Cyrodiil Healing Nerf!!

heimdall14_9 · February 6

StackonClown wrote: »

can someone explain - is HOT stacking what makes ball groups so hard to take on?
does hot stacking make these players unkillable or does hot stacking cause others to lag?

I sometimes see these ball groups inside an enemy keep - they seem to follow an NPC-like loop, never ever stopping.
So these guys would clearly all be on discord - giggling amongst themselves ??

if you want to get to the root of it all yes hots stacking along with shielding over-lapping make ballgroups seem unkillable

as for the lag thats just the game when an big group of players are hitting skills rapidly

MincMincMinc · February 6

StackonClown wrote: »

can someone explain - is HOT stacking what makes ball groups so hard to take on?
does hot stacking make these players unkillable or does hot stacking cause others to lag?

I sometimes see these ball groups inside an enemy keep - they seem to follow an NPC-like loop, never ever stopping.
So these guys would clearly all be on discord - giggling amongst themselves ??

Its mainly the shields that are preventing them from dying in the current meta. Shields are an anti burst tool whereas hots are an anti suffocation tool for tankiness. We are in a crit heavy meta because zos has given crit damage out like candy. The reason players always ran 7 impen was because a critical hit unmitigated basically means you do double damage or effectively doing two skills in one cast.....leading to a burst meta.

For shields think, if you could have 30khp that means in one instance of damage you could survive 30k damage. If we throw on 30k shields now you can survive 60k of instant burst. Once you lose those shields you need to recast back up actively to be ready to survive burst again.

Hots on the other hand are over time but are a guaranteed blanket. So if you have 30khp and hots you will still die to that 30k burst, but any little hits are going to ensure you are back at the 30k. So Hots are more of a counter to a bunch of little hits.

Hots however are probably more server lag intensive just because they lead to many ticks and potentially many cascading calculation events. If you have 12x people all casting 12x hots that tick 12x that trigger up to 10x proc events per player you can see how these factors could start going up exponentially for the server. For each of these factors you can come up with server rule limitations.

For Groups you can limit the max player count in a group which can pair with rules like "this heal/set only works on group members"
For the AoE you can do AoE hit limits, maybe "this heal only hits 6 players, but this morph heals 12 for less"
For the hot you can prevent stacking so only one source can be applied at a time, preventing abusive copy/paste meta skills.
For the procs you can make harder uptimes and harder proc triggers. (Think of rallying cry lasting 20s, but with a 15s cooldown giving no downtime. Or instead of the trigger being "spam aoe hots" you could make the trigger something like "when you use a single target heal on an ally")

YandereGirlfriend · February 6

MincMincMinc wrote: »

StackonClown wrote: »

can someone explain - is HOT stacking what makes ball groups so hard to take on?
does hot stacking make these players unkillable or does hot stacking cause others to lag?

I sometimes see these ball groups inside an enemy keep - they seem to follow an NPC-like loop, never ever stopping.
So these guys would clearly all be on discord - giggling amongst themselves ??

Its mainly the shields that are preventing them from dying in the current meta. Shields are an anti burst tool whereas hots are an anti suffocation tool for tankiness. We are in a crit heavy meta because zos has given crit damage out like candy. The reason players always ran 7 impen was because a critical hit unmitigated basically means you do double damage or effectively doing two skills in one cast.....leading to a burst meta.

For shields think, if you could have 30khp that means in one instance of damage you could survive 30k damage. If we throw on 30k shields now you can survive 60k of instant burst. Once you lose those shields you need to recast back up actively to be ready to survive burst again.

Hots on the other hand are over time but are a guaranteed blanket. So if you have 30khp and hots you will still die to that 30k burst, but any little hits are going to ensure you are back at the 30k. So Hots are more of a counter to a bunch of little hits.

Hots however are probably more server lag intensive just because they lead to many ticks and potentially many cascading calculation events. If you have 12x people all casting 12x hots that tick 12x that trigger up to 10x proc events per player you can see how these factors could start going up exponentially for the server. For each of these factors you can come up with server rule limitations.
For Groups you can limit the max player count in a group which can pair with rules like "this heal/set only works on group members"

For the AoE you can do AoE hit limits, maybe "this heal only hits 6 players, but this morph heals 12 for less"

For the hot you can prevent stacking so only one source can be applied at a time, preventing abusive copy/paste meta skills.

For the procs you can make harder uptimes and harder proc triggers. (Think of rallying cry lasting 20s, but with a 15s cooldown giving no downtime. Or instead of the trigger being "spam aoe hots" you could make the trigger something like "when you use a single target heal on an ally")

These are all very good points.

The benefits of eliminating sticky HOT stacking would be far greater than the basic decrease in durability for players and groups; exactly as you state, there would be very desirable performance and gameplay implications as well.

I would argue though the game would benefit more from Rallying Cry-style long-duration uptimes with simple proc conditions than it does from the current approach that is centered around intensely short "micro-durations", exotic proc conditions, and mechanics like the standardized 5-second "stack" duration for many item sets.

