Can the balance team please modify some useless paragon skills?

All professions have a number of weak or useless skills, but the useless paragon skills hurt more because there aren't very many skills to begin with. My intent is to draw some attention to skills that are rarely or never used and possibly modify them into viable options. I'm throwing some ideas out there, perhaps they are worthless, you be the judge.

Brace Yourself: does anyone use this? Even in knockdown-prone areas no one uses it, and monks will use Aura of Stability instead. For general PvE Ward of Stability is much much better. But what if Brace Yourself provided AoE knockdown prevention like the ward? It could provide total knockdown immunity (e.g. Ward of Stability) or simply prevent the next knockdown. The damage it does is not important at all in a PvE context, perhaps this one could have a PvP/PvE split.
In PvE we have I Am Unstoppable and Drunken Master for permanent or near permanent knockdown immunity so I don't see this as a balance issue at all.
Similarly, "Don't Trip" is useless, even in areas where you might want to use it, because of the short duration and long recharge.

Help Me: no one uses this either. paragon tanks perhaps? lol. and was a 75 hp self heal every 10 seconds so overpowered that we needed a PvE/PvP split for this? Give me a break. Please see Vital Boon and Shadow Refuge for much better self heals on a physical damage dealer. Perhaps if it was maintainable you could at least use it to power Soldier's Fury.

Never Surrender: Useful to counter degen in PvE. Would be useful in PvP if it were unconditional and maintainable, that way it could power Soldier's Fury. If health regen is ZOMG scary in PvP (it isn't) the effect could be reduced to only +1...+3 regen.

Never Give Up: Anyone seen paragons using this? If it were unconditional people might use it, but then +7 or +8 energy party-wide every 20s would be too strong. Suggest changing this to unconditional energy gain but reduce the amount. +1 energy regen unconditionally would give 6.6 energy over 20s if my math is correct. if that is considered too much scale it down. this might also be a decent option to maintain Soldier's Fury if it had a duration.

Mending Refrain: OMG. +3 health regen is so powerful, and we can't get that from any other source. Like Healing Breeze, Spirit Light Weapon, Recuperation, Rejuvenation, Troll Unguent, Well of Blood, Well of Power, Blood Bond. In PvE this is completely outclassed by Never Surrender and all of the above skills. In PvP it is useless, spikes dominate. Is there a reason to use this? Not sure why Anet made a huge issue of nerfing all non-warrior damage sources in the Jan 2010 update because of spiking, but they are so worried about minor regen that Mending Refrain and Recuperation get nerfed again. New flash, spikes happen so fast that health regen is irrelevant.

Lyric of Purification: again, not that useful. perhaps if it were maintainable then it can be used for Soldier's Fury, Centurion's Insignia, etc.

Angelic Protection: has anyone ever seen this in action? even when I tried desperately to find a way to make this useful, I could not. I have two suggestions, either make a single-target version of Angelic Bond, or have it negate damage completely for a (very brief) time... 3s? 5s? Which I think is its intended purpose. And the 30s recharge is rather ridiculous.

Angelic Bond: I love the effect of this skill after the last update but the recharge is way too long for anyone to use it. I would carry this in PvE if it could be used more often. Consider that in PvE you are likely to get partywide spikes from elementalists, mesmers, necromancers, barrage rangers, etc. so even having this as a maintainable effect is not going to save your party from severe AoE damage, it will save one character for a second before he joins the rest of the dead characters. but if it saves any single party member from being spiked down by single-target damage that could be worth the elite slot.

Slayer's Spear: Costs too much and the effect is useless. Warriors, Paragons, and Dervishes are likely to have more health than anyone on the field so this skill will almost never work. Suggest making it cause Deep Wound if target is <50% health like Merciless Spear or Reaper's Sweep, or perhaps cause Deep Wound if target has 2+ conditions like Fevered Dreams.

Mighty Throw: 3s activation time? :-\ slowest attack skill in the game.
please fix, raise adrenaline cost and reduce damage if necessary.

Unblockable Throw: see above. Wild Throw owns this completely, both have the same adrenaline cost and are unblocakble, but wild throw activates normally and also removes a stance.

