Ursan blessing - Why people love it and why people hate it

Disclaimer: I'm not an UB lover, I'm an UB liker. I like the skill, and that's it.

I broke the skill down in my head a while ago, and even though my opinion of UB has not lowered at all, I begin to understand why people think it's so bad.

So here's the breakdown.
You get 6 people who are now sporting 800 health or more. Put on their norn rank, they get nearly another 100. That's 900 health. Give this group two monks with an elite that makes healing spells 50% more potent. Give them a spell that heals them every time they are hit. Combined with the +20 or so armor UB also gives... Level 28's and such are hitting 6's and the players are getting healed for 30. Every time they are hit. I think I need to repeat that. Every. Time. They. Are. Hit.

So we got bitches who are one health buff away from breaking over a thousand hitpoints, armored out the ass, and untouchable, for the most part. Now let's look at the crap they're sporting.

A skill that does damage while ignoring every form of armor or damage avoidance. Not only does Ursan Strike hit twice, but it does touch damage, ignoring everything. You can do up to 140 damage every few seconds.
Not much of a weakness you say? They might get pounded you say?
That's fine, they have Ursan Rage! Physical damage (which armor DOES reduce) to every goddamn thing around you.
They also have a shout that weakens enemies and adds damage to you. IN ONE SKILL.
They also have a good speed buff.

These are just a few reasons why people hate UB.

Edit: (This stuff was actually said in one of the links above).

There are more reasons why people hate it.

1. Rewards grinding.
2. You can farm with it and get better (that is, get higher rank). No other (pve of course) build can do that.
3. Destroys the skill > time factor.
4. Makes my Prophecies' box back side look like a liar.

And finally, last but not least:

5. In no other game there is a f'ing megashit unbalanced build that can kill everything. You can use it ANYWHERE, ANYHOW and still pwn the game. I understand other mmorpg's have like soloable dungeons, easy and harder bosses (RO, WoW, Lineage 2), but there is no such thing as ,,lets go out for 30-60 minutes and wtfpwn something that normal people would have to PLAN for a week and do it in 2 hours after planning''. Try to go to a high-level instance in WoW in a group of few people where nobody knows other people and finish it without any planning, with a 3:1 ratio of damage dealers:healers (for 3 attacking people there is 1 healing person). Or go try to kill Ifrit/Thanatos/Valkryrie in RO with 1 tank (hahaha can I say 2 hours wasted?), 4 nukers and 2 healers? And you don't know them, don't know if their priest has the right build, if tank knows what to do or that nukers know, that Ifrit is (well duh) fire-element and requires cold-damage nuking? Because this is ursanway - 7 people you don't know and you don't trust them, they can pretty much do everything alone (1 ursan + 1 monk could kill a group of aatxes. Weakness + aoe knockdown every 8 seconds lol ;d) and still win. Not counting taking one wrong quest in UW, but even then it's doable.

I didn't read it -- But, YAY another Ursan thread! Maybe an admin should make a thread for these...

Everytime someone QQ's about Ursan, God makes a lolcat thread.

But on topic-I really hate it when someone makes a thread about Ursan and complains about the Elitest attitude that the UB haters have. Not every UB hater is an elitest! Most people hate this skill because it's overpowered and for reasons Abedeus, Caged and Guardian have said. There's no skill or challenge involved.

*yawwnnn* Please NO more Ursan threads!! Pretty please with a cherry on top!!!!

people hate it because it goes against everything GW stands for. GW is supposed to reward skill, not time spent. Ursan kills that.

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When I wrote this it wasn't my intention to say go and remove ursan from the game. I dont care.

But its bad for the game when one of its biggest advantages was variety.

One ursan or 2 per group is ok. They have powerful skills.

But a volley or barrager with great dwarf weapon, or a earth shaker warrior (with dark fury is cookies) can do perma knock too.

And that's what I dislike about the skill. It kills diversity.

Please close thread now.

The only thing more annoying than Ursan Blessing is Ursan Blessing Threads.

Right, this has become a very touchy subject with people either loving it or hating it or hating people for loving it etc.

But anyways, heres my analysis of the skill and the party's.

First off, If you want to flame, do it in somebody else post. If you want to say QQ some more noob then don't even bother reading any further.

Ok so just for the record, I do have ursan in my skill bar occasionally. im Rank 5 slayer on my warrior and in all honesty i cant be bothered to grind R10. I dont try and join ursan partys because obviously rank 5 is pretty useless. i use it whilst questing with hench as its a pretty useful skill.

But my main observations have been whilst playing HB monk. So i look for an ursan party doing fow... Shouldnt be that hard right?

Half an hour later i got a party in american Toa district 1 at 7pm GMT, very surprising as everybody makes out that ursan is add 7 other people and your set. But most of the time spent in ToA was sorting out consumables, as nobody wanted to use their precious 7k con set.

Shortly after sorting all the skills we entered FoW. This was my first time in an ursan party and i was astonished how efficient it was. We were at the temple within 2 minutes. One thing i did notice though was the love for mass aggro that all the ursans had. I understand how the skill works and it runs out very quickly if you are not fighting, but playing as monk it was tricky keeping up with healing people and removing hexes. This is where the main trouble lies.

Before entering FoW i said please call SS and DO NOT attack with it on, i said this about 4 times and still the ursans found it hard not to attack. We came close to wiping due to the stubbornness of them. I mean with 2 monks using cure hex which is a 12 second recharge (maybe 8 or 9 with cons up) it is pretty hard to keep hexes off everybody. Also SS and empathy are covered with mark of pain so patience was needed.

