nerfing shadow form without killing it

its not the biggest problem in PvE.
The biggest problem in PvE is PvE itself. The game is 4 years old no new content for some this is the only fun (you may not think its fun but alot do. and from my personal experience its mostly people on guru that want it nerfed because most of guru are full of elitist pricks that think theyre gods gift to the gaming world.) some have. Its not game breaking. If you dont like it dont use it. I kinda get tired of every day seeing a new thread about someone wanting to dictate how others play.

Turn it into a stance.

/devastated

Because pressing 123 for God Mode does make you good at this game...right...

Something must be done about SF dominating every aspect of PvE where you need to group with real people.

I have gotten about 1 1/2 pages through this, and all i have to say is

1) QQ about it now, doesnt help, it makes people angry and it raises peoples blood pressure... which is life threatening. =P

2) I like the idea about you take all the damage as the skill ends... that would be cool.

3) OR make it like mistform + Spell Breaker + VoW of Silence, great for running, not really maintainable, and yet a very good viable tanking skill... (uwsc would be nerfed though... oh QQ )

No one cares about being good at this game anymore . Its all about shiny weapons and titles duh.

That's the problem right there. Real people are stupid, slow and inexperienced. Real people like to argue with you for 2 hours why their Dolyak Signet Tank build is awesome and all the other physicals in the party should just hang back and let them tank. Standardised builds = less rage while forming up.

The standard counter to that, of course, is "go with guild/ally team lolnoob" to which I would say you can do that yourself right now. So go have fun with your guildies and leave the rest of us who are forced to pug in peace.

To talk about nurfing the skill, you must answer the quesiton why the skill needs to be nurfed.

Do you want to just slow down UWSC? IF so, it does not need to be killed, just slowed down drastically. I would say just change the functionality to include 50% speed and attack reduction. Alternatively, you could have deadly paradox recharge all non-sin skills as well as sin attacks.

If you just hate the idea of relative invulnerability, give more monsters PBAOE skills, or skills that drop enchantments.

If you just want perma to die, revert it to what it was but bump the recharge up higher.

I would hate for Perma to be completely destroyed - Urgoz, which takes about 30-45 min now in HM, would again become a 3 hour trap fest with very little reward. Not that any more than 15 people play it at any given time (needs bigger bonus).

Why to nerf? Simple:

-Permanent God Mode is a broken game mechanic which just should not exist, or it will continue to be abused wherever are the best rewards... it can be used almost anywhere, UWSC is just a tip of the iceberg. It also threatens any new content that may appear or get revived, it may just turn into just another degenerate SF farmfest.

And Urgoz... needs just an Elite reward, standard average rewards are ok, but it needs some of the 'Mini Polar Bear' approach - possibility for Uber Rare and Uber-valuable drops worthy of an Elite zone.

I like Mithran's suggestion of making it an actual Form skill with an appearance change - it both has coolness factor and provides a subtle nerf when used against human opposition (whether by the computer in the case of Afflicted Assassins or in PvE) by making it obvious when it's active.

Mist Form could do something similar, except using the transparent 'ghostly' skin instead. Obsidian Flesh would also be an interesting one to convert, but that would take a little more effort in changing the textures. (But wouldn't it be nice if buffs and debuffs could be identified by changes to the recipient's appearance? Maybe for GW2...)

Regarding SF: Making it harder to maintain, which is what ANet has mostly tried doing, doesn't work. It just ups the barrier to entry. In order to fix it, it needs to be made either non-maintainable, or the speed has to be reduced.

The effect of non-maintanable on Assassin farming and speedclear groups is obvious. For PvE, I'd be inclined to either reduce or entirely remove the health loss at the end - ending up with 50-odd health when the enchantment expires or is stripped is just too much of a risk outside of gimmicks. Without such a harsh end effect, it would make a quite decent defensive skill even if not maintainable.

