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.

I don't have Ursan Blessing on any of my characters. When I go PvE just for fun to cap some of the "useless" elite skills with henchmens and heroes. And I am having fun, I get owned by some of the harder groups, unless I find out good builds for my heroes or myself to counter some of the challenges. Thus I enjoy occasional GW's pve. And to be honest without your QQing how easy it is to play Ursan and without being in DoA outpost I wouldn't almost know that's there is easymode skill out there. And I wouldn't care. Anet's intention is to bring game to wide public. Whether you like it or not, it's trend to please casual gamers.

I find myself relatively good at PvE, even though I don't play it as much as I used to. I like the "oldschool" PvE style - failing at mission if I do something wrong, tune up your build a bit and try again again agin until you perfect it, this feels great. If YOU think you are good at PvE, ignore Ursan or Ether (if you find those skills too easy to play means you don't like them, so why would you play with them?), play as you used to play before. Enjoy what you can, and if you get bored of it, simply quit and come back later. Your whining and accusing arenanet for their actions proves you are just bored of GW and you played it too much. Get over it.

I have to agree ... anet did "anet" on HM.

(as far as removing people from hm: this is why stuff like vanquisher should have had NM variant. It takes about same time like HM, can be pugged, especially in easy areas. There is also a lot to be gained by replaying with other chars ... If you make all maxxed titles count towards account-wide koadb equivalent which maxes at what ... 100 titles? Thats heluva playing with lots of chars without ever having to touch hm. Gives grinders alot to do.)

I will point out one thing: GW as mmo concept is (was) unique-ish. There is no other mmo that i am aware of which has gameplay core similar to pre-pveonly stuff, and i was trying to locate one for some time (if you got one, share it with me!).

Unlike cookie cutter mmos, where if you are upset you just start playing different one and core gameplay you are going to experience is going to stay essentialy the same.

still just only one of a million retarded ursan whine thread, which nobody needs, you can QQ so much as you want, anet won't change anything drastically on UB, because UB is their way to fix some issues, GW had, which the community also wanted to see fixed ASAP. For anet implementign UB was the most easiest way to fix these issues without having to reconcept a huge part of the game, which would have been a gigantic amount of work, compared to implementign just only some more skills to "overlay" the problems with them, like changing pages of a book is much easier, than to cut out a page and to recover that cutted page then.

The mentality of pve players nd pvp players is somewhat of different, it was absolutely foreseeable, that GW will change into this way, especially because of PvE beign the money bringing much bigger half bright side of the medal, which is alot more versatile and entertaining over long time, than PvP wil ever be.

When you want chalenges, then you go play PVP..thats the gameplay MEANT FOR CHALLENGE.

PvE is meant for long time motivation, fun of mass slaughterign monsters, epic stories, battles regardless of skills beign used, because every person has its own choice to use the strongest skills or not. You want more challenge in Pve, beside using normal Skills, then use maybe lesser ARMOR POWER ???!!!, use WEAK WEAPONS THAT ARE UNMODDED and and and, you have so much possibilities to make out of Hard Mode Hell Mode, if you think, hard Mode isn't challenging enough for you.

How much retarded ursan QQ threads does this forum need to see more, before all those whienrs will finally learn to accept to live with the implemention of these PvE skills. no fu***cking ass forces you to use them!!!

Just deny the usage of these skills and play the game, HOW YOU WANT, but then you don't have to whine about the fatc, that you will find then alot lesser people to party eventually with, then you have to live with it, that you play mostly with that people, what what the game's name stands for

GUILD WARS

For what the god damn hell have people guilds huh ? To play together with your guild mades ? Uh oh, I forgot, the game has ya PUG's OMG !!!

Why should we play with our guild members, with which we can play the game, like we want to, with no ursa, with no imbagon, with no what da shit whatever you think is too imba.

No one, that got a brain, fu***cking cares for all of you whiners, as long the FACT exists and is 100% clear, that no one forces you to use these skills and that you can find ever your guild mates to create with them parties without these skills to have CHALLENGING PVE EXPERIENCE >.>.

Don't destroy the fun of others, which like the positive things, that Skills like UB brought to GW, which all of you whiners deny to see, like having a piece of wood in front of your heads. All of the Elite Areas are playable NM like HM without Ursan Blessing.

You whiners have only to use ur dumb brains to think for good group builds for them and for places like DoA, Deep and Urgoz are mostly so or so Consumeables a must to survive there without Ursan.

ursans are not the only thing, which can tank good, the +200 HP, +20 Def, the Knock Down Skill and the AL irgnoring 150 Damage attack on R10 aren't such a heavy revolution, which makes a perfect group synergy making look obsolete.

Splinter barragers have the ability to make with their Shots with 1 stupid attack alot more damage in an instant, than UB's can do in the same time.
The SB mostly deal even the damage, before the UB even has reached the enemies, with a right bow in the hand.

