Cyrodiil Healing Nerf!!

Radiate77 · January 13

Teeba_Shei wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Teeba_Shei wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Danse_Mayhem wrote: »

HAHA I kinda love this.. healing has been insane for a while.

Seriously though I agree with the many people saying this can and will likely backfire.

Large groups / ball groups (the problem) are just gonna spec further into healing. 50% heal reduction on a pretty stacked ball group that are cross healing each other won’t really stop them.

It’s the smaller groups that will suffer here - They will be punished for catching random heals from other players in cyrodil.

My suggestions;

- Make all heals scale with group size. If you want a bigger group, and access to each others buffs etc, then it comes at a cost of healing debuff (which can be built back up with the right specs)
- Nerf the strength of healing soul and remove major vitality. Yeah don’t come at me on this one, we ALL use it, and a universal skill that ANYONE can slap on ANY build shouldn’t be hands down the strongest burst heal in the game. Adjusting this would actually have people even rethinking their subclassing choices to access healing, and would promote some variety along with balance.

If you really must go live with this, just remove all cross healing completely. No one outside of your group can heal or buff you. Not sure I like that direction but you need to commit to one thing or another

The pts version here will be bad for the game

Adding extra bookkeeping and overhead like this will only further drag down performance.

Just limit players to one copy of a given morph and call it a day.

This is an awful suggestion, but still somehow better than what is on the PTS.

Edit: I agree that performance would be screwed by this though.

How so?

You would land with 3 possible HoTs from Regen instead of 12, and only one active Echoing Vigor.

Regeneration
Rapid Regeneration
Radiating Regeneration

If you were playing a healer in a group(Pug or otherwise) you would be casting spells and having them do nothing. Sounds like fun.

What if they refreshed? Or extended the duration?

Most players run around with 12 skills, if one or two of yours are overlapping, then use the other 10?

If more than 2 are overlapping, then the group you’re trying to heal is already decked out on heals and probably didn’t need yours to begin with.

heimdall14_9 · January 13

FOR THE GROUP OF PLAYERS SAYING LIMIT TO GROUP SIZE ( BATTLE SPIRIT ) CONTROLS ALL PVP ZONES GH/IC/BG'S

taking ALL the places that is controlled by this system the group size that would be needed to be the cut point would be 3-4 ( if you want to place BG 4v4 comp into rule set ) so do you really want to cut max group size to just 4 in GH/IC because thats all it would be as EVERYONES going to use that sweet # for group to stay under the % for best outcome

Stridig · January 13

IncultaWolf wrote: »

Teeba_Shei wrote: »

Crazy how the developers want vengeance to work so badly they are actively making changes to kill the good version of cyrodiil.

This looks like a good change. I've noticed several people complaining in this thread also play in a ballgroup what a coincidence. Current version of cyrodiil isn't good, it's full of unkillable 12 man groups farming pvers at a keep for hours until they get bored and chasing down solo players.

Nobody is farming PvErs. The only people in Cyrodiil are PvPers unless there is a pursuit or mayhem. Its the same people on all 3 factions every day. Additionally, the proposed changes to healing hurt the people who don't play in an organized group more than the ones that do.

Yudo · January 13

This nerfs everyone and everything. I will hate Bob and Jimmy for casting a hot on me.
Direct heals should not be affected somehow.
Or reduce HOT healing by a higher value but only apply the reduction on HOTs

heimdall14_9 · January 13

peacenote wrote: »

Blood_again wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Great change, my only concern is that this HoT check does not differentiate between self-applied heals and foreign ones. I feel like this is an important distinction.

Expecting trolls who spam Regeneration all around in Cyrodiil after patch 49.

See. The problem is. Before Patch 49, you would not be considered a troll... you'd be considered helpful. And this is a pretty big issue, if you ask me.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Yeah this is madness. So now if a random proc healer runs by you and slaps on hots, now your own healing is going to be gutted. Cant wait to be 1vXing and the most dangerous part is when a random teammate shows up trying to heal me thinking he is helping but instead cuts my healing by 50%.

Couldn't be more clear than this; perfect summary.

@ZOS_Kevin, since you asked, I'm going to expand a bit on playstyles here. I believe I made a post on this a while back but it would be faster for me to just summarize again, I think.

Imo, this change was conceived from the perspective of considering damage dealers (or groups of damage dealers) who "abuse" self heals to be impossible to kill, or PvP tank griefers who distract but almost never die. It also seems more to be from the perspective that people are running in large groups and have sufficient heals with them, such that they're benefiting from more healing than should be accessible to a single group.

First of all, not all of us want to join a big group when participating in the large fights in Cyrodiil. This is for a few reasons.
It's been much tougher to find groups to join since the group size was changed from 24 to 12. The longer PvP has been "under siege" (haha), the less people are playing, so there just aren't a lot of people grouping up and whatnot. I stopped trying to spam zone and join groups a long time ago.

Not everyone wants to join comms or be that coordinated, but can still help arrive in larger fights and turn the tide of battle. Frankly I think this is the most fun IN Cyrodiil... showing up solo or duo and impacting what's going on.

ESO doesn't have a dynamic group merge (Rift was a game I played that did), so if it's common practice (it is for me) to jump into Cyro with one or two other friends, and kind of be rogue agents, going with the wind and popping around, it's a royal pain to ungroup, have your little subgroup try to get into the same larger group, and then disband and regroup all the time when you decide to move on. It's not smooth or clean or fun or, at the moment, necessary.

