Next Skill Balance

Wait...FACTS?

What "facts" do the "waaaaaah I need SF to complete areas" crowd offer? Please, name a few.

You get protective spirit, PvE skills, a party, and intelligence, as well as the ability to change your build. He's the one who gets the short end of the stick.

Besides, while balance may be an impossible dream, that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to attain it. If we throw this principle out the window and claim that the game is just about getting cool stuff, then we might as well just give people an instant-win button and be done with it.

As I see it, SF has it's counters just like every other skill in the game. Blame poor enemy composition or mob inadaptibility if you like.

Lest we forget, here are the SF counters:

Energy drain.
Touch skills.
Hex removal.
Enchant removal.
Signets.
Untargeted AoE (Inferno, Crystal Wave, Chilling Victory etc.).

To Yelling @ Everyone: I've provided what I feel are valid points. I don't just post "because I said so" arguments.

I feel discussion about these nerfs is important, not just for how they change the "meta", but also how they affect the people playing. I feel if the majority of players are against a nerf, that alone should be reason enough to hold the nerfbat at bay.

As are all my (and your) arguments, these are opinions and anet will do whatever they please. When I say I'll move on to a different game if certain things change, I am not threatening and holding my breath to get my way. I'm simply letting (hopefully) anet know how I feel about the direction of the game. If the game becomes unenjoyable for me, the logical thing is to find one that is enjoyable.

I'm going to try to explain my situation here a bit for one simple reason: I believe a lot of pro SFers are coming at this from a farming standpoint, and it's easy to knock any/all farming builds for being too powerful since they're builds made for the sole purpose of easy farming. I believe a lot of the anti SFers are either in very large guilds and have no need for powerful solo/reduced party builds, or elite area PuGers having a hard time getting into groups.

I have been playing GW for over 4 years. I have very little experience in, and desire for, PvP play. If you debate overpowerd skills for PvP, I will keep my opinion out. I am primarily a PvE RPGer. I belong to a small, family started, guild. Of our 15 or so members, only two of us log on each night to play. We do not PuG. Too many griefers out there to have fun in random groups anymore. We have beaten Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North multiple times on multiple characters. I have the Bonus Mission Pack and have done everything there is to do. Guild Wars 2 is not going to be out for a while, as we all know. So... I'm at the point in this game where only the most elite of areas will actually give me new experiences.

If you've actually read everything to this point, thank you and, I'm sorry.

Ok, so here I am. In a guild where I have one other partner. Not wanting to join a larger guild because this one has great sentimental value to me. Bored out of my wits with content I've overplayed too many times to count. So on to the elite areas.... Therein lies the problem. You need to have a completely human party in order to be successful in elite areas with a "balanced" group, or you need a couple of powerful builds, and some hero support. With certain "gimmick" builds - SF, Discord, Smite - Elite areas have become completable for myself and my guildie. Now, because some have "abused" said builds to get record farming times, rather than a redesign of these few areas a-la UW, anet will simply swing the nerfbat at everything that has opened up previously unattainable content.

Call me crazy but I don't really care if ecto prices drop to 1k each, and your thousands of stacks become worthless. I don't care if a Bone Dragon Staff can suddenly be bought for 60k. I don't care about protecting the "value" of meaningless trinkets in the game if it means locking me and my guildie (and many others from the sound of it) out of content we can now enjoy with these "powerful" builds in place.

That's where I'm coming from. Thanks for taking the time to read through this.

Balanced groups actually require fewer people because there is less overall reliance on PVE skills. I have completed almost every dungeon, FoW, and DOA 2man with 6 heroes. Its pretty easy and fast you just need to know what you are fighting and counter it with your hero skills. In a way its almost easier to have 6 heroes instead of 8 people from some areas.

As far as you being in a small guild and only have 1 other person to play with. Well thats your choice, you can find new people to join your guild, or just accept the fact you will be unable to complete some elite area's because of your anti social ingame activity. So don't use the I don't want to make new friends or join a new guild and thus i can't do elite area's without SF.

