Perma is the new PvE?

There's a simple solution to all this Perma nonsense:

Let the ghouls overrun Tenpenny Tower. After Roy Phillips gives you the ghoul mask; unequip your body armor and run around the wasteland in your underwear, wielding only a Shishkebab. Even the Deathclaws won't want a piece of that.

If you do anything with heroes in order to HM it is all sabway does this mean that SoLS and Soul Reaping need to be nerfed because in PvE a N/Rt is a better healer than a monk. We all take what we are given and use it how we choose and we deal with. No one forces you to use anything.

Sabway doesn't work against Deathclaws! You need the dart gun and a good rifle, like the Lincoln Repeater.

How can it be a cheat if ANET MADE THE SKILL? I'm sure anet knows something or two about the skills THEY make and change. They put the skills to make perma sf possible in game, all people did was figure out the puzzle.

This is what guildwars is all about, combining skills to create desired effects and running those builds to perfection, to whatever ends. Perma sf, while perhaps over-effective, still requires a limited amount of knowledge and practice. The point is that Anet makes the game, and unless you intentionally tamper with skills, you are NOT CHEATING.

The only skill that you can even begin to call a cheat is ursans blessing, because there was no combination of skills or skill knowledge or practice needed. However, thats not to say that every ursan group is/was pro. Many flat out failed.

And im sure its been said, you said "Just so somebody could farm...I have a job,..." Well, you start talking about someone else and then make it about you. The universe DOES NOT revolve around you. If you have a problem with something in game, AVOID IT. Its like an abortion, if you don't like them, dont have one. You have no right to affect other's lives based on your personal feelings.

That's how I played it the first time. First I convinced everyone to leave and let the ghouls in. I didn't like Roy Phillips attitude after the ghouls took over, so I killed him and all the rest of the ghouls. Then I looted the rooms. I didn't take over the Tenpenny Tower because I liked my place in Megaton.

The shishkebab was one of my favorite weapons. Nothing like it in GW.

The Lincoln Repeater is a wimpy weapon. Give me the A3 21 Plasma Rifle any day.

Just wanted to quote Ash for awesomeness. This is true.. this would make me happy.

You could always give PvP a shot, if all else fails.

I liked Shadow Form best when it was used for farming by an A/Me with Arcane Echo and Shadow of Haste. Retreat when it ends, not keep it up 100% of the time. When NF and GW:EN introduced new skills to allow to to be maintained constantly, it changed the game completely. I agree with the OP that this is a 'cheat' of sorts and should be addressed by Anet. Kinda sad when teams used to form for UW and FoW clears using Warriors, Monks, Elementalists, Necros, and Rangers, occassionally Dervishes, Ritualists, and Mesmers, and now it is exclusively for Assassin and Necro.

yay, another "QQ nerf this anet plz" thread


so, you want to pug elite areas ? that alone, sir, proves you fail at GW

pve pugs in elite areas = fail and/or ragequits 75% of the time (much less in fow or uw, but can they even be called elite anymore ?)


find a decent pve guild, or a pve friend list with a few people who share your point of view, and have fun

lel i blowed up megaton too lel

And the reason why elite areas can't be called elite anymore is.....


Ding Ding Ding

Because of SF, Cryway and the like!

People may not want to admit it (because it's all they can run without failing) but all gimmick skills do is kill the game.

Everything after the first post in this thread is retarded. Excluding this post.

Congratulations! You have started the 1,000,000th QQ about SF thread!

Uhhh...no. They keep people in the game. If people could only complete those areas with guild teams or pugs, they'd be dead. I.E. Deep and Urgoz...next to impossible to pug those areas without running cryway with permas, so before cryway became big, they were dead areas. Deep less so because of the steel wall build but even that wasn't popular unless you were in a guild or on someone's friend's list. Now you can actually go there, pug a group and get the chest. Nerf SF and you'll see it dead again. UW before ursan and speed clear: 55/ss or 600/smite farming. Or trap farming. Or pug failures in Normal mode. FoW was the same plus guild group.

Nerfing builds that allow casual players to have fun in high-end areas and actually complete them is what's killing GW. People want fast, easy ways of doing things and reaping the rewards. If you take away all fast ways of completing things, you're forcing them to spend frustrating hours to maybe complete something, so they're not going to do it. They're going to move on to other games. Only the hardcore dedicated GW players will stick it out and join guilds that complete these areas balanced.

