Lots of quotes coming up and I'm legit the worst at formatting them correctly so bear with me... I might mess up a few of these quoted messages.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

You've derided this person as bias/alienating, but then completely dismissed (or ignored?) an extremely valid point they made about Rush (even ignoring everything else that person said, most of which I agree with you on) ...

You stated that AB was an issue when stacked by multiple players, causing an "insane damage spike" of 100k within 1-2 seconds, yet you constantly only talk about Rush as a "single proc" never talking about it being stacked like AB was, this deflection on Rush completely ignores the desync inducing ping pong effect stacking 2, 3 or even 4 procs of Rush of Agony has that causes the targets game to desync.

Look, I respectfully disagree with the idea that I’m ignoring or dodging this topic. I’ve talked about it in plenty of threads—maybe not every single post in this one, but there’s been a ton of discussion, so I might’ve missed it here. Point is, I’ve said multiple times that Rush needs a CC cooldown. As someone who pulls in a ball group, I’ve literally said stuff like, “I shouldn’t be able to double or triple pull people, then throw in another Rush on top of it.” It’s already a lot, but when you add in how Rush behaves under heavy server lag, it’s even more ridiculous.

I’m not shying away from this. If I didn’t hit on it in one specific reply, it’s probably because I’ve already said it a bunch elsewhere. And when someone says Rush is “literally unblockable,” that’s just not accurate. You can hold block and walk right out of it. Just last night, I was up against an EP ball group with three pullers using Rush on me. I held block, kept moving, and didn’t get pulled—neither did the DCs around me. So, tossing out claims like that feels more like emotions talking than facts. I don’t see much point in keeping the convo going if we’re leaning on hyperbole instead of what’s actually happening. ZOS isn’t going to (or shouldn’t) make changes based on feelings alone. Nine times out of ten, they’re looking at data—logs, their BI team’s analysis, that kind of thing. /end tangent

Every time I jump into these discussions, I’m trying to offer a perspective that I genuinely think could make the game better. I’m not always the loudest one in the room, but I do my best to keep an open mind and come from a place of honest, good intentions—even if some folks don’t see it that way. Disagreement’s totally fine, and I actually welcome it.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

This desync forces the targets block to be dropped for the second pull onwards, so no, blocking does NOT work, this set cannot be dodged since it's an AoE which are undodgeable and "Stepping out" is impossible without having access to (and block casting) specifically streak multiple times. Even with streak, it is completely ping + lag dependent on being able to avoid the bomb radius and completely RNG on being able to avoid a second or third pull. Due to this dependency on good ping/server-client sync, even streak is unreliable with how random the servers can be if they are good or not and forget about it if you don't live in the same area as the servers.

Man, there’s a lot to dig into here. I probably should’ve kept reading before firing off my last message, but I’m seeing some claims like “blocking doesn’t work” and “this set can’t be dodged,” and I’ve got to call those out—they’re just not true. It’s why I sometimes skip over these kinds of statements. I’ll explain why they’re off-base, and then someone will hit me with ten reasons why they think I’m full of it, and we’re stuck in this endless back-and-forth loop.

Let me break it down, though, because it ties into some of the points you made right after those claims. You can block Rush, and you can dodge it. If you spot a ball group charging in, you can roll out of the way and, more often than not, avoid getting pulled. I’ve got a pile of clips buried in a Discord from when our guild tested this exact thing. Our raid lead was convinced you couldn’t dodge Rush—turns out, you absolutely can. When I see Rush coming, I almost always just dodge roll to the side. If I’m too close and know I’ll still be in range, I hold block and start walking out of it. It works.

Now, on the desync point—yeah, desyncs are a mess. There are probably 10-20 things in this game that can desync you under heavy lag. But using that as a reason to gut Rush is a shaky argument. If we’re going there, you’d have to strip out DK Leap, all leaps, Meteor, any chain or pull, runes—basically any skill or set that messes with a player’s position from client to server. If desyncs are the justification, you’re suddenly talking about half the game getting removed.

Do I think ZOS needs to tackle desyncs? Hell yeah, 100%. They should’ve been on it five years ago. But does the desync issue belong in the Rush conversation? In my opinion, no. The second you bring desyncs into it, you’re opening the door to 20+ other things that derail the focus on Rush itself. It muddies the water and takes us away from the actual discussion.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

There's another issue that Rush currently has, that I didn't want to mention, but it has been getting more prevalent recently, which used to occur with Meteor. The "slow pull".
This is where the pull slowly drags your character across the map at walking (not run or sprint, actual slow walk) speed, leaving your character hard CC'd that cannot be broken (like getting knocked off a mount), the entire time/distance your character is sliding, unable to do anything at all, except watch your character slowly slide into the kill zone then drop dead (sometimes even dropping dead mid slide because for some reason your character is still targetable within that slow pull and can be focused down while unable to do anything).
No counterplay, no chance, can't even blame lack of skill/being unaware, just straight up uncounterable/unpreventable slow slide into instant/guaranteed death. Oh, and this one doesn't even require multiple procs of Rush either, a single proc can be enough.