These intensely short durations typically require additional overhead to manage because they are intended to be constantly refreshed. But perhaps more importantly, they also create negative incentives for gameplay.

For example, if you want to maintain SPC uptime, you need to absolutely spam healing ticks without any real regard for their healing utility. Because the actual healing is not the point. You spam them because SPC only lasts for 5 seconds and so you need to be not only healing but overhealing a target as rapidly as you possibly can. So you, as the healer, are making tons of unnecessary casts that are achieving basically nothing except for bogging-down the server and maintaining your SPC proc. There has got to be a better way.

Clearly, the original design intent is to not make proccing powerful set effects "too easy" for players, which is a valid concern. But it is simply reality that players are going to do whatever it takes to maintain their procs, no matter how wasteful or taxing it is on server performance.

From that perspective, you may as well stop fighting against the metaphorical ocean and instead change micro-duration sets, such as SPC, to require less degenerate gameplay to proc. Giving them a Rallying Cry-style long-duration proc, such that players are no longer incentivized to simply spam spam spam in order to maintain it, would be a worthwhile improvement.

Even adding features such as "Smart Targeting" for buffs, which was implemented for exactly two sets and then randomly dropped as a concept, would be helpful. Giving players certainty that X casts will result in Y outcomes every time, all the time, would assist in culling unnecessary player actions and casts. Yes, this would make life more straightforward for groups. But groups are going to maintain their uptime anyway, so you can have them either crush the server while doing it or you can streamline the process and improve performance for everyone. In my eyes, that that choice is obvious.

MincMincMinc · February 6

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

StackonClown wrote: »

can someone explain - is HOT stacking what makes ball groups so hard to take on?
does hot stacking make these players unkillable or does hot stacking cause others to lag?

I sometimes see these ball groups inside an enemy keep - they seem to follow an NPC-like loop, never ever stopping.
So these guys would clearly all be on discord - giggling amongst themselves ??

Its mainly the shields that are preventing them from dying in the current meta. Shields are an anti burst tool whereas hots are an anti suffocation tool for tankiness. We are in a crit heavy meta because zos has given crit damage out like candy. The reason players always ran 7 impen was because a critical hit unmitigated basically means you do double damage or effectively doing two skills in one cast.....leading to a burst meta.

For shields think, if you could have 30khp that means in one instance of damage you could survive 30k damage. If we throw on 30k shields now you can survive 60k of instant burst. Once you lose those shields you need to recast back up actively to be ready to survive burst again.

Hots on the other hand are over time but are a guaranteed blanket. So if you have 30khp and hots you will still die to that 30k burst, but any little hits are going to ensure you are back at the 30k. So Hots are more of a counter to a bunch of little hits.

Hots however are probably more server lag intensive just because they lead to many ticks and potentially many cascading calculation events. If you have 12x people all casting 12x hots that tick 12x that trigger up to 10x proc events per player you can see how these factors could start going up exponentially for the server. For each of these factors you can come up with server rule limitations.
For Groups you can limit the max player count in a group which can pair with rules like "this heal/set only works on group members"

For the AoE you can do AoE hit limits, maybe "this heal only hits 6 players, but this morph heals 12 for less"

For the hot you can prevent stacking so only one source can be applied at a time, preventing abusive copy/paste meta skills.

For the procs you can make harder uptimes and harder proc triggers. (Think of rallying cry lasting 20s, but with a 15s cooldown giving no downtime. Or instead of the trigger being "spam aoe hots" you could make the trigger something like "when you use a single target heal on an ally")

These are all very good points.

The benefits of eliminating sticky HOT stacking would be far greater than the basic decrease in durability for players and groups; exactly as you state, there would be very desirable performance and gameplay implications as well.

I would argue though the game would benefit more from Rallying Cry-style long-duration uptimes with simple proc conditions than it does from the current approach that is centered around intensely short "micro-durations", exotic proc conditions, and mechanics like the standardized 5-second "stack" duration for many item sets.

These intensely short durations typically require additional overhead to manage because they are intended to be constantly refreshed. But perhaps more importantly, they also create negative incentives for gameplay.

For example, if you want to maintain SPC uptime, you need to absolutely spam healing ticks without any real regard for their healing utility. Because the actual healing is not the point. You spam them because SPC only lasts for 5 seconds and so you need to be not only healing but overhealing a target as rapidly as you possibly can. So you, as the healer, are making tons of unnecessary casts that are achieving basically nothing except for bogging-down the server and maintaining your SPC proc. There has got to be a better way.

Clearly, the original design intent is to not make proccing powerful set effects "too easy" for players, which is a valid concern. But it is simply reality that players are going to do whatever it takes to maintain their procs, no matter how wasteful or taxing it is on server performance.

From that perspective, you may as well stop fighting against the metaphorical ocean and instead change micro-duration sets, such as SPC, to require less degenerate gameplay to proc. Giving them a Rallying Cry-style long-duration proc, such that players are no longer incentivized to simply spam spam spam in order to maintain it, would be a worthwhile improvement.

