A Simple Solution To The Current FoWSC Meta

Lol, this would only hurt the UWSC and FoWSC meta, so I don't care. You would also do the DoASC scene such a huge favor, cause it would mean some interesting stuff for spikes, lol.. Also, Obby tanks already rule UW, so it wouldn't mean that much, a permasin can so easily be replaced with an ele..

go read my posts again till you get the point i guess

So many people have said this, but I have yet to see a single non-SC'er who said something to the tune of "thank God for Shadow Form, without all the SC'ers farming Shards for me I would never have managed to buy my Obsidian armour".

So many people have also said "anyone can still make balanced groups with no SF tanks and SC builds and play their hearts out". OK. In that case I suggest ANet give this skill to all players, and anyone who doesn't like it can still make balanced groups with or without SF tanks and SC builds and play their hearts out. What's more, it'd make filling out HoM easier, drive down crafting material prices, add more players to the game and increase revenue from the cash shop! Win-win!

Since when was manipulation a good thing?

Balance doesn't and balance is the most important thing in the game.

The biggest problem I think is that Anet was never consistent on what they consider too fast for elite content. Times are more or less right back where they started after the last major change to the spell immunity mechanic. If it's all intended to push people out the door and make getting HoM credit as simple as possible, that's fine, but say so.

Lol? Only times that suffered under the update were UW times. FoW and DoA (especially DoA) only got faster. But that was mainly due to tactics changes and the fact that the new SF made DoA tanking only more efficient. Also, just a heads up, but SF will never get nerfed, Anet stopped caring about that a long time ago..

Let's be clear I'm not blaming SCers, Anet gave you lemons so you made lemonade. What confuses the hell out of me is why you are so resistant to shakeups in the meta when the e-sport crowd prides itself on adaptability and optimization. This would be a chance to set new records under a different set of rules rather than minor tweaks to builds which at their core have stayed exactly the same for years. Invincitanking in DoA quads with a casterspike, just as an example, dates all the way back to at least January of '07 if not late '06.

Yeh, the concept hasn't changed, but the individual tactics have changed so drastically over the years. Especially how veil is done is the most crucial change and tactic difference between guilds. Tbh, I wouldn't lie awake at night when they did change it, but it would be rather annoying, cause I like getting 30-33min casuals consistently and suddenly having to do an overhaul on tactics and most likely a quite steep rise in times wouldn't be so awesome imo..

Order of Apostasy hurts normal monks and elementalists (who uses Eles anymore) and warriors/dervishes with hero teams more than SCers. It punishes enchantments with longer recharge or high energy cost and lack of enchantment stacks. Currently, Vigorous spirit is spammed anyway (enchantment stacks).

i.e.
Protective Spirit
Spirit Bond
Guardian
Seed of Life
Shield of Absorption
Shielding Hands
Aegis
Awaken the Blood
Masochism
Divine Spirit
Dark Bond
Smiter's Boon (10 r though)
Strength of Honor
Air Attunement/Earth Attunement/Fire attunement/etc.
Aura of Restoration (cover enchant for attunement)
Onslaught
Vow of strength
Cultist's Fervor (sucks though)
Meditation (Dwayna dervish)

If you wanted to hurt SCers more than normal teams you could add things that need multiple players/heroes to activate such as pressure pads (like the Deep). Mobs that ignore the anti-spell enchantments, akin to Skeletons of Dhuum would probably be a better way to stop people from aggroing the map.

It's a bit late to change FoW though. Even at its highest, obsidian shards were ~6K (ectos were ~9-10K then). Now they're 3.3K or something.

The elite-SC has not reached the "peak" under the current meta. I would welcome a meta change if the current one had become stale, and all fastest times had been achieved long ago, however that definitely isn't the case.

I just stumbled in here and I don't quite understand the problem. The price of _everything_ (not just UW/FoW items) has gone down due to surpluses from SC teams except ordinary matierials due to SC team demand. As has been pointed out, this benefits the general GW populace. If there is any tangible negative effect that UWSC/FoWSC or any other SC has on the general GW populace, I fail to see it.

This seems more like a philosophical problem than a tangible one. I think it'd be more fun for me if the elite areas of the game were much harder than they are now, especially the older ones like UW and FoW. But the fact that teams can roll over the places in minutes doesn't send me into a rage.

The only thing that makes sense: SC teams have seen prices deflate due to the surpluses they've generated, so they want ANet to protect them from themselves by slowing them down, shortening supply and preserving their profits.

Well, the only bad thing SC's really got to generate was the fact that UW is nigh impossible now with a balanced team, which is kind of unfair towards the casual player who wants to roll in with his/her heroes and just try to complete it, but thanks to Dhuum and the way some quests are now, it's a real challenge, since the area is kind of made for teams where you need to be able to split very fast (4h and Dhuum himself are some of the hardest quests in game to do balanced.)

A drastic nerf of sf or any sc attribute would actually result in the 'sc community' having lots of fun to start another process of try and error on the way to a new sc meta. However the balanced teams would suffer.

Lets take the example of dhuum and his minions. For about a month after the update the uwsc was practically unexisting. But look now, 15 min uw record and subcons casual runs. With every nerf in uw anet gave us something new to think about. We could make new builds, set new records etc, FUN!

And what happened to balanced? afaik nobody has managed to complete UW HM in the current meta without anti-spell tanks and emo bonders.


