19 Apr 2007 at 07:33 - 15
I'd say they're useless. The Spear line has great DPS... sure... but its nothing more than a C-space char, even the Warrior needs more skill to use than that. It gets a bit boring after a while.
As you said in your OP, the motivation line is misunderstood. Its also almost totally useless to a single Paragon. Nobody gives a damn if 3+ para's can keep an entire team alive through an intricate mass of shouts, chants and echos... this is PvE for christ sake, your average pug won't take 1 Paragon, let alone 3, not to mention the rest of the team would be hard to work.
The para has been nerfed just too many times... At least other professions have some variation. There are only about 3 elites in the entire profession worth using. Cruel Spear, which can be replaced with Focused Anger + Merciless Spear.
They just need too much micromanagement... i've had them with me in guild FoW trips. As useful as Stand your Ground and Burning Refrain + They're of Fire were... the management of the refrains, the constant spamming of Anthem of Flame needed to keep them up, general things like that, gets extremely boring in the end.
Go for the Eyes is about as Mesmer as you can get. Nobody ever knows what it does, hell, chances are you don't even see it on your conditions bar. Theres no doubt it helps if you have maybe 2 or 3 other attack based characters with you, but until you see an enemy screaming "Ow my eye!" everytime GftEs causes a critical for someone in PvE it won't be noticable.
Quote:
Stunning Strike
Elite Spear Attack. If this attack hits, you deal +5...25 damage. If it hits a foe suffering from a Condition, that foe is also Dazed for 4...9 seconds
Better than Broadhead Arrow? Sure it has half the duration of BHA... and atually needs a condition first..... and 10 adrenaline of course... What use is it? You could just Concussion Shot something as a Ranger, if your target was still needing to be dazed after 10 adren, either BHA missed or dazing it was never really that vital to begin with. But yeah... i think this elite is a bit dodgy tbh.
All in all... Archon said it really. Paragons work best with other Paragons and Warriors. An organised PvE team can utilize it however they like, unless we're talking DoA (and maybe Deep/Urgoz) there's not really any reason to shun out a Para, even if they're use is severely compromised. They've just been made too weak alone.
Ranged DPS is better than a ranger... people bring Rangers for Barrage and interrupts more than anything else. Barrage can easily out DPS the Para, the Interrupts are ALOT better. Without hastle, condition application is alot more noticable too.
Energy gain... BiP/Br are here for a reason.
Healing/Protection. Its not bad, but weres a pug team without 3 monks, 1 a Bonder? You'd struggle to persuade a pug that your para would be more beneficial to the team than a Bonder.
19 Apr 2007 at 07:35 - 16
Quote:
Originally Posted by XvArchonvX
Personally, I think Paragons are strongest in a group of all paragons. Unfortunately, outside of very organized GvG, this never happens. With one single paragon, the effectiveness is strongly diminished for many builds.
That's similar to my issue with the profession. Unless they're going for pure DPS as a spear-para, their usefulness depends to a (in my opinion) too large extent on the composition of the rest of the party. Running Command, for example, with many skills that boost Attack Skills isn't much use in a party with five or six casters. Likewise with Motivation and requiring more casters to be effective.
It is a strength if the party is organised: the paragon's shouts have increasing returns according to the skill sets of the party's other members, but that also generally requires a coordination that PvE teams do not have. What I find in PvE are paragons running any old build, generally what they've been running in the past, without thought as to how their build could best suit their team.
I think the prof is a reasonably good idea, but it's not a general purpose profession. They fill niche roles well but (two of the attribute lines) seem to have more trouble than some other professions (and attributes) in a simple PvE PUG.
I don't think its a weak class, but like a mesmer I see paragons excelling in certain situations and either less suited or more neglected in other situations.
19 Apr 2007 at 09:02 - 17
IMO second worst implemented after the Assassin.
Whoever thinks they suck needs a reality check imo.
19 Apr 2007 at 09:22 - 18
Paragons own, hands down. They are pretty versatile, from what ive seen people do with them. Pretty nice, aggressive support class. In PvP they rock imo. Ive seen them being used as blindbots, dazers and interrupters and their shouts/chants are also pretty neat. Anthem of guidance->attacks cannot be blocked, I mean, how can that possibly suck? Hex breaker aria is just haxx against hex stacks and so on. Gotta love the paragon. I'm gonna roll one myself for sure.
