UWSC Nerf and Anet's "Progress"

Everyone has the ability to use shadow form.... its really not hard to play the game enough to run perma. The people who only have one level 20 character and don't want to "actually play" enough to run a specific build should not be given things to make their life easier.

If the only reason a person hates shadow form is they dont have a sin its pathetic.

I have a sin, but I don't want to be forced to play him as the only viable build to beat some areas. That SF is being used to 'break' so many things in the game now just makes it even worse.

Excuse me for saying this, but all I see here is a bunch of crybabies. You all want something for nothing (Starcraft anyone ) You want an elite area to be cleared in less than 2 hours in HM? "They hit too hard, they this and that..."

ELITE = HARD = LONG
ELITE HM = HARD^2 = LONG^2

Ectos should be expensive. Want that 6k for one? Earn it. Put some effort into it, not just "1-2-3-imma perma, look at meee" stuff.

There are no "flaws in the system" the game is balanced the way it is balanced, with counters to every positive and a positive to every negative. This is like:

Telling me not to look for ways to use the queen when I play chess.

Challenging me to a street race in your 85 civic then denying me the right to use my camaro.

While I really don't care one way or the other about speed clears. Other people doing them doesn't effect my enjoyment of gw. Yes I have a sin among my characters. Have had it before nightfall existed. Yes I do occasionally perma-sliver farm. No I don't bother with speed clears personally.

Now to break this down into segments.

In-game Economy:
Speed clears didn't kill the economy as many suggest. Inscriptions and hardmode did that.

Back in the day that r11 15^50 longsword was worth a lil bit. If it was an r9 its value jumped quite a bit more. Now anything above r9 is merchant fodder unless its a desired skin. Any r9 blue/purple/gold with an inscription slot can be given a perfect 15^50. This is partly what killed green values as well (other part being so many greens having identical stats).

Hardmode just added to this. more golds and more max mods. Remember back when a perfect +30 hp sword pommel was worth 30k. Hardmode even devalued high end NF golds. Colossal Scimitars for example, used to run 300k starting at r12s, Now r9s are only worth roughly 20-25k.

Speed clears did however, stimulate a small easy to farm item for any one. Feathers. Moving on.

Ectos:
Ectos are a crafting material for obsidian armor (most of which looks terrible anyway) and chaos gloves. It was not anet's design to make it a currency item, that came from playerbase and anet has no obligation to care about it's currency value. So yeah don't try to use it as your argument.

Dungeons:
Unless grinding rep, no one wants to spend an hour in a dungeon only to be rewarded with a diamond or onyx. People do dungeons for end chest, and usually only do for certain ones due to what I view as a flaw on a-net's part.

Staves and wands from dungeon end chests, many look very nice but are primary attribute only. While the only true universal staff in my opinion looks like garbage (it being only truly universal staff is probably only reason for its high value). Wands are the same, except the only true universal actually looks decent. No reason to list them as you know which items I am referring to). This leads to most dungeons having no real reason for people to bother with them.

This created the demand for speed clears / dungeon runs to fill dungeon guides.

Seriously anet remove diamonds and onyx from end chests, trash golds at least have potential to be worth the time via mods/wisdom title.

Ah the fun topic,
Grouping:
So many whine that SF and other popular builds prevent them from grouping, I see many in this thread alone, so clearly there are enough like minded people to group with yet you don't. How come? Because it is easier to complain than to act? Because you don't really feel like dealing with afks, prick attitudes, dcing etc. Ponder on that fora bit.

Meta. This term dictates what people have to play apparently. If someone doesn't wanna use a build you want them to, they don't get to play with you. "But meta builds are efficient and proven to work." So you want people to play a build that is efficient, that may not be fun for them just so they can group? Yet you don't want others to be allowed to run SF, 600/Smite, whatever farm/group build your favored character isn't a part of? There is a term for this. Hypocrite.

Solutions:
Non-existent. To fix these issues would take effort anet removed from gw when they decided to drop gw additions and move on to gw2. No matter what they do people will whine. People whined about uwsc, it's not as doable as it was due to the new skeles but people still whine about it.

Nerfing skills won't help. Never has before, as many point out, something else will replace it. And then you will get more whining to nerf next build. And the cycle starts again.