I hear you, and I’ve been there—that slow-pull nonsense is maddening. But this isn’t just a Rush problem; it happens with other sets and skills too. It’s all tied to client/server I/O data and the game’s overall performance. (If you check out the lag thread, I’ve got a whole saga about my ISP woes—TL;DR: busted fiberglass buried at the street level makes my internet “blip” for milliseconds at random.) When your connection has one of these micro-drops, the client stops getting data, the server stops receiving it, and that’s when you get those agonizingly slow pulls, delayed meteors, or just about anything else dragging out.

It’s a real issue, no question, and it’s frustrating as hell. But it’s not really about Rush’s tooltip or mechanics—it’s a performance problem. This kind of thing belongs in the broader conversation about server lag and connection issues, not pinned on the set or skill itself.

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

It's issues like this and exploits like the ping pong desync when stacking multiple instances of Rush are why Rush and AB are more like comparing green and red apples, not apples to oranges. It is also why it is such an egregious let down on ZOS end that they completely killed off (in PvP) AB that gave everyone else the required damage to have a chance to fight ball groups, but then are refusing to do anything about Rush that is being abused by ball groups to literally farm (not even fight, just farm) everyone else.

First off, using Rush in prime time isn’t an exploit. The way Rush works—those constant checks on where a player is, whether they’re entering or leaving the area—gets messy when you mix in a client/server “blip” and the general server instability we all deal with. On the client side, it looks like players are out of the blast zone (and they are), but the server’s like, “Nah, you’re still in range.” It’s the same deal with the Arcanist beam, actually. That beam’s client/server checks are almost identical, constantly tracking where players are relative to it. I’d bet good money people are getting tagged by the beam even when they’re way outside it—they just don’t notice because it’s not a pull yanking them across the screen.

Comparing the two is kind of apples and oranges—or maybe red apples and green apples—but honestly, the comparison doesn’t matter much (yeah, I know I brought it up). Do they both work as intended? Eh, not really, but also kind of.

Rush technically works as intended—the server’s pulling people who are in range based on the data it has. But on the client side, players are already out of range, and under heavy server load, the mismatch between server FPS and client FPS creates this delay that’s just brutal. I don’t know how you fix that without tackling the root issue: server/client performance. Vengeance is a step in the right direction, though. If the live servers ran as smoothly as Vengeance does right now, I’d wager the Rush complaints wouldn’t be about getting pulled from miles away or through buildings. Instead, we’d be talking about the fact that you can get pulled, then pulled again, and again.

That’s the real issue I’ve been harping on for over a year: I shouldn’t be able to double or triple pull people. It’s absurd. No mechanic should work like that. You pull someone, they should get a few seconds of immunity so they have a chance to dodge roll out of the damage they know is coming. That’s a change ZOS needs to make, plain and simple.

Now, about Azure Blight —the math on the server side was straight-up broken. We tested that set for days and confirmed it. There was some bizarre multiplier effect going on where anyone could slap it on and make things go boom. It was like cross-healing, but for damage—super weird. And when big groups ran it, you could feel the server choking. Disconnects spiked hard whenever that set popped off. I’m positive ZOS had logs and metrics showing a massive uptick in crashes tied to it, so they just went, “Screw it, delete the set,” and that was that.

Was that the right call? Hell no. As a ball group player, I actually loved the challenge it brought—until the griefers started exploiting the wonky math. ZOS should’ve taken the time to figure out why the set was misbehaving and fixed it properly. If the tooltip worked as intended, I think it would’ve added a really fun dynamic for ball group fights. There need to be sets that shake things up for ball groups, and the concept behind this one was spot-on. It’s just the execution and the performance hits that were a mess.

NxJoeyD wrote: »

RoA in its current state is absolutley lowering the ceiling in PvP and with subclassing has made non-strategic spamming the meta.

I’m sorry but just saying “don’t stack” isn’t a good enough of an argument here.

I agree, players shouldn’t be Zerg stacked .. but .. what people are falling to understand with RoA is that because of its ridiculous range players don’t need to be Zerg stacked. And let’s be clear, “proximity” doesn’t equal Zerg stacking.

There’s a lot of PvP gameplay mechanics that require some degree of proximity; team healing, location based objectives, etc. This is true for all manners of PvP gameplay, whether your team is trying to take a keep or capture a flag in BG.

The biggest flaw with RoA IMO is that it doesn’t apply CC immunity. This is allowing users to, essentially, create their own Zerg group where one didn’t exist.

RoA either needs to apply the CC immunity or have its range reduced. We can’t just sit here and say that being within range of your teams healer is justification enough for a set like RoA to swoop up and grab players and then follow up to the degree someone can.

There’s very little risk factor but huge reward factor and that’s the issue.

Listen, it’s never the right thing to do, gameplay wise, to inject a broken mechanic to address an existing broken mechanic; two breaks does not a balanced game make.

All I hear when anyone mentioned RoA (or Vicious Death) is the ball group Zergs; but the truth is these sets have made these aspects of PvP WORSE, not better.

PvP already has too many limited counter mechanics now with subclassing; some of these sets are just over the top.