For PvE theyre not bad either. Minion master+gfte is pretty good. Anthem of flame for extra damage, hexbreaker aria to keep all people clean. Of course there are beter alternatives, but theyre mostly on characters that don't do damage, such as monks for aegis, or necros for BiP. Imagine a paragon as puller in Tomb of Primeval Kings, I would take one along anytime.
19 Apr 2007 at 11:22 - 19
Quote:
Originally Posted by LightningHell
IMO second worst implemented after the Assassin.
Whoever thinks they suck needs a reality check imo.
So wrong on so many levels.
The Paragons look interesting to me, dispite the nerfing, I'd be more than willing to accept one into my party (assuming they know what they are doing) The only thing that bothers me about them is the armor and the fact them seem to have 1000s of spears hidden on them somewhere. Other than that, they are a good proffession.
Anyone who thinks a proffession is worse than the rest, need a reality check themselves.
19 Apr 2007 at 11:52 - 20
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shuuda
So wrong on so many levels.
The Paragons look interesting to me, dispite the nerfing, I'd be more than willing to accept one into my party (assuming they know what they are doing) The only thing that bothers me about them is the armor and the fact them seem to have 1000s of spears hidden on them somewhere. Other than that, they are a good proffession.
Anyone who thinks a proffession is worse than the rest, need a reality check themselves.
I would say a reality check would be quite hard in a game concerning magic...
Nobody is saying Paragons aren't interesting in terms of there skills. But really there is no way in hell a Paragon can just slide into a pug, to be useful a Paragon needs a skillset to synergize with his teammates, since if you were just after pure Spear/Leadership your pretty much a waste. Dervish, Assassin and Warriors have much more potential for damage in PvE with multi-target skills. Rangers have multi-target and massive interruption potential aswell as hindering people with conditions.
To make a Paragon an above average choice in an unorganised you need alot more than 8 skill slots.
The only role i've found a Paragon to be useful for solo is pure Motivation/Command with 0 Spear Mastery, an extremely boring job for a human... an ideal job for Morgahn. And even then literally every single skill on his bar apart from Signet of Return was nerfed!
19 Apr 2007 at 15:29 - 21
I think one of the problems is that Paragons start is so slow... everyone knows what they get with a warrior, an elementalist etc., etc (at least as a whole we know what to expect) . It takes the Paragon much longer then most classes to attain skills that give it a specific purpose and/or niche.
19 Apr 2007 at 19:53 - 22
If you're playing with any reasonable number of physicals (2 plus the Paragon, at least) he becomes pretty awesome. I think a lot of the bad rep comes from people refusing to do damage with their physicals, and expecting the 'nukers' to kill everything.
Personally I am hard pressed to leave an outpost without my General Morgahn:
Wild Throw, Spear of Lightning, "Go for the Eyes!", Song of Restoration, Aggressive Refrain, Anthem of Flame, "Stand Your Ground!", Ressig, 12 Spear Mastery, 12 Leadership, 8 Command, 10 Motivation (1 major).
You get a strong combination of single target DPS (target stragglers that break aggro) and a bunch of party buffs, offensive and defensive. I'll slam the class for having so much crap in its lines, but if you just take the good skills it's still a very, very strong character.
Peace,
-CxE
20 Apr 2007 at 14:53 - 23
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shuuda
So wrong on so many levels.
The Paragons look interesting to me, dispite the nerfing, I'd be more than willing to accept one into my party (assuming they know what they are doing) The only thing that bothers me about them is the armor and the fact them seem to have 1000s of spears hidden on them somewhere. Other than that, they are a good proffession.
Anyone who thinks a proffession is worse than the rest, need a reality check themselves.
Hey, being worst implemented != worst class. Kk?
20 Apr 2007 at 15:37 - 24
I personally love the paragon. It was my first character for NF and ran it through quite quickly. I did almost all missions with henches and heroes, there are a few a got some guildies to help with but other than that the paragon is a prof to reckon with if the player knows what they are doing. Saying they are underpowered or useless is ridiculous.
21 Apr 2007 at 07:18 - 25
Quote:
Originally Posted by XvArchonvX
Personally, I think Paragons are strongest in a group of all paragons. Unfortunately, outside of very organized GvG, this never happens. With one single paragon, the effectiveness is strongly diminished for many builds. However, they still have a very strong direct damage dps. The way I see it, bow rangers excel at laying degen conditions and interupting, while paragons excel at laying down straight raw damage.
