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Cyrodiil Healing Nerf!!

  • Iriidius
    Iriidius
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    amiiegee wrote: »
    This thread is a bit derailed by people who think they should be able to solo kill 20 people, because they are able to kite arround rocks, towers and trees & think they can have a good time now farming clips and push their ego in a wizard game.

    1vxers think they should be immortal as one army and able to kill people with acuity / null arca bursts, when they forget to buff them self for one second and cry over less skilled people grouping up and DARE to heal each other.

    Im a warden healer and i like to heal pug groups or randoms. Why should my healing be nerfed into the ground and the point of playing a healer be gone for me?

    I life the support role in cyrodiil, it´s all i enjoy.
    Take this and im gone, easy as that.

    This is strawman argument. Nobody here said they should be able to solo kill 20 people. Ballgroup players are the ones thinking they are entitlet to always win against multiple times their number of randoms for having 11 coordinated players with coordinated builds.
    PC EU
  • Stridig
    Stridig
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    Iriidius wrote: »
    amiiegee wrote: »
    This thread is a bit derailed by people who think they should be able to solo kill 20 people, because they are able to kite arround rocks, towers and trees & think they can have a good time now farming clips and push their ego in a wizard game.

    1vxers think they should be immortal as one army and able to kill people with acuity / null arca bursts, when they forget to buff them self for one second and cry over less skilled people grouping up and DARE to heal each other.

    Im a warden healer and i like to heal pug groups or randoms. Why should my healing be nerfed into the ground and the point of playing a healer be gone for me?

    I life the support role in cyrodiil, it´s all i enjoy.
    Take this and im gone, easy as that.

    This is strawman argument. Nobody here said they should be able to solo kill 20 people. Ballgroup players are the ones thinking they are entitlet to always win against multiple times their number of randoms for having 11 coordinated players with coordinated builds.

    What makes them think they are entitled to win outnumbered? Entitled? Give me a break. There's not as much room for error when playing in a coordinated group as many people think there is. The common hate tell is "What two buttons are they letting you push tonight"? But here in the forums you here about all the lag ball groups cause by spamming every HoT, DoT, and shield imaginable. Pretty tough to do only pushing two buttons.
    Enemy to many
    Friend to all
  • Lagzee
    Lagzee
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    Lagzee wrote: »
    Some simple math for people who haven't yet. This is for mid-large sized groups that actively siege on the front lines as well as those who go off on their own to try and take keeps.

    Lets imagine you have a 6 man group of players. Lets say one of them has a resto and the others are all running echoing vigor. If we have all 6 running echoing vigor and the healer also running radiating this is 7 hots for a total of around 9k HPS in open world, for a 6 man group that is pretty good, but lets see how it actually looks in practice.

    Remember healing reduction is multiplicative not additive. Lets completely ignore Jerall (this would make it even worse)

    The 9k HPS immediately becomes 4,050 because of the 55% reduction from battle spirit.
    The 4,050 becomes 3,807 with 6% reduction from minor defile
    3,807 becomes 3,350 with the 12% reduction from major defile.
    3,350 becomes 1,675 with one flaming oil on you, 837 with 2 flaming oils on you, and 419 with 3 flaming oils on you. (For some reason this debuff stacks and it is MASSIVE, you can also be affected by more but I will keep the example to 2 for now)
    837 is your effective HPS, this is without the proposed change.
    The first iteration of the change would bring this to 419 if it were 50% or with the second iteration it would be 561 with a 33% reduction.

    A 561 HPS is laughable in real scenarios and I would encounter this often as a 6 man group. As a 12 man you have more healing but you are often met with huge amounts of pug pressure and the oil debuff could bring the total number of HPS to less than what you'd even get with 6 in group if the opposing faction met you with pressure.

    I say this to ask, what would this mean for those scenarios where healing is already hard under siege pressure, without even meeting pressure from people actively trying to bomb you, snipe/forcepulse you, negate you? Will oils finally be addressed as well, bringing another necessary action from the dev team, or will this be ignored just for the sake of appeasing the smaller groups of people who are upset that a larger group, who should logically beat them, beats them?

    Are we really willing to change cyro just for the sake of those players who will be given the option to go to vengeance once it becomes permanent anyway? Most people dislike vengeance as was evident by the test and its lack of population once it was seen side by side with GH, some people wanted it removed entirely. I have advocated for keeping it open alongside GH and just let people play where they want, but why do we need to ruin the existing PvP server for the sake of people who want to be able to compete as a solo or duo against a group of 12?

    Most people dont like vengeance. But even if you had it your way, then what? You play in a dead GH? Is that the idea? Telling people to go to vengeance because they want heal stacking balanced is a wild solution. I honestly cant imagine how like 5 of you still deny that its a problem. Everyone knows it, its obvious to anyone that plays. Ball groups, heal stacking, and shield stacking, have been an issue for the last couple of years, but especially since subclassing and scribing. Its undeniable.

    And yes this is not the ideal change. Ideally they just change heal stacking so 12 people cant stack 12 vigors, for example. Maybe they reduce it to 3 per skill, but ideally imo its just one. There is way too much survivability in this game, and heal stacking like it is now is simply overkill. But i still think they should try to test things, and if its bad remove it. Its not the end of the world, as long as they are willing to revert it.

    if i had it my way they would adjust heal/shield stacking with battle spirit but it doesnt seem like they will.

    GH is literally pop locked across as you are saying to this person that they are "playing in a dead GH" It was also triple pop locked every day even when vengeance was an option at the same time.

    Just completely missing the point of the post, and ignoring everything else. Nice. You suggested that people who had issues with ball groups will have vengeance. I was telling you that most people have issues with ball groups, and its like 5 of you that are in denial about the issue. And your solution to go to vengeance to avoid ball groups is terrible because if you had it your way, and everyone listened to you, nothing would be addressed, and GH would be dead.

