Dear Arenanet: Please expedite paragon fixes

I dont see it. I read it , and i just dont see it. Sorry to tell you this but like many ppl said in this forum in other threads, ( me included ) dont fix it if its not broken.
Comparisons with other skills are bad mostly because :
1- Chants and stuff are IRREMOVABLE unlike Hexes , conditions and enchants
2- Some of P shouts cant be interrupted
3- Spears have faster attack rate than a bow ( cant compare with ranger stuff soz )
4- Ranged attackers should NEVER deal same damage or have same stuff than melee chars .


For the record i would say that only Moti skills REALLY need to be fixed and most of those fixes are a matter of recharge , energy cost , and casting times. Some of the changes fail due to stuff i said above and Desert Rose words :
"Even if your suggested skills would be equal in power to the "comparable" skills, a paragon that heals as good as a monk, removes hexes and conditions as good as a monk, deals as much damage as a warrior, interrupts as good as a ranger, protects the team as good as a monk, buffs the damage of the team as good as a necro wouldn't be balanced."

PS: Mending refrain was lol , same health regen , NO energy loss , maintainable in combat with 1-2 shouts and IRREMOVABLE .... please , you should REALLY spend some time thinking before writing ... no offense but changes like that are way out of place and balance.

As a person who plays his paragon often I have to disagree with most of what you're saying. They simply aren't adequate at dealing damage as of now and are behind every single class considerably. I agree that I don't think they should be able to do the same thing as every other class but better but I do think they need a function in the game beyond what they do now. They have (imby stricken) subpar everything. When you have subpar everything there needs to be a change.

quoted for truth.

@ tenebrae: paragons and dervishes need help, no one ever wants to group with them, and you think this is okay? is that what you call balance? /sigh
aside from the obvious problems with these two professions Arenanet has already stated that they are working on updates for paragon and dervish, therefore Arenanet believes that they need some help. Therefore you are simply wrong.

re: paragon...
they are inferior to all other physicals at dealing damage. It is easy to prove that warrior, assassin, dervish and ranger can deal (vastly) more damage.

they are inferior to necromancers and monks at buffing physical attackers. Orders and Strength of Honor are simply superior to anything the paragon has to offer.

they are inferior to monks and ritualists at healing, and some say that this is as it should be. however the motivation skills as they stand now are so weak that they never see use outside of teams composed almost entirely of paragons and warriors.

their only strength in the game consists of abusing a Warrior PvE skill, and that is just sad. Many of the people here want to fix paragons and give them more options so that running something besides Imbagon is viable.
:-\

Paragons can fill a couple of these roles with a single bar, while still retaining all of the advantages mentioned before:

- Chants and shouts are not removable and often uninterruptible
- They usually have marginal or inexistent casting times, low costs and work on earshot
- Even so, chants and shouts have much less counters than any other party buff - Vocal Minority, Well of Silence, and adren-denial for adrenalin skills

- Spear attacks are ranged
- Still, the Paragon has the highest armor-level in the game together with Warriors, and that can easily be boosted with simple insignias

That's the core issue: as it was designed, the Paragon had to be a jack of all trades. It has so many abilities, and none of these is original, that it just couldn't be the master of any.

I agree they need some help. Paragons need some peculiarity on top of any tweak tough, as they're pretty much redundant as of now. What could that be? What could be their uniqueness, to give them a significant role in a party?

Not quoting you to aim this at you, you just happened to be the person who covered my pet peeve with playing paragon.

Vocal Minority and Soothing Images are ridiculous. There's usually more than one foe with one or both hexes in a group, and the recharge/duration of those hexes is also ridiculous compared with the recharge/duration/effect of the hex removal skills, given how complete the shutdown of a paragon is with either hex on them. If paragons weren't so reliant on adrenaline and shouts for energy management it wouldn't be such an issue, but as it is if you're playing paragon you pretty much have to build your team around keeping yourself clean if you're going to an area where you'll be facing either hex.

I'd like to see this changed - either tone down those hexes, or change paragons' reliance on shouts and adrenaline a little so that they're not completely useless when 3/4 of the skills on their bar are inactivated and their energy management is shut down for long periods of time.

EDIT: To give a comparison, it's like having diversion or dshot affect your entire bar at once. Pblock and blackout only shut down your whole bar for a few seconds; dshot and diversion shut down one skill at a time for a long time. Where's the fairness in paragons being vulnerable to two skills that work more like pblock with the duration of diversion?