What this potential change means, as-is, is that solo players or small groups will frequently be considered trolls or disruptions on their own side if this change goes live as is, when they're only trying to help, and the people who enjoy this kind of play style will likely stop playing. Most people don't want to be constantly yelled at or criticized by their own team. And, as I explained above, there are reasons why people might prefer to not bother with grouping. I mention this preemptively as the next logical thought will be "well, then make it so you can only receive healing from your own group" or something like that. But that would, again, kill this playstyle.

Second, some of us enjoy being supports. We actually make builds with the primary aim of being able to heal up a group or random people we meet across the battlefield. I love my PvP healers. I never play in organized groups. A good chunk of my characters and my favorite role will have nothing to offer the battle at all if my team mates either get angry that I'm healing them or can't receive my healing at all. Not EVERYONE is DPS-focused. Are there not medics in wars?!?

ArctosCethlenn wrote: »

Nerfing ball groups, sure fine. But if this is gonna be a thing you should remove the ability to apply sticky hots to people you're not grouped with, otherwise it becomes very easy for people to troll and abuse their own faction; throw a few hots around and halve everyone in the area's healing. When I'm soloing at a keep fight I don't want my self healing reduced cause some dingus threw three bad hots at me.

Yep, it took almost... no time at all... for someone to suggest nerfing ungrouped healers, and to call them trolls and dinguses. (No offense intended ArctosCethlenn... I know you are just making a point, as am I.)

I don't know what the solution is. I was always more of a fan of better leveraging defile, than nerfing healing, but I do know that too much healing is a problem. But, please, for the sake of the solo'ers and small groups, don't implement a solution that makes us hated amongst our own faction! This is like the Ring of the Pale Order all over again, before it was nerfed per group member, in that it became a thing that someone could wear a piece of armor and make someone else's role pointless and ineffective. Except, this is worse, because the PvP crowd can be a bit more opinionated and quicker to report. Besides just the fact that it will ruin the fun for the playstyles I mentioned, not everyone reads patch notes, and not everyone plays the game all the time. I can totally see people being reported for simply healing their teammates and not knowing things have changed, and that is just crazy. I can also see people using it to sabotage the other factions and have some situations where the reporting would be ridiculous and some situations where it might be warranted. Please, please don't create that mess.

id hate to thank of my healer thats been emperor 2xs as something BAD for their alliance !!!!!!!!!

React · January 13

@ZOS_Kevin

To be clear, I am all for trying out the 50% reduction and seeing how it goes. A drastic and heavy change is definitely needed to begin reigning in the power of comped groups, both small and large. That said, there are definitely some obvious drawbacks to the approach taken today, and it seems like it is likely to be a "calculation heavy" thing to implement.

The below quote from gariondavey is definitely the best way I can think of approaching this issue in a way that might not have as many negative drawbacks as the 50% healing reduction, and almost certainly has less calculations to consider.

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.

Applying this same system to damage shields is a very important thing to consider in the near future, too. Regardless of whether the 50% reduction route is taken or Garion's approach, or even the 3x same morph hot stack limit that has been suggested on these forums for years - none of them will be sufficient anymore with how far out of hand shield stacking (and buff set stacking!) has gotten. I would hope the team plans to closely monitor whatever route is taken in the short term, and be prepared to make more focused changes like this in the following patch if needed. The community will thank you for it.

Thumbless_Bot · January 13

I run two hots by default on my warden, polar and vigor. With this change I am getting all my healing nerfed any time someone throws down another sticky hot like the other morph of vigor or radiating or rapid regen? That is... harsh...

I play solo outside of bgs and this will ruin my gameplay and do nothing to ball groups. They already probably run more than twice as many heals as they need. Ball groups are the reason i cut my play time by nearly 90% and almost never go into cyro anymore.

Can you at least give me the ability to opt out of rando heals from others ? This functionality is already coded into the game with pale order but maybe dont force everyone to wear a mythic just to be able to actually heal themselves in a bg ir cyro? Please... pretty please...

@ZOS_Kevin

I dont understand this change. Can you clarify the intent here? If it is aimed at leveling the playing field against ball groups it will have the opposite effect, just like every other change zos has made trying to counter ball groups. It will only make them stronger by comparison. If it is designed for any other reason please enlighten us. I dont make this comment to be negative, only to be realistic. This was the stated intent of dark convergence, for example. And that only made ball groups stronger. Please adjust this.

Maybe limit this to heals from others?. This way, those of us that dont abuse mechanics cam still enjoy the game the way it was likely intended to be played and, you know, heal ourselves.

Also, maybe have it scale higher than 50% for each additional hot to actually have an impact on ball groups? Maybe an additional 10% per hot up to some max reduction in healing? This way it will actually have an impact on ball groups.

Also, this should likely apply to shields. If it does not apply to shields, guess what ball groups will do...

Bottom line, outside of the ball group conundrum, I should always be able to fully heal myself with the skills and or sets that I slot.

fizzybeef · January 13

Is it 3x instances of the same hot? So 3x of one type of hot instance? Or is it But 3 of any hot?

Because then its literally overkill and will hurt randoms and zergs more then anything.

