Shadow Form meets the end

Why can't anet restores SF back to 60sec last time, reduce recharge to [email protected] attrib points, 0 cast time, and 5 energy cost? That way, every profession can run a perma build?

Wouldn't that be nice and end all the BS and crying?

Yeah because the reason there is a problem is because not everyone can run perma shadow form

Giving everyone nuclear weapons surely solves all the problem of them being used.

Oh wait.

Don't worry about it. The Farmegeddon clock stands at 2 minutes to midnight. Just sit back and enjoy the fireworks.

As much as I'd like to think the nerfs are gonna make all these QQ's go away. I think the update will in fact just release a new torrent of QQ's.

Did you read? I said so EVERY profession can run SF. What */A profession cannot run SF?

1. 30sec recharge @ 3 points in Shadow Arts
2. SF last for 60sec @ 3 points in Shadow Arts
3. 5 energy cost...What profession doesn't have 5 energy?
4. 0 cast time.

That was sarcasm, mate.

Mind Blast is still pretty rediculous. So is Word of Healing for instance, but those are both individual problem skills, I can't predict what skill combinations will dominate the metagame for the next few months but I'm fairly certain noone can. Atleast not until the skill update is final and we can look at all the alternatives.

Just to get this one through to you, Shadow Form is more than just a formidable build. It provides immunity from both spells and attacks, this includes enchantment strips that would otherwise counter the skill. The same problem applies for 55/600-ish farming builds using Spell Breaker, they negate the very counter to the skills they're using. And are doing that so effective that both builds had provided this game with the most overpowered farming method this game has ever known.

This obviously created a problem because players were now farming areas in times faster then the areas were ever meant to be cleared. So players either had the choice of creating an Assassin (and let's be serious, you could create and have a fully set and ready to go Assassin to farm with within a day. It doesn't take skill to get to level 20, and it doesn't take skill to use a build that is this self-sufficent as the Shadow Form template); or you could ignore the build, but not make as much virtual wealth as the players farming.

But farming isn't more than a grind, and what attracted most people to GuildWars in the first place was the anti-grind mentality of the game. The amount of time you spent online shouldn't give you a benefit over other players. That's why GuildWars has no monthly fee. To allow every player to play at their own pace, and enjoy the game in their own way. Be it PvE or PvP, aiming for a full map clear, earning prestige armour or getting a higher (fame) Rank.

GuildWars in its' current state however, does give players who push themselves to grind this game obvious benefits, in the sence of rediculous titles (100k+ faction etc.) These titles actually have gotten a benefit in PvE, and the whole Ursan rank...+ started having its' effects. The (grinding) PvE playerbase had become as elitair as they claimed the PvP-playerbase to be.
Thus the much needed Ursan Blessing 'nerf'.

But why should Shadow Form be allowed to keep its' current form? Because without it you'll find out soon enough that those mindnumbing titles are too much of a grind?

That might be a problem with the whole title system itself, but that doesn't mean Shadow Form isn't overpowered. Because it obviously is, immunity in such a way is a problem and has been admitted by Anet in the past.
This game is/(was?) meant to be played, not grinded.

Just to make sure this doesn't get quoted for another PvE vs. PvP discussion; PvP does indeed have the whole 'elitism' attitude, but since most of the oldschool playerbase quit and PvP has declined to inactiveness (compared to the previous years), most players still playing PvP have either made it to the top ranks, or are actually newer players who are experiencing the same meta over and over again. This is because of the lack of skill updates and because most effective skill combinations have already been created. There's simply not as much room for creativity in PvP anymore, and lesser (creative) players. (Again; compared to the 'glory days of GuildWars'.)

Soz pal , you are not teaching anything or saying something ppl dont know. Anyway everyone has its opinions but somethings are facts and ....

Discussed a Gazillion times. Titles that have a benefit in pve were buffed bloody long ages ago , now if you have that title at 60-70% you have about 90% of its effect , so your statement fails. And fyi , for the rest of the titles , anet doesnt push anyone. You paid the game , played the game for 3-5 years , feel free to leave.

Just because "life is hard" in a game doesnt mean that anyone must have an "i win" button to make it easier. Nor farming , grinding or title or those "root problems" are going to be solved ever ( you should know it by now ) and farming will not end with SF , OF and 600/smite end so lets move on.

