Cyrodiil Healing Nerf!!

edward_frigidhands · January 12

imPDA wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin, this should be added on top of turning off healing from players outside of the group, because it should not ruin your gameplay if some random healer will decide to stack a lot of HoTs on you out of nowhere. Or, if you can, you could decrease healing received from other targets, but left player's own healing as is, because loosing healing you used to is frustrating, but receiving less healing from random healers from outside of group is OK.

The goal of healers is to heal. This is part of the game regardless of whether you are grouped or not grouped with a player.

You don't want to set the requirement of having to be grouped for basic things like healing in a game that is advertised as a massively multiplayer online game.

That would be a bit counter intuitive don't you think?

ArctosCethlenn · January 12

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

Artisian0001 wrote: »

Again, on another note, a scaling healing reduction based on group size would be nice, or even a flat 50% to HoTs once you reach a certain number of people in group, but reaching just 3 HoTs is a lazy way around it. Large groups can still just shield stack and use direct heals, smaller groups are the ones that take the biggest hit from this, and larger groups will not be able to siege efficiently anymore which will lead to mainly open field fights that favor those larger groups.

No this would not be the answer. Remember HoTs are the answer to DoTs in this game. They are meant to be counters.

A scaling healing debuff that increases with crowd or group size that people don't fully understand in a game that is advertised as a "massively multiplayer online game" is a bad idea for reasons I don't think anyone should need to explain.

Larger groups are meant to kill smaller ones. The answer would be more people or better tactics. Not some arbitrary healing debuff that goes against the balance of the game.

That logic on hots vs dots really only applies in solo and smallscale; largescale it is significantly easier to apply hots to everyone than dots, and requires very specific setups to spam aoe dots, while the hots don't take any particular investment.

There are also cleanses to hard-counter dot builds, but there isn't really a way to strip enemy hots in the same way, eg offensive purges like wow has (had?).

Tommy_The_Gun · January 12

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

Larger groups are meant to kill smaller ones. The answer would be more people or better tactics. Not some arbitrary healing debuff that goes against the balance of the game.

That is not what is happening. Ball groups are able to take on way more players than they have in their group. Due to how game works and how stacking & synergies work 12 people in one group are effectively more like like 12 x 12 people. That is number 1 issue that open world Cyro & IC has & it drags for years. During early days it was not as prominent since every single update, ball groups had not received not a single direct adjustment to effectiveness while other play-styles got gutted multiple times.

xylena · January 12

Did they say whether they can differentiate hots by source, between self and others?

edward_frigidhands · January 12

L_Nici wrote: »

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Artisian0001 wrote: »

Okay, you have effectively ruined the game.

Can you give some context here? That way, we can provide feedback to the team.

3 healing over time effects on you halfing all of your received healing is a change that makes no sense.

HoTs and DoTs need to be balanced in the same way because they are polar opposite answers to each other in the game's balance scheme.

The way Major Defile is there to counter Major Vitality as an equal and opposite counter part.

3 healing over time effects on you halving all of your healing would need to be countered by 3 damage over time effects halving all damage you take for the duration as a counter balance. Neither of the two belong in the game. PVP or otherwise.

This change will break the game in all environments with battle spirit.

What is the actual problem you guys are attempting to address with this change?

Is it ballgroups? This won't stop them. Because it won't stop their ability to kill. It might make them more lethal because they are going to be killing groups that have no idea why they can't heal through the damage.

Is this meant to stop people from piling several rows of HoTs and DoTs which potentially impact performance? The answer to that will be to address how HoTs and DoTs work in the entire game because those issues are present in Trials, World content and PvP. You can't address that with Battle Spirit.

This needs to go back to formula.

You guys need to try and shift more damage and healing to direct damage from over time effects.

Or have buffs that combine HoTs and DoTs into one effect such as Major/Minor Corrosion and Major/Minor Renewal.

I am a little alarmed that a change like this even made it to the PTS in response to feedback regarding ball groups.

The thing is, that healing over time outpaces damage over time by far already..