I can’t imagine how we’re still defending RoA by using the position of breaking up Zergs or spam groups when RoA has an insane range of 12m! People here really believe that anything less than 12m worth of distance between players is punishable by a no skill set proc?

Sorry, not buying it. The set itself can have a place in PvP and exist, but the specs on it don’t align with the reason it was introduced in the first place and that’s what needs to be fixed, either apply CC immunity or cut the range.

Applying CC immunity will require the set wearer to strategically utilize the proc with proper follow up attack rather than just spamming broad AoE CC like what we’re seeing here.

Reducing the range is another option that would see the set really only pulling groups who were stacked rather than grabbing up everyone within 12m.

To be fair I’m more inclined to have the CC immunity because a lot of the area based PvP objectives arent large enough to avoid RoA even with a reduced range so unless the devs are going to expand the recognized objective AoE then CC immunity is probably the better approach.

1) CC immunity is a must with this set - fix it ZoS
2) 12m is too large I agree - when you add in the performance (client server) it "feels" like its 25m+. Drop it to like... 8 and it will "feel" a bit better.

Also, don't chase ball groups into the smallest of chokes - go around the chokes


Hopefully this massive wall of text gives my ball group rush puller perspective while trying to be fair to people who strongly dislike ball groups. ZoS has said they won't remove ball groups (and honestly if they tried we would just find something else). Better to work together to make it easier to kill ball groups.. add some fun mechanics, fix whats broken, and make cyrodiil fun for everyone.

LadyGP wrote: »

ercknn wrote: »

Turtle and NxJoeyD hit the nail on the head with those explanations!

lol and the “SLOW” meteor ☄️ effect 😂. I hate hold block on what feels like 10 sec only to get RoA pulled into an unblocked meteor. Feels the worst. It’s even worse when groups specifically time those to trap you in ceiling or keep walls.

Fixing the broken aspects of meteor should have been fixed over a year ago.

But guess what, meteor is just like another RoA in the sense that it’s something not working as intended, and players exploit it and then ZOS doesn’t do anything about it because you then have a split player base. Players that use and abuse exploits to have an upper end; taking easy street; WANT a low skill ceiling. And then you have players who don’t and want things to work as intended on fair grounds.

Someone above mentioned that I alienated the 1vX play style as BIAS in my last post.
You don’t understand.
I feel like I need to explain this to you and others that might be reading so we can get our point across why RoA is toxic and ruining the long term PvP experience.

The 1vX play style is Objectively the highest ceiling you can go when it comes to in ESO PvP. Every end game, long term, veteran PvP’er knows this, and because of this the 1vX is the most respectable play style.
I know because I have earned it this way, and not through bombing, cross heal botting, unkillable necro tank, etc
Bombing is NOT, despite people making glorified videos, despite people taking out 15+ in one go.
The 1vX style has and has always been and will be the master of all PvP routes. It is the sublime end game that only the truly mastered players will achieve.

ROA spam by either 3+ pinball groups and cross healing on RoA systematic proc goers ruins this play style by creating a toxic loop that can only be conquered by either adding more cross heals to your group or more RoA spam with 2+ negates, DK or scribing chain pull all times with soul tether, Goliath ulti dumps.

We need to stop RoA. and for the sake of the conversation, cross healing as well
Just end it now, and things will be so much better.

The ceiling will open up and players will have much more to work with and play with.
This will extend the longevity of PvP and make the experience better as a whole.

The vast majority of people don't "try" to get you stuck in a wall. It just happens if you get hit with a meteor under heavy lag. There are one or two trolls out there who do it.. and.. they should get a slap on the wrist because it's annoying.

Add CC to rush - problem solved with the ping pong.

Cross heals need a cap - but because they refuse to utilize battle spirit for this they won't make the change because the end game trial community would lose their absolute minds. Somethings got to give here IMO because yes... we can stack too many heals and shields in a ball group 100%. We actually have been pretty vocal about that for a few years now.

Each person has their own play style and I don't think it helps the conversation or game as a whole when people in general try to shame a certain person because of their play style. Some people don't like to be social and just want to run by themself. Some people like the stealth... patience aspect... of bombing (I can't do it I lack patience). Some people love having 10 people on them and 1vX. Some people love the 5+ hours post raid at 2am looking at logs and theory crafting on what worked in their ball group, what people are using now to hit them harder, what mitigations we can do, etc (this is my fun zone), and then coming up with a plan and seeing how the logs compared.

We should embrace all play styles. That doesn't mean we can't have conversations about cross healing or broken sets , though.

I agree with you. Everyone can play the way they want to. ZOS motto is play how you want.

Veteran PvP’ers have a good idea of what the highest ceiling of play is. Players can either choose to engage in that or not.

Regardless RoA tunnels the field of PvP diversity by limiting counters and forcing groups and solo players into certain play styles if they choose to engage each other.

I believe nerfing RoA into a “1 target can only affected by this skill every 6 seconds”

Or omega nerf into a hard CC.

Either way discussion will come to what will counter balls if a hard CC is added on to RoA.