I just think people who want to see SF removed are just people who don't like using it, or can't be asked to pay attention longer than 20 seconds in order to use it, and are pissed that people who do/can are reaping the benefits. They can't partake so they want to ruin everyone else's chances. "Zomg how do you get all that phat lewt!?!?!? Aww, that's boring, so I don't do it. Wow, this is unfair, you get so much more than I do, NERF NERF NERF!"

I find it hard to believe that all the people screaming for the removal of perma SF are doing it out of a sense of nobility. Even if they are...why? How does my using perma SF to farm my own titles hurt you? If you're going to hurt people like me who don't directly profit from my farming (I spend/use what I farm, I don't sell it except to the merchants), just to get rid of the people farming strictly for profit(ecto sellers, unid sellers, consumable item sellers) just because they're turning a bigger profit than you are...phht. Hell, powertraders make 234098092834x more profit for the time spent if they're good...how about nerfing the trade system?

That's a load of shit, pve rewards are basically free now and the feeling of accomplishing anything in this game has been negated by these easy mode farm builds, you say people like you don't feel like spending hours doing redundant things., why on earth did you purchase an MMO?

This game is raeped now and the HoM is a joke, I can't look at someones huge filled HoM without thinking "big whoop you power farmed all of this yay"

If this crap flies in GW2 than forget it.

Not at all. There have already been numerous threads discussing this situation. The problem is that with the introduction of PvE-only skills the community has become even more lazy then before. We have tons of OP builds at our disposal and even a nice site, pvxwiki.com to find them at! Urgoz, The Deep, DoA, etc were all called 'elite' missions for a reason. They were supposed to be tough, they were supposed to take a long time to do, etc. I don't understand why you think all the elite missions should be frolicking with bad players using OP builds?

When Guild Wars first came out Anet promoted Skill over Time. That was good for a while. Then Anet decided to make Time over Skill with the introduction of grind! And finally Anet just decided to throw away Skill and reduce Time.

The point being, everyone and there moms these days can do the HM areas succesfully. While that's well and good I highly doubt that your mom has ever played guild wars before - and that's a problem. When someone who has never or barely played a game can complete an elite area just as fast, if not faster than those who have been playing and perfecting their skills for countless hours - there's a major problem. Forget arguments about how without PvE skills and such the game would be dead. If anything, PvE skills were the ones that killed it.

If you don't want to use the easy builds, don't use them. Get groups together to run your slow, hard ways. NObody is hurting you at all by playing their own way in these "elite" areas. What, are they making your efforts meaningless? Nobody cares how you play your game, except you. Leave others alone if they want to play a certain way.

Skill>time. Exactly. Casual players are their target. You don't have to spend hours at a time playing GW to achieve something. Before these gimmick builds, which were created BY THE PLAYERBASE I'll hve you know, only non-casual hardcore no-lifer gamers could sit down and actually complete UW or FoW or DoA.

If you want the prestige of not running a gimmick build....don't run it. Finish it without the gimmick. Do it faster. Screenshot the achievement. Post it on guru. Revel in your internet Fame. Nobody is preventing you from doing that but yourself.

Your posts are nothing more than "wah, I did this and I didn't use a gimmick but you can do it faster than me waaaaaaah!" You know what you did, You know how you did it, that's all that matters.

And I'll say this as well: people who run record times using these gimmick builds consistently have more skill than the general playerbase of GW. Because it takes coordination, teamwork, timing, knowledge of the area being completed, and knowledge of your skill bar. You can't just toss on a pvx skill bar, go in and finish in a record time. You hear about all these 10 minute UW clears, but what you don't hear about are the runs with noobs taking 45 minutes to an hour with multiple consets, or not being completed at all because of noobs not knowing wtf they're supposed to do with their PVX build.

Skill>Time only works when skill is involved. GW PvE has no skill anymore. To say that only hardcore no-lifer gamers could sit down and complete UW, FoW, or DoA is a joke. You've clearly underestimated the stupidity of the PvE community. If you need examples go find old mallyx threads.