If you feel that is the case then your feedback and logical response to that feedback should be to address the individual numbers of those HoTs or DoTs that are out of line rather than introducing a game breaking debuff that breaks healing altogether and allows an entire one side of the game to be much weaker to build into (healing) than others (tanking/damage dealing).

What is being suggested here is the opposite of the word balance in it's very definition.

Radiate77 · January 12

What’s not being said, is that even as a solo player Subclassed into Living Death, you’re cooked.

Spirit Guardian.
Mortal Coil.
Anything else.

What other skill lines are a death sentence?

Desiato · January 12

I like that ZOS has the intent to address this issue.

But the way they've addressed it is SO INCREDIBLY concerning because it demonstrates a complete and fundamental lack of understanding of Cyrodilic PVP.

LordDragonSlayer · January 12

Just make it so there is a max number of hots on a person in Cyrodiil at one time vs reducing their effectiveness or make it so that each hot is unique so they cannot stack in Cyrodiil. However, I do not do pvp much anymore because I suspect based on observation that there is a ton of cheating going on so this healing suggestion may not really be viable.

I just hope this does not carry over to pve because that has always been the trend and I am sorry it is just wrong to apply what is happening in pvp community to the pve community. They are two separate entities and should be treated as such but I can see this going to pve as well and then making that community which is the vast majority of the players very upset.

This is the only game that I play and have seen were when new content comes out it is much better/easier to do the newer and older harder vet dungeon and trial content because dps, heals, and/or tanking always gets nerfed making it much more difficult for those that are new to the game or who are not at the same point as other players/guilds to get those achievements. Almost every other mmo makes the older content easier. I am not advocating for making that harder vet and trial content easier but I am advocating for making it a a maximum the same level of difficulty.

edward_frigidhands · January 12

imPDA wrote: »

While it is a problem for Cyrodiil healers, I would say PvP doesn't need dedicated healers,

If I am being honest, this one line invalidates any feedback you have to offer because of how much that goes against the point of this game.

Supporting the breaking of healing because you don't think the game's pvp should have dedicated healers is an absurd point of view for someone playing an MMORPG with a tagline that states "play the way you want".

Teeba_Shei · January 12

I expected something like a hot cap or a 4% reduction to healing-over-time effects for each HoT beyond five, but instead we got what is, in my view, the worst design decision I’ve seen in ESO—and I’ve been playing since beta.

edward_frigidhands · January 12

Desiato wrote: »

I like that ZOS has the intent to address this issue.

But the way they've addressed it is SO INCREDIBLY concerning because it demonstrates a complete and fundamental lack of understanding of Cyrodilic PVP.

This is where I am with this change. The fact that this would make it past a discussion in a meeting and the cutting board and here into the first version of the PTS is pretty alarming.

There would have to very many people in between that thought this idea was fine that approved it to move to the first set of patch notes.

All of those people do not play the game that they are making these important decisions for.

Artisian0001 · January 12

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

imPDA wrote: »

While it is a problem for Cyrodiil healers, I would say PvP doesn't need dedicated healers,

If I am being honest, this one line invalidates any feedback you have to offer because of how much that goes against the point of this game.

Supporting the breaking of healing because you don't think the game's pvp should have dedicated healers is an absurd point of view for someone playing an MMORPG with a tagline that states "play the way you want".

Some people don't want to look at this honestly. Saying PvP doesn't need healers is deeply unserious.

edward_frigidhands · January 12

Artisian0001 wrote: »

TheLoreMaster420 wrote: »

ZOs, You actually cooked this update - all the Quality of Life changes are amazing.

Then you shoved the worst balancing change to mar all the amazing player experience updates.

Please take actual feedback and revisit this change. If you can't figure out a better way to fight heal stacking don't make a bad change that will affect all of cyrodiil. No change is better than a bad change.

With the current change on PTS you treat a small group <6 players the same as a full 12-man group.

With all of scribing, vigor, and regeneration it is incredible easy for a solo or small group to reach 3 HoTs. You are actively punishing people for grouping and coordinating with each other in an MMO.