Making it 'slower' is basically a case of dropping damage output possible when it is used. This fits the concept of the skill - the idea behind Shadow Form seems to be that the Assassin becomes incorporeal, and thus shouldn't really be dishing that much damage out in return. Furthermore, it does also fit the concept of the Assassin. The Assassin's job is to get in, kill quickly, and escape - the role of Shadow Form, then, would be in ensuring the escape part works according to plan. This could be direct - increasing the damage output penalty when it is used - or indirect as was previously suggested about making it only possible for A/Mes. There's nothing wrong with the current build still working, if it's slowed down to a similar speed as other UW team builds.

Another way to look at this could be to bring the permasins to a similar level as the invincimonks - unkillable as long as the player doesn't make a mistake, but much more efficient if combined with an offsider to dish out damage.

Its entirely game breaking.

Man, what was I thinking, I'm clearly an elitist prick because I can recognize a broken skill when I see it.

Any skill that allows you faceroll anything is not good. The "If you don't like it don't use it" argument has been shot down several times. The skill itself is the problem, not the people using it. If you honestly have fun pressing skills 123 123 123 123 123 123 123 while watching RoJ burn the shit out of everything, you are easily amused. That got old after about 10 seconds.

And so did Ursan.
You want fun and balanced PvE? Take away PvE skills, cons, and everything else that unbalances it.

LOL, you can't be serious... Sorry mr. puebert, but please explain to me how many people will be willing to do a 5 hr foundry again, or ~12hr full DOA clear if Perma is nerfed? perma gives us the chance to do stuff that would have normally taken us hours to do that can now be done in usually <1hr. It's just after 4 years, people start asking "why the hell should spend 3hrs in UW while powertraders are making 1000's of ectos trading stupid rare minis in a matter of hours?"

Nerfing perma would eliminate most if not all SC groups, and then what? You'll have your definition of a "fun" PVE, yet no one except for a small group of friends would ever be willing to play with you. Why? Because not many people would like to hear:
guildie: Hey you forming for UW?
you: Yeah, we're doing it balanced way
guildie: how long?
you: well it'll be ~2-3hrs but it'll be fun
guildie: No thanks, I'd rather /uninstall, don't got 3 hrs of my life to waste for ~2 ectos & HM end chest.

Perma is the only thing keeping elite areas alive. How long before players start /uninstalling or leaving elite areas altogether because honestly...people just don't find the same excitement in Deep/Urgoz/FoW/UW/DoA after literally doing it 100+ times. Here's something to put it into perspective: You love biology. Your bio teacher assigns you 2+hrs of HW a night. The first few days you love doing the homework, but after 100+ days...how much longer can you be interested? Then let's say the teacher will do the notes for you and all you have to do is study them for the test. You get the same results on the test, yet through the teacher-note method, you've cut 2hrs down to 20 mins; which method would you prefer?

I don't have ANY problems with Shadow Form. What I do have a problem with is the ability to maintain it permanently. The best idea I have seen so far is to change it from an enchantment to a skill. This would prevent skills lile Glyph of Swiftness and Arcane Echo from working with it. Or, if anything, change it so Glyph of Swiftness only works on Elementalist spells, or the Deadly Paradox won't work with any ELITE skills(?).

Shadow Form is fine as it is, the problem is being able to maintain it all the time. I'd rather not see skills like Deadly Paradox and Glyph of Swiftness get nerfed, but it really should be fixed.

Before various builds were introduced (Perma, Cryway, RoJway, etc.) you could find PUGs for elite areas like UW, FoW, Slavers, The Deep, Urgoz, and DoA. Now, you can only find farming groups who don't do the quest, require specific builds/classes, or you have to wait for guild/alliance. Getting rid of the 'gimmick' builds would force people to use the 'normal' builds. This would allow PUGs to start popping up again, and other classes to get into teams. Would it fix everything? Nope, but it would help most things in my opinion.