Radiate77 · January 13

Three total, duplicates count towards the number.

If you have 3 Echoing Vigor on you, all incoming heals are 50%, if you’re using two HoTs on your solo build, skills like Rune Focus or Structured Entropy, and some random tags you with a 250hps Radiating Regeneration, that 250 Radiating Regeneration becomes 125hps, halving all of your other heals, including future burst heals.

Even if someone doesn’t tag you and you’re a fan of Vigor as all PvP builds are, then with any combination of two Class, Weapon, Scribing, or Guild Skill HoTs, and a Vigor active, all three heals are going to be reduced to 50% the second that you hit Vigor.

This is a mess, and I have no doubt we will see some change to how this new Battle Spirit debuff functions before the end of this cycle.

Sluggy · January 13

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.

There are potentials to troll people here. Let's say Timmy the Two-timer runs out onto the field spamming HoTs with 1k spell and weapon damage and 10k max mag and stam with 10% crit chance and base crit bonus. Now he's nerfing the healing of everyone around him while not providing enough of a bonus himself to make up for it. Now, Imagine for a moment that he's doing this on behalf of a group on the opposing team just before they run in for an ulti-dump. For bonus points he can also spam purges just after he sees something like Plaguebreak proc to ensure maximum efficacy (And yes, this kind of thing does happen from time-to-time in Cyrodiil even now).

It doesn't have to be Timmy, either. It could just as easily be Johnny Newboots who's just hopped into Cyrodiil for the first time at level ten and doesn't know any better. Invisible debuffs like this are usually a sign of a bad design concept. Most people familiar with stats-based combat will have the sense to ask if an effect like HoTs are stackable. Almost none will think to ask, "If I apply this HoT will it actually *reduce* my teammates survivability?"

A significantly easier and smarter approach would be the one we've been suggesting for years. Limit the cap on HoT instances per each unique HoT. Stronger versions override weaker ones - always - otherwise you get the same net effect as above. Weaker ones might be fine for refreshing stronger ones but that would probably require some playtesting to ensure it's fair.

AD42 · January 13

@ZOS_Kevin
How will this change work with sets and effects?
1.Major Defile, Minor Defile
2. Jerall Mountains Warchief
Why doesn't the development team want to rework two abilities? These are the main problems:
1. Radiating Regeneration
2. Echoing Vigor
Is the team afraid of changes in PVE?

I will attach group logs from PVE to PVP.

These two skills are too strong in both PVE and PVP.
It seems the best solution would be to rework these two skills, making them unique and not stackable. This would improve server performance.
Make these two skills unique. Add a healing boost based on the number of targets hit, up to a maximum of 12. But make sure the total healing is 50% less than the sum of the healing from 12 players.

fizzybeef · January 13

Radiate77 wrote: »

Three total, duplicates count towards the number.

If you have 3 Echoing Vigor on you, all incoming heals are 50%, if you’re using two HoTs on your solo build, skills like Rune Focus or Structured Entropy, and some random tags you with a 250hps Radiating Regeneration, that 250 Radiating Regeneration becomes 125hps, halving all of your other heals, including future burst heals.

Even if someone doesn’t tag you and you’re a fan of Vigor as all PvP builds are, then with any combination of two Class, Weapon, Scribing, or Guild Skill HoTs, and a Vigor active, all three heals are going to be reduced to 50% the second that you hit Vigor.

This is a mess, and I have no doubt we will see some change to how this new Battle Spirit debuff functions before the end of this cycle.

Yet it was proven again how far off the devs are from the people who actually play the game.

fizzybeef · January 13

They need to make healing group contained again
But increase group sizes to 24 again

Sluggy · January 13

fizzybeef wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Three total, duplicates count towards the number.

If you have 3 Echoing Vigor on you, all incoming heals are 50%, if you’re using two HoTs on your solo build, skills like Rune Focus or Structured Entropy, and some random tags you with a 250hps Radiating Regeneration, that 250 Radiating Regeneration becomes 125hps, halving all of your other heals, including future burst heals.

Even if someone doesn’t tag you and you’re a fan of Vigor as all PvP builds are, then with any combination of two Class, Weapon, Scribing, or Guild Skill HoTs, and a Vigor active, all three heals are going to be reduced to 50% the second that you hit Vigor.

This is a mess, and I have no doubt we will see some change to how this new Battle Spirit debuff functions before the end of this cycle.

Yet it was proven again how far off the devs are from the people who actually play the game.

This isn't even a case of "far off from the people who play". This is far off from the basics of game design. It's not taking into account even the most trivial of edge cases which take less than thirty seconds of thinking about to identify.

schorse · January 13

I don't think a sudden drop in healing at a number of dots is a good idea because it will punish groups of 3 to 7 a lot. I know the scaling is not accurate but visually it looks like this for me:

If you want to target the nerf at ball groups, I think it would be better to leverage other things. These are:
- remove Snow Treaders from PvP (and the banner which grants root/snare immunity)
- remove Rapid Maneuver and its morphs from PvP

It's the backbone of most, if not all, ball groups at the moment, and only very niche builds use it otherwise.

Muizer · January 13

As I understand it, the red line will have half the slope of the black line. Nevertheless, the principle is the same. Why I called it clunky. Perhaps this is something they can do without too much work, just to see if it has any impact.

