another one of those sf change ideas

Hey all sorry if this has been brought up before or it is a complete and utterly ridiculous idea, but i thought it was quite a good/great idea though i am unsure whether people will agree (hope so!)

It is based on the dervish' avatar line of skills idea which gives players a different 'form'. It is because of this that i thought that it could go well with Shadow 'Form'.

One of the main problems with sf is that it provides practically complete invulnerability to most sources of damage whilst at the same allowing the user to inflict damage for it's duration. This coupled with the al's inability to detect SF and continually try (and fail) at attacking the user (which could trigger other skills such as sliver armor) makes it far too broken. I know that anet are going to address it, which is why i feel that this topic could be stupid, but i've been thinking of this idea for a while and i just wanted to see what everyone else thought. I also liked the idea of assassins being stealthy and sneaking around undetected. lol this may sound broken too but i tried to balance it so here it is anyways-

Shadow form-
Energy cost-10 / casting time-2secs / Recharge-30secs
"Form. This skill can only be used while not being the target of an ally or enemy. You lose all enchantments and cannot be targeted by spells from allies. For 5...20...45 seconds, you move 90...50...35% slower and cannot be detected by any nearby enemies. This changes to 75...35...20% when an enemy enters your nearby range. This skill ends immediately when you attack or cast a spell that targets an ally or enemy. When an enemy enters your adjacent range this skill ends. When this skill ends, for the next 2...6...10 seconds, you deal an additional point of damage for each second this skill was active with your next attack skill, spell or signet. This skill is disabled for 120 seconds. (50% failure chance unless critical strikes 3 or more) "

In case that was too complicated or harsh here's a revision of it-

Shadow form-
Energy cost-10 / casting time-2secs / Recharge-30secs
"Form. This skill can only be used while not being the target of an ally or enemy. You lose all enchantments and cannot be targeted by spells from allies. For 5...20...45 seconds, you move 90...45...30% slower and cannot be detected by any nearby enemies. This skill ends immediately when you attack or cast a spell that targets an ally or enemy. When an enemy enters your adjacent range this skill ends. When this skill ends, for the next 2...6...10 seconds, you deal an additional point of damage for each second this skill was active with your next attack skill, spell or signet. This skill is disabled for 60 seconds. (50% failure chance unless critical strikes 3 or more) "

For the form, i was thinking of a ghostly assassin as i wasn't sure if they could do a shadowy sin but a ghostly one has been done. So i was thinking of something along the lines of this but , maybe more a darker hue-



Some of you may have realized when you looked at the skill that it didn't say 'Elite Form'. This was intentional. I personally don't think this will be too abuse-able and as such i thought a demotion to just a 'normal form' would be fine, as all this skill does is make your aggro bubble smaller with a little bit of damage at the end. This wouldn't be the first time a skill has been demoted...second(lol)
Another thing you may have noticed is that it says only enchantments by allies which means you can cast your own spells on yourself including enchantments such as sliver armor although no enemy will target you...
If they do, you will find that you won't be invulnerable anymore...
This was mainly done so that you can leave a battle and heal yourself if you have a self heal.

All in all i think this could be a very plausible skill idea that could be implemented and could change the skill from being a farming skill to a utility skill for sins. This is emphasized more in that it only requires a tiny investment in critical strikes to work efficiently and i tend to find that if i spec highly in two other attributes i still have enough to put at least 3 in the last attribute. It would also still allow sins to explore with ease but promotes a bit maybe slightly more skill? as you have to try and evade enemies rather than run straight through them. It also (i would say anyways), promote skill in that it would cause sins to think before causing the skill to end as the longer they leave it the stronger the extra damage and there is only a smallish window with which to utilize the extra damage depending on how much you invest in the attribute. I got the damage idea with the stereotypical thinking that a sin should be able to quickly silence any enemies that discovers them. On that note, because i feel it may be imbalanced if other classes could use it (not sure why yet...but trying to think of it) so i added the 50% failure chance clause. I know this will mean it's somewhat linked to critical strikes and it's not linked to the attribute well in terms of theme but it would mean only sins could use it well and could give them more options with utilities, and could reinvigorate the common perception by many that assassins are sneaky, agile and stealthy. The gw manuscript even states/implies this-

"The Assassin walks the shadows, a deadly viper ready to strike at the heart when the enemy least expects it, nowhere and everywhere all at once."

I can already tell most of you will feel that this is similar to stealth in WoW and lol yes it is...very lol, but i thought it was an idea that could be implemented and a good one at that, though this is purely an opinion so i understand if some of you may not think this is a good idea. Yes this will go against the innovative-ness of gw trying to be different from other mmo's (if gw is still considered an mmo anyways) but it's not like it's got much more life in it (again...if any).

One last thing to note is that this skill was made/changed with pve in mind as that's where it is overpowered most. However, linking back to my wow comment this skill could be adjusted slightly for use in pvp whilst retaining the core idea of stealth as it has worked well in wow. Again however, i understand that the meta is very, very...VERY different so this could be a debatable point.

