The Madness That Is Ether Renewal

I agree wholeheartedly, especially with the last bit.

There is a contender to this that I myself made. Although I have to say that later on I saw similar builds with the same skills as mine. It's basically 'Godmode', only I made it differently and it was purely coincidental (I swear to you all). Here, this is what I had BEFORE they nerfed Steelfang Slash (the bastards...)

[Steelfang Slash][Brawling Headbutt][Flail][Enraging Charge]["For Great Justice!"][Mental Block][Word of Healing][Vigorous Spirit]

This was when there was no recharge time to Steelfang. It worked exceptionally well in the Bison Tournament, and as a matter of fact it worked better to protect myself then Ursan would've. The Mental Block, Vigorous Spirit, and Word of Healing ensures great protection and healing while the immediate and constant KD has no contest. Compared to Ursan, I'd say my build was better. I'll let you all judge for yourself. It's not as effective now since the nerf. DAMN IT!...

But hey, I showed this to you to prove that at least one person thinks outside the box and made a build manually with creativity. Something that you've been asking for when you started this thread. I will assure you once again, I solely thought of this build without looking into previous builds at all. I just read through a lot of skills and did trial and error runs.

No, you don´t and it speaks volumes that you can´t see that. You are still trying your best, but under different circumstances. Try your best using only 4 skills, middle armor or 4 attribute lines, etc. This is the reason, why people play simultaneous chess against several others or why they play chess with a blindfold or etc....

Don´t blame your inability to make yourself a challenge on the people, that only want to have fun and maybe only play 30 minutes a day.

You mean like making an argument without a clue?

Games like that are a laughable gimmick, not real competition. A game between two grandmasters is competition and challenging, a game where a grandmaster beats the snot out of unskilled people in the park is insulting to the poor schmuck who gets beaten and isn't a serious game for the grandmaster.

Nobody is blaming the lack of a challenge on the unwashed masses. The issue is that Anet seems to have no idea how to integrate both player types.

boo f***ing hoo, reap what you sow kiddies.

"WHAAA CASUAL PLAYERS CANT PWN CHAR ITS SO HARD WHAAAA"

PvE is just boring now. I couldn't agree more with the OP. Ursan has to be ANet's way of thinning out the playerbase for some nefarious purpose. There's no other reason to throw such a twinktastic skill into the game.

Of course I don't have to run it if I don't want too, but then I'll get invited into how many PUGs? Maybe a few if I'm playing a hb monk... so I can heal the Ursan's.

Hell, why not do an update to Ursan so they recieve health too with every hit? It's possibly the only way to take it one step further than the worst idea ever.

You ought to go back and play some of those games now - they weren't really as hard as you remember (or at least they aren't for me). Years of gaming reflexes make the games fairly easy now. Games today are MUCH less newbie friendly.

There are exceptions, but then I worked until I had to start gimping myself in those too. A great example is Contra - it got boring when I beat it with the normal gun and no deaths. Then there were the games that required luck to get through some point too, but I don't think that we want that now. Even then I didn't have near the hours invested in beating Contra as I do in GW.

My bet is if you put what time you have played into one of those games that you have in GW it would have become trivial faster than GW ever has. I've been playing GW about 1700 hours now and I don't even log on every day. You can't expect *any* AI environment to remain challenging yet beatable with that amount of time put in and for the three year crowd I'm on the low end of hours. Even DMC in DMC mode eventually became quite beatable and in far less than 1000 hours of gaming.

GW isn't any easier then it ever was, it is just that after a few hundred (or a few thousand hours) it is nearly impossible to make something you will find challenging for long. The Domain of Anguish is an absolutely perfect example - even pre-nerfs to the area most of the top end PvE guilds were blowing through it. It was only a matter of time before others started too also. THK is no easier than before when it was considered impossible to beat with hench - yet now we know stand here, move here, basically every move to make (much as I did with Contra back in the older days).

Until or unless you (and the others) get over it *all* online games that you spend thousands of hours will end up this way for the same reason - there is no way to make the game so hard that a multi-thousand hour vet with an equivalent guild can not learn to blow through fairly quickly and still have it beatable. You can think I'm full of it yet note that all the examples given you didn't put near the time in before you quit - you will be disappointed for the rest of your gaming career.

Ahh then I didn't miss it.
And you are just simply wrong.

If you have skills that are balanced for the (PvP) set of rules - and those rules do not apply in PvE - then these skills can NOT be balanced in PvE.
It doesn't matter if they are more fun or better for the game or whatever you want to throw in there.
Balanced - they are not.

