Update 01/07/10

Everyone who has time to play only 1 character and level only 1 character to rank 10 in Norn.

I don't think I need to be in the Krewe to tell you that something so outrageous can't possibly be in the works.

This is a myth. Warrior and Ranger Ursans were better than other Ursans in every single way. That's why the current Ursan modifies your AL. Bringing back the old Ursan would only make the problem even worse.

Even better than Paragons who could maintain Echos (Blade turn refrain etc) while never dropping the Ursan form, and keep getting free energy every time they shout?

What about Eles with that large energy pool, maintaining their Grrr Bear (Ursan) when all the warriors and rangers had succumbed to e-denial (like, oh I don't know, DoA HM, City...) Same for necros with Soul Reaping, to a lesser extent.

Mesmers and their Mantras, could buff up before going Ursan, allowing them to pull their own weight.

The only people who missed out on the Ursan fun was monks... Ursan group lf HB and UA monks...

Not that I'm condoning bringing Ursan back, it was slapped down for a reason.

Shadow Form - Skill, 1 sec cast, 5 energy, 120 sec duration, instant recharge

You can not lose any health for any reason. Casting this spell causes you to lose one random item from your inventory.

Shadow Form has not been nerfed for one reason, Anet is still farming ectos for their Obby armour, once they've done this Shadow Form will be gone.

hopefully the .dll thing will help in the battle against the bots....

I'm not arguing against your points, they are fine in theory. In actual gameplay though the groups towards the very end were looking specifically for W/Me or E/Me (prismatic) Ursans and HB/HP or LoD monks. Very rarely you could slip in other professions with Necro having an easier time than most.

Once rank discrimination fell apart due to easy Path to Revelations farming the only thing left was profession to try to screen out failpugs. The grand equalizer didn't work even in Ursan because somehow someway the players themselves will work towards exclusion.

Any /Me could use mantras. There wasn't anything a mesmer primary could contribute to an Ursan team that another profession couldn't do as well or better. Same with an assassin (dervishes would have just as much armor, and mysticism for better energy management).

Technically, the monks weren't missing out, because they were an important part of Ursan teams (in fact, they were the only people in a given team that didn't use Ursan).

In any case, you get my point. Ursan was not balanced. In some ways, it was closer to balanced than the game has ever been (because there was very little difference between classes), but in other ways, it was also the furthest (because again, there was very little difference between classes, so any differences that did exist became that much more important).

In a truly balanced GW, we'd see something like this:

-Monks being the best healers and protters
-Dervishes being the best melee AoE, but lacking in utility and survivability
-Assassins being the best source of single target damage, while lacking in survivability and AoE
-Warriors being midway between the previous two, but having greater survivability
-Rangers offering utility, ranged damage, and some shutdown (great enough to prevent enough damage to justify it's inclusion into a team)
-Ritualists offering great damage and some meatshields, but they don't stack well with other ritualists (hey, we got one right!)
-Necromancers offering support and/or minions
-Paragons offering greater offensive and defensive support than any other class (not necessarily both at once, or even one or the other, but some butter zone combo that no one else could)
-Elementalists offering utility and ranged damage (greater than the ranger)
-Mesmers offering even greater shutdown than the ranger

Obviously, this is an impossible dream. What we can realistically shoot for (I think), however, is this:

-Monks being good healers and protters, with certain specific things they can do better than ER healers (already done)
-Dervishes being the best melee AoE before HB+WA+MoP, but without having to worry about scattering or being reliant on number of foes (ie, being more effective than HB+WA+MoP against 2 or 3 foes) (this would require some buffing and possibly nerfing of the alternatives)
-Assassins being the best source of single target damage (do they already do this? I don't know, because no one ever talks about it)
-Warriors being the best source of melee AoE, as well as having the benefits of hammers and good survivability
-Ranger offering the best ranged AoE when combined with MoP,
-Ritualists offering great damage and some meatshields, but they don't stack well with other ritualists (basically, exactly what they are now)
-Necromancers having minions and MoP (already done)
-Paragons spamming SY! and TNTF, with some offensive support thrown in (needs some more offensive support, but the defensive stuff is done)
-Elementalists being the best healers/protters (already done)
-Mesmers spamming high-damage meatshield summons (already done)

You forgot about Soul Reaping,Energy Storage and an armor rating of 80 per piece of equipment.
Beside those totaly irrelevent thing you would be right.

Ksmod guys....

So, skill update is now 2 1/2 months late?


And no new on the XTH that's been down for 7 months?


That's all I checked in for. That's for the update, Anet :\

Because SF is more equal amirite? You could argue that everything is unequal in this game. " I cant play paragon because i didn't buy nightfall". Argument is invalid bro.

correct me if I'm wrong, but the last actual skill update was in September, so it's about three months late already.

Oh, my bad. You're right. 3 months late on the "new" schedule.

I'll be damned if these new schedules don't keep working out just like the old ones

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time

This is what ANET has adopted, TBH.

In general, as a programmer, when you're telling someone how long something will take, you should say it will take 40% longer than you think.

Anet probably didn't get that memo. Either that, or they're so desperate to make us optimistic that they ignore it.

I was under the impression that the interrupt bots weren't using pixels to determine what skills to interrupt.. so correct me if I'm wrong but does disabling the graphics.dll library really fix that?

You know what I am tired of the community complaining about how this is overpowered, and this is over buffed and yadda yadda, I heard it already.

I have been with GW for 4 years, I think Anet has done a good job of keeping the skills balanced.

If you think Unsarn and SF are overpowered, 1 word, simple solution, DONT USE IT.

And another thing, If people would play together in a pug with out flamming each other and play the game for what it's worth to be played then we wouldn't have solo farmmers.

This goes on in every game, why should this be any different? Is it new news to you guys or something?

The bitching about how skills needs to be nerfed, enough already. Whats it next community? Discord? or Sabaway?

I am suprised that Anet even responds to the community with all the flamming about how they don't do this, or dont do that bla bla bla.

I have heard it all sence I first started playing. Maybe Anet should get rid of all skills so we can't kill anything?

It's very annoying to hear people complain about the samething day in and day out.

Ummmm, simple solution, don't play GW.

Now I don't play a sin so know nothing about SF. So maybe Anet should nerf the mouth of complainers rather then SF?

Whats worse? SF or complainers?

didn't regina already make a thread wherre you can bitch about a new skill update?

this one is about the update of January 7th update.

I not 100% sure, but I'll check.

EDIT: It didn't fix them. They still work. Apparently, so do non-competitive bots (afk bots like the JQ leechers).

EDIT 2: Oshit, you should check out obs sometime today or later. I've counted at least 30 obvious spike/interrupt bots now. PvP'ers are pissed off apparently.

I just want to congratulate ANet on this -outstanding- piece of work. I hope to see many more updates like it.

Ever hear of Smiter's Boon? They went full retard on that one.

Funny after your own little complaining streak. Ahhh hypocrisy...

Awesome. Anet is on the ball! Too bad being afk doesn't give you an unfair advantage in PvP.

Shadow Form can't get nerfed because it makes all attacks miss and all spells fail. Anet needs to first create a new skill.

Signet of Nerfing
Changes all applicable number of targeted skill to that of Smiter's Boon.
1/4 second cast
Instant recharge

I'm pretty sure that promise has been broken to the point where everyone knows it's a broken promise and nothing else needs to be said.

I don't even think you could call it a "promise". Someone from Anet would surely pop in to remind us that they never "promised" anything :/

This thread has run its course. You've expressed your disappointment that this update wasn't the skills update.