Paragon: Nerf Time!

/not signed

boost the counters, dont nerf the skills.

Ahh... So I shall adap. Funny, that's coming from the guy who are screaming for a nref.

Statement(1) Your opinion and question.

Statement(2) Answering your own question in statement(1) and contradicting yourself.

Statement(3) No one really care if you got masters for all missions or your game expliots nor are we interested to make PvE component competitive at all. Make your point and move on without resorting to insulting other players.

Statement(4) Good job you answered your own thread.

_______________________
Just say NO to Nerfism

I played paragon in GvG, RA/TA and HA for the last 5 weeks...command, motivation and hybrids: And I agree that some skills like Energizing Finale need a little tweak (10e on it would do the job). But most of the skills are actually fine and can only work in synergy with other things in the team.
However, like posted by others, it's the counters that need to be buffed a bit. Vocal Minority is still viable - but you can't expect to to make it work without internal synergy within your team. We faced a good amount of anti-paragon builds, and only those that were able to identify our utility dehexer and shut him down while shutting down our paragons were a real threat. Covering VM and keeping the dehexer knocked down / blacked out for example...

The point I want to make: You can't expect to have the few counters that exist to work properly (and VM is really really nasty if used properly) if you don't make sure the counter to your counter is taken care of as well with your build.
Another example would be Aegis+anti-spear-kiting (twirly lines will dodge lots of spears thrown at you) This can seriously slow down adrena gain - up to the point where refrains and finales loose the effectiveness that is needed.

Conclusion - don't kill the paragon class because a lot of people are having trouble to use the counters in synergy with other skills.
The one change I am all for is giving EF a 10e cost... and of course make Roaring Winds drain more energy... as it is right now it only takes away leadership energy gain - which is still something, but not good enough to put the skill into serious play.

Assassin and Elementist do have some effective builds, and with the addition of new skills, they are becoming more powerful, but that doesn't change the fact that some of their key skills to success simply suck. A class with less builds to choose from than another class is weaker, every class has a few builds which work well, but having a fraction of the elite builds another class does makes them less useful, end of story. Less builds means easier your easier to identify, which makes you easier to counter, which makes you weaker, simply put. In a hardcore PvP match that is a very big difference.

Alot of work has been done on Assassin to balance out his weakness, but his primary function has always been the same, and most of the primary skills involved in that role are worthless, Deaths Charge and Dark Prison are crap, and the new Elite doesn't deliver justice either. For a Class that requires mobility, infrequent advances are not acceptable skills, and only being able to advance teleport half as much as you can escape is a weak combination.

Elementist DoTs do not hit enough space and are not frequent enough to be useful, The spells do not compare in competative scenarios.

And Ritualists immobility hampers any team, in which case Binding Rituals literally mean your team is "bound" to a location to benifit from their effects.

All of these are serious issues, and if you think they arn't than look at paragon one more time and recognize what a class should be. Furthermore, these issues deal directly with overcoming and balance with Paragon. A Paragon exponetially increases the power of a group, making it even more risky for an Assassin to advance into enemy lines an target the soft players, in this scenario, the Paragon himself. His ability to advance into combat and escape combat not only instantly with his shadowstep skills, but frequently, is an intregal part of being competative and balanced.

The Power of Paragon revolves around keeping most of your party within an area of effect radius, this is where area wide DoT spells are an interegal part of putting preasure on an entire area, damaging Paragons group advantage, and pushing the enemy around to secure a better possition. Because of such high defensive boosts on an entire area, the spells which target an entire area need to be effective too, as a counter. A poor nerf in the past which causes more nerfs in the future, DoT spells should never have been reduced to adjacent foes, they certainly hit you in the energy for an area wide effect. And the Frequency needs to be better too, since such minor damage needs to be frequent to make a continous impression on grouped enemies. DoT spells need to be location wide on all but perhaps Meteor Shower, and all of them need at least a 1/3rd reduction in recast time.

Ritualist doesn't fall behind Paragon because his effects arn't efficient, there is only one spirit which needs some redevelopment. His weakness lies in his immobility, drawing a single spirit isn't good enough, any Ritualist investing in attributes to improve spirits will bring at least 2, likely 4 spirits. Draw Spirit needs to draw at least 3, or all of your spirits from where ever they are to a nearby or adjacent circle around you. And a new Elite which did this, as well as refreshed all of your exsisting spirits would bring Ritualist back into the mobility game. Spirits are incredibly easy to kill, almost impossible to sustain, and cannot be stacked, so the one spirit you can have out at a time, which cannot be recast for a good 30 seconds to a minute, should at least be easily drug around if you bring a skill to do it.

The one spirit which doesn't work well is Displacement. It doesn't take a complete shutdown of melee attacks to stop an entire group of enemies from spiking an allie, it only takes 50%, maybe 75% at most, with that much miss ratio an assault is almost worthless, and using skills is more likely to fail than succeed. The only thing accomplished by blocking all attacks with Displacement is ensuring that it will be gone in 3 seconds, and your defensive support is gone so fast that it may as well not exsisted. For a spell which isn't available for another 45 seconds, this is unacceptable. 75% max, or even better, making it 25% or 50%, with a 100% chance to block attack skills. This way your defensive support will last long enough to actually keep allies alive for a duration instead of a moment, a spirit isn't for momentary defense.

