Dear Arenanet: Please expedite paragon fixes

Because lets see you actually spam 10/15 enegy shouts/chants as a warrior while keeping up your energy.

Repeating this, but the main problem with Paragons is that they are the latest professions to the game along with dervish, and have highly conditional, or otherwise unwanted skills. Being that the class itself has a lot LESS skills than other professions, their skills must be more general and usable in nature to actually match other classes

Dervishes do this a lot better than paragons, even though they are outclassed by Warriors and Assassins. sure, mysticism is a bit lacking, but there aren't nearly as many worthless lines and skills as the Paragon. Earth Prayers is an amazing line for defense and quirky things, Wind Prayers a bit less so, but rocking for energy managment (the rest of the line falls short though)

There aren't many choices for Paragons, even if you completely ignore imbagon-type builds. Theres offensive support, and defensive support, which tend to lean towards the Command line (not many elites synergize with it, as all the Command elites are pretty bad in functionality), and Song of Purification (Motivation itself, and a lot of other elite skills in the line, suck.)

Fix that, you fix paragons

/signed on +33% paragon buff speed plox. (i can has healingz?)
anywho didn't they say something like " the problem with para's is that stuff like song of resto only heals chars that use certain skills,so will only benefit a minority of the group". nothing happened to this , i play a paragon but i just find it really kinda boring, the elite skills don't seems to attract me personally either. and whats all teh obsession with burininating? i didn't really see mesmer needing a gigantic buff i still love playing mine ^^, and they're fun to play. Some classes don't need to be buffed much (i enjoyed playing a rit even before the update made SS viable).
Dervs could use something moar interesting too but not in dire need of anythang.

Spread Deep Wound in PvP with Wounding Strike. Bout it.

Even if you give Paragons ranged AoE, will they be playable? Barrage doesn't see a lot of play right now. Paragons would need extremely potent skills in order to compete for a damage slot.

Seems to me that the balance problem is the high armor of monsters in Hard Mode and all of the armor-ignoring damage skills that certain caster classes enjoy right now. Rangers and Elementalists aren't in much better shape than Paragons and Dervishes right now, and it's for the same basic reason.

All the Mesmer update really did for PvE at the end of the day was cause Mesmers to supplant Elementalists as damage dealers. The basic issue appears to be that there are a limited number of roles for PvE players, and too many classes to balance into those roles.

Spammable deep wound is definitely their main advantage, but a front-line Derv calling spikes enables a balanced team to spike like a true spike team. A derv on the frontline doesn't have the need to take time to build up adren like warrs or wait for r/c's like sins- plus having one attack blocked doesn't kill the spike. All the derv needs is a few RoFs and Patient Spirits and it has the energy to keep roll spiking.

A warrior probably wouldn't have the energy regen to run a scythe build without WE, unless he/she could consistently hit 3 guys with a zealous scythe. But yea, I see your point, especially about Mysticism sucking and that classes shouldn't have to rely on others' elites. Also, saying the update put dervs 'on par' with the other scythe builds was a bit too generous of me.

The sin crit scythe build uses Critical Agility (or whatever that skill's called), which gives them +25 armor at full sunspear rank.

Honestly, I don't like the idea of all classes having aoe. Back in the good ol' days, the only classes with legitimate aoe were eles and, to a lesser extent, necros; all the other classes had very minor aoe or none at all. But, as years have passed, aoe has become more available and necessary for more classes, since it's easier to break everything equally than fix PvE.

Point: Although I wouldn't like it, I wouldn't be suprised to see paragons given more aoe, since PvE is broken and Anet is doing it for many other classes.

Possible racism? I shall investigate this further and bring up a case against Anet.

Agreed. Kinda...

Personally, I feel rangers are the most underpowered PvE profession. But, that's apparantly quite biased; everyone seems to think they're fine for some reason.

Current 'Excellent Build Count':

Monks, Warriors, Necros, Assassins, Ritualists, Mesmers: shittons
Eles, Paragons: 1
Dervs: 1/2?
Rangers: 0

If you can explain to me how it makes sense for a person clad in heavy armor that is meant to chuck spears to do significant damage in a large area, I might go ahead and agree with you on this. Right now, with my idea of what the paragon is, it doesn't fit to give it AoE skills, regardless of whether it would be in the best interests for them to have them or not. That view will probably only change with a class rework.

I doubt it as there hasn't been any buff for Monks in over 2 years and the Paragons are lumped in with them as being a support class.Anet has no love for the Monk anymore.

