Paragons: An Analysis on why Shouts Will Always Be Overpowered

Because of people who "abused" shouts, spamming them continuously, many player-favorite shouts (such as INCOMING!, which will be my example for today). Every skill-type in Guild Wars has a balancing agent.

Enchantments can be stripped.

Hexes can be removed.

Spirits can be killed.

Spells can be interrupted.

Attacks can miss.

What was the balance of a shout/chant? The recharge time. Yes, shouts and chants are extremely effective- but with the price of a short duration. For example, old incoming would give you a 50% damage reduction 1/5 of the time. While powerful, by timing spikes and such outside of the duration, one could win even with an incoming paragon on the other team.

But the problem is... what happens when the balancing agent is REMOVED from the game? Say, for example, hexes must last their entire duration. They cannot be removed. The hex metagame would go through the roof! The balancing agent has been removed, and now hexes are Godlike. I could go on and on about this, but I think you get the idea.

Here's the problem with shouts and chants. The main balancing agent CAN be removed by the players at will. I am talking about Incoming! chaining, for this example.

Incoming was relatively balanced at a 4 second duration. However...

Incoming affects the ENTIRE party, yourself included.

By using a second incoming, it is as if the duration of incoming just DOUBLED! Sure, at the price of an elite slot, but for something as broken as that, who needs an elite slot?

So as a result, Anet pulled out the hammer and smashed shouts and chants over the head until they lay there dead. This was effective, as chaining Incoming to get 8 seconds with 2 players now would take THREE players to get 9 seconds. But what about people who want to use the skill... well, the way it was supposed to be? They got screwed over by the fact that anet used the hammer to annihilate powerful shouts and chants.

But, in my opinion, there is a much better way. How? Make the balancing agent untamperable. How do you do this? Let me illustrate with Incoming!.

[Old] Incoming!
For 1...4 seconds, all party members within earshot take 50% less damage.
10E 20R

Now watch my idea for how shouts should be handled:

[My] Incoming!
For 20 seconds, all party members have incoming. For the first [1...4] seconds incoming is on each party member, they take 50% less damage.
10E 20R

Now take a look at what I did. Incoming now "lasts" as long as it's recharge (which would be applied to all shouts in my idea). However, the EFFECT only lasts for 1... 4 seconds- the FIRST 1... 4 seconds. So if after that 1... 4 seconds, another paragon casted incoming, it would increase the duration... but this doesn't matter, as once the 1... 4 seconds are up, incoming does NOTHING, and chaining it like that would just increase the time it does nothing for.

Also, for skills that say "Under the effect of a shout or chant", Incoming would only effect that for the 1... 4 seconds because after that, they are no longer under the "effect" of it. It is still on them, however, to prevent it being up for longer than the developers intended.

This fix is a creative way to make it impossible to chain shouts and chants, making them a lot more balanced and more importantly not abusable. Even if this is decided to not be a good idea, I am sure that by revising the shout mechanics, they can become much more balanced...

Thats great...

Can a moderator put this in Campfire-Paragons?

It wouldn't fix anything, because when another person uses a shout, it gets reapplied, so the 4 seconds would renew.

It would be the exact same.

EDIT: Actually this would only benefit the people who use skills such as WHEN UNDER THE EFFECTS OF A SHOUT OR CHANT.

Please read OP before commenting.

*Shut Your Mouth, fool*

Skill. Ends all shouts in the area.

better?

you need to add this to the end if the thread title: "In PvP"

because in PvE, all the nerfraping Paragons have taken because of PvP balancing has made them as valuable as minipets (ok slight exaggeration).

that, or move this to the pvp section, because this is a one-sided issue

I was talking about in PvP, however this shouldn't be in the PvP section as it would have a huge impact on both PvE and PvP paragons, for the better I believe.

There are ways to stop shouts before they happen... energy denial or andrenaline denial.

I'd rather people be creative and work around the way it is now then to have the mechanic made potentionally worse in an attempt to fix it, but that's just me.

DarkNecrid is right tho, your idea would mess with the way shouts get reapplied and possibily screw things up for the Paragon in the long run, or cause them to have to get a lot of their skills retooled just for shouts (which can be avoided like I stated above). If shouts didn't get reappled, that would screw with Echos, for example.

Shout-Chaining Paragons are like Touch Rangers, annoying but can be countered if one took the effort.

