There's Nothing to Fear for Paragons

I run Leadership only at 12 so I can use command higher (I run 16 command for Go for the Eyes and Fall back (used when not in torment)). Means I can keep TNTF up constantly, as well, since 10 sec duration and recharge.

It's almost sick how much defense you can get with these builds. With Save yourselves and TNTF, my alliance tackled HM Gate of Madness. Shiro was a yappy puppy (no deaths to him).

My build for that was:

Command 16 (12+3+1)
Leadership 12 (11+1)
Spear 9 (8+1)

1. LB Gaze (Lvl 6)
2. Spear of Fury (Lvl 3)
3. Focused Anger
4. Save Yourselves
5. TNTF
6. Go for the Eyes
7. Anthem of Flame (optional spot, used since we had splinter barrage and two warriors with us).
8. Sig of return.

Thank you on the cap information for adrenalin, I will adjust my build accordingly. I was not aware of the 100% cap. Must be a PvP reason for it, but why would they make a skill that grants an insane amount of energy but cap it at 100%?

Anet hates paragons!! They nerfed TNTF!! It's at 20 second recharge thus, even with 16 leadership, that's 8 seconds of cooldown

The ironic thing is, its effectiveness has been HALVED and it is still by far the best skill that Paragons have.

Quote: Originally Posted by Omniclasm

Incoming on steriods doesn't mean much since Incoming is completely useless in PvE. Something completely useless on steriods can still suck bad . But seriously I woke up today, logged on to order GWEN and read the skill adjustment. Not that they will care about 1 less order but this adjustment made me hold mine off for now. Not because this skill would be 100% useless now but to nerf it on the night of GWENs release is just a kick in the balls.

Edit: I'm so weak lol, my initial irritation with this change ebbed away and I bought it anyways ... been looking forward to GWEN for a while, not gonna let a single skill ruin my fun!

WHYYY!!!!!!???????

You know, I was fine with restarting the game every 5 seconds today to update to the thousands of new builds that kept popping up, but NOT when I found this new nerf.

It's a PVE skill for crying out loud! Sigh...I quit para. You know, all they had to do was take out the entire motivation line from the very beginning and everyone would be happy.

Yea seriously. Someone must really hate paras in that company. It's a PvE skill. Why are you picking on Paragons so much. One of important skills that made paragons valuable. Usually foW teams would take 1 paragon because it's really useful as a team booster. What are they supposed to do? Do more spear chugging? Sigh. Really disappointed. I hope this is reversed or thoughtout better (as someone in another forum mentioned have it attached to leadership so it can't be abused)

Greetings All!

I don't know what else to add, but I just don't understand why they nerfed the least-played class in the game. I mean, why not just get rid of Paragons altogether? Very sad day indeed.

And yes, it was just a PvE skill. So many other Paragon skills were nerfed because of PvP concerns. It was a hard pill to swallow but I at least understood the rationale. But who was complaining about this skill? The heket? The skree?

Now we're back to being pugless again.

Sigh.

Cheers, Henri

I am so pissed about this. Everytime paragons have an even semi decent skill, they nerf it. How many just completely kick anus builds can you think of for the other classes. Necro - MM, SV, SS, Bipper; Warrior - too many to count, Ele - SF, Air spiker, echo nuker (old school), the earth stuff is even semi decent now; monk - essential by definition and there are so many builds that work, Ranger - BP, Barrage, Interrupter, winter is SO helpful in many missions, Dervish - compared to these guys, paragons are like the NF ugly step-sister, Bath tank, Lyssa tank, etc., need I go on....

EVERYTIME the paragon gets a skill that even comes close to having a significant effect on gameplay, they nerf it. The ONE exception is GFTE. Now that I said that, they'll probably cut the % increase to crit in half tomorrow.

Name ONE build that is completely stand alone and does awesome 100% of the time like the builds above. There isn't one. Spear Spikers pale in comparison to warriors, monks and rits both heal better (unless you got like 5 shouters in your group), Bippers have ONE skill that makes all of our energy buffs combined look weak... GFTE spammer is probably the best but it is completely conditional on your party make up and how much physical damage the dish out (which is sort of the point). BUT, even then, the buffs are not significant enough for anyone in their right mind to ditch one of the "essential" character types for a paragon.