I get that ballgroups are strong, but this is just a punishment for playing with friends. You don't even have to be a sweaty 12 man, you can be a casual 3 person group of friends and you get hit as hard as the best ballgroups that play.

Well said.

xylena · January 12

This seriously restricts solo builds, it'll be an inconvenience for ball groups but they'll end up doing mostly the same thing by leaning more heavily into shield stacking.

gariondavey · January 12

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Artisian0001 wrote: »

Okay, you have effectively ruined the game.

Can you give some context here? That way, we can provide feedback to the team.

Hey @ZOS_Kevin
After seeing the notes today I was surprised and it seems like concerns are being taken more seriously, so glad to see that.

In terms of this specifically, I have been of the mind that I'd rather have hots overwrite each other if they are the same name. If this was paired with only having 1 damage shield as well (any damage shield overwrites previous one), then ball group healing would drastically be decreased.

If you wished to further decrease ball group strength, disabling pve trial sets in PvP would help with that. After all, rallying cry got disabled in pve.

Further things could be "if you are in a group larger than 6 people in cyrodiil, healing received is reduced by 25 percent" or something like that.

edward_frigidhands · January 12

imPDA wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

imPDA wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin, this should be added on top of turning off healing from players outside of the group, because it should not ruin your gameplay if some random healer will decide to stack a lot of HoTs on you out of nowhere. Or, if you can, you could decrease healing received from other targets, but left player's own healing as is, because loosing healing you used to is frustrating, but receiving less healing from random healers from outside of group is OK.

If I’m in a group with one friend, and we’re fighting around a castle, how would it be fair for us to not receive any healing from other players?

How would this be fair for people who main a healer in Cyrodiil?

There needs to be a smarter solution than simply turning off heals from an out of group source.

Let's test this first on Live for some time (2–4 weeks).

The live server is not for testing.

There is already a server for that purpose. You are posting on the forums dedicated to a server dedicated to testing.

That is kind of the point. To check bad changes and decisions like this one and keep them from making it to the live servers where people may login to expect a degree of quality.

Although lately those expectations have eroded.

edward_frigidhands · January 12

gariondavey wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Artisian0001 wrote: »

Okay, you have effectively ruined the game.

Can you give some context here? That way, we can provide feedback to the team.

Further things could be "if you are in a group larger than 6 people in cyrodiil, healing received is reduced by 25 percent" or something like that.

You want to discourage grouping up in a game labeled an MMORPG...I am struggling to make sense of this one.

The funny thing about this suggestion is that this would not stop the ball groups that we are ready to break the game to counter. They would make smaller groups since they coordinate on voice.

This will hurt regular players who just want to play together.

AD42 · January 12

Correct the change. Add a condition that the healing only affects party members.

Artisian0001 · January 12

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Artisian0001 wrote: »

Okay, you have effectively ruined the game.

Can you give some context here? That way, we can provide feedback to the team.

Further things could be "if you are in a group larger than 6 people in cyrodiil, healing received is reduced by 25 percent" or something like that.

You want to discourage grouping up in a game labeled an MMORPG...I am struggling to make sense of this one.

The funny thing about this suggestion is that this would not stop the ball groups that we are ready to break the game to counter. They would make smaller groups since they coordinate on voice.

This will hurt regular players who just want to play together.

This comment is probably just a meet in the middle number because 50^ is absurd, but 25% blanket nerf is absurd too. Again, I said this way earlier, no other game I have ever played puts out so HUGE nerfs with zero thought. A 10% nerf to people who have 3 or more HoTs on them is already substantial and in other games it would be game breaking and cause for outrage. A 50% heal nerf sounds more like an April fools prank than anything else, whoever even came up with the idea of this would lose their job in another company, it's just a joke.

Artisian0001 · January 12

AD42 wrote: »

Correct the change. Add a condition that the healing only affects party members.

This was already tested and was great, and is a good starting point. Why not remove healing from outside of group and add a flat 10% heal reduction to groups larger than 6? If that is too much or too little just adjust slowly, like any other company would.

