Beyond Healing: Why ESO PvP Needs a Modernized Combat Foundation and Battle Spirit Overhaul

heimdall14_9 · June 3

It’s no secret that the PvP community is divided over the recent, rapid adjustments to healing. However, focusing solely on healing numbers is missing the forest for the trees. The fundamental issue isn't just one mechanic—it’s that the underlying Battle Spirit framework is being forced to carry a modern game meta it wasn't built to handle.

Tweaking healing values or shifting damage percentages every quarter is just treating symptoms. If we want a balanced, high-performance PvP ecosystem in Cyrodiil, Imperial City, and Battlegrounds, ZOS needs to move away from isolated band-aid fixes and look at a comprehensive overhaul of the foundational battle systems:

1. Redefining Battle Spirit's Role
Battle Spirit shouldn't just be a flat reduction tool. It needs to actively decouple PvP scaling from PvE formulas. Right now, when gear or skills are designed for high-end PvE trials, they inevitably break PvP combat, leading to emergency nerfs that hurt both sides of the game.

2. Implementing Systemic Caps and Hard Limits
Instead of micro-managing individual class abilities, the combat engine needs robust, universal governance on:

Stat and Mitigation Stacking: Strict, diminishing returns on block mitigation, dodge roll efficiency, and movement speed to prevent unkillable builds.

HoT/Shield Overlap: Hard limits on how many sources of heals-over-time or damage shields can affect a single target simultaneously, curbing the oppressive nature of group-stacking.

3. Pacing and Time-to-Kill (TTK)
Combat pacing is currently in a volatile state—players fluctuate between instant bursts or infinite stalemates. A modernized system should standardize baseline recovery and damage scaling, allowing the dev team to make precise micro-adjustments instead of throwing the entire meta into chaos every major patch.

To the Community & Devs: > When can we move past the cycle of rushed, isolated balance patches and actually look at updating the core systems that govern PvP combat as a whole?

REFRESH OF BATTLE SPIRIT IS NEEDED

CatalinaWineMixer2 · June 4

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

Gabriel_H · June 4

The problem with addressing this is there are too many things in-flux at the moment. Vengeance, Class Masteries, and Class Refresh:

This gives me the sense that going forward they are looking to adjust skills to have different values in PvE and PvP. Something I have long advocated for. ZOS say here it is their "first time separating PvE and PvP" but that isn't strictly accurate. They have separated the two before - e.g. Potentates, Battle Spirit et al - but those were on a macro level rather than a micro one of the individual skills.

If my hunch is correct, ZOS may be looking to eliminate Battle Spirit all together, and adjust the skills accordingly. That's still a big if, not least because the tooltips could end up being half a page long (lol). However in the meantime things are going to look very messy and be very annoying.

I'll bring it back to my beloved Templar: Class Mastery - Judgement's Brand, adds an extra 1,500 damage to Templar skills for 3.1 seconds on proc - halved against players which takes it down to 750 BUT that is then subject to Battle Spirit taking it down in PvP to 375. That seems like a massive oversight, but could be explained if ZOS are taking a longer term view, and guinea pigging certain things.

heimdall14_9 · June 4

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

i dont want to be forced away from a game mode i enjoy just because they choose to do nothing with it and i will not play in vengeance for that very reason

BXR_Lonestar · June 5

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

Healing isn't the problem. There are 3 problems I see with healing:

1) the way healing works generally in this game. Its the inverse of damage and it scales off of damage stats. Healing needs to scale independently from other stats in the game so you can't heal AND do damage. It should be one or the other - not both. Pick a role and stick with it!

2) There few counters to healing. We have a small amount of healing absorption from scribing, and we have major/minor defile, but they are mostly from proc sets and you can't cast them and pelt large groups of people with them. And even if you could, the total debuff between the two (I think 16-18%) is only enough to cancel out major and minor mending, and it isn't sufficient to cancel out OTHER sources of improved healing. Negate is a hard counter, but only if they're standing in a bubble, and it is really difficult to KEEP players in the negate bubble. IMO, negate bubble needs to be bigger, or put a silence on players that is sticky.

3) You can have super strong heals AND be super tanky. IMO, heals should be very weak if you are wearing anything but light armor. As a healer, your survivability should come from being able to hide behind your group and keep them upright and have sustained heal output. You shouldn't also be one of the tankiest characters on the battlefield. Right now, a healer can be super tanky AND sustain, AND have powerful enough heals to keep your group upright against all but the most extreme damage output. That's a problem from a game design standpoint (I happen to love it).

Nordstern · June 5

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

1) the way healing works generally in this game. Its the inverse of damage and it scales off of damage stats. Healing needs to scale independently from other stats in the game so you can't heal AND do damage. It should be one or the other - not both. Pick a role and stick with it!

This would be a horrible change that would make the game unplayable for everyone thats not interested in running in big groups. The variety of playstyles is what makes eso pvp special and is the reason to play the game for everyone I talk to. If you want strict role based gameplay, stick to the 90% of this game that is pve content.

Gabriel_H · June 5

Nordstern wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

1) the way healing works generally in this game. Its the inverse of damage and it scales off of damage stats. Healing needs to scale independently from other stats in the game so you can't heal AND do damage. It should be one or the other - not both. Pick a role and stick with it!

This would be a horrible change that would make the game unplayable for everyone thats not interested in running in big groups. The variety of playstyles is what makes eso pvp special and is the reason to play the game for everyone I talk to. If you want strict role based gameplay, stick to the 90% of this game that is pve content.

You'd have to choose between big damage or big healing or a mix of the two to lesser degrees - that opens up playstyles and builds.

At present you stack for both - that closes down playstyles and builds.