Aside from that, If Paragon is outshining Ritualist so much, than the perfect solution is to add a counter for Paragon on Ritualist. A spirit which nullifies the effect of shouts and chants (not removes them, but nullifies their effect) is all that Ritualist needs to contend against Paragon. With this Ritualist will be accepted specifically as a counter to Paragon teams, and Paragon would have a counter equal to any other in the game.

If at any point you feel a class is too powerful and needs to be nerfed, look at it creatively and figure out why other classes arn't performing just as well. If you think about it, much which once was allowed previous classes to dish out just as well, but in the search for balance, nerfs were applied instead of remedies. Nerfs continue to make the game as a whole more mundain, they limit the proficiency of everything else when you try and break each build down one by one in order to keep them even. Nerfing is always a lazy way to balance the game, instead of creatively developing and improving other skills to overcome these features, you just reduce each feature til everything is boring.

Aside from that, skills which make killing an difficult to impossible belong in the game, combat is not all about killing your opponent. Great players recognize the value of staying alive over killing your opponent. If you don't die, than your enemy never scores, dieing is the highest penalty in the game, and this class obviously involves more survival support than spiking. The fact that there are ways to block even the toughest spikes and onslaughts is just a balanced feature, you will have to utilize alternative means to win.

As for Degen, there are several ways to apply degen to an entire group, and alot of it. Burning can be applied to entire groups liberally, if you think extinguish is the answer, think harder. With skills like Searing Flames, Rodgorts Invocation, and worst of all, Mark of Rodgort in combination with single or group effecting fire damage can put burn on enemies regularly, and there are even more burning abilities in Dervish and Paragon. Add that with hexes like Ulcerous lungs, dealing degen hex and bleeding to a group of units if the enemy uses shouts, and Suffering, and even combinations of fragility with any degen conditions, and you have an outstanding scatter of degen which will put alot of presure on grouped enemies. One of my favorite techniques is a Paragon with "Their on Fire" and a dedicated burning Elementist, the combination of group damage, group degen, and defensive increase make for a very worthwile addition to any party.

Nerfing is rarely an appropriate solution, it almost never is. Unless there are mistaken figures and unnoted applications which produce incredibly broken results, it isn't deserving of a nerf. The proper solution is to develope a proper selection of counters and advantages against enemies using or applying certain skills. All it takes is are some attacks which deal extra damage on a foe for every shout, chant and echo on them, and boom. 100 ways to fix the problem creatively, 1 crappy, lazy, shitless solution (nerf it), obviously getting a little bit creative and respecting the available counters is a much better solution.

qft... and I am off to catch some sleep. >_>

Incoming lasts for 7s out of 20 which still leaves 13s for getting your spike on. In addition, a well-timed Blackout followed by a Signet of Humility will provide another 20s w/o Incoming. If Incoming being active for only 7s out of 40s is overpowered then everything needs a nerf. I could see increasing its cost to 10e, but the recharge is fine as it is.

If the para is using "Can't Touch This" then Blackout won't work, but a Mes w Sig of Humility and Mantra of Inscriptions can make it so the paragon never gets off a single Incoming. Seriously, if Incoming is so key, then a single Mes should be able to turn the battle in your favor.

Angelic Bond (although not removable) is far worse than Life Barrier or Life Bond. The 5s recharge is hardly a problem as a paragon that spreads it out on allies takes a lot of damage and will die pretty fast.

Diversion (can catch the odd chant/shout) and Vocal Minority are decent counters to the Paragon but prone to hex removal.

Energizing Finale needs a nerf to 10e and 10s recharge, but the other Finales are really not overpowered. Finales get most of their power from GFTE being spammed, but a monk being targeted would be pretty dumb to attack (to trigger GFTE) instead of kiting.

GFTE and WY don't need a nerf. Soothing Images, Spirit Shackles, and Roaring Winds should be decent counters for these.

Some suggestions other than the typical let's nerf paragons all to hell so no one ever plays them again:

1. Nerf hex removals like Divert Hexes (maybe a 15s recharge).

2. Reduce the recharge on Vocal Minority to 5s (already suggested).

3. Switch HA back to 8 players (which most HA'ers want anyway).

4. Have some environment effect (like Victory or Death) in HA to encourage offense over defense.

It appears that the current HA metagame encourages defense and that is the main problem. Instead of making the paragon go the way of the dodo, it would be better to promote offense in some way. (Maybe give morale boosts for the team doing more damage... idk).

Paragons are not overpowered in RA, TA, or GvG. In fact, in RA and TA shouts and chants are pretty bad due to the gimped energy gain with less than 6 allies around. I would hesitate to nerf them just because of HA.

Why don't we just nerf everybody? Then we can all fail equally well?

maybe if they added a nother team to the HoH, it would be harder to hold with paraway, so they dont have to nerf all the paragon skills
and add 1 more minute to the HoH timer

Always cracks me up when I see people telling others to use the well as a counter.

If you can't kill because of the paragon, how are you gonna get a corpse for your 25s well? Not to mention the paragon would have to be retarded to stay in it. Wells suck.

Some people have mentioned it but most of you have overlooked the underlining problem here (and yes I read the entire thread).

Leadership is what keeps the paragon going. Even when EF the paragon wouldn't be able to spam anything if it wasn't for leadership giving him free energy from watch yourself and go for the eyes.

