Why I think PvE is broken.(rant)

/target HuntMaster Avatar
/bow

On an other matter:

The problem with the approach today is the constant nerfing (except the last buff to rits and paras, that was a great surprice! Almost no nerfing at all). The people in charge takes a long look at the popular skills and tries to figure out how to make them less imba. What they should do is to focuse on other skills and give the playerbase a more desirable content to chose from instead of narrowing it down to -Good Skills- and -Nerfed Skills-

Toss the nerf bat into the bonfire and bring in the buff wand!

That would be great if it happened but the problem is buffing stuff destroys the balance of the game.

It's nigh on impossible to buff lets say 20 skills without bringing something totally broken and ridiculous into the game which gets abused for 2-3 months before anet makes a half-assed attempt to fix it.

I think that's actually what caused the problem in the first place, skills these days are far far stronger than they were in prophecies days both in terms of damage and healing (WoH anyone?). This means that we see more gimmicky stuff being run, more emphasis on the skill bars you run with less emphasis on things like positioning and clever usage of skills.

That said I think that (with the exception of Bspike) that this is quite a good period in terms of game balance - well at least compared to the last year or so.

If shadow form gets nerfed then another gimmick build will pop up that will be just as effective. Sure between the two builds there ill be a time of a better economy. But once the new build comes out you'll be back here QQ'ing about it again.

And really your not complaining with pve overall your just complaining about the ease of farming these days. Think about you title next time all you did was rant about one aspect of pve.

Yes it's true that it is harder to buff skills rather than just nerf the more problematic builds down to oblivion.. Or it would have been true a year or two back. Buffing skills isnt a problem anymore, since what can be buffed in pve doesnt have to be changed in pvp at all and vice versa.

I'm just picking out a small part.
This sounds to me like PUG play.

GW has a huge number of people farming stuff. Loot or titles. Those will use the most efficient builds to do so, specially with those things that take ages to achieve.
To given an example: yesterday I was chatting to a former guildie and he asked me why I don't speed clear for my max Luxon title instead of playing AB.
Doing it SC will get me the title in approx one or two weekends (if my shoulder lasts that long...). AB will take me a couple of months.

The same applies to other farms. I never had any issues with my income, I just made sure my spendings were in check with them. No need to farm and don't care about those rare weapons. When I'm lucky I get them else I don't.

On PvE side there isn't much else left to do for people with a couple of thousands of hours on their account. Sure, start a new profession. Learn to play it. And then? Nothing. Yay, I can play warrior and be awesome. But since everyone is farming they won't notice it....

This ain't my style of play. I play for fun, do some stuff I've done numerous times. When I want somewhat of a challenge I get my second account and do stuff on that. Hardly any elites unlocked, bad or no heroes. Play with guildies or chat with old friends. Tag along for a Forge run with an ex-guildie.
I enjoy seeing others have a good time getting the stuff done that they want to get done.

I know my professions and how to play them. I might crack under some serious PvP pressure when playing monk but I don't need to play HB or UA monk in PvE. Regular preprot works good enough when the party doesn't draw aggro all over. Guardian here, SoA there. PS when caster is attacked by something doing huge damage. Clean conditions and hexes.

However, this ain't PUG play. This is playing with people who either enjoy playing balanced or don't really care about the teambuild since they just want to get something done for fun. Failure? That's ok, we'll learn from that and start over. It's a game, spending some hours instead of watching TV or doing boring household stuff or reading a book or drawing.

Till recently I cared about gameplay. I stopped doing that. If others want to learn how to play balanced or enjoy that and are lucky enough to bump into one of my officers they might get an invite.
I also know there are still a couple of decent guilds around that mainly play balanced teams. But the majority of the players is only involved in some form of farming nowadays. Because there is not that much else to do when you want to stick in PvE.

That's how the PvE game evolved the past few years and I think it's far more broken than your post stated.