Chants can be interrupted

And both Shouts and Chants can be AoE shuted down... btw, you don't even need to use any elites to do that

I've yet to see anything that is even remotely this powerful (elite or not elite) when targeting any other professions.
Where is the skill that can area-wide shutdown the entire healing+protection prayers + half of divine favour all at the same time?

I suggest a more powerful spirit of roaring winds. Maybe add an additional recharge to shouts and chants as well, for non-spirit creatures within it's range.

Not quite, minipets can be sold.

Instead of relying on the recharge, why not just nerf the effect of shouts, but make them more maintainable.

[Old] Incoming!
For 1...4 seconds, all party members within earshot take 50% less damage.
10E 20R

Now watch my idea for how shouts should be handled:

[My] Incoming!
For 5 seconds, all party members within earshot take 5...25% less damage.
10E 10R

Stacking 8 of them in a team would not help any past the second one, and having Incoming! on you constantly would not give you as much "invincibility" as it used to.

Way to go, it's [wiki]"They're on Fire!"[/wiki] but elite and without them having to be on fire...


Seriously, do any of you people get how the game works?


The first idea wouldn't work, since the effect would renew (just like any other shout) when it's reused. Add to that the fact that you would be under the "effect" of a shout for the whole 20 seconds.

To be under the effect of a shout, it has to on your Effects Monitor. From what you're saying, it would be on your Effects Monitor, just not doing anything.

And if you think, "They could change that" then why don't you try reprogramming it. They have a system that works, and I really doubt they're going to risk messing it up just because someone wants a single skill to be weaker.


Frankly though, I don't see why people think shouts are so overpowered. There are many ways to counter the use of shouts.

"Incoming!" costs 10 energy. The max a Paragon can get from Leadership is 8 energy. They loose 2 energy with each use of the skill.

Now, how do they make up for the energy lost? They use adrenaline shouts.

Adrenaline... that's not got any counters does it? Oh wait...
[skill]Soothing Images[/skill][skill]Soothing[/skill]
or even
[skill]Sympathetic Visage[/skill][skill]Ancestor's Visage[/skill]

It really is a shame that creating an entire class around a basis that isn't supported ruined them.

Paragons face the fact there is no *widespread* removal of shouts and chants. Sure, interruption, etc counters them, but once again, because a counter exists doesn't mean it isn't broken.

I would like to see this attatched to shouts or chants, since the mechanic exists elsewhere in the game.

Whenever a shout ends, the same shout is disabled for all other party members for [12 seconds - (Leadership/2)] if their shout is not recharging .

A similar mechanic functions for Xinrae's Weapon. It would prevent the "invinci-chain" in Incomings! while not totally destroying the reapplication process.

Let's look at incoming under this. At 16 Leadership, we could let incoming reach 5 seconds with a 20 second recharge. Then there would be at *least* a 4 second downtime before somebody else could use it again. That provides plenty of time to spike down a target, apply pressure, etc. It would also discourage bringing SO many people with the same Shout.
If two people brought it, it would be able to be chained (with ia meaning under incoming from the first para, ib maning incoming from the second para, and n meaning without incoming) 5ia, 4n, 5ib, 6n, 5ia, 4n, 5ib, 6n.....
This means that with two paras it could be maintained half of the time. (Makes sense, two paras, it's like halfing the recharge...)

Now, look at 3 paras: 5ia, 4n, 5ib, 4n, 5ic, 4n(since para a would have recharged before para c's incoming ended, meaning his shout would be disabled for 4 seconds...) 5ia, 4n(since para b would have recharged before para a's shout ended again, meaning there's a recharge....)5ib, 4n (there's a pattern here....)

Alright, you get the gist. Now, if you have three para's running incoming, it can be maintained for 15/27 seconds. In fact, with more than 3 paras, it would still only be maintained for this same amount of time. Alright, so with 3 or more paras, Incoming could be maintained for 50/90 seconds. In fact, with only 2 paras running incoming, it could be active for 45/89 seconds. One para could maintain the skill for only 20/80 seconds. (if we went more...it would be 22.5/90) So in turn, doubling up on Paragon's Double the effect, in reason, but adding any more is almost pointless. And any past 3 is COMPLETE overlap.

Of course, running paras at say, 12 leadership would require more paras to complete a "chain", but there is still ample spike windows open, and there is NEVER an invinci-chain.