Disagree as much as you want , im telling the truth, plain and simple.
You should read the changes/ultrabuffs he suggests and see that is bloody hell far of what any1 will call "balanced".
They are not subpar in everything , rangers and dervishes are "on the low" too but soz pal , shit happens when you can do a lot of roles unlike the rest of the classes. Like some ppl say , Jack of all trades ..... but master of none.

And now an advice ; paragons are not a stand alone class , they need more paragons to gain power . All party has some prot and some healing but no monk can do it alone , they are 2 ..... use 2 P or 3 to fill roles , sync with the team and the other P and youll truly see your class.



Stop putting words in my mouth ok ?.
What i know for sure is that your changes are so far from being balanced that you cant even reach the "b" from the word lol. You are pissed off because someone differs from your opinion ? deal with it because sometimes ( and i think this is one of these cases ) you will be wrong and other ppl will tell you so.

You failed at that equation.
Anet agrees D and P need some help/balance =\= P and D needs lots of overpowered stuff like you think.
Trying to fix something that is not broken is useless and like i said , only Moti line needs rebalance and maybe 2-5 skills from other att lines.

Seriously , think before writing and keep in mind things stuff that P have that i said before..... and now think about having 2-4 of them in a Party. If 1 of them can provide the best defense , another one the best attack buff , another one decent heal and rest a good or decent DPS .... WTH ? lets erase the rest of the classes !

Dude 80% or more of your suggestions are overpowered , im not the only one who thinks that ..... in fact , i think that you are almost alone thinking otherwise.

The problem is that the paragon cannot fill any of these roles adequately compared to the competition. The other physical attackers do much more damage, the necromancers and monks buff physical attackers much better than paragon, and the ritualists and monks put paragon's healing to shame except in special cases. Paragon does not excel at anything other than PvE skill abuse so it is no wonder that they are not desired in teams. Ritualist is also a jack-of-all-trades character, the difference is that the ritualist has a number of areas where it can excel. Paragon needs the same treatment.

BTW I agree with your assertion that there need to be more counters to shouts and such, but right now those skills are poorly implemented in the game. Take Vocal Minority for example... it completely prevents shouting for a very long time, 5..17..20 seconds, and affects all nearby. Compare this to Shroud of Silence which prevents spellcasting for 1..3..3 seconds, is a touch skill, and elite on top of that. Is there some reason why paragons should be punished 7x longer than spellcasters, and much more easily? Instead of paragon-hate skills like this I think the adrenaline hate skills should be less costly and more effective, that would shut down the paragon's energy flow, thus stopping the shouts indirectly. Of course adrenaline hate will have an effect on warriors as well, which is probably why Anet has not made those changes...

paragons work better in groups? o rly?
Thank you captain obvious.

The problem is that paragons are not good enough at *anything* for a team to have more than one paragon, and if a paragon is part of the team at all he is playing Imbagon. Everyone can observe this for themselves when they log into guildwars.


o right! i see what you are saying... having multiples of one class has never been done before! except for sabway, discordway, ritway, rojway, cryway, iway, bloodspike, rspike and the deviant permasin crap we see in guildwars these days.


I've got no problem with differences of opinion, the problem is that all of the paragon haters who come in here have plenty of opinions but little evidence to back them up. If you think any of those suggestions are overpowered then please explain why. The important thing is making the skills useful and giving the paragons useful roles within a group; the skill numbers can always be tweaked appropriately. Anything we suggest will go through a sanity check and playtesting from Anet and the test krewe before we ever see it in the game.

Well you are trying to make them a single stand alone machine at X task , by themselves so yo seem to ignore that fact.

Wrong and False. It looks more like a QQ than something based on empirical facts.

Misreading and overexagerating , very mature. If your changes are done , there wont be multiple copies of P , a FULL P group will blast thru any shit in the game and no , those comparisons ( lol you fail at comparisons once again ) arent valid because they are not the BEST at ALL ROLES like you want them P's to be.

Yeah no problem with diff opinions but anyone who differs is a paragon hater right ? lol you cant be more wrong if you think that about me.
For the evidences , i have them all and i told you why your overpowered buffs comparing with other skills are wrong , i have nothing more to say.