Titles in general are nothing BUT farming, so with tc's logic anyone who wants a title should quit the game. Look, I'm not sure we you have been but GW has always been about the money and PUG's have always sucked. Adding another build that can farm areas isn't doing anything but keeping people (such as myself) who've done mostly everything you can do in PvE, playing the game. Basically by your logic you're telling people that have done everything but gather some prestige armor to quit because they getting said armor too fast? Why would I want to spend a lot more time getting the stuff with nerfed builds? You only live once you know.

I believe this thread boils down to crying about farming being 'too easy' nowdays and allowing people who do not want to sink thousands of hours into the game to get the same rewards someone who previously sank thousands of hours in the game has.

Plain and simple, if I want something such as a tormented weapon there is no way around farming...people are just too stupid in game to try to get said weapon 'properly'.

Awesome. You spend your time doing something you clearly don't want to do so you can get an item that you probably don't even like the look of for the purpose of 'e-peen' and once you've got them you do... what exactly? You don't like playing the game, suddenly the only thing you wanted to do has been achieved. Quit now because your farming build got nerfed or quit in 6 months after you've abused it non-stop, i couldn't care less because you don't play the game anymore anyway.

I find it laughable how many players, especially Sins, have Chaos Gloves. You seriously telling me all those people bought it because THEY like it and not because they think it makes them look better? They are hideous and stand out way too much to actually fit in with the rest of your armour. Or the Tormented Shield? Oh yeah because that really looks good with your Monks bright white chaos gloves and terrible 'elite' armour.

Nerfing OP skills isn't the way to go. It won't matter if they do, anyway. You notice that before Ursan was nerfed, speed clear teams had to use 3 con sets just to clear UW, DoA, and FoW. That's 1 1/2 hrs of running around and mashing buttons. Now, with SF and tank+nuke teams, teams barely make use of the full duration of 1 con set (can't speak for DoA, though)

So, go ahead, nerf SF. People will adjust and maybe even make runs faster than what they already are, thus causing the economy to plummet some more. And if Anet buffs Ursan back to the way it was, people won't even consider it.

You see, nerfing Ursan was one of the downfalls of farming, since the next option was actually the fastest. And if you nerf SF, the next option might be even faster. You just have to give top-PvErs time to find the answer.

If you think anything in the game could possibly match a Permasin for tanking you are deluded. Nothing will be able to replace the Permasin, it can't be touched by the majority of skills used in the game, the skills that can bypass it can be worked around (i know DoA perma's use Stoneflesh with a Life Barrier monk).

Yep. Cause every time Anet listens to their incessant QQing and nerfs something, farming stops once and for all.

Oh wait, no it doesn't. You're not accurate at all. What the whiners often forget is that the farmers are amongst the most resourceful players in the game. Every time we get hit with the nerf stick, something new comes along. Got around anti-farm code. Got around myriad nerfs to SF, 55 monks, etc...

And farming persists. Because, as someone said above, after you've played for so long, there's nothing to do BUT farm. If by some miracle Anet does find a way to stop it for good, the farmers are NOT going to go out and start playing with the whining gits who got it nerfed. They've done it all already. They're just going to leave the game, probably pissed off, and play something else.

It's been almost 2 years since we got any new content, and that was a piddly small amount, easily completed inside of a month. Before that, nearly 3 years since NF. Now, there is titles. Titles means grinding and farming.

And stop talking about the economy. There is not one worth speaking of. There never will be. It is impossible to apply "economic" rules when there is infinite supply of anything. Blaming the drop in price from chest drops on shadow form is ridiculous. The longer anything is available, even rare things, the lower the price gets, because there are more and no one is merching these things (there's that lousy "infinite supply" gotcha again). If the price drops faster because more people can get it, GOOD. Eternal swords and chaos gloves for everybody (if they like that sort of thing)! Maybe then people will stop basing their ego on a goddamn game and trying to dictate how others play it.

