Shadow Form meets the end

I like your data. It's probably from the same source where "Only vocal minority wants Ursan nerfed" came from. And look what happended!

That's so horrendously uninspired that I can't even call it a "band-aid fix".

I really do like some of the opinions posted by Kaleban. If they want to fix the games balance then more is going to be needed then denying a few classes of some of their skills. That is a huge "band-aid fix" in comparison to the idea of giving rewards based on action. Yes his example was simplistic but the system could be refined to work quite nicely.

I've only had this game what ... 3 months or so? And SF really doesn't affect me in a negative way or a positive way. In fact, the only time I have seen it is when a friend I have known a year or so off of GW ran me to Droknar's. If I choose to try and farm (and fail) as a monk or a sin I go for it. I do prefer to do storylines to campaigns though on new chars.

Surely if you don't wish to use the skill and you want to spend hours running a dungeon with friends/guildies then that is your choice? Sometimes newer players do need a quick buck and some people enjoy speed clearing over grinding.

The quality of rewards for hard work is pretty terrible as it is right now. I can see why people so easily resort to running/farming.

People found the Signet of Ghostly Might to be really fun when it killed anyone and anything after 10 seconds as well.

What the f*ck are you talking about again?

There is a lot of reason why what you say is not valid, but do it have any point?

Anet said we gonna fix this, and i don't think this mean we gonna let the SF thing keep going

Its actually pretty well inspired. He just worded it rather simplistically. Rewarding "balanced" play with more reward is far better than punishing gimmicks.

No matter how many gimmick they nerf there will always be ONE area + ONE build that is the most effective. With nearly every area of the game having crap stuff for people doing "balanced", it just encourage nearly all the players to pile onto that one area and one build. Meanwhile, players like me end up getting screwed over with a completely empty game other than that one area.

Of course, there will always be an extremely small minority that doesn't care whether the game dies out or not. The few "pro" guild that are completely out of view and only comes out to cheerleed for a build nerf before they hide back to their little circle and wait for the next gimmick....=.=

Nerfing a skill because people complain is a band aid fix. Changing the gameplay so that people aren't tempted to use gimmick builds is fixing the source of the issue.

I just had to word it simplistically so people like you could understand it. Perhaps instead of praising the idea of segregation and exclusion, the SF haters could do something constructive and suggest solutions that won't basically remove an entire profession from group play again? Of course, that's expecting a quite a bit from you lot.

In the end equation, I fully expect ANet to do the wrong thing, and give in to the crybabies who want their Wammos, Eles and Monks to rule again as they always have. Its not like ANet has a history of doing the simple, elegant things, and instead find stupid solutions that either exacerbate the problem or introduce brand new ones.

Precisely, and many would rather see that change happen with making balanced team builds once again viable. There are many other methods to encourage more balanced party play.

I've suggested numerous changes, but a lot of them are on a huge scale. That's just because Guild Wars PvE is just in such a huge, massive mess.

In the past - and if you ever read this Improval, I've seen the light - I used to advocate that higher dmg = higher difficulty. While it can be something for those that want an insane and crazy mode of play, there's potential for much more challenging encounters with a much better AI and more balanced (team build wise) enemy encounters.

While I do consider what's essentially "invincibility" do be a bit of an iffy skill idea, a lot of the blame resides in the fact that enemies will still throw *everything* they have at you while you still have SF. If enemies actually saw how much of a non-threat farming builds were then none of this would be an issue. If those trolls in the Troll Cave actually realized that nothing they did could kill that 55 and instead kited farming would've died out as soon as it began.

So what I advocate for is:
-Less thoughtless implementation for attempting to increase difficulty: high damage and HP alone just doesn't cut it.
-More adaptable AI: Probably be hard as hell to do, sadly, but it has massive pay-off.
-More balanced enemy builds: running into a mob of 8 baddies that are all the same class and all the same build is rarely fun or gratifying.
And to top things off:
-More difficulty settings: An additional setting that makes the game easier wouldn't be a bad idea, since it would allow those who are inexperienced to see the endgame and challenging areas without wiping on the first mob. Rewards while in this mode would have to be decreased, obviously.

A decrease in power to PvE skills and consets would also be a pretty tasty idea.

And Unchosen makes a great point that the pay-off of many of the rewards you can get in the game are pretty crap. One can state that it shouldn't be much of a problem since everything is based off of just looking different, but still.

Mainly, it's not Shadow Form itself that's really a problem. It's what we go up against that's broken. The problem is ANet is very, very unlikely to make such broad and massive changes to their game, hence why I see a nerf to the skill itself incredibly likely, and also why I don't really care if it's nerfed or not.

And sorry if my first reply to you was a bit harsh. Long weekend at the job...

What happens to the Assassin class post SF nerf?

Lol, no worries.

