Questioning The Use of The Imbagon

For anyone that has used one, most people will know that an Imbagon is mostly used for the Allegiance Rank skill "Save Yourselves!", whilst keeping at range and negating the 'all but you' effect of the shout. But lately I've started to question the skills use - is it really worth it?

I've tried a few PvE Team builds out, more notably the Meta ones. I started off with Racway first, and I could keep my SY! up for the most part with 5 seconds. But I found I couldn't Vanquish some areas. If there were too many enemies I just got overwhelmed. Then I tried Discord, and it seemed as though I could handle huge pressures, because when the enemies started to rise, the minions would rise therefore. There was literally no place I couldn't go into (save for elite missions and the like).

So this lead me to believe that SY! was not worth the effort, even for all its posturing and boasting a massive 82.3% damage reduction. Why is this? Because Save Yourselves is NOT 82.3% damage reduction. It barely scratches the surface.

Here are a few statistics -

Save Yourselves is primarily a HM skill. Normal mode is whimp mode when you've been playing the game for 3 years or so (like me) and hardly needs anything to pass through the campaign. So in this mode, there are powerful nukers, skill spammers, reduced activation times and faster IAS.

It doesn't take much to figure out most kinds of Necromancer and Mesmer damage go straight through SY!, so powerful SS damage from Shadow Beasts will do big numbers.

Then, there's melee damage, but SY! doesn't affect this much either. HM Melee professions tend to be the type of skill spamming, thus high damage output. People should know that the +damage effect from attack skills is too, armor-ignoring. HM enemies are constantly spamming skills anyway so it won't do much against that sort of damage. Blocking is a more effective route especially with 75%, rendering the attack skills hopeless, for the mostpart.

Physical damage is much easier to counter as always with ace-in-the-hole skills such as Soothing Images, Well of Silence or blocking, Zombies in SoO. While casters only really need comfort from Dazing possibly, and usually have what it takes to remove those conditions. Imbagons need pampering constantly with condition and hex removal to make sure they get the shout through, as well as often needing a Dark Fury player in case of blocking or missy Hexes.

So what I come to is that SY! is only really useful against Ele nukers, a great deal. Am I missing something? From where I see it this build is not worth much more than traditional Monking (PS, Guardian, Aegis, the usual). I know Imbagons are held as something sacred being the only good build Paragons have (hence Imbalanced-agon) so when I criticise it try not to be rude and dismissive. Tell me where I am wrong.

Thanks.

Aside from all of the armor ignoring damage, 2 SY on your frontline (easy to slot in w/x and x/w formats) the imbagon largely becomes redundant.

It really is kind of a specialized build, there are some places it is amazing and others where it just doesn't do much. It really is a gimmick since, other than TNtF, the entire bar is based around spamming SY.

But it is going to be highly sought after in a PuG. It is still largely effective and ridiculously easy to play. Much like Healers Boon monks, they really are inferior to WoH/Prot hybrids, but they are easy enough to play that just about anyone can do it. Same reason PuG's have always hated frenzy.

Supposedly, enemy nukers can do serious amounts of damage in HM, so I'd say that alone justifies the imbagon's presence, to say nothing of his effects on physical damage dealers.

But you have to remember, the imbagon has more than SY!. There's two other damage-reducing skills in his arsenal. As well as whatever else he puts on his bar (GftE, for example).

You're wrong - somewhat.

The first problem /w the paragon is that it's one of the last classes to be released, hence it has the smallest skill selection to begin with.

The second problem is that 1/4th of the paragons skill tree is utterly, brokenly useless (motivation.)

I don't find SY! worth it, as Reverend said, the build is based entirely on maintaining it, and not only can DS warriors keep it up more regularly and for longer durations, but Imbas sacrifice alot of utility to spam it.

To the person 3 or 4 posts down that will eventually say it, NO, IMBAS DO NOT DO HIGH DAMAGE. They relying on too many 1sec casting time/ >6sec recharge skills to really spam attacks.

The PvE skills I usually lean on Ebon Battle Standard of honor and There's Nothing to Fear, the damage output from a well placed standard is far more valuable than SY! I also cut out all the chants in favor of shouts, as every second you're chanting is a second that you're not attacking.

For any HM area in Guild Wars, cookie cutter builds like the Imbagon are going to be inferior to builds designed specifically for a zone. Are the omnipresent Sab and Discord awesomely effective in every area? Of course not, so why should the Imbagon be?

That said, you have to check to see where the enemy damage is coming from when you're deciding on whether to run Imbagon. Like you hinted at, high powered HM elementalists are a great reason to bring such a great armor buff, but that's not all. Warrior, ranger, and paragon auto-attacks in HM can deal big damage to squishies, so SY can really help here, negating virtually all damage outside of the +bonus from the skill. Mesmers and necros your main threats? You may want to consider running another bar. No real damage threats but powerful monks in your way? Think about things like Stunning Strike. You just have to come prepared, that's all.

I like D-Slash as much as the next guy, but I tend to favor a para bringing SY if we're going to bring it at all. It's not as much of a problem with careful pulling and grouping, but all too often I find that heroes like to run out of earshot if I'm frontline.

Just my two cents ^_^

I prefer SY on a sin or barrager. Easy upkeep without major build interference, where the imbagon is completely built to keep it up with maybe 3-4 variabile skills...granted I love my paragon..I hate using one build with it, it's imbagon or porogon, boring.

The Dragonslash guy is always going to be inferior because of positioning.

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