Update 12/10/07

Bear with me, replacing the diamond with a lockpick in Frostmaw is MEH!

Diamonds still cost more, at least a bit. And Lockpicks have value, yes, but they are sooo boring... never a girl's best friends.

Actually not even my grandma gives me gifts or rewards me with things that are as boring as a lockpick...

gold to the mesmer updates
tin to the chilblains nerf

If you think Paragon is dead now you're a RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing idiot and horrible at the game. Not like that's news though.

My views:

Assassin : Mmmm ok.

Dervish : Wearying strike needed that, tones down Melandru a little which is good. However, the scale of the change is small.

Elementalist : Ward Melee Change was definitely needed and 15e cost fixes some of the main problems with it, like fc mor wards. Not sure how the other changes will work, gonna have to see.

Mesmer : Power Drain got a solid buff, Drain enchant some changes, but not sure how useful it is. The cast time will still hurt it. MoR got a hit, which is amazing - still usable but not quite as ridiculous. Surge/Burn/Leak all are buffed, they didn't really need it but ok - going to be alot of Surge mesmers around since HEV took a slight hit as well.

Monk: SoD change makes it much easier to fake out, that's going to reduce the skill's power somewhat against good teams. SoR just hits runners, probably going to be more rit runners than before.

Necromancer : Erm k.

Ranger : NR/Tranq teams (few as they are) take a small hit, but more importantly, spiritway as a whole gets a kick. DIEEEE!

Paragon : GftE and WY (honorary para skill) take a nice hit, the paragon energy engine is hammered - maybe leadership can manage energy costs rather than giving near-infinite now? Don't know, not complaining at this though, paragon energy was ridiculous. AR change seems negligible, but the changes look interesting so far.

Warrior : Mm ok. Not sure what that will do overall, besides a slight toning down of axe wars.

Final comments :

Paragons in PvE don't care about this, you still have TNTF and SY! (also honorary para skill) and the ability to spam them and other things. It won't make a dent in the class overall, I expect, except for some of the more ridiculous energy-requiring builds (and really, they weren't as good anyway).

Ritualist passive spirit spamming is a mindset that didn't deserve to live. The more balanced ritualists that actually use skills that aren't glued down won't care about this, and that's a far more interesting thing to see in a game.

Overall, a lot of good changes in the general direction, but quite a few are too small to matter.

Right, but this is possible to hit multiple foes, making it almost like mirror except with any enchantment.

Yes, good point.

Congrats, another RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed to hell update.

60 AL paragons, E-management gone down the drain, so yays.

Gotta love Izzy.....

On the bright side, I am going to keep playing my paragon, and hope they fix this mess that they made out of GftE, although watch yourself is not bad, because it does not end for usually 10 seconds, and that 4 sec recharge is not bad for it.

Edit: I made it sound alot worse than it is. The way they nerfed AR is ridiculous......but other than that, they are just more nerfs to lay on the paragon, and surprisingly, the class is still UNBELIEVABLE.

Just took my paragon out for a little run.....WY and GftE are surprisingly not affected by this nerf that much....but AR is annoying the piss out of me. Cracked armor is unbelievably annoying, and I am definitely going to vouch to take that away. Either reduce the duration of AR, and take away the cracked armor, or make it like....idk...disable all skills for like 5 secs. It just needs to be changed. H+H drain the bejeesus of energy away when I'm spamming adrenal shouts. Izzy needs to get on the smart pony and take a long ride.

Damn you for making me go with Flail = P

A Warrior can out provide a paragon party wide armor buffs (Armor bonus caps at +25 outside of one skill) while keeping up Flurry, Frenzy, Flail, etc etc, not to mention out-damage Paragons threefold.
These two skills are just proverbial straws that broke the camels back. Check any Paragon build posted anywhere and you'll see most, if not all, relied on GftE for energy management. If AR didn't reapply the condition, covering other, more dangerous conditions, I would be fine with the AR nerf, even if it is a strange way to balance something.
"Incoming!" is a joke unless you are running 4 Paragons. Defensive Anthem is a more expensive, more conditional Aegis, a non-elite. Focused Anger is bugged, or they just don't care that you can't reach 101%+ adrenaline, despite what the skill says. Anthem of Guidance, Crippling Anthem, Anthem of Fury, "It's just a flesh wound," "The Power Is Yours!" and Song of Purification are all worthless with an Elite status. This leaves Paragons with Song of Restoration, Angelic Bond, and now, Soldier's Fury. This is just the Elites, there are far more normal skills that are plain useless, like the entire Lyric line. And now their e-management skill GftE's is useless in that sense, and their only non-elite IAS covers conditions for the enemy. Try and tell me this isn't a dead class. It may have a few niche builds for certain areas, but every other class can out-do them in any area. They might as well rename the class to: "There's Nothing to Fear!" Shouter.