Also remember that spears miss a lot. They move through the air very slowly. Many times if the target changes any direction from the time the spear leaves my hand it will miss. You do not want to increase the adrenaline on skills very much because of this.

Here's my suggestions and some responses to the OP:

Leadership should be changed to 1e for every 3 ranks. This does not kill anything for the paragon but does make the take a break from spamming shouts and chants everywhere all the time. Expertise is easily the best attribute on the game but it doesn't even come close to leadership. I gain 6e for using an adrenaline skill while also making my other shouts and chants free or 60% off the energy cost. Even expertise can't touch that.

Incoming is not overpowered. Short duration, long recharge, and in the command line which only has 1 other good skill. Moving on.

Angelic bond same as above but in a better attribute line. Don't see a need for nerf.

Watch yourself this is the work horse of the paragon. Increase the adrenaline to 6-7 and increase the duration at 0 tactics. It can still be used like it was intended on wars and may even me considered a buff to some users. This will slow the EF triggers down.

Go for the eyes is a great skill. Is it overpowered? Hard to say. In some ways I want to say yes but in others no. The only real reason its on the bar is because you already have an investment in command for incoming, 4 adrenaline, another EF trigger. The skills effect is not really why its taken even though its affect is very good. I don't know if I would change this yet. I'd wait to see how everything else pans out first.

Energizing finale gets my battery of the year award. But honestly its not the skill that overpowered. Its how many short duration triggers there are. Do not change the energy cost. 5e for a 20e pool is fine. The other skills that are 10e trigger leadership so you are not really paying that full 10e. Change the casting time to 2 seconds so it can be interrupted. Change the recharge to 8 seconds. Paragons have to be in the center of the team to be affective. Too much forward or backline and they simply do not work. In the mid-line ranger/mesmer interrupts could reach him very easily. Even at 10e EF would work just fine. 3e per trigger and 6e from WYS and GFTE would easily pay for it with just 1 use of either one of those skills. The only way to balance EF is there to be a way for it to be easily interrupted because it cannot be removed.


To the OP you are not going to change any ones mind by arguing with them. Just state your peace and watch other's respond. The more you fight the more people will disagree with. Such is the nature of forums.

Now for the paragon counters. Everyone is right by saying that the counters are not powerful enough. Its not per say the counters that are the problem. Its divert/expel hexes that is the main problem. Even back in factions with expel I knew from that day forth that hex builds would never be viable again. During the NF preview with divert hexes I thought, "wow now hexes are not even worth considering." I create build for the majority of guilds I've been in. Any hex I've ever placed in the build is a hex that doesn't need to be there very long to be effective. Back in when GW started the hex removal was seriously underpowered. Now its to a point where hexes are a liability. That is something Anet does need to change.

A quick point on this one -

Watch Yourself was balanced for the old "earshot" range, which was enormously increased for Nightfall - and it was a good, if unspectacular, skill even then. Honestly, I was suprised that the original release skill-rebalance didn't either increase the adren requirement or add a "this shout has half the normal range" clause to it (which would be a restoration of the original functionality, not really a nerf).

Your point is irrelevant since Guild Wars pvp isn't balanced around 1v1. An assassin can kill almost anything in a 1v1 fight, but you wouldn't do any damage to a dual paragon build with Incoming and Song of Resto + wards.I know this might be hard to grasp but pvp requires a certain balance to live up to the "skill vs. time" motto. Spamming non-removable defense doesn't exactly require any skill, and the current counters are horribly ineffective at shutting down these paragons. So much so that the counters are exponentially harder to pull off effectively than the shouts.

And your posts are perfect examples of angsty pvers crying when people are sensible enough to want actual balance in pvp. So to apply some of your own logic, pve isn't the only thing in this game - pvpers deserve balance in the game they paid for. We just got two new professions and a ton of new skills, the concept that some of these skills will need a bit of tweaking shouldn't be a foreign one at this point. Maybe you could take it a little less personal that people want actual balance in the game?

Anyway, I don't think anyone wants to see paragon go the way of ritualists, but they are slightly imbalanced in their current state. I would actually prefer to see more and better counters added rather than seeing skills nerfed, but Anet seems to always want to make do with what's already out there. That's not really in our hands though.Less than 1/4 of the commonly used shouts are adrenaline based, and energy denial simply doesn't work when they have Energizing Finale and a decent spec into Leadership. Do you actually GvG? Almost every single team in the 100-1 range is running dual paragons, incoming chains, or some form of paragon defense VoD build. Which would only destroy a perfectly good monk skill, one monks have been needing for a while now. Nobody would even think about taking it with a 15 second recharge when Expel is 8.

Nice job! Add conditions to prevent shouts! I mean it's not like any one plays a Restore Condition monk or anything...

I've seen a lot of people complaining about incoming. At 16 command, it barely lasts under half the recharge time. 6 seconds, 7 seconds... then a 20 second recharge. It seems fine to me. Now, the counters to a paragon shout are VERY few. Roaring winds? Leadership ALONE is the counter. Vocal Minority? Hex remover. Now the one thing that any good necro should do is make PLENTY of hexes to cover this up. Not on just one person. On ALL the team. Parasitic bond on every one. Vocal Minority on the paragon. Life Transfer on the melee. The massive degen will distract the monk's attention AWAY from the paragon's hexes just long enough to be effective. Well of Silence is an easy one. Just take two steps away.

