a change to underworld

For anyone who is unaware let me enlighten you.

Pug Runs of UW are not an average of 45 minutes. They either fail 75% of the time, do it in over an hour 15% of the time, or you got lucky and filled the one spot a good sc guild needed and you got 45 minutes that very generous 5% of the time.

Alliance Runs from a decent ally will probably net you 45-1.15 hour runs on average, IF you don't fail. Ally runs from a very good SC ally will probably average 30-50 IF THEY DON'T FAIL.

Guild runs of an average SC guild will be 50-1.30 90% of the time and of course its IF they don't fail.

Good - Very good SC guilds will probably have 30-40 minute runs most of the time, 45-50 when something goes wrong, and 25-30 if everything is perfect. but at the same cost they will fail alot too, because the tactics they use to get an average time are dangerous.

If SF and SoD make you invincible why do pugs fail ALL THE TIME? Why do true duos not always conquer 4h and pits quests? Why do some people fail at the FIRST pull in the whole UW after the first skele? Why is an emo needed for the run at all? Can't he just stay at the spawn until Dhuum, BUT WAIT we should be able to tank Dhuum anyway because we have SF and SoD. Yes the two skills are very powerful when used the right way, with the right combo of other skills, but its not as OMG GAME [email protected]#RUQWRGUJHNRF as all of the anti SF people make it seem.

To Voodoo: This is not our place, we are fine with change, but when the change is unneeded and does nothing but make it easier for everyone it shouldn't happen. How is it selfish if you could do things our way? How is it selfish if you could perfectly well complete it you're way too and in a decent amount of time? But I guess time is suggestive.

To Elnino: Let me ask you this. Ever seen a person with a BDS? Thats Bone Dragon Staff if you didn't know. If SF wasn't around, and no maintainable spell prot was, it would take significantly longer to complete SoO(Shards of Orr) on a regular basis. So lets say one lucky son of a bitch gets a BDS on his first run. Since SoO takes so god damn long to do(which all of the non SC people seem to mind things that take a bit of time) he is one of if not the only person that has one, and he values it at 800 ectos. No one save maybe the person who has been around all 6 years and has done nothing but play UW with the 7 friends in his guild(no Dhumm, no skeles) all 8 of them may have 800 ectos by now. But wait, you could make this comparison with ANYTHING that drops from a dungeon or an elite area chest. The entire economy would revolve around a few people who had those ridiculous hard to find items, where we(the SC community) make those items a bit easier to farm and make the materials we use to trade for them, easier to obtain too.

With no item getting progressively better, and vanity is everything, any rare item is either worth as much as the only people who have it decide, or worth nothing, and because of the SC community we make it a happy medium of worth more then the average item, but still obtainable.

And I'm surprised you didn't want to write a wall of text to prove a point that many of us don't see, even if I'm the only one who can't see it, you like doing things the slow way right?

I always do a complete UW clear with 3 of my guild members. Always 1 para 1 rit and and a tank sin. 3 mesmer heroes 1 ss necro and one UA monk. We always do it in 2 hours and we have fun with it.
I was very sad about the UW nerf 2 years back. It was done against the UWSC but the normal players where the once that where punished. The UWSC was just slowed down a few minutes. But now we adapted and i don't think UW needs a change. Now with 7 heroes everything is already easier. But playing in a place like UW with friends is more fun.

I wish FoW got a end boss or added something to the Malyx end chest. The malyx chest is no fun. I wish it would drop a summon stone or so. Not high end pets but just something fun. And Fow not a hard boss but something you have to do just to feel like you ended something epic like UW.

Try to grasp that you have an opinion, nothing more.

SC is merely one gameplay option among many. It is not some valuable community service vital to the economy.

If SC was nerfed to the stone age tomorrow, both the game and the economy would adjust and move on.