It ISNT game breaking.
These PvE skills and "gimmick" builds like SF/RoJ is seriously the only thing that keeps people grouping together. If it wasnt for these then people would just stick to H/H since they are a hell of alot better players thn most human players.
I personally rarely use SF myself only time I do is when running dungeons for cash. But these are dungeons ive already completed normally. Who are you to tell me I can't run these dungeons anymore? No one thats who. People need to stop trying to dictate others gameplay. only ones that can do that is anet and hopefully they won't listen to the GWGuru community since it is a very small portion of the actual GW community alot of which rather it be left as is. Seriously the game is 4 years old and this is PVE. If we were talking about PvP then that would be different but for PvE leave it alone.

I would say its PuGs that disappeared first because everyone are going "my heroes and guildies are better than you noobs" Even before Ursan got popular the number of people doing UW/Fow was already dwindling, most of the people in the districts were 55/600/SS/Smiter farmers.

This is the real reason, there is absolutely no reason to play with a "balanced" build when all the reward for actually completing an "elite" quest is even more pathetic than a pre-searing quest....XP is the most worthless thing you can get in the entire game, even a 5 gold reward from pre-searing quest is better.

Balancing SF is very easy, but ANet fail to realize it.

Simple fix: Revert it to what it was before it got the big buff. SF wasn't a problem before the buff. Problem solved?

But hey, the games all about money, and PvE is already fubar. Don't expect a nerf anytime soon.

after shadow form was buffed, it was nerfed like 2 or 3 times to what it is today, lmao. leave it as is. it is still usfull for a handful of things but not as powerful as it was in the beginning. leave it as is if ur not gonna buff it back up to some of it's previous glory ;-)

Best way to kill perma form without damaging the skill itself would be to make Glyph of Swiftness work only on Elem skills. Then SF could be put back to the way it was without the damage reduction.

you fail farming:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Category:G...farming_builds

^and that's just the common knowledge stuff. there's tons more options for many classes.

Fail at builds much? SF sins are fragile if you go up against the wrong type of foe, what I'm saying is all these areas with 1 type of easy to waste foe should be nerfed, like they did with the Griffons in the desert. They put a bunch of toucher necroes and trappers backed up by a monk boss where they used to be and moved the griffs to some little corner near a wurm/hydra spawn. For the purposes of my example put the angorodons closer to the entrance of the raptor nest, or put a tyranus in there or make the brood mother patroll, maybe add a broof "father" with some monk or rit skills. For the UW give the foes leech signet, in the fow spider cave make a "armored trapdoor spider" that drops traps, for the tengu outside LA, add a kind of tengu that has ele touch skills like [Shock] or a necro tengu with well of the profane. Give some mobs pets or minions that can be bombed/smited off of ect. Even adding a decent healer NPC would shut out most farm builds.
Almost 300 elite skills, 1200+ total skills including others, they can make diverse npc teams that are worth fighting as a party rather then solo. but they won't

No, rather you destroy noob, fire and forget, passive defense monks who don't know how prot works... Prot spirit should have the same limit spirit bond does, it doesn't need to last 20+ seconds and recharge in less then 5(at least not in PvE). spirit bond shouldn't be infinitely maintainable(again split it into pve if you have to). That was the problem with prot bond, they hit it with the nerf bat.

you answer your own question and prove my point, what incentive is there to play these areas of the game for any drops or in game cash when you get free money for this and solo gimmicks. Make it a worthwhile rewarding challenge to play the game and people will play it. If you still want to solo, buff the henchmen and heroes.

As far back as I can recall, and i've been playing since about 3 months after release, there's been 55 caster farmers, warrior farmers of various flavors and ranger trappers, all relatively mindless as SF is now in it's current "nerfed" state(with GoS, DP you only have about 2 seconds of leeway to reapply the SF and the energy gets tight if you're not careful, you have maybe 10 energy to play with to kill things). With the power creep they get stronger and stronger but they've always been there and the areas have been there to be exploited(ettin's and their sup runes, the griffon's ect).