    Thankfully no one is listening to you, zos knows this is an issue, as do the vast majority of people actually in cyrodiil every day.
  • Lagzee
    Lagzee
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    That in mind, with all the other issues, this change is just not thought out enough and aims to fix some problem that doesn't really exist aside from a vocal minority of people who will still just complain about the next thing once this is changed.

    What problem do you think is being addressed that "doesn't exist?"

    I'm genuinely curious what exactly you mean by this, because I started to respond a couple times to different assumptions on my part with more than a little indignation, but held off. I'd like you to further define just what you're saying, if you're willing.

    That ballgroups are some extreme unkillable entity. I've literally had people in here tell me groups are 2v50ing or 4 people vs the entire 3 bar population of other factions and it's just fake. The best ballgroup, on the best server, doesn't even do that, acting like some other random groups do, while providing zero proof is silly. Other people were acting like ballgroups go around taking keeps, fighting to control the map, and make it a pain for pugs to get points in the campaign when in reality they usually go to a keep, take it, fight some pugs on the 3rd floor, get the keep capped while they are still at it, get exploited off the keep by someone pulling with warden gate, and then just leave the keep. They also die to siege almost every time I have watched them play. The other half of the people try to act like groups don't GvG away from pugs and they are only ever killing random people when they very often look to just fight each other. There was multiple groups on today as well that walked away from a keep to just fight each other for like half an hour and not even involve anyone else. People don't engage seriously with anything said and just make up some random things about how good ballgroups are, or the way they behave and it's just odd and impossible to even have a conversation with because they don't live in the same reality.

    im just gonna have to put some clips together. Not sure if you can even link videos on here anymore, havent seen any for a long time, but if you can i will put it on here. The denial from a couple people in this thread is utterly perplexing to me. The only conclusion i can come to is that you are either arguing in bad faith, playing on server where the issue isnt as prevalent as it is on PC NA, playing in blackreach regularly, or play in a ball group and dont want changes.

    You are exaggerating when you say 2v50 or 4 people vs the entire population of cyrodiil. Like honestly, how are we supposed to have a conversation about this when you are saying things like that? 4 man groups can fight insanely outnumbered like 4v20+ by using the same methods that ball groups do on a smaller scale. The same way a duo can, to a lesser extent. That is not the main issue.

    The main issue is the 10-12 man ball groups that are running every buff in the game, extremely fast, have constant hots stacking endlessly, constant shields rolling over their entire health bars, flying through a keep to wait until enough players are in the same vicinity to fly over and run through them. They will just get ult dumped and completely wiped by VD, which is fine i do the same thing. The difference is when the same players in that zerg, trying to take a keep, try to fight said ball group, nothing happens. Their health doesnt move. No one will die. These groups will just sit there killing a zerg of 40+ people with little to no resistance. And thats the problem, how little resistance there actually is.

    Ive watched groups sit in keeps doing this endlessly. Of course they can die eventually, mainly if there are enough people coordinated with oils, meatbags, cold fire, negates, pulls, and VD. Which usually means some kind of coordinated group/ball group shows up on the opposite faction.

    The issue here is not if coordination beats pugs. Coordination almost always wins to an extent, which is exactly why i can go around in a 2 man and kill 10-20 people. At the end of the day you are just playing strategically to stay alive until you can pull/ult dump/vd a group. But as i said, the difference is with a normal 10-12 man ball group there is almost no resistance, and nothing that can be done, until the odds are astronomically against them. And thats the main difference between the ball groups of today and the ball groups of 2-3+ years ago, power creep has gotten out of control at the highest end, mainly from subclassing and scribing.

    But thats it for me, im done trying to debate this issue with a couple people in this thread. Its just a difference in reality. Ill post some clips here at some point if i can though, just to prove my point further. But really its not even needed. Everyone who plays daily knows how things are. I can understand people being against the 50% healing change, but to say there is no problem, or that heal/shield stacking doesnt need adjusting, is just arguing in bad faith at this point.
    Edited by Lagzee on January 15, 2026 5:56AM
  • Adamus
    Adamus
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    @ZOS_GinaBruno I appreciate the on going communication as well as the team’s efforts working to balancing PvP in ESO. Thank you.
    Below are few thoughts/opinions on both possible directions and results to groups on live.
    Hi all, thanks for the continued feedback provided in this thread. We recognize that many of you would still like to see this issue addressed – we do too! – and reverting this change doesn’t mean we are shelving it. Again, this first try was exactly that – it was a first try and just didn’t land. This is all part of development being a bit more fluid moving forward and allowing us the space to iterate and try different things.

    We do still plan to revert this change which you’ll see in next week’s PTS patch, but in the spirit of iteration and talking through options, here are a couple options (it would need to be one or the other) we may be able to explore for Update 49:
    1. We could reduce the 50% modifier to a lower value, such as 33%
    2. We could increase the number of HoTs it takes to trigger the modifier, maybe to 5
    There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread, but realistically, many require time-consuming code changes and bandwidth is currently very tight with everything else the team is working on. Also keep in mind any options we lay out for Update 49 don’t and won’t prevent us from considering a longer-term option later. We are definitely open to discussing a short-term solution, though, and are interested to hear what you think of the two options presented above.

    Increase the number of HoTs it takes to trigger the modifier, maybe to 5, keeping modifier at 50%.
    This is the direction I would suggest to be the most appropriate between the two available options. Not taking into account any other adjustments to the game, added sets/skills coming with update 49, or alternative solutions, this would provide the best data on effectiveness of this approach, how groups would adjust, any unknowables, as well as measuring if the % is too strong or not strong enough. Healing isn't the imbalance, nor is cross healing, it's heal stacking. Stackable HoTs, like echoing vigor, do not have a cap on how many a player can receive. I believe 33% would not be a strong enough pain point to force an adjustment to the behavior or tactic due to available HoTs to fill the gap. A group that is already stacking multiple HoTs in excess may find it difficult to add additional HoTs as well as be forced to sacrifice valuable bar space & resources to make up for the reduction.