What? I recall the farmers were the ones 'QQing' when SF was first nerfed and for some stupid reason was then buffed again to be made perma-able. The nerfs have been pathetic. If they wanted to eliminate the 55 monk completely, a good starting point would've been to make the -75 non-stackable with identical runes, limiting it more or less to the Ele only. SF could be nerfed anytime in 100s of ways. 600s could be stopped easily, a great starting point would be to block players from equipping low AL armour in HM and to stop Wrath/Retri dealing full damage despite SoA reducing damage to 0. I bet you honestly think making Reversal of Damage effect the smiter was a proper nerf that these 'resourceful' farmers got around by not being complete retards and taking a self heal signet.

Yes. There is.

Its called MOVE ON! If all you play this game for is farming, its about time you found a game you actually enjoy playing. Perhaps after taking a break you might come back and find something you like doing again.

Between the nerf and the rebuff, the farming continued.

Then they'll farm with the Ele.

And it soon will be, I wager. Despite them saying that they don't want to make it useless (which it will be unless it can be kept permanently), I'm pretty sure the whinging will have it's desired affect soon. And farming will continue.

There's no such thing as a "proper" nerf that doesn't involve rebalancing the entire game.

Who said that we didn't enjoy farming? I admit I'm not "hardcore" enough that I play a game I don't like for the sake of playing it. That's the part you're failing to absorb. Just because YOU might not enjoy it, does NOT imply that others don't. So you go do what you like, leave us to do what we like, rather than having the unmitigated gall to tell people they should stop playing because you don't approve of their playstyle. You're just not that important.

So if you didn't have those OP builds you would quit playing?

No, what annoys me and several other players is that people who acutally have some playing skill beyond smashing buttons at the right time do get some serious punishment for playing a regular game. UW SC times are at 15-20 mins? How long would you say balanced play would take? 1-1.5 hour for a decent team? By not playing SC people are shooting themselfs in the foot because the difference in income is enormous. This keeps prices of several items artificial high and out of reach of non-farmers.
I don't want to be forced to play your kind of game to get something nice. I don't mind playing some more time for it, but 4-6 times is a bit too much I'd say.


Eh? I just played DoA a couple of times and got my gems.
I can't help it that others can't do that. The same kind of players who are easily able to UWSC. See how wrong this actually is?

So in a nutshell....Nerf the level. Still too much work bring back Ursan/SF and any other skill that has been broken.

i maybe the first one, but i agree with your post 100%. many of these ideas i've had in my mind for awhile. great post.

I would like to state now that although I am a monk, I do agree with about 80% of what you just said. However, my problem with your idea of not bringing rez is that you're now getting tunnel visioned yourself on the idea of power and healing. I am a firm believer that EVERYONE should carry a rez of some sort. I've been on too many missions with too many idiots who run in and get everyone killed except for you. I understand that a monk should be able to heal everyone but you can only do so much when a group of idiots agro multiple mobs. This is when the monk needs to run away and rez everyone.

I also look at rez as one of those things that can mean the difference between us finishing a mission and starting over, especially if you're at the last leg of the mission. If that's the case, I'd rather sacrifice one skill and carry the rez than start over.

So you're saying we should force people who don't want to play with other people to play with other people who don't want to play with other people because you can't find friends and because you're "bored"?

Nice reasoning

Excuse me while I go 6-hero vanquish with my guildies.

With all respect... HB is deffinately not a "flavor of the month"
2 dervs in HM running in the centre of your party are enough to do a spike of 200dmg+ in a blink of an eye to 4-5 party members. I wish you luck countering this with WoH. If you think everyone can hold the agro and scatter everytime when the spikes come... then you must be living in a different world. Add to this ele enemy with Invoke Lightning on the skillbar and DP is almost guaranteed
HB + Heal Party is FTW when it comes to random spike on your party




For 80% of the time you'll be either enchanted with something, hexed or have a condition on you. First two trigger Dwaynas Kiss, that combined with HB heals for... "quite a lot". There is similar skill for conditions
Some monks simply don't bother with bringing a hex removal with 12 seconds recharge. You cast it... only to find out 2 seconds later someone else is hexed
There are of course areas where you simply can't walk in without hex and con removal (Frostmaw) but most of the game HB simply does the job

If you're balled up against mobs with AoE without prot, you have bigger issues.