Yeah because this thread is worth to debate ANY SINGLE change of skill you suggest ...... right. I gave the mending example and explained myself and instead you didnt argue , therefore i guess you know im right and you know it.

If your tactic is "lets suggest 0984356093 overpowered stuff and maybe when Anet checks it they will give us at least 6-10 overpowered changed skills" i gotta tell you , that has a very high chance to fail.

From now on , unless you proof that what i ( and many ppl ) said in #201 is wrong , im not posting anymore . Im not doing a C&P of your suggestions and explaining below every skill change why is right/whatever/wrong , not worth the time soz.

- Other physical attackers are usually dedicated damage dealers and not support classes also dealing some damage like the Paragon.
- Other physical attackers rely on buffs to do that much damage. Most of these buffs are available to Paragons as well.
- Other physical attackers deal more damage in melee, the Paragon is a ranged physical, so it's fine as it is damage wise.
- Other Physicals (except the Warrior) could really use some better AC, but it's the Paragon (ranged) who actually got it.
- Paragons can cover too many roles at once to excel at any. All the examples you mention are pretty much dedicated characters (Orders), while Paragons can play multiple roles with greater bar compression. That implies moderate but not excellent effectiveness at all of these roles.
- Ritualists don't excel @ anything but spirit-spam, which is the Ritualist equivalent of the Imbagon, so the Paragon pretty much had the same treatment already. As healers, Primary Rits are often unwanted and, if anything, N/Rts are preferred. Channelling sees little play outside of the DwG spam. Not to mention that most spirit builds work just fine as a secondary Ritualist, while the Imbagon still is a Paragon exclusive.

Yes, but the skill to balance your version of "Brace Yourself!" against is called "Don't Trip!".

That may be true, but making the paragon two times stronger than every other profession isn't better either.

Try do (vastly) outdamage a scythe- or dagger-paragon with a dervish or a ranger. If you have succeeded please share your builds.

I agree, that is the most similar skill in the game to copy, but "Don't Trip" is useless because its duration is much too short. I don't carry that skill even in areas where I know there are mass knockdowns because it is not enough to prevent the knockdowns to any significant degree. Ward of Stability owns it completely. "Don't Trip" needs a huge buff to be useful, but that's another topic... I am not pushing for changes to any PvE skills at all.

This is a *huge* exaggeration and you know it.
Even if all of my suggestions were implemented without modification, I would expect the following:

Paragon becomes roughly equivalent to the ranger in terms of damage;
Paragon becomes equal (possibly superior in some ways) to the necromancer in terms of buffs to physical attackers; still no Barbs or Mark of Pain though, so Necromancer does not have much to worry about
Paragon becomes worse at direct healing and better at healing over time, meaning that he is more focused on party support rather than competing directly with healing professions like Monk and Ritualist;
Paragon continues to be strong at party defense and has additional options so that Imbagon is not the only build worth using.


See that's exactly the problem... paragon skills are weak, so the only way to deal decent damage with a paragon is to become another profession. :-\

Scythe Dervish obviously beats a scythe-wielding paragon and a ranger can wield a scythe with equivalent damage (and far better energy management) as well. Let's not even compare assassins.

re: rangers.... Glass Arrows, Triple Shot, Dual Shot, Forked Arrow, Asuran Scan. Against many foes, they have Barrage, Volley, Incendiary Arrows and then you add Splinter Weapon on top of that. Paragon cannot compete with rangers at all because 1) no multi-shot capability 2) no inherent damage buffs like Glass Arrows or Read The Wind or even Favorable Winds.

And that's the actual problem. Can't you see how imbalanced this would be? They go from "Master of none" to "Master of everything"...

Additional options and strong party defense, fine. But not together with everything else you expect.

Yes, but unlike the other professions the paragon does not have any multi-attack or multi-hit capability to take advantage of these buffs. Think about how Hundred Blades/Whirlwind Attack/Splinter Barrage/Death Blossom work and it becomes apparent why paragon loses to all other damage dealers in PvE.

I'm not suggesting that paragons deal as much damage as melee; without Strength of Honor, this is impossible. However the ranger has multi-attack capability and that makes it far superior to paragon in terms of damage.

Rangers have worse armor than paragon vs. physical and much better vs. elemental; and less armor vs. physical hardly matters since they attack from long range. They have always been ranged attackers.