I see that you don't venture in the PUG SC scene a lot. Those "made up statistics" are fairly accurate, or at least give you a good general idea on how PUGs work. Hence why on the few occasions I ever set foot in UW or FoW, it's only with guild or friends..

Try to grasp I've been playing this game, with and without SC's for all 6 years, and from my experience with SC, which is pretty extensive, those statistics aren't just made up, they are spot on.

There is a difference if SCing was nerfed tomorrow, we still got the ectos and items out there in the first place, if SCing could never have began, we would have had the issue. Think for a minute, maybe I'm not blindly defending something because I do it, maybe I actually have validity to my argument, and because you disagree yet refuse to state why, have to make it seem as though I've said nothing that would matter in an argument.

I don't think of SCing as a vital community service, but this game economy and the game overall would have imo died long long ago without it, due to players having nothing left to do but grind long ass dungeons and elite areas to either get the money or the item they want. No one would play a game where the people who got entirely lucky controlled the economy of the game.

Perhaps you could share the numbers and data the "statistics" were derived from. If not, it remains a conjectural opinion.

They were derived from SCing with all of those different examples I gave, over time. If you don't believe me, try it yourself or get more people who SC in here to add there own opinion my my stats and see how accurate they are then. You cannot comment on how long it takes an average pug group if you don't do it and never have. You can't comment on ally runs nor guild runs because its not something you do. I on the other hand, do it every single day.

Don't get me wrong, the numbers he gives are made up, but my point was that if you would try to get the experience yourself, what he stated is very likely what you're going to get. I don't have anything to back this up but my own PUG experience, which dates back to almost a year ago (omg, it's actually been almost a year since I PUGed UW or FoW). If this doesn't serve as a good point for you, then fine, try it yourself I'd say..

Meaningless. You have absolutely no access to numbers. You have no clue how many attempts are made in total, timestamps for all attempts, or % of attempts that are successful. Only Anet would have that information. Your % assumptions are just that.. assumptions from an extremely limited data pool. You do not even have reliable data on what I do ingame..yet make another assumption based on personal bias.

It is all opinion. The whole thread is.

For example, based upon my estimated 30+ times completion of Consulate Docks, I would say that the Master success rate is 100% solo. I've never failed it. And.. I would be full of BS because I haven't a clue what the overall master success rate is across the entire playerbase.

Ah, the pissing match. What every GWG thread eventually boils down to.

If opinions are meaningless then shut down these forums. All forums infact. Because discussion and debate simply won't happen without opinion.

You really need to relax, you're taking this all way too personal. My joke "you obviously don't venture much into the PUG" whatever I said was based on the fact that you think that the fail rate he predicts is way off, which it isn't. Of course if you take statistics as serious as you do, which I don't blame you for, then it's all a big pile of BS. But out of my personal experience, and the experience of many others, I think we can conclude that PUGs fail, and that they do a lot.
I also never claimed his % assumptions were any good, I said they were fairly accurate, which means that they come near reality.
The bottom line of his post was not that his numbers matter (if it was, I missed it, and you're right and it's all a rubbish) but that PUGs fail, and that depicting SF as a god mode with which you can do anything in game is false, because PUGs never fail to prove how bad they are and how easily they screw up, even with SF and Shroud.

Edit: for some reason I thought you quoted me there. Although I'm kind of with the other dude on the side of the SF spectrum that's actually pro and not con, I'm not taking all this stuff so seriously.

For the most part the non-sc ppl don't care about sc's...sc's are not the reason they want changes to UW. They want changes b/c UW is overly tedious now. Unfortunately the reason it's overly tedious is b/c of the changes put in place to combat sc's. Sorta catch-22 (if u will) they dont care bout sc, but sc is the reason the changes were made that they care about.

Net you can take all those stats and transfer them over to non-sc groups as well...just add minimum 1-2hrs to every time and added 10% failure rate. Remember sc's are not just faster...they are for the most part easier as well.

