Curse

Hanok Odbrook · Feb 09, 2008, 06:31 PM // 18:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

1) It's true, that elite missions are no longer elite. Even my friend admitted, that she's a noob and Ursan is the only way she will make it through DoA.

Well, how much of a noob can she be if she has made it all the way to DoA. I would think she might have picked up at least one proper tactic or two in that time. Of course, Ursanway will make DoA easier when used by decent players. - as will any balanced build. I defy you to prove how UB has somehow magically recoded DoA to render the mobs powerless in this area. The difficulty of the area remains the same. But again, read the second portion of this issue - the one regarding status. "Elite" is a status symbol - affected by the Haves and Have Nots. So long as the Have Nots can obtain the same items as the haves without even having the Have areas unlocked, UB's effect on the "status" is minimal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

2) UB did hurt prices. Did you notice, that Armbraces were 4-8 ectos less a month after UB appeared?

So tell me, what affected prices before GW:EN, and UB? UB is simply another in a long line of specialized farming builds that has no overall bearing on the supply and demand of items, thus the prices, except perhaps to speed up the inevitable. Armbraces would have dropped a few ectos any way, given time - whether that drop happens a month afterwards or four months afterwards is irrelevant. If I and a dozen of my friends ran balanced non-Ursan teams through DoA and gave away all rewards for free, that would have a greater effect on pricing than UB does now. Are you then going to complain that Anet should stop us from giving away all these rewards for free because it hurts the status of the elite areas and the economy?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

3) Sure it didn't kill. It just made everyone from ,,learn to play the class, then go with cookie cutter team'' to a ,,grind the hell out of title until your head explodes, then you MAY join us''.

4) It doesn't take any skill. You run to a mob in 4-6 ursans and spam 1-2-3 skills.

5) It did remove. I don't know what the hell did you write about, but if team needs 6 players with 1 skill and 2 monks (WoH, LoD or HB - wow, 3 types of monks...), it removed the need of building a team build.

3 - So we went from - "sorry your particular build is useless - forget the fact you had bushels of fun playing it, and forget the fact that out of the thousands of possible character creation choices only a dozen will be accepted by the player community into PUGs" to - "go ahead and pick the build you have the most fun playing and when you hit the tough areas, here is a skill to help you through."

4 - I have seen the same with several farming and CC builds. UB is hardly any different in that aspect. Really, if a friggin bot can run some of these builds, how much skill is really needed?

5 - And the real problem we have is that with BE, you are limiting the vast number of choices we have with professions and skills more so than UB does. When players form groups to balance a party to have maximum effectiveness in any given area, you are already limited the builds - essentially using CC builds for this area, thus minimizing any variety we have in professions and builds.

In essence, we are telling every monk in the game, "You need to run these eight skills, with this AP allocation, to be the most effective monk in the game. So, now every monk in the game runs the exact same build in the game, as do the tanks, as do the rangers, and as a whole, we then have the same carbon copy teams running around in the game thus from all the thousands of possible choices, the game itself limits the validity of choices to a very small handful. Well, so much for that touted variety of profession combinations and skill choices we are supposed to have.

In that case, I ask then what was the point of giving us all those choices to begin with? Wouldn't it have made better sense to only create the dozen or so skills that created the balanced teams and use the programming time for other pursuits? Why then say we have all this potential variety and choice of class and character when the vast majority of it is useless? That is the problem with the game - not UB. The vast majority of players look down on Mending as a poor skill to use in game. If that's true, then why was time wasted programming that skill, and why do we not simply petition Anet to remove the skill from the game since it is a poor skill and never used? Why not simply do that with all the other skills that are unused by the player base, and that the players feel are poor skills.

Let's just have Anet get rid of them all, therefore leaving only the good and useful skills, and then we can petition Anet to revamp the character creation process to only allow us to pick one of the dozen or so templates of the effective builds in the game. By doing this, we eliminate the risk of noobs ruining the PUGing experience as they will be forced to play only the builds that help balance the team and are effective in all areas of the game, and learn to become more skilled with them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

6) It is overpowered, no denying the fact.

