Paragon or Ranger

Ok, I've had enough of rattling this back and forth in my brain. I have a dilemma. Right now, I have a Level 20 Paragon, with about 40 Paragon skills acquired, Elite Sunspear armor, and shes completed Nightfall. The thing is, I never touch her anymore. After all of the nerfs Paragon has seen, I haven't really found it fun to play Paragon at all. I mostly play PvE, and the ability to run SY! and TNTF has lost its novelty; I found it much more fun to spam SY! on my Warrior while actually doing other things.
I've been wanting to play Ranger for a while now. I got a taste of Ranger during the Factions Preview Event and through ordering my Heroes and I like it, but I don't want to shell out more money for a character slot. So heres the dilemma: Should I tough it out with my Paragon, hoping that the next update will finally breathe some life into a, in my opinion, broken class; or should I lose all my accomplishments on Paragon and just give into making a Ranger? My Paragons life is in your hands!

IMO Rangers are far more fun to play than Paragons PvE and PvP wise. Why? Because instead of standing there and using shouts and 'javelining' things you could be interupting or barraging and snaring things and ultimately getting into the action of battle.
Well yeah thats my highly subjective view of them because whenever i play one i get bored REALLY fast.

However you have a dilemma. Ask yourself if the 15k armor or time spent on your Paragon is worth anything to you. Also are you planning to delete or buying a new character slot?

P.S. I don't think Paragons will get their so needed buff.

Or more than 3 different faces//unique looking armor sets.
Paragon ftl. Rangers have been a crowd favourite forever, have a lot more freedom for customization, and are still highly effective. It's a shame about the armor, but if you start to miss paragon skills, theres nothing stopping you from taking paragon as a secondary after assencion or.. if in any other chapters, you buy the secondary prof for 500 gold.

I don't plan on shelling out more money to Areanet at this time. Haven't got my moneys worth from GW:EN yet, but thats another subject. I'm heavily leaning towards the fact that Paragons won't get a needed buff, since time and time again, we hear that full focus is put towards GW2. If anyone has any news otherwise, I'd love to hear it before I delete her. 15k armor and time spent are worth a lot to me, but if I will honestly never touch the character, its rather pointless.
I'm glad to hear that Ranger is fun. It seems like Rangers have more "options" than Paragons, in terms of building a skillbar. Rangers can run Trappers, Thumpers, Interrupters, and have some hefty DoT spells, not to mention an array of Preps and Bow-types to chose from; whereas I see Paragons get short-length damage reduction shouts and echos, one type of Spear... and... a minor array of attack skills, most of which carry penalties now. I guess thats because Rangers have skills from 4 games, Paragons 2.

I already started to do that, with my BiP Necro in The Deep, and a few tossed on my Warrior as well.

Take ranger as your secondary and buy some ranger skills and play around with that. you won't be quite as effective obviously and in longer battler you will have some energy problems, but it will give you a taste of the ranger class, especially in harder areas that you wouldn't have gotten playing the factions preview event.

personally I like my paragon and have never done the p/w thing where all I do is spam party buffs. I went p/r and run with a pet flamingo and more offensive builds. If the certain mission I am doing is hard or I need some extra party wide fire power I can switch out my pet for some party buffs and what not but there is definitely more to the paragon that sy and tntf.

Just do it, ranger is far more fun.

agree with above :P

honestly, i would take a paragon over a ranger for basic pve...they just have more to offer. Rangers have a small degree of versatility which makes them more fun to play. But uh in my own opinion paragons are more useful :s

You can't be serious, ranger's are by the most most versatile in the whole game. what has a paragon got? spam shouts and a whole bunch of similar attack skills. A ranger can play more roles then i have fingers, disruption, trapping, melee, degen, the list goes on...

paragons have unremovable party buffs and DPS on par with an axe warrior..

There's a golden rule I have. Play what YOU want and have fun with. I was an excellent monk in Guild Wars, but, just like you, I found being in the backlines and just defending so boring. So now I play something I DO enjoy: Elementalist. If I want defence, I have earth. If I want offense, I have fire. If you want to play a ranger and find your paragon fruitless, then you know what to do.

It's not about how much virtual wealth you spent on that character. It's about how much fun you can have while playing the game. That will always be priority.

thats what i said..
yawn.. i'm talking about having fun playing the class not doing damage

Well, I know this is a paragon vs ranger issue....

but what are your other character?

Once you start playing your ranger, will you feel that you don't play your other characters enough? Do you have any mules that you can get rid of?

Personally, Para and Ranger can both be fun. I, personally, deleted my para a while ago so I could make a Mesmer. I'm enjoying that =)

Point is you already have a ranger type character your paragon.

You have similar armour a weapon with the range of a shortbow and a faster fire rate.
Energy is slightly better with recharge rate the same.
So why not take the suggestion already made and run as a Paragon/Ranger.

You will miss out on the skills based around expertise and there are some good ones, but there are plenty of great ones in the other ranger skill sets.


Depends what skills you want for your ranger all you would miss from running your paragon as a Paragon/Ranger is Expertise the ranger prime skill and the armours elemental protection.

Expertise is the rangers energy management with each point put into it reducing the cost of a skill by 4%.
I seldom have many points if any in Expertise with my Rangers.

I would never delete my Core class characters, considering I put over 2 years of work into them, brought them all through the 3 campaigns, and still find them great fun to play (Warrior, Monk, Necromancer, Elementalist). So that leaves these to chose from to delete:
Assassin, Dervish, Ritualist, and Paragon. Assassin sees a lot of use in AB, Dervish sees a lot of use in GW:EN, so their deletion is out of the question. Ritualist is pretty dusty lately, but I still find some fun in playing a spirit spammer, especially offensively in PvE, and Channeling nuker isnt half bad either. It honestly comes down to deleting Ritualist, which I've had since the release of Factions; or my Paragon, which was created after Dervish in Nightfall. Ritualist has actually gotten some buffs with skills (I actually like the Spirit Burn "nerf"), wheras my Paragon has been beaten down update after update.