Soldier's Fury / Aggressive Refrain: Two skills that actually *are* widely used, and both have suffered from PvP related nerfs. Request to split these into PvP and PvE variants if the balance team really wants to cripple every IAS option that paragons have. In PvE we have perma-IAS for assassins, dervishes, and rangers already with no drawbacks, not to mention consumables or pve skills like Drunken Master. Are these two skills really such a serious balance problem or is it just more paragon hate?

Paragon seems to have gotten the shitty end of the stick over the years, simply because there probably haven't been enough people that wanted to play it, and therefore anet kinda looks to balance the more popular, (though, I like them... )

I do agree with the IAS bit, paragons' only REAL good solution for IAS was flail (IMO)...since they are ranged, they didn't need to run much and in the amount of time you've thrown spears under flail, it'll be usable again, now it's only 1 second for non Warrior primaries.

GONS NEED IAS!

EDIT: I always thought Mighty Throw was bugged.

People complained about Sins being useless, they got god mode SF.

Can we get something? anything?

SY! as the only good build for pve doesn't cut it.

i know paragons can upset ORGANIZED pvp balance very easily, thats why we have the pve/pvp split. lets put that to some use?

I agree completely that AR and SF should get a PvE/PvP split where the PvE split of the skills dont cause cracked armor.

On the topic of Angelic protection, i think it should be reverted to its original function, but costing five energy rather than 10. I thought its unique functionality back then was useful... and i miss the days of being able to angelic bond for deep groups.

Although there are many command skills that need some slight buffs, i think motivation should be the more pressing concern. The whole concept of motivation, supporting the team through heals, battery-support, and condition removal is useful but the skills have some major problems, namely their recharges. I would like Mending refrain to be reverted to its original behavior of +4 regen at ~12 motivation. This way, a skilled para could maintain 4 regen on a team, thus taking some pressure off the monks. I think SoR needs to have recharge of 10. This way, it would provide more healing than LoD but would have a higher recharge to balance it with the other party healing elite. Ballad and Aria of restoration also need lower recharges (maybe 12 sec?). Finally, I think the lyrics need to be activated on something other than signets.

Thats just my 2 cents. This reminds me of the time when SoR was 5en/15 sec recharge and i would occasionally replace a monk in NM with myself as a motivation paragon. Good times...

the sole problem is the lack of diversity amongst pve builds. you either run XYZ or suck out there.
sins have sf, paragons have imbagon. mesmers have to run non-mesmer skills in order to be useful in a party.
but yeah, lots of para skills are inferior to their counterparts. when i think about it, i even only used para heroes at varesh and mallyx. though i quite enjoy playing my paragon

Agree with mighty throw,paragon attacks need some loving as well as something to make them mroe useful to paragons. In pve a spearpet ranger with NRA! easily beats a paragon using a spear...

The sad thing is that Paragon is such an interesting class and has the potential to be useful, but it doesn't. Most of their elites are terrible, and the class could REALLY use a buff. I'll /sign to anything that makes Paragons better and more balanced

One of the major things that would help is improving Chants and Echoes in their PvE incarnations.

Chants currently fail due to targeting; a paragon gets less effective in a balanced party where chants that effect casters aren't buffing physicals, and vise versa.

Echoes are currently boring, single target effects that often aren't worth the slot. While they may work in PvP, in PvE they simply lack enough bang for their buck.

So....

1) Improve Chant targeting. Lyric of Zeal, for example, is utterly useless because not enough people will bring signets to trigger it. But if you changed it to "The next time the ally uses a skill, they gain X energy. If that skill was a signet, they gain Bigger Number Goes Here energy instead," it would have more impact.

2) Turn Refrain style echoes into earshot buffs. They might still be based off of chants ending aka "every time a shout or chant ends on all allies within earshot, they gain ___ seconds of +X health regeneration", might be passive "while effected by a shout or chant, gain +3 health regen", or even have a sliding scale, "gain +1 health regen, each time a shout or chant ends on them, increases by +1 (max X) for ____ seconds", thus working kind of like the drunkard meter.