Seriously , there are too many pages in this thread , but if you read at least the 5 previous youll find posts like this. Keeping SF , OF and 600/smite just keeps making game more broken and that is a fact.

I'll grant you that no skills are required from Prophs but you don't see too many Perma teams getting together at Chantry or Zin Ku Corridor, ToA in Prophs is where it all starts.

And without the introduction of EotN then Essences may not exist. I'd be interested to know how many perma-players don't own Prophs or EotN, out of curiosity.

I play primarily sin, and I've permaformed for my share of time, but I can honestly say I'm not sad to see it go. It'll bring a lot of balance back into the game, and it'll make the game challenging again.

because adding skeles to uw resulted in tons of "lfg uw balanced" pugs in toa, right?

the arguement that it will "bring balanced" back is ridiculous imo. 3 things will happen:

1. pugs will still keep failing (and continue crying) or will still keep not playing gw (and continue crying)
2. innovative "speed clearers" will just be delayed 30mins-1hr dependant upon changes & area (using a new "gimmick" [which will be cried about])
3. the only consistently successful groups will (continue to) be guild/friend groups (balanced OR sc)

and a possible

4. people will just stop playing. why? cause some people have experienced everything in gw and continue to speedclear for "virtual wealth" and "pretty pixels"...which, in essence, are meaningless. but, when they are told, "no you cant make XX k in 20 mins, you have to spend 1 hour now" they will say "orlly?" and move on.

Like i have said it XXXX number of times, ANET should just take every skills in the game out, so all we can do is attack with the character's weapons... That will make everyone happier

Toa is uw/fow base to most players due to its easy access.
Toa any chr can reach within a few mins from la , zu kin corridor is way into kurz territory and requires storyline progess to access and chantry in nf again you need to follow storyline i believe to access.
Why walk 30 miles to a shop when you have a shop next door thats always open ?
I could guess and say its possible to get on a factions or nighfall chr lvl 20 and both attribute quests 8-9 hrs easily and ascended in factions maybe an hr or 2 later so say 12 hrs max u have a chr ready for uw and ascended and toa is a few mins away.
Prophs chr i dont know how long it would take but would involve being run right thru prophs to get ascended and attribute quests.

Ever hear of this thing called Mutually Assured Destruction?

If everyone has it, then the advantages of one class over the others is removed.

So while the core issue the QQers whine about (oh noes my ectos drop!) in regards to SF might not disappear, then at least with every build able to utilize it SF would become the "new" Ursan.

An interesting idea to be sure, but probably won't happen. ANet has a track record of giving in to the elitists who want nerfs simply because they *hate* a class and its mechanics, which is kind of silly. To see this much anger and ill will over a game is ridiculous.

About the only good comparison to this situation I can think of is akin to one or two players trying to ban Boardwalk and Park Place from a game of Monopoly because they didn't get it before every one else.

The amusing thing to note if ANet does terri-nerf SF and Sins in general will be to see if these same whiners QQ over the next meta farm build, or because its based on a newly uber Mending Wammo/Tactics build, they'll all be happy because their pet class got the buff. I tried to look over the archives, and a lot of the people complaining about SF did NOT also complain about 55s and 600/Smite because they all ran monks and had the advantage.

If you are implying that 55, 600 or obsflesh is just as powerful as perma you are so wrong. With perma, you can take 3 skills which give you blanket protection agiants 95% of all dmg in game. With 2 more skills you can get enough armor and dmg reduction to be able to take almost all dmg out there. With shield sets and weapon sets you are pretty much invincible. You also have 3 slots left for pve skills and damage. If you put up cons, you free up an extra slot and a secondary proffession

The true advantage of shadow form is bar compression. In a single bar you can cover, all 3 major spots in any team build, damage dealing, tank and healing. That is why most of the major SC's now'a'days aren't really any new tactics but more how many way's can we split up to complete elite area's.

The community in my opinion has been very lucky with ursan and shadowform gimmicks since EOTN came out, making elite area's overly easy and things in general very very cheap. The times you see now will be very very hard to replicate and team builds will be much more difficult to play because you will actually have to fight and kill stuff instead of running across the battlefield to sliver down the priest.

ANet has a track record of delayed nerfs just not to upset the abusers. Anything like Shadow Form or 600/Smite would have been killed the day after its conception in any other game.

Ups, SF nerf in a few days now. Let's see what happens with PvE after that gets implemented!