I hope this will be well received with positive comments but if otherwise i wouldn't mind reading it still.
oh and hope i don't get flamed too much for this still and sorry for the big wall of text and thanks for reading it if you did and yeah i think that's it oh, please /sign if you think this is a good idea please!

thats a dam good idea better than mine which was nerf the ----ing thing

Aggro control (nondetection) in a game like GW is just not a good idea. The cool down on that skill combined with the movement penalty and aggro ranges is not only far too complicated it's too harsh to ever see use. At least with Dervish forms they gain a sustained benefit to offset cost...this form gives you a brief damage buff which could far more easily be supplied by "BUH!" or Asuran Scan.

Thanks Deatgs I didn't think anyone would actually like it lol

To reformed- I thought that it might have been too complicated as well at the start but i wasn't sure if anyone would actually see that as well. Looking at it now that I have actually written it... i can see why it might be a little complicated and slightly harsh but then again, it has lost its elite status so it shouldn't be on par/level with the 'Elite' forms. The high speed reduction was used so that people could use speed enhancing stances/sweets to reduce the penalty whilst still suffering some if only a little so that it makes it harder in some situations to avoid enemies and requires you to think slightly before going too close. Asuran scan and buh are also pve skills and i tried, (not very hard though) to make this skill somewhat able to be adjusted for pvp which means i couldn't make it too broken to be on par/level to most pve skills.
Saying that i do agree with your points that i may have gone a little bit too far...
So it could be simplified to something like...

Shadow form-
Energy cost-10 / casting time-2secs / Recharge-30secs
"Form. This skill can only be used while not being the target of an ally or enemy. You lose all enchantments and cannot be targeted by spells from allies. For 5...20...45 seconds, you move 90...45...30% slower and cannot be detected by any nearby enemies. This skill ends immediately when you attack or cast a spell that targets an ally or enemy. When an enemy enters your adjacent range this skill ends. When this skill ends, for the next 2...6...10 seconds, you deal an additional point of damage for each second this skill was active with your next attack skill, spell or signet. This skill is disabled for 60 seconds. (50% failure chance unless critical strikes 3 or more) "

I simplified it slightly by removing the penalty change when an enemy enters nearby range and also reduced the recharge to make it slightly less harsh.

Lol however i know that there is no guarantee that anet will look let alone implement this but i hope they do and i hope i didn't sound too rude reformed.

sounds like it would have amazing spike ability in ha or maybe even gvg. Go in cast shadow form walk over to there rc or infuse and take him out with like 3-4 "shadow form" sins and then just use some form of the old iway survivability defense meta builds like the one with a bunch of paragons or whatever to survive till recharge. Then just spike again.



Edit: O yea and the whole move xx% slower thing as a sin who is supposed to be shifty and quick and all that using a self snare seems total fail.

The problem is, I can't really think of circumstances where this skill would be useful but at the same time not abusable (i.e dungeon runs, mission runs, duncan's section of slaver's.) It's a neat idea seeing as how there are no current skills like it, but that is probably for a reason...it doesn't seem too usable.

i think he did that so its kinda like obi flesh

Shadow Form doesn't need to stay viable or be altered into something useful. It can just be destroyed and left as useless as Smiter's Boon. No one used it for anything other than perma-SF exploiting anyways.

To songbringer
I did say that this skill was made with pve in mind as i knew that it would be a bit broken in pvp which is why i said it had to be adjusted if used for pvp.


As for your 'edit'. I guess there are more than one common perception of how sins should work. When i changed the skill i made it with the perception that sins should be able to know when to move quickly and when to lay low and move slowly. You wouldn't run straight through a group of enemies hoping they won't notice because i find that that's stupid (again, this is my opinion) and is suicide, unless of course, you use the current sf in which case, they will notice but they might as well not have as they can't do anything about it most the time but that's just far too overpowered which is why anet has changed it so much and are going to change it again. If you read, and i doubt it, (though i don't blame you as it was a bit too long i think) that you could use speed enhancing stances to mitigate the speed loss. However sins also have access to shadow steps which means they have near instantaneous movement which will more than enough subset the speed penalty.


To Ashes-
I'm not sure what to say about this as i can and do agree with it a bit/lot.
However, there are a lot of other skills that can be considered the same but they still have their uses, just those uses are limited and in some cases very limited. I do think that this could have slightly more uses than most of the other skills that are considered unusable such as for mapping certain areas as it can help you avoid unnecessary battles or just plain solo exploring if you don't like having h/h with you all the time. Yours is a very valid point though and i don't know anyways to make it sound like it's not.

Uhm,... no (unless you only want to use it as a runner)

few of my ideas:
Shadow form-
Energy cost-10 / Recharge-30secs
"Stance. For 2...13...16 seconds, each time you are struck, your attacker is blinded for 1...4...5 seconds and hostile spells have a 5...44...50% chance to fail against you. (attribute: Shadow Arts)"

Shadow form-
Energy cost-15 / Recharge-30secs
"Stance. For 2...8...10 seconds, while under 10...55...60% health, you have a 10...45...50% chance to block and all spells fail against you. (attribute: Shadow Arts)"
(all including allies spells)

Shadow form-
Energy cost-10 / Cast time-3/4 / Recharge-30secs
"Enchantment. For 4...15...18 seconds, you attack 25% faster and while under 50% health, you take half damage. (attribute: Critical strikes)"

what about

for 30 seconds your shadow under your char gets additional texture +1....7 pixels.


then it would be useless and they wouldnt have to nerf it again