3) Turn Finales into songbombs. "All your shouts and chants within earshot end. For each skill ended this way, have X effect", healing for Restoration, condition removal for Purification, burning on all enemies within the area of an effected ally for Blazing, etc. This will add a lot of versatility, letting you bring only one condition removal skill even in a balanced party, for example, at the cost of using your other skills without their normal effects. It will also make them truly finale-worthy, a buildup of shouts and chants that culminates in one massive effect.

I would love to see a paragon update. Para is my main and he WAS fun to play at the start. but every month we see skill updates and every one for para was a nerf of some kind. (The skills that were "buffed" are mainly ones that got nerfd so bad they became unusable at all!, Check the update history)

all they need is one or two "selfish" buffs. this may help out the lack of farming issues and so on. and a fiew party buffs. possibly some more direct healing. Almost like a WoH or direct protection im thinking about angelic bond/protection buff or re-work.

After all paragon is suposed to support party members. and the only truly helpful skill seems to be a PVE only warrior one at that !

Now for the damage. maybe a spear rework, Im thinking a exploding spear attack of some kind to offer some mild AoE (hits foe and ajacent foes for x ammount on hit). every other profession has some form of aoe weather it be Barrage, Cyclone axe, RoJ or a Meteor Shower.

*wishes for para buff*

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!

I'd like to see paragons use Assassin's Promise since Anet is okay with that skill being used by all professions. It's a safe bet it won't be nerfed. More spear changes (damage or some weird funky skill changes) would be enjoyable.

Just something.

Guys and gals...

Before we go on to buff alot of the skills, why don't we go on to solve the problems we have right now? We don't need some buff that suddenly opens up fifteen new combinations to win the game (coughSFcough), but to get rid of the immediate problems. Then, when these skills have been brought down, we would have more time and a more free mind to analyze and buff the UP skills without introducing new problems.

Also, keep in mind, when you nerf skills, you also make other alternatives relatively more powerful. Or in this case, if you for instance toned down the dps of other classes, paragons would become better without even being touched.

seen the update today? anet does not give one single god mother effing damn about SF, no matter what kind of garbage they tell us. get over it already.

paragons are tricky. when used properly they're strong. the only problem with that is, there's only a select few builds that are really effective in pvp. that's because of the lack of useful skills, even the number of skills alltogether. since we know no new skills are about to be added through another campaign or expansion, i think some useless para skills should be buffed just to add more variety to the playing field.

what's also tricky is how to go about buffing defensive paragon skills without letting para spike get way out of hand.

News flash, party healing is the linchpin of both offense and defense in GvG.

Take a look at Recuperation if you don't believe me.
Sounds like a persecution complex to me.

Balancing Paragons seems like a rough task to me, because buffing them seems like you're buffing the whole team, and vice versa for nerfs. It's likely that for Paragons to become more versatile in PvE (that is, have more builds available that are on par for general benefit as the Imbagon), there are going to need to be some skill splits. I don't really see how you can buff Paragon attack or defense skills for PvE and keep their power in check or unchanged in PvP without a good number of skill splits.

Also, the Imbagon bar is just so ridiculously good for Paragons that it's probably going to need nerfed somehow so that other party-protecting builds can poke their head out a little further.

While health regen (specifically party-wide health regen) is not going to save you from a well-coordinated spike, it helps keep you topped off in between spikes so that you appear as less of a target and need to have ~90% of your health blown away in a second rather than ~80%.

paragons are mobile ritualist spirits that often cost little to zero energy, cast faster, have much higher armor and health, have a built in energy engine that's powerful enough to support fast recharge spells, have better effects, and deal warrior DPS at casting range. and yet, you want them to be BUFFED.

if it were up to me, i'd nerf them harder. or delete them. they were a horrible concept to begin with, and no amount of adjustments short of a complete redesign will fix them. they are better off being useless (and despite what everybody thinks, they aren't). they cause less damage that way.