Gabriel_H · June 5

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

i dont want to be forced away from a game mode i enjoy just because they choose to do nothing with it and i will not play in vengeance for that very reason

The game mode doesn't work - on a fundamental technical level.

heimdall14_9 · June 5

Gabriel_H wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

i dont want to be forced away from a game mode i enjoy just because they choose to do nothing with it and i will not play in vengeance for that very reason

The game mode doesn't work - on a fundamental technical level.

im sorry to say the game mode is great , the care its gotten has been trash .. i started PVP in 2015 and it was the BEST part of the game until around 2018 then its been down hill with no care being gave to it .. so to say it doesnt work is only showing that pvp has been left to rot

tomofhyrule · June 5

Nordstern wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

1) the way healing works generally in this game. Its the inverse of damage and it scales off of damage stats. Healing needs to scale independently from other stats in the game so you can't heal AND do damage. It should be one or the other - not both. Pick a role and stick with it!

This would be a horrible change that would make the game unplayable for everyone thats not interested in running in big groups. The variety of playstyles is what makes eso pvp special and is the reason to play the game for everyone I talk to. If you want strict role based gameplay, stick to the 90% of this game that is pve content.

This would be an amazing change that would make people have to make reasonable choices with respect to their builds (choices in an RPG? What?!?)

Healing actually used to scale off a different stat (I think max mag?). There was a decent rebalance in the past five years or so with hybridization to make heals scale off of Weapon/Spell Damage instead, and the result of that was that build diversity went down. People didn’t need dedicated healers anymore, since any DD could slot Vigor and do just fine. After that change, we started getting loads of complaints of healing in PvP being off the charts, as well as the PvE complaints of healers feeling pushed out since 3DD groups could do everything that 2D1H could and more.

RPGs should make more reasons to make build choices, not less. A wider sandbox means that there are now only a handful of ‘best possible’ builds and everything else is trash. With restrictions, now each slot will have its own meta instead of a ‘one-meta-to-rule-them-all’ approach. It’s paradoxical, but every time ESO has done something to increase freedom, it’s severely restricted it instead.

Heals need to go back to scaling differently than damage. Healers should be useful again, not just a DD with a resto staff backbarred.

heimdall14_9 · June 5

Nordstern wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

1) the way healing works generally in this game. Its the inverse of damage and it scales off of damage stats. Healing needs to scale independently from other stats in the game so you can't heal AND do damage. It should be one or the other - not both. Pick a role and stick with it!

This would be a horrible change that would make the game unplayable for everyone thats not interested in running in big groups. The variety of playstyles is what makes eso pvp special and is the reason to play the game for everyone I talk to. If you want strict role based gameplay, stick to the 90% of this game that is pve content.

how would this be horrible? old school pvp was a blast and heals was based off MAG POOL and had limits of how many heals one could have ... having healing now based off damage there is to much healing going on and no need to be a healer just a dd with a staff and shields .... id love to see healing break back away from damage and put back on MAG POOL

heimdall14_9 · June 5

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

Healing isn't the problem. There are 3 problems I see with healing:

1) the way healing works generally in this game. Its the inverse of damage and it scales off of damage stats. Healing needs to scale independently from other stats in the game so you can't heal AND do damage. It should be one or the other - not both. Pick a role and stick with it!

2) There few counters to healing. We have a small amount of healing absorption from scribing, and we have major/minor defile, but they are mostly from proc sets and you can't cast them and pelt large groups of people with them. And even if you could, the total debuff between the two (I think 16-18%) is only enough to cancel out major and minor mending, and it isn't sufficient to cancel out OTHER sources of improved healing. Negate is a hard counter, but only if they're standing in a bubble, and it is really difficult to KEEP players in the negate bubble. IMO, negate bubble needs to be bigger, or put a silence on players that is sticky.

3) You can have super strong heals AND be super tanky. IMO, heals should be very weak if you are wearing anything but light armor. As a healer, your survivability should come from being able to hide behind your group and keep them upright and have sustained heal output. You shouldn't also be one of the tankiest characters on the battlefield. Right now, a healer can be super tanky AND sustain, AND have powerful enough heals to keep your group upright against all but the most extreme damage output. That's a problem from a game design standpoint (I happen to love it).

defile use to be good now theres no need because its been nurfed so badly . it real doesnt do anything 80%+ of the times

on healers being tanky ( sorry for building the 1st battle mag for pvp in ebon and worm

) having a tanky healers not the big issue having heals based on damage is , as you can be tank and have high damage giving you great heals too .. when starting out building my battle mag i had to figure out the sweet spot for how many heavy armor i used and how many light armor to run , how many MAG enchants and how many health i could get away with being heals was based off mag pool and health in pvp was 16k 18k if you was on the high end of health

LadyGP · June 5

IMO ZOS should reach out to a couple members of the community and sit them down and say hey... we want to fix pvp... we know ball groups are a problem.. we aren't making them go away.. but how can we make the experience better for everyone... without having to do something as wild as vengence.

Then just have a conversation.

I'm sure they could get a couple good nugets from said conversation. There are a lot of people who run ball groups who would give honest feedback on how to counter them, while still making the game fun for everyone.

Obviously, it's up to ZoS what they would do with said feedback and they might have their own design decisions (which is totally fine) but nothing wrong with having a conversation... it's free info.

heimdall14_9 · June 5

LadyGP wrote: »

IMO ZOS should reach out to a couple members of the community and sit them down and say hey... we want to fix pvp... we know ball groups are a problem.. we aren't making them go away.. but how can we make the experience better for everyone... without having to do something as wild as vengence.

Then just have a conversation.

I'm sure they could get a couple good nugets from said conversation. There are a lot of people who run ball groups who would give honest feedback on how to counter them, while still making the game fun for everyone.