TL;DR version: they kinda failed at pve balance from the start, Shadow Form is the least of the flaws though it does exploit many of them, there's 100s of ways to balance the game without touching the skill itself while keeping it viable as a tanking skill, and in turn increasing the replayability, challenge, and fun factor, fixing the overall economy of the game too, but it's too late and to big to fix now for the current team so enjoy the cheap ectos till they make it disable all your skills for 30 seconds after using it....

Where to start.

Game Breaking.... LOL.
Faceroll anything... LOL.
RoJ

RoJ is a monk skill no perma SF sin uses a Monk secondary. To perma you have El or Mes, that's it end of story.

You can not go up against any foe with SF up don't believe me then just try the angorodons next to the Raptor nest. SF is not invincible it has weaknesses. Like all farming skills it has areas it can be used and areas it fails miserably.

As for being game breaking how exactly, economy wise we get free z-keys every month that can be sold most of the time for 100k, game play wise you can not run a SF build through normal game play it only works in certain areas, and farming wise there are still many different farming builds for Monks, Warrior, Els, Rangers, Necros, Dervish and Rits. The only professions I can't think of a framing build for is mesmers and paragons. Just like these other farming builds SF farmers have their areas where this skill shines. I know but the UW. Monks, Rangers, Necros and Els have farmed the UW and still can.

So SF is about as broken as the rest of the farming skills. It can not be used alone, like other farming builds SF needs other skills to keep it going. If it were broken then a player should only need it and some damage skills, but SF requires 2 other skills to maintain, sounds an awfully lot like the rest of the farming skills.

SF is fine in its current state, if anything they should buff it back to where it was before the last nerf.

Just so you all know where I stand I think they should also buff Ursan back to it previous glory.

If you guys are going to ask the few remaining programmers to take a look at things why not ask for more content, to buff other skills, new armor, fix existing clipping issues with old armor, something besides bellyaching about SF.

It is as simple as if you don't like it don't use it. Form up your own UW teams that exploit another profession’s skills to get through. Farm with some other profession, or if you are against farming then don't. I really don't see why most people get so wound up over farming, if you don't like it then don't do it. The people who do farm enjoy it they are playing the game they paid their money for how they enjoy it. If any of you don't enjoy farming then don't. If any of you don't enjoy UW clears with Sins then form up your own teams, seems to me there should be plenty of SF haters to party with from Guru.

The only real problem with SF is a small minority of GW players whining about it every other week in the fan forums.

Pls ... Plsssss ... PLssssssssssssssssss

STOP asking to nerf WHAT EVER SKILL...
men Ill get so ....... with people asking to nerf skills... The only thing Anet is doin ,is skill nerving.
Let them spend time on things that keep the game alive.

again its PvE if you dont like the skill DONT use it, if others want, LET THEM.

christ. if the problem of SF is that the UW is being overfarmed, just make it tougher for SF sins, like they did with the dream riders or w/e. Leave the skill alone. It's allready been hit too many times.
And stop complaining about SF. there are sooooo many elites that need some love, which I find much more important than the fact that people farm a lot with permasins. Let them, what do you care? It's a way to make money. If you're bitter because you can't do it, well either learn it or live with it. If you're bitter because you think it's unfair: it's a damn game ffs. Get a life. This is like ursan QQ threads all over again, and they finally nerfed that, and nobody ever uses ursan anymore. Whoopteedoo, another useless elite richer instead of usefull elites. This is getting old and extremely boring people.
And if it's the PvP SF you're worried about: who on earth uses SF in PvP anyway? it's a 100% pve skill imho. good thing it's split. they could change it entirely for pvp and leave pve alone.

No it hasn't. All I've seen is people quoting ^this line over and over, without any valid counter-arguments. The argument still stands (for PvE). It's a good argument. Let people play the damn game the way they damn well want to. WTH do you care? But hey, you just keep on getting angry over a game all you want, ok? Keep on trying to dictate how others should be playing according to your opinion, while others simply enjoy the game and SF in the meantime. I know I will.