Plan A:
1. Nerf SF
2. Buff other sin skills

Those are the basics. Of course I could go into more detail, but I had to word it simplistically so people like you could understand it.

And, only sins would become "excluded" by a nerf of SF (that's only if Anet decides not to buff any other sin skills. And if they don't, it will still just put sins on par with professions like rangers, mesmers, and dervishes). Currently, as many as 7/10 professions are excluded in any given SC. If anything, an SF nerf would promote variety.

Assassins will be fine, just like Dervishes and Rits. The biggest problem they have is the PUG mentality that they are supposedly "useless". For the Assassin's in particular this can be blamed largely for what happened with Factions: the Afflicted are possibly the biggest enemies of Sins, and easily the cause for most of their deaths. It was an *awful* idea to design a less durable class against hordes of bad guys that do annoying damage on death.

This should be the plan they run with, but they can't be almost useless buffs like Golden Phoenix Strike, the skill is still fairly lacking.

All sins currently need in PvE is unblockable Death Blossom + Moebius Strike , if they make a PvE / PvP split like this, the sin will be perfect in PvE.

Anet will probably buff something else, so it all depend from what they buff and what one made the assassin for.

Farmer&soloer or he actually wanted to play the class.

A lot of assassin skills could be tweaked to make assassins more than just DB spammers.

I mean, Siphon Strength for example, is fairly great in PvP because players do under 300 damage per hit. Not so much in PvE. It could easily be changed to like...an AoE weakness-like hex without breaking THAT much (Enfeebling Blood...which isn't elite).

Expose Defenses could cause allies to deal additional physical damage, in addition to your unblockable attacks (similar to Barbs).

Enduring Toxin could spread to nearby enemies upon death.

Mantis Touch...god...needs a lot of work. A start would be making it do some unconditional damage...like 20...60...75 or something.

Honestly, you can take any terrible skill in the game and make it enticing. As for making PuGs want to take you...well...Paragons are STILL shunned by a lot of PuGs, even though imbagon is ridiculously overpowered.

Well, to me it seems that whatever buffs they do end up doing, the DB spammer will still be the best assassin build, it has a lot of variations, but the core principal will stay. So why not give it some love?

Well, I guess that's starting to go into the "There should be more than one effective build". I mean, granted, a naked monk with no skills on his bar is "effective" for easy mode PvE....but classes shouldn't be a 1-trick pony. Don't get me wrong, 1-trick ponies are definitely better than a trickless pony, but they should have options. Necromancer for example...there's dozens of builds to run, all of which are pretty damn effective. Hell, even Dervish have various builds, and some skills to add onto their skillbars in certain situations.

The problem is, with most of the assassin's skills, they try to hard to act like single target attackers. Siphon Strength, Palm Strike, etc. But this seems to make it a slightly tweaked form of a warrior with a faster but less damaging weapon, and less armor. I think anet just does not know what to do with the sins other that SF in PvE. I mean look, some skills OBVIOUSLY need a PvE / PvP split, like Beguiling Haze, Dark Apostasy, Hidden Caltrops, etc, so that they are actually wroth their skill slot.

Actually, it's already there in elite and non-elite form : GFoxstrike + foxfang + DB
Only DB is unblockable, and it's on a 4 sec cooldown. Add serpent's swiftness (or any cooldown reducer) and you have a 3 sec cooldown 3 attack chain. All non-elite.

Fox's Promise makes everythign unblockable, but takes your elite. 3 sec chains should be easy to find. (JS+FF+DB).

The choices comes down to : a) use your elite b) use your secoundary and stance c) look a bit deeper and find a better one

Sins having to recast their enchantments mid-battle just to output a decent amount of damage is just pointless. and Fox's Promise can not be relied on because blind is just as plentiful as block in HM.

To be honest, I quite like Beguiling Haze on my assassin. Of course it doesn't output the pure DPS that DB spam does, but completely shutting down a caster for 12 seconds in HM isn't that bad. Plus the high Shadow Arts requirement lets me take fun stuff like Blinding Powder, which is decent to shutdown groups of physical.

I prefer utility builds...which is why I love Paragon, and did so since way before the imbagon. But don't get me wrong, it could likely do with a sligh buff.

As for the direction of the assassin, I have always thought they should have more utility in PvE. Deadly Arts be offensive GROUP utility, Shadow Arts being defensive GROUP utility (though it does already have some...). My assassin was my main for the entire duration between factions and NF, and was the first to finish NF...but then my Paragon took over. Assassin just seems like so much lost potential.

That's because just have ONE good non-farming build generally is not enough, because its hard to get noticed. Also, people don't like the imbagon precisely because of the area design. DoA's very first monster are 100 life steal touchers....completely ignores SY!, and since paragon only has short bow range, its useless in a tank n' spank scenario.