Assassins and Dervishes have +24 armor (at least) for as long as they want it. You'd be crazy not to take Critical Agility on an assassin or Conviction on a dervish... permanent +24 armor / +33% IAS or +24 armor / 50% blocking? Yes please.

That said, I don't think the armor differences are that important. Save Yourselves covers up all differences and Protective Spirit makes anyone into a tank.

Ritualists have excellent healing skills, that is why you see N/Rt healers rather than N/Mo.
Ritualists have excellent party defense with Shelter, Union, Displacement, etc.
Ritualists have excellent damage with Signet of Spirits, Painful Bond, etc. as well as direct offense such as DwG, Spirit Rift, Ancestor's Rage.

Of all these things that the ritualist can do, paragon can only do one of them well, and that is party defense. And even that role is only possible with PvE skills (namely SY and TNTF) rather than any of the native paragon skills. :-(
Compare and contrast with the Ritualist who can perform the party defense role very well with no PvE skills at all. Do you really believe they are balanced?

to answer your first point (about bar compression)... in-game evidence seems to indicate that this so-called advantage is not as great as you think or else not valued at all because we don't see anyone clamoring for paragons in their group. If paragons were meant to be 'support' characters only, (whatever that means) then they should logically have better support skills than other professions... but they don't.

let's use the necromancer and ritualist as case studies for comparison.

ritualist has excellent damage, excellent defense, good healing capability, and good physical attacker buffs

necromancer has excellent physical attack buffs, excellent hexing/shutdown, excellent damage and damage prevention (ie. minions), and the best energy management in the game.

both of these professions are jack-of-all-trades professions that can do many things well if they dedicate skill slots and attributes to them. the difference is that necromancer and ritualist can perform any of their roles very well, whereas paragon can't do anything well at the moment besides party defense. Whatever modifications are made to paragon you'd still have to choose what area you want to excel in... a paragon that is strong on party buffs would necessarily be moderate or weak on damage. This is no different than the choice that a necromancer must make when he decides to go party support (orders) or damage (minions) or shutdown (hexes). there aren't enough skill slots or attributes to do everything well.

Don't compare ranged attackers to melee attackers...

Sure. Then make Rangers able to support the party as much as the Paragon. For balance, that is...

They're just cheaper, spammable and easier to manage for hero AI. They're far from "excellent". That's why you see N/Rt heroes but still human healers are usually Monks.

Most of these are not that excellent in everyday use, as Spirits are often weak, and their effects have short duration. They might be good but surely not that much better than Paragon party defenses.

You seem to forget that spirit spamming is only viable when using... guess what? a PvE-Only skill (Summon Spirits). Restoration is really nothing to write home about and Restoration Rits don't see that much play anyway.

So, you base the considerations on the effectiveness of a class on their success and following in the game alone.

I didn't see anyone clamoring for Assassing before the Perma builds, I don't see anyone clamoring for Mesmers even after the recent buff... I do see clamoring for Ritualists (Spirit Spammers only) and Paragons (Imbagons) much more often. So, let's safely assume that Assassins suck and are just good as Permasins, Mesmers still suck and Ritualists and Paragons are in demand.

/sarcasm

Paragons weren't meant to be "support only", they wouldn't be wielding a Spear otherwise. There's no such a thing as a "support only" class in GW, maybe just the Monk profession. Paragons as you yourself said are jack-of-all-trades, their ability to fill multiple roles must be compensated by some lack of focus: they excell at neither damage nor defense. Or better yet, they're excellent as Imbagons for defense, as much as Ritualists are excellent as damage dealers thanks to Spirit Spam, and little else.

So, give them better support skills and strip them of their damage capabilities, make most Paragon defensive skills strippable/interruptable/removable like the competition. Or leave them as they are and tweak a few skills so that Motivation is more effective. Turning Paragons into the ultimate warmachine doesn't make sense.

Ritualist have ONE viable build for damage (Spirit Spam), ONE gimmick rit-based team build (Glaiveway) that just relies on one Rit skill, average healing capability, a couple of buffs for physicals.

And both classes need to focus on either one or the other role. You either play your Ritualist as a Spirit Spammer or as a Resto Rit or play hybrid builds and do with less damage or less support. You either play your Necromancer as a damage dealer and give up some support, play it as a Minion Master or play it as a dedicated supporter (Orders, N/Rt).