The whole idea of 'omgzor u duntz has2use da builds if'n u dunt wunt 22222!!!' is completely retarded. I don't use them because I don't go for the fastest times or speedruns. It's still possible to do all the areas in a reasonable time without them - but if you ARE going for speed runs or PUGing, you need to use them. Being a necessity for a PUG is a huge problem. Running the exact same builds everywhere because they are that OP only encourages lack of skillful play. See 'guilds that declare themselves good' for examples of such.

kk I have done my share of whining on the state of god nerfs, SF,Ursan etc. Mostly because my mesmer can't solo very well (duh) without SF. My argument is the same, Pugs for pugs sake is dead, has been dead, will be dead. This is how people fill their HOM. Now that SF is a sin only skill and UW has been nerfed to the point that a normal clear will fail Anet will certainly finish nerfing shadow form. I find this laughable as the most abused farming skill in the game is protective spirit. Most everybody who qq's about these other skills has used a 600 or 55 monk. Go figure. Let everyone play the game as they wish. Anet doesn't want a 1 class only area so don't worry about SF, it dies in feb update at the latest. As for the next godway? It will come, there are not a lot of developers but still a lot of players. Someone will figure out a new godway and everyone will copy it, and whining will begin again. PVE is solo play, let it go folks.

- Sign of a good game: it doesn't matter what part you play, if the gameplay remains interesting and fun. I've never understood why some people like repetitive gameplay. When next level is beyond slaying the same boss thirty times, I just conclude the game finished. Yeah, so you could get +5 damage for what purpose? Perhaps to slay the same boss you've been slaying for tiny bit less round time? No thank you.

I like how you take my claims and put them in tard-speak like you're associating me with internet elitists. I'm not 12 years old. I don't have all day to play this game sometimes. "If you ARE going for speed runs or puging, you need to use them." Exactly my point. What's so hard to understand here? Speed runs are speed runs precisely because of the speed involved and the builds required to make them fast. Pugs use easy builds because they work more often than balanced builds. You're not so dependent on every player in the group..in a balanced team, if someone leaves, your group is crippled. Less healing, less damage, less utility, and when someone leaves a balanced team, that's the end of the run, because people lose their momentum and rage. If someone rages in a cryway team, life goes on, but just a little slower. People leave PUGs all the time. If it cripples the group, it makes that group unlikely to group up with that team build again. That's just how it is. If you want to play balanced, you need dedicated players, and you just can't guarantee that in a pug. Facts of life. If they nerf SF, UW will be all normal mode clears or duo farming. You won't find HM pugs, and if you do they won't succeed. UW will die, ectos will jump back up in price so the casual players can't obtain them anymore, and we'll be back to square one. The only people who win there are the farmers, power traders, and hardcore gamers. Casual players...buh bye.

Alright, if read the first post, and then scanned through a lot of other ones, this one is only one that reaallly yelled "Make some random thing about this..."

ANet can go around nerfing those skills into a bloody pulp, but then, players actually would require skill *gasp* SKILL? in the Present Day guild wars?? Sadly, with the SF Buff/nerf/rebuff/slightnerf, this makes things difficult. ANet can't just go nerfing SB, SY!, Obby Flesh (btw, wth is this skill doing in this list, barely used anymore!) and TNtF! nerfing these skills (except flesh) would make a lot of people angry, which ANET wouldn't like. Simply, Kronos couldnt take down all the gods in one game.

SF/cryway is fine, if you like that one shot one kill thing. This style of play is like taking an orange, and squeezing out all the juice in the sink. I would rather like the "oldschool" Obbyflesh tanks, defy pain tanks, etc. If SF was to be changed, it should be like an assassin version of Mist form, cant do damage, dont take damage. Makes it more of a tanking skill, (with this, Sliver would NOT work, Perma Scythe, etc). Tanking w/ an SF would be fine.

(Nerfing Cryway and SF, will make the game require a little more skill and make it more fun imo )

quote war go

If you don't want me to do that then stop writing dumb statements

Do you spot the problem? Speed runs are generally associated with risky builds and skillful play so that they can complete the mission in the fastest time. Pugs are generally known for running lots of defense to compensate for player skill, and thus taking longer to do missions - but still completing them. When the two overlap and you have pugs using speedrun builds and doing missions in fast times - you have a problem

What? With balance even if you lose 1 player you can continue to play. I don't know what kind of builds you consider balance but whatever. That doesn't mean everyone doesn't have an important or vital role in a balanced group. In cryway the vital roles are duplicated x4 or 5, making them expendable. Both groups are just as likely to rage quit in a PUG. If a monk is gone both will probably quit. A midline player for balanced is roughly the equivalent of cry'rs. So I'm not sure why you say that people in balanced are all more likely to rage quit. Losing 1-2 people on both teams will hurt them but it won't be the end of the world for either.