No.
Our skills are too conditional and the buffs are too weak for them to be attractive to a prospective party.

NEW SKILL SUGGESTION COMMENSURATE WITH CURRENT PARAGON SKILLS:

Name: "ANET BENDS US OVER!"
Attribute: Will you PLEASE let me be in your partySHIP
Type: Shout
Cost: 8 adrenaline (anyone notice warrior skills that cost this do like 50 extra damage?)
Recharge: 60 seconds
Effect: every other party member will have a 50% chance of doing 1-5% more damage when using their next skill that costs 10 or more energy. BUT only if it is a melee attack that is actually dealing elemental damage and only then if it is the second Tuesday of the month on a leap year.

ANets treatment of Paragons reminds me a lot of their treatment of pets for the first 2 years the game was out - A really cool game concept (probably one of the coolest) and they simply did not do anything with it. In fact, the pets were so bugged for almost 2 years they were more of a liability than a help. It wasn't until WOW announced that they were going to have mounts... not just pets, but pets you could friggin ride... that ANet even attempted to fix all of the problems. Hell, it was two years after the initial release and despite all the complaining in the forums, I STILL could not get my pet to go through the portals in the dragons lair. How hard is that to update....

Paragons had the potential to be the Paladin-like cross between a warrior and a party buffer/healer (as their design indicates). In every other RPG I have ever played, the Paladin is one of the most solid and essential character types. IN GW, Paragons are completely underminded time and time again and ANet doesn't seem to give a crap that we have to go through the whole game with heroes and henchies just to have a chance to complete the game because no party in their right mind would pick us up.

Thanks for solidifying our second tier citizenship ANet!!! Please consider my skill suggestion.

Quote: Originally Posted by Mad5cout I am so pissed about this. Everytime paragons have an even semi decent skill, they nerf it. How many just completely kick anus builds can you think of for the other classes. Necro - MM, SV, SS, Bipper; Warrior - too many to count, Ele - SF, Air spiker, echo nuker (old school), the earth stuff is even semi decent now; monk - essential by definition and there are so many builds that work, Ranger - BP, Barrage, Interrupter, winter is SO helpful in many missions, Dervish - compared to these guys, paragons are like the NF ugly step-sister, Bath tank, Lyssa tank, etc., need I go on....

EVERYTIME the paragon gets a skill that even comes close to having a significant effect on gameplay, they nerf it. The ONE exception is GFTE. Now that I said that, they'll probably cut the % increase to crit in half tomorrow.

Name ONE build that is completely stand alone and does awesome 100% of the time like the builds above. There isn't one. Spear Spikers pale in comparison to warriors, monks and rits both heal better (unless you got like 5 shouters in your group), Bippers have ONE skill that makes all of our energy buffs combined look weak... GFTE spammer is probably the best but it is completely conditional on your party make up and how much physical damage the dish out (which is sort of the point). BUT, even then, the buffs are not significant enough for anyone in their right mind to ditch one of the "essential" character types for a paragon.

No.
Our skills are too conditional and the buffs are too weak for them to be attractive to a prospective party.

NEW SKILL SUGGESTION COMMENSURATE WITH CURRENT PARAGON SKILLS:

Name: "ANET BENDS US OVER!"
Attribute: Will you PLEASE let me be in your partySHIP
Type: Shout
Cost: 8 adrenaline (anyone notice warrior skills that cost this do like 50 extra damage?)
Recharge: 60 seconds
Effect: every other party member will have a 50% chance of doing 1-5% more damage when using their next skill that costs 10 or more energy. BUT only if it is a melee attack that is actually dealing elemental damage and only then if it is the second Tuesday of the month on a leap year.

ANets treatment of Paragons reminds me a lot of their treatment of pets for the first 2 years the game was out - A really cool game concept (probably one of the coolest) and they simply did not do anything with it. In fact, the pets were so bugged for almost 2 years they were more of a liability than a help. It wasn't until WOW announced that they were going to have mounts... not just pets, but pets you could friggin ride... that ANet even attempted to fix all of the problems. Hell, it was two years after the initial release and despite all the complaining in the forums, I STILL could not get my pet to go through the portals in the dragons lair. How hard is that to update....

