Shadow Form meets the end

Without SF (or something like it) there is NO way to effectively manage aggro of large mobs in HM elite areas (referes to DoA specifically). So If aggro in HM elite areas can't be managed, I advocate bringing back the really old school NO SCATTER from AoE in HM elite areas to try to at least kill the mobs BEFORE they BREAK aggro and WIPE the back line...

That's true, but the difference is that in those games the player ends the godmode by making a mistake by falling off the world etc., while in GW a creep can counter the 'god-mode' by using a skill. So spell and counterspell, which is a basic gamemechanic in both MTG and GW. That's why imo SF can't be called godmode. Overpowered or imba is something else ofcourse.

A typical godmode skill in GW would be: 'all creeps in the area die, but you still take damage from environmental effects' or 'you can only take damage from environmental effects'

Sorry, I'm not going to stick my head in the sand; ignoring the problem isn't going to solve it. If Anet doesn't want to nerf the skill to hurt the farmers, then where are all the pve split reverts to the other builds that they killed? I wish Anet stop the degenerate builds and start reworking areas instead of throwing us new cons or shinies.


Fun fact: Permasins can bring heals along to nullify pbAoE dmg (aside from some monsters such as earth tormenters). It's how SoD's ran.

You're stupidity is showing...might want to zip it up.

Going back to my original request, how many skills are currently used to stop sins from pretty much doing every high-end area?

How is that SF's fault rather than those equipping the high end mobs? SF is taking advantage of what those high end areas will give them. It is not a god mode by it's design, it's a god mode based on the design of the world around it. The fact that we can name builds to completely shut it down proves this. A few Leech Signet's on mobs and SF's efficiency in SC's would've never arose.

Why can't Anet implement pop ups to dissuade SF SC's, much like they did to the 55 monk ages ago?

That's what EVERYONE says, then after they managed to get Anet to nerf the specific skill you never ever hear from the same people again once the areas completely empties (at least until the next gimmick pops up). Everything in this thread is basically a repeat of the Ursan/DoA whining from before...with the same old "degenerate build needs to go first then we can worry about the area" BS. Of course, after the nerf, they just go on their merry way with their "pro" guild laughing now that they managed to kill the area for pugs and casual guilds and now they're "leet" again.

If all these complainer truly cares about the game and not just about the loot and/or excluding others then they would ask Anet to rework the areas or balance the rewards FIRST, then complain about SF.

Isn't that why it's called HARD MODE? Sure, it by all means is supposed to be possible to beat, and it is, but it should be harder than what a few of the skills are capable of turning it into.

I can cast empathy on monk, it clearly affects him but does not counter him. I can Cast ignorance on random foe, but unless he has signets, that affects him but does not counter anything.

Just because they can affect perma does not mean anything. Question is, can they actually affect perma in way that counters it?

And guess what? No, they don't

Perma does not have to step to traps to rape pve, all traps are pointless to mention, hell, you can walk into the if you want, it is just some damage.
Only two spirits affect permaing, others do a bit of damage at most.
Oh yeah, and rangers have touch skill that is useless against perma.

One professions, two skills. Down from your 24.

To help with the subject matter, I took the liberty of making a video.

Shadow Form Effects

Ironically, I'm all for the nerf of Shadow Form

Shin Chan.

Wrong answer -1 epeen
I know of quite a few ways of handling huge DOA mobs and half of em dont include gimmicks, there is more than enough skills in this game to manage any HM area.
Maybe you should ask around =D
SF is uneccessary, it just makes it mime numbingly easy and lets face facts, HM areas shouldnt be easy, the day pugs can hammer elite areas is the day gw took a nose dive

Actually, pugs should be able to complete elite areas with some margin for error on normal (aka, Casual) mode. With just enough resistance that they will have to rethink their builds and get rewarded with success for proper preparations.

No point in being elitist "no, u cant ever see dhuum" jerk.