Most of them are spells anyway.
Protective Bond or Stoneflesh Aura.A/E's still use hexes?About 90-95% of the enchant removals are spells or attacks. All miss.Most of the time, useless or negated by Protective Bond.Stay your distance and use PB.
This would require a total overhaul of the PvE to make sure that every zone has at least one untargetted source of damage, one non-Spell, non-Attack way of removing enchantments and one non-Spell non-Attack way of e-denialing the assassin. Yeeaaah. And it would totally not hurt the balanced teams.Numbers or shut up.
Who cares if you leave? It's not like you are paying $15 a month to play the game. If anything, lesser burden on the servers for people that still play.

Also they promised to not only take care of SF, but also other invinci builds.

Sorry, but you're wrong. There's always been some balance in PvE. Want to know why we aren't running around with 50k health and base defense? Balance. Exact same for shadow form - it grants you invulnerability to the majority of PvE enemies, which is unbalanced, and why it is getting nerfed. Bosses generally have crazy health/armor/skills/whatever in every RPG, because without that they'd be loleasy (although they already are in GW).

Also, I'm pretty sure that after 4 1/2 years, ANet couldn't care less if people quit, so there's no point in throwing around empty threats.

All are pretty much nowhere to be seen in the elite areas of the game. The majority of elite areas that have those counters don't have enough to really effect the SF sin. The argument that there are counters is moot when the counters are nowhere to be seen.

If the majority of players demanded a stack of ecto or they'd all quit, would that be reason enough to give them it? No. I see where you're coming from, but sometimes you have to go against the majority. If ANet never went against the majority, this game would be absolute shit because the majority of PvE players are simply farmers.

Glad we got that cleared up...that means you can complete nearly every area in the game, on hard mode.


Yep, and you can do it without SF or 600monks

Cool, me either, I have 1 ecto

I'm with you here as well.

Again, I'm with you here...I really don't give a flying f*ck about the cost of anything in the game.

Still not seeing where you are coming from...you want to do places that are supposed to be hard, with builds that are ridiculously overpowered to the point of you being invulnerable? I'm not understanding how this is enjoyable at all. You admit to not caring about the phat lewt, but you also enjoy taking ANY challenge out of the game and essentially playing on godmode.

I mean, you don't need godmode to do UW/FoW with 2 people...so maybe your solution is just to be better at the game, rather than relying on godmode? A game is meant to challenge you and make you think. If you don't want any challenge or thought process, make a screen saver that comes up after a minute that says "YOU WIN!".

Ah, so you feel that instead of nerfing SF, the entire game should be changed around the skill...which achieves the same thing as nerfing SF.

So? Mobs aren't dynamic, they're static. And that wouldn't be a problem except then ALL elite areas would need to have mobs' bars balanced around anti sf, which is just stupid.

There may be skills in an area that slip through SF like Shock, but those groups/monsters can be avoided and don't seem to deter the really dedicated SFers.

there is 54 pages of facts here http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...414093p54.html you need to change ure quote to.... "waaaaaah I need 600 to complete areas"

Not sure if you were aiming for wittiness or what...but last I checked, this thread is about SF and 600, which are both part of the skill balance.

Which they are both pretty much the same as far as I'm concerned. Obviously, SF is the greater of the two since it can solo 90% of the game, compared to 600's 10%, but both are degenerate builds.

no SF can tank 90% of the game...600 can KILL 90% of the games areas

Which is why 600 should also be looked at (and is). Isn't it time 55 was kicked too? Low HP builds are clever in concept, but really?

Yeah because the 55 is game breaking

Where do I sign up to be as 1337 as you? I guess SF should be nerfed since you're apparently running an A/E/Mo...

You're of course missing the point. Nerf SF now, and something will come along to replace it, as it has done since the beginning of the game. SF is simply the current Meta, if you and other SF haters were TRULY worried about game balance, then you'd realize this completely obvious issue and be siding with those calling for game changes, not skill balances.

But as the completely obvious escapes you, I can see why you'd miss it. Seeing as how you and other SF haters are completely and utterly disingenuous, its very obvious to all that you're simply jealous of Sins being in ascendance even for a little bit, since it kicks the dominance of Wars Eles and Mos in the junk. Just admit you're jealous, then you can start working on a real solution.

