Revert Shadow Form Back to an older version

everything is faster and has become easier because of the new sf the only reason uw is longer is because uw itself has been updated the changes sf had little effect on it so if you put it back to how it was before it will slow people down again.

What should go is the immunity to spells effect.

Immunities of any kind are way too game-breaking.

Not the immunity, the ability to permeate its effect is what's bad. It makes me wonder why foes even use spells anymore. Just give them like a 300% damage boost to physical damage, make them unblockable and ignore the effects of blind and miss effects.

I agree completely with this. There should be ways to protect against spells, but not skills that grant immunity against spells.

Along this line, I would like to see spell shield and spell breaker become guardian-like and aegis-like in that I would like to see them cause a 50% chance of spell failure on target/party. Tweaks to cost, recharge, etc. would have to be worked out obviously, but I think this would be a good functionality for them and will be far better for the game than having spell immunity.

I agree but yet disagree.......Im ok with the perma immunity against spells. It still does not 100% protect you fomr everything. Some things can get through SF, be it limited I agree.

But..............if they are going to let Sins have it, then let others have it too. Buff Spell breaker so monks can perma it(easly), revisit 600/smite. Make changes to Obiflesh to bring back E/Me Terra tanks. If your going to let 1 proffesion have such power........spread it around.

Might as well let Ursan back in too

IMO they should just make spell immunity more accessible to everyone. Make SF maintainable for all classes already at 12 attribute points without having to spend over 4 times as much energy maintaining is as an assassin would on top of cons, PCcons and more.

As far as I am concerned, the biggest problem about sinway is that it practically locks out every other profession from participating.

lol as far im concerned sins became the new ursan a long time ago.

wont get fixed cuz the devs love the factions toons more than prophecies and way more than nightfall toons.

i prefer when ursans ruled the game in that at least all classes got to play.

abit too late for this suggestion dont you think?

How about: Just remove the thing from the game allready.

Simply no!

This game was never ment to have a god-mode skill like SF. This is the reason they changed it so many time. i.m.o. when it comes to skills, Anet is the best, but not for these kinds of mechanics. Either remove SF totally from the game or make it a proper shadow (-sneaking-) form mechanic. What i mean by that is that you can walk around the game going unnoticed, but when you are notuiced, SF is pulled of and can't be reaplied till the mob that noticed you is dead. There is a 5% change to be noticed (so when you meet a mob with 5 foes, the change would be 25%). You will always be noticed when you attack a foe in ny way. Cause you are sneaking, your movement speed is reduced with 50%.

One may debate if this still is an elite skill then, but it will defo have its uses. e.g. sneak up to Kanaxai using shadow form, kd him and quickly shadow step to a safe spot.

i think its alright now, i mean, derv has vow of silence, and that downside is that you cant cast spells... makes it kinda balanced

SF has less dmg from skills as downside

SB has long recharge as downside

OF makes you unable to attack and have -2 energy degen (still balanced given the 20 armor... ok not that much if using SY, but still pretty balanced)

except for farming, i dont see any bad point with these, as anet put em in for those who wanna protect themselves against spells, and they have enough downsides

besides, farming shouldnt be the part where GW skills get nerfed, as farming isnt an important factor to the game itself

the game cannot be 100% balanced, but these skills dont give real troubles to the game as far as i've seen

as for the normal players (no farmers and such) this wouldnt give a problem even if they would be buffed
playing the game normal like i do doesnt make farmers bad to me

so i'd say: leave these skills as they are, before the possible changes would make it worse to the so called GW market (whatever name people use)

and at these times it wouldnt matter if they get stronger, but SF is a good protection for my surviving sin, and has no real purpose after that, as in normal fights, sin gotta deal dmg, not lose it

EDIT:
oh yea, since they are elites, my points get even better, as you can only have 1 elite in your skill bar when making a build

The problem is once sf gets nerfed uw prolly should be made easier again.
Otherwise it will be a dead mans place again+ people will go obby flesh or even vos(which works).

think they'd already lost enough players ruining uwsc, dont think they can afford losing more by ruining other sc's.

That's my problem with it. No other profession even gets a chance in the EoTN dungeon speed clears.

And else it'd be probably limited to dervs, if there'd be dungeonsc's.

You do know other classes (barring maybe warrior and paragon efficiently), can maintain SF using Deadly Paradox at 12 Shadow arts and an ench weapon.

SF is probably the worst skill ANet has ever had the displeasure of attempting to balance it should just be removed once in for all because obviously they want to keep immunity to spells in but there is no way to balance it while still being able to do damage.

I've seen this skill changed more than the clothes on my back and it has basically kept the same exact function the entire time, rofl.

IMO, They should make SF, SB, VoS, and OF all have the functionality of "90% of all enemy spells cast against you fail."
It's still a huge defense, still far more powerful, but in the same style as the "75% block" skills, so still worth the Elite status.

However, it'd shatter the "I can solo a room in less time than a balanced team could do it" aspect that I think so many have issues with the current SF-like skills.

There are no 100% block skills. Even the elites are limited to 75%, or "next 1..2 attacks". Not to mention several "unblockable" attacks to counter them.

Why should there be 100% spell defense skills?

just not useful. and we got plenty of useless skills already imo

I agree with Ayuhmi.

If you actually look at how many areas in which Shadow Form is used, then compare it with how many areas, say, Way of the Assassin or Assassin's Promise... Which seems more necessary to buff because it's not seeing use in more areas?

The way I see it; they're not game-changing skills. They're gimmick skills. For all those people that love tank and spank, this is the easiest way to pull it off, and that method of dealing with combat has been around since the first MMO (bullshitting at this point). There's really no problem with farming apart from elitists saying zomg prices of ecto so low. Although, those are usually people who farmed UW then quit.

