How will certain runs work without Shadow Form

My answer to the OP is that these certain runs will go the same way (except with no ursan) as they did before the update.

People will actually have to be creative until another overpowered, mash your face on the keyboard build will come out to copy.

Or we'll just use another type of tank (Obsidian Warrior) that relies on keeping enchantments maintained and all the other stuff that messes up PvE will be the same. Shadow Form is just a branch on the tree. Other tanks work, just not quite as fast.
Get rid of cons.
Tone down PvE skills or remove completely.
Make HM HARD. Don't jsut increase level's and speed, do what you did with pets ANet.
Give monsters good skills and give them wider patrol areas.

But none of this will happen because ANet will take the way out that they think will please the population. Good effing job.

Did everyone just forget to play over night...

when GWEN was introduced no1 had pve skills... and we did it in both nm and hm... i got legendary master of the north before i hit r5 of any title... and i still dont have an assasin pve char...

and i do got all 35 pve titles, and i still play pvp all day long...

u dont need SF, pve skills or cons to play really... just some brain... and guess what... real ppl more fun that way...

but i did fow the BOOK way... and UW clears back in 2005... so... i know u dont need any of the fancy new stuff to play the game...

just suck it up and stop crying... take it like a man... its just a game it cant be smarter then u...

i hate to buck the trend, but if A-net thinks farming is the majority then they will keep that group happy. SF has always been OP and will always be until they nerf it( if they do).

Funny i remember people bitchin up a storm about 55 monks before SF and Ursan etc. Farming is a HUGE part of this game, like it or not.

Besides that, why do people get all worked up like little girls over a game lmao. I use SF OB Flesh and any other ass saving skill. If they get Nerf hammered oh well. The world will turn and the sun will rise.


Cronk

lol people will just go back to how they used to be waiting for a new skill to get buffed and over used although SF is overpowered its still fun to use and you dont NEED SF for anything theres always a viable alternative i just use it to make money for the things i want like gate of madness HM running people i dont care if people are to lazy to do it it makes me money

You'll make more money running people if the competition gets nerfed out of business and you're good enough to find a new way to do it. For a while you'll be able to pretty much charge what you want.

God forbid someone plays the game as it was intended instead of finding away around the fun, right?

So, you have to deal with Shiro and some levels in dungeons. So what if you might wipe. That's the point of a game: To play it. Why pay someone to play a game for you when you can play it yourself?


Bah!


I personally can't wait until the nerf of Shadow Form. I'll relocate myself into District 1 of ToA and enjoy the fury.


It'll be one of the best days of my life. *wipes a tear*

word. And anyone saying 600/smite should be nerfed instead of SF is an idiot. It hinders you to have the smiter, you can't handle infinite pressure and it's way, way slower.

Sure, but we're years into release and many people have already done the main quest stuff they want to do. It's like any game; the first time through you play for the experience. By the third or fourth time, you probably have a specific goal in mind (build a character, test a build, and so forth). By that point, playing it "as intended" just slows down accomplishing the goal.

Any time you have repeatable content that provides desired rewards, people are going to try to find ways to get through that content as quickly as possible to get the reward. People will try to find ways to get around having to do "boring" content again, as well. If you want to play a new class in Domain of Anguish, you have to play the character through Nightfall. If DoA is the goal, playing the campaign is a hoop you jump through rather than an end in itself.

There's nothing wrong with these shortcuts. It's when they're stupid efficient relative to other alternatives past and present, or when they produce tons of the things that players use as markers for trades, that they become a problem.

And it's when you get to this point that you have to take a step back and reevaluate your goals. You're on GW to play a game. So go play the game already.

I think the simple fact that its a game is the crux of the whole issue. If someone wants a run then get the run. It doesnt hurt anyone. People that say play the game the way it was intended are just stating an opinion. Youre entitled to it.

People that want to run bat crap crazy through the game to try out different builds or try and get that certain weapon for a set are entitled as well.

We all payed the same price (more or less) for the game and should be able to play it however we choose.


Cronk

Your argument logically boils down to, "I enjoy taking my time. You don't. You should be forced to take your time." This is patently ridiculous.

Players breezing through the main line quests doesn't impact your play experience. You taking your time doesn't impact my experience. Slowing me down doesn't improve your experience. So why should I be compelled to play your way? Good games support multiple play styles.

