Skill Balance Versus Actual Balance

Most significant is that they should have just done the Smiter's Boon procedure on Shadow Form and gotten rid of it.

That they haven't indicates they don't WANT to get rid of Shadow Form and are in essence just stalling as long as they can.

EDIT: Particularly since just about any one of us could have balanced Shadow Form in under a minute if ArenaNet asked us how to fix it. The only tricky part would be deciding which method to use - maybe make it a form with a long recharge? Maybe make it only prevent attacks OR spells, not both?

youre confusing.

1st you complain about SF. then you complain about heroes. then you complain about the lack of people playing.

how bout you quit complaining, realize its a fairly old (pick-up) game, and continue playing the way that you find most enjoyable.

better yet, how bout you take a break since you obviously arent happy with this game at the moment.

and sf...([email protected] again.) deal with it. you think you'll have an easier time finding a balanced pugs if they kill it? especially those that arent in a guild..[email protected]

First off hold the press.

Don't forget people like economics there are different classes of people.
The poor, middle, the rich and the richest which in terms of this thread the newcomers, intermediate, experts and the professionals. Now if the experts and the professionals are a having a dispute between the nerfs what will happen to the newcomers and the intermediates? Some of the intermediates will progress to becoming experts and some will just stay intermediate. Like the saying goes, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer".

To stay back on topic OP Guild wars is a lot like society. In fact it is a society to many people. Changes do happen and its up to you as an intermediate will you progress as an expert or stay as an intermediate?

As for SF, if they do decide to nerf it Assassins would be probably as great as paragons the reason is that Paragons have good skills but has nothing to distinguish them from what they have to offer. Anyways, isn't it already nerfed? You deal 33% less damage? SF is the most talked skill in forums I find anyways.

And stop with the SF rants its pointless.

The reason why ANet is so slow about nerfing these outrageous things is because they've dug themselves into a really deep and crap-filled hole, and it's all because of one bad decision after the next. A huge series of mistakes is what led ANet here, and now they're more or less stuck having to cater to the type of player that has resulted from all of this.

If they went back and did a major overhaul to make the PvE not a stale, boring and thoughtless facerollfest, it'd probably be one of the best moves I've seen a developer make in years. They'd piss off those enjoying the current game, that's for sure, but that's no loss whatsoever. Not to mention that there would be a huge crowd who would appreciate ANet for those changes.

Hey Bryant Anet hasn't created Guild Wars perfectly suited to you. If they have the game would probably only appeal people of your type of gaming. So far, Anet has done a great job. At least their paying attention.

I can understand a game not being "perfect" for me, and I can also understand when a game has been essentially beaten upside the face repeatedly with a flail. Given the amount of changes, dismay, and lack of care (or more accurately, the *wrong* type of attention), it's easy to point to it being the latter.

To the completely casual and oblivious gamer Guild Wars is amazing. But that's not really what we're talking about here.

If your implying that these changes give you the impression that Anet is not taking well enough care of the game then I am speechless. In order for a game not to be abused by players the developers has to do something like updates and nerfs.

Though I don't know whats your take on players abusing the game. I define abusing the game as anything from phishing to ruining the economics within the game.

Though I agree with your point, do we really need another thread describing why shadow form is good/bad? I think by now Anet has figured what's going on, and anymore discussion on this is useless. Instead of creating threads bashing Anet's reluctance to change skills, why not suggest things to get people playing together more?

They've abandoned their skill>time philosophy. They've introduced numerous tools and other perks that make up - from slightly to greatly - required skill. Essentially they've *massively* dumbed down their game.

There are those that adovocate that these changes cater to those who do not have the proper skill for an area, and that if they paid for the game that they should be able to play through it. That stance is fine. What's *not*, however, is creating the later portion of the content to be completable by them.

There's nothing to encourage players to learn more about the game. There's nothing to encourage them to learn more about their class. This is the problem of imba. It's not just the neglect to fix these things, it's also ANet outright *adding powerful tools to the game*.

That's the point of this thread. There's been not much but neglect for the PvE portion of the game. SF has barely been touched, tanking-and-spanking is still a viable and encouraged playstyle, numerous upon numerous skills have rarely been nerfed (and sometimes buffed)...List goes on.

I feel that this thread is more about to do with ANet's neglect of the game rather than just SF itself.

Agreed with the OP 100%.

