Paragon: Nerf Time!

Like someone said, I believe other professions, other than just necromancer should have ways to counter shouts or something. Stopping adrenaline gain won't stop energy skills, and denying energy won't stop adrenaline synergy. Using a setup uniquely to shut down a paragon is not tactical wise either.

Currenctly, I adapted my mesmer to domination and I've been dealing with them with diversion and simple thievery (which is considered dull, and to many and a waste of elite, but you just have no idea of what it can help within the new metagame); I also fit in cry of frustration for signets and chants. My opinion on balance should be, rising some energy costs, and more specifically on incoming, reduce duration time; if it was a anti spike skill, 3 seconds sounds fair. Angelic Bond is fine as it is; if the paragon spams it around too many targets, his health will be down quite fast.

Regarding the retardness of the new holding build, well of silence is an option but what stops you from stepping aside... Seriously, how boring the HA is now this way... It's clever, it's how it was supposed to be used, but now it's a run competition to the altar, and a dice rolling in anihilation maps.

That's not sarcasm, that's exaggeration and mostly ignorance.

Alright then, O mighty one, what's the counter to the Paragon hold build?

haha well put my friend well put! finally a smart human bieng!
paragons DO NOT NEED TO BE NERFED! they just need a shout removal.

the mighty one says this my most insignificant subject.

mesmers have simpathetic visage...ADRN prob solved!
necro-VM and WOS

now what we need is a overall shout removal i.e sumthing like deafness-foes cant be target of shouts
amnesia-remove all shouts,chants from target foe and perhaps have weakness be unable to shout

are you abashed by my ignorance? or just baffled that i got a thing called a brain and actualy use it to do sumthing other than sit here and shout
oOMG ANET NERF PLZ NERF! im too stupid to think of counters for paragons so pllz nerf it to hell!

so which one is it chump?
p.s hawk u got sum good points there bub.
but id say more like have incoming at 10e and keep the duration.

You are correct. I am "abashed" by your ignorance. Because...well...you are being ignorant!

If you actually read the thread, all three of those counters were discussed and shot down.

But since you insist on being lazy...

Sympathetic Visage: Doesn't proc on ranged attacks (i.e. Spears), and if the Paragon is in the AoE, he can just move. Don't bother to argue Soothing Images either, since that doesn't stop adrenaline gain, and it can be removed easily.

Vocal Minority: Hex. Long Recharge. Easily removed with a Divert Hexes, which the holding build has. This was in the OP!

Well of Silence: Paragon can just move. Wells have a relatively tiny AoE. Shouts have a relatively large AoE.

Just read the thread...read the thread.

Not taking into consideration whether the defense a paragon brings is overpowered or not, isn't the real problem that heavy defense is the most viable strategy?

If a team brings 2 paragons and 2 monks, they are crippling their damage output. Isn't the real problem that this isn't a hinderence.

Perhaps the design HA needs to be addressed. Playing around with a paragon, I don't think their abilities asside from energizing finale are overpowered. Maybe holding should be nerfed, paragons are supposed to provide partywide protection. To nerf them so they aren't game breaking, would make them useless at their intended role. Why not instead change the game to favor offense.

Since the very first GW came out its been a case of pvp players calling for nerfs and pve players screaming about them.

Is there a way to keep both happy??

Instead of nerfing I've always called on new skills to be added that would help balance out any problems that arrise in the way that a prof or its skills are used.

If people cant find or use the counter to paragons then maybe thats what needs to be tweeked. The paragons seem fine to me.

how was the new condition ideas been shot down? its hell of alot beter than the idea you got "NERF IT NERF IT!"
the whole issure of paragons int that they are uber its rather that there is no shout removal.

again a person that actualy thinks... idk bout ur reason of pve and pvp bcuz i do both..
but u are right on 1 fact that skills need to be added rather than nerfed

New conditions? They'd have to make new quick reference cards!!
Deafness?
Laryngitis?

White Noise would also be a cool name for a (Mesmer?) skill that did Paragons in.
On a slightly sillier front, Smoker's Cough?
Melee characters get throat cutting skills? Could give Assassins a new lease of life.
Make Choking Gas ruin Paragons? It makes sense...
Funny thought train.

ooo ya choking gas ruin paragons is actualy the bset idea..it makes sence too

You know what makes sense? Decapitation. If you slice someone's head off in real life, they die. Why can't you do that in GW? Video games are, after all, mimics of real life.