Currently, you've got a gift horse you're looking in the mouth. You want to kill farming, raising ecto prices and effectively double the cost of obtaining Obsidian armour, which everyone needs for HoM.

Why I do completely agree that having one skill on one profession be ridiculous overpowered to the point that it's required in every Speed Clear in the game, I don't think they will change it. To much of GW economy depends Speed Clears setting prices and availability of ectos. Ectos in turn set the price for most other items in the game. Not to mention the mass Exodus if all the but hurt people that would leave the game. No simply nerfing the skill would literally kill this game. Arena Net would be forced to possibly shut down there servers, do to lack of interest.

The better solution would be allow other professions to run OP skills too. I know what your thinking ...OMG.. you want to make an all ready easy game more broken and easy.
But think of the alternative.... plus they could always adjust the AI to compensate for any changes.

My only hope is the knowledge that people will most likely influx into GW1 when they realize how big GW2 is. It's happened too many games in the past. Ever Quest is a great example of this phenomena. If this does not happen.. chances are the servers are going to be shutdown eventually anyway.

No..making Vow of Silence, Spell Breaker, Obsidian Flesh...and other such skills a viable option; clearly is a better choice. More by default than any other reason, why these skills should be reverted to once again be useable. I would argue that these skills should only be maintainable under Essence of Cellerty (BU). Mainly as an incentive to get more people to buy Con sets..thus fueling the in-game economy.

Examples:

Vow OF Silence 10e 1/4 Activation 15 recharge
Elite Enchantment Spell. For 5...8...11 seconds, All spells that are not Flash enchantments cast against you fail. Vow of Silence renews when recast.

Spell Breaker 10 or 15 Energy 1 Activation time 30 Recharge time
Elite Enchantment Spell. (12....17.....22 seconds.) Target ally cannot be the target of enemy spells. Gain 1 damage reduction for every 2 points in Divine Favor.

Obsidian Flesh 15 Energy 1 Activation time 30 Recharge time
Elite Enchantment Spell. (12...18...24 seconds.) You have +30 armor against physical damage and enemy spells cannot target you. You lose 4 energy every time you cast a spell.


Gladiator's Defense 5 Energy 20 Recharge time (moved to Strength)
Elite Stance. (5...10...15 seconds.) You have 75% chance to block. All Spells that target you Fail.
(this one might be to powerful)

Amity 5 Energy ¼ Activation time 30 Recharge time
Elite Enchantment Spell. (8...18...20 seconds.) Foes in the area of you cannot attack or cast spells. Ends is your health drops below 75% (this of course only if spell breaker is kept the same)

May wanna take another look at Spell Breaker. Divine Favor =/= Energy Storage.

If you mean Divine Favor, I still don't like this. I would much rather see spell prevention not be possible to maintain, give it a more strategic use, like Seed of Life for example. It is still useable if it isn't maintainable.

Making the game worse isn't the solution.

If after fixing those skills by removing or preventing the maintainment of the anti-spell fuctionality the price of ecto rises to much and getting obsidian armor becomes much harder than intended, there's always the possibility of increasing the drop rate.

Yeah..i saw that 5 minutes after I posted and was like WTF brain....

The simple fact is...that spell breaker and SF and these types of skills serve no purpose in regular play. If not maintainable to farm or play Terra rolls they would not be used at all. They would be another useless skill no one would ever use. There are all ready so many useless skills in this game, that i simply can not support making more skills this way.

This is spot on..not that i think harder to obtain Obbi Armor is a bad thing, cause it wouldn't be. But because at this late stage in the game, the economy depends on the influx ectos and rare skinned weapons and the like, to keep people paying into the system. That in turn keeps people playing. Which enables me to keep playing...so on so forth...

They would still have use. At least to me. Not allowing them to be maintained generally causes the tank to, for lack of a better term, have a time limit. If he isn't quick to do what he needs to do, then he'll die, but so what? That should be the risk of using the skill, make them high risk, high reward skills essentially.

This is really all that ever needs or needed to be said.

I'm fairly certain that most people would revert to using Defy pain tanks again, rater than use any non maintainable skills. All though a Dev can still out tank a Defy Pain tank any day.

Now that I think about it one simple change could fix allot of problems.. hear me out.. program all melee AI monsters to never attack the first person they see if others are available to fight instead. . Tanking would be almost obsolete then. Of course I have no idea how something that game changing could happen without Arena Net and NCsoft devoting allot of time and resource to developing it. Which is say it will never happen....

Or how about this they just make PvE skill that one shots everything but you need to pay 100g every time you use it.....

And how's that a bad thing?

How is a bad thing to make skills worthless in a game where 80% of all the the skills are all ready worthless? ummm..ok then

Not all skills have to be usable in both PvE and PvP.

And if they get extremely underused when not maintained, they could be changed to other effects.

For example, just for spell interruption prevention.
That always comes in handy without turning all other enemy spells useless.

I think you forget that gw is a dying game waiting to be put down. A large majority of the gw community simply play the game for the elite speed clear aspect, including me. Remove that and they have no reason to play.

Not too mention the numerous amounts of guilds build around speed clear using sf, almost all of them simply dismantle into nothing if sf is removed.

Then this is the fault of the guilds for forming a guild built around one aspect of the game. I highly doubt any change will occur, but if it does, and these guilds do "dismantle into nothing" as you say, then it's sad. It's like they don't even play Guild Wars they play "Speed Clear". All a speed clear is, is going through elite areas very quickly, there is no challenge to them, thus, something needs to be done. There should always be a challenge to them. =(

Yes, we have heard the concerns about SF many times in the past already.

When you have a concrete idea of what you would like to see SF changed to that is less vague than "an older version" and you have good reasons in support of your proposed change, we can talk. Until then,

Closed.