From a "roleplaying standpoint" Perhaps it can be rationalized in the Shout being the order, it wouldn't make sense for another person to give the same order in short succession. The better the leader, though, the more respect they control, the more specific the order, the the more clean the execution is by their lackies.

How does this sound to everyone else?

They could give it the spirit bond treatment, which is what he is proposing.

They changed spirit bond so it has to end on before you recast or you will not gain the benefits from it.




Please provide a bar that uses soothing images and is not gimped in any way.

The visages also only work for melee attacks, so how does that stop adrenaline gain from paragons?

I won't mention names, but anyone that posts counters to shouts are retards. If you don't understand why, then learn to play first.

It's just like if there was a skill that takes 25 energy and 15 adrenaline that instakills with a 1 second cast, you can still argue that e-denial, a-denial, or interrupts can stop it. But just because there are a lot of counters doesn't mean it's not broken.

As for its effects on PvE, I think with this factor added in (kinda like spirit bond where reapplying doesn't renew the hit count), Anet can more safely buff some of the shouts back up again. The OP actually raises a good suggestion and could make paragons more valuable and wanted as a PvE class overall. Some people need to be less retarded and read the OP's post before commenting and blaming everything on PvP. This isn't a thread to nerf paragons...this is made to help balance them in PvP so that they can also be effective in PvE.

Good post... I don't think that anybody who bashed my post or dismissed it as a "nerf" to paragons grasped what I was talking about at all.

As a side note...

My main character in PvE is a Paragon.

My second-most used profession in PvP is Paragon.

I have used builds that incorporated 90% of the Paragon skills (some just aren't worth being on your bar).

I enjoy the Paragon more than any other profession and know how it plays.

I simply recognized that the shout mechanic is EASILY exploitable and that the best way to fix this would be to remove the exploit so Anet doesn't have to hammer shouts to the ground!

Also, any chance a mod can move this to Sardelec? Looking back, my post was basically a suggestion.

This is actually a fantastic idea. The nice thing about it is the remaining 'dead' shout/chant does not need to last the entire recharge. It could quite easily be half that so Chant/shout stacking could still be viable but vastly more controllable.
Using your example of Incoming. It could be up for 10 seconds on a 20 second recharge but only active for 4 seconds (could have similar graphics to how adrenaline works). Not saying this is balanced but it's an example of how you've created control handles.
Also the shouts/chants that are more balanced as they are could retain their current functionality, so you don't screw up Beastmastery or Warrior shouts.

A little though really does a long way ^_^.

now you can interupt shouts like any other skill so now SHOUTS ARE NO LONGER OVERPOWERED

Yes that is true, beast mastery and warrior shouts would need to be looked at as well as they shouldn't be ruined because of Paragon shouts, however! Beast mastery shouts seem to, if I recall correctly, only effect your OWN pet. My idea is more for party-wide shouts, not single target shouts, as I think party wide shouts are where the imbalance comes from... I don't think chaining pet shouts would really be imbalanced at all or possible for that matter. I DO, however, like your idea that the shouts can be "dead" for time less than the recharge so that chaining is still possible, just capped off.

As for warrior shouts, lets look at the warrior within earshot shouts-

Watch Yourself- no recharge, adrenaline based, so it wouldn't be affected
Shields Up- With it's short duration, inability to chain would affect it in theory...
Retreat- May be affected by change, like Shields up
Charge- Why would you want to chain this (or use it)? ha

So really only 4 non-paragon skills may be affected. Worth it for the sake of balance? I think so

Don't you love when people who don't have the faintest clue on what they are talking about try coming in and getting all tough with ya?

No, chants can be interrupted, shouts have no cast time, so it's impossible to interrupt them.

Well actually theres no need for such strict rules. Stick it on the chants/shouts that need to be kept in line, leave the rest...

Also gives Izzy an excuse to really buff some of the poor ones 'properly'.

.... Izzy.... buff... skills?

I think that shouts are fine, and truely, there are counters...but the counters are crap (Vocal Minority, Well of Silence?). The real problem with shouts/chants is that you can't get rid of them once they are on a target, it isn't that you can't stop them from going on in the first place.

So, my proposal would be to add a few new skills that remove shouts/chants
(other witty names could be used)

Necro
Amnesia
10e 10% sac 1 sec cast 10 sec cooldown
Spell. Target foe loses 1..4 shouts and chants.