Obviously, it's up to ZoS what they would do with said feedback and they might have their own design decisions (which is totally fine) but nothing wrong with having a conversation... it's free info.

we are in the state we are in because zos has done just that TAKE THE WORDS OF WHOM THEY LIKE/KNOW and forgetting rest of the players .. thats been the way to long its time EVERY PLAYER has a voice or no player does having inside crowd controlling the game to fit how THEY want to play helps ONLY THEM

Gabriel_H · June 6

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

i dont want to be forced away from a game mode i enjoy just because they choose to do nothing with it and i will not play in vengeance for that very reason

The game mode doesn't work - on a fundamental technical level.

im sorry to say the game mode is great , the care its gotten has been trash .. i started PVP in 2015 and it was the BEST part of the game until around 2018 then its been down hill with no care being gave to it .. so to say it doesnt work is only showing that pvp has been left to rot

The same complaints about performance that exist today were also voiced in 2015. It's always had the same underlying fundamental technical flaw. Large scale battles with umpteen skill combos, proc sets, HoT/DoT/Shield stacking and more are and always have been too much for the servers.

heimdall14_9 · June 6

Gabriel_H wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

i dont want to be forced away from a game mode i enjoy just because they choose to do nothing with it and i will not play in vengeance for that very reason

The game mode doesn't work - on a fundamental technical level.

im sorry to say the game mode is great , the care its gotten has been trash .. i started PVP in 2015 and it was the BEST part of the game until around 2018 then its been down hill with no care being gave to it .. so to say it doesnt work is only showing that pvp has been left to rot

The same complaints about performance that exist today were also voiced in 2015. It's always had the same underlying fundamental technical flaw. Large scale battles with umpteen skill combos, proc sets, HoT/DoT/Shield stacking and more are and always have been too much for the servers.

your 100% right but i belive a lot of the bottle neck comes from the battle spirit system being left to rot while the dev team changed sets , changed , skills, change map , ect ect but the one thing they refuse to change up is battle spirit if the main bottle neck is left in play nothing they do will change its outcome

putting down HARD limits on stats like they have in vengeance would be good not these -%, half %, applies to this but not to that ect ect them type of calculations are hard on any server , stat based is set and thats that and eso could make a battle spirit that controls every stat and limits them to an balanced fun game mode and adjust as needed easily

heimdall14_9 · June 6

"If we are talking about a truly robust, stat-based Battle Spirit overhaul, we have to look past the surface. To completely clean up the server calculations and force real balance, ZOS needs to put hard baseline numbers on every single stat in the game.

This is what a , flat-number Battle Spirit system looks like , tho not every stat is covered i did take the time to hit on some ive found to be bigger out liners of being problematic

1. The Healing & Shield Ground Rules
Resource-Based Scaling: All heals scale strictly off Max Magicka or Max Stamina (whichever is highest). Damage stats do not touch healing power anymore.

The 1 Unique HoT Cap: A player can only be affected by 1 unique Heal-over-Time (HoT) source per caster. If 12 players cast the same HoT on a group, only the single highest-value tick applies. The other 11 do flat out 0 healing.

Damage Shield Ceiling: Shields do not stack. The highest value takes priority, capped at a hard maximum of 9,000 total damage absorbed.

2. Offensive Hard Caps & Combat Pacing
Damage Attributes: Weapon & Spell Damage is hard-capped at 6,500. Max Magicka & Stamina are capped at 35,000.

Critical Limits: Critical Damage is locked at a flat 1.15x base damage modifier.

Penetration & Armor Debuffs: Offensive Penetration is capped at 10,000. Major and Minor Breach no longer use complex percentage math; they simply apply a flat, un-stackable +800 and +300 damage bonus to incoming attacks on that target.

Status Effect Controls: Status effect damage (Sunder, Concussed, Burning, etc.) is locked to a flat 1,200 damage per tick max. Status effect debuffs (like Minor Maim or Minor Vulnerability) do not calculate percentages; they apply flat -150 Damage Done and +200 Damage Taken values.

3. Ultimate & Resource Economy
Ultimate Generation Cap: Ultimate gain from all passive sources, sets, and decisive traits is hard-capped at a maximum of 5 Ultimate per second in combat. This completely stops infinite Ultimate dumping and ball-group synergy bombing.

Sustain Recovery Walls: Combat Magicka and Stamina recovery are locked at a hard maximum of 2,500.

Cross-Resource Suppression: Any mechanism that grants secondary resources (e.g., gaining Stamina when casting a Magicka skill) is cut flatly in half.

4. Movement, CC, & Stealth Mechanics
Speed Ceiling: Maximum movement speed is hard-capped at 1.30x base sprinting speed. No combination of Expedition buffs or passives can bypass this physical wall.

Sticky CC Immunity: Breaking free grants a flat 7 seconds of total CC immunity, which also flatly immunizes the player against all snares and immobilizations for the entire duration.

Stealth and Detection: Detection radius for stealth/invisibility is locked to a flat 15 meters baseline for every player, completely bypassing sneaky gear modifiers to make stealth detection consistent and readable.

5. Weapon & Armor Identity Limits
Light/Medium/Heavy Damage Mitigation: To keep armor types balanced without percentage multipliers, wearing Heavy Armor applies a flat -400 Weapon/Spell Damage penalty, while Light Armor applies a flat +1,500 Penetration bonus.

Block & Dodge Fatigue (Flat Penalties): * Block Cost: Base block cost increases by a flat +500 Stamina for every consecutive block within a 3-second window.

Dodge Roll: Each consecutive roll within 5 seconds increases the stamina cost by a flat +3,000 Stamina per roll to kill infinite rolling.

Why the Server Cries (And How This Fixes It)
Right now, every time someone hits a button in Cyrodiil, the server has to run a mathematical nightmare: Base Damage x Buff % x Set % / Mitigation % - Defile %. Multiply that by 100 players in a three-way keep fight, and the performance completely tanks.