Further, you're going to have efficiency and goal-oriented players kicking around this game because of the PvP side. If you don't have that attitude, you're going to get kicked to the curb in PvP until you realize that humans are smart and the only way to beat them is to be efficient and precise. This then carries over to a player's PvE approach.

SF does impact the play experience of others, which is why it needs a nerf. It's so efficient that it drives out every other alternative for group play, and the SF-powered UWSC does ugly things to rare item markets because of all the ecto getting dumped into the system.

In short: runs are fine. It's when a skill or build is vastly more effective than all other possible alternatives that you have a problem.

But they do impact my play experience. They drive prices DOWN and thus I can't make as much for my gaming time as they make for theirs. You drive down ecto prices, material prices, inscription prices and every other item that is overly farmed by SPEED. So, by making you play at a reasonable pace the sale prices of things I get will be higher than they are when everyone and their mothers brothers sisters cousin is farming them at the speed of light.
I really wished they would eliminate solo farming in high end areas as well. This will make what are suppose to be rare drops rare instead of common as the sun shines.

Every other mmorpg out there runs the games as they should be based on time and cooperation. Guild wars is a childs toy rpg with no limits to what an individual can do to gain unlimited wealth without any worry or struggle whatsoever. They might just as well left Ursans Blessing alone if they were going to continue to allow solo builds like SF, Obsidian, 55 monks and 600's. Eliminate all these gimmick builds and bring GW back into the light of what it was suppose to be in the beginning. CO-OP not solo takes all.

My main point is, if you really don't want to go through everything again, if you really don't want to do x and y before you can do z, then why bother making a new character?

Saying that, "Oh, I've done this and that X amount of times makes everything boring four years in." Okay, cool. I can accept that, but I still trudge through it - that's just how I am. But if you're making a new character specifically for X factor, that, you could say you've done a few times over four years, then why even bother? Everything before that one point is "boring', but you've done it probably the same amount of times before making a new character.

What I'm trying to say is, just, for a rough example (Excluding the creation of pvp characters)

You want to make a new mesmer for Fort Aspenwood. You don't want to do all the quests to GET you there because they're so boring. Cool, whatever floats your boat.

But if you've gotten say... six characters through factions and they've all done FA, wouldn't that be "just as boring" as getting through the content before it?


Meh. Do what you want, but I still support people playing the -game- themselves. If we really had better things to be doing, we'd be doing them.


/rant

Reread the line you quoted. I argued that people burning through the storyline has no impact on your experience. Of course farming has externalities, so let's talk about that.

Erroneous. The price of ecto hardly budged as a result of UWSC; it went from 4.5-5k to around 4.3k. People farm feathers quickly because people want them and the price is high; the price is high because you have to go farm them specifically to get them in quantity.

Now, UWSC definitely has some distributional effects. The prices of desired materials that drop in quantity there are low, and the prices of desired materials that do not are high. But this is NOT your argument. You argue that UWSC and farming generally depress the prices of all materials, and that just isn't so. Remember that UWSC artificially creates demand for certain materials as well. The effects are not just on the supply side.

I'd argue that inscription prices aren't as impacted by farming as you think. The problem is simply that (with few exceptions) they are all more common than the items you'd like to stick them on. Just playing the game, you'll have more usable inscriptions drop than weapons you'd like to put those inscriptions on. Most skins in NF and EotN are ugly, extremely common or both.

Other than the Elemental Sword farm and EotN event item farms, people never have solo farmed areas that generate tons of gold inscribables. Dungeon clears are large-group affairs that are slow gold-item generators; you run past as many critters as you can because you're farming the end chest.

But they aren't farming them at the speed of light. Unfortunately, you just don't know what you're talking about. You have perceptions about the rewards of farming that are not accurate. It is clear that you've never been a farmer and don't hang out with them. So how could you possibly be informed about what is going on in farms?

Elaborate. I can small group farm most dungeons to run players if I want, but if I want something hard to get from the end chest it's much more efficient to round up seven other players.

Here's where you really show that you have no idea what you're talking about. Amassing small quantities of wealth is easy. If you just want the cash to fill a Hall of Monuments and max titles, you can throw time at the problem and it will get solved.

Amassing large fortunes is not easy. People that bought limited items that are no longer available did very well. If you want those items and don't have them, it takes ridiculous levels of effort to get them at this point. Everybody can easily mint ecto and zkeys these days, so some people have just stupid amounts of them (and armbraces).