Those calling for a skill nerf need to wake up and realize the real issue at hand, GW will NEVER be balanced for all the professions unless the gameplay itself is altered to accommodate ALL THE PROFESSIONS. This game is NOT balanced if the only choices in a "balanced" team consist of three core classes! To suggest it be the case is complete idiocy, but for some reason, SF haters fall on this side of the argument because they're completely unable to see the root cause of the issue.

Ah well. I guess the only thing to do is to let the vocal whiny minority have their cake and eat it too, which of course means GW will die a slow and painful death into obscurity, rather than enjoy a revival which would be accomplished by addressing the game's actual flaws.

GW will never be balanced and once SF is gone something else is gonna replace it (not as some similar skill, i hope is intelligent enough to not make another godmode).

So? That is the thing who keep the game fresh.

Nerf and buffs.

And the fact one cannot achieve perfection don't mean better do nothing then something.

And no im not jealous of sins, actually in the last week i was in few successful dayway and SoOSC ( Well, it take many bad player to fail something as easy as SoOsc)

I feel that as long as a game is fun for the "newbie", it's not going to matter what you do to the higher-end portion of your game. A good example is WoW: even with so much crying (much of it well warrented, and usually pretty big issues) and other major imbalances, you still see players flocking to the game.

A great example is Guild Wars: even though it's turn into a pretty shit game, it still managed to reach the 6mil copies mark and still sees a major load of activity.

Unless ANet did something to really hamper how newcomers play the game, they're really able to do anything.

It used to be, no reason why it won't be again.

Thanks for proving yourself retarded.

No , dont be mistaken, NOTHING will come along just "by magic" . Dont be mistaken , 2nd becomes 1st when 1st goes out but it doesnt mean 2nd is AS POWERFUL as 1st. The rank of unbalanced stuff goes 1 step down and if that step is SF , it is a BIG step.

Yeah there are lots of broken stuff so , fix all or fix none ? MEEEEEECK wrong. There are other killers out of jail so lets free the ones that are in jail too ! . Not a valid argument.

Doing nothing , changes nothing. Doing things change things.

Yeah , SF rework and 600/smite changes will slowly killl the game ... all of a sudden because game isnt dying now , right .
That is the same reason as the number #3 in the "WTF is this guy thinking" list :

#3 "if you nerf SF , a lot of people will leave the game"

Say it over and over ..... it wont make it true. I dont get why ppl isnt tired of listening to the same stuff over and over .... and over and over again. God , leave this thread alone till update comes in .......

Make up your minds. One moment you want a content update, one moment you want a skill update. One moment you want sf nerfed, the other you think the nerf will kill the game.
If the playerbase can't even make up its mind, I don't think Anet will consider your opinions.
There are numerous hypocritical posts in this thread.

Actually, I think you will find that all those posts above were made by more than one person, that their name isn't "playerbase" and that they might not agree with each other on some things!

I never said it was magic. As you confusedly put, when SF is removed as the top tier farming/tanking build, something else will replace it, PERHAPS not as powerful or efficient, true. HOWEVER, the relative power of skills is not the real problem, what is IS the game's areas and reward/time ratios. In the end, it won't matter what build is "number 1" since as others have said people are lazy and want things RIGHT NOW.

If that's the case, then finishing UW in 15 minutes via SF or 21 minutes via the next speedclear meta is really no different, which means SF isn't a problem. Since your point is all about SF's relative power compared to other builds, I can see why you'd be confused as to the actual problem.

This doesn't make any sense, at all. Nerfing Shadow Form will not fix the problem that plagues GW, as I outlined above. Please make arguments that make some sort of logical sense, or don't try at all.

A tree is a tree is a tree etc., etc. Blue is blue. Your argument again makes no sense, except to state the obvious. Changing the game areas to make them un-soloable, by any number of options, such as mob skill randomization for example, would stop ALL attempts at speedclearing, and is a much more elegant solution than heavy handed nerfing of the one generally accepted and successful Sin build for group play.