    Solo Players
    There are few solo players that would run a multiple HoTs as a healing source alone. Defensive skills tend to be a combination of HoTs, burst heals, shields, buffs and evasion tactics. Gankers & Bombers tend to be more tilted toward DPS, 1vx players tend to use LoS & speed tactics. Permablock tanks would be affected the most from this category, much of this style is fueled by damage mitigation. Plus, from the permablock tanks I've talked to, I'm sure their response will be 'challenge accepted'. Dueling outside of Cyrodiil is the one exception I would suggest this adjustment not take effect outside Cyrodiil, from what I've heard they tend to police themselves. Duo players somewhere between here and the next category.

    Smaller Groups (4-6)
    This playstyle may be slightly affected if they relied heavily on HoTs for survivability, but they don't. Most small groups use tactics like LoS & elevation, attack & kite, and often can maintain a fight separated. The healing nerf may actually be in these groups favor, as they often enjoy being chased around towers by larger groups.

    Large Groups (12)
    Larger groups will be hit hardest, depending on number of HoTs in the group, coordination from the leader and ability to adapt to new threats. Burst heals, AoEs, sets that provide trigger healing may become more popular, changing skill morphs may favor none HoTs if alternative is effective in PvP, and any HoT from a skill or set that isn't recognized as a HoT counter will be used heavily (similar to how Healthy Offering could cross heal during the no cross heal test and could proc sets outside your group). Ballgroups have expressed they would rely more on burst heals if a HoT nerf ever came. Shield stacking will still be an issue but these groups will be more vulnerable when being pulled or cc'd. May need to change up tactics to more hit, run and reset, rather than just hit and reset. Groups will be more susceptible to continuous pressure attacks and will rely more on movement than they currently do. If ballgroups attempt to fill in the gap of missing healing with more HoTs, there may be a noticeable level of lag and server stress, that is if the resources, time, and skill slots sacrificed do not affect the survivability of the group.

    Multiple Large Groups(2-3 groups)
    Really depends on how many healers show up. Some nights there's enough to fill half of the first two groups, other nights (most nights), like tonight, there was 1 per raid, on average, a higher number of players want to play DPS. Different tactics are deployed with different raid comps, every night is a role of the dice, and each of our raid leads may have alt tactics/strategies to explore. My plan is to expand on previous tactics of keeping each group separated during engagements, may replace a HoT on my bar with a defensive buff or an additional burst heal. Will continue to be focused by all of the above categories, particularly bombers during large engagements. Expecting to see an expansion on the number of Small Groups as well as a continued increase in coordinated dual-faction multi-ballgroup engagements (3-5 ballgroups).

    Pain Points on the Battlefield and final notes
    Keep sieging will may require more breaches
    Keep fights may vary in length in either direction, based on viability of groups pushing through breaches
    Bombers and chain bombing will increase during large engagements
    Zerg surfing will be more dangerous
    Sets/skill viability may shift. Soul stone market may shift.
    Players not use to dying in a video game may protest and claim the game has been ruined.
    I might die more in-game, and I might spend a lot less time chasing a ballgroup around a third floor, giving more opportunities to move on to more exciting and challenging fights.

    It's late, I have to work in the morning so I'm going to skip proofreading this until tomorrow (sorry about that). Thanks again for the team’s continued attention into this matter and I look forward to see and assist in the next steps.
    Edited by Adamus on January 15, 2026 10:41PM
    Adamus
    Army of the Pact (AP) - GM | NA-PC
  • AD42
    AD42
    ✭✭✭
    That in mind, with all the other issues, this change is just not thought out enough and aims to fix some problem that doesn't really exist aside from a vocal minority of people who will still just complain about the next thing once this is changed.

    What problem do you think is being addressed that "doesn't exist?"

    I'm genuinely curious what exactly you mean by this, because I started to respond a couple times to different assumptions on my part with more than a little indignation, but held off. I'd like you to further define just what you're saying, if you're willing.

    That ballgroups are some extreme unkillable entity. I've literally had people in here tell me groups are 2v50ing or 4 people vs the entire 3 bar population of other factions and it's just fake. The best ballgroup, on the best server, doesn't even do that, acting like some other random groups do, while providing zero proof is silly. Other people were acting like ballgroups go around taking keeps, fighting to control the map, and make it a pain for pugs to get points in the campaign when in reality they usually go to a keep, take it, fight some pugs on the 3rd floor, get the keep capped while they are still at it, get exploited off the keep by someone pulling with warden gate, and then just leave the keep. They also die to siege almost every time I have watched them play. The other half of the people try to act like groups don't GvG away from pugs and they are only ever killing random people when they very often look to just fight each other. There was multiple groups on today as well that walked away from a keep to just fight each other for like half an hour and not even involve anyone else. People don't engage seriously with anything said and just make up some random things about how good ballgroups are, or the way they behave and it's just odd and impossible to even have a conversation with because they don't live in the same reality.

    To be very straight forward on my side of the picture: I think you don't fully comprehend just how out of hand the power bloat has become. You're very myopic because you've invested heavily in a dynamic and done well with it, deservedly so (I mean that), and excelled within the parameters of what's been allowed. Kudos, sincerely. It takes time, scheduling, and effort.

    At this point, though, even mediocre or poorly run Ballgroups are so ridiculously advantageous in terms of buffs, healing, shields, and movement that it's diminishing the larger game. A number of tremendously(!!) objective Ballgroup players in this thread alone seem willing to admit that and to bless the efforts towards reigning in how far it's gone, and honestly that's beyond impressive on their part. (Yandere, Chimpanzee, certainly come to mind.)