So, you think they're flat-out lying when they said that they're splitting the update into two parts to get the PvP changes out faster, and the changes to SF, etc, will be forthcoming after the Canthan New Year?

Can I quote you on that? Cause it'll be hilarious next month.

Not trying to rain on your parade or anything, but I feel I have to point out a couple things.

1) Dervishes do not have a permanent IAS. If they did, they'd be slightly better at using the scythe than warriors.

2) As for Mending Refrain, if health regen is so useless, then why would buffing this skill change anything?

That said, as a Dervish player, I feel your pain. I feel it oh so very much.

I find some of the command pve splits pretty useful actually. SYG, fall back, we shall return, sometimes never surrender. The irony is they work even better with soul reaping than leadership.

Onslaught. +25% IAS and +25% IMS, no drawbacks.

It wouldn't really change much of anything, that's why no one needs to fear it. Recuperation, Rejuvenation, Never Surrender, Well of Blood and Well of Power all give mass health regeneration with only one skill and far less work and energy, so putting Mending Refrain back to normal shouldn't alarm anyone.

But Assassins were already godlike damage dealers if you weren't pants-on-head retarded.

Need to add more skills to this list.

Bladeturn Refrain: 5...17% block chance. really? show me anyone willing to waste a slot on this. Anet has already set the standard for blocking skills, and that standard is 50% or 75% block chance. This and Winds (with a similarly pathetic effect) are not worth the slot in any way. If the concern is having 50% block on everyone... please see Aegis, which is far less work to cast, can have its duration extended, can be echoed, etc.

Song of Restoration: i watched the PvPers nerf this into uselessness because someone felt like having other classes do party wide healing infringes upon the monk. Hmm... PwK, Life, Rejuvenation, Recuperation, Feast of Souls anyone? Regardless of what those guys think, party healing was clearly intended to be a paragon ability from the start, we have an entire line of skills devoted to it. Suggest making this recharge in 10 seconds and possibly reducing its healing. I don't think it would be out of line for it to be a copy of Light of Deliverance with similar cost, recharge, and effect. It isn't a spell so there would not be any easy way to get multiples of it or make it recharge faster.

on a related note... ballad of restoration and aria of restoration could use some help too. One way of fixing them is to make one or more of them into chants that give health regeneration for a set period of time. Let's say that Ballad of Restoration should heal 60 health at some given spec of Motivation, and it recharges in 10 seconds. It could be changed to give +3 health regeneration with a duration of 10 seconds, at which point it ends. It will heal for the same amount as it did before, but because it has a duration the user cannot benefit from multiple copies of it other than extending the duration. This may be a way to control its effect in multi-paragon teams. Song of Restoration may remain as a straight up heal and be immune to this stacking problem, thus making it worthy of the elite slot. As an added (or interesting) benefit, chants with a duration could be used to power centurion's insignia, soldier's fury, recharge aggressive refrain, etc.

lol, i use them in the same way. i have R/P and N/P builds for heroes that carry SYG and one or more of the following: anthem of envy, anthem of disruption, GFTE, never surrender, fall back. i spec 10 command usually because it gives 15s of coverage on SYG. Since it recharges in 20s that's a pretty good setting. the ranger is prepared shot, read the wind, and interrupts while the necro is a standard sort of minion bomber.

I have no complaints about any of those skills except for the pvp variants, which are too weak.

Hell, I already do. It's nice to keep up There is Nothing To Fear, and recharge Leader's Zeal directly after use. Keeps my blue bar filled.

I'd like to see targeted shouts/chants/echoes reworked, it just seems odd you are screaming at someone across your aggro, and nobody else can hear it. I'd make targeted shouts/chants/echoes affect adjacent allies, but that might be overpowered.

I meant a permanent 33% IAS.

And how is sacrificing your elite slot for IAS/IMS while putting a ton of points into a terrible attribute not a drawback?

Fully agree. Bladeturn Refrain, at the very least, needs to confer a 50...80% block chance, seeing as how it only stops slashing weapons.

It's blocking that never, ever, EVER ends.
And it's in Command.

Haven't used this team-build in months because well ... ASSASSIN!!1!! but it worked really nicely.