And no, in GW doesn't play 4 millions players. Just 4 millions copies were sold, of all games. So if everyone bought all chapters, it's just 1 million. And not everyone is playing - I don't know, maybe the half of those people. It's around million, if for example each person has 2 games. But then again, some players have 2 accounts. So, as opposite to WoW, where accounts can get frozen, buyed copies =/= active players.

Exactly why UB has little bearing on the overall prices of high end items. The player base is limited and finite. Therefore the potential demand for any given item in the game is very limited. Farming is an on-going business - always was, and always will be. Therefore, as long as farming continues, the supply of any particular item will continue to increase and outpace the demand of the item, therefore the price of the item will drop. This has happened long before UB and will continue to happen long after UB is over and forgotten with.

Hanok Odbrook

blockkiller · Feb 09, 2008, 07:01 PM // 19:01

why discuss about UB, use it if u want to, don't use it if u don't want to use it, i think UB has no effect about wich build people use, before UB people used builds straight from wiki. the real guys are the people that make there own good build creativity rules

Numa Pompilius · Feb 09, 2008, 11:05 PM // 23:05

You guys can't seriously claim there's any skill involved in using Ursan. You don't even have to use any interrupt or use adrenal skills in a particular order, it's just target closest and spam all the skills as they recycle. Literally.

The sum total tactical skill involved is to not target the next mob until this one is dead, and avoid sprinting away from the monks. And even sprinting away from the monks isn't that bad as long as you don't lose ursan on the way.

We're talking a one-skill skillbar here, which still is better than any conceivable set of 7 normal skills plus one non-ursan elite. So hell yeah it's overpowered.

No-one disputes Ursan is effective -the combination armor-ignoring damage and near complete damage mitigation from perma-knockdown is godly- but christ, don't tell me it requires even the modest skill an Eviscerate axe-warrior takes to play.

Which is why I stopped using Ursan. It's just mind-killingly boring to play. Looking at the screen is completely optional, just target nearest and spam those skills.

Personally I think Ursan is game-breaking crap. It's beyond me why ANet seems to think this is a good direction to take the game. But it's pretty obvious that they do.

misguiding_prophet · Feb 10, 2008, 03:10 AM // 03:10

Hanok is my hero <3

ursan will get nerfed more quickly if ppl continually complain about its power- leave it. Lazy farmers like me can easily make 100k just by button smashing and not worrying about anything else. I still havent reached r10 ursan

so I still have to 600 -_-

Realize the fact that even skills such as pain inverter make a lot of elites wane when comparisons are made. I primarily use them for farming purposes as do most other ppl. Individuals who have difficutly in normal campaign missions might not have had the opportunity to get high enough norn ranks in the first place to begin using ursan effectively. Those that are in the position of having high ursan and hvae difficulty with say raisu in HM, or DoA will find the campaign much more enjoyable than be traumatized by it and hate it completely.

Think about it, if there are people who rely on ursan, then in a way it is a good thing. It means they might not not have received the appropriate exposure to the game to develop their own, effective builds for their respective professions. Until they do, they can rely on Ursan. People have the psychology of getting sick of repeatedly using one build everywhere. So ursan would be a catalyst for ppl finding equivalently powerful builds.

Sab · Feb 10, 2008, 05:12 AM // 05:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanok Odbrook

1) UB takes away the challenge of "elite" areas.
Conclusion - False.

Ursan allows people who are otherwise unable beat an elite area, to beat it. There is no challenge when literally anyone can succeed with Ursan on their skill bar.

----------

(I don't care enough about prices or pugging to argue the next points)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanok Odbrook

4) UB takes no skill to use.
Conclusion - False.

You C-Space and mash three buttons in no particular order. If you seriously think that takes skill, then you're probably borderline retarded.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanok Odbrook

5) UB removes a basic mechanic of the game - skill building.
Conclusion - False.