Btw, there's some IMHO unwarranted assertions being made in the thread about dragging down performance. Tracking parameters and making simple calculations on a character by character basis aren't where the performance problems are. I'm almost sure of that. Would be nice to get confirmation, but I suspect this is trivial compared to the cost of evaluating merely who is affected when someone casts an ability. Especially AoEs. Anything beyond that is going to be quite cheap by comparison. (I guess that's why AoE caps didn't work to improve performance much. For that you'd have to increase the cooldown, to ensure fewer casts per second. But I suspect a lot of people would hate that).

Artisian0001 · January 13

React wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin

To be clear, I am all for trying out the 50% reduction and seeing how it goes. A drastic and heavy change is definitely needed to begin reigning in the power of comped groups, both small and large. That said, there are definitely some obvious drawbacks to the approach taken today, and it seems like it is likely to be a "calculation heavy" thing to implement.

The below quote from gariondavey is definitely the best way I can think of approaching this issue in a way that might not have as many negative drawbacks as the 50% healing reduction, and almost certainly has less calculations to consider.

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.

Applying this same system to damage shields is a very important thing to consider in the near future, too. Regardless of whether the 50% reduction route is taken or Garion's approach, or even the 3x same morph hot stack limit that has been suggested on these forums for years - none of them will be sufficient anymore with how far out of hand shield stacking (and buff set stacking!) has gotten. I would hope the team plans to closely monitor whatever route is taken in the short term, and be prepared to make more focused changes like this in the following patch if needed. The community will thank you for it.

I know you mainly play solo, or at least you did when you used to stream, so you probably have some gripe with larger groups or even smaller groups of 4 people, but you're smarter than "trying out the 50% reduction and seeing how it goes." You have to know how silly allowing a 50% reduction in healing is to all sources. You must also know the community wouldn't thank them for this. I don't even see you in cyro anymore, all this would do is lead to a further decrease in the people playing, which would give you less people to fight, should you even decide to log in.

frogthroat · January 13

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

acastanza_ESO wrote: »

This looks like a great change, finally nerfing OP HOT stacking in Cyrodiil. But question for @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin, the wording is a little confusing here. Does having 3+ HOTs nerf all healing (e.g. Blessing of Restoration will get halved too), or just the HOTs themselves?

Just checked in with the team. All healing will be reduced if you have 3 or more healing over time effects on your character.

My first thought is that a 12 player ball group could now be a 12+1+1 player ball group. 12 in your alliance, and then one healer each for the enemy alliances. The purpose of those extra healers is to go in the middle of the group your own group is fighting and start applying weak hots, nerfing the healing of the group.

Iriidius · January 13

Artisian0001 wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Teeba_Shei wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Danse_Mayhem wrote: »

HAHA I kinda love this.. healing has been insane for a while.

Seriously though I agree with the many people saying this can and will likely backfire.

Large groups / ball groups (the problem) are just gonna spec further into healing. 50% heal reduction on a pretty stacked ball group that are cross healing each other won’t really stop them.

It’s the smaller groups that will suffer here - They will be punished for catching random heals from other players in cyrodil.

My suggestions;

- Make all heals scale with group size. If you want a bigger group, and access to each others buffs etc, then it comes at a cost of healing debuff (which can be built back up with the right specs)
- Nerf the strength of healing soul and remove major vitality. Yeah don’t come at me on this one, we ALL use it, and a universal skill that ANYONE can slap on ANY build shouldn’t be hands down the strongest burst heal in the game. Adjusting this would actually have people even rethinking their subclassing choices to access healing, and would promote some variety along with balance.

If you really must go live with this, just remove all cross healing completely. No one outside of your group can heal or buff you. Not sure I like that direction but you need to commit to one thing or another

The pts version here will be bad for the game

Adding extra bookkeeping and overhead like this will only further drag down performance.

Just limit players to one copy of a given morph and call it a day.

This is an awful suggestion, but still somehow better than what is on the PTS.

Edit: I agree that performance would be screwed by this though.

How so?

You would land with 3 possible HoTs from Regen instead of 12, and only one active Echoing Vigor.

Regeneration
Rapid Regeneration
Radiating Regeneration

Smaller groups not being able to have 3 echoing on them or something is a huge hit to a 3-4 man group. Smaller groups still suffer the most from this.

I almost never see groups with less than 5 players use echoing over resolving vigor, a group of 3 can and usually will use resolving over echoing vigor and do fine.
„Smaller groups“ healstacking 5 echoing vigor are just a smaller version of big groups stacking 12 echoing vigor and deserve to get nerfed just like them.
5 echoing vigor are almost twice the healing of 1 resolving vigor with much longer duration so they are up 100% of the time while casting resolving vigor every 5 seconds is unrealistic.
Even after 50% reduction HPS on every player is almost as much as resolving vigor with 30% of the casts and ressoursses spend.

Scytex01 · January 13

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Just chatted with the combat team. For those who think this change needs more work, we’re passing this feedback on so our teams can iterate on this. Please make sure to clearly express your feedback so we can take it into account during adjustments.

Hey Kevin,
First of all I appreciate that you guys listen to the Feedback of the Community and that you try nerfing OP strats.
I have to agree with some of the previous comments that this change would be very concerning for all PvP players.