Other than the fact that the current version of WoH is hacks, I might agree with you.

The problem with balancing Monk is that any changes to the class affect every single meta in the game.

Implying that monks aren't OP.

lots of misconceptions and assumptions in here about what a paragon is "meant" to do. i will try to clear up a few points, you may agree or disagree as you choose.

"paragons are not meant to do damage": this is obviously not true, any profession that has a weapon mastery attribute is meant to do physical damage. axe mastery, dagger mastery, spear mastery, scythe mastery, marksmanship. furthermore, paragon is the only other profession that uses adrenaline to power its skills. it's pretty clear that paragons were meant to attack, and attack often... in fact their energy management requires it.

"paragons are a support class": this is obviously not true either, as the paragon does not have the energy to perform a support role without chucking spears to gain adrenaline to power shouts to regain energy... all of which takes time. a true support class simply casts a spell and he is done, leaving him far more time to fulfill his support role. paragon is usually in a middle ground between full attack and full support.

"paragons don't need AoE": I have nothing to say to this besides pointing out that every other profession has AoE damage skills, even the healers such as monks and ritualists. Is there a reason why paragon should be denied something that every other profession has access to?


Lanier suggested that throwing multiple spears "doesn't make sense", but this is a fantasy game and throwing multiple spears is no more illogical than firing multiple arrows or causing an explosion with death blossom. Besides that, throwing multiple spears (ie. Barrage/Volley style) is only one way of dishing AoE. Holy Spear is a good example of the type of skill that could prove useful, unfortunately it is too conditional. Perhaps if it affected all undead (not just minions) and all demons then it would be more generally useful.

some other ideas:

change Mighty Throw to do +x...y damage and knock target down if it is moving or weakened. similar skills: slippery ground, gale, stoning, bull's strike. -OR- Mighty Throw does +x...y damage to target and x...y damage to all adjacent. similar skills: death blossom, splinter shot. change cost/recharge/etc. as appropriate.

change Burning Refrain to inflict Burning on target and all adjacent for 1..3 seconds (unconditional). similar skills: mark of rodgort. ties in with the paragon's burning theme and synergizes with glowing signet, they're on fire, etc.

change Unblockable Throw to attack twice and be unblockable. similar skills: sun & moon slash, twin moon sweep. at present this skill is completely pwned by Wild Throw, it needs to be changed.

change Stunning Strike to daze target for x...y seconds and also interrupt all adjacent. similar skills: cry of frustration, tease.

there are plenty of other skills we could talk about but the idea is to show different ways to deliver AoE effects. It doesn't have to mimic Barrage or Volley.

I don't believe a paragon's role is to be dealing AoE damage, nor' dealing warrior damage. When we speak of damage buffs, they really only need a very minor damage buff. It's everything else about them that must be looked into, such as the convenience of skills, IAS, and motivation, to name a few.

To be straight and simple, paragons ARE a support profession because their best spear chucking builds involve spreading the game's most powerful conditions like deep wound, daze, and weakness. A good paragon won't focus their damage on a single target, but quickly charge up their adrenaline and spread conditions on enemies in order to aid allies in defeating enemies, while buffing those same allies with the powerful damage reduction shout "There's Nothing to Fear!"

When paragons are ever buffed, I expect more interaction with burning as a condition. If Paragons were to deal any sort of AoE damage, it would be minor, but a spammable AoE burn instead to fuel whatever interactions with burning they may have. Holy Spear would NOT be the perfect candidate for a change like this because it is currently very useful in its current niche as a wiper for summoned creatures. What I would, however, like to see expanded upon is "Brace Yourself!"

Anyways, bottom line is that Paragons are not nukers since it is a support profession, and were designed to be so. What it needs is more of its "offensive" support like condition spread.

I disagree that because there is a spear mastery attribute paragons were meant to be damage dealers. Sure you can play a spear mastery build with only purpose to deal damage but the thing is you would be out-damaged by nearly every profession and better off using shouts/chants to support your group.
Besides even if Anet decided to buff spear damage to something comparable to other professions' dps you would end up in a dervish-scythe like situation: Warriors and assassins would be better with it than the paragon because Leadership doesn't provide anything even close to what Strength and Critical Strikes do.

The best energy management option for the paragon is Leadership which gives energy whenever you activate a shout or chant which is pretty much irrelevant to spears and their damage.

More than half the shouts/chants require energy rather than adrenaline. Energy comes from leadership whenever you use a shout/chant and with this you can fuel the next shout/chant and so on. So it's not as "hard" as you make it seem.

