Does FoW and UW need a huge update?

This is kinda half suggestion and half question. (Mostly question)

Scince I am not an elite guru member, I can not make polls, so I will just do it by hand! (Oh noes!1)

So, how many epople think FoW and UW need a huge update?

I mean, these areas haven't been touched (except for items).

I believe UW/Fow need the following upgrades:

• Improve the monsters' skill bars.
• Do something with the favor system.
• Improve quest rewards (i.e. give the quest rewards Req 9 or 10 inscribable items)

When I mean improve the monsters' skillbars, I mean make them hard!

Ex.
[wiki]Dying Nightmare[/wiki]
Level 18
HP: ~100
[skill]Blood is Power[/skill][skill]Rend Enchantments[/skill]

With update:
Dying Nightmare
Level 24
HP: ~300
[skill]Blood is Power[/skill][skill]Rend Enchantments[/skill][skill]Life Transfer[/skill][skill]Order of the Vampire[/skill][skill]Barbed Signet[/skill][skill]Spiteful Spirit[/skill][skill]Poisoned Heart[/skill][skill]Plague Touch[/skill]

The idea is to drastically increase the strength of the monsters, while increase the value of the items and rewards. Also, I would prefer it wasn't DoA hard, but very close, hard enough you have to be experienced, but not so hard that you need TS/Vent.

[Signed for all four]
Me.

[Signed for monster skillbar change]
Malice Black
Kool Pajamas

[Signed for access/favor system change]

[Signed for better drops]
Malice Black

Allow Henchmen
Malice Black
Kool Pajamas

[Not signed for any]
Narcism

Reasons for this thread:

• I love UW and wanna see a change to it (haven't been in FoW very much but I know if UW was changed, FoW would be too)
• I was gonna make a suggestion thread on this and wanted to see how the community viewed this first. :S
• UW/FoW are supposed the realm of the Gods, but are so easy that they can be soloed and FoW armor has lost its value

Please state your reasons why you've signed/notsigned the ideas.

The only change I would like to see is the ability to take henchmen in. Personally I just can't find a group to quest. There are area's I would like to explore and check out but I can't because these areas have been reduced to farming.

I would love to explore UW and FOW and see all the area's I can't get to because no one wants to go there, like the spawning pools in UW or volcano in FOW.

id like to see something more epic. right now people only play for some of the drops.

teh quests are useless cause they only give xp., and you really dont get anything for clearing it all

I'd rather they worked on adding the rest of the areas, not updating the two we already have. Too bad we really won't ever see an area for Lyssa, Melandru, or Dwayna.

What I'd like to see:

- ENDINGS to UW and FoW. A last, incredibly tough boss fight (Menzies in FoW; Dhuum in UW), followed by a face to face meeting with Balthazar or Grenth, who hands you over a green item. And a title to reflect you've finished it: Champion of the Gods [x/5 Realms of the Gods cleared].

- As the above implies, ADD THE OTHER REALMS OF THE GODS.

Not signed for any, deal with it, run 2x55's.

Yes for improved skillbars
Yes for better drops
Yes for Henchie access
No if it becomes 24/7 access
No greens

New skill bars, add professions (sins, rits, paragons, dervs)
Allow henchies

I don't have a problem with that. I'd rather have a very hard area, with great rewards, than the current UW.

I don't have a problem farming, I used to 55/SS.

I'd say they are fine as they are. I'd like to see Melandru, Lyssa, and Dwayna get their realms.......

the favor system, on the other hand......

While I was soloing over the weekend, I got to thinking that they should change the skill bars for the Smite Crawlers. Only, I just thought of changing Reversal of Fortune for Reversal of Damage. Not like it would be odd for non-core skills to be in UW, just look at Frostfire Dryders, they have Meteor Shower.

However, giving something like a dying nightmare 3 more elites (4 total), is just absurd. The most elites on any monster is two, never more, since that would just be getting dumb. Really, you don't need that much stuff just to counter 55 monks, since that's what the skill bar you suggested is clearly intended to do.

Some of it, yes, really just Barbed Signet, LT was for some health gain to help counter the sarcrifice skills and OoV was to help increase Aataxe Damage.

The reason for the 4 elites was because rather than just giving monster's their own special specials, they would at least have skills you are familiar with.