The game is already slowly dieing because people are losing interest, the content is unchanging and stale, and everything in the game is predictable. Making a popular and fun build unusable and obsolete will only make more people sick of the game, and will CONTRIBUTE to the decline. If ANet truly wanted to reinvigorate their game, they would, again, CHANGE the playing areas to make them more interesting, such as making any mob anywhere have a 0.004% chance to drop an ecto.

Both sides, including yours do the same, your arguments are just as repetitive, if not more so, since your side believes a SF nerf will somehow be the Second Coming for GW and make thousands of players re-login and play in areas like Ruins of Surmia.

This will not happen unless the content is updated or altered to make areas worth visiting and played. When the entire campaign of prophecies is a ghost town except for high level areas, you know something is wrong with the design of the game, and it has nothing to do with one Elite skill that you all seem to hate so much, and for all the wrong reasons.

my 2 cents:

linsey is a wonderful developer absolutely, the last pve updates were perfect and nice
BUT SHE DOES NOT HAVE A CLUE HOW TO BALANCE PVP so after 1 year we are standing here playing against 1-2-1-2-3-4-1-2-1-2 bloodspam and it is still not nerfed because they say on balance forums that new players need to get into pvp so they need an easy gimmick to play so everybody learns to play IDIOT IMBALANCED SHIT BUILDS

(+these players are changing guilds many times to farm the same guilds over and over..... isn this ladder manipulation means they should get a ban?)
(sure this is a ladder problem only, but why cant we play normal ladder matches?)

Ok dude keep throwing BS on me or whatever ; ill put it simple so a 7 year old kid can understand it.

1-You CANT argue that there are other problems to solve to argue AGAINST solving a problem.
2-You CANT argue that because reworking SF doesnt solve other inherent game design problems Anet SHOULD NOT rework SF ( and 600/smite )

Bigger or smaller , SF is BROKEN and NOTHING you say or do or think is going to change that fact .

If you cant understand 1 and 2 as facts and see they are 100% logical ,no one ( including ANET ) can do anything for you. People is going to laugh at you if you keep throwing nonsense and telling ppl that makes some reasonable arguments that they are the ones that make no sense.

PS: LoL @ Failban nickname by Yelling @ Cats.

Seriously?

I haven't tried. I've argued that SF wouldn't be a problem if the main causes were dealt with, which would by association also fix other issues, such as the other marginalized classes being more group friendly.

Again, you're missing the crucial point. SF, heck ANY farming or OP build is NOT the problem? When are you going to learn this simple fact? The REAL problem is the area design, reward/time ratio and static mobs, something that's BEEN a problem for, oh, the last five years!

You're arguing that fixing a small surface paper cut will somehow stop the internal bleeding that GW is currently experiencing. I'm no doctor, but that's not how it works.

Its only fact to you, and that is relative to your biased opinion combined with your lack of knowledge of good and solid game design. You're woefully ill-equipped to discuss these issues, otherwise you'd understand the obvious FACT that no matter what ANet does to SF, the root cause of the problem will remain, unless ANet focuses its efforts on those root causes. Since it hasn't done so in the last five years, its a simple conclusion that ANet is unlikely to do so anytime soon, and that by focusing on skill nerfing, they're ignoring the problems.

You've given no factual or logical rationale for your arguments, and continue to ignore the real problems that plague GW. Unfortunately for you, its also unlikely, given your posting history, that you'll EVER see the light and actually understand why the game is the way it is, and why the cycle will continue if ANet continues business as is.

But by all means, keep on truckin', just realize that you're a contributing factor to the game's demise.

Probably not a good idea to get chummy with a guy who gets banned for foul language and being abrasive towards other forum members. Just sayin'.

In theory, Test Krewe will have players who do PvP and can help direct the skill balances, so there is a chance that the next skill balance will be decent. Even if the next skill balance does good for PvP, it will unlikely appease everyone.