Here I agree with you to a certain extent. SF has to go. 605/Smite is probably slow enough that it's OK, but this should be evaluated. The only issue with Obs Flesh is that players are likely to abuse stacking the Nicholas consumables to deal with the skill's drawback. Otherwise it's fine.

People have been solo farming ever since the first players figured out how to farm things like Crystal Desert Hydras and the Mountain Troll cave for weapons, and farm the Tengu outside Riverside for runes. You can't nerf every solo farm; players will simply substitute to the next, slightly slower solo farm.

You can nerf super-efficient farms like SF. Of course, the best way to address the issue would be to increase the rewards for group play markedly. But this would involve work, and the short-staffed team assigned to this game prefers to avoid that because they already have plenty to manage.

Don't really care either way, but people who just say go play the game are really meaning go play the game "my way". Whether people choose to play the game with runs or without is their own business.

As for it affecting prices, I think you'll find that the majority would be happier with lower prices. And even if you aren't, you'll find that prices will drop over time anyway. This game is over 4 years old, and there has been NO new armour or weapon skins for ages. Most who would pay big for an item, will have done so already, and only a few newbies would be able to afford what you'd try to sell at. Trying to sell items at old prices is just a waste of your time, adjust and move on. Cutting down speed runs won't effect the price people will be willing to buy at in most cases.

As for maybe forcing more people to party up, go check DOA. Ursan pugs filled there like crazy. Now? Try getting pugs there. You only go with guild groups or people they know. Trinity's is as close to pugging as you'll get there. Gl if you want to do anything else. The only chance you'd have without sitting there for an hour going LFG is during zbounties. Even then, most of then look for runs, not parties. Take away runs, and I doubt few would stay.

Nerf SF cause you think its an OP piece of crap (and while I hated tanking as a warrior, the idea of a sin being more durable than me is annoying as hell), but don't be dressing it up with all these other reasons.

I will quote you Nope you're wrong again. I'm arguing that any and ALL speed farming is detrimental to the WHOLE game and it is. It has driven prices down because of these gimmick farming builds that can kill whole hordes of things within seconds or a few minutes. In other mmorpgs this can't happen because they are group oriented for the quality loot and higher value items. In GW any scamp can make a solo sin and do anything and everything and get anything and everything easily. Was the same with 55's before and then OSFers and now 600's. Eliminate the solo farms that can speed clear everything in a matter of seconds and minutes and you will have a growing FUN economy once again where things of value maintain their value and dont' turn into 1plat items of worthlessness.

I've been playing online mmo's/mmorpgs since they first came out starting with UO and I've seen it all and I know what works and doesn't work. This type of economy and game play just doesn't work. You can't build a world where everyone can get ahold of everything and expect it to prosper and last and not get boring. Anyone can read the forum threads everyday and find the same thoughts "GW IS BORING" and that is because it has no substance it has no real goals to go after and it has no economy of items worth any value other than torment, destroyer and stupid rare mini pets. Other mmo's/mmorpgs have thousands of items of value and maintain their value for extended amounts of time even to this very day.

Just take a look at the extened expansions thread after GW2 comes out. You can clearly see well over 66% of the forum population doesn't care if GW1 lives or dies after GW2. They are BORED with it and rightly so as there is just no fun value left in the game because of stupid childish invinsible builds that can farm elite areas without worry. As I said no other mmo/mmorpg game of any value out there has a world like this. There must be higher values to obtain and higher goals and things to play for than silly titles or mini pets. I'm pretty sure most people play the game for the rpg element and adventure and value of the items they can get moreso than silly titles and mini pets.

By anet ruining what motivates most people to play these games it has driven GW into nothing more than a childs toy as I said. Any 8 year old could take an SF sin and speed clear just about anything, where's the SKILL in that as was promised by Anet in the very beginning?? It's suppose to be a game of skill not how well one can find and copy and paste someone else's gimmick build and farm in godmode constantly.

So I suggest you go read what makes a lasting and successful mmorpg game. Read about WOW you'll learn a lot. )

i challenge you to make an assassin and attempt to solo any of the dungeons people pay 15-25k lol not anyone can farm whatever they want with an assassin SF may not take any skill but doing high end dungeons solo with an assassin does take skill.

if you read about WoW and dont like the way GW is played and want everyone to play at your pace why dont you just stop playing this a go to WoW..

