Buff Sunspear/Kurzick skills to compete with Ursan Blessing?

I actually posted this before in a huge Ursanway thread, but it got lost very quickly and I had no reactions (I'd like some, even if only to say it's rubbish).


With all the debate going on whether or not Ursan Blessing should be nerfed, I'd like to discuss whether we could have the best of both worlds.

• Ursan Blessing stays as it is, allowing people to play an easy and powerful build.

[LIST]All the Sunspear and Kurzick/Luxon profession-specific PvE skills get a huge buff, encouraging people to play the non-tank/nuke/heal professions more in Hard Mode and Elite PvE: Mesmer, Assassin, Ritualist, Dervish and Paragon.


A few examples to go with it, just to give an idea of what I'm hinting at.

(note that these should only work with their primary profession)

• Ether Nightmare: Target foe loses all energy and all nearby foes suffer -4...-7 Health degeneration for 10 seconds. (90% chance to fail with 4 Fast Casting or less) [10 En, 3 Cast, 15 Rech]
  
  -> Zap! Energy of pesky Monk or Boss goes bye and some decent Degen to boot. If anything, we would get Mesmerway with this. Finally. And I don't even have a Mesmer.

• Shadow Sanctuary: For 10 seconds, Spells against you fail, Attacks against you miss and you gain 5...9 health regeneration. (90% chance to fail with 4 Critical Strikes or less) [5 En, 1/4 Cast, 30 Rech]
  
  -> Mini no-penalty Shadow Form that actually heals you.

• Vampirism: Create a level 1...8 Spirit that dies after 30...126 seconds. Attacks by the spirit steal up to 20...36 Health, and Party Members are healed for 20...36 Health. (90% chance to fail with 4 Spawning Power or less) [10 En, 3 Cast, 30 Rech]
  
  -> Quite a bit more powerful and heals the entire party when it steals health.

Sure, it's completely overpowered, but even so, not quite as powerful as a team of 6 Ursan Blessings and two Monks.

If PvE balance doesn't matter anymore, at least with these skills there will be some creativity left on the rest of people's bars.

If it can entice half the group to go without Ursan Blessing, it would be a victory.

not sure.........(btw you forgot lux)

plus UB is...severely overpowered,even for pve.

Blasphemy! Madn--

My apologies, most honoured Luxon posters.


I tend to agree, but the whole point here is not to take a toy away, just give more toys.

TNTF in its current state (well, a Paragon with TNTF and SY) is more overpowered than Ursan.

No, nerf UB. This is coming from a straight pve player. It's way overpowered.

First, show me evidence of nothing but UB groups everywhere. You guys really need to stop this. This...this is just ridiculous.

But .. what would be the reason to buy GWEN if the C2&C3 skills were that good?

No thanks, these skills are powerful enough as it is, personally i would rather remove all PvE skills but thats not going to happen. Non trinity proffesions are already powerful enough, the problem lie's not so much with these proffesions(mesmer is debatable) as with PuG's in general. The reason most pug's use trinity builds is they are poor players who dont really unerstand the mechanics of the game, non trinity groups already perform better if played by compotent players so i see no need to buff these skills to compensate for bad players.

No, THIS IS SPA--

Ahum, sorry about that.



Let me clear up my point.

Whether everyone uses it or not, Ursan Blessing is (over)powerful. I think we're beyond having to prove this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlZzFwuJs78



If it gets nerfed, a lot of people will be unhappy.

Also, it doesn't look like it's going to get nerfed. We're getting mixed signals (if any) from ArenaNet.



What I'm saying is: don't nerf it, buff the others.

Especially the ones belonging to not so popular PvE professions.

They'd see some more playtime, even while not running UB.

D: holy god DAMN!

Die! Elite shout. All nearby foes are killed. [5 Energy, 5 Recharge]

I know at least one person who posted here some posts before me would use this skill and defend the skill as totally balanced.
I also know someone else would feel the need to write a 3 page long guide how to use it.



On topic: Adding more unbalanced skill is not a solution. We have enough of them already.

Nerfing UB is the better solution, IMO. While I appreciate where you're coming from here, if you buff all the other PvE skills even more (and let's face it, many of them are far better than normal skills as it is) the impact is to further reduce diversity of skill usage in the game. GW is, ideally, about bringing the right skills for the situation at hand. In any case where one answer fits every situation (whether it's UB or a newly buffed PvE skill of another sort) the game loses challenge and depth.

Removing PvE skills is the *best* solution, but too much QQ would occur.

