Shadow Form meets the end

@Kaleban
Its not about the game its monopolized by Wars ,Eles and Mos,those classes are the easiest classes to play(the monk not exactly but its the best healer class so its always wanted),the other classes are more hard to work with it,require better synergy with the skills(Rangers and Mes have to had a good interrupt timing for example),so those 3 classes created a better reputation during this 4 years of GW life,especially in pugs.
The Sins suffered a lot(the other classes too but not much as) i know that but its a matter of the community itself,most people had bad experience with some class and that stay marked on his mind(for example a narutard sins who shadowstep to a group of mobs and kill herself, or a Ranger that only know spam barrage or a Mesmer without interrupt and energy managment whos run out energy then the only thing he does is wand the mobs) such things killed the reputations of the other classes by the fault of the 2 sides,the bad player and the others who associate the bad player to the class itself
Wars bash things ,Eles nuke things, and Mos heal things this is something that almost everybody can figure so there are less bad War Eles and Mos than other classes.
thank god in GW2 anet will simplify the things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw

ROFL 12charss

omfg so funny xDDDD

Blocked for UK viewers booo...i wanna see!

Lots of irony if that is true.

Troll thread has trolled well. Impressive.

just use any Free Proxy site

Arg! Hurry up and nerf shadow form so i can cash out my ectos.

or just tell us that, "include big changes to Shadow Form"

Just means updating the skill icon to look cooler.

The problem then was ANet creating any other classes basically.

The game dynamic is as you describe, wars bash, eles nuke and monks heal, and in a group setting these obvious and straightforward jobs are the easiest to deal with.

The problem then, is one of ANet making the instances accessible to a class such as a Sin's shadowsteps being of great marginal utility to a group, such that its much easier with than without. Or a Mesmer, as in my last post, being in a group and encountering un-killable monsters that only die on a skill interrupt, such that a skill like Cry of Frustration nukes them all instantly.

Games have had ideas like these forever. I remember in one of my favorite games of all time, the Quest for Glory series, there were enemies that required something more than just damage. Example: in QFG 5 you and an NPC face off against a hydra, and to kill it, you have to work as a team, one doing damage to hurt and then cut off each head, the other using a torch or fire spell to stop the heads from re-growing.

Many Squaresoft games have this idea of multi-stage enemies, both in terms of multiple story type actions and also team cooperation to take an enemy down. WoW does this as well in the high end raids and dungeons, yes DPS is king in many examples, but there are many situations that require strategy and tactics beyond "swing sword, fire nuke, heal heal heal."

If ANet wants to make a truly memorable and successful game, they need to stop knee-jerk nerfing skills, alter the gameplay of a massive percentage of their game to offer unique and interesting challenges such that its a different play experience as an interrupting Mesmer or Ranger than a Warrior, and be sure to incorporate novel ideas into GW2. Again, Quest for Glory did this great for a game in the 90's, each character class had different ways of completing quests and even different quests that defined each character type.

Like I've said multiple times in this thread alone, I don't mind SF being nerfed, as long as its for the right reasons, and that its nerfing is accompanied by gameplay changes that actually make sense and are conducive to party play for all professions.

What I am against is nerfing SF because a bunch of whiny crybabies want it that way, to justify their desire for e-peen stroking and keeping areas of the game exclusive to their highly specialized team builds. Peace.

Anet wont Nerf SF because that,he will be nerfed because its simply overpowered, for example you can solo Duncan on HM with it, this is not right on a game that since the trailer of the alpha version in 2003 claimed to be team play,
or when the skill is used in group,it became ridiculously powerful allowing one of the most or the most difficult area to be run in 7 mins.

and the nerf wont monopolize the high end areas for "highly specialized team builds" ,people will discover other gimmicks to use in PUGs, but the case is when one build go out of control ,he needs to be nerfed,like was Ursan and will be SF now

and about the sins being hated i belive it can be solved buffing another sins skills as said before, its hard to change the mentality of people but when Nightfall came(the campaign not Abbadon invading Elona ) Critical Agility for example helped a lot the reputation of sins. perhaps a buff in some skills will make the sins be wanted on high end PUGs again.

Today's update... and no skills.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAAHAHA HHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! AHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH AHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!

On a complete side note : We recently hit 1kposts.

Gratz reflect!

If we get another 3k posts, I think we'll be still a couple of months away from the actual nerfs. So the final countdown has indeed begun, 180 days left

ANet's solution to SF is GW2.

Just going to drag it out and drag it out and be like "LOOK GW2!!!!!".

Going to be a rude awakening for them when nobody buys it because they have made it painfully clear that they are as good at balancing a game as your every day waterhead.