See above regarding people leaving groups. Ideally, balanced should be able to be run successfully in PUGS. Anet provided tons of useful, good, but not OP skills before PvE skills came out. The PvE community had it's head to far up it's on ass to realize that and continued to pump out gimmicks. If this wasn't the case you'd be seeing a completely different side of PvE pugs these days. Once again, see old mallyx threads for examples.

No. The community will just go back to tank'n'spank for pugs, which isn't much better but at least than speedclear builds aren't overlapping with pugs.

/me feeds the qq troll on perma form

All I can say is when it takes a PUG group less than half an hour to complete an "elite" area there's something wrong with the game.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Why?

Do we actually have a caste system in place here where the lowly under-class is forbidden to set foot in certain areas lest they attract the ire of the elite class?

...Do you even play Guild Wars? Just asking.

No, but that doesn't mean completion should be given to them on a silver platter either.

When there's no challenge in what's supposed to be an elite area within the game it makes you wonder why everyone is left feeling that they want something more.

What if the NBA tailored their rules so that 5th graders could compete and win against professional NBA teams.

Seems pretty ridiculous right?

Well that's what Anet did with Guild Wars PvE.

Apparently the lowly proles not in 1337 guilds need to stick to their bergen farming where they belong. :\

As far as the NBA analogy goes...lol. Seriously, I lol'd. Because the only way that analogy works is if the NBA started training said 5th graders to play at the same level as the NBA pros.

If a 5th grader could play as well as an NBA pro, why not allow them to play?

It's not Anet's fault that the playerbase felt the need to create these gimmick builds. If anything, talk to the players posting these gimmick builds to PVX for the whole world to see, resulting in their overpopularity and subsequent nerfing by Anet catering to the vocal minority bitching and moaning because their elite achievements in the game were somehow lessened by the less-worthy pugs completing the same things in less time.

Here's a thought: maybe some of these players running these gimmick builds have been playing this game from the beginning, have the ability to create their own builds and run them effectively, but frankly don't care to?

I'll say it one more time: IT'S NOT HURTING YOU. Not in any way, shape or form. SF farming, UW farming, etc etc has been around for a long long long time. Ectos are stable. If you want to complain about items being cheapened by overfarming, point in the right direction: Zkeys and MAT predictions. People with multiple free/cheap accounts get hundreds of keys per month. With these keys they have the opportunity to get high priced rare items from the zchest. These items can be sold for more zkeys, thus more items....etc, and these items drop in value because of the saturation of the market. Talk to 600/smite farmers running dungeons for the high-dollar rare skins, also saturating the market. SF did/does very little in the way of the GW economy, because the things that SF can farm are stable in price regardless. Anguish gemstones, ectos, obsi shards(have been climbing), gold unid's, and event drops. The only things that dropped in value are the non-stackable golds and rare skins because they don't have the bulk ever-renewing demand of ectos, shards, anguish gems, gold unid's, and event consumables.

Seriously...get off your high horse and understand that SF isn't hurting anything, so there's really no point to QQ'ing about its existence, other than your inability to find a decent pug. lol

Wonderful, another thread of kids yelling 'IM NOT TOUCHING YOUUUUUUUU' to support invincibility in a tactical game.

What a fine Christmas present.

Nowhere did he impose upon this very thread that one should not be allowed to enter an area whatsoever. He merely brought up the statement that when people can clear areas given the title, "elite", within a time span of thirty minutes and taking use of such a low skill level, a problem emitting there is.

You need to realize that alot of the people playing GW don't give a shit about your "supposed" fun. In truth, people care about getting the rarest weapons as fast as possible, which is why the voltic spear gone from rare to bullshit in such a short amount of time. People try everything they can to get the items they want with the least amount of effort, they don't give a dam to as they are having fun or are slaves of the game.
(Sometimes the problem can be solved if you are in a well organized guild with active people. But in general, if you want to play in an elite area, 9 chances out of 10 is that you are gonna have to play a farming build.)