The idea of nerfing HoT Stacking is fine to me, a massive blow towards ballgroups was the 50% Radiant Regeneration Nerf a couple of years back. With this current change you are suggesting, you will make every PvP Healer quit the game in my opinion.
Ground AoE Hots are nice for sieging and stationary combat but the moment you need to move a lot they become dreadful to play. This change is basically removing Sticky Hots from Cyrodiil entirely.

As many previous comments stated you can get Sticky HoTs from random other players or apply them to other players. This will 100% guaranteed result in Healing Bots trolling other people from their own alliance.

Just to give an example: Im playing a Solo Warden Build with Leeching Vines, Polarwind and maybe resolving Vigor. As soon as I have all of them up, my healing goes out the window. So this cap is *easily* reachable as a solo player. With the current siege dmg being a 8-14k DoT per siege depending on how well you mitigate dmg, this will be unplayable.

I dont only want to look at the problems here and maybe offer some ideas/solutions as well.

One idea (if this is to nerf ballgroups, which i am assuming here) would be to reduce healing from hots per group member. You did a great job at this with Rallying Cry in my opinion, by just making it so much more worth for solo players/small groups, while still making it viable for 12 man. A similar change could be applied here. Idk something like: HoTs are at a 100% effectiveness while being solo and then per group member they get reduced by 2 or 3%. 24% reduced healing for a 12 man group is A LOT. (Bare in mind, zerg groups that want to fight ballgroups will also be effected by this)

I'd also *not* nerf all the healing, because you are trying to address hot stacking not overall healing. A normal AoE burstheal (no crit) heals for around 6-7k or so. With the current siege dmg it already takes 2 Healers to outheal 1 oil. I think thats fine the way it is..

Another idea would be to just increase the cost of sticky HoTs slightly or reduce their healing as done before with Radiant Reg.

I do want to point out tho, that groups that do optimize should be capable to fight unorganised groups with ease.

Hoping this helps if you want further Feedback feel free to let me know.

Greetings Scytex

Artisian0001 · January 13

Iriidius wrote: »

Artisian0001 wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Teeba_Shei wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Danse_Mayhem wrote: »

HAHA I kinda love this.. healing has been insane for a while.

Seriously though I agree with the many people saying this can and will likely backfire.

Large groups / ball groups (the problem) are just gonna spec further into healing. 50% heal reduction on a pretty stacked ball group that are cross healing each other won’t really stop them.

It’s the smaller groups that will suffer here - They will be punished for catching random heals from other players in cyrodil.

My suggestions;

- Make all heals scale with group size. If you want a bigger group, and access to each others buffs etc, then it comes at a cost of healing debuff (which can be built back up with the right specs)
- Nerf the strength of healing soul and remove major vitality. Yeah don’t come at me on this one, we ALL use it, and a universal skill that ANYONE can slap on ANY build shouldn’t be hands down the strongest burst heal in the game. Adjusting this would actually have people even rethinking their subclassing choices to access healing, and would promote some variety along with balance.

If you really must go live with this, just remove all cross healing completely. No one outside of your group can heal or buff you. Not sure I like that direction but you need to commit to one thing or another

The pts version here will be bad for the game

Adding extra bookkeeping and overhead like this will only further drag down performance.

Just limit players to one copy of a given morph and call it a day.

This is an awful suggestion, but still somehow better than what is on the PTS.

Edit: I agree that performance would be screwed by this though.

How so?

You would land with 3 possible HoTs from Regen instead of 12, and only one active Echoing Vigor.

Regeneration
Rapid Regeneration
Radiating Regeneration

Smaller groups not being able to have 3 echoing on them or something is a huge hit to a 3-4 man group. Smaller groups still suffer the most from this.

I almost never see groups with less than 5 players use echoing over resolving vigor, a group of 3 can and usually will use resolving over echoing vigor and do fine.
„Smaller groups“ healstacking 5 echoing vigor are just a smaller version of big groups stacking 12 echoing vigor and deserve to get nerfed just like them.
5 echoing vigor are almost twice the healing of 1 resolving vigor with much longer duration so they are up 100% of the time while casting resolving vigor every 5 seconds is unrealistic.
Even after 50% reduction HPS on every player is almost as much as resolving vigor with 30% of the casts and ressoursses spend.

Of course you don't see groups of 3 running it, it makes no sense mathematically to run echoing in a group that size, it heals for less. If you knew this, rather than just trying to push your own narrative where you equate a 5 man to deserving the same nerf as a 12 man, you'd know that 5 echoing vigor isn't close to 2 resolving, because 3 echoing is less than 1 resolving. You would then by that logic know that 6 is also less than 2 and that you'd want 7 echoing to beat 2 resolving. Now, regardless of the fact that you don't actually care to address any of this and just hate the fact that big groups beat small groups, which is just logically what should happen given all other things equal, it makes zero sense to nerf a smaller group the same as a larger group. Why? Well, if you are playing solo why do you not also receive this nerf? Oh because it would be unfair correct? Okay, then at what random arbitrary metric do you decide that every group should be nerfed the same as a 12 man or even 2 12 man groups running together in tandem? No logic behind this, even if I ignore your lack of understanding the math.