Ursan blessing is far from the most overpowered PvE skill, its just by far the easiest to use. List of skills that are easily more powerful then Ursan Blessing:

Save yourself and Cry of Pain (Most overpowered skills in game when used right. 82% reduction in damage. Instant huge aoe armor ignoring damage that any class can use on a secondary, lord knows why they buffed its recharge.)
There's Nothing to Fear (Would be with the other top 2 if it hadn't been nerfed to 20 seconds)
Great Dwarf Weapon, Brawling Headbutt (Either of these can put an enemy on the ground forever)
Aura of Holy Might (about 74% damage bonus increase at max rank, for the weapon type that already does the greatest base damage in the game? Changing the damage type to Holy is very nice too.)
Pain inverter (Instantly kill any aoe enemy in the game? Sure, why not)

Why people even use ursan blessing is something I never got, Raven better since its base attack is AoE and blind is a more powerful condition then weakness. Only time Ursan really is better is vs casters which the %block doesn't help with.

Still, I wouldn't object to buffing the UNDERPOWERED PvE skills.By that I mean PvE skills that aren't even better then normal skills. Such as:

Selfless Spirit (reduce recharge or take off the ending condition)
Elemental Lord (maybe add a snare hex whenever you deal water damage, a blind whenever you deal lightning, ect?)
Ether Nightmare(Deal 5 points of damage per energy lost after health degen is done maybe? Energy denial is really pretty bad against PvE monsters)
Never Rampage Alone(Reduce energy or give it a +run speed like RaO has)

Quite a few PvE skills need nerfs, some need buffs, we need to find a certain 'level of power' for PvE skills and standardize it.

Duh, its totally balanced because energy denial can stop you, anti shouts will prevent its use, and if they snare you then you wont be able to get into nearby range. And the fact that its elite stops you from using things like shadow form that would stop all of these counters. Looks fine to me.

Now I am curious, who exactly?

The Meth apparently..

Rofl

QFT
Pain Inverter, in particular, is just ridiculous. There are definitely some PvE skills that could use a boost, but these could really use some toning down (make them better than normal skills if you must, but not THIS much better).

Buff the Sunspear/Kurzick/Luxon skills, they need it badly.

Ursan is Ursan, it might actually be nice if they buffed Volfen and Raven Blessings to compete against Ursan Blessing.

Off topic: Just watched that film

On topic: Well, thread title says it all. Buff overpowered skills to the level of an even more overpowered skill. Intelligence at it's peak!

Wow...you just made Eternal Aura really, really broken. Since the only thing Mysticism changes about it is duration, that would enable you to only have the minimum of 4 points in it.

Besides, some of us like to flaunt our armor, who'd wanna be a stupid looking god everywhere they went?

Have the mobs been complaining about Ursan or something lately? Mobs are just mobs. You aren't competing against players in PvE, you are competing against mobs. Who cares if it's unfair to the mobs, they're not real people. If people don't like Ursan then they can play without it. You're never going to be able to PUG the exact way you want to so either guild up or go H/H (without Ursan I assume).

If player interaction and the GW economy didn't exist, you would be absolutely right.

You got me on the first, but the second is a joke pretty much at this point in the game. The first is simple to rectify by playing with friends/guildies or H/H.

EDIT: I mean they even went the full instanced route so that interaction/competitiveness in PvE would be at a bare minimum. It would be a whole different story in a game that doesn't run instanced I agree.

its been out for almost 3 years I think all the challenge and depth is lost at this point.

I agree UB is Overpowered but dont you think it was about time to put something crazy like this into the game? we have been doing the same things for years, PvE wise so a huge change was just a matter of time.

by doing the same things I mean we all have done missions,farming,guardian,skill caps,vanquish, treasure hunter, wisdom, ETC....
So whats the big deal that after 2 and a half years of doing this the old way (change skills for each area find builds that work and so on and so on) they put in the overpowered skills? I really can not see anything wrong with this.

The game was fresh and new for about a month for each campaign and GW:EN after that its old and repetive.

When SF came out everyone was there same for tombs after the PVP isles came along, same for missions and challenge spots same for deep/urgoz same for doa same for eotn it is the same for every area.

after about the 10th to 15th time through something the challenge is lost and it becomes easy, which when this happens most of us switch to the whats the funnyest looking build I can do this area with or how fast can I do this area as to make a efficient money making spot, Etc.

All Anet did is give us the Funny skill and said HAVE FUN WITH IT.
and I have been LMAO ever since.

/joke: I used to go out and dance with monster for fun. Some can get down and funky, others just kinda look at you with a WTH look on their face.
I am not joking about the dancing with monsters only joking about them dancing back LOL

I'm categorically against H/H as it turns GW into a single player game, but that's besides the point.

My friends and guildies are all raving about UB and I don't blame them.

It IS great.



Three of us playing Warrior (and 5 Heroes) were trying for Master in Dzagonur Bastion on Hard Mode the other day, one of the more challenging Coops in Nightfall.