Now this leaves only two problems. Angelic Bond and Energizing Finale. To the person that said that a paragon would die fast because they'd cast it on their whole team, no they wouldn't. They'd cast it on the ghostly hero and use Incoming for that. Energizing Finale can keep any monk's energy up nicely so Angelic Bond damage would be minimal. A raise of energy in the shouts would probably be necessary, as at a decent leadership level, around half the shouts would be entirely free. I mean, even a Ranger runs out of energy with a high expertise.

There are a few solutions. You and the OP, among others favor the first:

1. Nerf the paragon in a major way.

Myself and a few others see a bigger problem which is that defense is overpowered compared to offense. As twicky_kid points out, hex removals are overpowered, which therefore all but eliminates hexes from the metagame. Our solution is:

2. Nerf the paragon a little.
3. Nert hex removals (Divert Hexes, Expel Hexes, and any others I might be missing).
4. Buff some counters like Vocal Minority in terms of recharge time.

Also, you didn't respond to the suggestion of bringing a Mesmer w Sig of Humility and Mantra of Inscriptions. Those two skills can completely shut down Incoming.

omg zinger u just put the gun to ur head and pulled the trigger bub!

read ur last sentance..
GUIILD WARS IS AN EVOLVING GAME.ADAPT


just like you said bub ADAPT! and stop calling for nerfs

Dont flame me because i agree something needs to be done because there is no way to remove shouts and they have no cast time which is overpowered something has to be done because we have a long wait until a new chapter where new skills may come to counter shouts but i dont think we should have to wait 5 months or how ever long. I wouldnt really call it nerf that is needed but something needs to be done soon to balance it. Think of it as a balance no a nerf just like searing should be "balanced" compared to existing skills.

For me its:

Adjust paragon Leadership a little.
Adjust paragon skills a little.
Buff paragon counters a little.

really and truly the counters suck.

I find it funny how people even considering Well of Silence a counter. If I played Paragon, my counter to well of silence would be "get out of the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing well". That takes 1 second... so in fairness, I guess you could shut a paragon down for 1 second with well of silence. wowza

Vocal Minority is about the best, but it's not got the greatest of recharges and occasionally you'll find smart use of veil to win. Also the fact that everyone brings divert hexes. it needs to be a bit more spammable to be that good of a counter really. To even have a chance of shutting a paragon down with this skill you need to be running it in a pretty heavy hex build.

ulcerous lungs wouldn't make me stop shouting.

I guess there's Diversion, but what isn't diversion a solid answer too ^^. Paragons are really hurting the metagame right now. It's pretty darn dull at times, and I feel slightly gimped when not running one. Because the defense they offer is _that_ good....

Right now, this RaO, Searing Flame, Paragon stuff is about the most retard-friendly stuff gw has seen since necro and obsidian flame spike.

Before making changes to the paragon skills (with the exception of energizing finale which is just retarded) I'd like the route of more viable counters to be looked into. As is, they are very limited right now.

Not sure why some PvE-only players are in this topic randomly asking for no nerfs because it'd effect their game too, but I do wish they'd chill. Until you've actually experienced this firsthand, please gtfo.

Back on topic, I agree with Lyra.

Don't want a huge nerf to make them unplayable, just some adjustments. The practically unlimited energy from Leadership is broken, plain and simple. People keep mentioning the same three skills to counter them, one of which is a useless well, and one's a useless spirit. So there's what, one really viable counter (VM), and even that's easily removed? Buff counters please.

As many before stated, Parangon shouts are not overpowered, but counters are completely lacking and underpowered. Worst, most of the few counters available are too much oriented against shouts and chants exclusively, thus having no or few utility outside the shout/chant prevention.
The first thing to do is to put an icon on the health bar to show who is affected by a chant. Actually, you don’t know who is benefiting from a shout, so you can’t have counters that removes or punish chants affecting a foe. A little green arrow should be cool.
I will propose some buffs on the existing counters, and some additionnal counters as well to cope with these uncounterable paragons.
Buff to actual counters (bold for changes) :

Roaring winds
10 5 60
For 10…54 seconds, create a level 1…11 spirit. Chants and Shouts cost 1...10 more Energy and have their activation time doubled.
Notes: Roaring winds changes from a minor annoyance to a huge threat for paragon heavy teams. They will have to kill the spirit in order to properly use their shouts.
Vocal Minority
10 1 20
For 5...17 seconds, target foe and all nearby foes cannot use Shouts or Chants. When Vocal Minority ends, hexed foe loose 5…29 health for each shout, echo or chant on him.
Notes: This way, Vocal Minority has an built-in cover hex. If it is removed by hex removal such as Divert hexes in a paragon heavy build, this will result in mass damage for each party member affected by shouts.
Well of Silence
15 2 20
Exploit target corpse to create a Well of Silence for 10...26 seconds. Shouts and Chants used in the well fail and each foe within suffer -1...3 Health degeneration, and -1 additional Health degeneration for each Shout and Chant affecting them.
Notes: Now Well of Silence is a real threat. Just standing out of the well for paragons was too easy. Now, if they use their shouts within the well, they will burn out their energy/adrenalin, that is to say that WoSi would work more like Spell Breaker. And if the paragons still use their shouts outside the well for their teammates inside the well, those teammates will suffer massive degeneration. Well of Silence become a real area control spell.
Ulcerous Lungs
15 2 30
For 10...22 seconds, target foe and all nearby foes suffer from -2 Health degeneration and take 10…34 damage each time they use a shout or chant. If they were under a shout or chant when Ulcerous Lungs ends, they begin bleeding for 3…13 seconds.
Notes: When a skill is so oriented towards countering one specific set of skills without preventing these skills to be used, it has to be powerful. With its 30 sec recharge, Ulcerous Lungs needed to have a side effect if removed.

