Update - Thursday, February 25, 2010

What do people reckon of this?

I don't know which would be better, but either Ele or Assassin primary.

Glyph of Swift
Shadowform
Stoneflesh
Armour of Earth
Dwarven Stability
Dark Escape
Shadow refuge
Shroud of Distress

does that sound like a good tanking idea? (you'd need a balth spirit on you)

Ele can't keep up SF with 12 shadow arts and just glyph of swiftness and an enchanting weapon. You need DP or sin primary for higher SA.

What SF and other skills combinations offered was doing hard mode things in very fast times with a well coordinated team. It is yet to be seen how much this update will have slowed the speed clears as alternative ways will likely be found.

For many veterans of the games the Speed Clears were the only challenge left. Doing DOA Quad run from 4-6 hours when it first came out to less than an hour was motivating or UW from 2 hours to 10 minutes was tremendous. In my opionion, takinig that away because of skill changes is demotivating.

BTW: Greens have not been worth farming for a long time, so I find that comment a bit misplaced.

Deadly Paradox and a perfect Enchantment mod allow permanent Shadow Form on any class.

I don't think Dark Paladin is trolling, I just believe that s/he is uninformed and, although I don't presume to know, it seems s/he has little experience of farming on other professions. Hopefully the guidance being provided here will be taken on board.

The update (nerfs) have made GW less fun for myself in that I see group play as worthy for accomplishing missions, but I get a crack out of trying to accomplish things as an individual. Maybe we've just been spoilt upto now with the ability to solo stuff, and I use 'solo' to include 600/smite with a passive hero. From now it seems that at least 2 humans will be required to do what previously could have been 'solo'ed. This, it must be pointed out, is good for the game overall, but maybe not to everyones' tastes.

I look forward to seeing what ingenious builds grow out of this update but for now I am off to spend a weekend with my fiancée

I think the assassin tanks are far from dead.

As far as PvE goes, the only non-assassin weapon worth using on an assassin is a scythe. Everything else is going to be meh at best.

Seeping Wound is totally raping PvP atm, please balance this skill as soon as possible!!

I hope more changes for SF are being made because the SC's are not dead not at all. I've seen it.

sigh............

i'm pretty sure the new blood bond will single-handedly be able to keep a (or multiple) sin(s) alive. this update will also give necs the option to run oov without sacrificing the adren gain of dark fury (by using mark of fury instead).

Mark of Fury was always an option. This update reduced the duration of the hex but increased the adrenaline gain. I think that's just made it more irritating to use.
I don't see why they just didn't remove the unfair condition on OotV for PvE.

As for Blood Bond: it won't single handedly keep one Assassin alive if he's taking all the damage. If the rest of your team are taking the damage instead, Blood Bond will do bugger all to save you.
It's still a very nice addition.

Failnet strikes again, buildwars is complete............

You know, I am not really complaining about the update to 600/smite but I just fail to understand why Anet really cares about PvE. I can understand skill balances for PvP, but who cares if two people can solo an area? Who cares if people can run dungeons? People who want to use a runner service may miss some of the nuances in the game, but that is their choice. Why does Anet care? I played through the game with any number of toons and enjoyed it, but sometimes I just want to get to the end. So a dungeon runner, or a runner to a new area is a nice option. Sometimes I only have an hour to play so I will dual toon 600/smite with two of my accounts and head for UW alone. I dont have time to find a smiter, and get distracted a lot so being able to AFK was nice. I seldom have time to find groups, and H/H -since the H/H "steals" all your drops with loot scaling (even though we have to pay to upgrade our heros with runes and gear but that is another post for another time) makes soloing necessary in a lot of cases.

I just cant understand why Anet feels the need to "fix" something that really doesnt matter in the general sense. Having an "unfair advantage" over make-believe monsters - so what. Doing 600/smite still required a great deal of skill (at least from the 600 perspective) so I simply dont know why they needed to nerf it.

My .02... just wanted to get that off my chest in case anyone from Anet reads this and cares about a long time player's perspective. While I am not pissed off, they have just made the game a lot less enjoyable for me after I have spent a great deal of time and money in thier store with upgrades, storage slots, extra toons etc. Yes, there will be other 600/smite builds (already a new one for DTSC) but that doesnt really work for what I enjoy doing which means I wont be playing much any more, and that just plain sucks.

./tall

Haven't used my sin with SF yet, didn't even bother to get the skill. I still am having much fun with the scythe buid I got from this forum. Can't see why it is not fun to go sin anymore, I would say that SF took most of the fun out of the sin anyway.

Your arguments are two years late.

Why does PVE matter? Well for one thing most of the audience buys the game for that. For another, when farming reigns supreme, there's no group play to be had except farming. Imagine playing this game for the first time and dealing with the crap that's in it now. You get to ToA and the only people who want to help you tell you need to get lost and go spend another 20 hours making a farming build character. Then you come back and get bitched at by nerd nazi's as you learn the ropes. Damn, sounds like a great game? Some people get locked into the grind spirit of things, but what they don't understand is they're extremists sucking the casual fun out of the game.

As much as it dosn't seem a bad nerf its just a matter of time till people overcome this obstacle and make new builds ive done this many a time but this far into a game i just CBA...ill just play my PS3 abit more till some builds appear...if there still like snail clears then i'll just find a new game to tick me over for the next year then try GW2...but even then if that's open world its not my cuppa tea.



If farming areas fast, has been removed and ppl cant find a new SC build then you have taken away a vastly fun part of the game for > MANY < players...be prepared for a mass clearout (dont bother with the get out farmer noobz reply's)...see how quite ure game is when they go. Maybe a year ago this wudda been ok but with a new game being due a release in ''2011''...BIG GAMBLE....which i doubt is gonna pay off. im not speaking for everyone, but i think in 2 months time when people scream stuffs to expensive (its starting with ecto's already)..they may regret the QQ...just my 2c.

So..From what I understand SF is still functional? Still viable in speedclears? Uh..Doesn't this kind of make the update rather stupid if this is true? I mean whats the point of tweaking the skill if its still going to be used for what it was disliked for in the first place?

So how's 600/smite doing? Anyone came up with any ways to makeup for the damage that holy wrath was casting? Prefably looking for a solution that could be used on a hero. Running in and casting holy wrath is just annoying.

Also, Power Block nerf = lame. It didn't need nerfing. It seems like it was nerfed to appease whiney people who seemed to get PBed. (Cancel casting = yay!) Sigh. Tis depressing.

People keep calling for mesmer buffs. Considering how Anet has handled other class buffs (the creation of SF's godlyness in the first place), I'm quite scared to see them tweak the mesmer skill line. I don not have confidence in their "buffing" abilities. At this point I'd rather have them not touch anymore of the mesmer skills.

Tbh, some friends' guilds have already completed DoA, UW and FoW within 12 hours after the nerf...get this...using Shadow Form.

I find it a bit of a slap in the face that Obby Flesh is unusable, as is 600/Smite, but SF tanking lives.

Anet really sucks.