Any point in Paragons anymore?

Is there any point using Paragons anymore in PvE? It's been 3 back-to-back nerfs and no buffs of any significant whatsoever. Incoming is now 1...3 seconds, and flashes it's about to finish the moment it starts - it's not even funny anymore.

Edited by Dralspire: Please review our complaint procedure as specified in the forum rules.

Im glad i already deleted my paragon

The paragon only rocked when i deleted it lol

Ofcourse not, paragons are useless, they can't provide party buff shouts, defense, heal, spike , pressure , and they have really low al, go ahead and delete your paragon, useless class.

Well, yes. I deleted mine ages ago - when Incoming was first nerfed in fact, as the writing was on the wall even back then. But I was faced with deciding whether or not to admit a Paragon into my group today in PvE, or taking a hench/hero instead of any profession. I found it too easy to reject him and use Dunkoro instead.

As any party leader, why would they accept a Paragon over a hench like Alesia?

Half what you said is right, and half what you said is retarded. Buffs, defense, mid-healing? Yes. Spike and pressure, and a low al? Nope. Useless class yes you are right. AMEN TO THAT

I'll sell you a sarcasm detector for 1k.

I asked originally why would one still use or play a Paragon and instead of contributing reasons for or against, you spam the usual hit-n-run one-liners I've seen up and down these forums.

People like you are the reason why any threads discussing the effectiveness (or lack thereof) or Paragons get shutdown prematurely by the mods.

Paragons HAVE been over-nerfed. However, they are not useless. Right now they are mediocre. A Command Paragon can still provide good support and a Motivation Paragon can aid the monks with healing and energy and aid the tanks with some spear pressure. Paragons need a buff for sure but they are not dead yet. Saying "As any party leader, why would they accept a Paragon over a hench like Alesia?" is like saying "Why would you accept an Assassin over a Warrior?" "Why would you accept a Ritualist over a Monk?" "Why would you accept a Dervish over a Warrior?" "Why would you accept a Mesmer over a Necromancer?" "Why would you accept a non-fire Elementalist over a Searing Flame Spammer?" etc. However, all these people are accepted because every profession has its uses. Yes, Paragon's uses have been hindered, but they are still there.

WTS sarcasm detector 100k+50 ecto. You could use one.

Edit: AW, somebody beat me to it

Because Alesia's a monk who tanks?

No, if I'm the party leader I'll take two monks AND a paragon if one is around for extra damage not for keeping the team alive, that's what the monks are for.

How about you use your paragon in a different role?

Cruel Spear
Spear of Lightning
Harrier's toss
Go for the eyes
Aggressive refrain
Anthem of flame
(optional)
(res)

12+1+1 spear, 10+2 leadership, 8+1 command

tough build

Actually, Alesia's leeroy tendencies makes PvE fun sometimes. Having a paragon in mid-field with 80AL is a waste, and frankly inefficient. Putting the Paragon up front means his chants wont reach the back-line most of the time, so he's always mid-field to suit his ranged spear attacks.

I'll take two monks just like you, but I'd still reject any Paragons in favour of any other profession, all other things being equal. For extra damage, I'd bring a nuker or a dom mes.

Oh great... I finally get Nightfall, make a shiny new Paragon,only to discover that the profession is now pretty mediocre...

Ah well, she looks good, and she is still more fun to play than assassin was for me.

You know, I tried a 3-skill spear build + remainder as command like that (but used Stunning strike instead because I was in a caster-heavy area). It really didn't feel as effective as an axe warrior in terms of damage output.

1. Nothing does.
2. It's a PvP build.
3. If paragons are useless, how come people* still use them?

* (PvP'ers in good guilds)

If you could show how much additional damage your TEAMMATES were making thanks to the shout buffs through this build, im sure the damage output is comparable.

The physical fighters all benefit from increased damage through shout buffs. I would treat command paragon as more like an orders necro.


People you must remember, this is a UTILITARIAN class with complimentary skills NOT SUPPLEMENTARY

For the same reason people still run sins. They do it because given a choice of professions to make, some people invariably choose them. But that's not a testament to whether or not the class will stand the test of time, or turn out to be misconceived in the final analysis. Not that it's gonna get them into pugs any easier, or that the nerfed skills makes playing PvE any more fun, because it isn't.

Monks and rits out-heal and out-prot. Eles and warriors out-tank and out damage Paragons. Rangers have better range and multi-target elites which Paragons lack. You can't seriously say Paragons buff that well, unless you have one micro-managing a web of mending refrains which face it, is pretty unlikely and plain boring to play. GFTE might constitute a plus, but it's not in the same class as other useful pve skills that other classes have.

There really isn't much of a reason that I can think of to use a Paragon in PvE unless you have a spare char slot you dont mind bulking up with mediocore performing member. Given that's the case, why even bother with the Paragon as a primary?

That's a pretty niche use if that's all you can come up with. Physical fighters make up at best half the team in pve usually, if not less, so GFTE is less effective than you think. Casters dont get any benefit.