It will come when its done..

I know they QQed about trinity but that has nothing to do with it. If they improved their playing, which many of them did, they could do just fine with another build. Or they could invent something on their own. Examples the 5-man SF team had necros instead of eles, or B/P which used synergies in a very different way and didn't have a tank character, unless you can count the MM as a that.
It wasn't even hard. People played trinity not because there was nothing else that was as efficient, they did it because they lacked imagination.

With SF, there is no way to beat the gimmick by improving. Because no matter how much you improve, you can't be better than RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing INVULNERABLE.

That's why Ursan needed to go, that's why SF needs to go.

Only reason i want shadow form gone is because it makes the game to damn easy for the people who abuse it. Have you ever asked one of the abusers if they come onto GW to do something other than farm? or sell their 7-8 BDS'?.

Say hello to SF for another month...atleast. Remember Anet said they would address it before this year is over? Good times, Good times.

Remember anet said they would tell us wtf is going on over there?

but yeah sucks don't it...

How many times do we have to say that that's not why we want SF nerfed?

As many times as you need to convince yourself.

You can keep saying it until you're blue in the face, and we will continue to not believe you until you can provide a *good* reason to nerf it.

Things that are not good reasons:

"No game should have god mode" - Ignoring for a moment the skew on reality attempted by the term "god mode", this is entirely rhetorical, based on an opinion, nothing more. Plenty of games, good, and bad, have had the capability to far overpower the mobs. In about every single-player RPG (except maybe those from Bioware) I've played (and that numbers in the triple digits) it's possible to get so stompingly insanely strong that you can all but OHK bosses and the random mooks go down like flies. And GW is more like a single-player RPG than an MMO in PvE due to the advantage of an instanced world, but with those roles reversed. It's the wandering mooks who walk around with one-hit-kills(dinosaurs), more hard-res capability than any player party(awakened), more numbers than any party, stupid number buffs... etc... plenty of games, far more successful than GW, have made it possible for characters to be more powerful than what they meet. So the "no game..." canard doesn't fly.

"SF/600/etc... Makes the game too easy" - Another opinion. Whether its true or not, in this case, it's definitely a case of "if you don't like it, don't use it." Some people like easy games, and them doing so doesn't affect you in the slightest. We also summarily reject the claim that you cannot get a group because people are using shadow form to do $INSERT_WHATEVER_HERE. You have many options here. GW is unique in its hero/henchmen system. Use it. Or you can use shadow form and join in the group. OR you can group with any of the myriad OTHER people who whinge about the SAME "I cant get a group cause everyone uses SF. Waahhh!" garbage. Ruining SF will ruin the fun for other people and gain you nothing except epeen and the unfortunate realization that if you whine enough, you *can* force other people to play your way.


"OMG Nerf SF 123123 faceroll Lulz!" - This one seems to increase in popularity geometrically, like pouring water on a gremlin. I'm pretty sure that most of the ones saying this have never even used it, and the rest know better but the truth is a minor consideration next to their pundit-like ideology. Yeah, someone who knows what they are doing can have an easy time of a lot of things with a perma. No different than anything else in the game, but the claim that anyone can grab a cap sig, get SF and perma without issue is pure garbage. There are actually skills that can be learned by solo-permaing that are generally neglected by the population as a whole:

Thanks to the recharge/duration nerf a few months back, perma was still possible, but a lot more energy intensive. Yet perma continued, because people using it learned that the general PvE tactic of "spam until energy is gone, then let H/H tank it out while I recharge" was synonymous with "dead assassin." Shadow form runners (outpost, not mission) learn all about mob avoidance and positioning, and on some runs even aggro control that is actually more complex than "plink with longbow, run behind minions". Telling when its safe to let SF drop and recharge rather than keeping it up and risking running out of energy... but no, any drooling moron can do it. Except they're too busy using idioms like "lol race roll keyboard" on forums.


I realize none of this makes a difference. The QQ epeen whiners won this one, that's already in stone. Doesn't mean we're going to let you claim you whined about it for a year for any other reason, because we haven't seen any evidence of even one. But the conclusion was foregone from the way they selected the TK members who'd be doing this, and what's one more fail from Anet at this point?

My name is Targren and I eat paint chips and poopoo in the potty.

The fact that GW has an instanced world does not make it a single player game. Not even close.

Being more powerful than the monsters is not the same as godmode. Godmode means they can't even hurt you, and that no amount of luck on their part will ever allow them to defeat you. This sort of thing is not tolerated in any decent multiplayer RPG out there.