If you're not even playing the game and all you're doing is collecting farm stuff, why the bloody hell are you even here? Why bother touching the game if you hate playing it?

Good games allow for multiple play styles, sure, but bad games allow for clear exploits to continue without consequence. You say runs don't affect me, but they do, they affect all of us, and I'm not talking about the economy. If Anet wants Guild Wars to at least resemble a team game, they'll nerf SF, 600/smite, and force us into a community environment. PUGs are increasingly harder to find for anything as more and more people look for runs (I mean hell, look at how many people keep requesting/buying full campaign afk runs). This isn't encouraging anything but laziness and has to be dealt away with. To hell with fixing the economy, nerfing SF and speed clears will do wonders for the community.

Difficulty... has NOTHING to do with why SF is used. It's clear you're one of those people who refuses to understand it.

Fail logic fail gogogo.

Oh rly? Seems to me that nerfing SF will simply please all the QQers and everyone else will simply move on and wait for GW2, or maybe just forget about GW completely. Of course, that COULD be what A.net wants... saving bandwidth and all.

Vsf will be gone for good, not that it was a good run anyway.

Personally, I haven't farmed in ages. PvPing again. The point is that the farmers have a right to exist too. It just can't be too ridiculously efficient.

And yes, I detest the campaigns. They're lowest-common-denominator content. The fun part of farming is figuring out how to abuse the system; collecting the rewards is nice for a while but eventually gets old.

I'm right there with you. Once the community knows about a badly overpowered farm and everyone flocks to it, that farm needs to go. That's why you don't see me trumpeting the latest build in the Farming forum.

SF has shown that it drives the bus on enough OP schemes. It should have been gone a year ago. Buffing it was a bad idea in the first place, and the error was compounded by repeated efforts to "tone it down" rather than recognize it for what it is - hacks.

But they also want to sell games to traditional RPG players that want to play alone. Hence farming and heroes. They're never going to implement a team-only game. That hurts sales. The business model ensures that they're going to try to build a big tent for everyone to live in, rather than a focused, team-oriented game like Left 4 Dead.

People substitute to runs for three reasons:
1) Time is valuable. PuGs fail more often than runners.
2) The Zquest system artificially creates value, so clients make more money from runs than they used to.
3) Everyone has money anyway, because ANet has turned GW into a gigantic ecto and zkey giveaway.

If you want to play the game with other people, your best bet is to find a guild with PvE players that share your preferences. PuGs are usually the dregs of the GW community. They're either too unskilled or too annoying for regular groups to snatch them up. Every once in a while you find a diamond in the rough, but that's rare.

Doing away with runs will lead to good players substituting to H/H and guild teams, and bad players joining the PuG pool. Why do you want a bunch more failbots asking to join your groups?

Anyone who uses WoW as the standard bearer for MMoRPG needs to really take more into consideration.

This thread has been beaten to death. I dont think theres much that can be added.

AGAIN i think along with alot of others, you play how YOU want to play. If your not puggin and you are knockin around solo then WHO GIVES TWO POOPS what someoen else thinks. Its not there DIME. its yours.


Cronk

Ahh the age old stupid question. WOW charges $15 a month that's why M...

Hear hear excellent post and tells it like it is. Bring back the game millions loved when it first came out cause they ain't a handful left playing now. I went to Droknars and it was completely empty today and in district 1 as well. Why I remember when it used to stay packed and had several other districts as well. Most of GW is just a ghost town now. Only heavy spots are where the SF sins are lol or 55 monks or any of the other craptastic gimmick builds out there being abused. We need a chant Down with SF Down with SF Down with all gimmick solo builds. )

exactly you get free online play so you play it how Anet makes it dont sit here and bitch about it.your opinion isnt that of everyone in guildwars so stop making stupid comments.

Meh just nerf it and get it over with. People will bitch and shit themselves, people will QQ, ectos will go up in price and then finally silence. People go back to playing and then another build comes then we bitch again and QQ and make profit and then 2 and a half years later Anet will nerf it and we repeat all this again.

Hopefully by that time the servers have shut down and GW 2 is under way making fail.

Why should I that's all you do? ) At least I make intelligent comments once in awhile you never do. )

Exactly.

