The Madness That Is Ether Renewal

not saying it doesn't work im saying have you TRIED playing it in the imba way that some people are presenting it here with their screenshots (IE:what...12 or 11 mantained enchants)

its a waste of time, you have to stop far too often and are relegated to staring at the mana pool as well as whos enchanted with what..and THEN when one enchant goes down good luck finding it to recast.

SO WHAT if you can play it in the fashion you just mentioned, it was nerfed for PVP reasons NOT PVE now you can play both. whats the problem?

the fact that ive had to explain this only underlines your lack of "grasping". extrapolate (if you can) what you will from that.

you would be amazed at the number of idiots that cannot grasp this...

No, you see, PvE is different and requires all sorts of skills that would hurt the brains of improperly prepared PvPers - like picking up items and taking quests.

How many random PUG Warriors would have an elemental damage weapon on switch? My point wasn't to show the best way to shut her down, but how easily you can throw together a ragtag non-elite combination of prophecies skills to completely shut her down. A single Warrior or Ranger can turn her into a sitting duck, let alone a balanced party. She's a joke, especially compared to Shiro.

We aren't comparing missions, rather the skillsets, which he claimed Glint's was much more powerful than Shiro's. As for the mission, Gates of Madness? I just did Glint with HH and a touch ranger (all prophecy skills) and it didn't take longer than maybe 15 minutes. Shiro pretty much requires you to have PvE skills (PI) or elites (SS, SV) to take him down. Compare that to the two Warrior skills that can be attained by the time the player hits Lion's Arch.

Who gives a shit if a skill is OP in PvE. You scrubs were bitching about balancing for so long, and now you've got it. DEAL WITH IT

hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

I still haven't figured out why some people are upset about ANY skill that is imba? PVE has never been that difficult. You can complete any of the campaigns and EOTN with a empty skill set. Why? Because you started out bad at the game and with time you finally got better. You figured out how the mobs work and what to do. You will never be able to make the game hard again once you have achieved this.

The only thing that is being affected by these pve only skills and the other skill buffs is that now, casual players don't have to put in all the time that you did in order to be able to beat the game. They won't have to learn the areas and learn the mobs. Sad but true. They will simply be able to steamroll anything.

The only thing left to do is either wait for GW2 or go play another new game untill you get to the same place there that you are here. Then you will see the same thing happen. You will know the game so well that you will disagree with any changes that make it any easier. It happens with all games.

Most people that play PvE wanted it so they could just smash through everything and watch pretty numbers fly up. They got what they wanted.

Even still, the warrior can just not attack and the party doesnt care and proceeds to pwn glint anyway. And good warriors should have an elemental weapon on switch. Bad players in the prophecies campaign should have had a Fiery Dragon Sword on all the time, right?

lol. Shiro requires a single person with blocking and the rest of the party to be smart enough not to stand next to him. GG. Party: 1 Shiro: 0
Gate of Madness is a joke mission. I was running 4 noobs at a time through that thing with me as a ranger who basically soloed shiro and lich together. Anyone who thinks you need SS or SV for him needs to fail less.

Agree, but I also think they have no way of changing these things now, too many layers of updates and skills that they are unable to build a balanced system. I think (and hope) they will only be able to do that in GW II - learning from mistakes etc etc (maybe thats the reason why they are not trying too hard to change right now).

Imagine you are walking on a thin rope across the abyss.
A person that has balance (or would be "is balanced" better or is that only used for stuff like mental health?) will be able to walk across.
A person that has more balance will be able to take 2 additional steps - contrary to the person with less balance - before BOTH fall into their doom.
And that's my point - both fail.
IF one does not take into account the specifics of PvE - then one CAN NOT balance the skills.
And if one can not balance the skills - then it's idiotic to throw around the term "it should be changed because of balance reasons".
Rather start using the term "it should be changed because it makes the game too easy". And this brings us to the end of this discussion - because "it makes the game to easy" is a completely subjective argument and that is why it fails.
Stay out of my instance with your subjective arguments!

And one (current split system) fails more than the other (old PvP balance system). What those few PvE players who actually care about balance are going to find out is exactly what PvP players have known and been complaining about for years.

None of this was taken into account, and the buff to ether renewal proves it. When Anet buffs it back to its broken form, it can only mean 1 of 2 things:

1. Anet doesn't know what the hell they are doing or how to balance
2. Anet doesn't care because they want the majority to be happy and the majority doesn't care about balance

You make the call.

I wonder where this will end? Will we get a third button next to normal mode and hard mode? A button that says "play by PvP rules"? The ultimate snobbery? Or better yet, instead of a third button we will get a pulldown menu which allows each group to individually revert all skills back to some glorified day of the past, when the game was supposedly not broken.

A definite potential game-mode for GW2 is the skill balancer game mode. No loot, maximum reconfigurability, endless fun and forum discussions.

Exactly.
The system you are advocating - fails.
What we have now is a bad system that pleases the majority of players. Sure those players ARE bad ...
What you are proposing is a system that is also bad - and on top of that it would piss of the majority of players. Now - pissing off the majority of players is a sacrifice I AM willing to take if the result is a balanced system.
But like agreed on - the system would also fail.
So - either do it right - or don't bother.
And what I had learned in the last 3 years through their half-assed decisions is that in such cases - where the decision is between:
1. don't do anything
2. or risk a major shitstorm vs. the chance of doing something right
never ever EVER go for the door that says "risk of a major shitstorm".
Because evidently they don't tip Lady Luck enough so that she would visit them often.


Can I choose both?

Once again - exactly!
They are making some REALLY moronic choices.