If you think everyone can hold the agro and scatter everytime when the spikes come... then you must be living in a different world.

Apparently you don't understand the difference between holding agro and standing next to allies when HM Eles and Dervs are around. If 4 people are trying to tank Awakened Dune Carvers and none of them have prot your team fails.

Really?! There i was thinking the entire farming community held a minutes silence after SF got nerfed. Anymore retarded things you think you need to tell me?

Yes... "Starting point" is such a difficult thing to understand. Usually meaning SOMETHING WILL FOLLOW.

Not at first. Pretty sure the forums will be full of whining Permasins claiming that clearing UW in 15 minutes is perfectly legit. All the noobs that copy wiki builds and youtube videos. The farming community with intelligence is less than 1%, the rest are just sheep that use the builds without a clue.

Bwahaha, thats what they all say. I enjoy farming... so why don't you go play the rest of the game? If you find entering the same area with the same build taking the same route killing the same enemies over and over again and you don't find actually playing the game fun also then there must be something wrong with you. Pretty sure you don't need to farm 24/7 to get enough cash to actually play this game or to get the titles.

A master-baiter will gladly be the mob's whipping boy for the party so long he has PS on him.

Pls...
You either don't play the game or play with flawless people

In perfect world tanks tank, rangers pull, casters sit at the back. But we don't live in perfect GW world, well... I don't. Maybe you do

I don't agree about Pve players playing Pvp to gain perspective. I live with very lousy ping rates and certain aspects of the game are denied due to that. I would have liked to play an interrupting mesmer, but my reflexes are not that great and suffer badly with extra long ping times. I have played all the character types in the game. I suck at playing healing and protecting, so I played the monk as a smiter. I also found the assassin tends to make a better smiter, as the spell type skills for the assassin are worse than useless, mostly. These days I generally play a necromancer, monk or ritualist, with the recent ritualist's buff, spirit builds are now better than great. Necromancers are still one of the most powerful characters in the game, even after the soul reaping nerf.

Wow. Reading comprehension FTL.


Silence? Were you even here? There was invective, loud and vile, levelled at Anet, anti-farming whingers like yourself, and their families and ancestors. All the while the ranting was going on, Bars were being adjusted to make room for Intensity and EBSoH, zealous scythes of enchanting were being assembled, and things were still moving on.


And it will take those 1% a very short time to come up with something new that works, to pass on to those "wiki-copying noobs," and farming will continue. Might have a setback of a day or two, max. No big deal there.




How is that different from "playing the rest of the game?" The same 58 missions, the same 121 explorables, the same 18 dungeons, the same 5 elite areas...

Seriously, who the hell do you think you are? Listen carefully this time; I will use small words.

You... do... not.. get... to... tell... other... people... what... they... find... fun.

If you don't get it this time, let me know, and I will try to find some crayons to dumb it down some more until it sinks in.

And no one said anything about doing it 24/7, so shove your strawman. But there's a difference between making it impossible, like you're advocating, and not doing it 24/7. And, for that matter, if they DO want to do it 24/7, it's NOT any of your damn business.

Please don't pull with your ranger if you want the tank to get aggro. Let the tank do it instead. Every tank worth something has a spare longbow that he uses for pulling.

I lived in a perfect world for a beautiful hour last night, doing Gate of Madness HM with a guildie and a guy from another guild in our alliance. It was truly a thing of beauty...

No cons, no cryers, no discord (though at first there was some argument on that front, until we made the dissenter /wiki "Impossible odds"), no permas. Just good, old-fashioned randomway "Kick the Red-Engine out of them." The warrior tanked (and was perfection with his stance-breaker), the ele spiked, the ranger (moi) pulled to the tank and turreted like a fiend.