I agree here. It's probably just my nooby experiences but them and Rangers I find to be best together, while a single Paragon or Ranger can still be of great use, having an extra one is much better than them separately
Basically I'm saying the combined Rs and Ps are greater than the sum of its parts
21 Apr 2007 at 19:29 - 26
Most misunderstood. They're rather awkward to play, but doable. I think the biggest problem, and why people don't take them, was already mentioned - a lot of Paragon players don't look at their team, they just take whatever build suits them.
I only just recently created a Paragon (just got to level 20) and it didn't take me long to figure out how to play them. I do look at my team and decide what build/skills to use. A lot of times I go to use something like Aria of Restoration and say "oh, not really any spell casters, so something else will be better" (actually, this can be useful in any group for your monk(s) to help them out when they come under attack, but most of the time if your monks are your only spell casters, you can take something better.)
Likewise, if I have a lot of spell casters and little to know physical classes, Zealous Anthem isn't going to be doing any good.
There are more "neutral" builds that you can make with a Paragon as well though that will benefit virtually any class out there.
There are a few reasons why Paragon's support skills aren't supposed to replace a monk's - First of all, there's no way to remove chants, shouts, echos, ect. - that alone is reason enough as to why the effects aren't as powerful as other similar skills. Secondly, most of them will affect your entire party. And finally, a Paragon also can also deal quite a bit of damage, giving them a duel role as team support, and damage dealer.
That said, there are some pointless skills in there, my biggest problem is Defensive Anthem though...
As was said... Aegis does the same thing without the downside of being removed upon attacking. I think it should lose the attacking removal condition, and increase the duration. As it is now, it not only does not deserve Elite status, with Aegis out there it would even be a lousy regular skill to take.
21 Apr 2007 at 21:00 - 27
I got NF a month ago. Made a Para and beat the game with heroes and henchies!
They could be better, could be worse.
23 Apr 2007 at 18:06 - 28
I for one think they are quite versatile using skills from their secondary to complement their utility builds such as:
[card]expel hexes[/card]
[card]blood is power[/card]
...and other such eilites that require little investment to be effective...The paragon can handle not having a paragon elite...
24 Apr 2007 at 22:24 - 29
The Paragons need a retooling so that they can be more powerful but not overpowered. I love the Paragon but I'd say a good 50 of the skills are almost completely useless. That's ok for a profession with 130 skills, but Paragon has only 75.
24 Apr 2007 at 22:33 - 30
My own thought is they've been just a tad overnerfed.
But at the same time, as others have indicated. Rangers and Paragons have a small problem in that they're self-reinforcing. I tend to play my ranger more, and I run into a lot of 'we don't want rangers'... so my reaction is typically to call out to all the other rangers and form a PUG akin to a B/P group. Right now, paragons really don't have the equivalent of a simple B/P group build for PvE... or I haven't seen them forming them.
I kind of wonder if certain skills will need to be identified for single paragon use, while others kept usable for mass paragon builds.
24 Apr 2007 at 23:12 - 31
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pick Me
Bargamer - Pre-NF, Rits were definitely the most misunderstood profession. Post-SR nerf, Necros still will not just look into Rits. Many Necros looked at rits and thus a MM bomber was created.
Heh, I guess I was way ahead of the game, with my Rt/N minion-master starting from day 1 of factions ^_~
In response to the paragon... I'm not so sure yet. I've been playing my paragon, and while the buffs and such are nice, many of them seem unessisary, and I don't seem to contribute a whole lot to the entire effort of winning. On the other hand, I haven't tried it without myself, so maybe I'm doing more than I think, or it may just be where in the game I currently am, but a lot of my buffs seem to just push the party from "winning" to "overkill". Instead of a few people getting to ~60% HP once or twice for a second or two, everyone stays >75% HP the entire time.
One thing I CAN say is that I never run out of energy. I can spam shout skills all day long, and don't get close to dropping to 0.
24 Apr 2007 at 23:22 - 32
Another reason y a paragon is better than a warrior is, what others dont realize, in the start warriors were ment to have the best armor, and were stronger against dam. b/c of the armor, paragon max armor is the same as warriors max; 80
25 Apr 2007 at 08:24 - 33
Quote:
Originally Posted by PenguinMercenary
Another reason y a paragon is better than a warrior is, what others dont realize, in the start warriors were ment to have the best armor, and were stronger against dam. b/c of the armor, paragon max armor is the same as warriors max; 80
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uga uga orly wtf?
seriously..what in gods name are you talking about?
btt
PARAGUNS OBVIOZLY SAK BECUZ DEY AINT GUD IN PVE HMKAY? BECUZ LYK RYTS ND MONKS R BETTA FO HEALZ ND PROTECT N STUFF YE?
