Revert Ursan, Raven, and volfen Blessing

I disagree Aldric...
As I stated in my previous post If it wasn't for SF (Shadow Form) the only time Players would regularly get involved as a team would be the Daily Zaishen Mission/Quests. Even then people still prefer heroes. Arenanet built this game on the fundamentals of enjoying the game as a community. Sure you have the ability to solo a good portion of the game, but I know that ArenaNet has made it a priority to bring players together. That skill holds "Speed Clears" and keeps players playing together in my opinion.

No, because Ursan was a skill with the right intentions and wrong execution from a different time in the game. Back then, the game was basically holy trinity only. Other profs like Mes, Rit, Assa etc weren't able to join in and were clamoring for some way to. If ursan wasn't as effective as the best balanced teams even in the hands of poor players, it would have been just fine. The unwanted profs could have filled a slot with ursan and the other profs would run regular bars. Unfortunately, it was too powerful and got rightly nerfed. In today's game, Mes, rit and (non-sf) assa all have several viable builds, and its pretty much just ranger and para that need some touching up. The skill just plain isn't needed, either in its overpowered or a slightly nerfed form.

Having said that though, the game still isn't completely open to all profs due to certain skills being way too powerful (everyone knows what they are at this stage...). I still don't know why they didn't put a stop to SF earlier and just let it run rampant to the point where the only real justification is "some players have fun playing the game in this way". Really? Then why delete HB and TA when the small communities that existed had fun playing with & against each other.

Somewhere along the way the balancing vision became very clouded and went from "nerf any op f-ups from the last balance patch and buff some stuff" to "leave the OP stuff in because players have fun farming with it and make some more stuff OP too to bring other profs in line with the current op fotm". Sadly, I don't think the current live team has a chance in fixing the last few years of mistakes.

I agree that the removal of HB and TA was unnecessary.

ANet also built the game on the fundamentals of PvP being the endpoint. We all know how that has turned out as far as priority gones.

/not signed

If you really loved Ursan, you would find a way to use it effectively post-nerf.

Done and Done! Why can't anyone else? 60-65 minute DoA times are rather solid aren't they? :S

Not fantastic, but it's not meant for speed

This kind of thinking led to everyone creating an assassin to farm elite areas and entire teams of nothing but assassins.

That is exactly what GW was NOT supposed to be about.

When is the last time anyone did an elite area with a PUG? (non-guildies)

/notsigned

Too many other skills that need revision. I have like 600 warrior elites that are too rubbish to even consider building around.

Making skills that just vapourise everything in any area no matter how elite just so that people will play together is silly. Skills like Ursan/SF are just plain bad and should never have been put into the game. It's a sign of Anet retardeness that they took as long to (mainly) kill Ursan and have never got around to doing the same with SF.

I recently started playing again, primarily because of the HoM and GW2 but also because I was curious about what happened to this game...

Surprise, surprise! I found that now you can have 7 heroes in your party. First thing I tried was to use these new heroes to clear the UW. I almost died... of boredom.
Then I tried DoA. The only place you need to be semi-awake is in Foundry, but only just.

I then saw that SF was still alive and kicking but 600 smites are dead

Great...

So basically, for anyone new/returning to the game the only way to get into any kind of group play is to level a Sin or a Rit (if you dont have a Monk or Imba). Smells like the same problem everyone faced before UB is the same problem everyone still faces after UB's demise.

I hated UB back in the day. But, it did allow some of my other characters to group (like my dervish, mesmer, ranger) when those characters were not seen as viable in most of the group builds of the time...

/signed

Let people spend the final days of this game in groups killing things with their bear hands... could be "fun"?

I'm actually for it. I never even participated in round one of Ursan madness, and I can complete DoA with 7 heroes and no cons with almost a 100% success rate, so it's not for lack of skill.

I've been in lots of guilds and they either demand way too much activity for a grown adult working full-time (and having a life) or they're pitifully inactive and bad at the game.

When the Dervish update was coming, I was all for breaking the crap out of the class, and at this point I'm still all for breaking the crap out of the game. I realize there's a lot of folks who want to maintain some semblance of balance, and they're welcome to vote as such, but for me, being able to PUG something with moderate success instead of just rolling it with my geared heroes would bring me back to GW more often.