Best part was how the AI screwed us at the end. All 5 shrines capped, and our monk heroes got stupid and died to the Lich. We still beat him. Brings a tear to my eye. It was so beautiful.

What? Sorry but more than 1 person getting hit by a nearby/area AoE spell is fair enough, assuming its not an entire team obviously. Sometimes theres just not enough space to make sure everyone can avoid them. But if your team is getting raped by adjacent/scythe attacks you're playing with morons. Avoiding tiny AoE skills isn't even close to 'perfection', its just not being incompetant.

Yes, you really do fail at it.

Maybe i should add /sarcasm tags next time, apparently claiming there was a minutes silence on an online RPG when SF got nerfed was just too subtle for someone like you to figure out.

Only if they don't have to come up with anything new. Changing 1 or 2 skills to make things work again, do you class this as effort? More than likely the people who actually have the capacity to make builds in the first place have already considered these other skills... but obviously you seem to be missing the point (again). NOTHING will replace a Permasin!

What? You can tell the difference? If i asked how to clear an area 99% of the time 600/smite could be posted and it'd work. Maybe the 2 optional slots get changed, maybe the elite is changed, maybe the Smiter has to bring Healing Signet, maybe a 3rd is needed to spam QZ. Theres no difference in the slightest. Not that you'd do them anyway, profit and speed is whats important so you go to the best place, maybe to 'shake things up' every now and then you go to a different area. Must be such fun for you, and once you've got these shinies you desire oh-so much you can quit the game because you've got nothing to do anymore.

Never heard of exaggeration? Most people can figure this sort of thing out, even in text form, maybe you should go play with those crayons till you've calmed down and actual read things through enough to figure out what is actually meant.

Originally, Yoda's talk of bringing "balance to the force" was really another way of saying "Shadowform, gtfo!"

No, it wasn't subtle, it was ineffective. It came across as being metaphorical instead (no, I never believed you were saying that the farmers actually stayed silent), suggesting "mourning" when, in fact, the opposite was true. The farmers will not go gentle into that good night.

No, I get the point quite clearly. What you are missing is that, until permasin is made impossible (and I do not discount the possibility of that, even as soon as the next update, considering ANet's general lack of judgment in the whiners they choose to appease), AND nothing replaces it, I will continue to believe that the ingenuity of that cross section of the playerbase will make do.

When I'm not farming, I play PvE with a ranger as my main, and the one I'm working on the real titles on. I don't run discord or sabway or cryway, I build to the area, and occasionally I have to recruit assistance (physicals have issues in bundle-missions like Arborstone, though Jennur's Horde was pretty easy with patience and no time-limit). That is FUN to me (except for the recruiting help part, since EVERYONE hates those damn missions), just like farming is FUN to me. Both are part of "playing the game". Flexibility is a wonderful benefit of being a multifaceted individual (and a ranger). You might try it sometime.

I don't get to, or need to, use cute little builds like 600/smite. Those are for farming. Going with them and doing nothing while they do everything is boring, not fun, and if that's your idea of "playing the game" then your advice to do so is even more worthless than I originally thought.

You're a bloody mind-reader now? How would you know what's important? My gods, your hubris knows no bounds, does it? I go where the fun is (which is why I generally avoid EotN like the plague) when I want to play, and where the profit is when I want to farm. After legendary guardian, why do missions again? Most of them are annoying, not fun, the first time through (I'm looking at you, every Nightfall mission requiring a sucky hero), much less repeating them after you've gotten NM and HM masters/bonus. I am personally never setting foot in Gate of Madness again for my own purposes (i.e. I'll help guildies if they need it). The dungeons in EotN are even worse. Long, tedious, boring, and with crap rewards (with the few exceptions that have tiny chances of "shinies"). Why would I repeat those? I have my UW and Urgoz statues, and both were done with my ranger (meaning no SCs) and were not fun. Why would I repeat those activities? DOA is evil, cruel, and insanely op. Would I turn down an invite into a group for that? Nope (if only they'd stop inviting me exactly when I'm bringing my girlfriend through factions *sigh*), because I haven't done it yet. Will I ever get to? Who knows. Am I going to sit in the outpost and wait? Hell no. I can better spend that time finishing my last 9 HM missions, capping skills, or farming feathers and granite. Am I going to turn down an invite to Sorrows Furnace or Urgoz? Hell yeah. BTDT.