What is "PvP" balance? It seems to me that it would be actual balance, as you're allowing all the skills to be fair game and measured against each other with intelligent use on each side. This is a pretty common phrase I see primarily pve players use: "xxx skill was a perfectly fine skill that got changed because it was exploited in pvp". I'm puzzled by this, because people seem to truly believe it even without any positive or negative context implied. Can someone mention to me any occurances of skills that were perfectly balanced but needed to be changed because of a pvp exploit? Or even what 'pvp exploit' means, if it isn't the true value of skills or attributes?

Players complained every time skills were affected by actual balances, and now complain when actual balance is thrown out the window.

I see no difference between the Ursanway and the generic ranger/aoe ele with some super tank to aggro groups. The ursan method just makes things a lot simpler, finding groups, not having to worry about 1 idiot who doesn't know how to use his skills to the best of his abilities, ect. The fact that good pubs are impossible to make makes ursanway a necessity imo. I think anyone going through the game without cookie cutter groups can appreciate the break in lameness.

hehe yeah DMC 3 rocked (even on pc where the controls where a pain (no kidding)) and indeed the hardest difficulty mode was a heck of alot of fun, heck even made me replay the game (ok at some times replace fun by frustration by bad controls for the pc version (played the same level on a PS2 of a buddy and was ten times easier thanks to decent controls)) but still the game was and remains great

Lets see ...

More profitable farming does not kill gameplay challenge.
Even back them ele damage sucked compared to buffed physicals, its just that noone really knew or used that in PvE back then.
It was compained about and it was fixed. Besides, ... tankway ... heh. what was ever imba about that? Slowest and most fragile way to do anything ...
Eventually nerfed. Was imba thou.
Also nerfed, during prohecies. Besides, modern MM builds ARE more powerfull. It aint just in pure number of minions, you know.
BOTM had PBAOE range and was weaker. MMs used heal area and veratas. Nowadays you might have 10 minions but you can actually keep them alive indefinitelly. Besides, 60 minions? Thats quite HUGE overstatement.
Weak. Did it actually work anyway?
Weak. Nerfed.
Who needs to stack armor from multiple multiple skills when we have SY!?

Using 3+ skills to get one single person what what one does nowadays for whole party ... lol?
We had UW/FoW. Did you do full FoW run back then? Maybe. Full UW? I seriously doubt so.
Giant Stomp? Spectral_Agony? All those useless undead monster skills? You recall what Glints skillset is, right. Consuming Flames ..
Poisonous water? Ice snare? Mursaat tower effects? Whole of freaking Glints place?

Noo ... it was Allll full of imba ... *rollseyes*

Anet made a good decision by leaving the Campaign model in favor of GW2. Too many skills.... 75% is useless, 5% is overpowered, 20% is fun to play with.

I dare to say that environmental effects and pve skills were much harder in Proph that in Nightfall or gwen.

Gloat - oh noes, someone of us died and charrs are ready for another spike! So scared.

Mursaat Tower - lol wtf 0 energy and 1 pip or regen? I can't heal or kill...damn I'm dead.

Or the imbalanced Glint skillset, which is harder than Shiro's or Abaddons. And it laughs at Lich's or Destroyer's.

What?

[skill]Hexbreaker Aria[/skill] + [skill]Wild Blow[/skill] + [skill]Distracting Blow[/skill]

Game over.

You still need to know what's coming. This game is easy indeed if you look everything up in Wiki before entering a mission...Or if you think you always have to use the "best" team and never leave a town before you have a 5 Ursan + 3 HB team. Of course the game is boring if you play like that.

Imagine getting to the end of Gates of Madness without having checked a wiki or having played it before. That great team being astounded as they're wiped as soon as Shiro's health gets widdled down. Not fun.

I'm sure people had Hexbreaker back then.

Btw, DMC is a great game, but it's not an RPG. Same as Quake Wars isn't a sport game and Diablo 2 isn't a fighting game.

[skill]Inspired Hex[/skill]

Spread out casters, healer in the middle + ample time to set up since you can decide when to turn hostile = piece of cake.

We can throw in [skill]Distracting Shot[/skill] just so the Warrior only has to break her stance and deal damage.

Glint has never been difficult. Having to only bring three non-elites that can completely shut her down makes that more than evident. Shiro is much more of a challenge, especially given the power today's skills and elites have. Go back and face Glint now (I just did) and realize how much of a laugh the entire mission is. She lasted maybe 15-20 seconds?

If we were to base them both off of what'd happen if you weren't aware of their skillsets and went in with your normal build, I believe we both can agree that Shiro would wipe the party almost every time while you'd be able to kill Glint more times than not.

I have no idea what they were thinking with that change. Well actually I do: They wanted to buff the skill that is a classic example of a heavy handed nerf.

It's now absolutely ridiculous, and that was pretty obvious from the first time I read the description.