In conclusion, its a game. Especially PVE, if someone is having fun and not bothering you get off your ego and do whatever it is you do in the game that keeps you playing it.

ps: Take the time to look beyond the e-peen items that speed clears farm like eblade, bds, etc. Most of the easy to get skins look a lot better anyway. Quit being a lemming.

You my good sir, should get out of my head.

DING DING DING! Ladies and gentlemen we have a winner. Post of the effin year.

You're an idiot.

What ANet intended is irrelevant. All that matters is the behavior that follows from ANet's design choices. Ectos and armbraces have value because they let players safely transact business on items worth over 100k without requiring an intermediary. Everyone can agree that they're useful (and will be tomorrow), they're plentiful and they stack.

The value of the currency doesn't matter. But the resulting prices derived from the currency do. Players that play the game convert their time into in-game cash. Some activities are more efficient at doing this than others.

When you have hyperinflation, this devalues time spent playing the game. When you devalue time spent playing the game, people quit playing. This is very basic microeconomics (marginal effects).

Someone like upier likes the current inflationary regime because it rewards him. He can't farm the game efficiently, because that requires skill. But if someone creates an easy, semi-efficient cut-and-paste wiki farm, he's better off because he saves time. However, since someone like upier is farming a specific goal, making his life easy just makes him quit playing sooner. Once he's got GWAMM, he's out of goals and he's gone.

In any event, easy farms SHOULD be inefficient. Bad players can graduate from easy farms by putting some effort into the game and sucking less. Remove the incentive to leave easy farms behind for more complex activities, and there are two bad consequences. First, people never improve at the game. Second, the grind necessary to buy really nice things becomes prohibitive, because any chimp can get currency in a hurry.

If you want to make everybody happy here, you make the items that upier wants (title track consumables) more readily available. ANet's actually done a very nice job of that this year with Nicholas. Prices on sugar, booze and party points are 25-50% lower than they were a year ago. But evidently this isn't enough for some people.

Once again you display total ignorance of basic economics.

If SF makes it more costly for these people to group...that's an externality. You know what you have to do to fix an externality? Internalize it. You know how you do that? You need an external authority like a game developer (or a government) to make changes.

They have a collective action problem, because that form of play isn't the standard. You don't, because SF play is. They want the game designers to reverse that situation. They have every right to identify the cost that's being imposed on them, tell you about it, and request a design change to fix it.

LoL.

Nerfing stuff that is clearly overpowered is the first step in achieving a game where many viable builds all have equal potential (which is what we want). No nerfing SF won't solve everything, but it is the obvious first step. If you are arguing that we shouldn't nerf SF because another build will come up, you don't have an argument.

Then they should do the latter first before the former...If they didn't do anything to help DoA after they slaughtered it with the Ursan nerf, I doubt they'll do anything with UW or dungeons. Or the many other pug unfriendly but gimmick friendly areas in the game.

How is it more costly? They are not losing money by not using sf/joining sf groups. They are just simply not making as much money as those who do. Sounds like a case of 'Wahh... If I can't have it, neither should they!'.

those who do not have factions cannot shadow form. (for those who claim anyone can use SF)
inscriptions killed item value - true
100k was an intentional limit for characters to be able to carry.
1000k as storage limit also intentional - nothing was intended to have value over 100k. (can't really fix these things, just hope this is not a GW2 problem)ectos are a crafting material - true (to use as currency is foolhardy, i lol when ecto prices fall)
armbrace - due to the large number of duped braces that remained in game after the big ban, braces should be practically valueless(well far less than the 300k or so they are at) - however the dupe remains largely unknown among the average player (less of the player base uses guru than it seems). If I would guess maybe 5% of players visit guru it would be a high estimate i think.



The answer to the QQ is clear - MAKE SHADOW FORM into a F O R M skill, like dervish avatar skills. seems like a no- brainer
just for starters, can deal with the next problem when it arises.
for those who say "600 smite just as bad" - no its not even in the same category- 600 smite never cleared all uw in <20 minutes.

bla bla said it all before

Everyone knows GW is broken. They will never nerf speed clears, just accept it and come play Aion like the rest of us

Nnnnno. You might then say that leveling in Aion is hard, because it takes long to grind mobs.

Elite = difficult.

Elite HM = difficult^2 but =/= poorly designed.