By shifting to flat, static caps, the server stops doing heavy math on the fly. It checks the player's static number against the cap, hits the limit, and passes the calculation instantly. It fixes performance, kills toxic stat-stacking, and forces players to actually choose a defined role instead of being a tanky, high-damage, infinite-healing god."

BardokRedSnow · June 6

This writeup both here and in the vengeance thread is right on the money tbh and @ZOS_Kevin I know y'all have trouble scanning through all the different opinions here to see who to take suggestions from and implement ideas from, but many of us have actually been begging for y'all to separate pve and pvp calculations for a while. Also if y'all are serious about making the game more friendly to new players, one of the best ways is to streamline the math calculations so people don't have to whip out the calculator as much. Baseline flat rate figures vs percentages overall seems like a perfect solution for balancing acts, ESPECIALLY now that you guys are adding class masteries on top of everything else.

The only thing I don't believe needs addressing is block damage mitigation specifically, making diminishing returns for it etc, because dedicated tank players really aren't a problem in pvp, we've had them for a while now and they serve a role but overall they're not nearly as much of a problem with the meta as ballgroups are. Its only a problem when generally speaking players are tanky and deal a lot of damage. Then you get boring stalemate fights. We have much less of those with this current meta, but this suggested change in battlespirit will make sure it improves and stay this way, because it'll be easier for everyone to understand, including your dev team who sometimes makes balancing mistakes I assume due to the increasing complexity of the game.

LadyGP · June 6

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

IMO ZOS should reach out to a couple members of the community and sit them down and say hey... we want to fix pvp... we know ball groups are a problem.. we aren't making them go away.. but how can we make the experience better for everyone... without having to do something as wild as vengence.

Then just have a conversation.

I'm sure they could get a couple good nugets from said conversation. There are a lot of people who run ball groups who would give honest feedback on how to counter them, while still making the game fun for everyone.

Obviously, it's up to ZoS what they would do with said feedback and they might have their own design decisions (which is totally fine) but nothing wrong with having a conversation... it's free info.

we are in the state we are in because zos has done just that TAKE THE WORDS OF WHOM THEY LIKE/KNOW and forgetting rest of the players .. thats been the way to long its time EVERY PLAYER has a voice or no player does having inside crowd controlling the game to fit how THEY want to play helps ONLY THEM

My point simply was there are a lot of veteran people who come on the forums and nail feedback from a very unbiased POV. React and BXR being two of them.

heimdall14_9 · June 6

LadyGP wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

IMO ZOS should reach out to a couple members of the community and sit them down and say hey... we want to fix pvp... we know ball groups are a problem.. we aren't making them go away.. but how can we make the experience better for everyone... without having to do something as wild as vengence.

Then just have a conversation.

I'm sure they could get a couple good nugets from said conversation. There are a lot of people who run ball groups who would give honest feedback on how to counter them, while still making the game fun for everyone.

Obviously, it's up to ZoS what they would do with said feedback and they might have their own design decisions (which is totally fine) but nothing wrong with having a conversation... it's free info.

we are in the state we are in because zos has done just that TAKE THE WORDS OF WHOM THEY LIKE/KNOW and forgetting rest of the players .. thats been the way to long its time EVERY PLAYER has a voice or no player does having inside crowd controlling the game to fit how THEY want to play helps ONLY THEM

My point simply was there are a lot of veteran people who come on the forums and nail feedback from a very unbiased POV. React and BXR being two of them.

you are right there is some of us that step outside our personal builds and class favorites and gives real honest feedback here , but over the years zos has just listen to them they like/knew , look at the old class rep program any time we tried telling a rep an issue they'd say its not and things we said wasnt they say was making every change about how the rep wanted the class to play not the players .. i hate to see that happen all over again theres to many play styles for 1 player to represent a single class

part of the reason ive came up with this stat based battle system is it favors no class as it hits all classes all playstyles evenly and gives zos ways to find tune any stat that comes to need it not needing to make major changes that buffs something else while putting something else into the dirt like we have seen for years .. i think zos should MANDATE real changes over players wishes , because not all players want fair fun game play they just want to win on their favorite character or the flavor of the month lol

LadyGP · June 6

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

IMO ZOS should reach out to a couple members of the community and sit them down and say hey... we want to fix pvp... we know ball groups are a problem.. we aren't making them go away.. but how can we make the experience better for everyone... without having to do something as wild as vengence.

Then just have a conversation.

I'm sure they could get a couple good nugets from said conversation. There are a lot of people who run ball groups who would give honest feedback on how to counter them, while still making the game fun for everyone.

Obviously, it's up to ZoS what they would do with said feedback and they might have their own design decisions (which is totally fine) but nothing wrong with having a conversation... it's free info.

we are in the state we are in because zos has done just that TAKE THE WORDS OF WHOM THEY LIKE/KNOW and forgetting rest of the players .. thats been the way to long its time EVERY PLAYER has a voice or no player does having inside crowd controlling the game to fit how THEY want to play helps ONLY THEM

My point simply was there are a lot of veteran people who come on the forums and nail feedback from a very unbiased POV. React and BXR being two of them.

you are right there is some of us that step outside our personal builds and class favorites and gives real honest feedback here , but over the years zos has just listen to them they like/knew , look at the old class rep program any time we tried telling a rep an issue they'd say its not and things we said wasnt they say was making every change about how the rep wanted the class to play not the players .. i hate to see that happen all over again theres to many play styles for 1 player to represent a single class

part of the reason ive came up with this stat based battle system is it favors no class as it hits all classes all playstyles evenly and gives zos ways to find tune any stat that comes to need it not needing to make major changes that buffs something else while putting something else into the dirt like we have seen for years .. i think zos should MANDATE real changes over players wishes , because not all players want fair fun game play they just want to win on their favorite character or the flavor of the month lol

I agree with you but I think its fair to give the new leadership at zos some grace.

