If ursan gets nerfed, can we include all classes in elite pve areas?

So what you are saying is that PvE players don't need to be good at GW to be able to play it?
So why the revolt against Ursan? PvE players - even without Ursan - will still be shit and be able to complete everything.

You guys are making PvE into something more then it is.
Completing PvE means you are good enough for PvE. It also shows how insanely simple PvE is. I don't believe anyone here has anything against Ursan for completing NM. NM is pretty much "easy mode". The issue is that players that can't play are getting a free pass into completing HM - which was meant to be hard, and a challenge to players who had completed the game. Completing NM means you are good enough for NM. It doesn't mean that you're good enough or skilled enough with your bar to complete HM.

Ursan makes it such that you don't HAVE to even be good with your bar to complete HM.

I don't believe anyone here has anything against Ursan for completing NM. NM is pretty much "easy mode". The issue is that players that can't play are getting a free pass into completing HM - which was meant to be hard, and a challenge to players who had completed the game. Completing NM means you are good enough for NM. It doesn't mean that you're good enough or skilled enough with your bar to complete HM.

Ursan makes it such that you don't HAVE to even be good with your bar to complete HM. I actually like this argument.
The big problem is that it makes the overpowered status of the PvE skills subjective. Which is bad. Because if it would apply - that would mean that Ursan is an ok skill for HM if you know your way around HM.
Which is false.
Just like all PvE skills it's shit and shouldn't exist.

I actually like this argument.
The big problem is that it makes the overpowered status of the PvE skills subjective. Which is bad. Because if it would apply - that would mean that Ursan is an ok skill for HM if you know your way around HM.
Which is false.
Just like all PvE skills it's shit and shouldn't exist. My guild group actually loathes killing in Junundu and ursanway because it's slower than a proper build. You don't even need a full party of 8 real players to kill if you have a good build, actually. The thing is, of course, you need to know your way around HM to do that. If you're an ele who's been flarespamming your way through NM, too bad.

Since it's already in existence and not likely to disappear, I'm more keen on nerfing ursan not to the point where it is completely useless, but to the point where ursanway is no longer as viable as it is now. I got my r10 more for the +hp and the title than for ursan, since I monk - and I tried solo ursaning or ursaning with a friend. Maybe I suck at it, but one single ursan isn't exactly the most fantastic damager on earth, since ursans are single-target except for ursan rage. I'd take a good nuker anytime, but that's just me. My opinion is pretty much that Ursan isn't overpowered as a single skill - it's overpowered because it lends itself to gimmick builds that let you rampage across anything PvE has to offer.

If and when I do choose to PUG, I want to be able to go into a group, ask people to ping their bars, and be able to judge from there. As it is now, all you need to get into a group is to ping your bar to show that you have ursan, and display your norn rank title. If you're a monk, you just have to show that you have the cookie-cutter HB build. It doesn't show how good you are as a player - I can't tell until you're actually in the instance whether or not you're going to do something stupid. You leeroy in NM? OK, you might get away with it. You leeroy into two huge mobs in HM? You don't have a snowball's chance in hell. Unless, of course, you're all R10 ursans packed full of consumable power. That's my biggest problem. You shouldn't be able to do something so ridiculously stupid and get away with it just because 6/8 of the party is ursan. I always thought things like pulling and not-leeroying were common sense, and I'm a lot more forgiving towards ursans who do things like wall to protect the backline, pull carefully, and not leeroy.

And since I really should stop rambling - it pretty much runs like this: I'm cool with a player running ursan if the player demonstrates basic common sense - doubly so if the player can run his/her original bar. I'm not happy with ursanway and the way it lets you rampage over everything without even having to stop and think about what you're doing. Nobody complained about junundu - but well, fine. Ursan is a shit skill, it shouldn't exist - but it does. So maybe the best way to go would be to nerf the most devastating side effect: the ursanway team itself.

EDIT: To keep this on-topic - completely deleting ursan? No. People will just go back to other builds which would still exclude certain classes - that is, if you're talking about PUGs. Nerfing ursanway might offer more flexibility (so classes which don't have an immediately obvious use might have a better chance to fit in), but this being PUG, I somehow doubt it. I still would like to see ursanway nerfed, though.

I don't believe anyone here has anything against Ursan for completing NM. NM is pretty much "easy mode". The issue is that players that can't play are getting a free pass into completing HM - which was meant to be hard, and a challenge to players who had completed the game. Completing NM means you are good enough for NM. It doesn't mean that you're good enough or skilled enough with your bar to complete HM.

Ursan makes it such that you don't HAVE to even be good with your bar to complete HM. I keep returning to this argument because I REALLY like it.
Although I still feel that it's flawed in terms of looking at certain things in a subjective way - I really love the idea of competing NM giving you the right to be able to do NM (rather then giving you the right to the whole game).
Now the thing that made me wonder - does HM teach you anything new though?
Based on your argument - people should be excluded from HM if they didn't learn what HM should teach them.
Now - what should that be? The only thing that I can think of is HM introducing new gimmicks - and in PvE you pretty much counter them rather then learn a lesson that will help you play better. Hell - the way HM is designed - you actually FORGET some of the stuff you learned (double activation speed means that skills that actively counter that are less useful!).
So what lessons should HM teach you (that you can't learn in NM) - that would justify keeping players outside of it?