For those who sc and argue to those that don't that UW sholdnt be any easier...if you like the challenge...don't sc... non-sc is harder.

To boot...the non-sc's don't even really want to make uw easier....they simply want checkpoints to break up the tediousness. In mutiple post some have mention they wouldnt mind if it got harder as long as there was some sorta of checkpoint measure put in place.

Do any non-"show stones" guys agree with that statement whatsoever?

If SF doesn't make you invincible why do we have screenshots like this one?

Balancing a game around bad players is silly.

@above - I don't, obviously.

Well, those people are usually quite exp and know what they're doing. Put SF in the hands of a casual player and it will get disastrous.

I agree to the part though where you say it's unfair to non-SC'ers to not be able to complete UW because of the nerfs put in place for SC'ers, but Anet should find something else to that than just nerfing SF imo, because it's only a powerful tool in the right hands.

SC's, SF, etc.. I don't care whether they're nerfed or untouched.

It would simply be nice to complete UW, without making it any easier, just in separate chunks. Simple as that.

Do I think Anet would ever do this? No, it would take a good amount of time and bug testing to do so. For a game that is 6+ years old, it's certain to not occur.

@OP. UW is indeed hard. But that is not your real problem: UW is the ONLY ONE which is hard. If you could do pve quests in HARD-hard mode using only the daily codex skill-set for better reward than what UW/SC gives now, UW probably wouldn't bother you anymore. This "I want to be 50/50" mentality is not healthy.

200+ stones or your opinion doesn't matter.

And ther you have 1 of my agruments, if you are not in a SC team to get thouse stones you wont get in one because they wont take a "NOOB" in to sc.

my thread has nothing to do with SF, I could not care less if you are a sc player some of us dont want to sc ,we wantto play the game.

All i am putting out there, (and stop ego tripping guys) is since the nerf to stop the sc uw was made hader. cool love the challege of it just would like a SAVE point.

So that we can complete it at our leasure and not have to become a nussance to sc players buy jumping in teams we have no reasonbel right to be in for a sc. hence why you have PUG groups that fail sc.

I have a sin , I can run sf to some extent, I CANNOT SPEED CLEAR
so would you likeme to pretend to be abel to do a sc of uw and stuff up you sc run????????? or would you prefere I play the game normally and leave you guys to your sc's?

So it comes down to Do you think it is in your best intrest for the players that can ruin you pug sc teams to have a save option in uw so that we can still compleate it and stay the hell away from you perfect runs.I think that its a great idea you sc guys would benifit and so would the rest of us.

of and before some idiot jumps in and sayes OHH you have to compleate uw to get stones. I can buy enough of them to get in a pug team That would Fail, ohh and is probebly why they fail most of the time.


cheers

So you enjoy de-valuing items? You do know that the struggle to obtain rare items is one of the very little factors that keep this game alive? If everyone had free access to everything, there would be nothing else to work towards and this game would have died years ago.

Here's my wall of text explaining why certain skills used in SC's are bad. It's not in context with this thread as it's a reply to a thread asking for a shadowform buff.
Then someone said something along the lines of buffing more skills to combat SC's, to which I said:
Then some other guy said that the concept of sc's came as a result of players thinking outside the box, to which I said:
Then the first guy pretty much said that people hating on sf (and other skills used in SC's) are people that have been unsuccessful with it, to which I said:
This is why pugs failed. Not because guild teams are so amazingly skilled at it, but because they have had more practice.

False.

I had actually read that when you posted it, and yes i re-read it. I guess we will just differ on our opinions. No matter what something will rise as optimal. Something will be best and someone will cry for it to be nerfed.

As far as you're point as to some people still play this game in pursuit only of that rare item, I reply, and thats at the current standard with SCs, I don't see them sticking around if everything takes x amount of time longer for everyone, and was so in the first place. But again thats just me.