It's fairly clear there was a very... interesting mindset with the old guard and now that the new leadership is in place things have been trending in the right direction.

So with that being said... willing to give grace to the team and their current leadership until proven otherwise.

heimdall14_9 · June 6

BardokRedSnow wrote: »

This writeup both here and in the vengeance thread is right on the money tbh and @ZOS_Kevin I know y'all have trouble scanning through all the different opinions here to see who to take suggestions from and implement ideas from, but many of us have actually been begging for y'all to separate pve and pvp calculations for a while. Also if y'all are serious about making the game more friendly to new players, one of the best ways is to streamline the math calculations so people don't have to whip out the calculator as much. Baseline flat rate figures vs percentages overall seems like a perfect solution for balancing acts, ESPECIALLY now that you guys are adding class masteries on top of everything else.

The only thing I don't believe needs addressing is block damage mitigation specifically, making diminishing returns for it etc, because dedicated tank players really aren't a problem in pvp, we've had them for a while now and they serve a role but overall they're not nearly as much of a problem with the meta as ballgroups are. Its only a problem when generally speaking players are tanky and deal a lot of damage. Then you get boring stalemate fights. We have much less of those with this current meta, but this suggested change in battlespirit will make sure it improves and stay this way, because it'll be easier for everyone to understand, including your dev team who sometimes makes balancing mistakes I assume due to the increasing complexity of the game.

1st off thanks for your support on this
2nd i hit on block mitigation now and not later just so with re-freshed system they can balance everything under the sun out at once and then find tune it as problematic issues come about

Nordstern · June 7

The problem with healing is the stacking of cross healing in groups. What you ask for wouldnt solve that problem at all. If you cant kill single players "because their healing is too strong" you might just have to think about your build and playstyle and maybe improve. I never get the feeling that I cant kill someone because of their healing. The only single targets that cant be killed by a solo player are 50k hp perma block tanks and thats not because their healing is too strong.

licenturion · June 7

Nordstern wrote: »

The problem with healing is the stacking of cross healing in groups. What you ask for wouldnt solve that problem at all. If you cant kill single players "because their healing is too strong" you might just have to think about your build and playstyle and maybe improve. I never get the feeling that I cant kill someone because of their healing. The only single targets that cant be killed by a solo player are 50k hp perma block tanks and thats not because their healing is too strong.

It's always the healers/support their fault.

I play a lot of PvP games with classes like Overwatch and Rivals and sometimes ESO battlegrounds.

In all games it's always consistently the same: healers get blamed for everything. Either they don't do enough or they do too much and are 'unbalanced'.

Almost never do people look at: counters, positioning, build choice, synergies, teamplay, kill priority and location awareness of team mates. This is usually core gameplay for people who play support, but something other classes tend to ignore. They think every fight is won by raw damage output or shielding. And when it's not it's unbalanced and need to be changed.

heimdall14_9 · June 7

Nordstern wrote: »

The problem with healing is the stacking of cross healing in groups. What you ask for wouldnt solve that problem at all. If you cant kill single players "because their healing is too strong" you might just have to think about your build and playstyle and maybe improve. I never get the feeling that I cant kill someone because of their healing. The only single targets that cant be killed by a solo player are 50k hp perma block tanks and thats not because their healing is too strong.

HoT/Shield Overlap: Hard limits on how many sources of heals-over-time or damage shields can affect a single target simultaneously, curbing the oppressive nature of group-stacking.

1. The Healing & Shield Ground Rules
Resource-Based Scaling: All heals scale strictly off Max Magicka or Max Stamina (whichever is highest). Damage stats do not touch healing power anymore.

The 1 Unique HoT Cap: A player can only be affected by 1 unique Heal-over-Time (HoT) source per caster. If 12 players cast the same HoT on a group, only the single highest-value tick applies. The other 11 do flat out 0 healing.

Damage Shield Ceiling: Shields do not stack. The highest value takes priority, capped at a hard maximum of 9,000 total damage absorbed.

here i highlighted what would stop heal stacking !!!!!

you can belittle people but cant read, where have i ever said " I CANT KILL SOMEBODY , WHERE DID I SAY ANY OF THIS IS MY PROBLEMS WITH ANYTHING ??????

you are right there is some of us that step outside our personal builds and class favorites and gives real honest feedback here guessing you missed that part to ...

heimdall14_9 · June 8

LadyGP wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

LadyGP wrote: »

IMO ZOS should reach out to a couple members of the community and sit them down and say hey... we want to fix pvp... we know ball groups are a problem.. we aren't making them go away.. but how can we make the experience better for everyone... without having to do something as wild as vengence.

Then just have a conversation.

I'm sure they could get a couple good nugets from said conversation. There are a lot of people who run ball groups who would give honest feedback on how to counter them, while still making the game fun for everyone.

Obviously, it's up to ZoS what they would do with said feedback and they might have their own design decisions (which is totally fine) but nothing wrong with having a conversation... it's free info.

we are in the state we are in because zos has done just that TAKE THE WORDS OF WHOM THEY LIKE/KNOW and forgetting rest of the players .. thats been the way to long its time EVERY PLAYER has a voice or no player does having inside crowd controlling the game to fit how THEY want to play helps ONLY THEM

My point simply was there are a lot of veteran people who come on the forums and nail feedback from a very unbiased POV. React and BXR being two of them.

you are right there is some of us that step outside our personal builds and class favorites and gives real honest feedback here , but over the years zos has just listen to them they like/knew , look at the old class rep program any time we tried telling a rep an issue they'd say its not and things we said wasnt they say was making every change about how the rep wanted the class to play not the players .. i hate to see that happen all over again theres to many play styles for 1 player to represent a single class

part of the reason ive came up with this stat based battle system is it favors no class as it hits all classes all playstyles evenly and gives zos ways to find tune any stat that comes to need it not needing to make major changes that buffs something else while putting something else into the dirt like we have seen for years .. i think zos should MANDATE real changes over players wishes , because not all players want fair fun game play they just want to win on their favorite character or the flavor of the month lol

I agree with you but I think its fair to give the new leadership at zos some grace.