React · January 13

Artisian0001 wrote: »

React wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin

To be clear, I am all for trying out the 50% reduction and seeing how it goes. A drastic and heavy change is definitely needed to begin reigning in the power of comped groups, both small and large. That said, there are definitely some obvious drawbacks to the approach taken today, and it seems like it is likely to be a "calculation heavy" thing to implement.

The below quote from gariondavey is definitely the best way I can think of approaching this issue in a way that might not have as many negative drawbacks as the 50% healing reduction, and almost certainly has less calculations to consider.

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.

Applying this same system to damage shields is a very important thing to consider in the near future, too. Regardless of whether the 50% reduction route is taken or Garion's approach, or even the 3x same morph hot stack limit that has been suggested on these forums for years - none of them will be sufficient anymore with how far out of hand shield stacking (and buff set stacking!) has gotten. I would hope the team plans to closely monitor whatever route is taken in the short term, and be prepared to make more focused changes like this in the following patch if needed. The community will thank you for it.

I know you mainly play solo, or at least you did when you used to stream, so you probably have some gripe with larger groups or even smaller groups of 4 people, but you're smarter than "trying out the 50% reduction and seeing how it goes." You have to know how silly allowing a 50% reduction in healing is to all sources. You must also know the community wouldn't thank them for this. I don't even see you in cyro anymore, all this would do is lead to a further decrease in the people playing, which would give you less people to fight, should you even decide to log in.

Nobody wants to fight groups utilizing these mechanics to begin with, the groups hardly even want to fight eachother. Its gotten so out of hand that even the sweaty small scale (4-6) groups are becoming unkillable without receiving a nuclear level burst. This is probably the number one reason many cyrodiil players do not log in anymore - there is no point fighting groups that cannot die because of broken mechanics. You're suggesting that all the "ball group" players will quit, and I genuinely doubt that because theyre probably some of the most obsessed pvp players left - but any that do leave will likely be replaced by people who are willing to play the game again once this absurdity gets reigned in.

I don't have a "gripe" with organized group play. Never did. Its a large scale environment and grouping is perfectly fine, as is gaining some power benefit with proper comp and skill distribution. I do have a problem with the absurd, exponentially scaling power level that mechanics like HOT stacking, shield stacking, and buff set stacking provide though. You cannot argue in good faith that these things are fine as is, nor can you argue that a light nerf to any one of these things will impact that power level. It has been so out of hand for so long, there is no denying it anymore.

You also mis-quoted me at the end. I did not suggest the community would thank them for the 50% healing reduction approach, but that they would for the approach outlined in the quote from Garion, especially if it is also applied to shields.

MincMincMinc · January 13

Teeba_Shei wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Danse_Mayhem wrote: »

HAHA I kinda love this.. healing has been insane for a while.

Seriously though I agree with the many people saying this can and will likely backfire.

Large groups / ball groups (the problem) are just gonna spec further into healing. 50% heal reduction on a pretty stacked ball group that are cross healing each other won’t really stop them.

It’s the smaller groups that will suffer here - They will be punished for catching random heals from other players in cyrodil.

My suggestions;

- Make all heals scale with group size. If you want a bigger group, and access to each others buffs etc, then it comes at a cost of healing debuff (which can be built back up with the right specs)
- Nerf the strength of healing soul and remove major vitality. Yeah don’t come at me on this one, we ALL use it, and a universal skill that ANYONE can slap on ANY build shouldn’t be hands down the strongest burst heal in the game. Adjusting this would actually have people even rethinking their subclassing choices to access healing, and would promote some variety along with balance.

If you really must go live with this, just remove all cross healing completely. No one outside of your group can heal or buff you. Not sure I like that direction but you need to commit to one thing or another

The pts version here will be bad for the game

Adding extra bookkeeping and overhead like this will only further drag down performance.

Just limit players to one copy of a given morph and call it a day.

This is an awful suggestion, but still somehow better than what is on the PTS.

Edit: I agree that performance would be screwed by this though.

Teeba_Shei wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Teeba_Shei wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Danse_Mayhem wrote: »

HAHA I kinda love this.. healing has been insane for a while.

Seriously though I agree with the many people saying this can and will likely backfire.

Large groups / ball groups (the problem) are just gonna spec further into healing. 50% heal reduction on a pretty stacked ball group that are cross healing each other won’t really stop them.

It’s the smaller groups that will suffer here - They will be punished for catching random heals from other players in cyrodil.

My suggestions;

- Make all heals scale with group size. If you want a bigger group, and access to each others buffs etc, then it comes at a cost of healing debuff (which can be built back up with the right specs)
- Nerf the strength of healing soul and remove major vitality. Yeah don’t come at me on this one, we ALL use it, and a universal skill that ANYONE can slap on ANY build shouldn’t be hands down the strongest burst heal in the game. Adjusting this would actually have people even rethinking their subclassing choices to access healing, and would promote some variety along with balance.

If you really must go live with this, just remove all cross healing completely. No one outside of your group can heal or buff you. Not sure I like that direction but you need to commit to one thing or another

The pts version here will be bad for the game

Adding extra bookkeeping and overhead like this will only further drag down performance.

Just limit players to one copy of a given morph and call it a day.

This is an awful suggestion, but still somehow better than what is on the PTS.

Edit: I agree that performance would be screwed by this though.

How so?

You would land with 3 possible HoTs from Regen instead of 12, and only one active Echoing Vigor.