Yes, because a poll on this forum would actually give us a definitive insight on whether paragons are overpowered or not. On other pvp oriented forums, IRC channels, and guild/friend/alliance chat this has already been discussed to death. Zinger is correct in saying that a majority of pvpers find paragons to be imbalanced in their current state. The current counters are also quite lacking.
Great point, too bad most of the commonly used shouts and chants are energy based.

Daze ought to affect shouts' 0 cast. Hell, it was even named Silence before.

Screaming Shot, Choking Gas should affect shouts also

BTW, the mesmer elite Visions of Regret (when covered) works well to damage adrenaline usage. Too bad it is 20 recharge, so in PvP it won't be of much use.

You keep talking about Hex removal... easy solution: if your hexes are getting removed, stack the hexes.

Monks removing your hexes? Stack low energy quick cast hexes on top like Parasitic Bond. You win.

As someone who plays BOTH a Paragon and a Necro, I'll say this: yes, Paragon is powerful and is a big buff to parties with one or two of them in them. No, they are not unbalanced. A few of their skills are a wee bit on the too-easy-to-cast side and should probably cost a little bit more energy (or perhaps instead take more time to cast, allowing for interruption), but they don't need any significant nerfs.

true. thought shouts should not have any cast time. chantes should and they do. great point on hex covers.

mayb that insignificant subject of mine wuts his face doesnt understand that paragons are not overpowerd as he draws em out to be.
all they need is some minor tweeks.

don note again that these skills are ELITE and are supposed to be good strong skills

incoming should definitly be tweekeked to 10e and recharge and duration stay the same.
AB- this skill is fine
SOR-perhaps reduse the health gain by a little nothing else.
EF-oh hell nerf this one. lower the duration on it or reduse energy gained.
my advise is make t a echo that only gives+1 energy for shouts ending.

rest of the paragon stuff are fine

all we need is a condition that stops the shouts
??
weakness-shouts take 2x cast & only last 1/2 duration?
dazed-cant shout at all.

The problem is that some of the skills offer a bit too much non removable defense, protection or energy. That, coupled with the fact that necro is the only class that offers any real viable counters, and the fact that they're hexes, makes them a bit too powerful in their current state. As for anyone saying to stack hexes, keep in mind that these builds usually have a Divert Hexes, Expel and a Purge Sig or Convert. Hex stacking simply doesn't work on the better teams.

When the majority of GvGs go to VoD when facing a dual paragon build, and the majority HA matches against paragon holding builds last 20+ minutes, there IS a problem. Yes, these builds can be countered and killed, but spending 25 minutes do to so in HA isn't really fun.

Well, that's true. Spreading hexes around can help this a bit, but I'm agreeing that rather than a nerf, some more skills should be added to existing classes. There should not be a shout removal, but an echo removal I could definately see, and a Deafness condition to prevent people from being on the receiving end of shouts/chants/echos would be good. Actually, I'd limit it to shouts, because between that and a few more skills for either removal or preventing chants/echos it would balance out ok I think.

Another idea (which I briefly mentioned) would be make some of the chants/echos take a little bit longer to cast, making them easier to interrupt. Paragons already have a defense against interruption, so it'd make them drop a skill to pack Song of Concentration.

Make deaf have a 90% chances of missing a Chant and 50% of missing a shout... what about that?

well, the way I see it, it's not that the paragon is to powerful, its just that the counters are too weak. Instead of nerfing the paragon badly ( like it happened to rits) boost the counters so even if paragon effects can be powerful you can still do something against them.

I have to agree, been playing motivation paragon along with command paragon in gvg, and I like it very much, I hve to put attention in everything that is happening to the team, and havent found much counters besides the hex that sileces you ( I dont recall the name) and the ocasional diversion. other than that, not much. But as said, the problem is not the paragon, its the counter, boost the counters and everyone will be happy.

Or not making the energy gain on Energizing Finale scalable. Keep it at 1, and just make the length on it lasts change w/ attributes. And also just put Incoming! at 30s recharge.

I don't think anybody has mentioned it yet, but spirit shackles seems like it would make a decent counter to the paragorn's leadership attribute. -5 en per attack sort of takes the wind out of the 4 adrenaline (4 attacks) shouts for energy gain.

Its been a while since I have pvped but I doubt that hex stacking has been completely invalidated in that time.

In my opinion the main problem lies not in the paragorn, but rather in maps that require defense to win. With 2 paragorns spamming defensive shouts and 2 warders I tend to doubt these builds have the ability to actually fight. Perhaps if the maps in HA rewarded offense (for example, require x kills before a team is able to win) a bit more we wouldn't have the problems with these teams geared soley towards defense.