It's fairly clear there was a very... interesting mindset with the old guard and now that the new leadership is in place things have been trending in the right direction.

So with that being said... willing to give grace to the team and their current leadership until proven otherwise.

its not the leadership i worry wouldn't do good at what they are told i just worry they be mislead by the in crowd that already has a strong grip on the development of the game as is due to their hassle ways of interaction with anyone new coming in saying something that doesnt fit status quo for their agenda of how the game should be played

BXR_Lonestar · June 8

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

Healing isn't the problem. There are 3 problems I see with healing:

1) the way healing works generally in this game. Its the inverse of damage and it scales off of damage stats. Healing needs to scale independently from other stats in the game so you can't heal AND do damage. It should be one or the other - not both. Pick a role and stick with it!

2) There few counters to healing. We have a small amount of healing absorption from scribing, and we have major/minor defile, but they are mostly from proc sets and you can't cast them and pelt large groups of people with them. And even if you could, the total debuff between the two (I think 16-18%) is only enough to cancel out major and minor mending, and it isn't sufficient to cancel out OTHER sources of improved healing. Negate is a hard counter, but only if they're standing in a bubble, and it is really difficult to KEEP players in the negate bubble. IMO, negate bubble needs to be bigger, or put a silence on players that is sticky.

3) You can have super strong heals AND be super tanky. IMO, heals should be very weak if you are wearing anything but light armor. As a healer, your survivability should come from being able to hide behind your group and keep them upright and have sustained heal output. You shouldn't also be one of the tankiest characters on the battlefield. Right now, a healer can be super tanky AND sustain, AND have powerful enough heals to keep your group upright against all but the most extreme damage output. That's a problem from a game design standpoint (I happen to love it).

defile use to be good now theres no need because its been nurfed so badly . it real doesnt do anything 80%+ of the times

on healers being tanky ( sorry for building the 1st battle mag for pvp in ebon and worm ) having a tanky healers not the big issue having heals based on damage is , as you can be tank and have high damage giving you great heals too .. when starting out building my battle mag i had to figure out the sweet spot for how many heavy armor i used and how many light armor to run , how many MAG enchants and how many health i could get away with being heals was based off mag pool and health in pvp was 16k 18k if you was on the high end of health

There's no sweet spot anymore though bro, you can have massive heals and be in full heavy armor. One of my builds only has 1 light armor piece and the rest is all heavy - not by choice, just those are the sets that the group needs me to run. I have 17k base mag and stam (0 attribute points in either) and have ZERO sustain issues because someone else is running sustain sets that give me more than enough resource recovery every 10 seconds + running jewels of misrule. I forfeit spell damage and power for % healing buffs and I make use of major/minor mending, and my burst heal is still strong enough to to allow my group members to survive burst from another group. And that is part of the problem.

The base stats need to be adjusted so that heavy armor inhibits healing somehow if they're not going to make healing be based on its own stat. In the TES games, heavy armor would inhibit spell effectiveness, so that is one thing they can potentially look at.

heimdall14_9 · June 8

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

CatalinaWineMixer2 wrote: »

People who only go to PvP as healers will quit over this. Healing is not the problem when there is so much damage allowed in there. Im so very glad Vengeance is coming. There is no hope for GH, its completely out of control. Its beyond saving at this point. I still go and im the last of all of my Guilds to do so. Most of them outright quit the game because of what Subclass did to PvP. The rest of the ones who stayed will only play Vengeance now. Next, they will chase the tanks away and they will quit. Or maybe play Vengeance but I honestly doubt it.

Healing isn't the problem. There are 3 problems I see with healing:

1) the way healing works generally in this game. Its the inverse of damage and it scales off of damage stats. Healing needs to scale independently from other stats in the game so you can't heal AND do damage. It should be one or the other - not both. Pick a role and stick with it!

2) There few counters to healing. We have a small amount of healing absorption from scribing, and we have major/minor defile, but they are mostly from proc sets and you can't cast them and pelt large groups of people with them. And even if you could, the total debuff between the two (I think 16-18%) is only enough to cancel out major and minor mending, and it isn't sufficient to cancel out OTHER sources of improved healing. Negate is a hard counter, but only if they're standing in a bubble, and it is really difficult to KEEP players in the negate bubble. IMO, negate bubble needs to be bigger, or put a silence on players that is sticky.

3) You can have super strong heals AND be super tanky. IMO, heals should be very weak if you are wearing anything but light armor. As a healer, your survivability should come from being able to hide behind your group and keep them upright and have sustained heal output. You shouldn't also be one of the tankiest characters on the battlefield. Right now, a healer can be super tanky AND sustain, AND have powerful enough heals to keep your group upright against all but the most extreme damage output. That's a problem from a game design standpoint (I happen to love it).

defile use to be good now theres no need because its been nurfed so badly . it real doesnt do anything 80%+ of the times

on healers being tanky ( sorry for building the 1st battle mag for pvp in ebon and worm ) having a tanky healers not the big issue having heals based on damage is , as you can be tank and have high damage giving you great heals too .. when starting out building my battle mag i had to figure out the sweet spot for how many heavy armor i used and how many light armor to run , how many MAG enchants and how many health i could get away with being heals was based off mag pool and health in pvp was 16k 18k if you was on the high end of health

There's no sweet spot anymore though bro, you can have massive heals and be in full heavy armor. One of my builds only has 1 light armor piece and the rest is all heavy - not by choice, just those are the sets that the group needs me to run. I have 17k base mag and stam (0 attribute points in either) and have ZERO sustain issues because someone else is running sustain sets that give me more than enough resource recovery every 10 seconds + running jewels of misrule. I forfeit spell damage and power for % healing buffs and I make use of major/minor mending, and my burst heal is still strong enough to to allow my group members to survive burst from another group. And that is part of the problem.