    To be clear, I personally admire the theorycrafting, communication, and leadership that go into good Ballgrouping and make them so damn successful. I also feel that even if the rather obscene power stacking mechanics they receive currently were reduced in some format (like the one we're hopefully working towards), those same strengths would still make the best of them tremendously successful, while perhaps freeing the rest of us from the pretty off-putting scale-tipping that current stacking and buffing allow and making the mediocre ones far less of a dominant force.

    So too do I sincerely believe that Ballgroups impact Server performance, because of stacking, simply from first-hand viewing of their impact. Deny it if you like, I think most veteran players are extremely aware.

    I don't fault Ballgroupers for taking full advantage of how things are, as that's the player's "job." I fault ZOS for allowing it to get SO out of hand. This is ZOS admitting, defining, and focusing on a solution to what they've allowed for too long. I think you are incorrect when you say it doesn't exist.

    There is a problem. It exists in PvE as well. But the proposed solution is disconnected from the gameplay and mechanics. This particular method is very bad.
  • imPDA
    imPDA
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    It is truly spectacular how this question was ignored for many years and everybody just gave up and either got used to it or left, and as soon as the first possibility of changes appeared, the forum exploded and ZOS is now afraid of changes and reverted it back, making it even worse. It is a consequence of the lost connection between the devs and the game. I am 100% sure there is not a single dev on the combat team who would take a top place in the deathmatch BGs repeatedly (sorry, but other modes are simply healing + blocking simulators), so everything the combat team can do is listen to comments and try to make people happier, but it always comes with potentially making another part of the people unhappy.

    So, what problems are people complaining about:

    1) Too strong healing - if you nerf it, it will make 70% of people unhappy, because they will die without any chance since now, they are relying on heals around and in the group. The current nerf proposed is just bad because it would affect people unpredictably, including solo players who accidentally run past the group and receive the debuff and die afterward because they were unaware of it. It needs modifications or a full rework.

    2) Manual resurrection - I repeatedly see on Twitch how a 1-2 player group fights against a full 12-person group, a solo player fights a 4-5-6 player group and loses even after the fact they managed to kill everybody 2 or 3 times in a 2-minute window, resulting in an 8-12-24 / 0 battle victory mark on the map, but still losing in the end because this big group was resurrecting members. Just imagine being solo, killing everybody from the group against you twice and still not being able to prevent a keep capture just because you are solo. It is a pure numbers game. No matter what you do, you can do nothing solo. Well, you join the group and start killing everybody and receive this: a player from a big enemy group of less skilled players started to die and was unable to be resurrected because now members of the smaller group acted coordinately and killed them even faster and prevented resurrection.
    njakrk94qks1.png

    3) Siege damage. It is not a PvP game, it is more like an SvP (sieges vs players) game, because they are overpowered and you can't defend a keep without them. The two previous problems are part of this, because only meatbags and Coldharbour or a lot of oil can counterplay heavily stacked healing. And constant siege damage is also good to prevent resurrection; a healer will most likely die trying to resurrect anybody. All you do at the moment is either operate siege to defend a keep, or fight against sieges (meatbags, oil) in order to go inside alive and capture the keep. But it should not be like this; in PvP people should fight with people, not sieges.

    Any change you make to these 3 problems will cause a strong negative reaction from the majority of players, because getting more healers, resurrecting team members by hand, and then staying by siege is simple gameplay and 90% of players are used to it. I will be happy with any change increasing performance; it will make 100% of players happier and improve any metric you choose to make investors happier.

    Try to build PvP metrics in order to understand what the outcome of a change is. If you continue only listening to players complaining, you will make it even worse. The vocal majority will receive everything they want, and it will leave others with no options but to leave the game. You have to find some design balance. Making all classes equal and giving all buffs to everyone was a mistake, both leading to the current nonsense in battle balance and performance degradation. Probably start from that. Probably try to find the root of the problem instead of trying to cure the consequences by listening to forum fighters.
    Edited by imPDA on January 15, 2026 7:29AM
    Your Friendly Neighborhood PvP Enjoyer (prior to U48)
  • Yudo
    Yudo
    ✭✭✭✭
    If you really insist in ugly solutions, I'll do you one better: limit healing based on group size then, sounds like that is basically what you guys are pushing for if you do not address cross healing. :p So many here are trying to sell a "smart" solution, and they sound systematic, but do not really solve the problem after all.

    I really hope we can focus on limiting cross heal, or at least HOTs isolated, rather than spending energy on presented options.
  • AD42
    AD42
    ✭✭✭
    @ZOS_Icy @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Hadeostry @ZOS_KaiSchober

    Here's an example of 5 abilities. They don't require DLC, just the base game. I can reduce my healing and get the strongest healing reduction in the game. 100% chance, for 10 seconds on multiple targets (-50% or 33%). With a low-level character, I can endlessly ruin the game for my allies.
    How do you plan to stop this?
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    Edited by AD42 on January 15, 2026 9:01AM
  • heimdall14_9
    heimdall14_9
    ✭✭✭
    Lagzee wrote: »
    That in mind, with all the other issues, this change is just not thought out enough and aims to fix some problem that doesn't really exist aside from a vocal minority of people who will still just complain about the next thing once this is changed.

    What problem do you think is being addressed that "doesn't exist?"

    I'm genuinely curious what exactly you mean by this, because I started to respond a couple times to different assumptions on my part with more than a little indignation, but held off. I'd like you to further define just what you're saying, if you're willing.