We lost a bombard twice while not using Ursan Blessing (because we are huge noobs made of 100% pure fail).



Then we just UB'd it. I have no other way of putting it.

We waltzed through the mission, not even particularly paying attention to the mobs storming the bombards.

Everything died faster than you could say Edgebomb.



In all honesty, I feel absolutely no satisfaction having done it this way (and knowing I can do pretty much everything this way now).

I'd rather have failed again and again and waited till we had a full human team capable of doing it without UB.



So, no, I'm not saying UB should die. It is great for playing on Tourist Mode.

Only now, playing anything but Ursanway is simply living in denial (it's nice here, you can come too).

If it doesn't get nerfed, at least give us some better profession-specific PvE skills.

Please don't kill what little is left of build creativity in PvE.

There you go.

I understand what you're saying, but its like making Alcohol illegal for all because someone can't resist it and feels bad about using it. What you mentioned is just a matter of willpower. If someone enjoys it (or occasionally enjoys it) then let them have fun. If you don't enjoy it but can't bring yourself away from it, that's merely a lack of willpower and really could be applied to anything. Well, in a guild it could be peer pressure from others' lack of willpower as well.

Next time, just pressure them to keep trying if that's not the road you want to go down. An alternative is to do it in hard mode so at least there's a bit more resistance to it.

That video is a good example of what is wrong with Ursan Blessing. The team devotes all of their Ursan Strikes onto Mallyx instead of dropping the Margonites and then the Torments resulting in a near party wipe once Mallyx did die. My assumption is that is how that group of players always approaches Mallyx; why else would they record and showcase their deaths?

Anyway, you think TNTF needs a buff. I'm not really sure what to say to that.

Guild Wars - Your willpower not to use overpowered skills will be your legend.


But I agree with you absolutely.

Only, I shouldn't have to agree with you. The game, even PvE, should be more balanced than this.

Either that, or you might as well give us the "Die!" shout.



It doesn't need a buff at all.

It just needs a buff compared to UB.

So... a guy with lung cancer should just keep smoking? I mean... what's the point of stopping now? He's already screwed.

Just because something is in trouble already doesn't mean measures can't/shouldn't be taken to improve the situation/slow the degregation.

Why create more imbalance and more reason for people to whine about not wanting to grind for the titles?

I really disagree with this.

Yup ............

Oh and on topic
SY anyone?

What about it? Please don't say you want to buff it to give +200 AL for 10 seconds.

Pretty sure he meant it's already overpowered.

Absolutely no way! Ali skills are perfect, your bringing about doomsday here. and this would also not solve the problem, just make it worse, nerf ursan way is the only way to fix a over powered skill. (I dont acauly care about ursan way but i do have opinions on how to fix it)

Well, I may have been a tad bit vague about this, but I was referring to buffs especially for the non-trinity professions.

Obviously a number of skills don't need buffs, such as Save Yourselves.

This said, Warrior, Elementalist, Necromancer and Monk PvE skills can get a buff too, as long as it doesn't interfere with the goal of getting a Mesmer or a Ritualist as much wanted as a Necro or a Monk and not have to use Ursan Blessing.

Sounds ridiculous to you? Well, it shouldn't.



Come on people, we have PvE skills now. Why hold back on making them really shine? Especially on the professions that don't see enough PvE use.


A Mesmer should be able to completely e-drain a single enemy (Energy denial in PvE is a joke now) providing HUGE party support.

A Paragon should really be that: a single "leader" figure providing defensive shouts.

A Ritualist should be more than a spirit spammer, but have an incredibly powerful spirit that both damages the enemy and heals the party.

An Assassin's magic should make him invulnerable during his attack chain, without having to resort to Shadow Form.



We should be able to have parties that have 8 different primary professions and work really, really well, with everyone being an essential part of the team.



Am I thinking in stereotypes?

Well, how about this then: everyone is a bear and kills everything and a few Monks heal.

I'll have the former, please.

Paragons are [unmentioned in your post, but] already at the 'great profession to have in your party' rank, but people just don't understand and don't allow them in groups anyway.

it is, because of Diversion

I don't think we should improve already uber powerful skills unless Anet creates a higher difficulty mode, beyond hard mode and normal mode. Legendary mode? That however seems unlikely and mobs were already easy enough without UB and the other PvE skills. I say we just leave them both alone. Without UB it becomes way too difficult to beat Mallyx in HM and most of you will say that's how it's meant to be. But remember when everyone started "I hate DoA" threads because Mallyx was undefeatable? Just keep everything the same no more tampering because you can't please both sides so just keep it as it is.

I don't like the idea change on Shadow Sanctuary, considering I use that on my warrior for a free half as good as Feigned Neutrality for running.