The base stats need to be adjusted so that heavy armor inhibits healing somehow if they're not going to make healing be based on its own stat. In the TES games, heavy armor would inhibit spell effectiveness, so that is one thing they can potentially look at.

i aint really done a lot of armor weight yet but i did work out a little idea nothing id set in stone yet but something like

To eliminate messy calculations on the armor side, armor types are stripped of percentages to keep it simple. Wearing 5 or more pieces of Light Armor grants a flat +3,000 Offensive Penetration, a flat +1,500 Raw Healing Done to all abilities, and a flat +300 Magicka Recovery, balanced by a flat -1,500 Armor Resistance penalty and an extra +400 Physical and Oblivion damage taken per hit. Wearing 5 or more pieces of Medium Armor grants a flat +300 Stamina Recovery and increases your flat stealth detection radius by +5 meters to crush sneaky Nightblade resets, balanced by a flat -1,500 Armor Resistance penalty and a flat +300 Stamina cost per block to kill the brawler infinite-turtle meta. Wearing 5 or more pieces of Heavy Armor grants a flat +3,000 Armor Resistance and reduces baseline block cost by a flat -300 Stamina, balanced by a flat -400 Weapon and Spell Damage penalty and a flat +1,500 Stamina cost to all dodge rolls.

along with other changes would deal with this part if the step on block and healing doesnt help much , tho i know given a chance zos could and should make a stat base battle spirit so that changes to just PVP are able to be made without the need for skill , class , and sets having to be overhualed all the time when a issue comes about they can just hpe in adjust a few numbers here or there and be done with it no need to mix up the pot when you control the heat

BXR_Lonestar · June 9

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

Nordstern wrote: »

The problem with healing is the stacking of cross healing in groups. What you ask for wouldnt solve that problem at all. If you cant kill single players "because their healing is too strong" you might just have to think about your build and playstyle and maybe improve. I never get the feeling that I cant kill someone because of their healing. The only single targets that cant be killed by a solo player are 50k hp perma block tanks and thats not because their healing is too strong.

HoT/Shield Overlap: Hard limits on how many sources of heals-over-time or damage shields can affect a single target simultaneously, curbing the oppressive nature of group-stacking.

1. The Healing & Shield Ground Rules
Resource-Based Scaling: All heals scale strictly off Max Magicka or Max Stamina (whichever is highest). Damage stats do not touch healing power anymore.

The 1 Unique HoT Cap: A player can only be affected by 1 unique Heal-over-Time (HoT) source per caster. If 12 players cast the same HoT on a group, only the single highest-value tick applies. The other 11 do flat out 0 healing.

Damage Shield Ceiling: Shields do not stack. The highest value takes priority, capped at a hard maximum of 9,000 total damage absorbed.

here i highlighted what would stop heal stacking !!!!!

you can belittle people but cant read, where have i ever said " I CANT KILL SOMEBODY , WHERE DID I SAY ANY OF THIS IS MY PROBLEMS WITH ANYTHING ??????

you are right there is some of us that step outside our personal builds and class favorites and gives real honest feedback here guessing you missed that part to ...

The problem with HoT stacking is that is how this game is designed from the ground up.

Take a step outside of a healer mindset for a minute. How is the best way to build a damage build? You want several DoT abilities that you can layer on the ground, you have a good spammable that you can weave with light attacks, and you just maintain high uptime on your dots while weaving your spammable and light attacks until you hit execute, and then you hit execute as many times as you can between your weaved light attacks.

Healing is the same way: how do you keep your group upright? You layer your HoT's on your group and apply the burst heal when needed.

If we were going to change the paradigm and discourage layering - both from a DPS and Healer standpoint, then you would need the HoT/DoT to be powerful enough and to tick often enough that you don't NEED to layer. But then what are you going to do with your remaining skill slots, because not every character has enough abilities that provide passive benefits just by slotting up a specific skill.

And if the HoT/DoTs were increased in strength, then you have a separate problem of people complaining that heals are too strong.

Overall, I don't think people are ever going to be happy with the state of healing in this game because if a healer is doing their jobs right, you shouldn't be able to kill the players they are healing. And nobody likes to fight unkillable players, and hence why people complain about healing to begin with.

Again, I don't see healing as being a problem. I don't see HoT stacking as being a problem. The problem is that there are no counters to healing and that ANY player on the battlefield can heal stack effectively. If you could only healstack effectively as a healer, that would go a long way to reduce some of the HoT stacking because EVERY DD is able to contribute to the HoT stacking because they have high offensive stats.

heimdall14_9 · June 9

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

Nordstern wrote: »

The problem with healing is the stacking of cross healing in groups. What you ask for wouldnt solve that problem at all. If you cant kill single players "because their healing is too strong" you might just have to think about your build and playstyle and maybe improve. I never get the feeling that I cant kill someone because of their healing. The only single targets that cant be killed by a solo player are 50k hp perma block tanks and thats not because their healing is too strong.

HoT/Shield Overlap: Hard limits on how many sources of heals-over-time or damage shields can affect a single target simultaneously, curbing the oppressive nature of group-stacking.