RR is basically proof that a.net doesnt give a shat anymore. Guild Wars 1 is dead. Just nerf EVERYTHING. The epic QQ lulz will be more than enough compensation to entertain me.

I never thought I'd write something this sad, but
Stop QQing and learn to play

Seriously, if you don't enjoy the game and its challenge, choose a different game.
I (like countless other people) have beaten everything and everything in GW in times when there was no perma (yes children, there use to be no perma! how shocking!), and on a Mes, no less. It was fun and it actually felt good.

GoM HM, Duncan NM, CoK NM I've done all of these with a regular RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing henchie group >.< Duncan took some time to kill, but only because of his high hp.

On HM I've done CoK with a regular group consisting of 2 mates of mine and heroes for the rest.

Never tried Duncan on HM.

What's my point: You are either an idiot, a weakling or simply lazy (Or one of each) if you think Perma is the only way to complete these things.

BTW to those who don't have time: As long as you have time to even play GW you have time to do anything.

Most people who pay to get ran aren't weaklings and aren't lazy there just bored and want to get it done the fastest way possible and with a perma that is the fastest way..unless you can show me screen shots of you doing GoM HM in under 20 min or duncan HM in under 10. most people just buy my gate of madness runs because its an annoying mission they can get it done for there title its fast easy and after that they can just finish NF and get to DoA Duncan is just a pain in the ass and its not worth the hour or more in HM with hero's and henchie's trying to do it when you could pay to have it done in 10-15 min.

And that's the major problem with GW is there's too much "pay to have it done". That's not rpging or adventuring. It's stupid nullifying the game content just to get to the next 'boring' part of the game. Take away soloing and you'll bring back the rpging and adventuring of the game. Until then it's really nothing anymore but a pay as you go game.

Blame the title system. It's the main reason you see people pay for runs. People have been promised GW2 rewards for maxing out those silly bars, so they pay to max them out as quickly as possible. Filling those bars is boring for many people. Let's be honest.

If those players didn't enjoy doing something other than the runnable content (in-game, another game or IRL), you wouldn't see them pay for runs. Forcing them to play through the "boring" content isn't going to help you out. Many people that are getting runs just won't play the content, and the others will be bitter that they have to play it with you.

Bad players that can't make money faster than they can getting run is the other reason, but there isn't much to be done about that.

RPGing and Adventuring got bored after 2-3 years of playing the same stuff over and over.people basically see pushing a new char through NF proph factions whichever a grind because its not fun anymore its just boring to them they want to lvl up the characters get HM ect for high end runs SC's and other elite areas

This is mostly assuming that shadow form will get nerfed, but has anyone considered that areas may get buffed? I myself doubt it, it may make some areas even more difficult for the 'legit' player.

In general answer to the question, people will need to learn how to play balanced again. Either that, or start a monk.

The irony in that is that you only need to go through the game once to unlock HM, that UW can be accessed easly from ToA.
Actually the only high-end content that requires going throught the game more than once is DoA (dead), Deep/Urgoz (half-way, ferriable, mostly dead too) and Slaver's (alive I think, but I only hear about UWSC and SF nerf recently) and I don't think there are runners for GWEN.

Basically the story part should be only for the missions themselves. What you said doesn't make sence or I missed something.

EDIT: silly me forgot to mention lv 20 is given at character creation in faction, you don't need paragons or derv. From that, if they are doing the story, and the story gives nothing beyond HM, WHY THE HELL ARE THEY STILL PLAYING. Sad thing is addiction, boredom too, complacent gaming cindrome's nothing to laugh at too. GOod thing GW is free and we can stop whenever we want!

So let me get this straight: you refuse to use a perma, and probably refuse to farm or do speed clears, and you are telling other people to "learn to play"? loool!

Epic....

No wonder A.net hasnt nerfed SF yet if these are the arguments they're getting.

Just make it a Form
You assume the form of a shadow...
nothing will extend duration of that
dervish skill wont recarge it as it is an assassin skill

{from earlier}
If you use all 3 of them, and a pie, and a cupcake, you'll move at normal speed and pretty much insta-cast everything, making interrupts moot{}

Do these all stack? isnt there a 33% cap?

I know there is a 50% recharge cap, but I believe the casting time limit is 90%, correct me if I'm wrong.

Why not this?
Shadow Form (PvE): Whenever you use a lead attack you shadow step to target foe.