Now I think each profession (other than the necro, I won’t add any necro counters) should have its own counters on shouts and chants. I will propose some for each actual profession. Progression is showed for a 0…12 in the attribute line.
Warriors
“Roar!”
Tactics
5 AD
Each nearby foe loose one chant or Shout and 1…13 health (max foes : 1….6).
“Shut up!”
Tactics
4 AD
Each nearby foe is affected by “Shut up!”. If these foes were using a shout or chant, it is interrupted and their shout, chants and echoes skills are disabled for 1…13 seconds.
Blade Song
10E 20r
Strenght
Stance. For 1…13 seconds, you attack 25% faster. When you hit, you remove one shout/chant/echo from target foe.
Howling Strike
5E 5r
Axe mastery
This attacks hits for +5…17 damage. If target foe is affected by a shout/chant/echo, this attack deals an additional +5…17 damage and target foe suffers from a deep wound for 1…13 seconds.
Teeth Crush
6 AD
Hammer mastery
This attacks hits for +5…17 damage. If target foe is affected by a shout/chant/echo, he is knocked down.

Mesmers
Voice Theft
10 1 25
Domination
Shouts/Chants and Echoes affecting target foe and their remaining duration are transferred to you.
Mute
5 1 5
Domination
Hex Spell. For 1…13 seconds, next time target foe use a shout, it fails and you steal from him 1…7 energy.
Bad Vibes.
Domination
15 3 25
Hex Spell. For 10 seconds, each time a shout lands on target foe, he takes 25…145 damage.
Voice shackles
Inspiration
10 3 10
Hex Spell. For 1…24 seconds, each time a shout lands on target foe, he looses 5 energy.
Illusion of Sound
Illusion
10 1 15
Hex Spell. For 1…24 seconds, shouts/chants and echoes on target foe have no effect (but they are still present).

Rangers
Howling arrows
15 2 20
Wilderness Survival
Preparation. For 1..13 seconds, your arrows deal +1…13 damage, interrupt Chants and Echoes and remove one chant/shout or echo when they hit.
Throat Shot.
10e 10r
Marksmanship
If this shot hits a foe affected by a shout or a chant, it deals +1…7 damage for each chant/shout on him and his shout/chant/echoes skills are disabled for 1..13 seconds.
Bestial Roaring
10e 5r
Beast Mastery
Your pet attempts a Bestial Roaring attack. If it hits, it deals +1…25 damage and target foe loose one chant/shout/echo.

Monk
Pure Voice
Divine Favor
10 1 30
Spell. You loose every shout on you, and so do foes in the area (max:1…7 foes).
Voice of Judgement
Smiting Prayers
5 1 15
Hex. Each time target foe uses a chant, every foe affected by this chant takes 1…25 Holy damage.
Voice of Protection
Protection prayers
15 2 20
Chant. For 1…13 seconds each party member affected by Voice of Protection have their damage taken from foes under a chant/shout/echo reduced by 1…25 points.
Healing Voice
Healing Prayers
5 1 10
Enchantment. For 1…13 seconds, each time a chant lands or ends on target ally, he is healed by 1…19 points.

Elementalist
Flu
10 1 10
Water Magic
Target foe and nearby foes are hexed by the Flu. They get weakness for 1..13 seconds if they were affected by a chant/shout and take 14…63 frost damage each time they use a chant/shout/echo.
Hurricane
25 3 15
Air Magic
Create a Hurricane at target foe’s location for 5 seconds. Each second, Target foe and nearby foes take 5…41 frost damage and loose one chant. This spell causes exhaustion.
Rumbling Earth
15 2 10
Earth Magic
Target foe and nearby foes takes 15…63 Earth damage. If they were under a chant/shout/echo, they are knocked down.

Assassin
Signet of Whispers
3/4c 10r
No Attribute.
For each Chant/Shout affecting target foe, you loose 1 hex and 1 condition.
Throatcut
Dagger Mastery
5e 10r
Lead Attack. Target foe begins bleeding for 1….13 seconds, and Throatcut deals +1…24 damage for each chant/shout/echo on target foe.
Distracting whispers
Deadly Arts
10 1 15
Hex. For 1…13 seconds, target foe suffers -1 Health degeneration for each Shout/Chant affecting him. In addition, each time target foe uses a Chant/Shout/Echo, it has an additional 1…13 seconds recharge.
Shrilling blades
Critical strikes
5 1 20
Enchantment. For each 1…7 seconds, each time you deal a critical hit, target foe loose 1 chant/shout and Shrilling blades is renewed.