To reply to you stating they aren't difficult to learn I retort with asking you to give me something that then is difficult to learn. Besides something counter intuitive, like learning to write with you're other hand, or behind you're back, what is truly difficult to learn without time and practice? The only things I can think of are when its that you stop learning and it becomes natural born skill(IE Pro athletes)

I don't disagree pugs fail more often because they are less practiced. But when I hear/read that SF makes you INVINCIBLE, I think, well, its only useful if you know how to use it, or took the time to learn it so, its not really invincibility right? After all you also need 2-3 other skill with it to survive in just about any area. Also, as I originally said, Cons and Pcons make things maintainable, make things quicker, and make things moreso imbalanced then the skills themselves. Why not cry for a nerf of cons and just have SF users adapt to having Deadly Paradox and OF users bring Glyph?

@ Jeydra - as I just said above, that is possible because of cons and SF, with cons being the more powerful, in my eyes of the two. As BSS said, things like that take lots of practice and dedicated time, asking just anyone to do that won't work.

And to anyone who thought the 200+ comment was serious, I'm pretty sure it was sarcasm, since its SCs most of all who are aware pugs can just buy the stones.

That's fun , on that thread a few months ago when i suggested to remove consets which provided a way bigger advantage than skills themselves , i got trolled and flamed on 3 pages.....

But yes , i still agree with that idea though... consets ( especially essence of celerity imo) provide a too big advantage , and it's quite ridiculous to see that some builds only work when having cons + all bonus items from events.....

We really are stepping over the boundaries of this thread, but if you believe cons are more powerful, I suggest you try doing Ooze Pit without Shadow Form (and Obsidian Flesh, and Vow of Silence). Go ahead and use cons. Post results.

Are you implying that if it takes lots of practice and dedicated time, we should ignore the fact that that single Necromancer beat out the best possible non-SF builds with 7 full heroes tagging along? One player + cons > 1 player + 7 heroes by at least five minutes, and probably more. This is despite 1 player + 7H having eight times the firepower as the Necromancer.

I cannot agree with that. Time, practice, etc - who cares. It is possible, and that's what matters. You do not balance games around what bad players can do or cannot do, or next we'll have "guys I keep forgetting to refresh Fire Attunement so I run out of energy with Searing Flames, plz buff Searing Flames".

I want to have your babies for this ^

Also, while people are on about the comparison to DoA, are you saying it's not fair that the more of DoA you complete at once the more gems you get?

Full UW took my old balancedway guild less time then full DoA. And yes, we would take Paragons, Rangers, Warriors and Elementalists (not running ER either) and we did it in HM. I do SCs now but I actually did every elite area in balancedway HM first. Yes, I know doing UW can take a while, but as said above, it's an elite area, what do you expect? You don't get anything for nothing. Even SC teams have to learn their roles in order to pull off fast times (and a lot pop a load of pcons in the process). The way I do UWSC now is a balancedway team that takes roughly an hour. I go on my Necro. I could take a good few others of my characters, none of which are sins! I'm sick of this assumption that you can only SC on a sin. My boyfriend goes on his monk (even in sinway dungeons), I generally take my Necro or my Mesmer. If a bonder is needed, I have my Ele. Generally a rit is liked as well. I know people who run ranger terras. YOU DO NOT NEED A FREAKIN SIN! In certain places they are required in teams, so what? Run one of the other roles.

Also for those wanting to split up UW: you do realise it's one instance, right? If you can figure out how to split up UW and "save" progress, by all means go ahead. With Slavers and DoA the completion is tied to the quest. I don't see how UW could work in the same way.

Can we please have less of this wanting a "win game" button mentality that seems to be plaguing Guild Wars lately? Some of us like a challenge, not being able to faceroll through the entire content. Elite areas are elite for a reason. Part of that is the time needed to complete those areas.

Look guys, if EFGJack can finish the uw then everyone can. If you fail at uw it's time to uninstall and find another game. Hopefully they buff dhuum so not all the scrubs can get the monument in their halls. Add some respawning nightmares and more of those chained ghosts there.

