nerfing shadow form without killing it

/not signed.
Shadow Form is fine as is.

Who would use Shadow Form as an offensive skill with the massive health loss?

Reduce the activation time, remove the health loss and let it end prematurely if another (offensive) skill is activated. This would turn this skill into a defensive one, like it was supposed to be (right?).

But to be honest, I don’t care.

SF is an AWESOME skill even WITHOUT the ability to perma it, and without perma it still has a ton of uses

The only good way to fix it is removing the ability to maintain it permanently, for example by:

-Changing it to a FORM instead of Spell/Enchantment (no Arcane Echo)
-Making it DISABLE itself for a given amount of time, for example 45 seconds. No faster recharge skills should change that.
-Lenghten it's duration to make up for the loss of +20% Longer Enchantments.
-Optional: Make it so you lose only HALF of health when SF ends instead of dropping to ~40.
-Optional: Remove the -33%dmg, but I'd rather keep it.

The skill would be still viable in A LOT of farming and running applications, it just wouldn't be an Uber God Mode which is beyond imba.
Nonperma SF is also Much more FUN to play - I use it all the time for years, in a lot of different places so I know that.

2006 original functionality but make it a skill instead of a spell = no more perma = no more obnoxious whining about sf.

Then we can see even more people leave gw because face it, what is there left to do but farm cash to pay for grinding titles or play in a dead and rotting pvp environment?

Shadow form. Up the duration a few seconds, take away the 33% less damage, and add one thing that will solve most of the SF abuse:

While Shadow Form is up, you cannot cast enchantments.
Just like shadow walk. Annnnnnnnd, done.

This is a simple matter of the way the game was designed to played. Professions were made to be mixed and played together, in balanced team builds (or with henchmen/heroes) It is for this reason that they made professions so that they could not over-tank, or over-heal/buff themselves. That they would have to help other team mates by buffing them, or taking/dealing damage while being buffed. When PvE was balanced in the first years of GuildWars, things were fine. Fissure of Woe and Underworld were still elite areas, which I do no think they should be considered that anymore. And ectoplasm prices would hover between 8-10K.

We saw this change when ArenaNet added new gameplay choices to the game. We saw ectoplasm prices drop an extreme amount when the new 'Ursan Meta' came into play and balanced teams were impossible to find. That was near destroyed and things remained stable for a short period of time. But then Shadow Form when combined with several other skills becomes a super skill and one profession is pulled into the meta. Ectoplasm prices have again dropped a severe amount and once elite skins have been diminished into nothing.

Does anyone remember when a perfect Elemental Sword was 100K +x amount of ectoplasm? I do, but that was all turned to ash. ArenaNet needs to configure some way to destroy this new Superman meta build and balance it out. I'm not going to spend time developing theories that will be rejected, but I am saying this needs to be done. I want a balanced PvE to return to GuildWars, a game were earning money took commitment and teamwork with other members. With such a powerful build this can not be done.

Well, I always though that Forms are a Dervish specialty.
but if they change it to a Form, I won't mind as long as they change the appearance of the character when that happens, to something like a Nightmare version of the character. (I know how you dye Anet, and I know that you can dye a whole model black that way!)
Assassins were going to have Traps, ritualists got spirits, assassins also got the maintained enchantments, paragons got a lot of shouts...

The skill intended behavior sounds quite like Forms. A HUGE advantage for some time, and then becomes useless for quite some more time.

So now I think that the Form way could be the way:

Elite Form. For 5...18...21 seconds, all hostile Spells that target you fail, all attacks against you miss, and you deal Dark Damage. This Skill is disabled for 120 seconds.

The huge recharge against the low duration would certainly ensure the skill is wisely used when the time is right, and the dark damage ignoring special armor bonuses (vs elements, vs phsycal) but not full armor bonuses(i.e. Dolyak signet) will compensate to make it a skill to 'go for a kill', and instead a skill to spamm as much as possible with the aid of echo and copy ally spells.