Also, you forgot an argument: SF defeats the purpose of playing any other profession. Saying that SF is ok is tantamount to saying that the game's other professions should not exist. Furthermore, since SF more or less removes the monsters from the game, it also practically says that they shouldn't exist. The same is true of the majority of the game mechanics that comes with those monsters.

Basically, once you accept SF as an acceptable form of gameplay, it inevitably becomes the norm (by virtue of being vastly superior to everything else), and what you're left with is...well, not much of a game. All the work Anet put into programming all this stuff? Meaningless, because none of it ever comes into play.

But seriously, how can you say that the anti-SF crowd only wants to stroke their e-peen when there are people like me who are against it and have no e-peen to begin with?

Yeah, I love that argument.

Excuse me while I log on and bathe in my 20 thousand gold that I have saved.

Better yet, excuse me while I log in which I haven't done for nearly a year now. I'm just a casual onlooker disappointed at ANet's constant failure, and the userbase's idiocy.

Then you can't call SF godmode because that definition does not hold for it. There are plenty of ways to screw it up, and therefore it doesn't apply.


That's not an argument, that doesn't even make sense. You're dead wrong about it"removing monsters from the game", even if there IS a case to be made about some of their mechanics that should not exist (hard res on monsters but no DP being one of them).

It's pseudo-existentialist crap and a slippery-slope fallacy. If you're honestly THAT insecure about your pet class (before you try the obvious but very incorrect redirect, mine is Ranger) that you think one meta build is saying it "shouldn't exist", then Shadow Form isn't your problem, acceptance and conformity issues are.

More slippery slope, all just as wrong. It's not "vastly" superior to "everything else" outside of poorly-designed elite areas. It's superior to many other things in poorly designed dungeons (if they were not poorly designed, there would not be such a market for running them, and even then, SF is hardly the only possibility), and in some cases is one of the better running builds (but is dwarfed in effectiveness by many others on more non-trivial runs like Beacons->Drok's)

Because they haven't offered good reasons. Neither have you. Your arguments here are appeals to emotion and borderline neuroses, there's not a reasoned position in the bunch.

How many monsters can get through SF? For practical purposes, it might as well be godmode.

Why should I play a warrior, when a SF sin is better? Or an elementalist? Or a mesmer? Or anything besides a SF sin? Answer: I shouldn't, unless I want to do the equivalent of putting mending on my bar.

Why even have the monsters, if they can't do anything to you?

SF makes so many parts of the game redundant that the only logical conclusion to be drawn is that they shouldn't be there. Excuse me for following the logic to it's end.

I've said this several times, and I'll say it again: If you think SF is ok, then go to Sardelac and suggest every one be given the ability to maintain it. Until you do that, it's clear that you just want the assassin to be better than every other class.

Don't know if this was mentioned before but see Related Skills: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Invulnerability
i lol'd

stop trying to pick on the little man

This is utter rubbish and though you rephrase it it's a recurrent theme in your posts. Rather than flame you I'll try to help you. Make something other than a Dervish, problem solved. If you are gunshy about the holy trinity then I would highly recommend either a Necromancer or a Ritualist both of which can easily work into groups. If your problem is finding "decent" or "winning" groups then welcome to Guild Wars PuGs in PvE. Expand your friends list to people you know to be decent players or join a guild that does the things you want to do. Nothing can touch SC runs, don't even try. Instead switch to a working meta that has consistent results and reasonable times, Physway. There is no spoon.

There are 10 professions in this game. Only 1 is useful. This is wrong.

Also, I don't have a warrior or ele, and my monk is pvp-only.

Boy, I'm glad you let me know this. I'd better stop playing on my warrior now.

Yes, you can say it again and again and it doesn't become any less ridiculous. The problem with "following that logic to its end" is twofold... First, the logic you are following to its end is flawed. Secondly, see here. The CLOSEST thing reality has to offer to what you're saying is that there isn't any point in FARMING with anything but an assassin (which is also decidedly untrue).

As for posting ANYTHING is Sardelac, you're out of your mind. While I don't personally have a problem with the idea of anyone being able to maintain it (I do miss Me/A), the subsequent bitch-fit blowback would be epic, and anything suggested in sardelac that DOES somehow miraculously get implemented does so in a very "monkey's paw" sort of fashion.

You are absolutely correct there. It is wrong. Factually and axiomatically. The only question is why you bothered to say it if you knew it wasn't true?

Would that be why there are 11 A/E builds on PvXWiki, all of which are just permutations of the GoS/DP/SF formula adapted for specific areas with or without consets, all under the "Great" tab for PvE builds, and there are NO other "Great" builds listed for any other class in the same category?