I am NOT saying that the idea to balance PvE is bad!
On the contrary! I've also been screaming my lungs off to bloody fix PvE!
What I am doing is looking realistically at their track record and telling you that such ideas WILL backfire.
Because to fix PvE would be a project that would take TOO MUCH resources and they won't do it! They'll just modify some random parts - and we'll end up with a system that on a whole is as broken as this one now. It will just piss off a bit more people.
(I mean look at the the ranger Guardians in the Jungle. After the change to [debilitating shot] (when it was moved to marksmanship) NOBODY took the time to modify that build. And those guys have 0 in marksmanship! The same thing with [EW]. The Guardians outside of Divinity have 0 in bm.)

WRONG! The majority of PvE players were complaining about skill balances that didn't take PvE game mechanics into account. If you think for one minute that the PvE community wants to get rid of any of the challenge that's left to PvE, then you really should consider a few things:

1. The FACT that there are so many "nerf Ursan" posts here on the forums.

2. The FACT that since they introduced the new system that there has YET to be a thead made by anyone calling for any of the hundreds of skills that have been nerfed over the years that DIDN'T get a dual-stats adjustment to be updated. (Spiritual Pain jumps to mind as an example of an extremely over-powered skill in it's original form that hasn't been given dual stats.) There have been 3 suggestions made regarding skill changes in Sardelac, and none of them have anything to do with the new system.

And one other thing: Overpowered =/= Balanced. (this applies to both PvP and PvE)

I will point out that anet expended a LOT of resources on HM. If It wasnt accompanied by PvE skills (and after that GWEN) it would fix challenge part of PvE quite nicely, leaving NM for nerfing. Monster nerfing. Assasins useless in NM? reduce mob armor vs piecring, make ai much less likely to target sin all kinds of that stuff.

What did they do wrong with HM? Accesiblity & Desirability. Its easy to unlock and 15 titles prerequisite doing it, plus there is loot. Result? People wanna do it, can do it but are unable to do it. They want to do it long before they exhausted NM content. That results in frustration. There is nothing to teach players how to play properly so HM is too much shock.

So it needed to be either less desirable (no titles for it, no reason for joe scrub to do it and cry for nerfs if he fails) or less accesible (were taking koabd (2-3) ). I'd go with less desirable.

Once you remove masses from doing HM because they dont really gain anythign from it (so they dont want to do it), you removed reason for dumbing it down. Masses would be doing their NM version of vanquisher and whatnot and be challenged enough without needing imba stuff. Candy canes would be enough, really.

Alas, as you demonstrated with Debilitating, anet does not expend resources to fix even small, simple, problems. If PvE changed along with PvP updates ...

Hey, lighten up! This can only mean good news for Sousuke!

And what did people wish for HM to be like?
As far as I can remember - anyone that has an idea about PvE said something in the lines of:
1. please don't just make the monsters 10 levels higher
2. give the foes better builds
3. create better party formations
4. something that will allow for advanced play - a place where not everything will spontaneously combust just by looking at them - eg. a mesmer's play field

And how does HM look today?
Double casting/attack speed which came with the nerf of passive counter skills because that's not the kind of play A.Net would like to see in PvP!
Foes with a semi-random elite - using their old builds.
Foes that are mostly just a few levels higher then in NM.

And THAT was achieved with "a LOT of resources expanded".

But once you remove the masses from HM - the masses lose interest in the game.
Now combine this with the fact that a good PvE balance would require pretty much writing PvE ALL OVER AGAIN (removing all PvE-only skills, make PvP rules apply, change formations of the foes, ...) - and you can see why overpowered skills are so important for A.Net.
They aren't good for the game - but once they started breaking PvP rules (the rules that the skills in GW are balanced on ... well the good skills at least) - they stopped caring about that.

PvE skills were added because of the complaints - and they were A.Net's answer to BOTH kind of complaints:
1. OMG!11! I can't complete X because I take so much damage when Heal Sigging under Frenzy11!!
and
2. A lot of things in this game do not work because of how broken the design of PvE is
and now the separation happened because the complains didn't stop.

Why?
Because it's the easy way.

And like I said - that's my problem with this discussion.
The idea is superb - but it's A.Net we're talking about.
And the execution of the idea WOULD take an insane amount of resources - and they won't do it.
If they didn't do it when GW was at it's most alive and kicking - they sure as hell won't do it now that everyone is just expecting for GW2 to drop.

(And yeah - I am fully aware that this is VERY Mr. The Glass Is Half-Empty - but this isn't a fight for the environment or human rights.
It's a product.
And products can easily be replaced.
It's not worth losing sleep over something like this.
It's some massively shitty design - but the pros still outweigh the negatives.
Plus the ritualist has some INSANELY cute outfits to chose from!
*cute bunny*)

You are wrong.

Tha Hardcore players (Read: minority) want balance and want a challenge in HM and elite missions.

The Casual players (Read: vast majority) want to be able to HM and elite missions as quickly and easily as possible. They want their FoW too!

Anet is catering to the majority ... big surprise.

Recall the original design of GW .. wasn't PvP supposed to be the endgame anyway?

Look back at the threads that were made on guru. Many of them were BEGGING Anet to stop making changes that affect PvE, and to split it from PvP. This had gone on for a long time. They split it, and everyone cries about ONE very specific build?

Stop posting. You caused it, deal with it. Either don't use the bar, or use it to win easily. Either way, stop wasting the forum bandwidth with this garbage.

...along with the many "don't nerf Ursan" posts. Numbers aside, it does not necessarily follow that the anti-Ursan posters want *balance*. They may hate Ursan on one hand, but want other overpowered builds to open up on the other hand.

There was a thread a while back where people posted what they think should be reverted. The list was pretty ridiculous, as players wanted stuff that was already powerful to be buffed even further.

If you're going to pick on when the thread was created, it doesn't matter - the thread nevertheless shows that PvErs just want to blow shit up. I could easily make a new thread now and repost the same suggestions.