Regeneration
Rapid Regeneration
Radiating Regeneration

If you were playing a healer in a group(Pug or otherwise) you would be casting spells and having them do nothing. Sounds like fun.

This is how the game used to be when it was far more functional. Every hot/dot/effect did not stack. This alone prevents so many terrible metas from forming because without stacking we would not see metas form around everyone spamming one BIS skill.....because it wouldn't stack. Same goes for proc sets. We would never see one BIS proc set because the effects and cooldowns would not stack on each target. This acts as a softcap for group play which starts to even group output so different size groups are more competitive with each other.

Before we had 3x the population on a pvp server and hardly had issues with overlapping. You would not notice it being an issue unless you were in a dedicated coordinated group having to leave cyrodil to change morphs.......OH WAIT, zos just fixed that issue because now we can change skills in our menu. Regardless ESO has maybe doubled the number of skills in the game. The chances of you ever overlapping in a crucial moment are so slim we are better off going for the performance and anti ballgroup concept.

For zerg players the benefit of preventing ballgroups from stacking 12x of the best hots in the game would FAR FAR outweigh the minor inconvenience of your minor hot potentially not overlapping on some lvl10 player that shouldn't be in greyhost.

Also ask yourself, should we really care about someone spam casting aoe hots into a void of a 50 man zerg.....I dont even think it is perceivable to the person whether or not the hot helped? Also it isnt like hots are the only forms of healing, you would still be able to spam breath of life like the oldschool zerg healer builds. People back in the day would build healers with full crit chance and regen and just absolutely pump breath of life. So they would be a living better hot essentially.

Teeba_Shei · January 13

Meanwhile they are buffing dk dots by 50%. The counter to that would be to run more hots except that you are now going to receive 50% less healing while taking 50% more damage from dots if you do that.

I'm getting flash backs to that garbage patch where they buffed hots and dots. That patch nearly killed cyrodiil and the pvp population was much higher back then. I know a lot of players that quit after that patch and never came back to the game.

The_Meathead · January 13

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 said it earlier in the thread, and I'll say it again: Garion has it, right here.

@ZOS_Kevin, please show his input to your people.

This is a clear solution, should hopefully diminish strain on the server by causing less calculation with removed stacking rather than add to it with massive additional calculations of more complex mechanics, takes Ball Groups down from having 10+ HoTs of a kind on them to 1 each like everyone else, and it reduces the perhaps even larger issue of shield stacking that's become so commonplace.

This is what so many of us have hoped for, for years. Diminishing the obscene stack of ticking HoTs and shields that constantly cocoon 12 mans like layers of steel, concrete, and bubble wrap.

Once this is established, things like RoA, Warden Charm, Snow Treaders, and other problematic outliers can be evaluated and hopefully trimmed one by one, but it starts here: get rid of the stacking.

Artisian0001 · January 13

React wrote: »

Artisian0001 wrote: »

React wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin

To be clear, I am all for trying out the 50% reduction and seeing how it goes. A drastic and heavy change is definitely needed to begin reigning in the power of comped groups, both small and large. That said, there are definitely some obvious drawbacks to the approach taken today, and it seems like it is likely to be a "calculation heavy" thing to implement.

The below quote from gariondavey is definitely the best way I can think of approaching this issue in a way that might not have as many negative drawbacks as the 50% healing reduction, and almost certainly has less calculations to consider.

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.

Applying this same system to damage shields is a very important thing to consider in the near future, too. Regardless of whether the 50% reduction route is taken or Garion's approach, or even the 3x same morph hot stack limit that has been suggested on these forums for years - none of them will be sufficient anymore with how far out of hand shield stacking (and buff set stacking!) has gotten. I would hope the team plans to closely monitor whatever route is taken in the short term, and be prepared to make more focused changes like this in the following patch if needed. The community will thank you for it.

I know you mainly play solo, or at least you did when you used to stream, so you probably have some gripe with larger groups or even smaller groups of 4 people, but you're smarter than "trying out the 50% reduction and seeing how it goes." You have to know how silly allowing a 50% reduction in healing is to all sources. You must also know the community wouldn't thank them for this. I don't even see you in cyro anymore, all this would do is lead to a further decrease in the people playing, which would give you less people to fight, should you even decide to log in.

Nobody wants to fight groups utilizing these mechanics to begin with, the groups hardly even want to fight eachother. Its gotten so out of hand that even the sweaty small scale (4-6) groups are becoming unkillable without receiving a nuclear level burst. This is probably the number one reason many cyrodiil players do not log in anymore - there is no point fighting groups that cannot die because of broken mechanics. You're suggesting that all the "ball group" players will quit, and I genuinely doubt that because theyre probably some of the most obsessed pvp players left - but any that do leave will likely be replaced by people who are willing to play the game again once this absurdity gets reigned in.

I don't have a "gripe" with organized group play. Never did. Its a large scale environment and grouping is perfectly fine, as is gaining some power benefit with proper comp and skill distribution. I do have a problem with the absurd, exponentially scaling power level that mechanics like HOT stacking, shield stacking, and buff set stacking provide though. You cannot argue in good faith that these things are fine as is, nor can you argue that a light nerf to any one of these things will impact that power level. It has been so out of hand for so long, there is no denying it anymore.

