Possible SF change?

I understand people want to balance PvE, and one of the many skills that keep getting mentioned, is [Shadow Form]. Now for the longest time, I never wanted it to be nerfed, but only because When I use it, I use it in Team farms, and I always liked that an assassin was finally able to be in a team. Anything that promotes Team Play is good for me.

So I was thinking of a way to kill solo SF but still let assassins be the tank of a group, since every farm with team play I can remember revolves around a tank. Pet barrage using pets, well...cant think of any more atm but...yeah.

So how about we put it the way it was before it was energy difficult, but make it like this.

Please bear with me in that I forgot what the numbers were. And please no OMG GOOD THING UR NOT A BALANCER, cuz most likely, this won't happen. I am just trying to find a way to make team play still possible.

For X seconds, all hostile Spells that target you fail and all attacks against you miss, and have 6 health Degeneration and you deal 0% damage. Shadow form ends when you pick up or drop an item. When Shadow Form ends, or you recast it, you lose all but 5...41...50 Health.

Now I was thinking by making you deal no damage, a secondary source of damage is required somewhere.

By adding the degeneration, you are needed to A) bring more shadow refugee or something or B) bring a healer....I think....I don't know.

By adding the Item clause, it stops the popular festival item/gold item farm with a certain little dwarf. Although I think the damage to 0% would cause that anyways. I'm not sure, I wanted to be cautious.

By making the 'lose health' inevitable, you are REQUIRED to have a monk ready to heal when you recast, if there are dangerous things like death nova, like in VS farming.

Discuss...but do it nicely please XP

although it would be slow killing, solo-sins could still bring AOE degen builds since it doesn't count as "damage"

and why not just say "while under the effects of SF, you can not hold items"? a bit nicer verbage

good idea, but i'm sure people would still find ways to abuse it.

I`d say bad idea
Any aoe that hits your sin is bad enough but coupled with degen - major ouch
yes you could be bonded but every profession should be allowed to solo and this would hinder sins.
SF nerf has affected alot of other professions - e/a , a/me and me/a for example
Also its nice in a way to see sins being used in teams , i do recall the days where sins were laughed at if trying to get into a team and often they were reduced to being runners and even your idea will mean sins have lost their running capability - droks would be impossible etc.
Nerfing/buffing 1 single skill in any profession can affect all other professions - mystic regen nerf hit 55 mo/d ( but we used hb instead ) but killed a lot of others for ele,derv,war etc - so balancing is damn hard.

As for zero dmg - theres no other way to have dmg output - smite skills from monk fail due to sf as u wont get hit/take dmg and thats about it - you wont be able to do anything really.
picking item etc is bad - what happens if in uw or mission where theres no res shrine and party is wiped before y can pickup your green/gold/elite tome ..... end game and annoyed sin .

The little dwarf part - would kill the ability to help guildies with gaining norn rep easily and the run itself is slow and tedious as mass kills means less drops and even now it takes ages just to get a full bag.

I wonder what other sin users will say ( can guess what sin haters will say lol )

I guess I didn't describe it good enough. When i say item, I mean things like item spells, flags, torches, etc etc. A bundle item, not drops. Sorry about that.

Also, as shursh says, you still have your degen builds. And I also proposed to make it back to the non energy heavy version meaning the degen builds are possible. You'll just need to bring some sort of self heal or a monk hero to counteract the self degen.

You can still solo, but it will be on par with other farms.

Also about affecting other proffesions, I know, because I had a Me/A chest runner for RoF, but now i have to get my sin to ring of fire to do it. This proposed nerf won't affect any other proffesion's...as far as I know. Infact, me/a can be possible again if its back to the 'less energy heavy' nerf I think...I don't remember.

A/me is still able to run a perma SF now with arcane echo and a 20% echanting mod is needed and a 20 scr wouldn't hurt either. Mesmers have many skills that keep the energy flowing in your direction. Channeling and the many Mantra's come to mind.

LOL.


Balance promotes team play.

Not a few ridiculous skills that everybody has to make characters for.

Whether you will like to admit it or not, Perma's have promoted team builds, and only 1 member of the team is a perma, meaning not everyone needs to make one.

Please discuss the skill change.

As it is, you can still be perma sin. I stil do it. The change was more oriented to avoid other profesions to be permas.
The skill is fine the way it is.

Wouldnt the degen be kind of pointless since your health is going to drop anyway? And once it DOES drop, 6 degen with 50hp might turn out pretty bad o.o

Exactly! I am trying to make it where you almost NEED someone else to run this. So that its almost only wanted in Team builds.

I woud just change it to skill instead of spell and if you use stance it gets canceled eg. using dash.

i still think they just need to disable shadow form for 60 seconds or so instead of fooling around with the recharge and duration.

So you want to take a skill that is abused for farming purposes and turn it into a skill useless outside of farming? I rarely use a melee character on my teams unless a guild/alliance member is using one. Having someone 'tank' is not beneficial to my play style. When I use my melee characters, I do damage, not 'tank'. You want to force people to use Shadow Form as a farming tool, not as a potential use for things like running, survivability, and farming.

/unsigned

It needs to be changed, as it is abused, but this is far from a good way to change it. And look into UW Speed Clears for teams using only 1 perma.

It DOES need to be changed, but not in that way. In my opinion, they should make it a maintained enchant, but make it cost 30 energy and have a -2 upkeep (instead of the normal -1 upkeep) and disable it until you get a morale boost.

And what about...

Elite Enchantment Spell. For [color=green]5...19...23[/color] seconds, all hostile Spells that target you fail and all attacks against you miss, but you deal 25% less damage. Whenever you use a spell, chant, shout (...) skill while Shadow Form is in effect, it becomes disabled for additional [color=green]8...5...3[/color] seconds. When Shadow Form ends, lose all but [color=green]5...41...50[/color] Health.

The main idea - you are free to use whatever skills you like, but whenever you use a certain kind of skills (spell, chant, shout, maybe more) while SF is in effect, SF will recharge several seconds longer. One still can freely use stances, attack skills, signets etc, although more restricted skill types may be added. One can still be a runner, a tank and can participate in farming parties, but he won't be able to maintain SF permanently if he wants to cast attack spells (nuking, degen, etc).

It's just a quick idea. Feel free to try to fix it so it's a bit more usable or just unsign and forget.