Ritualist
Disharmony
Communing
15 5 45
Create a lvl 1…8 spirit at your location. This spirit deals 1...25 damage and remove one chant each time it hits a foe. This spirit dies after 15…63 seconds.
Whispering
Communing
25 5 60
Create a lvl 1…8 spirit at your location. Foes chants and shouts in the area expire 5…41% faster. This spirit dies after 10…46 seconds.
Whistling weapon
Channeling magic
10 2 30
Target ally has a whistling weapon for 1…18 seconds. Whenever target ally hits a foe under a chant/shout, it deals an additional 1…7 damage and remove one chant/shout.
Babbling was Zaratustrah
Restoration Magic
10 2 30
Hold Zaratustrah’s ashes for 1…25 seconds. You have 75% chance to evade foes under a shout/chant while you hold them. When you drop Zaratustrah’s ashes, nearby foes loose one Chant/Shout.
Cries From Beyond
Spawning Power
15 2 45
For 10…46 seconds, whenever you create a spirit, foes in the area loose 1 shout/chant. If a shout/chant is removed this way, they take 15…63 lightning damage.

Dervish
Avatar of Kormir
Mysticism
10 2 10
For 15…63 seconds, you take the form of the Keeper of Secrets. While in this form, conditions and hexes on you expire 33% faster, and you remove one chant/shout/echo each time you hit successfully with an attack skill. This skill is disabled for 120 seconds.
Guiding Voices
Wind Prayers
10 3/4 20
Enchantment. Guiding voices has a 5…17 seconds duration. While under this enchantment, your attacks cannot be “blocked” or “evaded” by foes under a chant or shout. When it ends, nearby foes loose one chant/shout/echo.
Buzzing sweep
Scythe mastery
5 3/4 30
Scythe attack. You deal +5…17 damage. If you hit a foe under a shout/chant/echo, you loose one enchantment, Buzzing sweep is instantly recharged.
Quiet Earth
Earth Mastery
15 3/4 .20
Enchantment. Quiet Earth has a 5…17 seconds duration. While under this enchantment, you cannot be targeted by foes under a shout or chant, but cannot be affected by shouts or chants as well. When Quiet Earth ends, you loose all energy.

Paragon
Counter Chant.
Command
10 1 20
Chant. For 1…7 seconds, next time affected allies within earshot hit a foe with an attack skill, they remove one chant/shout/echo from this foe.
The Song Remains the Same
Leadership
10 1 20
Echo. Each time a shout/chant/echo on target other ally ends, a nearby foe loose one chant/shout/echo too.

Yes in a matter of fact I do. Check my guild tag and you will se that my guild have done alot og GvGs. And yes I am in the line up. Hmm... You say it is a problem. seems like you don't know what you are talking about. The counters for a paragon are so shit easy to bring in a GvG. Our Paragon got rolled over a bounch times by necros. If you see team buffing as a problem, I can only say "lmao".

Actually, I don't. If you had actually bothered to read my post you'd even see that I stated otherwise. "I would actually prefer to see more and better counters added rather than seeing skills nerfed" The problem is that Anet most likely won't introduce new counters, so we have to address rebalancing what's already available.

This is exactly the reason paragons are imbalanced. The absolutely destroy offensive play and encourage hold out builds. In tombs they create builds with barely enough offense to kill bad teams, and rely on fighting these teams to progress. When they face a good team they rely on the team resigning out due to frustration or rolling dice for a win. In GvG, you've got a ton of guilds doing nothing but standing there with an Incoming chain while they clear out NPCs in preperation for VoD.

Hex removals are nowhere near being overpowered, they just finally got to the point of being on par. The thing now is that hex overload builds just aren't as brainlessly easy to pull off as they were in the past. And I'm sorry, but if you think hex removal is the problem here you're way off track.
This is a very sensible solution. Paragons don't need to be destroyed, but they certainly need to be taken down a notch. Energizing needs to have the max energy reduced and the recharge lengthened, for one, and Incoming could use a longer recharge. The majority of Paragon skills are just fine, however.

I don't recall that suggestion ever being targeted at me... but that would reduce the offense of a dual paragon build a bit. The problem is that the team's monks still have infinite energy and the Motivation guy buffing them.

Guesting for a top 50 guild yesterday, every single match we fought was against dual paragon teams. Of these, some had Incoming on their mesmers making for a ~18 out of 20 second Incoming chain. Furthermore, as long as their monks stayed near the paragons they have infinite energy. All of this results in pressure being largely useless and most matches being a stand off to see who can clear out the most NPCs for a long and drawn out VoD battle.

I'm sorry but you've got to either be completely out of touch with the meta, or play at such a low level that it's irrelevant, to not notice these things.

I received an interesting PM today, basically calling me an idiot (and "YOUR WRONG") and that Thallinor "owned me." Won't paraphrase it, though.

Yeesh, don't the Paragon defenders think that they could be the slightest bit mature about this and not resort to childish ad hominemattacks?

I like glountz's skill suggestions, though. Buff the counters.

Honestly, anyone asking for certain skills to be reduced in effectiveness will always be attacked on a forum. It's natural - you get used to using an overpowered/exploitable skill, and you don't want someone to take it away from you. Counters only mitigate those overpowered/exploitable skills - sometimes the skills themselves need to be changed to restore balance to the PvP (and sometimes PvE game).