But I'm certainly against change in skill type to Form if the skill doesn't change appearance. It is enough having the Norn blessings being Forms when they do not turn you into an animal (Yeah, Norn may turn into Nornbear, but that doesn't mean a human can't turn into a bear).

/Agree with this

Also /Agree with this.

Current:
Full: For 5...18 seconds, all hostile spells that target you fail and all attacks against you miss, but you deal 33% less damage. When Shadow Form ends, lose all but 5...41 Health.

Maybe in Future:
Full: For 8...18 seconds, all hostile skills that target you fail and all attacks against you miss, but you cannot deal any damage. When Shadow Form ends, lose all but 50% Health.

Concise: Viable Tank. End of UWSC and Keg Dropping. Learn to play GW in other ways.

for all you [shadow form] lovers, a little food for your thought:
why should a single skill, be it elite or not, make all other skills meant for the same purpose obselete?
in this case we're talking about [shadow form] and farming, why would you: 55, 130, 330, VwK Warrior, Glads Def Warrior, R/E spider farmer, etc when you have [shadow form]?
why on earth should Assassins be godly with this stupid skill and make all other professions obselete as far as farming, and even regular PvE if you insist, goes?
why on earth do we need actual GOD MODE? as if PvE and farming are not easy enough already...
why did ANet nerf Ursan, only to buff [shadow form] to its ridiculous form now? Ursan at least required an entire party... :\

so well, [shadow form] is NOT fine, and it has nothing to do with the economy and all other crap you guys are trying to defend against. it's simply got to do with freakin' ridiculous GOD MODE!!!

Nah, no damage won't do.

Imagine shadow form as a way to get behind enemy lines holding the damage untill your job is done, and then receiving it in one hit.

Hey. That could be one way. It could stop making the attacks and spells fail, but 'save' the damage for later, with a minimum of 1 Health kept.
No one attacks you, you don't lose health. Enemies spike you, when the skill ends, you may be one hit away from death.

Assassins are not tanks, they are killers. They work to move to a target and deliver a death blow at all costs. Some times regardless of the consequences.

This wins the Thread, hands down. Why? Because it is the truth, and possibly the best reason that SF needs an overhaul. Not because people have gotten rich off of it (people got rich off of 55hp Monks and SS Necros way before Factions ever saw the light of day), but because if ANet wants there to be any semblance (yeah, I know, laugh, I'm shaking my head as I type this) of balance in this game, they have to fix their screw-up. SF allows players to ignore all but a few skills for however long they choose to maintain it. That's far to broken to be allowed to stay. They did it for Ursan, they can (and should) do it for SF.

I agree with the post above mine. Good idea. Nice explanation for the loss of HP @ the end of the skill. Makes sense, unlike the hordes of bitching from the "Don't Change my SF" camp across the way...

Hmm. I could actually envision this, but, I still think it should not be an enchantment, just for the sake of length.

Shadow Form (Elite Form): Teleport to target foe's location. For 8...18 seconds you cannot cast enchantments, but receive no damage/conditions/hexes. When this form ends, you return to your original location and any damage/conditions/hexes that were previously negated are applied.

No, its not. Its the biggest problem in PvE.

Kill it.

For 1..1...2 (15 spec) seconds this skill does nothing. When it ends, you lose all but 1..1..2 (15 spec) health. This skill is disabled for 60 seconds.

Fix'd

12 chars.

Don't completely change functionality, don't make it a teleport skill or remove damage completely. The biggest problem is it's maintainability. Sins shouldn't be godlike tanks but this skills purpose should be a quick stealth attack and retreat or just moving through a few groups of enemies to a safe place, untouchable for a moment like a shadow.

Because abusing a stupidly overpowered skill is being good at the game?

you got it backwards, why should monks, warriors, rits, eles, dervs, necroes, mesmers, and rangers have all the viable farming PvE Invincibuilds, yet assassins get crap for farming.

IMO, nerf all farming, all of it, properly balance PvE mobs so that they have diverse and well thought out skills that challenge the player, every mob should have enchant stripping, decent healing, skills that go through blocking and ignore armor, the second, the instant, the moment something is discovered to have a flaw that makes it soloable, plug the hole in their defense. Every PvE mob should be like a compact GvG/HA team. Improve their AI to so if they see traps they send guy in protected to trip them while the others hang back, that if they get body blocked they'll try and run around the obstruction, give them all res sigs ect.

Nerf all the "lawlz I am invincible" skills(prot spirit, spirit bond, obsidian flesh, ect), make it so grouping up with players or a full diverse party of heroes is the actual only viable way to beat a zone.

Then make the quest rewards and drops worth that time and effort, No more of this YAY I beat a FOW quest I got 5-10k xp.... in a game where the level cap is 140k... Give them a decent gold or item reward, buff the drops from chests(if I get another R13 common skin offhand with imperfect mods from a chest in hard mode I'ma put my fist through a wall...) buff the drops from monsters, make it worthwhile to take the time and effort to play the game "correctly" then it won't be worth it to use stuff like SF, then we're on our way.

Literally [Shadow Form] is the least in a long line of farming junk and gimmick builds that's been going on from day 1. They had the right idea when they put the phantoms with signets in the UW, dunno why they moved them.

That, ftw...

Either nerf everything, or nothing at all...

'Scuse me, but I can only think of 55 and 600 Monks (which I am also against), 105 Dervs (which I don't even know if they exist anymore), Obby Flesh eles (which also may not exist anymore) and VwK rits (which can only be used in like, 2 areas and they don't even yield good drops)

In your "perfect PvE scenario" the only reasonable farming build will be SF, and every monster would either have 12 skills, or every mob IN THE ENTIRE GAME would have the same skills

Either way, it's a bad idea

Umm... I'm assuming you're bad at the game, so I'm going to try to lay this out for you. If you nerf prot spirit and spirit bond, you destroy legit prot monks. Those are 2 of the most key skills in the game for that character, so they would virtually cease to exist and PvP would cease to be anything but paraspike

Why is this needed when XHT gives you a free 100k every month for just entering your e-mail address basically? The only skins that are actually expensive anymore are ultra-rares (i.e. frog scepter, BDS, etc)

SF is actually the first in a relatively short line of farming junk. There's potentially 6-8 invinci-farming builds, and all of them require at least some kind of awareness as to what you're doing besides SF, "Guyz, epic lulz, I just pressed my "1" key and I am invincible forever!!! I'm so gud at the game!"

Yeah... no.

Ummmm... the classic, first version of UWSC included Obsidian Flesh Earth tanks and like, what, 1-2 Perma-Sins? To speed it up, the Obby crawl Eles have been replaced with Perma-Shadow versions of whatever. If UWSC is the problem then nerfing Shadow Form will slightly slow it down and groups will replace Assassins with Eles... AGAIN.

Everything that Assassins can do, something else can do similarly and either slower or with slightly more difficulty. Wow. Gonna kill a profession's farming options to slow UWSC from 20-25 minutes? Yeah, good idea. Then the community will bitch and moan endlessly about 600s, Obsidian Flesh, Mist Form, whatever. Oh wait, no they won't, because everyone already has a Monk or Ele so there won't be complaints about just making the new build.

If there is any fix necessary, revert to ORIGINAL functionality. Maintainable with A/Me perma only, able to farm reasonably but without the single-target killing power of Sliver Armor can't do bosses or some of the farms with any heals involved. Plus, 99.99999% of the community is retarded and doesn't know it can (or could ever be) maintained with A/Me, so they'll probably just give up because they can't formulate independent thought. Hell, even keep the damage reduction if it's that much of a freaking issue.