Honestly, you're talking so much crap I'm not even sure what point you're pushing here. Is your definition of the "playing the game" that I ostensibly don't enjoy actually "redo tedious, unrewarding things?" Because if so, then yes, you're right, I don't enjoy "playing the game", and you're the one with the psychological problem (or at least a tendency towards masochism).

Despite the fact that you are outright BSing again (it is really poor form to assume my desires and be so wildly, ignorantly wrong about it) Who cares if I quit the game if I've got nothing left to do? Isn't that the point of a game? To play it until you're finished playing it? Or do you think people should be like those idiots who keep looking for their car keys after they've found them? Of course I'll stop playing when I'm finished playing.

It's only simply exaggeration if you don't then try to argue against it to make your point, as you did. When you do that, it crosses into the realm of being a "strawman fallacy" and is the mark of very weak rhetoric.

i agree with this guy. especially the last part

and UA is a damn sexy skill. nothing better than instant rez at full hp and mp. makes a potentially disastrous situation easily recoverable.

pve and pvp are 2 very different realms. pvp builds (both team or solo) are mediocre for pve. and of course pve builds just won't work in pvp because 1/3 of the skills are usually pve only. monsters are dumb and almost always do the same thing (except when their agro is all f'ed up), so its easy to gather them up and nuke em. this is done in in all kinds of mmo's

In PvP, men fight against men.
In PvE, men fight against GODS!

(Alternate version)

In PvP, men fight against men.
In PvE, men fight against small woodland creatures until they level up.

...what?

...again... wtf is that suppose to mean? Until the Permasin is nerfed nothing will change, the majority of the farming is revolving around it because its so unbalanced.

Congratulations. Since you seem to be questioning me, what exactly gives you the right to comment on what these people do or do not like and what there motives are when you clearly are not 1 of them if what you say is true. People who do nothing but farm, you do other things but farm, so clearly i was talking to you? Why exactly are you replying to things that are clearly not relevant to you as if they are?

Amazing, again you reply to something that clearly isn't relevant to you (assuming what you said above is true) as if it was. How about you try and respond to things that are actually relevant next time? Your hypocracy is getting dull, i can't speak for people who farm none stop but apparently you can?

It's a reference to a poem.

I disagree. If it was imbalanced, it would be used for EVERYTHING, not just farming. As it is, it's maluses make it completely useless as an "oh shit" button in any normal play. Nerfing it to make it unusable for farming will only relegate it once again to the pile of "completely useless elites" next to Quick Shot, Illusionary Weaponry, and Panic. And if it IS nerfed, it will be replaced.



Fair enough. In the statement that leeching from 600/smites is not fun, I should have specifically stated "leeching from 600/smite is not fun for me." Other than that statement, which I mistakenly thought would be clear that I was speaking of my own opinion, I made NO comment on what other people find fun/enjoy.

As for why I am replying to them, they ARE relevant for me. In your zealous crusade to nerf these "farming-only farmers," you will affect me and my enjoyment, because Anet cannot only nerf them without nerfing me, and there is no reason being offered other than "some obnoxious GWG moralfags disapprove." So it is very relevant to me.

See above.

Mr. your arguments are so strong I'll just go and sit in the corner. Obviously 3 years of monking and observing people's habits is not enough.
I'm taking back what I said. HB is the worst elite monk skill and everyone should stop using it. Everyone go back to WoH. Now!