I absolutely agree with your suggestion on Energizing Finale, but I think low cost adrenaline shouts are still needed in the game, whether they be Warrior or Paragon shouts.

there u go finally using your brain. instead of calling for a a nerf skills shoud be buffed

and he did make a killer statement against you.

and i hardly doubt its a hominem attack. more of a sstatement

and us "paragon defenders" can careless about paragons. we just hate stupid ppl who call for nerfs w/o even thinking.
p.s we also hate cry babies.

ya know...this happens ever few weeks..someone says a class they are having problems countering is overpowered and should be nerfed. I think Anet does a better job than most as far as keeping balances...but its up to the players themselves to find what balances work best for their style of gameplay. So just cause you have problems countering a certain profession doesnt mean its over powered..it means as a player you need to delve more into your character, the henchies and heros you take and the types of teams you play on. There are counters to pretty much everything..but you gotta find it. And I know for a fact that paragon's can be easily shut down by every current profession. The ability is there..but its up to you to find it. If you believe shouts are a problem..well then look at your character and heros for ways to interrupt those shouts.

I hate "Profession: W/Mo"


Just buff the counters.

Funny, I hate people that attack people on an internet forum, I'm surprised the mods put up with you. Please, keep it to the argument, not the person.

I don't see any problems with Paragons. If you find yourself squaring off with them alot, just make yourself an anti-paragon necromancer. Paragons have to spam their shouts; so if you hit them with Ulcerous Lungs and Spiteful Spirit they murder themselves very quickly.

Or let's just nerf everything so it takes 3 hours to kill eachother. I don't like how "I Will Avenge You!" works against unprepared foes. Let's nerf that.

I don't like to bring any interrupters whatsoever due to my own ignorance of their importance; so let's nerf all spells and attacks that cause large damage like Meteor Shower.

I don't like monks with hex-removing skills either; so lets nerf every single hex in the game!

Oh, I don't like to bring monks period either; so I don't think it's fair that people who are monks can heal so well; let's nerf every single healing skill in the game.

For any of you that are completely inept at detecting sarcasm; I was just mocking you. It's your fault for not being prepared. It's not like you have to put in much effort to destroy paragons. If you like to use skills from one class; slap on necromancer and bring Ulcerous Lungs and give their Paragon some grief.

From the perspective of someone who's been playing high-level GvG (20-100) over the last few seasons, Paragons seem to be having a really negative effect on fun.

The current top 50 sees a huge number of guilds running one or two paragons for huge defensive and buffing skills, and it makes matches very boring.

You can not run a pressure build vs. paragons, that's pretty much the case now. An enemy team with a paragon takes very little damage, but of course, with all the buffs paragons provide for health and energy and attack bonuses, you can still spike.

Last weekend my guild decided to look at the three main builds we were facing in GvG (hex/pressure with thumpers, dual Me and W, W/Me/P) and make a general counter. We had well of silence, roaring winds, vocal minority. You know what effect it had? None.

Well of silence you can't use, because it requires you to kill something, and with the level of damage mitigation we experienced due to paragons, it didn't happen. Chain incoming and all the other motivation stuff kills your pressure and hurts your spikes. Roaring winds is pathetic. A L4 spirit with 180 health, killed by TWO spells or attacks, but mostly, the team can just move out of range. Vocal minority needs to be present in a hex heavy build or it's gone straight away, and even if it's covered twice, one elite takes it all away.

As has been said, there should be more or better counters to shouts; I've just gotten bored with facing paragon teams who stand there and take no damage, spike some people down, and remain invincible at VoD as all allies (footmen/archers/bodyguard/guildlord) are affected by the shouts too.

Against a single paragon, a split is possible, and can be sucessful as they lose defence on one of their split teams, but against two it's just stalemate until VoD; a 4-3 split with a monk, a paragon and a warrior or mesmer provides no real damage, but huge defence, so again, it's VoD or bust.

Basically, the introduction of paragons has made GvG so boring that I can't be bothered any more. Change them or whatever, but I'm going back to PvE for now where things are less lame.

If I had a Sig on these fourms...that's what I'd put in it.

For all you people who say use Vocal Minority, this has been addressed many a time and always it comes back to it is simply too easy to remove. Yes, you can use cover hexes but with Divert Hexes and a bit of hex removal your counter simply fails. Now there really are only a few options and you can take your pick, either nerf the paragons, buff and increase the number of counters, a combination of the two, or leave them the way they are and essentially say "Screw you PvP."

For you defending paragons against any nerf and saying that the counters there are, are fine. Think about this. What another class can offer unstrippable, constant +24-48 AL (I forget the exact number and unable to look it up at the moment so forgive me if my numbers are off), almost infinite infinite energy for your monks, decent healing, and decent damage at the same time for the whole team? Now double that affect since two paragons are the most common now days if you don't do high end GvG or don't watch observer which can give a great insight on the Fotm in GvG (try it out you non-believers about paragons.)

Also let's list the counters to paragons, Vocal Minority (Divert Hexes please), Ulcerous Lungs (Wouldn't stop me from shouting), Roaring Winds (easy to kill, weak effect), Diversion (general counter to everything in the game), Sig of Humility (general counter to every elite in the game), and some impartical measures such as adrenaline denial which has little affect on two paragons shouting a majority of energy shouts, and e-denial which with EF the way it is, is simply pointless.

I would rather see the counters simply buffed and increased in number rather than a nerf to extreme measures and ending up with another class like the rit. Unfortunately I believe paragons will have to be nerfed since Anet, I don't believe, will add skills or new conditions to help try to balance the paragon. Anyway I think some of your skill suggestions are on the right track glountz good job there.