Bleeding Ears
10e 2 sec cast 10 sec cooldown
Spell. Target foe loses one shout or chant. If a shout or chant is removed in this way, target foe begins bleeding for 5...25 seconds

Mesmer
Concussion
15e 1 cast 25 recharge
Spell. Remove one shout or chant. If a shout or chant is removed, that foe takes 14...83...100 damage. (same as shatter enchant)

Memory Loss
15e 1 cast 20 recharge
Spell. Remove one shout or chant. If a shout or chant is removed, that foe is dazed for 4...9 seconds.

Forgetfullness
5e 1 cast 10 recharge
Spell. Remove one shout/chant.

(some witty name)
15e 3 cast 20
Spell. Remove one shout/chant from target foe, all of that foes allies also lose the same shout/chant.

but thats what makes shouts and chants unique...they cant be removed..if you make them removable the paragon loses all of its appeal (if it had any)

Too bad none of those skills will ever see play. All those are doing is promoting RPS gameplay, if you bring them against paragons then you win, otherwise, you lose. If you want to make shout/chant counters, you need them to be versatile enough that they are still useful against other builds. Think of how diversion and dshot can be used against chants, but also against everything else effectively.

It's fine to have unremovable stuff. However, that stuff has to be balanced around the fact that it's unremovable. You can't have unremovable stuff that is not only stronger than the removable counterparts, not only takes 0 skill to use effectively, but also is on a character that has powerful DPS and unlimited energy.

Vocal Minority?

I see tons of ppl in HA using this skill.

Btw, no need for nerfing shouts, they arent that good.
Incoming is one of the worst shouts, I think.

~Prof.

Shouts are Weak.

Forms aren't useful.(you forgot a skill type)

Oh? Why do you think a lot of them are weak and constantly weakened? Perhaps because shouts are so inherently strong as a concept that stacking easily makes a decent shout way overpowered.

With a system like this, good concept shouts can be improved upon. Like bringing Shields Up! down to a 20 second recharge. This will help tackle Para spike and BA/Interrupt rangers (or at the very least, force them to start taking Crip Shot as an alternative) without making it stupidly over-powered when stacked with another shouter...

It makes a lot of sense when you think about it...

Paragons being talked about in a nerf oriented thread? WTH? Did anyone forget the whole motivation line is crap thanks to the last such paragon nerf thread?

All this QQing over shouts! And the thought that shouts and forms are crap? Stick to the facts,people. Shouts are awesome when put in the proper build perspective. Counters exist for all forms of shouts, yet nerfing them is overkill.

Stop QQing.

How about making the skill recharge much slower if it didnt achieve its purpose of reducing a huge spike damage, and was used to reduce all damage with many Paragons.

Lasts what it did before the ubernerf, yet recharges in 20 seconds. This skill is recharged but disabled for 35 seconds if it does not prevent x-x damage or more.

Maybe.

The only fast recharge on shouts occurs with the adrenaline shouts and [skill=card]Aggressive Refrain[/skill]. Mix that with[skill=card]"Go For The Eyes!"[/skill] and you have an energy battery of unrivaled proportion (for himself), due to the low adrenaline cost. Shouts like this one make for fast shouts, but most aren't like this.

Most shouts like [skill=card]"Fall Back!"[/skill] and [skill=card]"Stand Your Ground!"[/skill] have long recharges and little use beyond PvE or the AB scenarios where you may possibly cross paths with a paragon.

Then, their's the elites...[skill=card]"Incoming!"[/skill] was the biggest disappointment. Nerfed to death before I even capped it. Now I wonder if my paragon will cap it or not.

[skill=card]"The Power Is Yours!"[/skill] heh, who uses this? Knowing that you have alot of energy degen so the team can have a little bit? What a joke!

My point is that shouts aren't overpowered in the least, when they obviously lack consistent usefulness. If anything, buff the crap ones and make them useful.

....

This is where I start to question if people are getting it.

Add another control mechanism to fully saddle chants/shouts, giving more range in balancing. Range as in think 'slider'. What does this do?
Prevents a situation where a shout/chant is either overpowered or shit.

Incoming is a good example: It was too good before, so Anet nerfed it. Since the shout/chant control mechanic is weak, on nerf the skill became shit.

With Series' idea you could scale the 'cool down' period to help balance the thing without making it shit at the same time.

Heres another example for you: Black and white. Shades of grey. Anyone still not getting it? It's not rocket science...