Please name a true supporter class in GW.
Also the fact that most shouts/chants are party-wide makes up for the time lost building up adrenaline. Furthermore shouts have no activation time so you don't have to stop gaining adrenaline while supporting your group.

And casters don't have access to attack skills. Also paragon is the only profession with access to chants... Plus the other non-caster professions have somewhat limited access to AoE (assassin,ranger being the most obvious examples), so what's your point here?

Well i can't explain why but a spear Barrage strikes me as wrong


Myself i always thought of paragons as the supporting profession mainly because 3/4 attributes are pure support but i guess everyone has his/her own opinion

Fixed.

Rangers have bow mastery, does that make their purpose DPS machines? Just like rangers, para are meant to support the party, although the way rangers and paras support is completely different.

Paragons are in fact a support class, as evident that a vast majority of their skills are party buffs. the spear is merely necessary to to spam adrenal shouts, but para damage isn't ever going to be impressive.

Provide one logical reason paras need aoe, aside from just because everyone else has aoe.

Which is the basic problem. Support classes are unnecessary in PvE (if you play the way you should), and Paragons usually exist in one of two states in PvP:

1) Dominant; redundant paragons own all
2) Suckage

with very little room to balance in between the two conditions. Long story short: support classes with decent ranged attacks are not a good idea in this game. Ranger works because it provides disruption and DOT without providing meaningful support.

True enough, but aside from rits, non-core profs are either meh or OP, which is why GW would be better without them.

Every support profession can nuke except paragons.

In fact the support professions are arguably the best nukers.

Anthem of Explosion. Chant. For 10 seconds, the next attack skill used by each party member within earshot explodes on impact dealing XX damage to target and adjacent foes. 10 nrg. 20s r/c. 2s activation time.

Adding skills to the game at this point is ridiculous just for a skill balance.

Rangers can also nuke. Does that mean they are good at it?

I don't think a profession is defined by how well they can nuke, and if one thinks inefficient adjacent range AoEs are the only important factor for PvE, they should re-examine what goes on in the actual battlefield.

Paragons were designed to be support in every regard. Support the monk as a hybrid Prot/Healer, Energy Support(this is the area I hope sees some love) and moderate damage. I really think that the PvP in GW just really wasn't designed to handle how powerful they were when they first arrived on the scene. They will never have much variety in the 4v4 formats because any damage they could do that would shine in RA/Codex would completely be too powerful for 8v8 formats. They are so unique and awesome, but they are a conundrum in the mechanics of the game imo. I hope something drastic is done to the motivation line. I had posted a thread in which I said that a Spear should be able to be used a ranged weapon or melee weapon for any skill listed as ranged/melee that isn't defined my what weapon you have to use to give them some versatility with the other classes. Sadly I don't think that will happen. With their limited skill set, I think that would go really far in helping their damage and the amount of builds you could come up with to make them better.

As a matter of fact there's a Paragon AoE. Blazing finale is the name iirc.
Paragons do good damages if you add bleeding or burning condition to the mere yellow number. Maybe Paragons would benefit to have a poisoning skill, but I think I've read somewhere health degenaration is capped to -10, so no need to add poisoned to burning and bleding. ^__^

Also I don't understand the point to have AoE. What you want is to kill enemies fast, and to kill fast you'd better to focus fire on one enemy til it's dead, then pass on the next, no ?

Oh yes, with low level opponents you can hope some AoE will almost kill every one in the mob group, but well, low level opponents aren't trouble to be defeated anyway.

examples of how to kill enemies fast (from both past and present)

hundred blades / whirlwind attack / mark of pain / splinter weapon
barrage / volley / splinter weapon
searing flames spam
DwG / spirit rift
Death Nova / minion bombing
Cryway
Ursan


All AoE damage. Look at what speedclear teams are doing and you can see what is effective. Not to say that it's the ONLY effective build, but... the results speak for themselves.

to spell it out even further...
A profession with some kind of multi-attack skill (e.g. Whirlwind Attack, Barrage) willl *always* be superior to other damage dealers because most damage buffs are delivered on a per-attack or per-hit basis. So attacking everyone around you or attacking the same target multiple times multiplies the damage boost you get from Strength of Honor, Orders, EBSoH, GDW, Splinter Weapon, Barbs, Mark of Pain. Characters without multi-attack capability or AoE damage can not compete. Again, look at the hundred blades / whirlwind / mark of pain (manlyway) teams for proof of this, or recall the splinter barrage teams that were commonly used at ToPK in times past.

to address your Blazing Finale example... that skill is useless for the paragon in most cases since he is not melee, and if you have any strong melee in your team then inflicting burning on everything around them will not matter very much at all, the targets simple die too quickly. So AoE condition spreading is nice but it is not going to fix the problem. Paragon needs multi-attack and/or AoE damage to be on a more even footing with the other professions. Even one or two nice skills (e.g. death blossom) would do a lot to fix this problem. Holy Spear is a great example of this concept in action, but right now it is ZOMG great against minions or spirits, and meh against everything else. If it worked on everything it would need to be rebalanced.