Maybe when they increase exp gain, so I don't have to grind 2 more levels just to get another instance.

One reason Sorrow's Furnace, Slaver's and the Anguish are better designed than the Underworld is that your progress is saved, and you can make each mission separately of you don't have time to make them all.

Time is one of the most important things here. Not everyone has 3..6 hours to complete an elite area, but everyone has the right to complete all of them.

So, to go around that, all that is needed is some way to save progress, probably by talking to a Reaper and leaving.
The next time you talk to the Voice of Grenth, you pay the fee to go down there again, and go back to an Underworld where current missions have been completed, and monsters related to completed quests are no longer there, although other may respawn., and you have to pay the fee to go down there again.
All that would be needed is checking that everyone else in the team has the same completed objectives as you.

Solution - restore SF to the way it was before. Duration was 5...17, recharge 60 seconds. PROBLEM SOLVED.

Your post was solid until the bolded. As soon as that came you lost all credibility.

Only really intelligent post in this thread so far

I want SF nerfed just like any other whiner as we are more commonly being reffered to.Not having factions is one of the most stupid reasons to use as a reason to not being able to use it,anyways.

There is no reason for us to believe that 100K was the what Anet decided should be the limit of money we could have at any one point or other,its simply what they decided to put the limit at.They could have just as easily made the limit 532889100K it would really say that thats how much money they thought we should have.

100K was the decision to put the limit on because they thought it would't affect most people.They could have made it 10K but that would have been stupid,only been able to buy 7 keys before having to take out money again.

About 1000K being the intentional limit on account money I call BS,if that was true Anet would have never released 5 of a kind polar bears in a game with millions of the game sold, what did they expect the owners of those bears would not sell them for more then 1000K?

I guess its also stupid to use gold as a standard in the real world after all its price also falls and rises.How stupid of us.

Costly as in terms of time and effort. As in economic theory. People who want to group in non-speed clears have to put together significantly more effort to find likeminded individuals then those who UWSC.

People who are actually using logic - One
People who are just calling their opposition crybabies - Zero

We don't anymore.

People who want to do Underworld old school (or balanced) should just make friends who want to do the same... I'm in a guild that did UWSC all the time, but sometimes we would get bored and spend 3 hours on a "fun clear".

Lots of guilds plan regular events where they do things like UW, FOW, DOA (and yes even HM dungeons *gasp*)... with balanced groups FOR FUN. They dont do this to make money. They just enjoy playing.

You don't see a lot of balanced teams forming in uw looking for pugs cause people like to do elite areas with friends (more reliable, they all get on vent and talk, they don't rage on each other).

Logic fail. 0 != 1

Stop being a crybaby. If you don't like SF dont use it.

I'm glad I already have traversc on my ignore list. Not even being able to see his post, I already know it is a troll.

Edit: Yep, just unignored him just to see what he said. Thanks for not disappointing me. /back on ignore list

so perma is the only way to play the game? lol

if you dont like it, dont use it, noone is forcing you.

all these people who say perma is invincibility/god mode etc.

id LOVE you to come dual tank with me in doa

I've been looking at this post over and over and over again and I think it has finally hit me why we will never be able to agree on this subject.
It seems to me that you find farming and grind not only to be acceptable but actually desired activities in a game such as GW.
And I feel exactly the opposite. The expansion of grind and farming was the worst thing to happen to PvE.
So while I strive to minimize or to even remove it, you are striving for ways of keeping it in the game.

Id love to see you tank in DoA with a W/N for example ... no right ? thats what i thought.
Bolded statement pfff , 987th time i see that BS here.

Oh wait , 988 right now.

3 words to that statement , pointless , useless and worthless.

You are an idiot.

This is a multiplayer game.

Anything that outclasses other...classes should be nerfed down to hell faster than you can say DURR DURR HERPDEDEERP!, but you probably should be playing single player games.

how does shadow form outclass something else?

its just DIFFERENT. you can farm perfectly fine on any class, there are hundreds of different builds out there.

stop your f*cking whining and play the game how YOU want to, not how somebody else is.

No perma isn't the only way you can play the game,im happy someone commented on that post.

My example would be more complete and accurate if i added to it.

You might complain if Mc Donalds was the only place you could eat at.
in this example you can do two things, you could either eat in or you could eat out which means you must eat Mc Donalds.