Wow..........you have no idea what a Paragon is capable of, at all....

A warrior has more support than a paragon, you say?

A warrior may be able to out damage a paragon with other weapons, but the fact that we can reduce party damage by half, give bonus armor, and still pack a powerful punch leads me to believe that these WY and GftE nerfs don't even begin to cripple us, and AR is easily replaced by Flail, which is a handy skill to have on a paragon or ranger.

Just...wow.

And more damage, you say?

Again, just wow.

A spear chucks as fast as a sword, but more damage, not including skills.....

Good idea *reinstalls fable*

My Mesmer is officially VERY happy about this update and wishes to express his profound gratitude to the people of ANet

I suggest you read the first line again, particularly the sections I've bolded:
Reduce damage by half for 3 seconds, with an Elite. And bonus armor caps at +25, something "WY!" basically do easily, minus maybe 3 points of armor, depending on how high you take Tactics.

Flail is a Warrior skill, not a Paragon skill. It may be handy on Paragons and Rangers, but its a Warriors skill first and formost. The fact that a different class has an IAS you can use doesn't make up for the fact that their own is crippled.

Wow. Attack skills set the level of what damage output a class has, not the speed in which they can C+Space. Of course a Spear chucks as fast as a Sword, but once you start chaining Adrenaline attacks on a Warrior, Paragon's damage with its own attack skills is left in the dust.

So stand your ground doesn't count, even though it is 24 armor? I use WY anyways, but TNTF takes the cake on party wide buffs. It's not elite...ToF takes that up to around 50%, also non elite, with two skills, you have successfully copied Incoming! Which is utter crap because it lasts for 2-3 seconds, unless you expect heavy spike damage in short bursts. I agree that a warrior hits harder, but paragon support > warrior support.

No, "Stand Your Ground!" doesn't add to "WY!" If you use both, the most you are going to get is +25 Armor party-wide. I'll look for a link on the wikis to see if I can point you to the article that states that Armor bonuses got capped.

Like I said, they might as well rename the entire class to "TNTF Shouter."

One of the few remaining skills in a Paragon's arsenal. That is, if you bring a SF ele or two. Like I said, there are a few niche builds that will work some places (not all monsters burn). But the name "TNTF Shouter" still fits this class better than "Paragon." Pray it doesn't get nerfed again.


EDIT: I found a link to the wiki article (http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Armor#Notes):

Paragon can nearly maintain "Save Yourselves!" with something like Focused Anger. That is not niche. That is ridiculously powerful.

Wow, that's funny cause Chillblains was giving me a lot of trouble on my eariler droks runs lol...

Sweet HM Gwen.. ty Anet..

Screw this. I'm tired to having to micromanage my paragons and not enjoying playing ME - you know, ANet, my character. Mickey mousing around with builds and tweaking till the sun goes down is fun for some folks, but not others. GW2 better have some separation of PvP skills so that those people like me who just want an average game experience in PvE can do it without worrying about it being nerfed all to shit.

Well, back to the Build Wiki to see what other options are available for Paragons . . . again.

Morghan is damned pissed off about it. And I don't much care for having to seek out a human player with a high luxon/kurzick rank when I want a paragon.

You also forgot to mention that aggressive refrain was just nerfed out of usefulness. Sure, it was overpowered before. But now it's total crap. Can't Izzy at least try to hit the middle ground?

Was already on life support after rit lord took a hit and the cost shelter went way the hell up. Knocking another 50 hp off was NOT a good thing...

nice to see the hard mode in in time for the weekedn event, i will be spendign time with my main character gettign its titles up quite a bit.

Happens to be a mesmer too so happy with those changes,

gg anet

You don't need a rank. It takes 4 attacks to charge SY! Base level is 3s.

I didn't forget to mention it because the change to AR makes no real difference. -20 armor on a heavily armored, well positioned character? Oh noes.

You're right. Removing passive spirit spamming would have been a good thing.

I didn't mean WY and Stand your Ground both at the same time....I'm not entirely stupid.....I mean, I use WY instead of Ground, because I agree that it is much better.