As a Paragon you wield a spear and do damage with it and build up adrenaline to fuel your shouts. You both do damage and support, but can't expect to excell in both roles, expecially not when your defenses are pretty much impossible to remove once applied.

/sigh

Here's a point by point rebuttal of your post #201. Anyone with an objective point of view can see that I speak truth.

1- this is true, and I think there should better counters to them... for example, skills that reduce shout duration within an area or prevent a foe from being affected by shouts, chants, and echoes.
2- shouts cannot be interrupted at all, this is a basic trait of the 'shout' skill type. warriors have shouts too. You can't interrupt stances either, does that mean that any profession with stances is overpowered?
3- spears can attack faster than a bow, but paragons have no multi-attack capability so this doesn't matter. Ranger can hit you with 2 or 3 arrows at once or barrage a group and hit 7 times. rangers also have inherent damage buffs like Glass Arrows, Read The Wind, Favorable Winds. ranger beats paragon in all cases.
4- I never said that paragons should be able to deal equivalent damage to melee. What I am hoping for is (near) equivalent damage to the ranger... but ranger will still be better because of the inherent damage buffs i mentioned above.


Paragon has good condition removal already but they cannot ever deal with hexes as well as a monk because of PnH, Divert Hexes, Convert Hexes, etc. Paragon has mass hex removal that he cannot use (lol) because he has no spells.
Paragon cannot deal as much damage as a warrior (and never will) because he does not have Strength of Honor, inherent armor penetration from strength, and no multi-hit or multi-attack skills to take advantage of buffs.
Paragon only has one interrupt skill and it is terrible compared to what the ranger has, you're really reaching on this one.
Paragon can protect the team as well as a monk... possibly, but only with PvE skills. Even then, he does not have anything that can match Protective Spirit, Spirit Bond, Guardian, Shield of Absorption, Life Bond, etc. etc.
Paragon cannot buff physical attackers as well as a necromancer, nor even close at present; however this was clearly part of the paragon's design and something that the paragon SHOULD be good at. The paragon skills are simply underpowered compared to what the necromancer and monk can provide.


one word: Recuperation. +3 health regen to all, no energy loss, maintainable in combat, unremovable unless you kill the spirit.

my suggestion was to increase Mending Refrain's effect by +1 health regen and increase the duration slightly... in other words, revert back to the way it was before the last nerf. This is not a major change.

But there aren't, and you can't just expect to:

- Introduce new skills
- Heavily rework some skills to introduce new mechanics

just to make the Paragon competitive... At the very least, Paragons as supporters have a HUGE advantage for this already.

If you base your whole role on providing unremovable buffs to the party, yes, if those buffs are too significant, which is exactly what you're suggesting.

Rangers don't have any support capabilities, so they compensate with multi-target attacks and more damage, together with damage-mitigation with interruption, which is far from being as effective as party-wide buffs.

Why? Rangers can't support their team as much as Paragons, so I don't see a reason to give Paragons equivalent damage to the Ranger unless the Ranger is given equivalent party-defenses and support capabilities to compensate.

Then, you'd basically end up with two redundant classes.

Paragon has good condition removal already but they cannot ever deal with hexes as well as a monk because of PnH, Divert Hexes, Convert Hexes, etc. Paragon has mass hex removal that he cannot use (lol) because he has no spells.
Didn't you just say you don't expect Paragons to deal as much damage as physicals?

Monks would love unremovable buffs and more damage options.

One word and one number: 25 energy. You also need to cast it everytime the Spirit expires or it's killed, while Mending Refrain renews itself pretty easily.

Spirits are also easily targeted and destroyed, so there you go.

Thanks for saving me some time Halendt. Seriously Khomet , no . No matter how you look at it , 80% or more of your suggestions are way overpowered.

PS: LoL @ "Rangers beat paragon in all cases" omg.

Sorry to butt into you two's argument but iv got to defend my rit. He is my most used character after all.

Sry man but this is completely incorrect. Ritualists can do so much more than spirit spam which is why I am actually pushing for a nerf to SoS, spirit siphon, and summon spirits. Ritualists are just good at so many things.