During my time with this party the one thing i noticed was an awful amount of flaming. DONT AGGRO THEM, STOP TRYING TO SOLO, OMG NOOBZ!!!11ONEONE etc. Now ive been playing 2 years and ive never seen a party fall out so much over little things.

But eventually we get to the forgemaster and the other monk goes AFK. So im trying to heal 6 ursans who are all attacking with SS and empathy on with no regarde for their own safety. After a lot of GoLE and Heal party spamming we made it to the cave where one ran in and died whilst i was still making my way to the cave entrance. After that somebody insisted on taking the quest with shard wolf or whatever they are and accidentally aggrod all the shadow army round that area. This was when i thought to myself, since when was guild wars full of idiots like this bunch.

Now i have nothing against the ursan skill, i haven't question ANET on their "skill balancing" and what not since the AoE nerf just before hard mode was introduced. and in all honesty i think hard mode was a life saver for guild wars.

But back on track i believe the problem with ursan is not the skill. Its the people that use it. PVE is now like PVP - Full of arrogant bone headed morons who think the higher rank they are the more superior they are. The skill is that easy to use, even complete idiots are clearing out FoW and UW with little or not effort.

Now that may seem a rant, but in all honesty i think ursan has brought something back to the community.. The community itself. People want to join partys now, people want to actually clear out FoW not just go to the forge and all leave after completing one quest. For the first time, people are working as a team to do the elite missions. Before ursan, FoW clearing was pretty rare, unless in a barrage party with 3-5 hours spare and the occasional healer/bonder/2nuker/2 tanks partys, but how often did they wipe before reaching the skeletals.

People want to join partys instead of solo farming, its more profitable to join an ursan party than to solo most places. And recently ive noticed ursan in now being accepted into the guild wars community, after the initial "OMGZOMGZOMGZ NERF!!!"

Before i ran with ursan i too thought it was a stupidly overpowered build that needed to be nerfed.. but now i see it for what it is - Its what most people want, a fun, easy way to make money, regardless of how many people say how boring an repetitive it is.

now thats my $0.02

i agree with you

I think Ursan goes against ANet's oldest saying: "Worth is determined by skill, not hours played"

Now they implement Ursan which gives grinders advantages over others, and they brought the competitive, thick-headed douchebagedness that's in PvP, to PvE.

There's my two cents.

Ursan = buttonmash skills

"Worth is determined by buttonmash skill, not hours played"

Be brave!

ill agree it is bringing people together, but like just today joined a group and after one wipe due to someones hot-headedness everyone left throwing insults left right and centre, despite it being quite easy to still clear with 15% dp, as in HM 15 enemies killed usually removes it.

i do try to avoid ursan though, and me and 2 guildies used to spend hours trying to clear fow, using tactics and thought out team builds, took ages but it was still fun

used to be 3 of us + heros, no matter how many times we shouted at the heros they just didnt play ball lol, but it was a laugh

ursan is great with the right people, but so is pve in general with the right people, its just about finding the people who play for fun, not for their ego.

thats my 2 cents as u seem to be saying can i say £0.02p?

i agree with you , before ursans, i must say it was pretty rare to be in a team and those teams were full of ELITISM HEADED PRO flaming you for not healing in time/agro/etc... i hated it, and btw, whats wrong with button smashing?

1. Getting to r10 norn is not hard, period. Not long in time either.
2. Ursan pugs suck, use guildies, if guildies suck, find a better guild.
3. Ursan or not, can't fix stupid.

I agree. It's pretty simple, but it's also probably responsible for bringing pugs to areas that were previously guild groups only.

As for calling it button mashing, so's pretty much all the main cookie cutters. Tank and spank, B/P, etc.

Tbh I think the reason there is a alot of ursan hate on the Guru forums is because there are alot of sierious players who where able to do DoA/UW&FoW fullruns befor Ursan and Ursan lowered the prices of what they could do aand not much of the comunity could, my .02

I totally agree with what you said about what ursan did for GW, getting poeple to play together again.

As for your wonderfull PUG adventures, sorry it turned out this way.

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Well said,

I agree that it has done good things for the community, but hopefully you see that it is not all good.

It does get ppl into groups that are willing to do the harder parts of the game, although it its ment to be hard. Those parts of the game arent ment for the lesser players to do.

Making a group before ursan was a challenge to get ppl with builds that work well together, to set up a plan of attack that completes the goal. Now its just a hack and slash of some lack luster players, some good players and one or two really great players, all of witch are trying to command the party.

I do fit into the group of lack luster players...but I was learning every time I joined a group. Now I can't even join a group for hm or an elite mish with out ursan. So I'm learning to hack and slash, with the monk yelling "STOP....WAIT".

If arena net decides to nerf the skill then I say go for it. If not I will continue to do what needs to be done to complete those parts of the game. You could say I'm on the fence about it. I don't fault anyone for using or not using the skill. But I say this...I would rather have the option to use the other skills in the game to get the job done than using the same old build all the time.

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yea yea

I've already gone over this...
[skill]Ursan Blessing[/skill]

and i've never had to use it...

coz
1. My rank sucks (why grind for something i'll never use)
2. I never need it, my H/H teams pwn as it is.
3. I FoW using my HB monk. Nuff sed.

i don't believe this thread has long to live, but i agree also.

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See Savio's post and post in one of those.