I think ANet need to sort out guild wars in general. PvE is so the same over and over theres absoluely nothing new being implemented into it at all, oh ye the skeletons in uw. <-- As if thats something to ACHEIVE! They need to add something new into the game in general, the last thing i seem to remember them adding was the Codex Arena i mean, thats great for PvP players but what about the PvE? I Mean titles whats the point in having Norn,Delver, etc titles when the benefit is only in areas of THAT race of the game, they cant be used how they intended becasue theres nothing in those areas to play for in which those titles will be actually worth and benfit more.

They need to quit with all these rediculous skill nerfs and moan on about balance and put something new in, and go from there the last major aspect they put in was EoTN and how long ago was that now?

Guild Wars has died long ago in terms of balance,fun,enjoyment, I mean i'd love the old school game back but i garantee anyone that due to all the Q_Q and crying your chance of playing guild wars AS a Multiplayer game are low cause no one takes one another anymore, so its pretty much a solo grind from lvl 1 onwards anyways.

QTF

Merely increasing the challenge by nerfing various builds but not increasing rewards and/or adding new weapons or content will NOT revitalize the game. Period.

The last 5 dungeon chests I opened were diamonds and onyx - not even a lousy r 13 gold weapon. That is 10 useless gems. There is no way anyone is spending 2 hours to slog through a dungeon for that.

Nerfing alone will not revitalize this game - this is no longer a multiplayer game and never will be again - if ANet thinks so then they are morons.

I won't be holding my breath for a perma nerf.

They've had months to figure it out, if it went against their design philosophy they could have reverted it at any time to avoid what a few QQers consider exploiting.

Personally I think they might try some half-arse measure, like nerfing the damage output more, say to 50% or even 66%, but I doubt they will be removing the option to perma it.

What MAY happen is changing GoS to only work with elementalist spells, which leaves consets as an expensive option for perma, or simply go A/Me and use Arcane Echo old skool style.

Would be fun if. "Shadow Form Skill For 10-30 seconds you take zero damage and deal zero damage. when this skill ends, you and your party die, failing you run QQ"

Well ya know if you go to the last mission and Nightfall, stand on the bridge, cast SF, wait 10-30 seconds (depending on how many points you put in Shadow Arts) and then type /dance (old news but hey! I'm making this work) and voila you and your party die. And they will likely all /ragequit and /whisper "noob I was going for survivor!"

Crit Scythe build would dominate.

Yeah, because that worked so well, right?

That is pretty silly, which is why no one does it. I can't tell if this is a joke or if you seriously think people just want SF nerfed because they have something against assassins.

I have a Monopoly analogy for you:

Everytime you land on Boardwalk or Park Place, you automatically get 2000 monopoly dollars. You can also get there whenever you want, but only if you're the sneaker piece. Luckily, there are enough sneakers for everyone! Everybody wins, right?

No, because now the game sucks (not that Monopoly was ever that great in the first place :P).

"Don't hate me cuz you ain't me!"

Ursan was universal. People complained about that, too. People will always complain when there's something game-breakingly overpowered.

Anyone find it odd that Regina hasn't revealed exactly the details of what they are changing SF to in her Feb 19 post? Probably it's because they want to keep it as a big surprise b/c it's the most anticipated of all updates. Though a reminder that anything that Anet keeps as a surprise for GW1 is often bad. Just look at XTH repair attempts as they continually kept the public under the dark. Not a good sign since they are kind of doing the same with SF. Now, there has been news that the skill will be changed into a complete different function, but that's all we got. Also to keep in mind after Anets interview from the latest PAX convention that they are hesitant of nerfing anything that's farming. That's another bad omen, but there is a possibility that they could be over it by now. So that leaves with the question of how SF will be changed. Completely different as they said, or just a rick rolled statement and just tweak to make it look vulnerable, but still be a farming skill?

Not really.

Linsey said they have been hesitant because of SF being so widely used today, not just because of "farming". As with Ursan, they didn't want people to react to the nerf by abandoning the skill alltogether. So they've been looking for a way to slow it down before resorting to a radical nerf.

Also worth noting that the preview opens up with this statement:

Their stance about farming has always been clear: they're not against farming per se, they're against overpowered builds that blatantly subvert the game design.

Problem with SF is that it breeds ignorance and incompitance. There is a large majority of guildwars players out there that have no idea about how to play. Sadly this SF nerf is gonna be a huge shock for them all, hopefully a new meta will quickly materialize and allow ppl to learn about the game and how to play.