Ritualists can heal very well. They may not have more of a variety of spells than monks but their spells they do have heal for a higher amount than most non-elite monk heals and even several elite monk heals. Soothing memories, wielder's boon, mend body & soul, spirit light, and ghostmirror's light are all just as effective or more effective than their monk counterparts. Spirit's light weapon heals for an insane amount of health, and Xinrai's weapon and weapon of remedy are good as well. Weapon of Warding and Weapon of Shadow are very good anti-melee prots and are just as good as the monk anti-melee prots. Protective was kaolai, life, and recuperation all make good party heals. Simply put, while rits may not have as many options as monks have due to only having one attribute compared to the monk's three attributes, the spells that rits do have for healing are just as good as the best spells available to monks. I dont see how you can say that a rit's healing is "average". Oh, and a rit restorer on a human is better than a necro restorer on a human b/c as a human, managing energy as a resto rit is pretty easy. The reason why n/rt's have become popular is because heroes suck at managing energy and need the godmode energy management that soul reaping makes available to them. On humans, rit > n/rt.

As for rit's damage dealing options, it is true that SoS spirit spam is a little too powerful. However, they have other options that are good (not overpowered like SoS but still good) ways of inflicting damage. DwG and Cruel was daoshen give armor penetration making their direct lightning damage effective in HM. There are many direct damage lightning spells like spirit's rift (cracked armor means even more armor penetration), channeled strike, spirit burn, ancestor's rage, caretaker's charge etc. that can be effectively used in general PvE. In short, rits have good offensive abilities besides just SoS.

Rit's also have very effective defensive skills in the form of Shelter, Union, and Displacement. With soul twisting, armor of the unseen, and summon spirits, it is easy to maintain shelter and union (thus negating a vast majority of the damage done party wide) and displacement can be kept up pretty often as well, if not maintained. A constant party wide prot spirit + shielding hands + almost constant 75% block is definetly good enough to stand in for a prot monk.

Finally, rits have more than just a few physical buffs. From splinter to sundering weapon to weapon of fury to nightmare weapon, rits have options for all types of physical buffs. At the same time, they can keep physicals condition free with wielder's remedy and can support casters with weapon of quickening or do extra damage to the enemy with vengeaful weapon. It is true that these weapons can not stack but if you have splinter, vengeful, and weapon of warding/resilient weapon with weapon of remedy, a rage, and whatever other healing or damage skills you want to bring, you can have a very good supportive build.

In addition, rits can do a shitload of damage in physical with spirit's strength and can minion bomb better than necros thanks to added damage from explosive growth and added support from spirit's gift.

You don't see human rit's because SoS is overpowered and every rit and their brother wants to abuse having an army of spirits. For some reason, many people find doing damage to be more fun than healing, so they choose to use the OP (which needs a nerf) SoS over... well... any other build. However, saying that everything else is bad because rits only use SoS is inaccurate. This is just a testament for how OP SoS spirit spamming is.

Spirits are really easy to keep alive with summon spirits. If using one of those rare spirits that inflicts damage on itself like earthbind+wanderlust or shelter+union, armor of unfeeling solves that problem. Keeping alive spirits really isn't tough at all.

So yea...i already addressed this above. Saying that a build is weak because it doesnt see play is not always accurate.

replies in bold.

Beyond that, I noticed if paras don't have AoE, at least being able to kill something would be a nice buff. I toyed with some para bars and I couldn't find any bar where I felt I was hiting enough to warrant my place. Most mobs wouldjust be blown by the next hits right after me. If someone can give me a combo that can make sure a foe is taken down (with party support, that means just a little disruption is enough to garranty the kill), that point is pretty much moot. Even if the combo is doable once per 10 sec, that wouldalready give paras the punch they need to be decent as damage.

Another things most "meta" classes have is party wide protection. what do paras have? SY (1per team), party wide utility (hex removal/ energy gain), party wide defense(that wears off when you attack/do something), and single target echos.
SY is limiting.
utilities are very specialised and hard to control, And they require specific trigger.
defense requires a synchronised team.
single targets echo will in the end only affect 2-3 people out of 8, so why bother when others have better.

They could emphasis the need for a synchronised team. Giving great effects if you can use them. But good teams exists and they would use it to the full potential.
Or make the specialised skills more versatile. I know I am not the first one to say this, but why not just make those skills like "never surender" and lyric of zeal another effect if the condition isn't met.

Then there's the pvp-balanced-cooldowns, 20 sec cd for a chant that trigers once in a 10 sec window just doesn't cut it in GW PvE. It's more of a PvE problem if you ask me, but we aren't the ones who designed the areas.