Just for the hell of it:

Have putrid explosion and Death Nova cause AOE Deafness for XX seconds, like an explosion should.

I haven't played the Paragon myself, but have noticed its power in Hero's Ascent. I'm sure we'll be seeing a major alter in Dervish and Paragon skills soon to re-balance things out. If it's all in the sake of balancing the professions then I'm just fine with some changes.

The sad thing here is the weakness of other classes, and lack of exsisting counter use, not the power of paragon. Many paragon skills are situational, and require additional triggers and coordination of not only their own skills, but other teammates skills.

Paragon skills are an example of how well builds should actually function, it is the classes like Elementist, Ritualist and Assassin which are below par, and cannot compete effectively in comparison to a good class. The pathetic radius of DoT spells, hell the cost and recharge time are as well, the heavy cost, low survival, and immobility of Ritualist spirits, and the infrequency of Assassin mobility skills are just some of the significant weaknesses which mar their capabilities.

Beyond that, the only other reason shouts are so effective is because people do not recognize all the counters available and utilize them well. The value of adrenaline denial has gone up with the dual opportunity to disable Paragons and Warrior, the use of energy denial and sabatoge can cripple skill use, blackouts and disabling skills can debilitate key skills in a paragons selection.

There are 2 skills to totaly block shouts, Well of Silence, and vocal minority. Also, there are 2 skills which punish shouts, Ulcerous Lungs, and Roaring Winds. Beyond that, high defensive boosts do not block degen, a primary reason why powerful skills like Searing Flames belong in the game. Then you add on all the other adrenaline, energy, interrupt and disabling skills in the game, as well as complete shutdowns like blackout and mass knockdown, and there is not problem at all except in your ability to utilize the proper counters.

Effective skills are what make playing each class fun, trying to nerf them only creates a cycle of nerfing which is required as each powerful counter to those spells and other effective builds have to be countered in return to keep everything weak. If there are a few classes which do not provide the neccessary power to compete with the standard of classes, than there is an obvious lack and weakness of skills which would be powerful enough to counteract them, or match them.

Beyond that, high defense skills have the same counter that high defense spells have always had, massive degen. Skills like ulcerous lung, other group degen skills, and fast recast degen spells and condition spreading skills all contribute to fast degen on a group which punishes shout based parties who stick together and have high defense.

Even more so, Paragon has the least healing potency between the 3 support classes, including monk and ritualist. It is no wonder Paragon has the most impressive defensive skills when he lacks any form of continous healing output. His best heals provide general infrequent support to a group, or infrequent healing to one allie. Paragon excells in providing offensive and defensive support, and almost no healing support, which means an actual healer is still required, and that he is not an end all survival solution.

There are a vasad of counters to Paragon, just because the game evolves with the use of new classes and skills does not mean that they are too strong, your once effective and useful builds do not apply to the revolution in gameplay, and must compensate and evolve as well to meet the new challenges in PvP.

As for severly lacking and deficient builds, these are not comparisons of how effective another build can afford to be, the fact that they are so deficient based on the infrequency and immobility of their skills, and the unacceptable costs to go with them only precludeds the obvious fact that they should be adjusted to meet expectations. As the game consistantly evolves with new classes and techniques, exsisting classes need more than new skills, their functions need to be redeveloped to meet already higher standards of output.

I think we can all agree that many people were disappointed with factions, whether it was you or not. The fact that Factions classes didn't meet the efficiency of core classes, and Nightfall classes did, doesn't make Nightfall classes broken, Factions classes still arn't good enough, and in light of legitimate options that provide alternatives, it becomes painstakingly clear.

Paragon is a class done right, anything imbalance between Paragon and other classes should be remedied by doing those other classes right too, and meet the standard of acceptance and appreciation that we demand from a profession instead of breaking enjoyable opportunities because some players have a taste for the mundain.

/notsigned

too many people complain when things get hard. leave the classes alone. if anything just add more skills to balance out the the percieved imbalance.

every time you reduce the power of skills and classes you reduce the enjoyment factor for people in PvE. PvP is not the only part of the game, and to many it is not the most important part either.

They shouldn't be nerfed lol. You sound too serius, they are good buffer for team but they sucked at 1 on 1. I see a lot of P/W on alliances battle using Incoming and Watchyourself Spamming but i killed them less than 10 seconds with assassin. See? they are balanced. Like lilnate said dont cry lol.

