My case for Ursan Blessing

Before eotn came out, the only time i cud join a DoA group was if I was an obby tank. That was annoying. And when you finally did join a group, if you so much as dared to question something you'd be out. Ive tried and mastered many different builds. From the necro and monk farming builds to runners all over place. All im saying is UB allows ppl to come together and have fun. I dont think most do it for titles. They just want to have fun You mean you could only join a bad pug group as an obs tank?

Ursan has pretty much removed any chance of bad players improving by giving them an easy mode.

Thats one of the reasons people complain, although it gives everyone a chance to do high end content they do it without improving, there is no skill, they use no skills but ursan. There is no area in the game a well balanced team of players who know what they are doing cannot do.
Now with ursan around whenever one fo those players leaves the game they are not replaced. New players just go ursan to get a group.

Titles are meaningless these days, but something to do. Anyone who really does think titles are any sense of half-decent accomplishment are, in all reality, idiots who like swinging their e-peen around. Maybe to the average player on Guru, that is the case. I get the feeling that the people who bother to come here and "troll" are typically people who have spent more time thinking and achieving in game, thus, here, something like r5 KoaBD doesn't seem like a big deal. But really? I'd say it IS kind of a big deal, considering the average active poster on guru is not a good sample of the type of player you'd find in a random town in GW. I can't say all the titles take an extreme level of talent, but depending the route someone chooses to get to the end, it can take some skill. Dedication is often overlooked - it takes a lot to H/H the 130~ zones in all the campaigns/expansion. I also think that some people tend to oversimplify their accomplishments when looking back, when it comes to making "some kind of point."

Anyways - with Ursan. I'm tired of this argument because neither side seems to get it. I think (some) the Ursan haters are too extreme, but I think that the regular joe who uses it for everything is missing out on some fun challenges. I'm not a huge fan of the skill myself, but I'm glad it can open up doors for people in the game that previously couldn't do something. To those who get upset at the PuG-Meta... there's always active guilds out there combating the use of the skill in their own play, that take part in elite areas, or title hunting. You're not condemned to PuG-play only.

My thought about the success of Ursanway also has more to do with consumables than it does the the Blessing. To be perfectly honest, playing Ursan without consumables is very boring and not overall efficient, unless you've got 5 others, and coordinate button mashing. If you take out consumables, like celerity, or armor of salvation, Ursanway would, in MANY circumstances... fail. Feel free to refute me on this, but this is my personal observation from pugging.

Maybe to the average player on Guru, that is the case. I get the feeling that the people who bother to come here and "troll" are typically people who have spent more time thinking and achieving in game, thus, here, something like r5 KoaBD doesn't seem like a big deal. But really? I'd say it IS kind of a big deal, considering the average active poster on guru is not a good sample of the type of player you'd find in a random town in GW. I can't say all the titles take an extreme level of talent, but depending the route someone chooses to get to the end, it can take some skill. Dedication is often overlooked - it takes a lot to H/H the 130~ zones in all the campaigns/expansion. I also think that some people tend to oversimplify their accomplishments when looking back, when it comes to making "some kind of point." Time dedication is alot different to skill dedication.

Time dedication relies on how much free time you have on your hands, and your lifestyle in general. Not really much of an accomplishment if you ask me.

Skill dedication relies on how skilled you are as a player. PvE doesn't require much skill at all to be honest, and I'm not counting PvE-only junk. All in all the AI should have been improved instead of overbuffing mobs which are still stupid and exploitable, simply stacking prots on someone being a makeshift tank messes up the enemy.

The only true thing that is a problem in PvE, is groups with ALOT of Monks squeezed together and huge groups being pulled.
It can be avoided quite easily all in all. Sometimes there are situations like Monks packed together which just needs a quick /Resign and go through it again, really.

Let's try and keep this millionth Ursan thread atleast clean in the least.

Anyways - with Ursan. I'm tired of this argument because neither side seems to get it. I think (some) the Ursan haters are too extreme, but I think that the regular joe who uses it for everything is missing out on some fun challenges. I'm not a huge fan of the skill myself, but I'm glad it can open up doors for people in the game that previously couldn't do something. To those who get upset at the PuG-Meta... there's always active guilds out there combating the use of the skill in their own play, that take part in elite areas, or title hunting. You're not condemned to PuG-play only. /Debateover.
Seriously, that sums it up for both sides.
Thank you for not being as biased.

Should players who grind x amount of hours be allowed to beat any area in the game? I vote no. It sucks that I prefer to beat the game in hard mode without Ursan Blessing, and use more skill to get the Dungeon reward/drops, and Johnny Ursanway can get his r8-10 ursanpug for the same reward quicker.

I feel about Ursan Blessing pretty much the same way I feel about cheating in single player games. I hate it. And using "cheat codes" and Ursan Blessing just feels so similar to me.

Should players who grind x amount of hours be allowed to beat any area in the game? I think the issue is not weather or not they should, but weather they should get a huge advantage over normal players.

Let's face it, there are many parts of GW that you can grind against and eventually beat. Fail at a mission long enough, you will likely learn enough to beat it, or just get lucky.

I've not had a chance to play most of the Elite areas, but from what I've heard, some of them (DoA in particular), were just as bad before as they are now, but instead of looking for Ursan, it was a set of 3-4 classes with specific builds only. In this case, Ursan opens up the area to other classes that may not have normally been able to access the area.

of course, a better solution would be to tweek the area to allow other classes to participate. Much like skill balances, maybe an area re-balance on occasion might not be a bad idea. Of course, people will be upset about that no matter what too ("Now it's to easy, anyone can do it!" "Now it's to hard, my PvX build doesn't work there anymore!").

I'm of no real strong opinion of Ursan at the moment. It's not a PvP skill, so it can be unbalanced without killing PvP, but PvE needs some balance too. I like the Avatar solution presented in another thread that make Raven and Volfen blessings more interesting, and balance them out a bit to where the Blessings are nice, and powerful, but not overbearing, and still require a good build.

Ultimately, other players playing Ursan aren't hurting my enjoyment of the game, so I don't see it as as big an issue as everyone seems to think it is.

As usual when it comes to the discussion about why Ursan is destroying the game the most important issue is missed. The main problem with Ursan is that it destroyes the entire concept of Guild wars. The idea behind it is to make builds that are really good together in a team (or solo if you like) and in the meanwhile you learn how the game mechanism works and improve both your character and your skills as player (and hopefully understands how fun the game can be), and as final challenge of your skills and builds you go to the elite areas.

When Ursan was introduced it took away the entire process of developing both your gameplay and your char, and made it possible to skip the entire path and go for the end at once (elite areas). If there was a way to go from pre-seering directly to the lich quickly arena-net would decide that it needed to be stopped, but when it comes to Ursan noone does anything. I dont know if it is a last attempt to boost sales for a bad product or if there is any other motives like killing GW1 in time for the release of GW2, but Ursan is killing the idea behind the game. It can be considered ill conceived attempt to introduce "operation shortbus" concept of MMOs where developers intentionally open older elite areas to more casual people when new content becomes available.

Basis of why that works in them is that new content caters to people which lost content to do because of nerfs. Another reason why this works is that casual people actually have use for that older equipment, and they should get it, and elite players have new stuff to get, so noone really has reason to QQ, as its win/win scenario.

In GWs there is no "replacement" content, and even if there was, gameplay degenerated in a way that it would have to be impossible to do with ursan/consumables, which means that it has to be very, very imba. Which means that once developers choose to open it they have to give casuals even more imba stuff that destroys other content even more.

Basically, power creep in its finest, lack of which was major selling point of GW. At least for me.