Wow... you honestly believe that doesn't mean its imbalanced? Its only used for farming, therefore its not overpowered? Shadow Form should be obliterated from the face of PvE. When it was used in conjunction with Sliver Armour to give you a small window of opportunity to farm bosses was 1 thing and alot of changes wouldn't effect that, but being able to tank an infinite amount of foes in almost any area of the game on your own is just ridiculous.

No-one can find it fun because you don't actually do anything... wtf do you think people Smite for? Because they find it fun sitting half a radar away doing nothing? No, they do it because either they fail at 600 and have no choice or don't want to put any effort in to get loot (usually both). Theres always an abundance of Smiters for DTSC because most people seemingly don't want to put any effort into things.

How does playing your Ranger require you to farm excessively? Sure you might need to farm occasionally to get some extra cash, but someone already pointed out (here or another thread i can't remember) that if you really want to make some quick money, turn up to a Z-quest and run it or farm the items themselves during a weekend event. Farming using small teams is not the issue. Farming an entire zone in 1/10th of the time is. Speed Clears will always be faster, they just shouldn't completely outclass every other viable build by a mile.

Only if you spent those 3 years playing with H/H (in which case, why weren't you Smiting), otherwise you've been playing with morons. There is no excuse for more than 1 person getting hit by a Scythe attack, its range is tiny and you can see the foe coming a mile away and spread out. If faced with a Terrorweb Dryder you make an effort to NOT stand 2 inches from an ally. This isn't rocket science. If you think Heal Party will save you when 2 Spark of the Titans land a Rodgorts Invocation you're delusional, and if your allies also seem to think that too its about time they learnt the truth or keep dieing.

Actually, the changes DID effect that.Without perma, between the duration nerf and the damage nerf, that pretty much be limited to certain (weak) NM bosses now before the enchant wore out leaving you ready to be one-shotted (and that malus has always been there).

As for tanking an infinite amount of foes in almost any area on your own, that's bollocks. Do it in the Jade sea. Oh, wait, you can't. Do it anywhere where the baddies use signets or touch skills (there are a lot of them, they just generally go unnoticed). You can't. Do it in Sanctum Cay. You can't. Hell, you can't even do it in old ascalon, the most noobish area of the game.

And even if you could, what good is standing there tanking if you can't kill them on your own? Plenty of places where that's the case too, so you need a team. Yep, farmers occasionally team up.

If the skill let permas do EVERYTHING, like you claim, with no effort or skill whatsoever, then you might have a point. But it doesn't. It doesn't come close. Even the widely-hated UWSC requires more skill and teamwork than most of the haters are likely to EVER be capable of.

It doesn't make every mission soloable (The ones it does can probably be counted on 1 hand, with at least enough fingers left over to deliver an appropriate message to Anet when they do nerf it. Tihark Orchard doesn't count).

No, people are butthurt because of UWSC and crying about the non-existent economy when they really mean they're afraid of their ecto supplies dropping in value (which is funny as hell, since half the UWSC team has a near-zero chance of seeing even one).

FoW? Please. My guild regularly clears it with a team of 8 paragons, just for giggles. SF isn't doing any damage there. Deep? Nope. Urgoz? Nope. DoA? Never seen a team without one, admittedly, but as I understand it, it's pretty much required and not a speed clear thing.

So no, I don't buy you're logic that it's imbalanced because you choose to ignore its many shortcomings.

There you go again. Do you really think you're so worldly and wise as to say that with certainty? Why do people enjoy being cheerleaders? They're not even playing the game. Yet, they do.

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.


And from the part the almighty one extrapolates the whole. SOME people might smite for that reason. I often smite for DTSC because my guild run has all its 600s and needs one. I often 600 for it when they're set for smiters. Might also smite when my connection is particularly laggy, I'm tired, or I just don't feel up to it but want to participate in the guild activity and chat while doing so.