How about changing a few skills on monsters in Underworld, for example putting in some nasty touchers? SF itself is not "godmode" as several people here say. For EOTN dungeons its actually pretty bad (except for example; Darkrime Delves), and most of the time it is used to farm, tank or as runner. Leave it as it is, just change a few mobs here and there to make it harder to do.

If you want to nerf SF why not nerf 600 monks, IMO they are better nerfmaterial, as they can do almost any dungeon with relative ease, with help from a hero or two.

So because UWSC is the most used argument here, let's look at the mobs and find something to make it harder for the perma's. And pugging for UWSC is almost always /fail. I will begin finding solutions right away which I will post in a day or two.

~The Son of Grenth/ The Devils Cutlass (who is proud to be a SF sin).

exactly what I suggested. QFT. thank you for this post it's the best one in this thread so far.

Overpowered farming skills don't keep the game alive. SF, Ursan and others of the same breed are actually killing the game quicker. They destroy the value of most items in the game and this is what makes the rewards for completing an elite area seem so pitiful.

And stop crying about spending hours completing an elite area without your SF crutch. If you can't complete Foundry in under 5 hours without SF then your doing it wrong. If you actually play the game, use some skill, and play as a team you will complete most elite areas fairly quickly. Won't be 30 minutes but it certainly won't be 3+ hours. I'm sick of people who feel they are entitled to the best rewards in the game for little in the way of effort or time commitment.

To be honest, so much damage has already been done nerfing SF is months too late. However it should be done to show that Anet has finally gotten a clue as to why skills like this are bad. Because if they don't then I fear this kind of nonsense is what is going to be in GW2 right from the start.

only way to nerf and not kill SF is like this:
16 shadow mastery it lasts 20 or 19 sec, and the lose health thingy away.
for 20 seconds all attacks mis and all skills fail, but you deal 33% les damage.
but just keep it like it is now.
energy pressure makes a/e lame, a/me dont got damage dealing skills like sliver armor.
so its good the way it is.

You mean the over-inflated value of FoTM items?

Yeah, real shame.

funny how ya'll crying against a [shadow form] by saying "no, it will kill UWSC, who will do blahblah again...?" well, let me ask you something:
what was everybody doing before the ridiculous SF buff? what did all the noob Ursan PuGers do after Ursan got nerfed?

I dont know about you but most are still around and kicking... so what's the sudden worry?

P.S there's a difference between Permanoob and 55ing, VwK, etc. Permanoobs are invincible to like everything, 55ing, VwK, etc have a lot more counters to them. they're still viable cause a lot of PvE mobs dont have the proper counters, but even those that do are usually not enough for Permanoobs. and I will repeat what others have said here, [spell breaker] is an elite skill, [mist form] is an elite skill. there's a reason why these 2 skills are elite! so why on earth should a single elite skill combine the power of 2 elite skills and even be better at it(being maintainable and all...)???

yes PvE means nothing nowadays, nothing is worth doing any more, blahblahblah. nobody's stopping you from quitting GW, nobody needs people with that attitude, kthxbye

You are so very wrong.
Do you know how many people quit after the Ursan nerf(not saying I like Ursan)?
Do you know how many people quit after the first SF nerf?
People use these in actual groups where without them they would just rather go with H/H. If anything killed the game its Heros not the PvE skills,not SF, not RoJ. The day that people realized that a computer is better than a player is when the game truly started to die.
SF is just fine as is. Only updates I want to see now is PvP balance and new Content.

Nothing making you use these skills either, if you dont like the way it works don't use it. Nothings stopping you from quitting the game because you don't like the skill either nobody needs dictaters either "kthxbye".

This sentence explains why you should stop posting on this thread. These kinds of posts do not keep this thread alive for a very long time.