More on topic:
Certain options need to be trashed first so that we can actually take a realistic look at what the paragon is offering. A lot of the things seem bad because of how insane the best options are.

I agree with Khomet in almost all points but the thing is that Paragons are very tricky and so its balance is really hard. I think its because :
1- They use shouts/chants/echo ; wich are hard to interrupt ( many of them dont even have cast time ) and are impossible to remove once casted .
2- They are a "support" class but they overcome that role and turn into a impressive defender/attacker in a matter of seconds and when you have a good number of them they become unstoppable .

I gotta say Sfury changes are retarded yes ( see Onslaught ) but there are only a few skills that need certain .... i wouldnt say buff , maybe some rework. Its not really needed in general but in the Moti line ? its just plan BAD. That att line doesnt work even having 5 paragons in your party .... damn that means something.

So resuming , some skills need some rework but most of all , damn buff + rework of Motivation skills is needed.

IMO, you guys just need to think out of the box .

8 paragons can survive PvE and vanquish pretty easily .

can 8 warriors survive ? can 8 rangers survive ? etc ..

Paragons are one of the only few classes that can survive even in HM in a party by themselves .

You just gotta think out of the box .

But i have to agree, there are many useless paragon skills that see no use in PvE and PvP. I'd hope to see some changes to them to make paragons more popular.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/p...23#post5007823
I agree with you completely. It is also really lame being able to only run a very small amount of primary builds in RA as well.

One problem with echos is, once they are up, that they can be keep up eternal with ease; this can make even echos with a comparatively weak effect like Mending Refrain overpowered.
A possible solution to this might be to limit the maximum duration of an echo, i.e. 90 seconds. This way you can give echos stronger effects because they need to be reapplied and can therefor be contered.

You know what else would help?

Add an icon on the party member that indicates "Is affected by a shout or chant."

They have them for hexes, for conditions, even for weapon spells, but not for chants and shouts. This should change.

I think this can be done with most any profession... Rt, E, N, Me, D can make decent (or beyond decent) healers and protters with the right build, and I've seen groups of all warriors and paragons clear FoW and other places. But I hear what you are saying, paragons are very versatile and this is one of the things that initially made them my favorite profession. Ritualists have the same kind of versatility imo. They are not damage or defense or healing or utility, they are all of these things.

Definitely! For the typical party-wide shout or anthem I don't think this is a big problem but it certainly is for the single-target shouts, echoes, and refrains. How can you tell when Angelic Bond (old version) or Blazing Finale or Make Haste has worn off so that you can refresh it? You can't, you can only guess. This is an oversight on Anet's part IMO, this type of skill should have an icon like weapon spells or enchantments. (perhaps a tiny bugle or horn?)

As it stands now such skills are better suited for use by heroes who can automatically maintain them on all the proper characters with their omniscience and instant targeting capability.

part of the problem with paras is lack of the game rebalancing after they got introduced. compare charge!, incoming! and fall back! for example, you'll notice something weird. also watch yourself! should be a paragon skill, that's pretty obvious.
but then, whole tactics line would have to be remade, followed up by additional game tweaks. there was time for it upon nf release.

This suggestion deserves it's own thread, imo.

I can't really understand Anet never thought of it themselves ...

I agree that an icon to indicate a shout/chant would be useful, but it won't completely sole the problem you indicate. I often am using 2-3 shouts/chants at the same time, and have trouble remembering which one is on which person and will expire soon or already did. But think of it like enchantments. You can see that a party member is enchanted, but is that Ele enchanted with the Guardian you cast on it, or their Attunement? Does that warrior have Vigorous Spirit or Tainted Flesh on it? The only way to know which shout/chant expired would be to have them each get a different icon, but that won't happen.

Would still like to see an icon show up though.

perhaps Anet can clarify this, but in my opinion Paragon is just a tactics warrior taken to the next level. Warrior and Paragon both have similar armor, shields, and weapon damage, both use adrenaline, and their skills complement each other. Or rather, paragons amplify warriors... warriors don't do much for paragons. The tactics shouts are better used by a paragon because he is in the center of a group (instead of chasing down enemies) and will almost always affect everyone. Anyways it is pretty clear to me that paragon is simply the tactics shout mechanic evolved in the same way that the ritualist evolved the ranger's spirit summoning.