Keyword: "Seemingly." Things are not always what they seem. Your snap judgments should take this into account.


Playing Ranger + going for Legendary skill hunter: Just shy of 300k just for capsigs

Playing Ranger + Monk + Assassin + Mesmer + Necro + Warrior + Paragon + Dervish + Ritualist + Elementalist : quite expensive.

And as was pointed out elsewhere: Z-quest rewards suck as far as money goes, and to earn said rewards, you have to play the same boring-ass missions already beaten. If you're lucky, the reward will be enough to buy one new skill. Again, you are advocating people stop doing something you disapprove of to do it a way YOU would enjoy, whether or not they would. Unless it's one of the few missions I have left for LG, or an easy-ass one like Tihark Orchard, I don't bother with the Zquests. It's just not worth it.


Shadow form is not the issue here. The area is. And you can't expect it not to be, considering the area is OLD, there are new skills and classes to work with, AND people have been getting a LOT of practice. It's not just the build that outclasses every other build, it's the teams themselves. Just because it takes the average randomway group an hour and a half does NOT mean that is the baseline to use for comparison. That same team, attempting a UWSC, will probably fail inside 15m, because those buggers are HARD, they require teamwork and coordination, and few bother to cultivate that anymore.

So when you get your way and Anet stupidly nerfs shadow form again to kill UWSC, rather than nerfing the area itself(because that's apparently how they roll), those same teams that practiced it and got it down will STILL do it faster than ARG.

Take a step back. There are new skills and classes to work with, but it's the area that's the issue and not the skill Shadow Form? Shadow Form isn't the only cause, but it is part of the cause and the heavy defense of it allows so much versatility in areas (most of the game, no doubt).

Yes, practice makes people better... but no amount of practice in running would make you run the speed of light, for example. Yes, it's a massive exaggeration, but it's the same concept. You wouldn't even be able to touch the speeds we get today if it wasn't for new skills coming in.

Calling it hard is pretty dumb too. Difficulty is completely subjective. I've had people tell me that powerchords on a guitar are incredibly easy, and single string picking is a lot harder (I'm a beginner at the moment anyway), but I've had exactly the opposite with that, I can barely even keep the same finger structure when moving up and down the neck to change chords, but I can play single string quite well compared to powerchords. And when you practice, it eventually gets easier. You can hardly call something hard after a couple months of practice, depending what it is. I recall hearing that some areas in the game were awfully hard with H/H, with whatever buffs, but I found them to be easy without the buffs. (Discounting PvE skills obviously, I probably had some of that stuff on my bar)

I spoke to this in an earlier post. Things like this are seriously overstating the power of the skill.

Most of the complaining about speeds is a massive exaggeration, too. Claiming UWSC takes 1/10 the time of a normal clear is BS. Before it came out, there were noted instances where a good team would clear it in 45 minutes. So that gives you maybe 1/2 the time, at best, assuming a perfect run and perfect spawns.


Wait, what? You say calling it hard because it needs a lot of practice is dumb, then go on to give a counterexample of something that's... hard
and needs a lot of practice? Or are you saying calling it hard is dumb because it becomes less hard with practice? Or.. what? I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming there's a way of parsing this that isn't completely vacuous.

The only things that can touch you are untargetted AoE skills, touch skills, enviromental effects, regular skills, a couple of tidbit skills (think Illusionary Weaponry) and signets. And it's maintainable aswell as not having an effect on mobility. Overstating? Are you kidding me?

Perfect run and perfect spawns. Now, imagine that with the current build. The 1/10th time has absolutely nothing to do with me.

But the times that people are getting are absurd. 45 minutes back then, with a really skilled team? Compared to now? Sometimes more than half is a hell of a lot of difference.

Difficulty is subjective, some people may have a natural talent for it.
Skill levels will always alter the difficulty of something in that person's eyes.
Practice will increase skill levels, but at times, some things are just unsurpassable.