Dalinar4 · January 12

50% healing nerf...

Setting aside the seemingly Machiavellian design of this change, has anyone considered the impact this could have on the already over taxed servers? Think about the number of added checks this will cause the server to do. Every time a person is hit by any heal the server will now have to do a check to see what heals they already have. How did they code that check? Is it just checking for "like" heals, or is it a full character sheet being checked every time?

In large scale battles that’s likely thousands if not tens of thousands of extra checks every minute for the server.

Iriidius · January 12

ZOS could make battlespirit divide all Hots from other players by square root of the number of Hots from other players so the healing of more HoTs is steadily dimished without ever becoming negative or zero.

Dalinar4 · January 12

50% healing nerf 2.0

The goal seems to be targeted specifically at Ball Groups, but this will hurt "normal" players the most. Nuking all healing received by 50% with a mostly uncontrollable proc condition is one of the worse decisions I have ever seen in this game. Burst healing is one of the primary ways solo players survive.Being a healer in PvP is now a net negative to your faction's survivability.

Instead:
1. Only applies to Healing over time skills
2. 2.5% healing received reduction for each player you are grouped with. 12 players = 27.50%, 30% if you count yourself.
3. Limit the number of the same HOT on each person. Example: 3 Echoing Vigor stacks, hit by #4 resets the oldest one.

Darkivel · January 12

Please do not make healing group only. We have enough trouble getting new people into Cyro, and forcing them to be in a group to get healing will kill any fun they might have. Also, from the day ESO launched, I have loved the fact you can be a drive-by healer in Cyro. That you can help any ally, not just the ones you are grouped with. Changing healing to group only would be against the spirit of the game.

I agree that a cap on hots, or turning vigor and RR into major and minor buffs, are a better direction than cutting down all healing once you have a certain number of hots on you.

I do think it's important to look at shield stacking as well if we're trying to balance group healing.

MeridiaFavorsMe · January 12

This is a terrible change. Penalizing healing taken by 50% for having multiple HoTs active destroys sustained healing and pushes PvP even further into burst-only gameplay.

If this makes it to live, I probably won’t keep playing. This is not the kind of PvP balance I want to support.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · January 12

@ZOS_Kevin

I'll test this myself but imo it shouldn't be 'number of HoTs' but instead be number of 'same skill' HoTs' i.e. cast by another person on you.

For example lets say I choose to run Green Vigor which only places the vigor hot on me, and someone else comes and places radiating regeneration and Yellow vigor (the aoe morph) on me. Now I have 3 HoTs from just 1 extra player being near me.

In my scenario of '3 of the same HoT' this wouldn't proc the 50% reduction but reading the change it looks like it would currently.

Remember that some sets in the game require HoT healing in order to activate so by implementing this rule you're removing playstyles from the game (or causing players to actively harm others around them for simply wearing a set similar to when plaguebreak was introduced and curse-eater set could proc the damage from it)

Similarly Shielding is a large problem right now (mostly due to the fact the scribing shields scale on HP which rewards tank gameplay) which won't be affected as they can still be stacked along with other heals.

With the current implementation (if it works the way it sounds) I can foresee some tanky trolls following groups to just apply 3 HoTs onto them constantly.

The_Meathead · January 12

gariondavey wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Artisian0001 wrote: »

Okay, you have effectively ruined the game.

Can you give some context here? That way, we can provide feedback to the team.

Hey @ZOS_Kevin
After seeing the notes today I was surprised and it seems like concerns are being taken more seriously, so glad to see that.

In terms of this specifically, I have been of the mind that I'd rather have hots overwrite each other if they are the same name. If this was paired with only having 1 damage shield as well (any damage shield overwrites previous one), then ball group healing would drastically be decreased.

If you wished to further decrease ball group strength, disabling pve trial sets in PvP would help with that. After all, rallying cry got disabled in pve.

Further things could be "if you are in a group larger than 6 people in cyrodiil, healing received is reduced by 25 percent" or something like that.

