More Paragon Nerfs-Time for a Solution.

Before you think "Oh noes its a QQ Thread", let it be known its not.

The recent skill balance wasn't so great for Paragon players although im sure those who have played it for awhile are used to the nerfs. Go For The Eyes!, Aggressive Refrain, Watch Yourself!. All of these were nerfed for obvious reasons which are targeting para's directly. These changes may seem great for some but noone listens to the Paragon community and they would let you know that its not ok.

GFTE! and WY! were E-Management and you would never run out of energy as long as you gained adrenaline which was required due to some of the Energy intensive Shouts,Chants,Echos, etc.


Aggressive Refrain: Everyone saw this skill was gonna get Nerfed but Cracked Armor reapplied every few seconds thats overnerfed because of two reasons.

1. Acts as a cover condition and at 25 Energy seems kinda strange.
2. Hero AI will constantly try to remove the cracked armor which gets reapplied every time!

It would be much more balanced if it was -20armor while attacking. Thats a compromise. And would make much more since cause how are you Aggressive without attacking?


The problem is not the skills, but Finales,Leadership, and Counters

The Finales are just plain crazy, how they were designed would obviously be exploited by having multiple Paragons in a party. If their had to be a change to these I'd suggest Whenever "you" use a shout or chant these Finales go off that way it isn't broken.

Leadership: The most broken energy gain in the game, Everyone knows it, But how to fix such a Primary Attribute without gimping the Paragons as a whole?

This will sound stupid but what if they removed the energy gain period. and gave us say 3-4pips and then maybe something along the lines of increasing the amount of time a shout or echo last.

Also changing the armor to 70 would also be nice as I realize Paras are not desirable targets to attack.

Counters: Their should be echo removal for sure, if maybe they buffed enchantment stripping skills to either remove an echo as well or remove 1 enchant or echo depending on the situation. Shouts are a bit tricky, i believe those should be handled differently, they should not be strippable but because of this have their effects weaker then those that are.

My ideas may be stupid but I hope we can all agree a compromise is needed to fix this once and for all.

WY and GFTE were really a lazy mans method of trying to fix leadership - and really, WY lasts long enough to cover the 8 second downtime, GFTE obviously decreases pressure a bit, in PVE it's not going to make a slightest of difference on peoples opinions on Paragons. I think everyone agrees the real issue is Leadership - the GFTE and WY nerf were just the easiest way to do something about, and considering the balance looked like Izzy logged on for 10 minutes, watched a bit of obs then did it... yeah...

I'd personal just prefer if Aggresive gave -20 (all the time / when attacking - don't care) than apply cracked armor.

And so what would the primary attribute for a paragon be?
Right now it works where you get one energy back per person in hearing range for every two points in leadership. Maybe change it to one energy back every three points in leadership. That would cut energy return slightly, but not make it completely useless.

That is a good idea but still people would run 15 Leadership for 5 energy gain and still get free energy from GFTE/WY So it would effect very little. Basically Adrenaline to Energy is the biggest problem.

Adrenaline shouts/chants: Half the energy gain.
Energy shouts/chants: Returns up to half the energy required for the shout/chant max.

There is no reason why using Anthem of Flame should net me energy, really.

I agree but what would the return be for 5 energy chants, 2 or 3 energy? and also that does seem like a fair balance without changing the attribute too drastically. Their is a problem with Leadership and my suggestions probably are not the best ones but its to address the situation.

I would say 3 energy, round it up.

In this form, Leadership would become similar to Expertise except Leadership has adrenaline chants/shouts to give out free energy as opposed to three pips that a Ranger has. You could return GftE! and WY! to a 0 recharge, and maybe give them in increase in adrenaline by a strike since they are no longer providing as big an energy return.

those are great ideas! I think some skills should be buffed for good measure as well cause to fix the Paragon you gotta change everything at the same time.

This 'nerf' is a joke. The only thing they did was force me to remove condition removal from my heroes so that they dont lemming away all their energy. A better fix would have been to change it to something along the line of frenzy, which does not apply a condition, but instead has a armor reduction.

The changes to WY and GftE does not change anything either. The way I fix this on my paragon is to switch from my furious spear to a zealous spear. Nerf Fixed.

Hes got a point Zealeouse spear + increased attack speed = OP
we got to ban the Zealeouse mod from being inserted into spears.

I just wonder why were paragon ever released as powerfull as they were...

nonelite skills giving equivalent of 4 energy regen, easily maintainable and under controll of caster.

tons of "whenever X happens, Y happens too" skill where X is dead easy to achieve and Y powerfull.

lotsa partywide prot/heal which was destined to be followup Rts spirit thing, both in abuse and harshness of nerf.

Half of skills having discounts (= leadership energy return) that even rangers cant dream about.

Infinitely mainatinable and decently powerfull stuff with 0 cost in long run (refrains)...

Paragon can never be fixed, only radically reworked. And that is not going to happen. Petty nerfs like recent one never solve core problem ... ease of abuse. All this one did was to annoy H/H users with monks burning energy...

In a perfect world, we would have gotten this:

Leadership: For each rank in Leadership, your shouts / chants last 2% longer. Your shouts / chants affect adjacent allies. At 3 ranks of Leadership, they affect nearby allies. At 8 ranks of Leadership, they affect allies in the area. At 12 ranks of Leadership, they affect allies within earshot.

Then, with that done, the shouts / chants / echoes would need to be more adrenaline based than energy based. And give them 3 energy pips to compensate. If Anet was trying to create a "ranged warrior," then they should have looked at the warrior's strengths and weaknesses and understood that a class with 2 energy pips should not have an energy-intensive skill set. Because of Leadership as it is now, blindness does not shut down a Paragon as effectively as it would shut down other physical classes. It shuts down their DPS, but not their utility.

The problem with Paragons is that they are a class that needs energy but only has 2 pips of energy. Such a paradox was destined to fail.

Paragon: nice idea, extremely poor implementation.

I think the idea of the class was a great one, however they brought in mechanics (echo,chants,refrains,) But didn't add effective counters the only counters are to specific to be warrented on another classes bar, and you are right the Paragon is still broken because of the core mechanics.


Well you gotta wonder what was the purpose of Paragons, another ranged attacker is pointless but because of the utility its wanted some. But they nerf the utility because everything just synergizes to well with Leadership.

3 Pips regen would seem fair to compensate for loss of energy gain from Leadership.

Make the extra energy regen come from a 'high' rank in leadership, like 14-16 would give you one extra pip, so with a +2 rune you're sacing a little hp for more energy gain, its reasonable.

As for aggressive refrain nerf, wtf? If the cracked armor is constantly having hero or hench ai removing it then yes that is a major problem in pve, or even pvp.

I also like the idea of armor dropping to 70 (unless they put negative armor on aggressive, which wont happen most likely, cause it makes sense). Im a paragon fan personally so its not cause i hate them or anything. But come on, 80 armor level is for warriors and thats how it should have remained.

The AR nerf is very punishing cause it causes more problems, the -20 armor is fine but getting a covering condition is not. Their's so many Leadership ideas floating around it does seem like a dousy to try to fix to make it fair.

Because everyone was too busy freaking out about the dervishes to notice the paragons during the preview event...

Only because mysticism was seriously imbalanced...

Anyways, Racthohs ideas seem pretty decent.