    That ballgroups are some extreme unkillable entity. I've literally had people in here tell me groups are 2v50ing or 4 people vs the entire 3 bar population of other factions and it's just fake. The best ballgroup, on the best server, doesn't even do that, acting like some other random groups do, while providing zero proof is silly. Other people were acting like ballgroups go around taking keeps, fighting to control the map, and make it a pain for pugs to get points in the campaign when in reality they usually go to a keep, take it, fight some pugs on the 3rd floor, get the keep capped while they are still at it, get exploited off the keep by someone pulling with warden gate, and then just leave the keep. They also die to siege almost every time I have watched them play. The other half of the people try to act like groups don't GvG away from pugs and they are only ever killing random people when they very often look to just fight each other. There was multiple groups on today as well that walked away from a keep to just fight each other for like half an hour and not even involve anyone else. People don't engage seriously with anything said and just make up some random things about how good ballgroups are, or the way they behave and it's just odd and impossible to even have a conversation with because they don't live in the same reality.

    im just gonna have to put some clips together. Not sure if you can even link videos on here anymore, havent seen any for a long time, but if you can i will put it on here. The denial from a couple people in this thread is utterly perplexing to me. The only conclusion i can come to is that you are either arguing in bad faith, playing on server where the issue isnt as prevalent as it is on PC NA, playing in blackreach regularly, or play in a ball group and dont want changes.

    You are exaggerating when you say 2v50 or 4 people vs the entire population of cyrodiil. Like honestly, how are we supposed to have a conversation about this when you are saying things like that? 4 man groups can fight insanely outnumbered like 4v20+ by using the same methods that ball groups do on a smaller scale. The same way a duo can, to a lesser extent. That is not the main issue.

    The main issue is the 10-12 man ball groups that are running every buff in the game, extremely fast, have constant hots stacking endlessly, constant shields rolling over their entire health bars, flying through a keep to wait until enough players are in the same vicinity to fly over and run through them. They will just get ult dumped and completely wiped by VD, which is fine i do the same thing. The difference is when the same players in that zerg, trying to take a keep, try to fight said ball group, nothing happens. Their health doesnt move. No one will die. These groups will just sit there killing a zerg of 40+ people with little to no resistance. And thats the problem, how little resistance there actually is.

    Ive watched groups sit in keeps doing this endlessly. Of course they can die eventually, mainly if there are enough people coordinated with oils, meatbags, cold fire, negates, pulls, and VD. Which usually means some kind of coordinated group/ball group shows up on the opposite faction.

    The issue here is not if coordination beats pugs. Coordination almost always wins to an extent, which is exactly why i can go around in a 2 man and kill 10-20 people. At the end of the day you are just playing strategically to stay alive until you can pull/ult dump/vd a group. But as i said, the difference is with a normal 10-12 man ball group there is almost no resistance, and nothing that can be done, until the odds are astronomically against them. And thats the main difference between the ball groups of today and the ball groups of 2-3+ years ago, power creep has gotten out of control at the highest end, mainly from subclassing and scribing.

    But thats it for me, im done trying to debate this issue with a couple people in this thread. Its just a difference in reality. Ill post some clips here at some point if i can though, just to prove my point further. But really its not even needed. Everyone who plays daily knows how things are. I can understand people being against the 50% healing change, but to say there is no problem, or that heal/shield stacking doesnt need adjusting, is just arguing in bad faith at this point.

    showing clips of mass killing has been deemed as name and shaming same with death chat big reason you wont find many people willing to take that risk even to prove an point that has not to do with the players that was even killed at that time just purely the #s

    and since they once again cant tell my story right even after correcting them once it was 2v40+1-3 with them using 2 tents at farragut i was on my NB the other on an templar and happened to mix well together and overcome the odds ...
    never said its done daily or often only thing ive said that happens often enough that theres guilds name after it is DC farming KC and mainly by 4-6 players until 40-50 players come to push them out but not often because they come right back attack from wall of resource like clock work ... even showing what i know im safe to post this player still would like to belive i have an reason to lie about an video game just because

    1) they cant see themselves doing something
    2) they dont want to do something other then what theyve done
    3) they dont play the game in any real meaningful way and just like harassing them that do
    Edited by heimdall14_9 on January 15, 2026 9:04AM
    Nordic-Knights (PSN)/Sir-A-Crowley (PSN)/Sir_Crowley ( PC) 16 account holder !!!!!!!!!!!!! 19x emperor , 98% full game all vet HM SR ND release day ESO VET !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Radiate77
    Radiate77
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    AD42 wrote: »
    @ZOS_Icy @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Hadeostry @ZOS_KaiSchober

    Here's an example of 5 abilities. They don't require DLC, just the base game. I can reduce my healing and get the strongest healing reduction in the game. 100% chance, for 10 seconds on multiple targets (-50% or 33%). With a low-level character, I can endlessly ruin the game for my allies.
    How do you plan to stop this?
    c2fnrj8cnj3d.png
    7ohxjvf2kb0d.png
    n3acnqtxmqth.png
    azwbb5vztxid.png
    qmuxkjwikeuy.png

    By banning you for harassing people?
    Seems easy enough to me.

    It will be quite easy to tell when someone is doing this on purpose.
    Edited by Radiate77 on January 15, 2026 9:20AM
  • AD42
    AD42
    ✭✭✭
    Radiate77 wrote: »
    AD42 wrote: »
    @ZOS_Icy @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Hadeostry @ZOS_KaiSchober

    Here's an example of 5 abilities. They don't require DLC, just the base game. I can reduce my healing and get the strongest healing reduction in the game. 100% chance, for 10 seconds on multiple targets (-50% or 33%). With a low-level character, I can endlessly ruin the game for my allies.
    How do you plan to stop this?
    c2fnrj8cnj3d.png
    7ohxjvf2kb0d.png
    n3acnqtxmqth.png
    azwbb5vztxid.png
    qmuxkjwikeuy.png

    By banning you for harassing people?
    Seems easy enough to me.

    It will be quite easy to tell when someone is doing this on purpose.