I do agree with you, but Anet shouldn't go as far as to nerf SF completely, but to reduce the time so that even with deadly paradox, glphy of swiftness and the such, there will always be a 10 second gap between SF becomed ended and SF recharged. This way, SF is still useable, but the 10 second gap requires people to use their brains, instead of acting like living slaves of the game.

If you guys are so pissed off at stupid brainless pugs join or form a knowledgable and dedicated guild/alliance to avoid pugs all together... Also about SF... Why is there so much hate? It's a skill that can benefit your group in pve... I don't see any monsters permaing! Bottom line, if you want to avoid stupid ppl that can only play in cryway groups join a guild and cmon SF is a skill that will benefit your team!!! Now stop fighting!!!!!!

Yes it is, it was Anet that updated skills to make Shadow Form maintainable in the first place. Had they of not done so then players wouldn't have created said gimmick builds.

It's amusing how the once hated Assassin seems to be a requirement for playing just about any elite area these days via perma Shadow Form. If you think there's nothing wrong with that then I suggest you go and learn what game balance is.

The fact here is that builds such as these have killed any sort of accomplishment that could have been gained from completing what is supposed to be a challenging and hard area to beat. I remember once when I could say "Wow, completing Underworld last night was a real accomplishment for us" nowadays it is nothing more than a notch on the bedpost in the Hall of Monuments and has killed any point to these so called elite areas existing in the first place.

You really think an "Elite" area should be so easy to complete by a random group of people? It's not even teamwork, its just a bunch of people running about soloing stuff with invinciblity. I'm in a guild that does FoW and UW often, and can quite easily avoid PuG's, but you're missing the point entirely.

Low level skill? What is a low level skill, the "elite skill" shadow form?

There is no "low level skill" unless you're talking about mending or healsig. It's how you use it. If you take advantage of game mechanics to profit, that's just how it is. Perma-shadow form is no different from a 55 monk or 600/smite duo. They're all effective in specific areas and are both just as fragile, Shadow Form is actually more fragile than 600/smite because it's one spell that needs two other skills to maintain and really has no cover. 600/smite is a bunch of enchantments that work together but you can survive if one of them drops, for at least one or two hits depending on the enemy you're fighting. Each has its downsides...daze and enchant removal for the 600 and PBAoE, enchant removal, touch skills, traps for the perma. Both require near-constant attention to survive.

The only difference is Perma SF doesn't require a second player/character to be effective. A 600 monk can survive forever against the mobs it's designed for, but needs the smiter to kill anything. Now, SF permas can kill things solo but not easily anymore, requiring consumables.

It's funny how people who are usually claiming "lol pve, c-space with heroes and it's done" are now claiming that these builds are removing all skill from PvE elite areas. Irony.

I'll say it again: it was the players' choice to use these gimmicks. You can't argue with that. If it's hard to find a group doing what you want to do how you want to do it, obviously you're in the minority. How hard is this to understand? Why, if more people want to use the gimmicks, should those gimmicks be nerfed? This game is all about the loot now. It's undeniable. That's why the only replayability in this game stems from farming for titles and getting the rare skins/expensive armor/rare minis/tonics. People want to remove the grind necessary to obtain these items, so they choose the fastest methods...enter gimmick builds.

This entire thread is a QQ-fest because you can't PUG shit anymore. My god...get over it and join a guild, and put it to rest. If you care about prestige of completing an elite area and having the bragging rights...you really need to get out more. It's a game. Games are meant to be fun. It's no fun when you have to form a group for a half hour to half-ass your way to a completion of an elite area. Which is the case if you don't run a guild group.

It's funny you should say that because I dislike the addition of heroes aswell.

To answers the OP's question: Perma is the new PvE?

This is the answer: No.

The problem with players is, they only want to do what other players are doing. hence everyone flock to the end game "elite" dungeons farming for the exact same thing, thinking it will be so cool when they finally have the gear, and all the while doing that, they come to the forum and cry "WHY DOES ANET MAKE US GRIND" we want skill > time, we do not want to have to grind for "elite gear" like most other mmorpg, but they are doing it and doing it and continue doing it....