That said, there should have been (and needs to be) more control over shouts and anthems and I think this is the main complaint people have about paragons in pvp. Conditions and hexes can be removed, enchantments can be removed. There's no way to negate the effect of a spirit but if you kill the spirit the effect goes away. With shouts there is no way to strip it at all, even if the shouter dies. I am not really in favor of more paragon hate but IMO there should be more skills that negate or disable shouts, and with these in play there would be more ways to counter paragons (and tactics warriors) and then the rampant nerfing could stop. perhaps if Watch Yourself, Shields Up and SYG weren't nerfed all to hell there would be an easy defense against ranged physical attackers like paragons and spike rangers. oh wait... been there done that. IMO one of the fundamentals of the game is checks and balances, or counters for any given skill. they took away the counters for ranged attackers, is it any wonder that there were soon complaints that ranged attackers do too much damage? well obviously, that is a natural result of removing such defensive skills.


ideas for skills to counter shouts, anthems, etc.:

what about a spirit that negates all shouts within range? powerful, yes... but spirits can be killed. ritualists and rangers could use this.

why don't mesmers have anti-shout skills? they can shut down any other type of character, it is definitely in their job description. what about a hex that makes a character unable to be affected by shouts, chants, anthems, echoes, refrains...

why don't the necromancer skills that affect shouts have more utility so that people carry them. their focus is too narrow. what about a spell or hex that removes any shout-like effect on a character and prevents further shouts from affecting them? this could work like enchant stripping, either strip one, two, or all. mesmers and necromancers are naturally suited for this type of skill.

/signed

different icons for different shouts or anthems is too much to hope for IMO, and possibly very confusing. As it stands the status bar is a binary sort of indicator, there are only two states; e.g. "hexed" or "not hexed". So if a character is affected by shouts you get an indicator no matter how many there are.

This could get confusing fast though with the ease and speed at which paragons are chanting. IMO there should only be an icon for targeted shouts or echoes or refrains, because these are the ones that you might want to maintain or refresh if they wore off. The non-targeted shouts and anthems will typically be spammed on recharge so the indicator would be less useful for them and it would hide the status of the targeted shouts.

Going to have to agree that Paragons are the "Red-headed step-childs" of GW. Having one useful bar in PvE is beyond boring. Just out of curiosity......does anyone actually use spear mastery? Seems like command is it for paras. As for buffing para skills in PvE making mods harder.....Who has ever been pwned by a group of paras?..Only their rezing is slightly annoying..their dmg is laughable. Maybe if the mobs had SY or TnTF then it would matter but as it stands now.....
Having every profession and playing every profession I find paras least interesting to play. I really want to play my para....but there is almost no reason to as I can do everything better on another profession except imbagon. Plus groups will not accept more than one para, and the one that is accepted has to be imbagon. I know I am not alone seeing this as flawed. (here come the qq sf quotes...at least there are 5 options in that bar)
I guess the main point.....as you have heard b4..is that it would be nice if paras had another option in PvE. I am not sure how things pertain in PvP..as I dont like PvP (way too many jerks in PvP) I am simply referring to PvE. Plz include para consideration into the next balance/update.

It's not that easy. If you buff shouts because they can be keeped in check with those counter skills they will be overpowered if you don't bring them, which means that you need to bring them everytime because you don't know if you face a team that use shouts/paragons. This increases the number of required skills for a teambuild and therefor decreases build variety.

I don't understand the meaning of the second sentence, are you insinuating that you are forced to use spear mastery or that it's not beneficial to spec into spear mastery?
Anyway, properly any half-decent paragon players specs at least 9 points into spear mastery, more likely 12 or more.

It is geared more to asking if anyone uses Spear Mastery builds. U know a build that focuses more on SM skills than command, PvE Only, motivation(not like this is used either), or Imbagon.