    This is a game mechanic and you can't get banned for it.
  • Radiate77
    Radiate77
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    AD42 wrote: »
    Radiate77 wrote: »
    AD42 wrote: »
    @ZOS_Icy @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Hadeostry @ZOS_KaiSchober

    Here's an example of 5 abilities. They don't require DLC, just the base game. I can reduce my healing and get the strongest healing reduction in the game. 100% chance, for 10 seconds on multiple targets (-50% or 33%). With a low-level character, I can endlessly ruin the game for my allies.
    How do you plan to stop this?
    c2fnrj8cnj3d.png
    7ohxjvf2kb0d.png
    n3acnqtxmqth.png
    azwbb5vztxid.png
    qmuxkjwikeuy.png

    By banning you for harassing people?
    Seems easy enough to me.

    It will be quite easy to tell when someone is doing this on purpose.

    This is a game mechanic and you can't get banned for it.

    Says who? If I catch you following me around tagging me with baby heals, I’m going to ask you to stop and if you don’t you’ll be reported for griefing.

    Not a hard concept. You can grief players within the rules of the game, just like how you can get banned for t-bagging, except I’d imagine something like this would be taken a bit more serious.
    Edited by Radiate77 on January 15, 2026 7:56PM
  • WaywardArgonian
    WaywardArgonian
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    ceruulean wrote: »
    (cut for brevity)

    The publishers of Call of Duty, a series that makes much more profit than ESO, has determined that making the top 10% happier is not a good idea, because it makes the 90% unlikely to return.

    People speak with their feet.

    The point is not to give top level players what they want, but to listen to their input because they have a deep understanding of how the game works. Given the nature of the original proposal (50% less healing taken with 3 HoTs), such input continues to be necessary because I do not think the dev team realized the full effect of such a measure.

    Listening to every player is important to get a fair idea of what everyone wants, but I have been in plenty of casual guilds, and among them there are many players who still struggle to grasp the fundamentals of how PVP works. That is not to say they are wrong for doing so - not everyone has to care deeply about the ins and outs of a video game - but it does make it so that they may not always be aware of the implications that a given change has, thus giving detailed feedback to a developer team becomes more difficult.

    I am against the proposed change because I think it is a bad proposal from a design point of view and would ultimately make PVP a worse experience for everyone. I am in favor of addressing HoT and shield stacking, but this is not the best way to do it. It would be the case of the cure being worse than the disease itself.

    That's not to say that anyone who disagrees with me is not knowledgeable or a casual or whatever, but I just wanted to point out that there are plenty of players who have played at a high level yet understand the issue and want to see it addressed, even if it makes them weaker.

    That is the last thing I will say on it since I do not want to derail the main discussion.
    PC/EU altaholic | #1 PVP support player (contested) | @ degonyte in-game | Nibani Ilath-Pal (AD Nightblade) - AvA rank 50 | Jehanne Teymour (AD Sorcerer) - AvA rank 50 | Niria Ilath-Pal (AD Templar) - AvA rank 50
  • VixxVexx
    VixxVexx
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Perhaps a blanket percentage healing nerf is not the way.

    I could be wrong here but I remember when people used different morphs (even different ranks) of certain skills because they wouldn't stack.

    If all of these suggestions require too much dev time, why not revert to having only one of each skill effect on you?
    You could even set the limit to 2 , as in your own application and someone elses.
    Edited by VixxVexx on January 15, 2026 10:09AM
  • fizzybeef
    fizzybeef
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Even 33% reduction is to much. And 5 hots aint much either, i can have 3 by myself. Accidently get hit by 2 random hots and have 50% heal reduction is crazy.

    Youre encouraging elitism by immortal 1vx kiters so they have a easier time against randoms healing each other, by trying to nerf ball groups. In the end it will hurt the casual players more then the bg´s. Same as when dark con , rush and plague was released.
  • Ph1p
    Ph1p
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Radiate77 wrote: »
    AD42 wrote: »
    Radiate77 wrote: »
    AD42 wrote: »
    @ZOS_Icy @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Hadeostry @ZOS_KaiSchober

    Here's an example of 5 abilities. They don't require DLC, just the base game. I can reduce my healing and get the strongest healing reduction in the game. 100% chance, for 10 seconds on multiple targets (-50% or 33%). With a low-level character, I can endlessly ruin the game for my allies.
    How do you plan to stop this?
    c2fnrj8cnj3d.png
    7ohxjvf2kb0d.png
    n3acnqtxmqth.png
    azwbb5vztxid.png
    qmuxkjwikeuy.png

    By banning you for harassing people?
    Seems easy enough to me.

    It will be quite easy to tell when someone is doing this on purpose.

    This is a game mechanic and you can't get banned for it.

    Says who? If I catch you following me around tagging me with baby heals, I’m going to ask you to stop and if you don’t you’ll be reported for griefing.

    Not a hard concept. You can grief players within the rules of the game, just like how you can get banned for t-bagging, except I’d imagine something like this would be taken a bit more serious.

    Very bad equivalent: Teabagging isn’t an intentional game feature and doesn’t serve an in-game purpose. Healing is and does. So why make it possible to use it for griefing in the first place? Why create a situation where beginner healers may be less welcome? Why burden customer service with players getting reported for healing, a core gameplay function?
  • AD42
    AD42
    ✭✭✭
    @ZOS_Icy @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Hadeostry @ZOS_KaiSchober
    Maybe make some changes to Battle Spirit. Reducing healing received by 88%. Reduce shield durability by 88%. That's the simplest solution.
    Edited by AD42 on January 15, 2026 11:39AM
  • Artisian0001
    Artisian0001
    ✭✭✭✭
    Lagzee wrote: »
    Lagzee wrote: »
    Some simple math for people who haven't yet. This is for mid-large sized groups that actively siege on the front lines as well as those who go off on their own to try and take keeps.