You also mis-quoted me at the end. I did not suggest the community would thank them for the 50% healing reduction approach, but that they would for the approach outlined in the quote from Garion, especially if it is also applied to shields.

I can 100% argue in good faith that it logically follows that larger groups should, all other things equal, beat smaller groups, and smaller groups should, all other things equal, beat solo players. The vast majority of players have some issue with this being the case and want to find a way for a solo player to be impactful in beating a min maxxed group which is void of any logic. Your own framing and engagement of this conversation is poor. You stated that 4-6 man sweaty groups are becoming unkillable. By what metric? A 4 man group is extremely easy to kill. Unless of course you are talking about trying to kill this group with a single person, but why would you even make that argument when it makes no logical sense? Of course a solo player isn't going to be able to kill a 4 man group easily, that would be nonsense. Now, if I look at it from another lens, since you didn't clarify, and you are saying a 4 man group is becoming unkillable even by larger groups, I'd just say you're lying and you are aware of it. The best group in the game can kill groups, good coordinated ballgroups of 12, with 8 people. Your metric of a 4-6 man group becoming unkillable has nothing to do with the size of the group but the skill of the group and that's where the issue is. 4-6 man groups don't walk around being some god-like entity on the server, they fall apart instantly to well timed siege or just an abundance of pugs, should they not be able to find any LoS to constantly run around, which even a solo player can live long against a zerg by doing. Your whole argument is based off the fact that this 4-6 man group is fighting bad players or zone chat pug groups. If the instances of these groups performing at the level you are trying to claim they do is few and far between, which it very much is, then the issue you have is not with the size of the group. If 1 in every 100 4-6 man groups that attempt to run ends up actually playing for more than 1 week because the rest can't hack it, is the issue really with 4-6 man groups being unkillable (when even the best 4-6 group isn't) or is it with something else? Even THE BEST 8 man group isn't unkillable, so why are you trying to frame it as if a group as low as 4 could be?

To say a light nerf isn't going to impact groups at a certain power level would just depend on the group in specific you are talking about, which again doesn't have to do with the size of the group, but that is the real issue we should be talking about, as it would make no sense to nerf groups based on what the best possible group can do. A 50% nerf in healing to ANY size group is completely unwarranted in my opinion, and I hate 12 man groups, almost as much as I hate multiple 12 man groups running around. As someone who has played plenty of games competitively there is no way such a nerf should ever go through without extensive testing, and that hasn't been done at all, and won't ever be able to get tested alone on the PTS, which is why smaller nerfs should happen first, and be increased or decreased as they see fit. I think, genuinely, if this came through, a lot of the ballgroups would work around it, but if it went through in a more methodical way that covered all workarounds, the ballgroups would just quit, and that would ruin my enjoyment of the game because a lot of my enjoyment comes from picking some of those players off and fighting outnumbered. I don't expect to win every single fight, and when I play in really small groups I expect to lose the majority of the time when facing them, but I'd rather that than have cyro be a solo, duo, trio experience. If I wanted that I would go to stormhaven or que a BG all day, or maybe even participate in the abomination that is vengeance. With that being said, I think a blanket 10-15% nerf to all healing and shielding on groups larger than 6 would be okay, but a scaling nerf should be better based on the amount of people in group.

Gabriel_H · January 13

Restrict it to one HoT and one DoT - new ones replace the old ones - decide if you want the HoT to outheal any given DoT for balancing. Then you can scrap Vengeance because you just solved the root cause of the performance problems in one move.

MJallday · January 13

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Restrict it to one HoT and one DoT - new ones replace the old ones - decide if you want the HoT to outheal any given DoT for balancing. Then you can scrap Vengeance because you just solved the root cause of the performance problems in one move.

Thats just one of the causes of the performances issues. it isnt the only one.

Teeba_Shei · January 13

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Restrict it to one HoT and one DoT - new ones replace the old ones - decide if you want the HoT to outheal any given DoT for balancing. Then you can scrap Vengeance because you just solved the root cause of the performance problems in one move.

You are trying to move back in time to 25 patches ago. Are you also going to remove the extra weapon and spell damage and reduce siege damage back to what it was 25 patches ago? Your suggestion isn't going to fix performance.

The game has massively evolved since then.

If you want to throw healing nerfs on groups then it should probably scale based on group size or something, but so many of the suggestions in this thread are terrible. It seems like the nerfs should specifically be targeting hots if that is the issue being addressed, but the current change is targeting all healing and is going to impact everyone.

Gabriel_H · January 13

Teeba_Shei wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Restrict it to one HoT and one DoT - new ones replace the old ones - decide if you want the HoT to outheal any given DoT for balancing. Then you can scrap Vengeance because you just solved the root cause of the performance problems in one move.

You are trying to move back in time to 25 patches ago. Are you also going to remove the extra weapon and spell damage and reduce siege damage back to what it was 25 patches ago? Your suggestion isn't going to fix performance.

The game has massively evolved since then.

If you want to throw healing nerfs on groups then it should probably scale based on group size or something, but so many of the suggestions in this thread are terrible. It seems like the nerfs should specifically be targeting hots if that is the issue being addressed, but the current change is targeting all healing and is going to impact everyone.

ZOS own tests show it is the root cause of the performance issues. Multiple HoTs and competing DoTs are a massive amount of server calcs.