Using cheap gimmicks like Ursan, SF, and, *cough*, consumables has ruined the group play aspect of this game. The reason is that the people who play this way are playing in Godmode, and not actually learning how to play well enough with normal skills for me to want to play in PuGs. Ursan was terribly unrequired because everything in this game is possible with normal skills once youve learnt how to play, and Ursan did nothing but remove the learning curve.

I dont mind shadow form and other skills (mist form, obi flesh) being used to solo normal mobs and bosses for golds / greens / tomes etc, but taking the farming aspect and making it work in what is meant to be the elite areas like Fow, UW, dungeons takes the absolute piss.

The problem is that if you were to hypothetically remove all PVE skills, consumables, and SF from the game right now, much of the player base that relies heavilly on my these would be left as useless terrible players.

I had to first learn to play the game struggling in THK, using no elites, and when I did finally get elites, they were lightning surge, mind burn.

Now everyone just gets to dig right in with shadowform, PVXWiki, and highly overpowered PVE skills.

Also if I remember, Hard Mode and Elite content were designed to actually be *HARD* and require skill and knowledge of how to play the game to succeed. Instead, after implementing HM, Anet rolled out all the rubbish game changes to make HM far far more easier and faster than NM used to be before NF.

Also lets not forget that Shadow Form was actually buffed by Anet into what it is today. There was nothing wrong with it when it just lasted 20s and allowed you to simply farm bosses for green weapons. I would like this shadow form back, like maybe 60s recharge with a 25s duration. Also, change it to a skill so it cant be Echoed.

As you mentioned, I wouldnt like it smiters booned because it used to be such a good skill in its original form for simply farming gold and green weapons. I would like it to still have this function, but while not being abusable in elite areas or stuff like speedbooking.

So change it to a Skill.

Problem is gone instantly, because it no longer benefits from GoS or 20% ench, and cannot be echoed.

to fix the game one must look at areas where animal populations do not drop items anymore to find the problem of farming animals

Wait...you mean Death Charging in (such a suiting name) while the rest of the party is half a radar away is NOT a good idea?

wtf?

SF should have been smiter's booned many months ago. Seriously. As if invulnerability is EVER a good idea.

It doesn't even need careful balancing. The concept of the skill is just retarded.

It's actually quite impressive how many skills are completely retarded in concept. ANet has always been so far out of touch with their own game that it is almost painful.

You see Cats? You and I, while we've had differences in the past, can at least agree on this. I would go further to say that aNet has never in their history of out-of-touchness, been as out of touch as they are today.

That goes for the game itself, and that goes for the playerbase as well. Sure they get some feedback from players, but I certainly question the logic behind the test krewe, how can they truly think that a small pocket of people speak for the general populace? I've never bloody well met a single member, I don't think I know anyone that has. That make me a noob or make my opinion any less valuable? Because I can tell you, apart from in here, my voice counts for shit all, and I even have strong concerns about here.. :P Others have questioned my gaming credentials before in respect to my opinion, but that in itself shouldn't even be a factor.

The simple fact of it all is that more than anything else, it is glaringly obvious that there is a serious problem with CR atm, and that is causing a cascade effect of problems exacerbating problems, and being condoned and indeed perpetuated, even encouraged, by denial to save public face and minimise legal liability, and by vague, improbable at best, excuses as to why they are performing security upgrades that don't need to be done, because hey, no-one is getting hacked are they? And even if they were, it'd be their fault anyway.

What their recent statements are ultimately saying, in a nutshell, is that Linsey was definately running something that she should not have been. I just wonder what. Don't you?

*Edit!* Is it just me, or has anyone else come to the conclusion through a little creative thinking: What if Linsey was not hacked at all? IMO building a rapport and gaining the players trust by "Baring ones soul" at a time where everyone is getting hacked, would be beneficial indeed in respect to making excuses as to why things are being implemented when there's not actually anything wrong..Just a thought, but feel free to comment.

Is this in reference to the accounts being hacked? I've honestly not paid much attention because I really don't care. I've not change my password in years...if someone wants to go through the trouble of hacking my account, they deserve the whopping 12k gold and the ruby I found a few days ago.

But yes, whatever you are referencing...it sounds interesting.

Threads like this really make me wonder how people survived through the game without SF or Ursan or Cryway/Discord or whatever.

I find myself agreeing with the OP however. No matter which way you slice the cake a skill like SF will either be grossly OP (like now) or totally useless. The reason is simple, it either gives you 100% invulnerability or it doesn't, there is no middle ground. If they just killed the skill people would sulk for a week then forget about it, and it would become a footnote in history just like ursan.

the OP is right.

