Is this Anet's solution to shadow form?

I think you best define standard play first.
Because I am giggling at the idea that some idiot is using SF to do The Wilds.

If I remember correctly, SF-farms used to involve a bonder, a healer, a mm, a nuker and a tank.
Guess what?
A bonder was ALWAYS a monk, a healer was ALWAYS a monk, a mm was ALWAYS a necro, a tank was ALWAYS a warrior and a nuker was ALWAYS an ele. (Or was the "nuker" a SS necro? My mind is a bit blurry here.)
That's how farming works.
When it comes to farming there is ALWAYS that one option and everything else isn't used. Or do you really think that if SF is trashed that we'll see this MASSIVE number of builds pop up that will be all interchangeable?

The vast majority of PvE can be curbstomped by a SF sin. And if it can't, bring 3 or 4 and you're still unkillable.

I don't know about the past, but in the present farming doesn't involve nearly so much variety.

Exactly. If farming is truly all there is left to the game, then the only way for the game to be fair is for every profession to be identical. So we'd better hope that there is more than farming left in the game, otherwise the only logical thing to do is suggest that every profession besides the assassin be deleted.

The one and only time where this may have been true by design was during the Ursan days. Even then it wasn't enough and we started seeing rank discrimination followed immediately by profession. The only time I ever saw D's swap in was as terra's for DoA and even then given other options they suck. That's your real problem here, you need to use up more than just one of your eight default character slots. Monks were, are, and still will be into the conceivable future the most versatile farming profession. Not that I want to see more of your complaints but a little consistency would be nice.

So if I use WoH for the whole game, does that makes WoH problematic also?

How will trashing SF benefit the mesmer's ability to farm?

The two of you are misinterpreting the message I'm trying to get across.

If farming is what the game's really about, and if there is only one way to farm that is always most effective, then the only way for the game to be fair is for everyone to be identical.

Note the ifs. Neither of those is necessarily true if the game is not all about farming. the interpretation that the game is all about farming leads down a dark path.

If, on the other hand, the game is not all about farming, and that just happens to be one aspect of it, then there is hope, because then there are teams with each person contributing in a certain unique way to create a team that is greater than the sum of it's parts. This is why the game has separate professions in the first place. Each one is supposed to be able to contribute to a certain team in a way that no other could.

But SF is so much better than everything else in the game that it destroys this dynamic. In doing so, it removes the purpose of having separate professions in the game at all.

So, if we are to assume that SF is ok, we might as well admit that all these other professions are a waste of memory and shouldn't exist, since none of them have any real place in the game or reason to exist.

I understood your post just fine. When I play PvE I can take any profession I want and get a group. If, on the other hand, I want to join a very specific team build for an Elite then I accommodate the team with whatever they are missing if I have it. This is not something new, it's always been that way. You can either play the desired professions whose party slots are at a premium or sit out. This particular argument has been going on at least as long as the Holy Trinity has been around and it never changes. Not all professions were created equally, that's life.

This "Holy Trinity" thing seems to only be something you think about.

If you don't know what it is, that gives me a good idea of when you started playing Guild Wars.

see, this is what trying to balance PvE do to you. read that phrase again and try not to look stupid. How the hell are you going to sell a game with 10 identical professions?

The holy trinity is pretty much how most mmos go, and how some of us on consider it the epitome of balance in pve. You have a tank that holds agro, healer, and nuker. It's not prevalent in GW because you have extra professions and there isn't a real agro system.

I disagree. Some professions should be better farmers because that is how they are created, however they shouldn't have acess to skills that allow them to solo dungeons and elite areas. SF should either be nerfed to the ground or changed to a tanking skill; any middleground "balance" is going to keep it in its broken state.

You still don't get it. I am saying that GW is not about farming, and that due to the way it is put together it cannot be. There would not be 10 professions if farming is what the game was about. If it is about farming, then the logical conclusions are, well, illogical horseshit. Hence, it must not be.

Upier is a god!

Also i giggle at the idea of another SF nerf thread.
im going to bake some cookies till cows can fly

I bet there'd be a lot less QQ and more pew pew if ANET reverted back to most classes being able to maintain SF, lol.

Actually, you'd just have the same situation as you did with Ursan. A couple of professions would be better at using SF than everyone else (in the case of Ursan, warrior and ranger ursans were better than other ursans in every single way, and there was literally no reason to ever use any other kind), and there would be no point in playing anything except those professions.

Guess what? That's the status quo with SF as it is, except that instead of two or three professions that are worthwhile, there is only one.