Let the rich people cry about there farming builds being nerfed. Let them cry. What I wouldnt do for an 8man blanced underworld team. or a team for anything for that matter. I wont say I don't use SF or 600/smite but I would love to see them both disapear

What i think of this is that if they do nerf Shadow Form and 600/ Smite that the farming rate in GW will drop because there is no current solo or duo builds around. Ectos will skyrocket again. and the econmy will slow down. If they are still possible, then awesome. If not then it could cause a few players to quit, and that could influence others to quit as well. Id hate to see a nerf happen now because with the arrival of GW 2, alot of players are scavaging money to buy various things to put in their halls. I appriciate the heads up. And can't wait to hear more about this.

we have a winner!!

the overpriced fluff could be considered development money for GW2 also.

seeing its near impossible to fix whats broken, or have a good enough reason to justify fixing a game nearing 5 years old, why nerf anything at all. there is the PVE/PvP skill split already and based on past threads PvP has its own problems. seeing PvE is all done in an instanced world, nothing anyone does, has an effect on someone else unless your in the same party. the economy has been destroyed for a long time and there is nothing that can be done to fix that, nightfall, eotn and the z-chest can be thanked for that. the so called elite areas, well thats been talked about before. short of a total redesign of those areas, theres nothing that will breath life back into them. nothing that anet does will ever get people teaming up like we use to do when it was only prophicies and factions, heros and the now redone henchie builds can be blamed for that. the player community can also be blamed some to what the game has becomed. we bitched back before nightfall was released about how crappy the henchies were and we got heros out of it, had they tweaked the builds of the henchies as skills were changed and more games were released we wouldnt of needed customizeable heros. we bitched about HM and how some areas were difficult and PvE only skills came from that. had the PvE/PvP split happened when factions came out and it was clear trying to balance 2 games worth of skills was difficult, PvE only skills would of never been needed

basicly GW1 has become an almost 5 year open beta test for GW2.

its been discussed before but 6mil copies really isnt that many players and of those players ill bet less then a 1/3 are left or truly active. 6mil copies if every account had all 4 games is only 1.5 million players. then theres the banned accounts, accounts that dont have all 4 games, people with multiple accounts because its cheeper to have extra accounts then by storage panes or extra accounts bought to take advantage of the XTH when it was active. as much as i would love to be proved wrong ill bet there is less then 500k people still playing, probably closer to 250-300k or less right now.

As true as this may be (or not be, I really don't care)...only an idiot would try and say GW wasn't successful.

Tenebrae can you please read through what you have written before you post. It is very difficult to try and understand your points when your posts consist of jumbled, angry rants.

Just a quick example, I cannot take you seriously with things like:
Which is undeniably an opinion not a fact, or:

Which has poor grammar, unnecessary insults, opinions stated as fact again, and just makes it clear that your entire post hasn't been read through.

If I re-write this to state what I believe you are trying to say but more clearly (correct me if I am wrong):

Now, I have my own counter-argument:

Firstly, my argument relies on all builds varying in how powerful they are for farming, and thus some builds will be better than others. If the game was such that for any area there were 4 or 5 different builds, all of which were equally effective and better than any other, then this argument fails straight away. I am of the opinion that this is not the case, and that there is almost always only 1 build that excels for any particular task.

Let's draw a line to represent the power of builds:

Weak.............................................. .......................................Strong
...............|........|.................|....... ...............................................|
..........balanced..55............Obsidian........ ..................................Shadow
............PUG.....monk..........Flesh........... .....................................Form

Since SF is so strong, it doesn't take very long to farm an ecto.

Now, SF is nerfed:
Weak.............................................. .......................................Strong
....|...........|........|.................|
Shadow.balanced..55............Obsidian
..Form......PUG.....monk..........Flesh

I am just going to stretch the axis of this so we can see it more clearly:

Weak.............................................. .......................................Strong
....|...............|...................|......... .............................................|
Shadow....balanced.............55................. ...............................Obsidian
..Form.........PUG................monk............ ...................................Flesh

Look familiar? OF is not as strong as SF was, it takes a lot longer to farm an ecto. But now Obby Flesh looks just as over-powered as SF used to be.