Making and adapting builds is an essential part of Guild Wars - there is no "not wanting to make builds". If people are too stubborn to change their build, or they don't have the knowledge to, or they can't bother, then they don't deserve to advance through the game. With that said, you can complete the majority of casual PvE with an empty skill bar, so don't even start with the whole "you need to spend hours making skill bars" argument. If you're attempting HM or the elite areas, then presumably you accept that you need a decent understanding of skills in order to complete them.

Hanok Odbrook · Feb 10, 2008, 09:03 AM // 09:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sab

Ursan allows people who are otherwise unable beat an elite area, to beat it. There is no challenge when literally anyone can succeed with Ursan on their skill bar.

That's funny - as I am running secondary characters throughout the campaigns, I haven't noticed any decrease in the challenge or difficulty of these areas. Did UB re-code the game to remove the challenge? If so, somehow, the new build of the game failed to be downloaded to all three of my computers upon which the game resides.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sab

You C-Space and mash three buttons in no particular order. If you seriously think that takes skill, then you're probably borderline retarded.

As you do with many CC and farming builds. Again, perhaps you need to read a bit closer - the contention here is that it takes NO skill to run UB - that means skill to use it along with the skills of using proper battle line tactics. The proper terminology here is that UB needs very little skill to use. However, if you still need proof positive - when I have some free time, we can meet up in DoA - I'll run UB and show you how a complete lack of skills still equates to failure with the build.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sab

Making and adapting builds is an essential part of Guild Wars - there is no "not wanting to make builds". If people are too stubborn to change their build, or they don't have the knowledge to, or they can't bother, then they don't deserve to advance through the game. With that said, you can complete the majority of casual PvE with an empty skill bar, so don't even start with the whole "you need to spend hours making skill bars" argument. If you're attempting HM or the elite areas, then presumably you accept that you need a decent understanding of skills in order to complete them.

I never said you didn't or shouldn't need some understanding of the skill bar and tactics in this game. However, there comes the point when it simply does not matter how well skilled you are at a particular build if that build does not meet one of the limited few CC builds that teams require in certain areas. That is my point of contention here. I love the amount of choice we have in creating a character's class. The problem arises when the freedom is stripped away by imperfect mechanics within the game. Just because someone may not have as much time to dedicate to BE as others does not mean they shouldn't have an equal opportunity to visit and succeed in any and every area of this game. Unfortunately, UB is the imperfect solution to allow this to happen in the imperfect mechanics of the game.

Hanok Odbrook

Abedeus · Feb 10, 2008, 11:54 AM // 11:54

....So, wait. You love the amount of choices, but you are defending Ursan? Thanks to that skill, people don't want, for example, damage dealing warrior, tank, party support or even a wammo. They want Ursan. And people don't want MM necromancers, SS or BiP's - they want Ursan Necromancers. How about that? If someone loves SS, PuGs tell him ,,gtfo get an Ursan and grind to r10 n00b''. If someone wants to tank with E/W or E/D, they tell him ,,gtfo get an ursan (...)''.

It's a bit strange - you are defending Ursan Blessing, the skill that tells 9 of 10 characters to USE IT OR GTFO, and yet you are talking about people that like their own builds? Wth bbq qq kthxbye?

Numa Pompilius · Feb 10, 2008, 03:51 PM // 15:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanok Odbrook

That's funny - as I am running secondary characters throughout the campaigns, I haven't noticed any decrease in the challenge or difficulty of these areas. Did UB re-code the game to remove the challenge? If so, somehow, the new build of the game failed to be downloaded to all three of my computers upon which the game resides.

Perma knockdown.

That's what you get with 5 ursans in the team. That equals near-complete damage mitigation. And that sure as hell makes any area a lot easier.

John Panda · Feb 10, 2008, 03:58 PM // 15:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

I won't play PvE until they nerf Ursan. Someone said that we don't have to use ursans to play in PuGs? Oh, rly. Look at the screenshot that I just took.

90% of pugs are Ursans. And if that elementalist looks for ursanway, it's 96%. Can't you understand, it's like a parasite? Either you agree to being assimilated by it, or you die from boredom and rejection. Parasites should be KILLED!

honestly, anet made a better form of a pug for you to get into, which is a guild.
Join a guild do the missions. if not why change from ursan? ursan is good for pugs because most of the time pugs fight and argue and lack skill. ursan is perfect for every pug. if you are tired of ursan and your guild ursans everything get a new guild.. their are plenty of elite pve guilds. go join one.

Avarre · Feb 10, 2008, 04:02 PM // 16:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanok Odbrook

The proper terminology here is that UB needs very little skill to use. However, if you still need proof positive - when I have some free time, we can meet up in DoA - I'll run UB and show you how a complete lack of skills still equates to failure with the build.

D/Mo teams in the NF event lost games. Does this mean the template was not broken?

Skills are not supposed to be balanced to the minimum potential of their use, based on poor players.

Hanok Odbrook · Feb 10, 2008, 04:41 PM // 16:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abedeus

....So, wait. You love the amount of choices, but you are defending Ursan? Thanks to that skill, people don't want, for example, damage dealing warrior, tank, party support or even a wammo. They want Ursan. And people don't want MM necromancers, SS or BiP's - they want Ursan Necromancers. How about that? If someone loves SS, PuGs tell him ,,gtfo get an Ursan and grind to r10 n00b''. If someone wants to tank with E/W or E/D, they tell him ,,gtfo get an ursan (...)''.

It's a bit strange - you are defending Ursan Blessing, the skill that tells 9 of 10 characters to USE IT OR GTFO, and yet you are talking about people that like their own builds? Wth bbq qq kthxbye?

Uhmm. It's called class discrimination. Maybe you haven't been playing all that long, but I remember a lot of complaints from players saying they couldn't get into PUGs because the general player base looked down upon their particular profession. Didn't matter how good they were playing it - they were still discriminated against. I remember an instance in Factions where I had my Assassin and my Ritualist in the Viz Square outpost. Even before my Rit had finished loading there were a half dozen invitations on the Party bar. I couldn't even bribe my way on to those same groups with my Assassin. So I went with my Rit. The group missed Masters, and we all agreed to give it another shot. I told the group I wanted to go through with my sin this time so at least I could advance that character through the storyline. There was some refusal at first, but since I had proved to the group that I wasn't a complete noob, they agreed. I think we just missed masters the second go around, but got it on the third try (again with my Assassin). It was like that the whole time in Factions until Nightfall hit and I could pick up Heroes and skip the nonsense with my sin.

The elite areas have seen the worst forms of this discrimination. All we have now are two different groups discriminating against each other. We have the original groups who did not allow weaker builds or professions to join the team, and now we have those very same builds and professions using UB to form their own teams. Tit for Tat you might say.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Numa Pompilius

Perma knockdown.

That's what you get with 5 ursans in the team. That equals near-complete damage mitigation. And that sure as hell makes any area a lot easier.

And it still remains all relative to your own personal experience. A balanced team of all human players will always find any given area easier than a non-balanced team filled with Heroes and Henches. And neither team has any influence on the other's perceived ease of that respective area. Again, I haven't noticed any change in the difficulty of any area of this game because other players run UB. The only differences I notice are the ones I directly influence myself - my own team's formation and own character's skills and AP allocation. Any area of this game is only as hard or as easy as we ourselves choose to make it based upon what we take into that area. And since these areas are instanced, they cannot influence the perceived difficulty of a separate team. Oh, and if memory serves, there are several different types of monsters that are immune to knockdown in the game, rendering this particular attack useless.

Hanok Odbrook

Numa Pompilius · Feb 10, 2008, 09:12 PM // 21:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanok Odbrook

A balanced team of all human players will always find any given area easier than a non-balanced team filled with Heroes and Henches. And neither team has any influence on the other's perceived ease of that respective area.

You've discovered that perception is subjective. That way madness lie, but OK.

Quote:

Again, I haven't noticed any change in the difficulty of any area of this game because other players run UB.

So all that text equates to a statement that I don't have to run Ursan if I don't want to. I didn't know that was at issue; in fact I DID stop running Ursan because I no longer wanted to.

Here's a question to you: can you conceive of any skill which you would consider unbalanced?

Let's imagine a skill which when used insta-kills all the mobs on the map and teleports the drops to you. You're not forced to use this skill; it's completely voluntary. Is this skill overpowered? Unbalanced? Game breaking?

Or is it perfectly fine?

Jiub · Feb 11, 2008, 12:41 AM // 00:41

i dont particulary care about ursan blessing, but the whole "description of a typical human group" made me laugh. its so true

Sab · Feb 11, 2008, 04:25 AM // 04:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanok Odbrook

That's funny - as I am running secondary characters throughout the campaigns, I haven't noticed any decrease in the challenge or difficulty of these areas. Did UB re-code the game to remove the challenge? If so, somehow, the new build of the game failed to be downloaded to all three of my computers upon which the game resides.

If you're not finding your subsequent runs through the game any less challenging, then you're not learning anything from your previous runs. The game itself doesn't change, but *you* can. If you keep running the same crappy bars, then of course the game is going to be difficult. But, if you learn from your previous experiences and tailor your build to each specific area, then you'll find the game much easier.

However, you can bypass all this learning and slap Ursan on your skill bar. It has the effectiveness of a well-designed build, but requires none of the knowledge, intelligence or skill to run it. It removes the challenge from skill building and execution.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanok Odbrook

As you do with many CC and farming builds. Again, perhaps you need to read a bit closer - the contention here is that it takes NO skill to run UB - that means skill to use it along with the skills of using proper battle line tactics. The proper terminology here is that UB needs very little skill to use. However, if you still need proof positive - when I have some free time, we can meet up in DoA - I'll run UB and show you how a complete lack of skills still equates to failure with the build.

Okay, so even with Ursan, you can't run out of your monk's range and aggro the entire map and expect to survive. That's common sense, and nothing to do with Ursan. The *build itself* still requires no skill - there are three buttons you hit on recharge. You'd have to intentionally play bad in order to screw up an Ursan bar.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanok Odbrook

I never said you didn't or shouldn't need some understanding of the skill bar and tactics in this game. However, there comes the point when it simply does not matter how well skilled you are at a particular build if that build does not meet one of the limited few CC builds that teams require in certain areas. That is my point of contention here. I love the amount of choice we have in creating a character's class. The problem arises when the freedom is stripped away by imperfect mechanics within the game. Just because someone may not have as much time to dedicate to BE as others does not mean they shouldn't have an equal opportunity to visit and succeed in any and every area of this game. Unfortunately, UB is the imperfect solution to allow this to happen in the imperfect mechanics of the game.

If your build doesn't work or is not wanted in a certain area, change it. You don't need Ursan on your skill bar to make a build that's minimally acceptable in PvE.

As for dealing with class discrimination, you deal with it the same way you'd deal with rank discrimination in HA. Start your own groups, or make friends and join their groups, or use some social skills and talk your way into pugs.

odly · Feb 11, 2008, 07:27 AM // 07:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Numa Pompilius

Let's imagine a skill which when used insta-kills all the mobs on the map and teleports the drops to you. You're not forced to use this skill; it's completely voluntary. Is this skill overpowered? Unbalanced? Game breaking?

Or is it perfectly fine?

That skill is inbalanced.

To balance it you should add that the area scales with frequest use from 0% of an area to 100%. You'll receive full 100% after using the skill 10.000.000 times. After using the skill it is disabled for 30 sec.

But is you zone 3 times in succession to certain zones, spinning right and left after zoning you can mysteriously get it to recharge right away. This only works between 23pm and 5 am wherever you may live and only on the odd minutes of the hour.

There you go, I've fixed it for you.

misguiding_prophet · Feb 11, 2008, 08:01 AM // 08:01

Ursan = a get rich quick scheme that works VERY WELL. If you have problems with it, then fine- but dont suggest for a minute that having a prejudice against a skill gives you an air of superiority.

All good builds are supposed to run effortlessly in their effective contexts, Ursan seems to be one of those "builds" that can be used ubiquitously with the same efficiency. Why does this then warrant negative criticism?

There are at least 2 professions with over powered skills at any given one time throughout the various different reconstructions the game goes through. You can either accept it, or ignore it. But to make such an issue out of it suggests that some (those who perceive UB to be a negative, contemptible thing) might have ego problems.

Abedeus · Feb 11, 2008, 08:09 AM // 08:09

2 professions with overpowered skills? Name them.

And since when a team build = 6 characters with one skill (ONE SKILL IS BETTER THAN ANY SET OF 8 SKILLS!) + 2 monks that don't even have to have a condition removal.

misguiding_prophet · Feb 11, 2008, 11:47 AM // 11:47

At least 2 professions implies that there are more (perhaps all of em, but I cant say that with complete certainty)- definitely from first hand exp Dervish and Ele have extremely powerful hurting capabilities.

What is wrong with that build? It was primarily designed to score UW chest as quickly as possible. And no one I know that has used ursan in farms, has ever said "ONE SKILL IS BETTER THAN ANY SET OF 8 SKILLS".

Most ppl who use Ursan prcast Inspiriation stances prior to using Ursan- so its not necessarily wholly relying on ursan :P

enmitee · Feb 11, 2008, 12:37 PM // 12:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sab

If your build doesn't work or is not wanted in a certain area, change it. You don't need Ursan on your skill bar to make a build that's minimally acceptable in PvE.

As for dealing with class discrimination, you deal with it the same way you'd deal with rank discrimination in HA. Start your own groups, or make friends and join their groups, or use some social skills and talk your way into pugs.

this is the root of all class discrimination making UB the EXACT reason why these classes that "need to change their build" can play in PUGs without trying to be nice to some elitist players who will only accept you if your a hb/terra/renewal nuke/ss/bip.

Abedeus · Feb 11, 2008, 02:35 PM // 14:35

Maybe people using Ursans don't cry about them, because they have nothing else? They have no skill to use a non-Ursan build, no skill to get elite skills (lul) from bosses to use a cookie cutter build.

Dervish has an extremely powerful hurting abilities? What? It's a perfectly balanced class - it can moderately well tank, deal damage at same level as warrior, yet has less armor, for exchange of a bit more hp.

And elementalist... Well, in EVERY RPG there is such class. In DnD it's Mystic Theurge/magician classes/clerics (death magic), in WoW there is a nuker, in Ragnarok Online it's High Wizard, in Diablo 2 it's Sorceress or Druid... It's just a standard class, like a healing cleric/monk or tanking warror/cyborg. Besides, a Necromancer can deal as much damage as elementalist, in HM even more (Spiteful Spirit ignores armor, and since monsters use skills/attack faster, it deals more damage than in NM - and mobs have increased armor, so their uber power is almost reduced to 0).

Saying that,,at least 2 professions implies that (...)(perhaps all of them)'' means almost same as ,,all characters can deal a lot of damage''. So they are balanced... But you don't get the point.

Ursan:
1. +200 health.
2. +20 armor.
3. Speed boost.
4. Armor-ignoring damage (about 100 every 4 seconds).
5. Mass weakness and increased physical damage.
6. Perma-knockdown and AoE damage.
7. Ability to hide 7 other skills when Ursan is down.
8. Everything said above is, as long as skills are being spammed, maintained even for 3 hours.

Give me a build (2 professions, 8 skill) that can make what Ursan made. Oh, and don't forget that it can't use enchantments, stances or things that cast slower than 1 second and have more than Ursan skills recharge.

And don't forget - your build must be immune to Blind or Dazed conditions, Empathy, Backfire... So use only signets/skills. I should say only skills, because signets can get Rusted, but hey... Would be too hard for you, Ursan defenders.