They just should not be able to farm hell of it easily or complete in in hard mode without being really, really good.

Ermmm... think about what you just said.....

'A player can bring heals to nullify damage........'

That is what every profession does..and is kinda the whole concept of the game...... nothing to do with God Mode

Aside from all the grammar mistakes in this thread that are subsequently flamed by others, this malapropism made me chuckle. Haven't seen this one before .

Almost all of the elite area's in guildwars are laughable easy in normal mode if you remember one thing...

Team synergy, you can't bring your favorite huge dmg build you need to COORDINATE with your TEAM and figure out a way to have a HUGE SPAMMABLE SPIKE to kill things fast. jesus its guildwars not rocket science

I'll be happy to see SF get nerfed. It should get back to TEAM efforts. I quit the game for awhile, came back to jump in a FoW group but there are no groups going unless you are one of a few professions. Hard Mode areas should be just that, a competent group, not the actions of one profession able to conquer all. Right before I took my hiatus, noone wanted a sin in their group because the only sins worth a flip were ones who knew how to get in, spike, get out. During that time, I made a sin, took it to survivor title, just to show it could be done. Sure, I made a perma later, just to see what all the fuss is about, but I can assure you I use my regular build over the perma build, just because I like to have fun in the game. The assassin gettin props is nice after seeing assassins not wanted for so long, but it got way too much power for what it is supposed to be now. I didnt read to see how they would nerf it, but I'd prefer SF to not be able to be able to be kept up non stop. Maybe keep its current characteristics, but reclassify it as a stance. They nerfed warrior stances to hades and back when Nightfall came out so more people would use a dervish. So make it a stance, shorten duration by 10-20%, and make an assassin what it was supposed to be in the first place; get in, spike, get out. That way other professions can strive and get in groups again. Why they let it go this long reminds me of that "confessions of an ANet employee" story, making it ring even more true. I'm sure many got rich off the SC's, which IMO is rediculous, but come on ANet, let other professions get back in the game =)

Oh, so the skill is fine, it's just the rest of the game is not balanced!!!

Right

(someone call for the men in white coats)

Shadow Form has been meeting it`s end for quite some time now. Will it happen at all?

The skill is not fine but neither are areas with frustrating design. (or if the design is meant to be that way, the reward is not balanced compared to the risk).

As for the NM/HM argument....splitting the player base that is already dwindling and spread out into two was a bad idea to start with. It makes it even harder to group for anything....

I did not say a player can bring heals to nullify damage, I said a permasin can. Please don't misquote me. My response was to a poster who thought that every single AoE in the game will affect sins and will stop them from farming high-end areas (which there is very little of).

Sorry, I haven't started posting much before Ursan, I'll keep the QQ alive

Anet did exactly this by adding skeletons to UW...and look what happened. The only reason people even play UW now is to get the new items, and most teams need a permasin for 4 horsemen. Balancing the game around a broken skill doesn't work and it never will.

On the contrary, You and others have claimed it was invincible mode and nothing effects it, I showed you were wrong and have since been doing the BUT BUT BUT excuse.

I didnt make any claim as to stoping UW farming, Once again nice try. How about you take your own advice on misquoting.

And so called balancing a skill around a broken area also dont work either nor has it ever worked.

As far as the list I gave on skills that effect SF, you do realize there is more than 1 mob in UW right. Theres tons of things that could have been properly to fix the areas itself that would have put a end to the times of speed clears.

...
Ummm...yeah...

The point I'm trying to make is that few monsters in high-end areas have skills that can kill permasins and stop them abusing the skill. I'm not sure where you came to the conclusion that I said nothing can get through SF.

I'm not seeing logic here. UW has been out for three years, and yet the only complaints of it being "broken" before the big update was that the nps kept dying and f'ing up groups and that 4 horsemen is frustrating in HM. Go ahead and prove me wrong, but I haven't heard of UW as being broken.

