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?