Even adding features such as "Smart Targeting" for buffs, which was implemented for exactly two sets and then randomly dropped as a concept, would be helpful. Giving players certainty that X casts will result in Y outcomes every time, all the time, would assist in culling unnecessary player actions and casts. Yes, this would make life more straightforward for groups. But groups are going to maintain their uptime anyway, so you can have them either crush the server while doing it or you can streamline the process and improve performance for everyone. In my eyes, that that choice is obvious.

Right on its almost wild that we even question why the game lags. Yet we see design decisions like incentivizing groups to spam aoe hots which do aoe procs with 5 different effects.......etc.

Honestly I would rather zos focus more group play onto ultimates or higher cost skills like seige shield, purge, or timestop for example. Move more group set interactions to incentivize these gameplay interactions. "if you purge 20 effects give each affected group member 300wd". Then drive the normal combat gameplay away from absurdly bloated skills doing 5 paragraphs of aoe proc effects like deep fissure.

ioResult · February 10

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right on its almost wild that we even question why the game lags. Yet we see design decisions like incentivizing groups to spam aoe hots which do aoe procs with 5 different effects.......etc.

Honestly I would rather zos focus more group play onto ultimates or higher cost skills like seige shield, purge, or timestop for example. Move more group set interactions to incentivize these gameplay interactions. "if you purge 20 effects give each affected group member 300wd". Then drive the normal combat gameplay away from absurdly bloated skills doing 5 paragraphs of aoe proc effects like deep fissure.

We know that this issue with AoEs is density of players in an area. In a trial, BG or overland there are always less than 20 players, so at max the server has to do 20x calculations to see if a player is in the AoE. In Cyrodiil it is many more than 20 because of the much larger density of players, so anytime a ball grouper casts an AoE the server has to see which of the other 150+ players are in the area and then determine if they are friend or foe to determine if the AoE's effect actually affects each toon. It becomes exponentially more compute intensive as each ball grouper and/or zergling spams more AoEs. This is why - IMHO - the versions of skills in Vengeance are what they are. They started out with no AoEs and Vengeance was always snappy. Now that they have let some AoEs leak in, performance can suffer during times with a lot of players in an area and AoEs are being cast.

So ZOS needs to decide what their goal is in terms of maximum number of players in a Cyrodiil instance and then tailor the designs of abilities accordingly. The server still has to do calculations when an effect is sticky, so as far as I can see, managing how the abilities work (e.g. in group only, max targets affected, larger cooldowns, etc.) is the only real solution, but nearly no one active in this thread who was screaming about the nerf that they did seems to grasp the reality of doing so many server calculations within the global cooldown that AoEs cause. I personally want them to cap everything at 3 and make all abilities targeted in Cyrodiil. That's how you get hundreds of players involved in a close quarters battle for a keep - which I always thought was the point of Cyrodiil.

ZOS can also make PvP experiences like BGs (and larger w/ a max of maybe 40-50 per side) that are smaller than Cyrodiil's open world which perhaps have some AoE abilities. Abilities just change based upon what type of instance the player is going into: PvE Dungeons/Trials/Overland vs. PvP Small (max 24 players/instance) vs. PvP Medium (max 48 or 60 players/instance) vs. Open World PvP (300+ players/instance).

AoEs, Scribing and Multi-classing increased the number of calculations per global cooldown needed on the server side for Open World PvP because maybe no one is left at ZOS who could understand the consequences of such decisions for the server when a bunch of players were put into close proximity and their abilities could affect all local friendly or hostile players. For Cyrodiil we need the pared down abilities like they made for Vengeance if the goal is hundreds of players in an instance. I don't know why spammed AoE HoTs, DoTs & effects are even a thing in Cyrodiil still.

Veinblood1965 · February 10

Why not just make it so the more people an AOE hits the less heal amount per player? There are other examples of such reduced effects for other spells/sets etc,.

YandereGirlfriend · February 11

ioResult wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

Right on its almost wild that we even question why the game lags. Yet we see design decisions like incentivizing groups to spam aoe hots which do aoe procs with 5 different effects.......etc.

Honestly I would rather zos focus more group play onto ultimates or higher cost skills like seige shield, purge, or timestop for example. Move more group set interactions to incentivize these gameplay interactions. "if you purge 20 effects give each affected group member 300wd". Then drive the normal combat gameplay away from absurdly bloated skills doing 5 paragraphs of aoe proc effects like deep fissure.

We know that this issue with AoEs is density of players in an area. In a trial, BG or overland there are always less than 20 players, so at max the server has to do 20x calculations to see if a player is in the AoE. In Cyrodiil it is many more than 20 because of the much larger density of players, so anytime a ball grouper casts an AoE the server has to see which of the other 150+ players are in the area and then determine if they are friend or foe to determine if the AoE's effect actually affects each toon. It becomes exponentially more compute intensive as each ball grouper and/or zergling spams more AoEs. This is why - IMHO - the versions of skills in Vengeance are what they are. They started out with no AoEs and Vengeance was always snappy. Now that they have let some AoEs leak in, performance can suffer during times with a lot of players in an area and AoEs are being cast.