Paragons had the potential to be the Paladin-like cross between a warrior and a party buffer/healer (as their design indicates). In every other RPG I have ever played, the Paladin is one of the most solid and essential character types. IN GW, Paragons are completely underminded time and time again and ANet doesn't seem to give a crap that we have to go through the whole game with heroes and henchies just to have a chance to complete the game because no party in their right mind would pick us up.

Thanks for solidifying our second tier citizenship ANet!!! Please consider my skill suggestion.

I agree with you so much!! The paragon is a good class regardless of these nerfs that keep happening but we are limited to what we can do every single PvE para used TNTF it was a staple for us and basically our best shout. We then get nailed in the face especially for us paragons who dont want to be forced to H/H everywhere and have farmed for this skill. Right before GW:EN as well just knowing how they treat paragons has made me decide not to buy the game because they probably will nerf our sweet new gwen skills as well. Because MM's will say Holy spear is to OP its like we have no right no say that something of their's is OP to us but as soon as we get 1 skill that changes everyone else's game style we get nerfed cause we were the mistake!
We are not a mistake if you love paragon play the class through the nerfs show the community you can still make it without skills at a decent level of effectiveness keep fighting the good fight.

I guess I agree that all we can do is fight the "good fight". I guess I'm just pissed because: do they nerf SF cause it can still waste an entire group of enemies even in hard mode in like 20 seconds? No. Do they nerf SV cause it can waste any boss in like 30 seconds? No... Do they nerf Life Bond and Bathazar spirit cause you can basically keep any tank alive indefinitely with the combo? No... Do they nerf any chain of warrior skills even though you can basically put any single enemy down in less than 10 seconds when its combo'ed correctly? No... They still allow solo builds to work and they still allow power builds for every single class to exsist except for one...

They choose to nerf the one of two skills that actually works CORRECTLY for paragons to make it half @$$ed and weak and in the interest of "balancing" us to other classes... COMPLETE HORSEPUCKY. It is not even just this one skill that bothers me. It's every nerf they've put in from the beginning for paragons even though we had already been dealt a short hand and its the fact that these "uber-GWEN" skills you mentioned don't exsist. What the hell am I gonna do with converting my spear damage to holy damage. ooo... thanks.... How about some more low adrenaline party shouts for energy maintenance that actually do something. How about a cripple attack that doesn't have a prequisite or adrenaline as a cost? The whole friggin problem is people running out of range of our spear... (the new spear attack requires bleeding which requires adrenaline to put on) How the heck is an adrenaline skill gonna help me with that?!?!

Simply put.... W... T... F...

Holy Spear is low adrenaline dmg and has conditional holy damage for low adrenaline so its still decent but yeah i agree with you completely. If the paragon skills contradict or even are super effective against another classes cookie cutter builds then we are nerfed for "balance" what balance is this?

After the nerf to TNTF and Seed of life they make Seed of life 5 energy the next day and leave TNTF untouched if we even run 16 leadership we have 8 sec downtime which is just crazy.

There has to be balance if you nerf our best shout buff the useless ones!

They probably received 10 times more feedback from angry monks then they did from paragons if not more.

What bothers me is they develop these PvE skills for weeks or months, giving them time to balance it. I understand that when they put them on live certain issues might arrise that they didnt account for while testing so they adjust the skills some after release, which they did with alot of PvE skills including TNTF. Then they go ahead and let us use the skills for MONTHS only to decide on the release of their new expansion its about twice as powerfull as ever intented. That is just a plain bad job from their balancing team imo. With Seed of Life at least there was some gimmick build people made that allowed for the skill to be 'abused'. With TNTF there isn't any gimmick build, its a plain and simple skill that they could have adjusted a long time ago, or could have adjusted in a less drastic way then freaking double its recharge time. Its a lazy solution to a problem that for most people didnt even exist. Sure now you have these wiseguys screaming how the nerf was justified but I never heard them before, I never hear them about how the majority of the other paragon skills suck ass and most of them probably don't even play a paragon.