That, to me, speaks volumes. The paragon appears to be largely useless as a primary, but may have uses as a secondary proff. He's clearly not core (according to the standard definitions), so the question is whether or not he's good enough as a support char to last. With 4 repeated nerfs, I personally doubt this.

Maybe you should stop using paragons as monk and start using them differently.
Let's take the warrior for example, it has Watch Yourself, which is a great skill, it adds ~20 armor to all party members, but does a warrior put only watch yourself , shields up? No, cause that means hes limiting his effectiveness.

Try putting 3 attack skills on your bar, 3 support skills a healing and a res on your bar, you'd be amazed at how much more a paragon can do then just heal.

Lets see.

A paragon can provide party wide attack buffs, party wide armour buffs, party wide heals, party wide energy gain, has individual player buffs and impressive DPS.

Yep, totally useless....

For those bitching about how useless paragons are, consider what it is possible for a paragon to achieve with 1 skillbar and then think how many other characters you would need to produce the same effect. You cant simply say "i'd rather take another nuker" as yes, it may do more damage, but can it buff your whole party's armour, buff your melee chars and do that dps at the same time? No, but a paragon can. Likewise, you can't say "i'd rather take a healer hench", when did healer hench start doing heavy damage and restoring energy whilst healing?

I'd say people need to stop playing paragons as healer types and start playing them in the agressive buffbot style that it was designed for. For all those that are in doubt about what a paragon can do, go watch obs mode for a few hours. They can annihilate full teams of human opposition in short order whilst hardly getting scratched themselves. If they can do it to humans, they can do it to dumb AI as well.

Been there, done that. And the numbers aren't convincing.

I'm not reposting the detailed analysis in other threads, but in the final analysis, the output damage is worse than a core class, and the party heals are lower too. There's no point in playing a jack of all trades - the shouts are too underpowered and conditional to be useful. And the entire spear line is utterly horrid and a mish-mash of small-ish condition spreading skills.

Nothing that cant be duplicated better by a monk, or a warrior or a virulence build.

ok everybody..lets all delete our paragons...maybe if there are no paragons people will stop whinning about them...

Try the bar I listed.

Your problem sounds like you want you para to be a monk, when it is more of a warrior with some monk on the side.

But the point is that all of these have been nerfed into the ground. They can do all of these, but it's so insignificant you'd be better off taking a core class instead.

Party wide armour buffs? Take a warrior with enough points in tactics and WY. SyG and ToF really doesn't cut it anymore.

Party wide heals? Please. Take a monk, or even a rit with PwK+ FoS. Or (shudder) an E/Mo HP pumper would do a better job.

Party wide energy gain? Double please. A blood necro with BIP or Well of Power does better energy gain spot-wise and party-wide.

Impressive DPS? That's arguable - show me the proof that spears out-damage axes and I might believe it. They are too slow, and too easy to evade, and have no multi-target functionality.

Support classes, in general, are difficult to balance.

It's easy to balance skills like Orison of Healing and Power Attack. It's much harder to balance skills like Zealot's Fire and Incoming. Give them time, they will get it worked out.

I said PvE - read original post.


No. I already said I deleted my Para, so I can't possible want my Para to be anything (other than to stay dead lol) - please, read carefully next time.

I wanted to know if there was even a point to using Paragons anymore in groups in PvE. I think the replies I've gotten clearly show not. A bit of this and that really isn't good enough - it's an ineffective mish mash that is better served by using core classes in almost every area. A bit of warrior and a bit of monk? No thanks.

I dont believe Motivation or Command will ever get sorted out - that would undo the reasoning behind the last 3 repeated nerfs in the first place, which would render the recent skill changes nonsensical.

The question is whether or not Anet will buff Spears - I'm drawing a parallel here with Rit's channeling line. It also come out initially brain-dead on arrival, but it took about 9 months for it to be reworked to actually merit using occasionally (notwithstanding the borked rework of Glaive, which appears to have random AP).

If past experience is anything to go by, the best Paragons can hope for is a buff in a few months time on Spear. I think that will come too late for most players in PvE. That's one point.

If its the same person(s) again doing skill changes, it's clear they're not listening to the PvE playerbase, that's another point.

Both points mean that Paragons are pretty much dead.

That, is quite possibly the most stupid thing posted on Guru this month, and having read some of the other threads, you have achieved something remarkable. Lets take a look at some fairly common place paragon skills and see how useful(or not, they are)

We'll start with an easy one:

Cruel Spear - its had a small nerf, but essentially, its still eviscerate on steroids. Incase you didn't notice, eviscerate has been the most commonly used axe skill for the last 12-18 months.

And another spear one:

Barbed Spear - just like sever artery(favoured by wammos around the world) except it costs less adren, and can be used from range.

How about a shout now:

"Stand Your Ground" - Well, we all know that most pve players don't kite, i'd have thought getting your tanking eles turned into the equivelent of real tanks was really quite useful.