@Renegade26
I see where your coming from but that is too complicated. Inelegant if you will. Series' idea is far superior...

So, you want another Soul Reaping,eh? Sure, why not reinact that nonsense again? Leave the profession mechanics alone. If anything make the overpowered for PvP skills for PvE only and leave well enough alone.

Tinkering with what is good only makes things bad. Look at poor Grenth? Never will he see the light of high end GvG again. Incoming, destroyed...SR just got back to being useful again...and that took months.

The shouts aren't broken,people. Control isn't bad, it's the fact that people will always use the better skills to achieve their goals and you have to accept it. If you play a paragon, Like I do, you don't want this kind of nonsense happening to them.

Slider system? What does that entail? My paragon whispers instead of shouts? I hum and don't chant? If I hum, it only effects the immediate area and not full range? Why do people alway want to gimp a good thing because their prefered character of choice can't cope?

Leave shouts as they are! Realize what the Paragon is, and except that he does exactly what ANet meant it to do.

Paragons are leaders in combat. They shout to be heard when they give orders. They chant to encourage results, they sing war songs to get the results they desire. Don't start gimping them for the sole reason of because you cant "remove" a shout. If someone screams at you, do you forget it? can someone take the moment away? Pfft, use some logic when you start weilding the 800 lbs. Nerf hammer. Things can't be fixed once it smashes something, as we have seen in the past.

Another thing that keeps shouts,chants,etc. under the nerf bat and not weapon spells (another unstrippable buff that has been exploited before) is the fact that shouts stack, while wep spells do not.

I really like TGold's idea for managing shouts. We have all come to the fact that it is not so much the shouts that need nerfing, but the ability to chain them with multiple paras. Increasing recharge only makes more pvpers want to make paraways and the like. So the only way I see shouts not being chain exploited is by doing like TG's idea of making a chain disable relative to leadership. Yet this will also affect PvE (I have seen groups using 2 or more paras using motivation for hybrid heal/pressure/battery that this could mess up) The solution? make the disable work on SHOUTS ONLY. I don't know personally if people chain shouts much in pve, but I know that shouts are a good part of the reason that paragons are being nerfed to dust. So in essence, tweak shouts, bring back chants to their former utility (not NF preview overpoweredness) and try to leave paragons alone before no one can play them anymore.

And if they could do small little fixes to make shouts such as "the power is yours!" and "Incoming" at least playable, I'm sure we would see more diversified builds(maybe something for "TPIY" like All other party members within earshot gain 1..7..10 energy. You lose 6..4..4 energy for each party member affected) I have high hopes that GW:EN will bring useful AND balanced skills for the paragon.

@ alchemist: I hate the nerf bat too, but there has to be some nerf to somehow cauterize the paragon so no more nerfs happen on account of a broken skill mechanism. A paragon can't be a "leader" in combat when there are 7 other leaders fighting with him =P

I really think you've lost perspective. Your entire post is almost entirely reactionary, and has barely any relevance to what Series is trying to achieve. It certainly has the least to offer.
Nobody is trying to nerf anything. They are trying to add control so that the bad shouts/chants can actually become good and the good can perhaps become top skills. Surprise surprise, you got it wrong...

You yourself mention that Incoming is now 'destroyed'. The reason it's in such a state is because when it was first issued, it was somewhat acceptable on one Paragon in a team. Guess what though... It's a skill that can be stacked one after the other if you bring more than one Paragon. If you bring say, five. Hey! My team has perma-damage reduction at 50%. You lose.
Too strong. Nerfed. However it's not easy to nerf because there aren't many ways to control a shout. A 2 second cast would make it 'not a shout'. Making it a chant with cast time would make it pointless for it's actual purpose. Spike counter. Basically you either make it too good, or you make it worthless at it's task...

Are you starting to understand it now? Remove the problem of mass stacking and the skill doesn't need to be 'destroyed' any more. It can be buffed. Along with other shouts/chants weakened due to this problem. All of a sudden you have skills that are actually useful again.

It's not that hard to understand. Btw all the words in bold are important...

The funny thing is, all the posters opposed to my idea have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, and it appears no concept of balance either. If you think my suggestion is in any way a "nerf" to paragons, I suppose you thought that Anet has been buffing them since Nightfall came out? Here's a hint...

nerf- (v) To make worse

buff- (v) To make better

and finally

change- (v) To make different

My suggestion is a change/buff... essentially BUFFING the paragon but CHANGING it so that the buffs do not make it overpowered. I please ask that if you have no understanding of the game, you refrain from posting. Thanks.