Quote:
IMO second worst implemented after the Assassin.
Whoever thinks they suck needs a reality check imo.
he won the thread tbh. o:
25 Apr 2007 at 14:56 - 34
The paragon's armour is only lacking the +physical aspect... other than that their armour is on par with the warrior...
^ Thank you guys for proving my point..... I think you guys should go back and read the first post...(spear=underestimated...motivation=overesti mated) paragons in their current state are not healers...they provide damage and utility...
compared to monk = the paragon cannot compete with the heals/prots
compared to warrior = The paragon has higher base dps, and overall team damage augmentation.
you should think of the paragon as a ranged warrior, with some team based utility.... not as a healer/protector
25 Apr 2007 at 16:18 - 35
I cant wait till GW:en gets here hopefully with some new paragon skills. As the thread has already pointed out alot of the Paragon elites are pretty useless or require incredibly precise timing to get the most out of them. Now-a-days I just use a pretty standard build with
[skill]"Go for the eyes!"[/skill][skill]spear of lightning[/skill][skill]anthem of flame[/skill][skill]aggressive refrain[/skill][skill]signet of return[/skill] leaving an elite and 2 other skills spare, I often go with cruel spear, one of the + energy motivation skills for spell casting or attack skills (dependant on party) and fall back. Spamming GFTE and Anthem of flame keeps your IAS up indefinately if done right or combining with 'fall back' and 'charge' between fights and you'll never have problems with energy
25 Apr 2007 at 22:07 - 36
If you want to play this game to go up on the line, rush in, and wait for monks to heal you while you keep using frenzy, use a warrior. If you like motivation, and you like to keep party alive and boosted then use a paragon. People have to know how to use them to play them, unlike the warrior. The same goes for assasin.
The only reason people do not play paragon is because they do not know what they can do, and when they think about playing them, they just figure warrior or ranger is better because they do damage. Err... wrong. You only need a certain amount of damage dealers. If you all were damager dealers where would the healing, motivation come from. So, well... people don't know paragons can help the team, so they use warrior since it is easy.
26 Apr 2007 at 00:36 - 37
i normaly take general morgan or the motivation henchie and blaze through stuff. never notice what sologon? does tho XD
my para is atleast as effective as any of my other chacaters, in general terms  , lazy playstyle too
26 Apr 2007 at 14:28 - 38
Quote:
Originally Posted by XvArchonvX
The way I see it, bow rangers excel at laying degen conditions and interupting, while paragons excel at laying down straight raw damage.
If using short bow and Kindle Arrows, the Ranger's damage is higher than Paragon's.
Rangers have a lot of bow attacks to choose from and a lot of preparations.
They can opt for Kindle Arrows in which case they outdamage paragon.
They can opt for Read the Wind in which case they do good damage and their arrows can't be dodged.
They can opt for Choking Gas or any other interrupting preparation.
They can mix and match preparations with attacks where they can choose extra damage, bleed, poison, burn, daze and cripple, double arrows and AoE attack(barrage) and awesome interrupts(not like lame Disrupting Throw).
In addition to that they can also go traps or pet.
They also have game altering spirits.
They are versatile, and have many options. Paragon has like a few good skills that everybody uses and so we have 90% same builds. No options there.
26 Apr 2007 at 20:17 - 39
In terms of offense via Spear attacks, I feel that the Paragon fills a "Support" role (surprise, surprise). By this, I mean that their attack skills are an easy way to help the party slay a target. Paragons have a large variaty of Deep Wound-inducing attack skills (note that Rangers have zero), as well as other flexible skills that are easy to use. For example, Lightning Spear for elemental damage (Physical Resistance Mesmers, anyone?), Burning Spear or Barbed Spear for an easy and cheap condition, et cetera.
Essentially, I see Paragons as a full-fledged support class. Everything about a pure Paragon is support -- even their attacks.
29 Apr 2007 at 17:35 - 40
When Nightfall came out, definitely the most misunderstood class. After Anet's nerf department got a hold of it (it wasn't the most powerful class to begin with tbh), definitely the worst. Yes, worse than a Sin.
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