Ok, I have no idea what you mean with Assassins and Elementalists, both have a place in competitive matches, Ritualists still havnt found a solid place yet though. And that degen is alittle hard to put into use when the Paragon is constantly feeding the monk energy through shouts(Im talking about Energizing Finale).

Now, honestly I dont know how you call an Assassin a broken class now, it took them awhile to fine tune, but they can be a serious threat if left unchecked. To be honest, I was dissapointed with the Ritualist, its like the Ranger of spellcasters... fun to play with, but I doubt Im really going to play mine as much as I used to.

Finally the idea is starting to catch on. I played a Rit religiously at the start of factions, I LOVED my spirit spammer. I agree, they were overpowered. When the nerf came I, like many, dropped the class like a rock. I really miss playing the rit lord, but it's just not as fun anymore. That's what I'm afraid will happen to the Paragons. The Paragon took the Rits place in my eyes, I LOVE the class! Instead of nerfing it, please just make more counters. As I said in a previous post, why limit the content of PvP rather than improving it?

I agree and ask why then perhaps the weakness of other classes exist? Due to threads like this that exist in the past where bunch of PvP QQers get their lot to make nerf threads all over forums. And instead of finding solutions, they and Anet choose the Lazy way and start nerfing classes. In the end we just end up with a bunch of dumb downed classes with dumbed downed skills, making playing GW feel like participating in the special Olympics.

Apprently the enjoyment factor of the game for those in PvE is moot for PvPers who only care about themselves and that the world evolve around them. This thread is perfect proof of this.
__________________________________
Just say NO to Nerfism

This, still doesn't change the fact that EF needs a nerf. It's a retarded skill.

I agree with some things about the paragon should be nerfed. I play a paragon myself.. and well some of the major things should be nerfed. Incoming I would suggest maybe increasing the recharge time just a bit.. when it comes to Energizing Finale, definitely increasing both recharge time and energy cost. That skill is just too overpowered. Angelic Bond, ehh, well.. I do like this skill, and I understand that it is a bit overpowered. I say keep energy cost where it is and maybe increase the recharge time. 10 seconds max.

But other than that, the paragon counters are somewhat plentiful and I think that we should leave things pretty much where it's at for now.

Isn't it a bit soon to be calling for a nerf? Paragons are a new class so of course pvp balance will be a bit off for a while until everyone adapts.

From the little I know about paragons, they can be countered through adrenaline and energy denial. Weaken Armor also comes to mind if a team wants to spike a paragon. Team work and creativity is always better than calling for nerfs.

I am against nerfing in every way. Skills should not be reduced unless they are extremely ridiculously overpowered. Nerfing because a community complains a little is uncalled for in most cases. Instead, they should just release a few counter skills to balance the concern. As it stands, nerfing something for the pvp community tends to negatively effect the pve community and therefore should be avoided.

Uhhh....as for no counters...
Hello!? Mesmers can totally kill adrenaline and energy and shut down a paragon in no time.

/not signed

all classes have strengths, you cant take all of the Paragons away.

As i said above, EF still needs nerfing.

I am confused though, how was e-denile taking place with shouts through a mesmer? adreline killing is a hex, as mentioned above, divert hex removal is for one to cure the issue for paragon.

No, I think you needs a huge nerf. There are anti paragons skills out there, just use them.

I think it needs to be a requirement in the Sardelac Sanitatium that people need to read the thread completely before they post, so that they don't raise arguments that were already shut down.

Did you just randomly click this topic, didn't bother to read what I posted, and post unecessary crap?

I used 20min to read every post in this thread. And I agree on many of them. You don't think about PvE players do you? And paragon isn't a problem in GvG(yet). So you crying about nerfing can very well hurt the game for some of us. Think about the responsibility you have when making a "nerf" thread

Not signed

So your response is that Paragons shouldn't be nerfed is because it would affect them in PvE. Right. That's very persuasive. Do you have any tangible arguments against Paragon nerfing?

You do realize that Guild Wars is both a PvE and a PvP game?

Also, I do use a Paragon on my Hero Squad in PvE. The only skills he uses which I mentioned in the OP are Watch Yourself and GTFE (only for damage aid/protection, the energy is unneeded). I don't use Incoming or Energizing Finale. And I've completed almost every Master quest. If you need either of those skills as a crutch, you truly suck at PvE.

Guild Wars is an evolving game. Adapt.