The thing is...to put paragons on even footing with everyone else it's going to take a huge amount of skill changing...at least on the same level as mesmers if not higher. They just whipped out a huge mesmer update and are midway through WiK content. So...like I would expect paragons to be addressed possibly this same time next year...if that.

i think you are totally right... that is why I felt motivated to start this thread, I wanted to encourage them to publish some updates even if they are not perfect. I think that mostly people can agree that paragons, dervishes, and rangers are the least used professions and need the most attention as far as updates go. for those who don't agree, look at the composition of commonly used teams... no, i don't see any paragons or dervishes or rangers there. :-(

Its amazing how much attention this thread gets when its not put in the Campfire section. Ill have to remember that next time. JK

I would trade SY! being tied to Strength for a PvE only return of the motivation line and some party wide offensive buffs that work. I think thats fair.

I agree with this. Making the useless chants and shouts better should be the goal of an update for paras. Giving them chants that increase damage output like oop does would be good since paras have very few direct damage buffs.

I think it would be better to have a bunch of little paragon updates (on a monthly or bi monthly basis) so they can slowly tweak and balance them over time. But the way they seem to be buffing classes now is giant updates that change a shitload of things all at once.

It seems to me a bunch of little updates would be easier to do than one massive one every 3 to 10 months. Then again I might be wrong...

Yes, I believe the only way paragon changes can actually be effective is if Imbagon is knocked down a notch. Even if, say, "Save Yourself!" was reduced to +40 AL, the build would still be amazingly effective. Imbagon in it's current state is like... an effective build x 10.

I would actually prefer reducing the armor the skill gives over tieing it to strength. It simply needs to not be a "use this skill and you'll never die" type of skill lol

I'd personally like to see some shouts increase allies' attack speed (Anthem of Fury/Guidance says HELLO!)! It'd pobably need a serious amount of balance and testiing before releasing the change, but it'd totally spice up paragons. I'd say something along the lines of "Elite Shout: for 0...2...3 seconds, allies attack 0...25...33% faster. It could be insta-cast, but that'd probably be imba, so tacking on a 1 second cast time is fit for this suggestion. Otherwise, to make it potentially even more powerful, make it a 2-3 second cast and give it a better duration (like 0...4...7). The energy cost (if applicable) and recharge could also be extended to further balance it.

To be honest that sounds pretty useless...unless you're in a team filled with physicals without iases (which people don't do...do they?) it's just a waste of a skill. In fact if you're in an area where SS/SV/VOR is prevalent your causing your henchies/heroes to die quicker because they aren't gonna stop wanding.

Essentially, a skill like that would just replace IWAY on 4 warriors so you would have to face 4 battlerage warriors with a para providing the IAS and make HA even more lame. Unless the skill was just inefficient at providing IAS, but it it was inefficient then the wars would just keep using iway or whatever IAS and the skill still wouldn't see play.

I wasn't thinking about it in the context of PvP (because I was assuming this discussion was purely about a PvE only change).

I wouldn't exactly say that and to the the one who said OPed.There are other classes that are just as OPed but Monks re in charge of keeping you alive as I meant no love for the Monk as in not being in GW2 aswll as no good updates in 2 years.

By expedite, do you mean take 4 months? Because, it'll be at least that long....most likely more before we see any paragon changes.

The last dev update even said that due to the GvG changes, the dervish update may (which means "will") be late, so the paragon will be updated some time following GW2's release (in 2012). But, of course, the support for GW1 will fall off the planet at GW2's release so.......

Well, let's just find a deity and start praying. Sound good? K, then. Go.

allrighty then, see below. :-)
I really hope that they push the paragon and dervish changes out soon. with each passing day I feel more and more that it will be too late to make any difference. Once gw2 is here no one will care about gw1 anymore.