I agree with upier. HM is neither hard nor challenging , and the only thing I learned is that weakness , daze and blind make vanquishing a piece of cake.

PvE difficulty-wise should be about the arithmetic middle between the top and bottom players AKA the average player , not making the game challenging for a minority. If A.net wants to challenge more experienced players the only thing to do is introduce new content , not make old content harder. Hard mode was in fact added to offer challenge to people who found NM too easy. The method used was not what people wanted however that is a different issue.

Over time anet reduced the difficulty of HM by adding more powerful options for players to take. Ursan being one of them. people these days just do HM for everything because there are no real noticable differences apart from DoA.

Wether or not anything is dumb, PuGs are retarded and all they believe is Tank>>>Nuke>>>Heal. In general, PUG = bottom half of the player population, because those who have found guildies and friends to play with don't want to PUG if they can help it. You might find one or two good players when PUGging, but I generally run along the notion of "They don't know what they're doing, or meant to be doing, at all."

And yeah. When you make something foolproof, fools get better at proving that it's not foolproof. Ah well.

In that case the problem is not Ursan. Nor any other cooky cutter build. In that case the problem is that some players for whatever reason don't play with a group of friends, or guildmates, or even solo, but instead rely on joining teams of players they don't know. And THEN they face the fact that in such groups Ursan is very popular. It has nothing to do with the build and the solution is obvious: Join a good Guild (its Guild-Wars isn't it?), or play with known friends or go solo. This is not nearly as simple as you make it seem. Even in the more active guilds, or even alliances, how often do you get 8 people (or 12, for the deep/urgoz) that all want to do the same thing at the same time? Undoubtedly you end up taking some heroes/hench, or PUGing part of the team, with mixed results. Combine this with people getting offended when you ask them to change something in their build that doesn't work well for the particular area, and you have a fun time making a team.

Teams that can be played well by heroes (such as sabway, though there are other good teams out there for pve as well) help alleviate the problem to some extent, but not completely. Some HM dungeons are extremely hard (to the point it's not even worth trying) even with such hero teams. Those that come to me off the top of my head are Rragar's and Arachni's. I've tried several non-ursan teams in each, and they either take so long (>2 hours) that they're not worth running, or too risky (opening a res shrine near a group of mobs, wiping, and then repeatedly dying at the shrine before you can do anything, and then returned to the town when team gets 60% DP).

However, I do think Pandora was dead right about something...Ursan is not the problem. In HM GW:EN, we have mobs that deal 200+ Dmg to caster classes in a single stroke, and bosses that deal nearly 400 with a single spell. Prot spirit you say? Wait, that gets ripped off (shatter enchantment anyone?). Ah, but wait, spell breaker or shadow form! Oh, soulrending shriek will take care of that--and have fun with the daze. Okay, so what about areas that don't have soulrending shriek, or enchantment removal? Prot spirit's effectiveness is still weakened. I've seen a group of two ooze multiply so much (into ~10 ooze), and then wipe the party in literally seconds with shockwave/earthquake/aftershock/crystal wave. Tried sabway on them? Oh, they have verata's aura. Monsters stats, skills, and builds have become so ridiculously meta-everything that Ursan is the only thing that works well in most HM areas, especially if you're going to PUG. People complain because ursan is the only way to go, and how overpowered ursan is, but that's not the cause of the problem, it's the effect.

I think, instead of changing ursan, anet should look at the ridiculous stats and "monster only" skills that so many mobs have, most notably in GW:EN. I'm fine with ursan being there for "the easy way" to do something, but at least give us a viable alternative to run classic builds, and not counter everything with a few monsters with insane monster-only skills and crazy stats.

Just my 2c.

This is not nearly as simple as you make it seem. Even in the more active guilds, or even alliances, how often do you get 8 people (or 12, for the deep/urgoz) that all want to do the same thing at the same time? Every day.

That is the definition of active guild.

If a PvP guild can find 8 players consistently for GvG then a PvE guild can find a full team. Smaller guilds even more so because they tend to have a core team set that play everything together anyway (meaning they are all at the same point in the game).

and to add. I personally faund arachni's and Rragars to be some of the easiest dungeons in HM using h/h.

Catacombs, frostmaws etc are harder with AI simply because of how they react to the types of foes there.

Although we are not making major PvE-related balance changes this time, we are working on a larger PvE-focused update. We are currently testing changes to Ursan Blessing and PvE-only skills.One of the goals is to balance Ursan such that players can still use it as long as they do so in a tactical way. Another goal is to alter the grind currently associated with many PvE-only skills. Additionally, we are adjusting a number of underpowered and rarely used elite skills. Depending on how testing goes, some or all of these changes may be released as soon as next month. seems like ursan will be getting a nerf in the future to me.