    Lets imagine you have a 6 man group of players. Lets say one of them has a resto and the others are all running echoing vigor. If we have all 6 running echoing vigor and the healer also running radiating this is 7 hots for a total of around 9k HPS in open world, for a 6 man group that is pretty good, but lets see how it actually looks in practice.

    Remember healing reduction is multiplicative not additive. Lets completely ignore Jerall (this would make it even worse)

    The 9k HPS immediately becomes 4,050 because of the 55% reduction from battle spirit.
    The 4,050 becomes 3,807 with 6% reduction from minor defile
    3,807 becomes 3,350 with the 12% reduction from major defile.
    3,350 becomes 1,675 with one flaming oil on you, 837 with 2 flaming oils on you, and 419 with 3 flaming oils on you. (For some reason this debuff stacks and it is MASSIVE, you can also be affected by more but I will keep the example to 2 for now)
    837 is your effective HPS, this is without the proposed change.
    The first iteration of the change would bring this to 419 if it were 50% or with the second iteration it would be 561 with a 33% reduction.

    A 561 HPS is laughable in real scenarios and I would encounter this often as a 6 man group. As a 12 man you have more healing but you are often met with huge amounts of pug pressure and the oil debuff could bring the total number of HPS to less than what you'd even get with 6 in group if the opposing faction met you with pressure.

    I say this to ask, what would this mean for those scenarios where healing is already hard under siege pressure, without even meeting pressure from people actively trying to bomb you, snipe/forcepulse you, negate you? Will oils finally be addressed as well, bringing another necessary action from the dev team, or will this be ignored just for the sake of appeasing the smaller groups of people who are upset that a larger group, who should logically beat them, beats them?

    Are we really willing to change cyro just for the sake of those players who will be given the option to go to vengeance once it becomes permanent anyway? Most people dislike vengeance as was evident by the test and its lack of population once it was seen side by side with GH, some people wanted it removed entirely. I have advocated for keeping it open alongside GH and just let people play where they want, but why do we need to ruin the existing PvP server for the sake of people who want to be able to compete as a solo or duo against a group of 12?

    Most people dont like vengeance. But even if you had it your way, then what? You play in a dead GH? Is that the idea? Telling people to go to vengeance because they want heal stacking balanced is a wild solution. I honestly cant imagine how like 5 of you still deny that its a problem. Everyone knows it, its obvious to anyone that plays. Ball groups, heal stacking, and shield stacking, have been an issue for the last couple of years, but especially since subclassing and scribing. Its undeniable.

    And yes this is not the ideal change. Ideally they just change heal stacking so 12 people cant stack 12 vigors, for example. Maybe they reduce it to 3 per skill, but ideally imo its just one. There is way too much survivability in this game, and heal stacking like it is now is simply overkill. But i still think they should try to test things, and if its bad remove it. Its not the end of the world, as long as they are willing to revert it.

    if i had it my way they would adjust heal/shield stacking with battle spirit but it doesnt seem like they will.

    GH is literally pop locked across as you are saying to this person that they are "playing in a dead GH" It was also triple pop locked every day even when vengeance was an option at the same time.

    Just completely missing the point of the post, and ignoring everything else. Nice. You suggested that people who had issues with ball groups will have vengeance. I was telling you that most people have issues with ball groups, and its like 5 of you that are in denial about the issue. And your solution to go to vengeance to avoid ball groups is terrible because if you had it your way, and everyone listened to you, nothing would be addressed, and GH would be dead.

    Thankfully no one is listening to you, zos knows this is an issue, as do the vast majority of people actually in cyrodiil every day.

    100 ques on GH when this myth of so many people having issues with ballgroups exists. GH will not die no matter how many of those people go to vengeance when it exists at the same time as GH, we have literally already seen this in practice, you are just flat out wrong. It was 1 bar all across while GH reached pop lock and had extra people in que, people just want to find something to complain about and it will never not be the case. GH will be fine regardless of those who want to leave to vengeance, sorry, that's just reality.
  • Thumbless_Bot
    Thumbless_Bot
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Modifying battle spirit is not ideal because, while you may be in a group, you may not always be with the group and certainly not with the entire group all the time.
  • rlindsey912nub18_ESO
    Reduce group number to 4 max problem solved no more unkillable ball groups
  • Thumbless_Bot
    Thumbless_Bot
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Reduce group number to 4 max problem solved no more unkillable ball groups

    You do not need to be in a group to be coordinated.
  • Artisian0001
    Artisian0001
    ✭✭✭✭
    AD42 wrote: »
    @ZOS_Icy @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Hadeostry @ZOS_KaiSchober
    Maybe make some changes to Battle Spirit. Reducing healing received by 88%. Reduce shield durability by 88%. That's the simplest solution.

    This is the average engagement with the problem. Surely nothing could go wrong from this.
  • Iriidius
    Iriidius
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    fizzybeef wrote: »
    Even 33% reduction is to much. And 5 hots aint much either, i can have 3 by myself. Accidently get hit by 2 random hots and have 50% heal reduction is crazy.

    Youre encouraging elitism by immortal 1vx kiters so they have a easier time against randoms healing each other, by trying to nerf ball groups. In the end it will hurt the casual players more then the bg´s. Same as when dark con , rush and plague was released.

    Youre encouraging elitism by immortal ballgroups so they have a easier time against randoms not healing each other. Players rarely have 3 HoTs by theirself and randoms rarely heal each other so they would very rarely get reduction. Ballgroups have more than 5 hots all the time. So why would it hurt casuals rarely get the reduction more than the ballgroups having it all the time. When atacked by ballgroup theyre healing isnt enaugh to keep them alive anyway and some dont keep up their HoTs. I doubt you really care about randoms as you seem to play in ballgroup farming randoms yourself. But somehow it is accepted for them to farm randoms 12v36 but not for hypothetical 1vXer to win 1v3.