Rangers got all kinds of farming and fun.

Do ranger. I am.

You can't be serious, ranger's are by the most most versatile in the whole game. what has a paragon got? spam shouts and a whole bunch of similar attack skills. A ranger can play more roles then i have fingers, disruption, trapping, melee, degen, the list goes on...


A Paragon is going to lose when comparing versatility with the Ranger. The Paragon has so few skills, being +10 from GW:EN and the hand full from NF. The Ranger (Core) has received skills from every campaign and another +10 from GW:EN. There is more free-play and less limitations when it comes to selecting skills. That is the downfall of the Dervish and Paragon thus they rely on their secondary for more combinations.


You have similar armour a weapon with the range of a shortbow and a faster fire rate.
Energy is slightly better with recharge rate the same.
So why not take the suggestion already made and run as a Paragon/Ranger.

Not quite. Similar armor? Ranger has 70 universal armor, 100 vs element, and 130 if you choose against a specific element; I doubt many do that anymore.

The Paragon has 80 base armor, +16 from a shield, 96 armor universal. Going with Centurion insignia like all good Paragon's should (general PvE) you have 106 universal armor. Way better than the Ranger's armor.

My bad though I thought you were bashing the Paragon. Reading sucks.

I have a Paragon and honestly I had the most fun with it. In PvE I H/H my entire way through NF before the TNTF nerf. The game was so ridiculously easy that TNTF nerf was inevitable. I also do not use SY! at all. My Allegiance rank is very low (1) and I don't go /W. I went with /Me and spammed Cautery Signet, Remedy Signet, and Signet of Synergy.

I'd keep your Paragon and try to go above the challenge. There's been plenty of nerfs: Aggressive Refrain is countered with Purifying Finale and many people do not use Motivation. I do, and I prefer it over Command. I think the nerfs took out cookie-cutter builds which wasn't the intention as more so PvP balance =S

I have fun with my Paragon still though. That's me, because I wanted a class that can provide great damage, have great durability in battle, and provide excellent support to my entire party. With the right shouts and attack skills I don't face low amounts of energy and do not need to stop attacking or defending.

But I do agree with what a previous poster mention: Play what you like. This topic is great for reading opinions but you should find your own. I wouldn't say the Paragon is far from broken. The nerfs have not killed the class. It makes Paragons have to think on a wider scale when it comes to utilizing all skills properly.

Yeah play, keep, delete whatever you want. Personally I like to play both, but Paragon is just way overpower in PVE imo, which is good. 3 Paragons, 3 Necros, 1 UG warder and 1 Lod hybrid = HM made easy.

That's a tough decision you're facing there ... I could never ditch either my ranger or paragon since they are both excellent classes while the playing experience differs greatly. Basically, a paragon without a party is just a goon but ranger is a wonderfully self-sufficient character. Being a late addition, paragon as a class is somewhat less fleshed out than a ranger but that doesn't necessarily make it a boring one to play. A mix of offense and passive and active defense is quite challenging to play properly if you are not used to playing a dual support role on the PvP side. On the other hand, there are mindnumbingly boring cookie-cutter ranger builds as well (splinter barrage, anyone?) that you're supposed to play if PUGging.

So, if you're happy when providing solid support to a party then stick with your paragon but if you seek a more independent experience then ranger is the way to go. Arguably, of the two ranger is more fun to play because of its versatility. There's isn't a thing a ranger can't do

not to be reductive, but playing ranger eventually boils down spamming barrage or broad head in pve. You're offered some interrupts, but nothing is stopping you from running power spike on your gon (it's actually quite good).

No one here can give you a definitive answer - so far of all the characters I have deleted I have only not regretted one (and I have deleted many, but none since I could finally purchase extra character slots). My suggestion is to spring for the character slot - if you like the game as much as seem too you will eventually re-roll that paragon and spend the next 150 hours thinking "Why, oh why, did I do this" and then angry every time your old characters birthday rolls around.

If you really do not want to purchase a slot then we can not truly know what the future holds nor can we tell you how much fun you will have with the ranger. That is always a problem deleting your least liked character if it has quite a bit of stuff done on it - what if you dislike the new one even more? If one of your other "liked" character doesn't have anything you would regret loosing delete them and play that ranger, then (and give it some time to make sure) you *really* know you prefer the ranger delete the Paragon and re-roll the older liked character.

If your only obstacle is buffs I, personally, seriously doubt that the Paragon will get that buff. Every other class in the game either plays a damager or a support character - the paragon can do both at the same time. This makes a nice addition to the party and a fairly strong character when you only have one, however it isn't hard to put together a multi-paragon team build that is unbalanced and that is inherent in the class. I doubt there will be any new PvE only paragon skills introduced and any others will be balanced for PvP - but who knows?

If you make a single paragon useful then the multi-paragon team is unbalanced. If you make the multi-paragon team balanced then they are poor with only one. The only consolation prize is if your paragon character gets both the paragon heroes and modifies one of the unbalanced multi-paragon PvP builds - but then there are probably other more effective builds for PvE land (since you are not facing the same variety of team builds nor do you face the level of teamwork you do in PvP).

I wouldn't do it, 10 dollars isn't much money and I would just get another slot. But then there is no real reason to have a character that you never play when it can be replaced by one that you will use.