[QUOTE=Khomet Si Netjer;5196475]I agree, that is the most similar skill in the game to copy, but "Don't Trip" is useless because its duration is much too short. I don't carry that skill even in areas where I know there are mass knockdowns because it is not enough to prevent the knockdowns to any significant degree. Ward of Stability owns it completely.[/qoute]
And your version of "Brace Yourself!" owns Ward of Stablity for the same degree: ~7 times bigger area, faster cast time, no aftercast delay, better duration/recharge time ratio.

No, it's spot-on, since you are ignoring once again that Paragons would be able to do 2-3 things from that list simultaneously.

Ranged professions were never meant to deal good damage. And btw, bow rangers are comparable weak damage dealers too. A dedicated bow ranger deals at best about ~80 single target DPS, Barrage Rangers are weak unless you tailor the entire team build around them, and even in that case a team build that is tailored around other classes (i.e. Searing Flames eles) is in general better.

That is exactly what your suggestions lacks at the moment; the paragon would excel at multiple roles at the same time.
To achive that you need to add "All your weapon mastery attributes are reduced to 0 for the next 10 seconds" for all of your changed shouts, shants and echos or so.

Yes, they are good at many things, but other classes can perform those things better, sometimes even far better than the ritu. A pure restro ritu, a pure spirit spammer or a pure channeling ritu is nearly always a wasted team slot. Their strenght, like paragons, comes from their ability to do multiple things good at the same time.

notice how I am comparing them to rangers, and how you ignore that fact.

Having Shelter, Union, and Displacement up 100% is excellent defense... and with the ritualist updates this is easier to accomplish. Is this better or worse than Imbagon? That's harder to say, they are both good.

Not at all... now that the cast time and recharge time of spirits has been reduced, you don't need Summon Spirits at all.
Restoration sees quite a bit of use. (ie. N/Rt amongst other uses)

Not sure why you are wasting your time with this nonsense, don't twist my words.


According to you, the jack-of-all trades cannot be good at both damage and defense. Why then do you not see a problem with the ritualist and necromancer and monk being good at both?

1) there's no damage capability to strip from them, they are already outclassed by all other physical attackers in PvE.
2) creating new counters for shouts/anthems/chants/etc. probably should have been done years ago but they are part of the game and I think Anet is unlikely to do a major redesign now when most of their effort is focused on gw2.
3) tweaking motivation is part of the plan.
4) if you think these modifications are turning paragons into the "ultimate warmachine"... lol. I hardly think that trying to come closer to the ranger's damage or the necromancer's physical damage buffs would be overpowered.

There are a lot more builds than that, not to mention farming applications.
In any case having several areas of expertise or several viable builds is better than having only one. And that's what Paragon is stuck with at present.

Take a standard SoS spirit spammer, add Splinter Weapon, and you have good damage and good physical damage buffing in the same bar. Are you saying that you've never thought of that? Never seen a smite monk with RoJ and Strength of Honor on the same bar? Never seen a minion bomber with Strength of Honor tacked on? Your assertion is easily proven false.

The damage is insignificant compared to other damage dealers; you keep claiming this as an advantage for the paragon but it just isn't true. Furthermore any warrior or warrior secondary can bring Save Yourselves and get the same defense that the Imbagon is using, so your argument does not carry a lot of weight.

Jeez. Why must this thread always bobble from decent to incredibly TL;DR all the time?

anyone can use Save Yourselves, and some (Dragon Slash, Dagger Spam) can keep it up 100% like the paragon.

The paragon's entire skillset is composed of shouts, anthems, and echoes, and it has been that way from the beginning. That is not something that I suggested. If you think it is a problem, how would you suggest fixing it?

No. Rangers and Paragons have different functions within a group, and that's fine; however they are both ranged damage dealers so they should have similar characteristics in that regard.
In their other attributes they have major differences... Beast Mastery gives more damage, Wilderness Survival has environmental effects, traps, more conditions, and some healing. Do these need some work? I think so, but that doesn't mean that paragons and rangers should be clones of each other.

Monks can have unremovable buffs anytime they want... it's called Spellbreaker. And their damage options are quite good with Ray of Judgment, Smite Condition, Smite Hex, and Strength of Honor. Not bad for a 'healing' profession.