So ZOS needs to decide what their goal is in terms of maximum number of players in a Cyrodiil instance and then tailor the designs of abilities accordingly. The server still has to do calculations when an effect is sticky, so as far as I can see, managing how the abilities work (e.g. in group only, max targets affected, larger cooldowns, etc.) is the only real solution, but nearly no one active in this thread who was screaming about the nerf that they did seems to grasp the reality of doing so many server calculations within the global cooldown that AoEs cause. I personally want them to cap everything at 3 and make all abilities targeted in Cyrodiil. That's how you get hundreds of players involved in a close quarters battle for a keep - which I always thought was the point of Cyrodiil.

ZOS can also make PvP experiences like BGs (and larger w/ a max of maybe 40-50 per side) that are smaller than Cyrodiil's open world which perhaps have some AoE abilities. Abilities just change based upon what type of instance the player is going into: PvE Dungeons/Trials/Overland vs. PvP Small (max 24 players/instance) vs. PvP Medium (max 48 or 60 players/instance) vs. Open World PvP (300+ players/instance).

AoEs, Scribing and Multi-classing increased the number of calculations per global cooldown needed on the server side for Open World PvP because maybe no one is left at ZOS who could understand the consequences of such decisions for the server when a bunch of players were put into close proximity and their abilities could affect all local friendly or hostile players. For Cyrodiil we need the pared down abilities like they made for Vengeance if the goal is hundreds of players in an instance. I don't know why spammed AoE HoTs, DoTs & effects are even a thing in Cyrodiil still.

This already exists and is called Vengeance. It will be available as a permanent campaign at some point in the future.

But rather than mangling abilities to be more Vengeance-like, you need to re-shape player incentives. You have to ask yourself why players spam Vigor rather than simply being angry that they do it.

It doesn't happen in a vacuum; it happens because the basic game mechanics (e.g. endless stacking, set procs, CP, etc.) incentivize players to spam it. So rather than mangling Vigor as a skill we should be changing the incentives to help players make decisions that are both in their own best interest as well as in the interests of the server.

So like the limiting to 1x instances per morph change would do exactly that. The skills stay exactly the same but we have removed a huge incentive, the endless stacking, that drives large numbers of players to spam it. You gain nothing of value from having 12x people spamming it vs. only 1x or 2x, which is a massive cast culling that players have now undertaken voluntarily.

Sets obviously feed into this dynamic as well, which I have discussed higher up in this thread. Sets that demand a high rate of ticks to proc or to stay active incentivize casting abilities that generate a large number of raw ticks. Change the sets to make them easier to maintain... and you wash away the imperative to make all of those wasteful casts.

CP has proc effects that share the same negative incentives as set procs but we also have basic balance and scaling to consider. Why do single-target heals and AOE heals both scale to +10% with CP? Why do we have a HOT star (which implies many recurring calculations) but not a corresponding Direct Heal star? If we want players to make better choices, then we should probably incentivize and provide them with healthier alternatives.

Even something as simple as allowing players to flag themselves as heals-always-target-self when playing solo to bypass, for example, the AOE search component when they cast their Healing Soul or Breath of Life, would be beneficial for performance as well as a win-win for players who would now have certainty that their life-saving casts will always go to themselves rather than potentially being stolen by some randoms in the area. You can and should do a similar thing for groups to flag themselves as the only valid targets for their own healing.

So, there are lots of things that you can to do shape player choices without destroying the combat system that we currently enjoy. It just requires a bit more thoughtfulness than the knee-jerk "NERF THIS!" that we typically see online.

sneakymitchell · February 11

People rely on HoTs too much for PvP than actual burst heals. There are plenty of tools for burst heal and trigger heals from sets that ain’t a HoT but a burst heal.

ioResult · February 11

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

This already exists and is called Vengeance. It will be available as a permanent campaign at some point in the future.

I don't think you realise that you and I are saying the same thing. Neither of us, I think, want Vengeance to exist & neither are working at cross purposes here.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

But rather than mangling abilities to be more Vengeance-like, you need to re-shape player incentives. You have to ask yourself why players spam Vigor rather than simply being angry that they do it.

It doesn't happen in a vacuum; it happens because the basic game mechanics (e.g. endless stacking, set procs, CP, etc.) incentivize players to spam it. So rather than mangling Vigor as a skill we should be changing the incentives to help players make decisions that are both in their own best interest as well as in the interests of the server.

I think we're talking about the same thing here. But it would not be "mangling" the ability, we're reducing the number of calculations per global cooldown to scale with playing environment. The mechanics as originally designed were not designed for Open World PvP. That's simply a fact.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

So like the limiting to 1x instances per morph change would do exactly that. The skills stay exactly the same but we have removed a huge incentive, the endless stacking, that drives large numbers of players to spam it. You gain nothing of value from having 12x people spamming it vs. only 1x or 2x, which is a massive cast culling that players have now undertaken voluntarily.