Warrior Skillbar:
Dragon slash [E]
"Save Yourselves!"
"For Great Justice!"

Wow, now I'm maintaining "Save Yourselves!" on the party until "FGJ!" burns out, and my secondary is open. And I can outdamage Paragons since I'm a Warrior. Again, Warrior beats Paragon in armor bonuses. I could even go onto making a PvE bar that can maintain "Save Yourselves!" indefinitely by using one Paragon skill (with a little luck from Air of Superiority)
Warrior/Paragon Skillbar:
Dragon slash [E]
"Save Yourselves!"
Flail
Air of Superiority
Enduring Harmony
"For Great Justice!"
Leaves you 2 slots, probably a Res and a self-armor buff. I find "I Am Unstoppable!" works nicely.

"WY!" is a Warrior skill, not Paragons. Warrior beats Paragon in Armor bonus again.

It was fixed already.

So hows that extra damage reduction from TNTF treating you?

Seperation of skills will not make the game better, stop having double standards regarding the game.

Also, if you are mad because a skill got reduced in damage slightly this game isnt for you. Oh wait, this reflects ANY MMO/CORPG w/e you want to call it. Roll with the nerfs intead of bitching about them.

AND AGAIN, repeating myself for the umpteenth time: Then they should just rename the class to "TNTF Shouter," if its the only thing it can outdo all other classes on.

I hope you are kidding. Almost all nerfs are based on PvP abuse. And PvE is just left to suffer for it.

Correct. It was a GREAT thing. There's so much more to a Rit than hiding behind spirits. People get their noses out of stupid Communing and see what else the class has to offer.
Or...

-gasp-

put some points into Spawning Power, the Ritualist primary attribute that had no use before!

No, I'm not. I dont understand why you people think pve is ok for overpowered crap. I'm sorry if I want challenge and want pve to have anything to do with pvp.

Ok, you're right. It's a major note that Paragon's outdo other classes only on the use of Paragon-specific skills that are inherently broken for PvE, to perform the role paragons were originally designed for.

By your same logic, Warriors should be renamed 'Dragon Slash spammer' since that's all they do better than other classes.

If the change heavily effects PvE, then the builds in PvE relied heavily on it. In that case, it can be said to be a change for PvE as well to reduce over-reliance on a specific aspect. Purely PvP changes, for the most part, have little or no effect on PvE simply because of how imbalance the other aspects are.

I don't understand the Chilblains nerf. Making SB/OF/SF harder to strip is not nice. Poor Jade Scarabs!

Was it being abused in HA or something? I've never seen it in TA or GvG, I don't think.

----

And I note with dismay that Promise Dancing sins were not nerfed.

That's too tiny to even care about..

QQ at para nerf ><...but good thing about the minipet thing...but wut the hell is wit chillblains...ive never seen neone use it...y nerf it O_o

The Aggressive Refrain nerf is quite bad for those playing with H/H though.

Monk Hero/Hench AI have quite a high priority for removing conditions/hexes if they have such skills on their bar. So Lina will try to spam dismiss condition whenever the cracked armor is reapplied, leading to waste of energy. Or even worse, she may decide to remove my cracked armor instead of throwing a ZB on someone with low health.

However if you can spare the points into motivation(and a skill slot), [skill=Purifying Finale]Purifying Finale[/skill](need to cast it after AR for it to work) will remove the cracked armor immediately.

I don't consider it suffering when we know 100% of the time what skills the enemies will be using. Just a minor inconvenience that we have to use up a few of those 100s of unused skill points to buy new skills to adapt our builds.

So far after reading through this update thread, I can say it really does not change much. Pargons are just as powerful as a backup class then ever before. Overall this skill update was fine. I think the only thing I have a problem with is that blasted SF buff, which should not have happen.

I was hoping for something a little more substancial but at least the changes made weren't bad overall.

*sigh* I know, I know. As a Para, I'm sorta

I like the feature a lot, too. I think it's having a major positive impact on the community.

Hmmm... interesting concept there. I think you've hit on something!
Yes, and you remember Santa's list? The "naughty" and the "nice?" I foresee a lot of lumps of coal in stocking come the holidays.

(Oh, and please don't take me seriously with that last bit. As Andrew said, there are no plans to action accounts of those engaged in the activities earlier today.)

Gaile, could you give me a few stacks of coal for the holidays? It's worth a bit at the trader and... y'know...

maybe they should make it like frenzy, but u take X% more damage or have -20al (not done via a condition)

Do you have any control over the skills that get hit or not? Cause para