</kneels in Temple of the Ages, wherein shrines of all the gods are found>

Mighty Balthazar, guide my spear that I may slay our enemies and grant me the strength to hold the line when it seems that all hope is lost. Gentle Dwayna, give me the wisdom to guide infidels back to the light and protect the faithful. As ever greater threats arise to challenge the gods I fear that my spear and my spirit will not be strong enough to withstand them! May Balthazar and Dwayna grant me the strength and wisdom to follow the path set before me.

Your humble servant,
Khomet Si Netjer
Paragon of Elona

Hi guys,

We chatted with the live team about this topic, and here's an update for you:

- As we've mentioned in the past, we're currently looking at Dervish and Paragon updates (in that order). You may have noticed from the Necro and Mes changes that we're willing to make some pretty significant changes to the professions at times, so anything major like this requires quite a bit of testing. I don't have a specific timeframe for when these updates will hit, but they're in process.

- We're working on Dervishes before Paragons because we have more concrete ideas about changes that we'd like to make to them. This isn't to say we have no idea what we'd like to do with Paragons, but we're continuing to work on the profession that's had its changes fleshed out a little more.

If you have suggestions about Paragon updates (or skills in general), definitely feel free to post those thoughts on our wiki. We may not respond to each idea, but we'll check them out and consider them.

- While we're working on these profession updates, we've also started to address a variety of GvG issues (you saw some of those changes go in yesterday's build). We've done some pretty substantial updates to skills in the past six months, so we need to make sure that things are healthy with the overall meta. These changes are at the top of our priority list, but we're continuing to work on balance issues at the same time.


As a sidenote, we know that skill balance is one of those topics that can be nebulous and misunderstood, especially for people that aren't directly working on the changes. We're working on an article that will give you guys a little insight into the process behind what goes into the updates, so keep a future eye on our blog.

On that note, if there's ever a specific topic that you guys think would make an interesting article/post, feel free to email us the suggestion ([email protected]). You can post it or PM it to one of us, too (if that's easier). We can't promise to cover every idea, but getting direct input on the stuff you'd really like to read about is always cool for us.

How can they not have a clear vision of fixing the paragon. Here's one hint: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Spear_Mastery

Those skills are clunky to put it mildly. 5 that inflict deep wound and not one of them is easier to use than the axe skill Dismember. Also compare some of the descriptions, someone went a little hog wild making them arbitrarily complex:


Here's something normal from the warrior:

Dismember

Axe Attack. Inflicts Deep Wound condition (5...17...20 seconds). 5 Adrenaline


VS. this crazy stuff from para:

Chest Thumper
Spear Attack. Inflicts Deep Wound condition (5...17...20 seconds) if target foe has Cracked Armor. 5 Energy 5 Recharge time


Cruel Spear
Elite Spear Attack. Deals +1...25...31 damage. Inflicts Deep Wound condition (5...17...20 seconds) if target is not moving. 7 Adrenaline

Merciless Spear
Spear Attack. Inflicts Deep Wound condition (5...17...20 seconds). No effect unless target has less than 50% Health. 6 Adrenaline

Slayer's Spear
Spear Attack. Deals +5...21...25 damage. Inflicts Deep Wound condition (5...17...20 seconds) if target has more Health than you. 10 Energy 4 Recharge time

Vicious Attack
Spear Attack. Deals +5...17...20 damage. Inflicts Deep Wound condition (5...13...15 seconds) with a critical hit. 5 Energy 8 Recharge time


So we have a core class that can get a simple objective off in 5 simple adrenaline, while the poor Paragon has a mess of redundant, confusing "if" statement skills to do the same thing. Sorry but I'd take the no extra damage, do what I want skill than messy garbage like that.

So Rangers are shown the middle finger from Anet again ?

Nah. Spear attacks are already well balanced. Sure a few may be conditional but those that are have very easy conditions to fulfill (chest thumper being an exception). Plus, they add pretty good bonus damage. You would have to be a pretty bad player to think that cruel spear or merciless spear are confusing.

So you think it's a good idea to give a ranged weapon equal power to a melee weapon? Ok, then. Anyway, those spear attacks are not hard to use. Merciless Spear is functionally equivalent to Dismember, at a higher adrenaline cost. You want to put deep wound on a target that is dying, since deep wound accelerates its demise. Dismember and all warrior attack skills have the condition "if target is adjacent" due to the range of their weapons. It only makes sense to balance the power of the spear attacks since they do not have the adjacent range restriction(with one exception), especially those that inflict the most powerful condition in the game, deep wound.