The best way they can balance stuff is to separate the PvE and the PvP skill threes.

While some stuff thats overpowered in PvE, like Spiteful Spirit, will never be overpowered in GvG, and Mesmer energy denial or crippling stuff will never play a significant role in PvE, theres a good chance that anything that can kill lvl 28 monsters fast or that will help lvl 20s versus stand their ground vs mobs of 10 lvl 30 monsters, will be a bit overpowered and game changing in a match between teams of 8 lvl 20s humans.

In addition, people do bring stuff that only removes enchantments, or hexes or conditions. Or that blind or daze.

How the hell will you know if the warrior need that damn mending touch? MAybe no one is bringing blind. Or if the opposing team is not bringing hexes, why the heck do that mesmer took expel hexes as an elite?

People just assume they are and they know they are powerful enough to be left unchecked. Sure the anti-shouts hexes are a bit limited, but hey blinding surge against a ritualis/necro/ele spike team is a bit useless.

In the end what we have is a shout that isnt powerful enough for PvE and it isnt overpowered anymore in GvG.

Is Incoming overpowered in GvG? No.
Its not used either? Well, lots of things and even professions arent used in GvG, so what are u proposing?
You want what an incoming that can be up for how many seconds? 4 seconds? Bring 2 paragons and you have 6 seconds. Or are u proposing that they should let incoming be up half the match with just one paragon?

Im sorry but I m not using You Are All Alone in PvE, so I can surely make without Incoming, especially with something like Theres nothing to fear in my skill bar.

The problem of the paragon class is that it has too many defensive skills, and turtling stuff makes for very boooooooooooooring GvG matches.

I really don't know what your getting at here. Your use a general statement (ra ra, Pve should be separate from to Pvp, ra ra) just confuses the issue of what we are tackling. No one here is asking for an education in how pvp is different to pve (regardless if it's needed or not in some cases). Let me explain what this thread is trying to achieve...

Is Incoming over-powered in GvG? Hell no, because it's shit now. It's not good anywhere. The reason? It 'was' over-powered in GvG upon it's inception. So it was 'dealt' with in the only way Izzy could deal with it while keeping it's function. If the class had been built with Series idea, this situation need not have happened.

You comment on what is proposed without having actually understood what it is you question. Having Incoming up for 'half the match with just one paragon' is a complete miss-understanding.
With this suggestion Incoming will be up on players stats bars, but it's effect won't be. The point of this is to make further Incoming skills ineffective or unusable while this icon is up. Let me elaborate...

Incoming Has a recharge of 20 seconds. It can currently only last 3 seconds (which is abysmal). Let's say you increased the duration to something reasonable on one paragon like say 6 seconds. What happens? People stack 4 Paragons and achieve 24 seconds of the thing making it grossly over-powered.
However, imagine having a situation where Incoming is on all the affected party members for a full 20 seconds, but it's effect is only active for 6. The idea is that while this 'greyed-out' Incoming is on your party, further Incoming shouts have no effect. All of a sudden Incoming can not be stacked and it's good on 'only one Paragon', but shit on more than that. Which is highly desirable.

The nice thing about a system like this is that The amount of stackabilty' is completely controllable by altering the duration of the grey-out shout. This is the primary goal. Additional control on something that is inherently incredibly difficult to control.

Just because 'lots of things and even professions arent used in GvG' is not a good enough excuse to leave things broken or unusable...


...So yeah. If you want to make a comment that is not greeted with contempt, at least understand what it is your rubbishing first please...

I like this idea a lot, but maybe you could make it even more tied in with the primary? Say paragon #1 uses "Incoming!", while paragons 2,3, and 4 have it in their skill bar. "Incoming!" would be disabled for any other party members carrying it (or maybe whoever was affected by it) based on their Leadership. This is due to another paragon not being able to issue another command to his/her troops unless they hold a considerable amount of charisma,otherwise their command (shout) would go unheard. Make it similar to Death magic's limits on minions. Go for "For every 2 ranks in Leadership, your shouts are disabled for 1 less second after the same shout has been used by an ally" or "For every 2 rank of Leadership, your shouts are disabled for 1 less second after being affected by the same shout".

Maybe?