My idea was to have only two special effects or negative effects in UW, higher level creatures, and the removal of elite cap.

Players would still be limited to one elite, and level 20 of course.

But, believe it or not, only Barbed Signet was intended for the 55 monk hate. As it is the only one that can go through [skill=text]Spell Breaker[/skill] and [skill=text]Protective Spirit[/skill].

The only thing I dont understand about the FOW and UW, is that its meant to be the hardest sections of the game.

Yet places like DOA and the factions elite zones are far harder. FOW and UW arent really any harder then some areas in factions.

I think Anet should have concidered that when adding new elite zones to new campaigns and increased the difficulty in FOW and UW to compensate.

Other then that, I think its fine. But personally I have no interest in FOW and UW. I dont want FOW armor and Im quite happy to avoid elite zones. Thats primarily because its purely a PUG zone and I cant always be bothered to stand around for an hour trying to form a party.

If they added henches and heroes for that area then Id be chuffed. But then you would have the issue of having low-level henches and high-level henches in the same town in Tyria.

I agree. The areas were considered to be very challenging. Which they were. Back in the days. Today there is little difference between mobs in FoW/UW and clay pigeons. Every team can tear them apart with no strain.

Maybe add bosses and new greens? Rethink patrol patterns and builds of mobs? Just don't add an enviroment effect, that's taking the easy way out like in DoA.

Monster changes could be good, as long as ANET sticks to the current levels. Just shifting around their skillbar to make use of other chapters skills would make it more interesting (and as this is an area accessible to all chapters, it should have skills from all). Just try to keep the enemies to 1 elite, maybe two for some of them. Just don't add any environmental effects.

I'm not sure about henchmen.

As for access, all I'd like is for some way for people in different regions to be able to go into FoW or UW together, as with the current system if you have friends on different servers to you there is no possible way for you to go down to FoW together (UW has that Lornar's pass statue that might work).

Better quest rewards might be worth it, because it would encourage people to go into there to do things other than farm the smites or reach the forgemaster. Fancy skinned weapons should work for this. Though they would need to encourage people to complete quests other than just the easier ones, so maybe give different skins for different quest rewards.

Just make it so that if you clear all of fow or UW, you have a chance of getting an uber weapon and a free ecto or shard, or something like a free chest that only drops rare skin golds, and encourage people to play everything there rather then just solo'ing aatxes, smites and dying nightmares and then crying,

'OMG aatxes smites and nightmares are too easy NOOOOO!, buff dem with 8 elite skills on their bars!'

Oh, and i believe this is a PVE part of the game and I only just realised we cant use henchies? I only realised cos ive never tried, but maybe if there were a full selection of level 20 henchies (correct me if im wrong, i think there 17) in the district, then I could go in with a full hero and hench team for fun.

I would like that.

I think that both zones have lots and lots of wasted potential. Especially UW which is only a farm zone for ectos.

And there's not much to change about them as they're almost finished, with quests, mobs, drops and everything. But there's the 'almost' part - clearing whole area with all quests gives you nothing, there's even no sign that you did it, and the team must /resign or map out. UW and FoW quests are among the best in the game, but there's really no reason to do them (Forgemaster for armor and occasional Spider capping are nice exceptions)

The solution could be gradually improving rewards - the further you get, the better the rewards. This could include increased ecto/shard drops in further areas, improved reward chests, maybe addition of some random green items at the end.
A cool new thing could be a new title connected to those areas and work done in the realms of gods (also the future Lyssa's, Melandru's, Dwayna's). Something similar to Lightbringer but with more importance over all campagins, connected to some pve only skills (maybe those from GW:EN) and with the best source of this title being doing those 10k exp quests in UW/FoW, not soloing some mobs.

As for improved difficulty and monster skillbars lets wait for Hard Mode and see if it affects UW/FoW aswell.

The above quote sparked an idea. It's one we'll never see, but it's an idea. If you want to increase the difficulty, create a new Elite Zone, (possibly Melandru's Meadows or Dwayna's Domain) that can only be entered with a Random group of 8. The monster difficulty factor would be about the same as the fissure or underworld, but it would be an area that you cannot solo (unless your teammates left) and you cannot pick your team.

If you want difficult, that would be difficult!

just adding a degree of randomness in the mobs/monster skills would make the game much harder,