I don't really understand what you mean here. Are you talking about limiting healing stacks? If so, I'm all for limiting healing stacks and shield stacks. Only 1 instance of each HoT ability should be able to stack on a player. Period. No 12x stacks of Vigor. One. Period. If a group wants more HoTs then other players need to slot different HoT abilities. And then remove shield stacking altogether. The limit is one shield, period. A shield is a shield is a shield. If two are cast/proc then the higher one wins and cancels out the other.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Sets obviously feed into this dynamic as well, which I have discussed higher up in this thread. Sets that demand a high rate of ticks to proc or to stay active incentivize casting abilities that generate a large number of raw ticks. Change the sets to make them easier to maintain... and you wash away the imperative to make all of those wasteful casts.

So from a technical perspective of how AoE calculations work vs. proc ticks, we know a proc tick from sets, CP or abilities are far less compute intensive in open world PvP than a single cast of any AoE. Every AoE has target calculations that must happen for every player in an instance within a certain distance of the caster. So if an AoE is cast/procs, the server must look at each player reasonablynear the caster and look at the range of the possible target to see if they are in the actual area defined by the AoE. If an ability is defined as targeted to self or group members then the server doesn't have to worry about any of this. It is the per global cooldown "Is player in the area of the AoE?" calculations that go exponential with a large number of players in a relatively small area that cause the lag. I think we both agree on this.

You're trying to only disincentivise players from casting such abilities but that still doesn't go to the core of the lag problem, which is that they still can cast them and nefarious players will continue to cast them to gain unfair advantage in PvP just as those same players today use cheats, exploits (which they don't report to the devs when they find them) and controller devices full of macro scripts like the Cronus Zen device (look it up if unfamiliar). So you're not actually solving the problem, you're kicking it down the road and hoping for behaviour from a portion of the PvP player base which already abuses every advantage they can to be "good at the game".

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

CP has proc effects that share the same negative incentives as set procs but we also have basic balance and scaling to consider. Why do single-target heals and AOE heals both scale to +10% with CP? Why do we have a HOT star (which implies many recurring calculations) but not a corresponding Direct Heal star? If we want players to make better choices, then we should probably incentivize and provide them with healthier alternatives.

Even something as simple as allowing players to flag themselves as heals-always-target-self when playing solo to bypass, for example, the AOE search component when they cast their Healing Soul or Breath of Life, would be beneficial for performance as well as a win-win for players who would now have certainty that their life-saving casts will always go to themselves rather than potentially being stolen by some randoms in the area. You can and should do a similar thing for groups to flag themselves as the only valid targets for their own healing.

So, there are lots of things that you can to do shape player choices without destroying the combat system that we currently enjoy. It just requires a bit more thoughtfulness than the knee-jerk "NERF THIS!" that we typically see online.

I'm all for this and so are many other players but I don't have the confidence that the devs can spare the cycles to work on any of this because it only applies to one single portion of the game - Open World PvP - whereas their roadmap as publicly described is what seems to be an attempt to lure new and old PvE-mostly players to the game. So from the perspective of people like me it's not a "knee-jerk" anything, it's looking at what the devs could do with little to no development effort on their part to make the completely broken Open World PvP of ESO slightly less broken. This whole idea of reducing things after 3 HoTs is pretty reasonable to many players because the vast majority of us never actually have 3 sticky HoTs on us ever when in Cyrodiil, but a small vocal minority of very niche playstyle players that (as more than casual PvPers) are already part of a minority of ESO community that would be realistically adversely affected by the change scream bloody murder so fast that ZOS the change doesn't even last more than a few days on PTS before being pulled. That is the very definition of "knee-jerk" from our perspective. But rather than recognizing that the devs are a small team with a big public roadmap so they can't prioritize changes that only affect open world PvP performance, the niche play folks in ball groups and bomber zerglets get on here and scream, "Only do the impossible! Not anything meaningful in the short term!"

It's great to get on here and wax poetic about what the devs could do, but its not realistic or practical with the current reality of what the dev team's current workload is. We need practical solutions which don't greatly adversely affect the majority of players in the Open World PvP ESO Community. If those changes do happen to affect a tiny minority of niche playstyles in that community then the devs should still be willing to make the change and then put the real solutions into the technical debt pile of their Jira ticket database where they will sit until such time as those in charge raise their priority high enough to make those meaningful changes a reality.

I wish @ZOS_Kevin, @ZOS_GinaBruno and others at ZOS would not have been so gun-shy and backed out this change so quickly before really anyone had a chance to assess its affects on players not involved in niche playstyles. But here we are. We'll go another quarter at least of the current "meta" in Cyrodiil with no changes and the Cyrodiil player community will decrease even more, which will lower the priority even more of all the changes you propose. That's where we are right now in practical terms.

MincMincMinc · February 11

There is also the general cyrodil issue pushing only large group content, while removing smaller group content that naturally mixes up the server and splits people up helping prevent high density lag points.