So to conclude: As a frequent sc'er I'm applauding new nerfs as they give us new stuff to work with instead of repeating the same old builds. But I highly doubt new nerfs would be as beneficial to balanced and destructive to sc as some people in here seem to think.

Most quests and especially 4H were subsequently toned down to have roughly half the initial number of foes so that should really show you where their heads were at with this. Sending FoW or any other elite through a tweaking phase like that just makes the experience all the more frustrating. I could easily see them changing Griffons to a forced NPC escort with loads more skeleton army in the way and vastly improved bars while keeping the Griffons themselves in Leroy mode.

To do what you suggest, they'd have to make a big AI overhaul, cause they are always set to leeroy mode, they just follow the person that pings a target, so if you keep pinging, they won't do shit, so it wouldn't make a difference. This aspect of AI is being abused all over the game (Snakes in Foundry, general usage when having to drag Togo or Mhenlo around etc)...

And indeed, what Jan said is true, what would the balanced community possibly benefit from SF being nerfed?
Assume it would be nerfed, this would be the concequences: Ecto, Shard and Armbrace prices go through the roof, because there is no constant supply anymore, and they can't farm the items themselves, because they can't come up with the builds, people or coordination to get it done (or mostly, they can't). In answer to the fact that everything is nerfed (assuming obby flesh, spell breaker and VoS get the nerfstick up their bumms as well) the current speed clear community would indeed try to make teams to speed clear the areas once more and as long as we have the fastest builds, we'd only benefit from it, because we can make the items the fastest, and the prices would be ridiculously high anyway.

So in conclusion: who would benefit from a possible nerf to shadow form? The people that are abusing it atm... Who would suffer under the nerf? The people that have been crying their lungs out for the past 4y to get it nerfed.

That's some stuff to think about the next time you QQ again...

Pathing with waypoints just like Leah Stone. If I can think of it in a couple minutes I'm positive they can too and would add this to stop exactly what you bring up. Groups have avoided escorting the Griffons in real time pretty much from day one down there. Doesn't help that as level 28's they are incredibly squishy.

Well, although I too think FoW needs to be updated, your suggestion would be a huge pain in the ass, rather than a sollution to the problem..

Elite areas shouldn't be doable that fast.

That's just a poor excuse.

Skillsmay change anytime. When that happens for a key skill in SC builds, then the records remain for thet old builds, and new records start.

You can't keep the game unchanged waiting for the fastest possible SC.
Much less when farming is tolerated, not supported.

Ecto prices have always fluctuated in GW's history. At it's peak, I believe it was 18k but it has been quite some time since it has ever reached that high. There have been nerfs to the FotM ecto farm before and prices did not "go through the roof". Players have always farmed rare mats since they existed and long before the current concept of SC existed. The GW community did not "need" SC then and they don't "need" SC now. Anyone who honestly believes ecto, shard, armbrace, etc. prices would sky-rocket if SF (and its analogues) were nerfed are either delusional or have a modest interpretation of what sky-rocketing prices entails.

Although SC would indeed generate the most items as they would by definition clear said areas the quickest, the prices would not be ridiculously high. How this would affect SC times are way too complicated to predict but I'd be skeptical of it widening the gap between SC and non-SC (if you want to call it balanced).

The people abusing it would not benefit from it. That conclusion is beyond farfetched. It would benefit those who have said areas inadvertently nerfed for them due to SCs. It would benefit those who don't "abuse" (your words, not mine) SF but wish to complete areas that are increasingly becoming fashioned towards SC's. Most importantly, it would benefit those who uphold the idea of balance. You know, that wonderful concept that a game should strive to achieve.

Sorry but fear mongering doesn't take precedence over balance.

Actually, I'm pretty sure they would. The day UW got nerfed, Ecto's went up from 3,6k/ea to over 6k/ea, in 1 day. Then they kept going up gradually. And that wasn't even a nerf to SF, it was just UW that got completely reworked. Also, armbraces would go up to at least 30e again. Who do you think supplies most armbraces? The DwG crowd or the diehard SC'ers? They might be more in numbers, but we make armbraces at twice to up to 4 times the speed they do. Shards wouldn't be affected that much imo, FoW is still easily farmable without SF. That area is really a joke..

I'm not saying the items will stay that high, but in a mass panic that would follow the SF nerf, they would certainly go up, and maybe gradually go down again, but they would still be higher than now.

To be honest, if only SF were to be nerfed, ele's would most likely just take over, and not much would change to SC's. DoA would be slightly slower due to not being able to trenchway anymore and the fact that SF tanks are just faster than obby flesh, because they can move faster and can do cool stuff with shadow steps. UW would pretty much stay the same thanks to ele's just replacing the ssins (since they've practically already done that). And FoW would probably also see ele's instead of ssins/rangers.
Now, if all spell protection were to be nerfed, I can't say anything about UW, because I only know the basics from that area.. But DoA can easily be done <50mins balancedway if you ask me, if not <45... And FoW, well FoW's a joke.. That would still be a piss in the park...


With abusing it, I mean the exp SC'ers, the High-end crowd who've been SC'ing for a long time. Of course shitty PUGs wouldn't benefit, they'd suffer pretty badly if you ask me.. But the exp SC'ers would probably find a new teambuild soon enough to get the stuff done as fast as possible again.