People want to get ready with GW1 now as fast as possible to get stated with GW2 as soon as possible - the reason for this is simple and is named competition.People try to be as fast as possible ready with GW1 so that they don't have to waste time with it anymore, once GW2 is out there, because it could mean, that you won't be then one of the people, that sees or gets somethign of the game first and gets maybe out of it ingame a little financial advantage over others. its the same thing, like with farming - people which farmed places excessively fist, got the most out of it, because places weren#t then overfarmed and alot more stuff dropped for them, than stuff would drop for people, which get to these places first, once they are overfarmed for long...long time. Its all so obvious and foreseeable, you can smell it >.>

UB is the way of Anet enabling people this, which take this goal for important, to have a chance to reach these goals in shorter time, than people which don't care about fact of "how fast you beat the game, how fast you max your HoM ect." which play the game for their pve chalenge or just to slowly discover the game's world to enjoy the sightseeing tour whatever

Phoenix has posted an unreadable wall of text. This thread can die now.

You do realize that PvE players are not a formless blob with one opinion on every issue? While some people were complaining about the changes, others were defending them. Now everyone who was defending them is pointing to the mess that has been made in PvE and saying, "I told you so!"

No, PvE players asked for skills to stop being nerfed on account of the PvP metagame and what was overpowered there.

Also, there is a difference between balance and just plain ridiculous.

why should WE make it challenging? shouldnt the game be challenging without us having to strive for it?

And to revert everything as it was, i.e. Splinter Weapon so they can explode stuff with just 1 skill.
I'm sure the users of The Bear care, and the creators of the Bear know the difference ~~

Phoenix if my most favoritist poster in the whole world. But I agree that Anet is catering in entry-level/casual/bad players, which is lame. I'm not much of a PvPer, and I used to love joining pickup groups simply for the "will we won't we" moments. This experience is gone now with "needed" skills, whether its [[ether renewal] [[save yourselves] or [[broad head arrow].

Actually he posted a very readable and very truthful wall of text. At least it was something about the topic unlike yours of course which was just trolling.

I agree with Phoenix, it's very simple if you don't like UB don't use UB. What I see are a bunch of sods who can't stand that others can now go where they go. I'm pretty sure Anet sees the data now of where and how much time people (especially casuals and newbies) are spending their time. Ursans may still get a nerf, but, I see no real reason to as the economy and everything inline with it is pretty stable and good now for EVERYBODY. I'd say 99% of all the quality loot in the game is now obtainable by EVERYBODY and that's a good thing. It's nice to know I can load up UB if I want to and have some solid good time fun with a group using it no matter how experienced we all are. Sure makes pugging a lot less frustrating now.

You're saying that to try to trick me into reading that rambling grammatical abortion. Crafty devil.

This has absolutely nothing to do with it. I don't much care what you do. You can put pineapples on your head and run 8 mending wammos whilst singing "La Cucaracha" for all I care, it's really not my problem. I care that balance is completely screwed to hell in PvE, which makes it far less fun for me.

Again, I don't really care if you get phat lewts or not. I'm fairly poor (30k or so across my account right now), and always have been because loot and money just doesn't matter to me. I care that the challenge in PvE is at an all-time low, even in hard mode. Pugging isn't fun if there's zero chance of failure. I care that hard mode isn't hard, it's just better drops and titles mode.

Of course, I probably play games differently than you. A game that I never lose is terribly uninteresting. My favorite games will hand my ass to me often enough to keep me on my toes and force me to adapt.

PvE balance is just fishfull thinking , changing some numbers won't do any good. I agree with Phoenix Tears , if you want challenge , play pvp , the game is called guild wars for a reason. PvE is challenging as much as you make it. Removing UB won't change anything to good , and A-Net would be brain dead if it did.

Because it is actually possible to make a game challenging for yourself, unlike if the game is too hard and you don´t have lots of time to play. Besides everyone has a different idea of what a challenge is, so that ANet could never please everybody. It is much better to leave it to the players themselves to make the game as challenging as they want it to be.

Shouldn´t the world be perfect? People be just and nice? Political parties care for all the citizens? Please, face reality.
There is no way to make the game challenging for everybody without making it frustrating for lots of players. DEAL WITH IT!

Esan, People here don't understand syllogism. It's not taught until post secondary and then only as an elective. Fallacy is the norm here.

Define "challenging", since it varies dramatically from person to person...

Loud Noises.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE YELLING ABOUt!

I agree with what you are saying. I just think that "pleasing the majority" getting in the way of balance is the ultimate destruction of Guild Wars claiming to be skill>time. Seriously....the goal of Guild Wars three years ago is so much different than today that I laugh (or cry) thinking about it.

With twice as many don't nerf ursan posts. Not to mention the forums represent less than 1% of the total community. Jeff Strain made a famous quote where he essentially said he rarely takes forums into his game consideration.

So you are saying the community wanted PvE to be an easy piece of garbage that they could roll through, and Anet obliged?

No its not that simple and I'm tired of people saying it is. If you think this way, you could care less about balance, and fit perfectly into the majority that Anet is catering to.

Well, you got what you asked for? They didn't nerf any skills on account of the PvP metagame and what was "overpowered there" in the last update for PvE balance.

Hooray?

Unfortunately, I think the minority that want balance in PvE are fighting a losing battle. Does anyone seriously expect Anet to revert these buffs, let alone nerf Ursan? The recent buffs to PvE skills makes it clear that instead of balancing PvE, Anet is simply going to overpower other skills so they can offer an alternative to Ursan. By doing so they might be able to bring back a bit of diversity in PvE builds, but of course that comes at the cost of turning skill bars into a bunch of "I win in PvE" buttons, where all you have to do is repeatedly mash your head on the keyboard...