A prime example being the hammer.....it is literally a singularity point on the map drawing all 3 factions to a singular point.
Another being the destroyable bridges. The emp ring has two directions, if one goes down and the action dies. Now the 50% going east suddenly joins the other 50% on the west.
The old small goat paths like under the alessia bridge opened alot of doors for small man fights and duels. These were close enough that noobs fighting on the bridge could be introduced and learn how to solo in some fights and break away from the heard.
The newer goat paths are SOOOOO far away, most people probably never even ran through them. Why not make a goatpath through the South ASH mountain that leads to the ash mine?
The outer outposts are SOOOOO far away, why not move something like carmala closer to the middle gate to incentivize fighting through that? Look how bruma is located between bleaks and dragonclaw and it is fought over all the time by solos and smallman groups.
Things like resources being worth little compared to keep flips for the faction. Resource bonuses not playing pivotal roles in keep seiges, so groups can just stack 50 on ram and wait 3 mins for it to open with no reason to split up during seiges. They could go back to guards giving insane buffs. Lumber yards preventing doors from being seiged. Mines buffing the walls. We could spend hours talking about how resource nodes could be better designed to force large groups to split up and then force smaller groups to split further to hold nodes.
Mountspeed and stamina being so fast and near infinite makes it so casual ganking isnt a thing anymore. Ganking used to be a core noob way of learning how to pvp solo for both the attacker and the defender. Now we only see 1 shot theorycrafters trying to pull it off. This MAJOR learning environment is basically gone from the game.

ioResult · February 11

This is all great stuff and is all relatively low effort for the dev team to (re)implement everything in this list. I'd argue that all of this would have been far lower effort than that spent on developing Vengeance and would have had a much more positive impact in terms of re-growing the ESO PvP community.

The last one is my favorite. Hardly anyone gets knocked off their speedy mount anymore in Cyrodiil. If they do, you know they're a PVE'er. And I can't figure out how someone riding on a mount can get hit with a literal meteor/comet and not be always knocked off their mount and unavoidably stunned on the ground. If ZOS want to make just one change to the game, this is an easy one. Meteors always dismount a player and always unavoidably stun anyone hit by one. One should never see "DODGED" as the result of casting a meteor on a target. Remove the unavoidable stun from Streak and make meteor be an actual meteor.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

There is also the issue of in cyrodil zos has done a lot of work to incentivize balling up and pushing single path objectives only for large group play.
A prime example being the hammer.....it is literally a singularity point on the map drawing all 3 factions to a singular point.

Another being the destroyable bridges. The emp ring has two directions, if one goes down and the action dies. Now the 50% going east suddenly joins the other 50% on the west.

The old small goat paths like under the alessia bridge opened alot of doors for small man fights and duels. These were close enough that noobs fighting on the bridge could be introduced and learn how to solo in some fights and break away from the heard.

The newer goat paths are SOOOOO far away, most people probably never even ran through them. Why not make a goatpath through the South ASH mountain that leads to the ash mine?

The outer outposts are SOOOOO far away, why not move something like carmala closer to the middle gate to incentivize fighting through that? Look how bruma is located between bleaks and dragonclaw and it is fought over all the time by solos and smallman groups.

Things like resources being worth little compared to keep flips for the faction. Resource bonuses not playing pivotal roles in keep seiges, so groups can just stack 50 on ram and wait 3 mins for it to open with no reason to split up during seiges. They could go back to guards giving insane buffs. Lumber yards preventing doors from being seiged. Mines buffing the walls. We could spend hours talking about how resource nodes could be better designed to force large groups to split up and then force smaller groups to split further to hold nodes.

Mountspeed and stamina being so fast and near infinite makes it so casual ganking isnt a thing anymore. Ganking used to be a core noob way of learning how to pvp solo for both the attacker and the defender. Now we only see 1 shot theorycrafters trying to pull it off. This MAJOR learning environment is basically gone from the game.

MincMincMinc · February 11

ioResult wrote: »

This is all great stuff and is all relatively low effort for the dev team to (re)implement everything in this list. I'd argue that all of this would have been far lower effort than that spent on developing Vengeance and would have had a much more positive impact in terms of re-growing the ESO PvP community.

The last one is my favorite. Hardly anyone gets knocked off their speedy mount anymore in Cyrodiil. If they do, you know they're a PVE'er. And I can't figure out how someone riding on a mount can get hit with a literal meteor/comet and not be always knocked off their mount and unavoidably stunned on the ground. If ZOS want to make just one change to the game, this is an easy one. Meteors always dismount a player and always unavoidably stun anyone hit by one. One should never see "DODGED" as the result of casting a meteor on a target. Remove the unavoidable stun from Streak and make meteor be an actual meteor.

MincMincMinc wrote: »

There is also the issue of in cyrodil zos has done a lot of work to incentivize balling up and pushing single path objectives only for large group play.
A prime example being the hammer.....it is literally a singularity point on the map drawing all 3 factions to a singular point.