I can tank sub conset DoA runs (if the main team is good) can you? Because, obviously, you can, since 1 person can do it, that must mean everyone can do it.

I might be an elitist, but that what you just said there makes no sense and is condescending to say the least.

My guess is that he means EFGjack can do it with heroes and provided the vids to show how.

If you think UW is bad now you should have tried it when it was fresh off the anti-SC buff that it got. Many of the quest spawns have been dramatically reduced since then including 4H which originally had roughly twice the number of dryders. The real irony here is that they added all of this crap to stop SC teams when the only thing it really did was further hinder farmers and normal teams.

Re: Missing HB, +1 on the cons argument just because it's such a mixed message that they send. A quick glance at the 'common' stuff:
+4 to all attributes
+300hp / +30e
+33%IMS / +33%IAS
-25% activation time / -20% skill recharge
50% immunity to criticals
+10AR / -5 damage reduction
+1hp Regen

Looking over that list it's so obvious to me now why Asuran Scan was a priority for nerfing /sarc.

I can provide you vids as well, I even have vids of parts of a run on Youtube my point was that what he said was utterly and completely ridiculous and not constructive at all.

Oh please get over yourself. Picking at words, twisting it into something else. You think you had to pick a fight with me because you misinterpret what I say.

Ecto's are the most important in my view because they are the most expensive part. Simple. It's not about the number needed, but about the value. That makes it more important in my book.

The drop rate in FoW is next to nothing and therefore insignificant. It's not enough to have a chance of collecting enough there for a suit of armour.

If you actually read what I wrote more objectively, you would've understood that I said that I don't mind there being elite areas that are only really for the hard core...as long as they don't have materials that are needed elsewhere that can only realistically be gotten there. You cannot have one area fine for casual players and the other not when the armour is available to buy in the casual area. That is my point. If UW was not toughened up there was no issue for me. Cloth etc can be gotten in casual areas. If Obby armour was about hardcore players then it should be gotten in UW and not FoW.

Coffers are also part of the DoA area...I never said it had to be in the explorable parts. So you are wrong because that location is part of DoA. So there mister "accuse without thinking".

So get off my case with your lame, self-invented arguments. Next time, instead of instantly flaming someone for something you think they said, how about simply asking what someone means or disagree in a normal way.

Seriously? You seem to be missing the point. Cons make SF as powerful as it is, along with Shroud and on most occasions other skills. Me running through Ooze pit with 7h and cons wouldn't prove anything other then I can do it, and obviously I can't do it as fast since I can't skip any mobs. I don't think the ability to skip mobs is a bad thing, because in ~95% of the game its virtually useless. Without ranged aggro sliver and whirling do virtually no damage and won't kill anything, in normal mode you can't even pull mobs to the spot you would have the team spike in a SC. SF is powerful in elite content because of the way its set up and played. I can't think of almost any other instance I'd choose an SF build over a standard 7h one.

And for the life of me I don't understand why you keep referring to SF/maintainable spell prot users as bad players. If its because you(meaning anyone) can complete the content without it, then that argument isn't very valid to me. I can go through life eating nothing but the flesh of another human to sustain myself, because I go through life without eating real food and I'm surviving, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG AND I'M BETTER THAN YOUUUUUU xD You see my point I'm sure.

@Bellatrix - YAY SOMEONE GETS IT<3

I remember way back when the whole 55 duo/solo thing was taking off, the few people that started threads asking for it to be changed got exactly the same thing.

All they had to do was nerf some skills and consumables into the ground to slow down speedclears yet a endgame area gets adjusted instead.

A player can get all those consumable benefits without attaching a skill to your bar and suffer no after effects yet there is now recently a 10 minute downtime on summoning stones.

There should be downtime on some consumables.

Also this thread is hillarious:

OP: These quest's are taking too long and i'd like continue on from where i left off.