I'll second what Garion says here, his version sounds a lot better focused on the objective than what has been put on the PTS.

YandereGirlfriend · January 12

Glad to see that this proposed change is getting absolutely ratio'd. As it should.

Making each sticky HOT morph unique, as some have suggested, so that you may only have one instance at a time, would be a wise change, IMO. It achieves the intended spirit of the change, completely eliminating sticky HOT stacking, without blowing up the rest of the game around it.

Moreover, it would avoid adding even more Byzantine and arbitrary calculations to the already over-stressed game servers' plate. The poor servers don't need that. We don't need that. Instead, follow existing mechanical precedents and treat sticky HOTs like damage shields that cannot stack with themselves.

Not only have you evened the odds in fights but you have also likely slightly improved performance due to all of the sticky HOT calculations no longer being made.

imPDA · January 12

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

imPDA wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

imPDA wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin, this should be added on top of turning off healing from players outside of the group, because it should not ruin your gameplay if some random healer will decide to stack a lot of HoTs on you out of nowhere. Or, if you can, you could decrease healing received from other targets, but left player's own healing as is, because loosing healing you used to is frustrating, but receiving less healing from random healers from outside of group is OK.

If I’m in a group with one friend, and we’re fighting around a castle, how would it be fair for us to not receive any healing from other players?

How would this be fair for people who main a healer in Cyrodiil?

There needs to be a smarter solution than simply turning off heals from an out of group source.

Let's test this first on Live for some time (2–4 weeks).

The live server is not for testing.

There is already a server for that purpose. You are posting on the forums dedicated to a server dedicated to testing.

That is kind of the point. To check bad changes and decisions like this one and keep them from making it to the live servers where people may login to expect a degree of quality.

Although lately those expectations have eroded.

PTS is dead for tests like this. There were many tests on Live before, by the way. If you don’t want to test it on Live, fine - deliver it to Live without testing. The only condition - it must be added that it won’t affect players without their consent. A solo player shouldn’t receive this debuff because of a random healer nearby. I don’t know what’s implementable, but maybe a switch like “Do not receive healing from allies outside of group” could help. I’d use it, but it’s probably hard to implement.

As for everything else - I’ll be fine with any heal reduction change, honestly. While this one looks a bit extreme, I want to see it in action. Besides, as I said, 50% can be tweaked to 40, 30, or even 20. “3” HoTs can be tweaked to 4, 5, 6 to help balance it.

Once again, I understand how it will affect probably the biggest part of players who just join Cyrodiil in random gear, place ballistae, and hold block waiting for heals - but that’s not healthy for the game. It discourages players from learning how to play. Recent updates in PvE also discourage people from learning, because you can just use Arcane Beam or even Heavy Attack and have 100k+ DPS. There are normal dungeons for casual gameplay. This type of change drives thoughtful and skillful people away over time. Almost no one posts good builds and articles anymore, because everything is easily achievable. There’s no point in trying something new - a raid leader can recruit 8 Arcanists and be sure any trial is beatable. It’s not even stagnation - it’s degradation of the player base.

I entirely support nerfs to damage in PvE and survivability in PvP. This will make people spend more time in-game learning and experimenting. Each achievement will truly feel like an achievement, not just a title to get and forget. You want an easy game, but it shouldn’t be like that - there must be a little challenge, a little learning. Otherwise, the game will keep losing players: one half will achieve everything fast and leave, the other will get bored of dull gameplay.

If you can propose another way to reduce healing in groups, I’m all ears.

Varana · January 12

Others have pointed out the problems with this change - esp. when you get hit by random and even entirely well-meaning people around you.
As Yandere said - this will make healers more hated than the enemy.

One other point though: Countering this design flaw by restricting healing to in-group should not be seen as a solution either.
Apart from people running casually around Cyrodiil for whatever reason (for instance, no open random groups), there are so many occasions where you are around other players outside your group and could support them. It kills faction cohesion if you cannot support your faction in a fight.

There have been solutions proposed in this thread. Restricting healing to in-group was a terrible idea the first time around and hasn't become any better in the meantime.