Another being the destroyable bridges. The emp ring has two directions, if one goes down and the action dies. Now the 50% going east suddenly joins the other 50% on the west.

The old small goat paths like under the alessia bridge opened alot of doors for small man fights and duels. These were close enough that noobs fighting on the bridge could be introduced and learn how to solo in some fights and break away from the heard.

The newer goat paths are SOOOOO far away, most people probably never even ran through them. Why not make a goatpath through the South ASH mountain that leads to the ash mine?

The outer outposts are SOOOOO far away, why not move something like carmala closer to the middle gate to incentivize fighting through that? Look how bruma is located between bleaks and dragonclaw and it is fought over all the time by solos and smallman groups.

Things like resources being worth little compared to keep flips for the faction. Resource bonuses not playing pivotal roles in keep seiges, so groups can just stack 50 on ram and wait 3 mins for it to open with no reason to split up during seiges. They could go back to guards giving insane buffs. Lumber yards preventing doors from being seiged. Mines buffing the walls. We could spend hours talking about how resource nodes could be better designed to force large groups to split up and then force smaller groups to split further to hold nodes.

Mountspeed and stamina being so fast and near infinite makes it so casual ganking isnt a thing anymore. Ganking used to be a core noob way of learning how to pvp solo for both the attacker and the defender. Now we only see 1 shot theorycrafters trying to pull it off. This MAJOR learning environment is basically gone from the game.

I used to run a lowbie training guild back in the early days until about summerset. Honestly its not that bad to have basic mount speed. Its just another PVE powercreep that 90% of people wont want to give up. There are tons of pvp benefits to slower mounts like having higher consequences for groups wiping. It changes how the pug zerg waves function.

Mounts in general in eso were never designed to work with pvp in a smart way. IMO i think the albion type system was better where your mount would take all the damage and then youd be forced to dismount and fight, failing to do so put you at a combat disadvantage. ESO you could do something similar where you could use mount storage capacity like mount health in pvp zones. Then instead of maxing out 60/60/60 youd have only 120 points to spend so you have to choose whether you want to be able to escape fights or get places faster.

YandereGirlfriend · February 11

I think that you are right that we largely agree, @ioResult

But I do not wish to see large divergences in the way that skills perform between game modes. That may be unavoidable for certain situations, like the eventual solution to the Warden Charm plague, but keeping those sorts of things to the absolute minimum is, IMO, much better design for the game.

And yes, I was speaking of single morph stacking on players. But I would disagree with you that limiting stacks to 1x per player would not cull wasteful Vigor/Radiating Regen spam. I make the builds for my ballgroup and we definitely will be pulling those skills of off players' bars once that inevitable change is made. Ballgroups are intensely rational and so wasting resources and combat GCDs on ineffective actions is simply not something that at least good ballgroups are going to do. I can't speak to zone zergs or the big zerg guilds but I would imagine that eventually they would cease the practice as well.

For sets, I mean that having sets such as SPC incentivize the spamming of wasteful skills like Vigor and Radiating Regen because you, as the caster, want to have as many healing ticks spread across your group as you possibly can. And Vigor and Radiating Regen spam are the most effective ways to achieve that. If the set proc lasted for longer, like 20 seconds, then the spamming of those wasteful skills would no longer be necessary. So in that sense, SPC (and really most buff sets) directly incentivize wasteful casts because it is baked into their set design. But it doesn't have to be that way.

I would also give this new era of ZOS a bit more faith that they can implement logical solutions to some of these issues. Indeed, it seems as though they are intending to do the 1x stack per morph solution to limit HOTs, which is something that most folk, including myself, would have thought to be impossible just a few short months ago.

For example, @MincMincMinc often brings up that even most "single-target" heals are actually crypto-AOEs due to Smart Healing. I think that Smart Healing has its place and that shifting healing to a tab-target format would not work in ESO. But there likely exist better solutions than what we have at present, where basically all healing abilities are de facto AOE.

Which is where an idea like a self-heal flag/toggle for individual players and groups comes into play. I think that this new ZOS can implement that if it is something that players want. I would love that for solo and group play, as there are few things more devastating than your needed heals getting stolen by other players. So you are not only saving AOE calculations but also increasing quality of life for players.

Finally, to clarify, I did not intend for you to be lumped into the "NERF THIS!" crowd. You, and several others in this and related threads, are definitely interested in constructive and thoughtful solutions. That comment was more in reference to the overly simplistic takes that we sometimes see, such as calling to nerf healing by like 99% and such.

MincMincMinc · February 11

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

For example, @MincMincMinc often brings up that even most "single-target" heals are actually crypto-AOEs due to Smart Healing. I think that Smart Healing has its place and that shifting healing to a tab-target format would not work in ESO. But there likely exist better solutions than what we have at present, where basically all healing abilities are de facto AOE.

Which is where an idea like a self-heal flag/toggle for individual players and groups comes into play. I think that this new ZOS can implement that if it is something that players want. I would love that for solo and group play, as there are few things more devastating than your needed heals getting stolen by other players. So you are not only saving AOE calculations but also increasing quality of life for players.