    Dark con and RoA were designed and plague redesigned to help ballgroups kill randoms. Why would I need to stack a ballgroup that is already stacked? And explosion on death isnt that useful when you cant even kill one player.
    PC EU
  • Iriidius
    Iriidius
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    AD42 wrote: »
    @ZOS_Icy @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Hadeostry @ZOS_KaiSchober
    Maybe make some changes to Battle Spirit. Reducing healing received by 88%. Reduce shield durability by 88%. That's the simplest solution.

    Why is reducing healing by 75% for every player including solo and smallscale players ok when redicing it by 50% for players with 3+ HoTs a problem because it can also hit solo and smallscale players?
    PC EU
  • AD42
    AD42
    ✭✭✭
    Iriidius wrote: »
    AD42 wrote: »
    @ZOS_Icy @ZOS_Bill @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Hadeostry @ZOS_KaiSchober
    Maybe make some changes to Battle Spirit. Reducing healing received by 88%. Reduce shield durability by 88%. That's the simplest solution.

    Why is reducing healing by 75% for every player including solo and smallscale players ok when redicing it by 50% for players with 3+ HoTs a problem because it can also hit solo and smallscale players?

    You're ready for a fixed value. But you're not ready for griefers, newbies, and weak players.
  • MXVIIDREAM
    MXVIIDREAM
    ✭✭✭
    Cut HoTs and Shields down to one of each kind, and don't overthink a solution into something that will impact non-BGers potentially every bit as much or (invariably) more than the BGers.

    Important to note that shields are already limited to one of a kind, and furthermore, the limit applies to the base skill, meaning that even 2 different morphs of the same shield cannot stack.

    Shielding will need a bigger change to nerf it. Large groups rely on 4 primary shields; Contingency, Chakrams, Barrier, and Arcanist's Bubble ultimate. There are other shields that are also large offenders, such as Soul Burst and Wield Soul, but these shields are slightly less efficient and thus not as commonly used.

    The best route to nerfing shields is to either 1) reduce each subsequently stacked shield by a percentage, so that each shield you stack is weaker than the last, or 2) cap the total shielding amount of a player to a % of their health, rather than having a cap for each individual shield (as it doesn’t matter that an individual shield caps at 60% of a target's health when 3 can be combined to double or triple someone's healthbar).

    For option 2 I could see Ultimate sourced shields being exempt, but given that Barrier is one of the largest offenders in Ball Groups, something needs to give.

    Excellent points

    While I agree with this as a whole I’d have to say it has to be after a number say 3 shields so not to hurt solo players significantly

  • hoangdz
    hoangdz
    ✭✭✭
    Radiate77 wrote: »
    That in mind, with all the other issues, this change is just not thought out enough and aims to fix some problem that doesn't really exist aside from a vocal minority of people who will still just complain about the next thing once this is changed.

    Do you actually believe this? Be honest.

    Without a single doubt. The same people still complain about Rush of Agony after it has been nerfed multiple times and is one of the easiest sets to play against. You get a visual and audio que that is delayed by a second and is blocked by the majority of decent players. If you ever watch a GvG with decent groups the pull goes out and even with 12 man GvGs will often times pull nobody because it's extremely obvious. People who complain about this will always just jump to the next thing.

    I’m a seasoned 1vXer/smallscaler on PCNA, which means I know more about the game than the average player. I don’t agree with what you said about Rush of Agony. It could not be further from the truth.

    Rush of Agony is still problematic for PvP, and I have multiple videos demonstrating and disproving your claim that it’s one of the easiest sets to play against. In fact, several of the people defending RoA who I argued against in a very long RoA thread turned out to be ballgroup players and RoA abusers. Coincidence much? One thing I know for sure though is that this set deserves to be nerfed into the ground, period.
    Edited by hoangdz on January 15, 2026 1:56PM
  • Teeba_Shei
    Teeba_Shei
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Everyone seems to be bringing up weird anecdotal examples of how ball groups are ruining cyrodiil. Meanwhile, I was out in cyrodiil for the last two days and didn’t see a single ball group. They aren’t that common, and when they do show up, they get destroyed by pugs.
  • MeridiaFavorsMe
    MeridiaFavorsMe
    ✭✭✭
    hoangdz wrote: »
    Radiate77 wrote: »
    That in mind, with all the other issues, this change is just not thought out enough and aims to fix some problem that doesn't really exist aside from a vocal minority of people who will still just complain about the next thing once this is changed.

    Do you actually believe this? Be honest.

    Without a single doubt. The same people still complain about Rush of Agony after it has been nerfed multiple times and is one of the easiest sets to play against. You get a visual and audio que that is delayed by a second and is blocked by the majority of decent players. If you ever watch a GvG with decent groups the pull goes out and even with 12 man GvGs will often times pull nobody because it's extremely obvious. People who complain about this will always just jump to the next thing.

    I’m a seasoned 1vXer/smallscaler on PCNA, which means I know more about the game than the average player. I don’t agree with what you said about Rush of Agony. It could not be further from the truth.

    Rush of Agony is still problematic for PvP, and I have multiple videos demonstrating and disproving your claim that it’s one of the easiest sets to play against. In fact, several of the people defending RoA who I argued against in a very long RoA thread turned out to be ballgroup players and RoA abusers. Coincidence much? One thing I know for sure though is that this set deserves to be nerfed into the ground, period.

    Do you want to share those videos? RoA stopped being a problem when it became a stationary pull around a location. It also has the most obvious telegraphed circle on the ground. I'll admit previous versions could be an issue, but we are well past that.
    Edited by MeridiaFavorsMe on January 15, 2026 2:02PM
This discussion has been closed.