1. The Healing & Shield Ground Rules
Resource-Based Scaling: All heals scale strictly off Max Magicka or Max Stamina (whichever is highest). Damage stats do not touch healing power anymore.

The 1 Unique HoT Cap: A player can only be affected by 1 unique Heal-over-Time (HoT) source per caster. If 12 players cast the same HoT on a group, only the single highest-value tick applies. The other 11 do flat out 0 healing.

Damage Shield Ceiling: Shields do not stack. The highest value takes priority, capped at a hard maximum of 9,000 total damage absorbed.

here i highlighted what would stop heal stacking !!!!!

you can belittle people but cant read, where have i ever said " I CANT KILL SOMEBODY , WHERE DID I SAY ANY OF THIS IS MY PROBLEMS WITH ANYTHING ??????

you are right there is some of us that step outside our personal builds and class favorites and gives real honest feedback here guessing you missed that part to ...

The problem with HoT stacking is that is how this game is designed from the ground up.

Take a step outside of a healer mindset for a minute. How is the best way to build a damage build? You want several DoT abilities that you can layer on the ground, you have a good spammable that you can weave with light attacks, and you just maintain high uptime on your dots while weaving your spammable and light attacks until you hit execute, and then you hit execute as many times as you can between your weaved light attacks.

Healing is the same way: how do you keep your group upright? You layer your HoT's on your group and apply the burst heal when needed.

If we were going to change the paradigm and discourage layering - both from a DPS and Healer standpoint, then you would need the HoT/DoT to be powerful enough and to tick often enough that you don't NEED to layer. But then what are you going to do with your remaining skill slots, because not every character has enough abilities that provide passive benefits just by slotting up a specific skill.

And if the HoT/DoTs were increased in strength, then you have a separate problem of people complaining that heals are too strong.

Overall, I don't think people are ever going to be happy with the state of healing in this game because if a healer is doing their jobs right, you shouldn't be able to kill the players they are healing. And nobody likes to fight unkillable players, and hence why people complain about healing to begin with.

Again, I don't see healing as being a problem. I don't see HoT stacking as being a problem. The problem is that there are no counters to healing and that ANY player on the battlefield can heal stack effectively. If you could only healstack effectively as a healer, that would go a long way to reduce some of the HoT stacking because EVERY DD is able to contribute to the HoT stacking because they have high offensive stats.

decoupling heals from damage stat and putting it back to mag pool would cut down on the power in healing for them not spec'ed to heal , making it so heals only applies from 1 source stops the heal stacking , the best counter to healling in groups would be to kill healer 1st just as it is now having to focus movement and kills is part of being a skilled player .. play smart win, play good stalemate, play bad you die . i think its worth a try more than its not we can fight over likes and dislikes after see how it changes the playing field ... oh and while they do this they could add back defile so that it actual has meaning again and another counter to healing

NxJoeyD · June 10

There are heaps of issues with PvP in ESO and given some of the statements that some of the Dev team members have made it’s no surprise why.

It’s clear, at least to me, this team doesn’t have a concept of logical combat. Pair that with the state of the game/server with all of the bloat and we’ve got something that’s good on paper.

Now I agree with the sentiments of healing and ball groups, to a degree. As ball groups go, the reality is that any team-based activity is going to reward cohesive teamwork over PUG randomness. It’s a rule of the universe that’s not exclusive to ESO. In instances like Cyrodill and the IC, this is unavoidable aside from running in a group that can, at the very least, understand the assignment well enough based on what they see their team bringing to the table.

The concept of a group advantage is not something that can just be “fixed” rather it needs some degree of coordinated play to counter and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

Now, as for healing. Healing can be strong and should be given the degree of power elevation in PvP. The issue I see with healing is when self healing is exceptionally strong versus receiving strong heals from a dedicated healer.

I’m not necessarily sold on the idea that everyone has to be “locked in” to any particular class or play style, but, I DO agree that any build should have a focus or direction to what they’re going to do to contribute to their team in PvP and to that end this could all be solved by installing an indexing system into ESO; strictly for PvP.

The long & short of such a system is that when Battle Spirit is active, it would automatically adjust a players base tooltip values for skills & procs based off of the total choices that player makes in their build and their role selection in group finder (healer, tank, DD).

So if a player wants to go hamm on damage they can, if they want to add some self healing, they can .. but .. there’s a cost to those choices and if they build highly into damage then the index is going to scale back their resistances or healing to compensate.

It’s balance of performance. It doesn’t make everyone the same, it just brings them closer together. At that point combat gravitates more toward player skill execution than it does on procs and mechanical combinations that reward non strategy spam.

This really isn’t a difficult thing to do. IMO this is one of the best long-term options for PvP stabilization because it supports the idea of build & theory crafting, allows subclassing to exist without creating PvP-breaking combinations, reaffirms the concept of risk vs reward choices in combat, and more importantly establishes a closer baseline of mechanics.

PvP is overloaded with the same skills and mechanics on repeat, utilized in repetitive ways where combat doesn’t really look like combat as it looks like meta-whack-a-mole; where kitted out meta subclassesd builds dance around LoS breaks trying to land cleave shots and cherry picked skills.

Rotating metas isn’t the answer. I’ve watched that become a trap for multiplayer-centric games for years and even game tested one for a major Dev studio. They too chose not to listen to their broad audience, rather, influencers and content creators who were more concerned about looking good in content and the broken game states that enabled said content and as a result the game ended its life on such a sour note.

ESO gets quite a lot of things right but when it comes to PvP they need to stop treating it like an afterthought or just throwing Vengence at us as though that’s the holy grail of PvP. There’s a lot of contradiction but there’s also opportunity to fix if they really want to and an indexing system could do wonders. It wouldn’t make everyone happy but I’m willing to be it would satisfy the lions share of the player base.