Same thing with UW. To charge up SY! Paragons has to get in short bow range....but aatxe have 300dmg / hit, so if paragon goes up he just drag the aggro to the backline. He would have to wait for the prot to set or tank to grab aggro...but in that scenario SY! would also be unnecessary.

For sins, there's several good build (other than SF) which all revolves around skill spamming + crit agility. But one little enchant strip and the sin loses his damage AND his defense. In addition, if the enemy puts up a block, it also ruins the entire sin skill chain system, and possible causing crit agility to expire because the sin can't land a hit. Out of all the monsters in the entire GW world, I think enchant stripping and anti melee are like the most common. Combined with "death nova on death" monsters in factions...

Also, with stuff like stygian hunger and bladed aatxe in end game area, its inefficient to have more than one front liner. In DoA, one monk already need to dedicate himself to bonding the one tank, with another monk dedicated to spike healing that one tank, and one BiP dedicated to charging the monks because the damage is so high the monk would run out of energy...no group can afford bonding two tanks at once. So between all the melee, the warrior ends up winning the tanking war even though the sin ain't THAT bad with crit agil.

These are all stuff that needs to be addressed if they're going to nerf SF. All those profession all have one powerful build, but they mostly work to make easy stuff more easy rather than make hard stuff manageable.

Well, I'll have to disagree with you on this, Deadly arts and shadow arts have quickly fallen into a deep pit of obscurity and gimmick builds. Assassin's Promise is to me the only skill wroth the points in those two attributes, which says a lot. Shadow arts will be pointless if nothing is done post Sf nerf, and AP is starting to get some bad tides around it by people saying it is a broken skill. Relying on PvE skills hardly makes sins viable.

Considering we can't really change the fact that sins are melee attackers :
They have an AoE spam build (DB)
They have scythe (some say they are the best at it, the rest say it's warriors)
They don't have a compact high damage single target build, yet. (closest is MS below 50%)
THey could have some decent Shadow Arts disrupt build.
Don't think there's really the place for another role.

Imagine the SA playing half disrupt (KD,Daze,Blind are already there), while dishing more damage than a ranger/elem doing the same job. Of course they are by nature a single target class like mesmer. So if they add AoE to skills would probably be small.
How does that sound?

Is a 1 sec cast every 20 sec really that destructive for the DPS?
Lets see... The only counter I know for blind is removal or sight beyond sight. None of wich are up 100%.

Otherwise, how does that look : Golden Fox+WildStrike+ Shatering assault (if there are blocking enchants)/DB (otherwise).
Only counter left is blind, but it's not completely destructive.


EDIT : on a side note, after 40 pages, the conversation became useful.

The first 2 paragraphs...are you trying to explain how SY isn't strong? Because...um..."charging up" SY doesn't take much. Even if a cow attacks you, a decent monk will use Prot Spirit, you will get SY up, and the rest of your team will take no damage for the remainder of the battle. Hell, the mentality of those two paragraphs alone show what's wrong with PuGs. You have the tank n' spank mentality for everything...even UW. The only place it is remotely needed is DoA.

PuGs completely disregard any midline...it's "Tank, Monk (because rits can't heal ldo), and Damage". That's why assassins, mesmers, rangers, and paragons are excluded...and ironically enough, that is also why most pug groups fail. Using PuGs to judge the value of a profession/build/anything is pretty pointless.

But if a monk manages a prot spirit...is SY! necessary at all then? That's what I'm trying to say. SY! is powerful, but mostly in scenario where you can afford to have mobs running around in the backline/midline while you're charging/spamming SY! aka easy areas. What I find in more difficult areas, is that by the time the paragon get SY! up, either half the team already wiped, or the monk managed to protect everyone and SY! was just redundantly active. Either that or all the mob went to tank and have SY! on everyone end up completely pointless. As for DoA, even you agree with me so there.

You need to take into account the normal sin bar, which consists of Crit Agility , maybe Crit defense , you might have Asuran Scan then their attack chain (sometimes with a self heal). Now you want to add in Fox's promise, this turns one blind into a scramble to get 2-4 skills up in a combat setting, which IS destructive to DPS. Along with the fact that one enchant removal ruins all of this. So yes, it is destructive.

Wow.

I don't know how to respond to be quite honest. I mean, TNTF reduces damage from the cows by 35%, weakness (which any halfway decent team will have, in the form of Enfeebling Blood) reduces that damage down even further, and you completely charge SY! from one attack, which reduces damage for about 90%+. I really don't know wtf to say to you if you die before your Paragon gets off one attack.

yelling's never been out of normal mode

playing the assassin outside of an sf tank.. I like to use him as a barrage crit ranger- you can get some decent damage instead of trying to be up front with your enchantments ready to strip

tbh, here is how my assassin goes through the game...when I'm just finishing quests etc with h/h.