And I agree, this just adds to the continueing stream of nerfs paragons have been getting since launch. Balance does not mean nerf into the ground. There is a reason there are so little paragons in PvE, and its not just because of the silly skirts.

Good Post Trx well said.

I think the irony is that most of the people who wanted it nerfed dont realize we dont have many options because most of the paragon skills are just plain useless and its not like the skill was making them not play this game.

Their are not many PvE paragons out there and by nerfing the paragon PvE skill especially at the worst time right before the release date of GW:EN just seems silly.

With GW:EN it seems they introduced more spear skills which is good and bad. Spearagons will love these new skills but They might get nerfed because they are actually usefull omg! And thinking if a Warrior went W/P could probably throw spears with flail and FGJ just seems outta touch.

Truth be told we need buffs not nerfs our elites are just so flawed its pathetic.

Incoming! - Was abused in PvP now its just useless needs reworking big time.

Focused Anger- It was great and then they buffed FGJ it might last longer but most fights dont last that long. Plus the adrenaline gain is capped at 100% so the skill lies to us at high leadership. In PvP the fights may last that long but still the cap is annoying.

Angelic Bond - Its Unstrippable so it shouldnt reduce the damage but please give us an icon showing the duration and who it is on! because you can die very easily if not.

Soldier's Fury - was a nice PvE alternative to using Aggresive refrain since we could keep TNTF up constantly now u could probably keep it up with FGJ but then again why bring SF and FGJ when FGJ and Aggresive Refrain is a Better Combo. (If they nerf AR that will be a sad day)

The Power Is Yours!- Never Give Up! just puts this skill to shame.......Regardless if its conditional, sure you could swap sets or use it at only 10 energy but then your not getting much energy for a couple secounds those could mean alot.

Stunning Strike - This skill is a bit usefull but ounce again conditional, this skill wont be needed since most para's will use spear swipe instead from GW:EN.

Song Of Purification - good effect but its conditional ounce again not that horrible but may be outshunned by Cautery Signet and It's Just a flesh wound! (Alot of Condition Removal Skills :O)

Defensive Anthem - a beautifull skill still quite good for organized teams that can communicate not to use an attack skill. just useless with mainly any unorganized pug.

The Rest are remotly usefull and some of those are even conditional.

So point being is the nerf was to harsh a 15 sec recharge would have been perfect 3 sec downtime at 16 leadership is better then 8 secounds!

Go Paragons!

The good part about most of our elites being useless in PvE is you can use Echo to keep TNTF up longer ... somebody made some joke about using echo for it somewhere on these boards but I've been trying it and it works ok. At 14 leadership (which is what I run) it lasts 11 sec + 11 sec from echo'd version + 11 sec again from recharged TNTF. Then 9 sec downtime and go thru the cycle again. Extremely sad I have to use an elite from another profession for it but it sorta works.

I'm pretty curious what their plan for the paragon in PvE is though. Izzy and his crew are only worried about the paragon in PvP (he wants to nerf Aggresive Refrain pretty bad), which is understandable since PvP is all about balance but they should have left our PvE skill alone. After 4-5 days im still pissed lol ...

And wow, an entire month worth of topics on the first page of the paragon boards, pretty awesome.

Echo seems to work really well been using it, TNTF goes through 3 cycles without a downtime and it seems to keep up long enough for fights so thats good..but no more Save Yourselves or Shield's Up with it .

Aggressive refain i dont think is that overpowered tbh it requires some skill management if your out of a fight to keep up, but people complain of a passive IAS and i cant really blame em but if your gonna nerf it dont nerf it to uselessness which probably would happen

Quote: Originally Posted by Trx

I come back and theyve nerfed my favourite character Paragon AGAIN this one was truly unexpected and unjustified all that sunspear farming only to make it USELESS.

WTF is wrong with these incompetant balancers they should be nerfing the big three not the least popular race.

Ive been loyal for Prophecies,factions(which i didnt like/barely played) and Nightfall. I was excited only just now i found out GWEN was out, now im just angry. I dont know wheather i should give up on on Guildwars now, what do you guys think honest opion of GWEN ?

Paragons useless?

Even after the nerf, they can do this: