User:Racthoh/Ursan Blessing

My thoughts on Ursan Blessing
Now before anyone mentions anything about these skills helping the casual, you have to be level 20 to access GW:EN then grind the necessary faction to make these skills more effective. There is nothing casual about it. The blessing skills are nothing but time over skill, ruining one of the founding beliefs of Guild Wars. I suppose that only applied for PvP, and not PvE but nonetheless.

Any profession can use these blessings, but perhaps the best to abuse them is the warrior. In any area where you're expecting any sort of physical shutdown you can simply slap Ursan blessing on your bar and leave the other seven skill slots blank. Ursan Strike ignores everything; no block, goes through Spellbreaker and the like, won't miss through blind, armor ignoring damage, and it even has spell range. On a three second recharge, that's pretty good, slap on an Essence of Celerity and Quickening Zephyr to abuse it even furthur. Granted you won't out DPS a warrior in situations where there is no form of physical hate, but those areas are few and far between in the PvE world. In addition to the strike you have the Rage which is an AoE KD + damage that is affected by the Stonefist insignia, the Roar which weakens everything in earshot while providing a boost of damage similar to Order of Pain, and the Force which will allow you to catch up the kiting enemies/break aggro from an enemy with ease. All of these are skills, outside of disables like Distracting Shot and energy denial there is no way to slow an ursan down.

That is probably all your typical player is going to see, but really there is much more you can do even when limited to those four skills.

Already mentioned was the Stonefist insignia, providing a longer KD than the other professions would have access to. However as the rest of my bar is limited you could pump your strength to 13 and use the sentinels insignia for a 100 base armor level on top of the potential +20 of a maxed norn title. You also have access to your shield for another 16 armor, granted any profession could change to /w or /p to meet the requirements of a shield. Afterall, why not? Not like you can use skills from your other attributes in bear form right? Put those attribute points to use at no penalty. Now that you've pumped strength to 14 (additional +1 for being on the hat), why not use Signet of Stamina for another +283 health on top of the potential +200 of the ursan blessing? Drop your tactics rune for a Vitae, your weapon mastery rune for another Vitae. Now you're running around with about 1,000 health, 136 AL against everything, with damage less than if you were playing as a normal warrior but you are immune to practically all previous forms of shutdown.

But why stop there? Go /R and bring Charm and Comfort pet using the rest of your attribute points to pump Beast Mastery to 12. With your other slots you can use Call of Protection and Symbiotic Bond as both of these shouts can be used well before entering Ursan mode with the massive durations they possess. Could probably bring a nature ritual or two along with you, afterall you've only used 6 of your 8 skill slots at this point. Or you could say add one of the Asuran summons as they can last a good minute providing some extra fire power for encounters that could last a little longer. Or you might as well pack the Sunspear Rebirth Signet and the Ressurection Signet because there is no way you'll be dying.

Now apparently that is balanced.

Personally I see a lot of problems there. The obvious being you have 12 skill slots to work with, 1,000 health, and immune to any shutdown. Rather than having to think about the skills being used by your enemy this one skill will allow you to bypass any typical forms of shutdown you may have encountered, as minor as they may have been. Why bring skills to remove an aegis, clear hexes, blind and the like, snares for a kiting enemy when Ursan blessing negates everything? The entire thinking process is lost, the core of the Player Vs. Environment scenario.

One skill has proven effective enough to clear the elite missions, a single skill. Of the thousand plus available, you just need one to provide adequate offense. One would imagine the most challenging content (supposedly) in the game would require some thought process. This is my biggest concern with the skill itself. Prior to the original changes to the Domain of Anguish (the update that remove the environmental effects and toned down Enraged to 70% and 30% marks) it was clear to see that the PvE playerbase were not capable of completing it without resorting to numerous gimmicks and glitches. The City of Torc'qua is bugged in a manner that when the last groups are pulled behind the large gate they simply stop moving and do not fight back. In the Stygian Veil, players would use Necrotic Traversal to completely skip the first quest. In the Foundry of Failed Creations players would use Necrotic Traversal and a dead pet's corpse to fight groups behind walls rather than straight up. Prior to the final encounter, players would move the NPC that you have to protect out of harms way then proceeded to pull groups at their leisure. Mallyx himself was apparently never killed without resorting to a glitch, and when that glitch was finally fixed it ironically bugged one of his skills making him unkillable.

Which brings me back to this point; he was unkillable to those who were unable to examine the area and go through the thought process that would lead them to the appropriate build/strategy to defeat him. This plagues PvE everywhere, zones that prove difficult to those unable to adapt. Instead they're reduced to finding methods of glitching or easy shortcuts overlooked by the coders to succeed. Is Ursan any better than all of this? No, it isn't. You don't have to think about your skill bar, you don't have to worry about glitches or common pve tricks when you're granted such powerful skills that turn any area into a cakewalk. You still don't have to think, that isn't right.

There are those who will argue the skill is good for the game. The less wanted professions are able to PuG more easily because of it. Rather than challenge players to conjure a suitable skill bar for the task ahead a player simply needs to Ursan regardless of profession (even the less wanted of the 10). Content that was once harder to access becomes available. This then begs the question of whether or not this was the intention of creating these powerful elites, to grant all players regardless of player ability to enjoy everything the game has to offer. --Racthoh 19:20, 31 October 2007 (UTC)