Oh... wait. There ARE a bunch of other builds that work just as fine, if not better, and for each class each build is quite different when compared to the A/E builds.

So you're wrong, Yelling is wrong, and all the other whiners are wrong. Bask in the glory that you got to have your cake and eat it too with the upcoming likely nerf, and recognize that it doesn't happen too often. Oh... wait, I forgot GW always gives into the elitist e-peen whiner crowd, dang.

Wow, so even though the logic and arguments posited by the whiners are completely whack and out of touch with reality and fair gameplay, ANet still caters to them. I don't suppose saying I'll leave the game if they nerf SF will amount to anything will it...?

I'm sorely tempted. Not that I care about SF specifically (since I got my obby armor and stopped farming ectos and shards, I rarely use it) but because it's just as you said... Anet caters to the loudest, without regards to their minority or evident lack of intelligence (yelling@ demonstrates that best in this thread, I think) or willingness to reason.

There are people on both sides for whom it's become an ideological battle and transcended any possibility of "logic or reason." The sad part is that Anet has actually taken a side in that battle rather than just letting it blow with sound and fury, signifying nothing, and ignoring it. It's like giving free money to any player who voted Republican/Democrat (because yes, that IS the level of stupidity to which the Shadow Form battle has descended. When Shadow Form is gone, 600/smite is gone, discordway is gone, and spirit spamming is gone again, they'll fight over something else).

tl;dr version: I can definitely understand your losing faith in ArenaNet.


The sad thing is that GW *is* actually unique. It's cooperative in an instanced world without being entirely twitch-based. I'd love to find another game like it, pay or not. Ironically, that's the uniqueness they've abandoned in GW2 so they could be more WoW-like.

One can only hope.

Your kind are the kind of people that are ruining all modern day video games.

Not that you have bothered to read any of them. Your mind is closed, your interest in this matter is purely selfish. For you, GW IS a single player game and you are the only player in it.

Right, which is of course why I've openly said in multiple posts that I would not mind an SF nerf if it were done for the right reasons, along with altering the areas that give rise to the need to Speed Clear, namely most elite areas and dungeons who's rewards are not commensurate with time investment, and which give rise to the whole notion of speedclearing in the first place.

Along with THAT, I've also gone on record as stating that the main need for ANet to address is the utter lack of necessity and utility that classes such as Rangers, Mesmers and Dervishes bring to any area in the game. Its ESPECIALLY evident in the idea that the Scythe, the Dervish's PRIMARY weapon is actually more effective in the hands of SECONDARY Dervishes, due to the terrible way ANet implemented the Dervish class.

Nerfing Shadow Form, or ANY farming/running build for that matter, will not change the FACT that the majority of the groups that form in outposts will almost always run the MOST EFFICIENT build available to maximize their time spent/reward earned ratio, as well as not feling terribly underpowered and getting slaughtered by monsters and failing.

Failure, for most people, is not enjoyable. So whether its Shadow Form or something else (55 monks ruled for years, SF has had an extremely short heyday by comparison), players will always try to play through an area as fast as possible so they feel like they've accomplished something.

In the absence of new content, what do you think people who've sunk three or more years into this game are going to do? Do any of you honestly believe that there is a majority of players out there who are still "WOWED" by the UW, even after having been through it hundreds of times? No, these players want to get their eighth set of Obsidian armor for whatever reason, and are probably not trying to be leisurely at it.

If anyone can honestly say they enjoy immensely repeating the same areas over and over for its own sake, then they should be checked for OCD. I've seen and done the UW on a couple of characters, and the only reason I would go back is for the ectos, nothing else there is really of interest.

And that's probably the worst part about GW, is that eventually all areas become identified by the rewards they give, rather than the experience (not numbers, I'm talking philosophically), landscape or fun factor. There are no "EPIC" fights in GW, no multi-stage bosses, no flying dragons or transforming demons. Its all DPS burn-down, with no room for hexing (many bosses immune or 1/4 length), interrupting (many enemies immune or recharges extremely short) or tactics of any kind.

GW is flawed in design at its core, which is why so many of the professions don't have a function, and why so many people in PvE gravitate towards speedclearing and farming, because the challenge of speed makes the game interesting, its "re-conquering" basically. Until ANet realizes this issue and decides to take positive steps towards rectifying it, then threads like these will ALWAYS exist, with the issue being whatever OP farming/speedclearing/running build is in vogue at the moment.

I'm amazed that you can type all of this out, and completely believe it.

I do like how you use unrelated problems to try and justify keeping the problem that you like. What does "Interrupting is useless" have to do with SF raping the 90% of the game?