Speed clear defense: learn to play, if you don't want to play that long gtfo.

then there's this:

Speedclear nerf people: Speedclears need to be further toned down.

Speedclear defense: I don't wanna play for 3 hours and get jack **** drops.

LOL

Problem is that once you put in some practice into SF builds (which isn't a whole lot of practice really), you do become invincible. Things like watching the field, positioning and target selection in gvg takes so much more practice and a lot more time to perfect.

Yes, cons are definately part of the problem and need to be addressed but that doesn't mean that the power-creeped skills don't need to be looked at because they just add to the problem.

Yeah, but shards are still near 4k/ea, so they still make up a big junk of the deal, so picturing ecto's as most important is still not correct, they are more pricey but equally significant.

Well, you said yourself that the droprate in FoW should be lower than in UW, you ASKED for drop rates being very low to keep UW more important. Then what's the problem, because exactly what you ask for is already in place.

And since when do you decide on what area is suited for FoW armor? FoW is made up of a giant FORGE in the middle of it. With a giant ANVIL, and a FORGEMASTER next to it. What, are the Reapers gonna make your armor? Or after you defeated Dhuum, maybe you can ask him to make you an armor set and polish your shoes? FoW armor is in FoW because it belongs there, lorewise, and because FoW -and note, I'm gonna have to say it twice- was originally MEANT to be tougher than UW. It has more quests, more variety of foes, collectible drops salvage to more mats than the ones in UW, etc. So that's why it's in FoW. Oh, and did I mention the giant forge yet? You know, that place where they forge armor?

I'm flaming you not because of this thread, because we're seriously off topic, but because you ask for things that mean nothing and are redundant to say the least. Especially since some things you ask for are already in place.

You can't think of any instance you'd choose an SF build over a standard 7H one despite the fact that you can clear areas twice as fast (or even faster) with SF over 7H?

You're the one who referred to SF users as bad players, since you said PuGs fail so much etc. I don't care what bad players do. I care what good players do, and good players with SF way outspeed other good players without SF.

No, I don't see your point.

I think it's funny that every single player I've seen who has defended SF is an SC player. Lol, classic case of selective blindness.

Gosh so easy to mash egos... back on topic

UW is harder NM that every other area HM fact. Not because of the AI and or the Monsters or whatever but because...

Its been six years now. We have all moved on. I have kids. DoA I can do for a laugh in my spare time HM. If I fail its 20 mins-60mins lost.

UW reminds me of GvG from years ago... Master got barbed trap? yep, know when to cast it ok, Gwen got fallback, ok.

hang on 90 mins in RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO Livia you retard come back......

Signed

That's what power creep does to people.
I blame Anet for letting it happen in the first place.

I concur.

Seen some "interesting" justifications with it.

I use SF to SC and solo dungeons, and SC elite areas, thats it. I don't see a need to use it anywhere else, nor do I think it useful almost anywhere else.

I referred to pugs not as bad players, but rather as an example that SF doesn't make you invincible when its clear not EVERYONE who tries with it succeeds.

My point is there is no reason as to why SF or any maintainable spell prot at this point in the game should be nerfed so why call for it? It deserved to be nerfed at some points, and things were changed.

And why would the people who SC defend SF? Hmmm I wonder, maybe because they are the ones who use it most? Maybe because its there style of play you are calling to be thrown away? Speed clearing doesn't effect any of you're game if you choose to stay away from it, with the exception of trading/game economy. I understand the skeles and dhumm where placed in UW as a result of SCing, but Skeles really aren't a big deal, they are quite easy to kill with or without an 8 man team, and Dhumm just takes planning.

I find people who act high and mighty because they don't do a certain thing to be hysterical. Its like the people who play an instrument and say, oh I don't listen to x band because even though their songs are catchy and the lyrics have meaning, the song isn't musically technical enough for me. I only listen to Dream Theater and Rush.