And here's where I disagree. You can either make the area harder for "balanced" groups and try to hit SF,with tweaking and introducing new monsters, or you can just nerf the skill and make the areas easier to give an incentive to play the area. Anet has already shown that they cannot counter SCs in the UW without adding a boss with rediculous HP, so I think removing permasins from having a high dps output would fix the problem. Adding a -33% damage clause to SF is pathetic with all of the pve skills out there augmenting it.

I mean balancing it by making it easier for balanced pugs (and there are ways to do it without "dumbing down" the area), NOT making it even harder the way they're doing it now.

Balancing the game around a skill doesn't work, but neither does balancing the game around top "pro" guild/friend groups. All of the end game areas right now are designed in such a way that only the best of the best can get a decent reward out of it. Most pugs can never finish it, but those that actually do, it takes so long for like two ectos that it becomes completely pointless.

I might be the only one, but I think a pug group that is actually determined/decent enough to finish the area should get far more than two ectos for their 4 hours of work. But right now, the rewards seem to be worth it only for the most skillful play by the best guild/friend groups, and is completely discouraging to pugs just because they're not "efficient" enough.

I just don't believe in nerfing the skill BEFORE they solve the core problems, because they didn't do it for DoA either...and turned the area into a ghost town (once again).

Of all the posts I believe I agree with this one the most.

Alright guys I am going to going to lay it out plain and simple, If they nerf every farm that actually gets you a fairly good chunk of money, this game will turn into complete and utter bull. Now, as a powertrader, I will be in fairly good standing no matter when happens. But, I fear that the gw economy will inflate to pre-eotn standards. Which for some I know that would sound fairly good. But I fear that it will go farther than that, after the additions to UW ectos have been going steadily up, this could send us back to 10-14 k per ecto, again good for some, but this could alienate the newbie / moderate player. I would say that, since all these additions were made to UW, to immediately up the ecto drop rate as well as the rare drops from the UW, FoW, and EotN end chests. This is just to keep ectos down as well as the rare drops, because really, for a 2 hour+ (no perma or 600) dungeon you should get a reward to make it wroth your while. Now, I say this under the assumption that this will be a nerf to TOTALLY make the skills/builds non-viable for farming, if they are still viable, disregard my entire post.
We'll just have to wait and see.

If you fix the areas but don't nerf SF, people will continue to abuse SF, and there will no difference. If these people wanted to do these things in suboptimal ways they would do it already. Unless and until you nerf SF, changing the areas will have no effect.

And yet, if you don't treat the bullet wound, he dies anyway. So, either way he's RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed? In that case, why don't we try fixing the bullet wound anyway, on the off chance that there won't be this huge cascade effect, since those are possibilities (however likely they may be), while death from the bullet wound is a certainty unless it is treated. At worst, the effect is the same. At best, he might just live.

However, you win an internet for taking the metaphor into such awesome territory.

How about we nerf everything and BUFF Ursan again? Oh how I miss the days where I can play and watch TV 99% of the time.

One hand on buttons 1, 2, and 3, and other hand on the remote. Yeah, I know...I'm missing one hand for the crouch area and one hand for the cold beer. That's why you have a biatch for right?

Sorry what?

A good warrior can effectively manage aggro in HM, and if your team is decent, they can pick off key enemies before the mob breaks aggro, and you should easily be able to kill the mob without trouble.

lol I agree with this guy.

Another 2 "lol WTF is this guy thinking" argument to the list :
-Without SF (or something like it) there is NO way to effectively manage aggro of large mobs in HM elite areas.
-Fix the areas where SF can do its stuff and SC's and farm are done

Great..... lets now rework 90% of GW instead reworking 1 broken skill. Some ppl have abused SF so much that they dont recall using 2 hands in this game for so long ...... shame i wont be there to see all QQ ingame.

PS: The Reaper's "Balance" Scythe is swinging .....