No.

Depends.

It obvious that 600hp farming monks will not appear at mission outposts and join pugs to heal when 600/smite gets nerfed. It does not work that way obviously: They want to farm X, unless pugs allow them to get X, they will not join them. They propably got credit for mission+bonus year ago, there is nothing to gain.

This is, however, different for elite missions or any "farmable" areas: You only get ecto and uw chest in uw. If best uw build is nerfed, people will continue to want to do it as long as it is still best way to reach some goal they have. If you make average pug safe and fast enough and gimmicks worthless, players will play it that way.

OP is kind of wrong with content skips: You vanquish area exactly once and do hm mission exactly once. The fact that Ursan allowed them to do it faster does not change one thing: It does not matter if they did it in month or in week. What matters is that they LFG exactly once and do it exactly once. No amount of skill nerfs of buffs is going to make them do it again to make LFG viable again.

Issue was not ursan, but rather the fact that most of content has no replay value (and pretty much has no value outside +1 to some title counter)

Directly opposite of this, if dungeon loot is sweet enough and pugs are viable, pugs will continue to form, and will form easily without runners or gimmicks around because they will be the only (the best) way. But pugs need to become viable first... Ad of course, here gimmicks really hurt replay value as if you can farm hell out of something, you get whatever you want fast and then you simply move on.

Chests in DOA around Maw are prime example: three inwisely placed chests allowed players to farm hell out of DoA golds and killed proper groups for two days that it took to get those items under key value.

I get the feeling PUG's in speedclears and other farming spots could as well be heroes. Everyone is stuck in a predetermined role, knowing exactly what steps are to be taken from the get go. There's no need for an initial building of party skills which is the thing I liked the most about pugging: meeting interesting new combinations of skills and professions. This form of pugging isn't very appealing to me.

In a sense I am able to discern two types of pugging. The first being the farming people, that'll just find a new SC build on PvX after the nerfs, and the people who are truly doing a mission for the fun of it or because it is their first time. The latter not being too concerned about the mission taking 20 or 40 minutes.

All in all, I have to agree with FyrFytr998. People that were pugging for the aspect of rewards from endchests won't suddenly start tinkering with their own and one another's builds. I suppose they'll still be looking for a well documented farmbuild, and happily be the one cog in the farmbuild that enables the next speedclear.

balance in a video game is when all options in game are about equal in terms of ease of use, speed, and require similar levels of team coordination.

FoW is a good example of how imbalanced Shadowform is. A extremely talented team, with good tactics and coordination using shadowform can clear fow in 11-14 minutes. If you remove shadowform and pick any other options you are looking at 50m-1h clear. This is the imbalanced caused by shadowform because option one is clearly better than option two.

From a gamer designer perspective you can't allow this because it forces the majority of players into narrowly defined rolls, with limited builds and tactics. Essentaly because of the speed of any one build all others die out because why would any want to spend an hour in fow when you can spend less than 15 minutes?

There are plenty of other examples of imbalanced ingame, but FoW is easiest to see. There are over a thousand different skills in guildwars, and thus many options for team make up. No one team build should have a huge advantage over another.

While I agree with most of your post in general, you can't really say "any build with 8 skills on it's bar should be as good as any other build with 8 skills on it's bar". There's obviously skills that synergize with each other, and skills that cancel each other out.

However, "perfectly synergized" builds should be about equal. None should give complete invulnerability.

@ cats

What I mean is that if you take for example physical way build and then a SC build there performance should be about equal. However they aren't because SF allows for insane amounts of spliting.

Physical way would be 3-4 frontlines with midline dmg for support and some decent healing.

This is something that I would have laughed at a couple years ago and thought "Jaded player" or something........

I hate to say it but at this point I have no faith at all in A-net or anyone associated with A-net.

Its not just the slew of lies the CR constantly feeds us as players, and its not just the total ambiguity of every statement A-net makes, and its not just the lack on personality that A-net has suffered from lately.

Its more. Its like when you know someone for awhile and think they are really cool and then find out they have been stealing tips at work or something.

Its hard to describe, and its hard to think about but honestly ...... Zero credibilty........... and Zero love.

gg op. I hardly ever log on GW anymore, but if you want to hang out together and do some vanquish/dungeon I might come along.