SF is Mc Donalds in this example, everything else is eating in, which means eating food that isnt so tasty and is crap.

You can use SF or you can use something (anything else) that is crap.

(I know some people might like like Mc Donald food or like homemade food,in those cases just replace Mc Donalds with whichever is yoru favorite food, and homemade with whichever is your least favorite)

You dont know what you are talking about . You are one of those that is going to cry if SF gets nerfed. No one is whining so stop dropping your BS and calling ppl names.

ill just use something else, but funny thing is, SF wont get nerf'd and i love the fact all you weasels are gonna sit on here all day and cry about it

youre probably one of the people who campaigned to get 55 nerf'd too because it was so unfair and "cheating"

It's a completely valid argument. I could explain why, but I already did countless times, and doing so again WOULD indeed by pointless, useless and worthless.

As Hawk of Storms said, neither side is listening, but mostly crybabies QQing for nerf.

Anyway, it hardly matters at this point in time, so get off your crusade lol. That goes for everyone QQing for a nerf, too.

55 couldn't solo even one area of UW. Either the Maelstrom killed him, Terrorwebs (knockdowns), Mesmers or tons of other mobs. Neither could 600.

Also, you know what happened to people who were saying "Ursan Blessing won't get nerfed, don't like it, don't play it" before it finally got nerfed?

THEY SHUT THE HELL UP!

In online games, you can't say "don't like, don't care". Online games have economies, balance and other things that need to be taken care of.

You can't SC UW with 8 tanks. And did you even do a DoA clear with a warrior tank? It takes FOREVER. Assassin has:

- Spell protection.
- Attack immunity (doesn't need strong armor against physical)
- Mobility (no -90% movement speed)
- E-Management or self-heal

And for solo purposes, damage dealing or AoE PvE-Only degeneration spells.

Can your precious warrior tank solo anything? No. Can your Elementalist solo anything in UW? No. Can a Monk solo a whole area in UW? NO!

Your cited examples will only defeat inexperienced 55 or 600 players. Maelstrom and Meteor Shower can easily be avoided by stepping out of it. Spell Breaker allows duo builds to easily clear areas that are more difficult for solo 55 or 600 builds. Spirit Bond deals with the skeletons. A 55 could solo in UW, but it was difficult before the skeletons were added, and their addition only increases that difficulty further.

Shadow Form lets you fit all of the defense in fewer slots, is much easier and faster to run, and leaves you with more attributes and skill slots to kill stuff.

Yes, Meteor Storm and Maelstrom can be avoided.

But SF makes avoiding obsolete, you don't even get targeted by the spell. Also you can't perma-Spell Breaker the Mind Reapers or other Mesmers in the UW. You also can be knocked down, unless you take Fleeting Stability, but then you must go Mo/D instead of Mo/W for Frenzy.

Also, on Hard Mode, Dying Nightmares destroy 55 and hinder 600s. SF has none of those problems. Also, Bleeding harms 55 in a small way. So do interrupts by Skull Crack. Again, SF can't be interrupted by an attack, and they rarely get enough adrenaline for it. While we're at it, Fear Me! from Grasping Darknesses very, very rarely affed Perma-SFs, and even then they're almost dead. 55s can die when fighting them unprepared.

SF simply has too much defense in one skill. Melee, Ranged, Spells, non-Skill Interrupts, Enchantment Removals, Conditions, Hexes. Basically 95% of the things in UW can't hit you, except for PBAoE Frozen Burst, Traps from worms and Shock. Everything else either fails or misses.

I never said playing a 55 in UW was easy, only that it's possible. A 55 can survive a Rend if they are prepared. Multiple Rends will destroy you, though. I don't really want to discuss permanent Shadow Form again, but we do agree on the points you have made. There are counters to the difficulties you have presented with running a Protective Spirit based build in UW posted in other threads, like "Art of Underworld," Fuzzy Taco's necromancer guides, and Kcp's 55 UW necro thread. Shadow Form just ignores all of that.

What you say does not contradict the reasons for it being a valid argument.

Argument = "Don't like it, don't use it."

"Don't like it, don't use it" = SINGLE PLAYER GAMES.

In GW, you are forced to use it if you want to get into teams.

Also, it's an overpowered skill. Do you know an online-only game where an overpowered skill is accepted? I don't.