There are plenty of ways zos could cut down on lag while also incentivizing more involved fun gameplay. One of my major points with that is that most healer builds are half automated. For instance if I play healer, i would like there to exist just as much skill cap as if I was dueling someone.

Maybe one morph of breath of life is the dummy aoe smartheal.......maybe the other one is aimed but does 20% more. Maybe instead of smarthealing you allow tab targeting allies so maybe it does 10% more than the smartheal version. I dont think we necessarily need ONE or the OTHER to exist in the game......We could have both or many options.

Honestly this type of functional change is what I expected when they were describing skill crafting. Instead we got a bunch of charm spam skills

Aydh · February 11

There is a lot of good stuff in this thread.

Steering healing away from being a 5 second buff mini-game would likely give substantial improvement server side.

Not having same morphs of healing foo stack more than 1x or 2x seems sane. This would cut down on a lot of problems in PvP. Yes, some raids would need re-tuned, but you'd likely see oodles better server performance. Make sure to include scribing skills in this. Doesn't make sense to cap Rejuv to 1 or 2 stacks, then let 12 shields from scribing stack, or 12 hots, etc.

Fixing heal targeting is already something they said were looking at, so perhaps they could get this stuff in with those changes.

BlueTheRaptor333 · February 20

MeridiaFavorsMe wrote: »

I’m a solo player who runs around Cyrodiil healing on the battlefield. I’m not in a coordinated ball group and I’m not chasing meta setups—I’m just supporting my faction where I can. I already get plenty of hate tells saying I “ruin PvP” simply for helping keep people alive on AD. Even so, I feel like I have real impact in large fights and keep takes by keeping people healed through siege pressure and preventing unnecessary deaths.

This change really worries me because most of my skills are sticky heal-over-time effects. With Battlespirit now reducing healing taken by 50% when multiple HoTs are active, me trying to help people can actively hurt them. Healing allies shouldn’t punish them for receiving healing, especially in large-scale PvP where HoTs are the backbone of support.

I’ve seen the argument that this pushes healing toward “only heal people in your group,” but that doesn’t help my situation at all. I should be able to play solo and heal without being forced to group up just to avoid harming others. Cyrodiil has always supported different playstyles, including solo support players who help whoever is nearby. This change effectively removes that playstyle and turns solo healers into a liability instead of an asset.

I’m worried not just about the gameplay impact, but the social one too. I already get blamed for keeping people alive, and now I’m concerned I’ll get blamed for actively reducing their healing simply by doing my job. That doesn’t feel healthy for PvP or for players who enjoy supporting others outside of organized groups.

as a semi newish pvp player on playstation in GH. and i main heals. this is gonna hurt me hard if this change is incoming to console. cause no one ever groups up really in NA due to the meta being rally cry and everyone is in there tiny 1-33 man groups or solo. just like myself. so what im reading is they are punishing us solo healers?

MincMincMinc · February 20

BlueTheRaptor333 wrote: »

MeridiaFavorsMe wrote: »

I’m a solo player who runs around Cyrodiil healing on the battlefield. I’m not in a coordinated ball group and I’m not chasing meta setups—I’m just supporting my faction where I can. I already get plenty of hate tells saying I “ruin PvP” simply for helping keep people alive on AD. Even so, I feel like I have real impact in large fights and keep takes by keeping people healed through siege pressure and preventing unnecessary deaths.

This change really worries me because most of my skills are sticky heal-over-time effects. With Battlespirit now reducing healing taken by 50% when multiple HoTs are active, me trying to help people can actively hurt them. Healing allies shouldn’t punish them for receiving healing, especially in large-scale PvP where HoTs are the backbone of support.

I’ve seen the argument that this pushes healing toward “only heal people in your group,” but that doesn’t help my situation at all. I should be able to play solo and heal without being forced to group up just to avoid harming others. Cyrodiil has always supported different playstyles, including solo support players who help whoever is nearby. This change effectively removes that playstyle and turns solo healers into a liability instead of an asset.

I’m worried not just about the gameplay impact, but the social one too. I already get blamed for keeping people alive, and now I’m concerned I’ll get blamed for actively reducing their healing simply by doing my job. That doesn’t feel healthy for PvP or for players who enjoy supporting others outside of organized groups.

as a semi newish pvp player on playstation in GH. and i main heals. this is gonna hurt me hard if this change is incoming to console. cause no one ever groups up really in NA due to the meta being rally cry and everyone is in there tiny 1-33 man groups or solo. just like myself. so what im reading is they are punishing us solo healers?

Zos doesnt understand why ballgroups stacking up to 2-3 stackable sets each player walking around with 30khp+30k shields while stacking hots where all they need is a 7s cooldown aoe pull set to wipe groups is an issue.

The Zos higherups demanded that they need to do something to save face, and thats all they came up with for now. Even if they actually recoded all the effects in the game to prevent hot stacking multiple sources......the hot stacking was only a portion of the overall problem.