~The Son of Grenth/ The Devils Cutlass

and this thread is so important that it must stay alive right?
there are 2 groups of people in this thread. the first are those who recognize the problem and either whine about it or offer solutions(both good and bad). the second are those in denial, who seemingly cant live without SF just like they couldnt live without Ursan, etc. most of them are still here and whining when their FotM farming crap gets the nerf bat.

as for myself, I'm with the people that think that SF is just too broken to not get killed altogether, or get a funcionality change like Izzy did to so many other skills...

sad, but true. We gotta learn to live with it and hope aNet gives us another chaos gloves thing, but this time at 1000e, to ballance the ecto market which is getting saturated pretty fast since the SF buff.

Let ppl farm with SF, but give us something to spend all those ectos on, so that it won't drop on value due to the inflation.

at above post, the problem with [shadow form] is NOT related to the crappy GW economy... the crappy economy comes from 4 years of hardcore farming by a lot of people and the simple fact that there's no limit in the supply(mobs are always there) but a limit in the demand, therefore prices are falling rapidly.

agreed. We should have a better limitation system to high-end elite areas than just the favor system and always available scrolls.

It must stay alive long enough for people to find a proper solution, and this solution is not reverting SF to it's old form or changing the skill entirely. Want to make Assassins worthless in HM if you change the skill? RoJ or Cryway will dominate them as there would be no use for any assassin in a regular HM group.

Incubus spawns at common farm locations would fix the problem, but people would not like it, but its better then a total nerf of SF.

~The Son of Grenth/ The Devils Cutlass

Obviously you've missed the myriad other threads about SF.

That said, let's try and keep it close to discussing the OP's idea, rather than just SF in general.

I would say I have no idea how many people quit because of any particular nerf or change.... but neither do you so stop throwing around statements as if they are backed up by proven facts. Honestly if you quit a game because one skill gets nerfed then it shows how immature one is and the community is better off for it. If you think that a computer is better than a human player is then you are seriously delusional. Granted people have varying skill levels but I will take my alliance mates over the AI heros any day of the week.

I don't use SF, never used Ursan (other than the requirment for that one quest). The only reason you and others like you use SF is not because its fun. You use it because you can make a ton of in game loot for little effort. Would you still use SF if ectos, golds, tomes, and picks didn't drop if it was on your bar but its permanent invulnerability functionality remained the same? No you wouldn't, because its not fun your after its profit your after. If profit is the only way you can have fun than your playing the wrong game.

And please stop bringing out the "don't use it if you don't like it arguement". That horse was beaten dead a long time ago and everyone knows it for the crock that it is.

The only thing I can agree with you on is that I would also like to see new content. However, I don't want new content if its going to be farmed into oblivion less than a week after its released.

If you think that humans are better then the H/H then it is YOU that is delusional. I can beat any thing with H/H but the first time I go with a group its failed. and the "don't use it if you don't like it arguement" is completly valid. No one is forcing you to use these skills, stop trying to dictate others game play already. I DO have fun making profit doesnt mean im doing anything wrong. I've played through the game normally so many times already if I want to use an easy button now I will. And dont tell me I dont use SF because its fun, you dont know what I find fun. And I DO know people quit when Ursan was nerfed and I DO know that people people quit when SF was nerfed thats not just a statement its a fact.
but still just /notsigned to the OPs suggestion that WOULD kill it.
IF it got changed the only suggestion on here that would be any good at all would be making it a form seeing as how it IS Shadow Form

Things the AI Heros do better than your alliance mates...

[tease]
[jagged bones]
[death nova]
[order of pain]
[cry of frustration]
[splinter weapon]
[Reversal of Damage]
[Leech Signet]
[power block]
[distracting shot]
[punishing shot]
[savage shot]

I could go on and on and on...

Moral of the story: AI H/H > Human allies.

Ty.

K, the off topic has gone on long enough. There's nothing more to be discussed that hasn't already been covered on the topic of Shadow Form. We'll discuss it further when ANet does something else to it. Maybe in the April update.

Closed.