Or another one:

"Go For the Eyes" - Depends on your party formation, but given 2 warriors and a paragon, that is at least 3 players it is giving a good buff to. And how hard or conditional is it to use? Oh, its not, when it lights up, you press it, it buffs damage and feeds you energy.

Then you can look at making skills interact ***Shocked Gasp***

Use GFTE and vicious spear, and you suddenly get a good damage spear throw that is almost guaranteed to deep wound.

Then, should you wish, you can include skills from other classes that work well with a paragon too.

"Watch yourself"
"Shields Up"

Sure your "tank" might have watch yourself, but how often does this cover your entire party? Not that often. Used on a paragon, it does. So now we found 3 good armour buff shouts for use on a paragon. So lets see what the results are.

Monk = 60AL
Monk with "Watch Yourself" = ~80AL
Monk with "Watch Yourself" and "Stand your Ground" = ~104AL
And then lets say we meet a few ranger or paragon monsters(not exactly uncommon in NF) and we can add "Shields up". We now have a backline with 154AL, and a frontline with ~190AL. Not such a shabby result, a prot monk would be pleased to cut down damage to the whole party by that much. BUT, we missed one thing.

The paragon still has been throwing spears and doing decent damage the whole time!

The paragon is a very useful class, particularly when you look at party composition and how it can be used as a pressure build. It's complimentary not supplementary , as lyra stated, and frankly it's not supposed to be a 'pure' warrior or 'pure' healing class.

It's designed to compliment parties in an intelligent way and it succeeds.

a paragon can probably out sustain damage a monk (a core class ).

a smiting monk can spike/frontload a fair bit of damage, but with a nasty cooldown, and horrorific energy cost :/

Sometimes when we've done FoW runs a guildy has brought his Para. Thanks to serious over nerfing Incoming is absolutely shit and the XXX of Restoration skills are now lacking horribly for use alone. Thankfully Burning Refrain and They're on Fire still works nicely.

Rubbish. The Deep wound on Cruel spear is conditional on non-moving targets. It's unconditional in Eviscerate. And, Eviscerate can be combo'd with Ex Strike - Paragons have no suitable following combo.

Barbed spear is 5-13 seconds. Sever Atery is 5-21 seconds. Spears can be evaded easily.

And given the current nerf, how often can you keep up a 15e skill on a 30e base with 2 pips regen?

There are significant downsides to each of the skills you posted which you didn't highlight. Disingenuous. The rest of your post is really dumb.

True, I remember when Incoming was 6 seconds lol. Ah, the days.

ToF is still mildly usable, despite the recent nerf. That, and GFTE are the only 2 skills of note in the entire Paragon line. But 2 skills do not make a solid class...

(Damage reduction? Aegis or a newly nerfed rit lord please - works better IMO).

erm
wearying spear, blazing spear, mighty throw, unblockable throw, spear of lightning (possibly..) want to say hi2u oinkers

If Paragons are so useless then why has Paraway been making it to halls this special weekend?

~Death~

I guess I'm not really seeing what the point of all this is really, since you deleted your paragon. Is this one of those not-so-subtle hints at another class discrimination? Since you weren't quite happy enough with deleting the character you had? Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's just how I've been reading it so far.

Autoattack DPS, 16 Weapon Mastery, 60 AL, level 20 target:

Sword: 25.59
Axe: 26.66
Hammer: 29.35
Dagger: 25.83
Spear: 26.15
Scythe: 29.81

(Daggers at 13 Critical Strikes).

Swords, axes and spears have roughly equivilent raw DPS.

Paragons however get Aggressive Refrain, which they can maintain indefinitely at no cost for a +33% DPS boost. Other physicals need to use weaker attack speed boosts to achieve similar effect.

"Go for the Eyes!" is amazing. It's worth roughly 8 damage per physical at 0 spec, plus .8 for each level. Ballpark value with Aggressive Refrain up:

(10+<command>)*<physicals on team>*8/45

Value of "Go for the Eyes!" at 10 Command with 5 physicals on the team: ~18 DPS.

One copy of "Go for the Eyes!" on a physical-heavy team is about 2/3 of an autoattacking Axe Warrior.

Rough DPS of a Paragon with *only* Aggressive Refrain and Go For the Eyes on hit bar: 52

Rough DPS of well built and played Dragon Slash Warrior: 55-60 DPS.


Spears being easy to kite is ridiculous. I've never seen anyone who actively kited spears. If you want to bring kiting into this, hi, we're comparing Paragons to *Warriors*. Melee is weakened by kiting an order of magnitude more than spear dodges.

Peace,
-CxE

I like paragons... my para hero made skill caps a whole lot easier. Defensive Anthem+Aegis= 100% chance to block melee for the duration of the boss fight.

Yes, the paragon has been taken down MANY pegs.

But thats because it was good. It was just SOOOO good. Now its on par with the crappiness of the rest of the classes ^_^

If you played a Paragon from the beginning and didn't expect a nerf, you are clearly delusional.

I liked your way of putting it .

~Death~

Paragons are useless? And yet they're still my second favourite profession.