I agree with your point that the area needs balancing for normal pugs, but you have to consider that one of the reasons why UW is so broken at the moment is ANet's failed attempts to not balance SF by making UW much harder. So yeah, fix Broken Form AND rebalance the area to make it playable (quest completable) for normal players.

in time maybe we get a buff instead of a nerf. But that's unlikely.

Buffing?!?!?!? Skills?!?!?!?!? BLASPHEMY SIR.

IRONY, Sir.

Okay, I'll bite...

They didn't have to nerf 55 monks to hell and back when they were the farming king, they simply added enchantment strips, pop-ups and mobs specifically placed to deter them. How would SF be any different than this? There is a long standing precedent for such methods. Nightmares, anyone? If there is a single, lone core skill that can completely shut down SF, the SC's should have never gotten to this point.

Where is SF an issue? UW and dungeons. These are considered to be high end areas, and as such should be buffed in order to prevent SF's dominance. The issue is that Anet doesn't seem to realize how easily it is to shut down and would much rather add elements that create more difficulty for balanced mobs (skeletons) while really adding nothing in the way of resistance for experience SC'ers. I liken this to me adding a moat around my house to deter burglars instead of simply locking my doors -- and eventually the burglars find the easy way in anyway since they aren't looking to go through the front door in the first place.

The game's been out for how many years now, with many areas never evolving. Prophecies can be steamrolled due to power-creep by way of the added campaigns and expansions. As such, depending on area many skills seem extremely overpowered. The problem is that these areas were never adjusted to combat such efficiency. I'm not suggesting that out-of-campaign skills be added, but there are simple adjustments that can be made to mobs to counter many metas. UW is no different. Skeletons were the first real hurdle the UW's had in a very, very long time. These were nullified by the community rather quickly because they were a square peg in a circle hole. Why try to outdamage a SF-sin when the greatest damage you can do to them is removing their ability to maintain SF? Anet continues to overthink themselves.

SF as a farming skill isn't overpowered. There aren't many areas outside of the high end where a player can make any significant money, and at least in UW it requires a full team. If you don't think Anet considers farming to be part of the game, then I'm sorry, you're delusional. Nerfing a skill across the board to neutralize it in a handful of areas is the definition of overboard. SF has earned a lot of hatred, much like Ursan before it, due to it's dominance in high end PvE. The difference is that one is easily countered.

And this is what I thought would be the end result. They started with the skeletons (maybe they should have added a crippling skill as well, lol). I just figured they would do something to nullify or at least hamper SC efforts while still giving players the ability to use SF (as is) in other areas.

Whatever, the writing is still on the wall. I have the utmost confidence that something new will come along. Anytime something gets nerfed, something else gets buffed, and thus a new uberleet build is born. About the only thing I truly wish comes down the pike is that as a gift to the faithful, ANET gives us 7 heroes the day GW comes out, lol.

For those still saying SF should be left alone, go here: http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Category:A...running_builds

Look to the left. No build should ever have that ability. Eotn is meant to be elite even in NM. One skill should not make 90% of it solo-able. On that note, look to the right.

600/smite and SF are way too powerful. They need to be nerfed immediately.

So another calling for changes to the effect, rather than the cause.

Those skills ARE the cause

Nope this is the cause:

A majority of game contents are designed around grinding, but other than solo farming, none of the areas are designed for people to grind "normally" without using any sort of gimmick. You try to get all those titles using JUST "balanced" pugs in these end game areas, you won't finish them by the time Guild wars 3 comes out. That's the reason why so many people do gimmick speed clears....because it finally made those area worth it to do.

The reason why people do dungeon solos is because those areas are even WORSE than UW/DoA in terms of risk/reward ratio. 2 hours with balanced pugs for 2 diamonds...really? I just don't see how that kind of reward is balanced...

Lol. Agreed. Just for kicks I H/H some dungeons the other day. An onyx gemstone and a diamond were the most notables for my few hours of play. Lame.