Crit Agility, Locust's Fury, SY!, Wild Blow, Distracting Blow, rez

Have a smite monk hero use SoH on me, and an Orders nec with Either OoV or OoP, and Dark Fury. I just go through spamming SY!, and autoattacking for a bit over 80dps.

The problem still persists, if you get one blind or enchant strip on you, your DPS is shot.


Also

1 thing concerning, the 2-4 skills : once the faght is started, teh 2 crits will sustain themselves, the only castings are Scan and Fox.
But a blind is indeed destructive.

But consider the second chain: 4 skills, that fit in your build with 1 optionnal (the heal, rez or reduce-cd-stance). In theory, you never stop attacking, but you'll miss a beat if you need to use ShatteringA. Yes it reduce your DPS, but you're free from block stances and enchantments, even Obsi won't stop you or your party. And Shattering will deal about the same amount as DB, but 1-target and non-AL-ignoring.

Now that I think about it, you're basically asking for a foolproof, no-cast-needed, block/blind-proof way chain one of the strongest combo in the game? Are you sure you're not asking too much? Or did I misunderstood something in what I'm looking for.

Not really...I mean, you do lose some DPS, but losing Crit Agility doesn't turn you into a level 5. I mean, you still hit for 60-70 damage every hit >_>

Not to mention that you can simply recast it.

People are making this game out to be way more difficult than it really is.

Well we have now come full-circle in this discussion, if you look at most battles, you will see that a Warrior has less down time than a sin with the added benefit of having more armor and generally more functionality in a PvE setting. If DB/MS get the unblockable buff, we will see a very good niche for a sin to fill while still being subject to enchant removal and other melee counters.

You can say that about any melee class, and with this you must step back, recast, and then you can re-enter the fray, along with the lower armor, we can see why sins are shunned in a non SF world.

If you use Weakness AND TNTF AND Prot...then the team will survive whether SY! is used or not. Like I said, its not that SY! is a weak skill its that the scenario that it is actually required is not that much. In fact TNTF isn't really required if you have a weakness necro with some hexes, which is why paragon are not chosen in the first place. The paragon's TNTF reduction is nothing in comparison to weakness' 50% reducation, non-pve skill status, and 1 energy casting cost.

you pair with a rit splinter and pve skills.. the damage is pretty good- trying to play assassin as a damage dealer in pve hardmode is not really viable.. try that in practically any of the dungeons you'll find strips will leave you dead..

I wouldn't have an assassin deal damage on the frontline.. not saying can't be done, just asking for a headache.. why if sf does gets nerfed in pve- there's still monk tanks- but I mean really.. you still need a tank- if you rely on sy your still replacing one op skill with another.. just a different way to tank the damage

Weren't you just complaining that the cows hit for 300 damage and it's really hard to survive long enough to get SY! up?

Weren't you also the one complaining that missions are too hard? That could have been someone else, but if it wasn't...lol

SY! is actually a double edged sword.

I mean, it is ridiculously overpowered, without a doubt, and it does really pigeon-hole Paragons into using it (partly because a lot of skills need adjusted, and partly because it's so f'ing strong). However, it does allow balanced, non-cookie cutter parties in a lot of places, rather than taking away from it like most farming overpowered skills do.

To be honest, the people who are so valiant in "everyone should be able to do everything in the game" should be backing up the imbagon instead of a terribly gimmick/broken skill like SF. SY! allows everyone to do basically everything in the game, while still promoting teamplay, and fundamental game mechanics.

I can't believe people are actually saying that assassins will be useless after SF is nerfed. Even without it, sins are one of the most powerful classes in the game.

MSDB. Critscythe. Crit Barrage. AP. That right there is more "good" builds than the dervish and paragon have combined.

Crit Barrage is useless in HM

Ap is used by other classes or sins using gimmick builds.

Critscythe and MSDB share common weaknesses.

What do you mean by downtime? Unless you're stripped, you will only have Scan to cast, which is not so usefull in AoE situation and which the warrior will also cast. And you are not destroyed by the strip it's either blocking or IAS, the chain is unaffected. Concerning the attack time, even if you cast more, a warrior can also be blocked(and has less way to play around it) and if he does AoE like the sin, he needs Cyclone axe/Wirling attack (less than 20 AoE every 2 sec like you) or 100Blades/WirlingAttack (which is every 4 sec with double adren on auto attack), so his "efficient" time is weaker as well as his damages/attack (which makes DPS even smaller).
Then there's the case where both are doing spike damage : warrior are more efficient with DragonSLash, but that's probably it : The other options are probably inferior to a sin's spike. (added :My main's not a warrior, did you guess?)

The way I understand it, DB spam (not DB/MS) can already be completely unblockable at the cost of missing some DB with the Shattering chain. With higher AoE and equal weakness vs most counter (accept block).

EDIT : It is used at all in common builds? Or otherwise, is every spike build (where it could be used) a gimmick