Your argument is that by nerfing SF, a small part of the overall problem is fixed, and that this is a good thing to do. The rather subtle and easily missed point here is that, this argument relies on the premise that the greater problem can be fixed bit-by-bit. That by continually fixing small parts of the problem, eventually the entire problem will be fixed.
I do not think that this is the case. By continually nerfing builds, there is actually an infinite cycle, and you are no closer to fixing the overall problem than before you nerfed anything. One could in fact argue that it is bad to nerf SF, since it is probably more likely for people to quit because SF is nerfed than to start playing again.

impulsion, you are bad at understanding the problem. It has relatively little to do with what is the most effective skill, and more to do with what is the fastest way to make a buck.

The problem with SF is that it excludes alternative play styles. It's SO good by virtue of letting you run past content that it blows alternative play styles out of the water. There's no reason to play most dungeons with anything other than redundant SF in an 8 man team. Some are so easy that they just get 605/smited, and some require a 605/smite or something similar to kill the boss. But SF is the engine that makes virtually every group farm go; it's just too good.

OF would still be OP in UW (and it needs a nerf) if SF were nerfed. However, there are a lot of other places where OF is an inadequate substitute for SF, so we could define this as "progress" because other areas would be open to alternative solutions and playstyles.

Granted, the nerfs suck if you're poor and want to grind away at 8-man farms until you're rich. However, if you're farming an area with 8-man teams, you'll never become rich anyway even with SF. There are faster ways, and you'll always be behind the curve if you're running like a lemming on the farming treadmill no matter how fast you run or how many hours you spend on it.

Perma SF has been ridiculous since the day it was made possible. It needs to go.

Can't wait for some more "balanced" builds in FOW and UW. Will make it worth doing again.

I see youre having a hard time , not my fault. Shit happens when ppl refuses to see that 2+2=4.

Its a fact , Godmode or SemiGod mode = Broken. I gave real and true reasons so many times that im not going to do it again , do a search , im tired.

In case you didnt notice , you are doing the same . Btw , please notice again that english is not my native language but you still did understand my words right ? if you have any doubts ask me and ill pm you in spanish.

Already answered before me.

The thing is that meanwhile Anet is working on GW2 i can tell you they arent going to rework almost entire game mechanics and solve those "design problems" with entire IA , mob skills set and bla bla bla.
The myth "ppl will leave the game if you rework X" is not ( and never will be ) reason enough to leave broken stuff as it is right now.

Options :
-Rework entire game mechanics
-Rework entire IA and mob skill set
-Rework broken skills that abuse first 2 ones

Real options atm : the third one , mostly because previous 2 , are never going to happen ..... X months to rework 1-6 skills for god sake , and you dare to ask to rework entire game mechanics ? please ....

Says who? There are plenty of games that have 'godmode' in some way or another, even WoW with Paladin. They all proove you wrong. Anet didn't mind for years, but they gave in to the QQ bitches here on the forums.

Guys like you make it seem broken, but the spells do what they're supposed to do. Shadow Form, it's in the name itself, you can't hurt a shadow. Another example is Spell Breaker, for x amount of time spells get broken.

PvE is serious business right? If you want a more balanced environment you should play PvP, but I think a lot of the posters here just wet their pants when they hear the word PvP. They need to boost their E-peen through PvE though, all in the name of balance.

I can understand 7 minutes UWSC is not what Anet intended, but that's basically because the areas didn't have the counters to prevent that.

Guild Wars doesn't base its success off of activity, hence why we discuss "copies sold". For Guild Wars it's in the top 20, although that may've altered a bit. But it's still up there pretty high.

And in-terms of activity, GW wasn't - and still pretty much isn't - a game meant for massive and massive amounts of PvE longevity.

i said time and time again nerf pve prot spirit (if u use this skill u lose all enchants?)- = end of 600.

make SF a non att elite = end of perma but u still can use as a tank.

and @yelling...if u dont have somthing good to say dont say anything at all...instead of your 13 year old answers of 'your retarded'...as u have clearly shown in multiple posts, u must be on that same base level.