QFT, sorry Qual but he's right.

edwinna why do you think paragons make gvg &HOH boring? you state that all the top50 guilds use paragons in there build. fine ur prolly right they probably do use paragons in thier builds. but guess what all the 10k+ guilds have monks in thier builds too. so would they fit in to ur catagory as well?
and as for you "lord oranos" i atacked no one. but rather any one who called for a nerf w/o even thinking about the REAL posibilites.
im glad that zinger FINALLY understand (i thnink) that paragons only need a real minor tweek. and that the counters them selves hav to be buffed.

p.s zinger it was fun arguing wit u old sport, u did have sum real nice valid counters. but that one statement realy did u in. but anyhu energy F. needs a nerf just make the time dependant and e gain+1

umm a username-hmm hsnt all of us "paragon defenders" said that there needs to be more counters for us? non of us paragon defenders ever said anything about not nerfing.. we DO belive in a nerf. but not to the extreames of some ppl. in ur justification off the counter do hold to be somewhat true like isaid they need to be buffed a lil, but then again for every counter...there is a counter for that too.
u say that VM is easily removable true. then arnt all the other counters for say bonder,tucher,mesmer,ele etc arnt they all removable or easily avoided?

incoming HAS to be 10e, 5e is not rite
SOR needs to be buffed down a lil.

I never said anything other than that meaning there were quite a few of you saying adapt to the game and words along those lines, which can not be done without more counters, which will number-wise not increase most likely (I will be very impressed with Anet if they do add more counters, such as skills, or conditions, but I doubt it).

Now also going to your point about counters to everything, the counters to the counters to the paragons are simply too easy to pull off. Normally that would be a valid point, but untill we see what Anet does we cannot do anything other than express our discontent and logic behind it and hope that Anet will fix the unbalance that plagues PvP.

my small input
i think most people want paragons nerfed because they cant spam 2 sec recharge searing flames and get a win in 20 seconds

paragons have revived classes that wouldnt be normally used and have done well to stop teams of all one class which are overpowered

I really like the Weakness idea with the 50% chance to fail on a shout/chant/echo/whatever.

If you nerf the Paragon, then what's the point of adding a new class to Nightfall? People wont even use it since it is so screwed over. This is the same with the Ritualist. I was planning to make a Ritualist, but due to the many nerfs they have gotten from people who can't find counters to them, I decided it wasn't worth making, as I would have no fun playing Ritualists anyway.

If you are so intent on one class "being overpowered" in your mind, then why not make Guild Wars a game with only one profession, no secondary, and make everyone have the same skillset/armor/health/energy/weapon? That way it will be perfectly balanced.

Paragons are meant to be support characters. If they get nerfed to oblivion, what is the point of making a Paragon a support character if they can't do anything to help due to nerfs? A Hex removal is not always going to be readily available to use on the Paragon. If you run a hex-heavy build, what are the chances that the Vocal Minority is going to be removed in no time if it is stacked with 3 other hexes? Vocal Minority shuts down most Paragon builds, and do you believe that is balanced? That one skill can mean that a character can't function?

The "Watch Yourself!" proposed nerf is just a horrible idea. You plan to nerf a Warrior skill just because Paragons make good use of the shout.

/sarcasm
ZOMGWTFH4X the Monk keeps getting away from my Adrenaline spike with Return! Nerf Assassins now!
/sarcasm off

With the "Incoming!" complaints, why not do some creative thinking and spike while the shout is recharging? Find a way to get the spike ready again by the time that "Incoming!" ends, and you still have a 13-second timeframe to execute the spike.

/unsigned
Don't nerf a class to the point that is it useless. Make more counters.

Also, Zinger, don't forget that you yourself used the phrase "Learn to Adapt", or something along the lines of that. So, if you are to stay true to your phrase, you too should adapt to the Paragons and find counters to them instead of nerfing them.

And as to Angelic Bond, don't forget that the damage split is not reduced, so you are still dealing the same damage as before, only now one character takes a lot of damage. Solution: Pressure the other team until the Paragon dies from taking damage from Angelic Bond.

Hexes are not going to be the answer. The last time I've seen a full blown hex team that wasn't SB/RI was at the end of season 1. That was nearly a year ago. Even back then they were not that effective. Now we have expel/divert hexes that just completely shatters any hopes of hexes becoming powerful.

Here is why hexes will not become strong. Most hexes are 10e. You cast 2 hexes at 20e cost expel removes for 5e. Even at 5e per hex you are still losing more energy than it takes to remove the hexes. In the instance of revealed/inspire hexes you give your foe energy (once the paragon battery is nerfed it will return). In the case of divert hexes you complete screw any offense you have by using hexes. Hexes are nearly always acompanied by degen condtions. Divert not only removes the hexes it also takes the conditions and heals them which in turn nullifies the degen dmg.

Even back in season 1 hexes where mangable. The 64 skills for gvg number has not changed so you cannot pack more hexes than you could before but now you can remove more hexes while using less slots. You also use less energy to remove a hex then it takes to cast the hexes.

If you think that hexes are going to counter a paragon you are on a losing bet. Any team with a paragon is going to ensure he will stay hex free. If that team doesn't bring good hex removal they lost to themselves for not covering the classes weakness which is not very hard to do.

I did find counters. Read the thread.

The problem is that those "counters" do not work!