If she had reveal it, it would be insider information to those who read Guru.

It's like the stock market for SF/600 nerf...if you know 100% for sure SF and 600 are dead completely using every possible cons, skills combinations(ex. QZ +GoS+DP+SF+Essence+etc...), than you would buy up all the ectos(stocks) and on the day of the nerf, sell at the high.

On the other hand, if you knew the SF/600 nerf isn't as bad and UWSC is still possible, than you would start selling now at 7-8K a piece because after the nerf comes out, people will realize the nerf isn't so bad and ectos will crash back to 4-5K each.

Like I said....it's like the stock market on SF/600 nerf.

Enough speculation, BRING ON THE UPDATE!!!

I really enjoyed uwsc before dhuum and there is a huge difference since dhuum was put into UW compared to the old UWSC.

The difference is that now Anet have created Elitism in UW, by the sheer creation of a ghastly summoning stone from end chest they have created a huge divide where not everybody can access dayway. UWSC was different becuz you just had to lie about your experience.

By creating G Stones, not only do Elitist teams request you show then between 15-50+ G stones but then they have the cheek to sell these stones for 4k each.

This is why as a perma sin, I am 100% FOR this nerf, because if everyone cant access the teams then id rather no one access them. being forced to by stones to lie can net some elite players 100k from sales to ONE person which is totally wrong, thats without seeing the monopoly Elitist players have in the UW.

As well as the SF Nerf, I would like to request that we ALL request ANET to delete the ghastly summoning stones from end chest in UW as that needs sorting pretty soon too.

NO TO ELITISM IN OUR GUILD WARS - EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO JOIN TEAM AS A BEGINNER!!

Seems however that the elitist players dont give a rats ass about helping other players out, so WOOHOO to the nerf, ill be on watching the tears flow later ROFL!!!

If you're gonna call a large portion of the playerbase ignorant, be prepared for them to critique back. Plus, looks like you've insulted yourself with your analysis. Sweeping generalizations are win, eh?

I don't really care anymore. I want to see the update and just get it over with. My hopes and dreams are everyond will nod at the nerf, not feel like saying "i wuz right lol" or "los3r elitisms," and get on with their lives.

More than likely, it'll just require me leaving Guru for several months until people are whining about the next buff/nerf.

It's impossible to keep that sort of 'elitism' out of any game. It has nothing to do with the game itself, it has to do with people. When experienced people are playing to win, whether it be in GW, hockey, football, whatever, they aren't going to want randoms who have no idea what they're doing to join their team. That's just the way it is, and that's just the way it's going to be for a very long time. You can't force people to let someone in their group.

Yes I understand it has been around for a long time and it msy be here for even longer. Plus you are correct that you cannot force somebody to take inexperienced players into their UW team.

Problem is though, you also cannot force somebody to not take part in the UW experience via the same method.

So you have the "haves" who shudnt be forced to take the "have nots" which means that the "haves" keep "having" and the "have nots" keep "not having".

This reflects a clear issue in GW which unfortunately the G stones has made worse.

At least on old UWSC you just lied about experience whereas now you actually have to pay the "haves" to help you lie lol.

So this nerf i am hoping it maims SF pretty damn good. As superb as I am in UWSC i've never got in dayway team as I hadnt got G stone and nor will i pay for a bunch of them either!

Al along the "haves" have been saying "you cant have it" with their stone crap, so hopefully its a case of the "have nots" saying to the "haves" - " If we can't "have" it then neither can you.

Bring it on!!

either way sf is dead so stop whining about not finding groups with your nublet ace ;P
but on the (now dead)topic the ghastly stones were a measure of finding people as skilled as yourself i.e. HA rank. The whole idea of this is, yes all should be allowed to join groups but the inexp should be with fellow inexp while the pro's should be with pros - nuff said
and the stones themselves, when u ignore the selling of them, are pretty awesome the dream rider summoning is great. It's a good addition to uw endchest imo and now that the sc's are dead we need more bonus from chest till next OP sc build.
plus as an ending comment: If u dont like the game, play something else the 30 bucks or whatever u spent 1-5 years ago doesnt amount to crap ;P

If anyone's interested, the locals and I are throwing a Farewell to SF Party in GToB.

It's happened, time to draw a close on this.