It sounds like the main problem you have with paragons is the shout/chant mechanic... but Anet built them into the game years ago and I don't think they are likely to be reworked now. What we *could* do is suggest skill changes to help counteract them. I've already suggested two effects that would help with this, the only question is which skills and professions to attach them to. Mesmer, Necromancer, and Ritualist are natural choices for that.

effect #1: reduction of shout duration on affected targets. this could be an AoE hex or a spirit (rit or ranger). Perhaps add this to Soothing or Tranquility?
effect #2: preventing shouts from affecting a target. this could be a hex, perhaps an AoE hex. making this a spirit would be way too strong... imagine a spirit that prevented all spellcasting within its range.

With the ritualist update spirits can be summoned very quickly, very cheaply, and very often. Have you seen the new Soul Twisting?

Again, my suggestion for mending refrain was just undoing the previous nerf, so the change from the present form would be minor. If you have issues with the general function of the skill that is between you and Anet.

I know this is offtopic... but just bear with me

Although ritualists do have that unique ability to do many things good at the same time, that does not mean they make a wasted team slot as a pure resto rit, a pure spirit spammer, or a pure channeler. Channelers (direct lightning damage attackers) used to be subpar to air eles due to air eles having armor penetration and cracked armor. However, with the update last february, ritualists have easy access to both of these, and now i consider them equal in strength to an air ele. Like I mentioned above, resto rits may seem subpar to a healing monk due to their lack of skills (rits have 1 attribute while monks have 3). However, resto rits make up for a lack of variety with powerful skills among those available to them. Rits don't have enough protection in the resto line to replace a prot monk or a hybrid monk but a resto rit could easily replace a healing monk and do just as well. As for spirit spammers... well im not even going to bother addressing them. Spirit rits are very powerful and i dont see how you can say they are waste of a slot in a group when nearly pugs and hero teams alike often utilise spirit spammers.

just a clarification... ritualist do have two attribute lines for monk-like skills, it's just that they are split differently. Restoration has straight healing and condition removal while Communing has things that would be in the Protection line on a monk. Shelter, Union, Displacement, Soothing and Binding Chains for example. Unlike the monk, the ritualist also has damage or lifestealing in both of these attribute lines.

and i have to agree that anyone claiming that a ritualist is a waste of a slot is very far from reality...

Well i guess you could put it that way. A defensive spirit rit could easily fill the position of a prot monk and be just as effective after all. Idk about binding chains though...i think you meant dulled weapon?

Yes, exactly. In my opinion giving the paragon a multi-attack skill like Volley and a multi-hit skill like Sun And Moon Slash would go a long way toward closing the gap with rangers.

Most of the skill changes I have suggested (including never surrender) involve making the skills less conditional. In some cases this will require weakening the skill's effect.

The recharge on the motivation skills is generally way too long, the paragon's energy management depends on spamming shouts and chants and anthems. I would rather see shorter duration shorter recharge skills with weaker effects than super strong effects with long recharge. the ritualist has lots of powerful long-recharge spirits, but the paragon skills are meant to be spammed.

that's another skill with a kind of damage-reducing effect, but no... i was thinking of Binding Chains, Pacifism, and Amity. All of those prevent foes from attacking you. Binding Chains used to work that way but it got changed around recently.

If the only problem we have is numbers, that's fine, those can be changed. We can alway increase the recharge time, reduce the duration or whatever. However note that the suggestion for Brace Yourself also has a conditional, it doesn't work at all on allies that are moving.

oh, you mean like channeling/restoration ritualists, or blood/curses necromancers, or smite/prot monks?

Yes, bow rangers have less damage potential than melee professions, and that is why I don't think that having the paragon achieve equality with the ranger is anything for people to get upset about. :-)

I don't quite understand what you mean here. A paragon focused on strong support (either offense or defense) is going to have an entire bar dedicated to it. The Imbagon is a good example. He deals weak to moderate damage by auto-attacking with his spear and that's about all he can do. This is not big scary damage, and it is hardly what I would call "excelling" at being a damage dealer. But that's okay because the primary focus of the imbagon is not damage, it is defense.
A paragon that was focused on physical attacks would have an entire bar devoted to that as well, and if he happens to devote any skill slots to party buffs those skills will take time to activate... and that means less damage from throwing spears. more party support means less damage; this problem is self correcting.

So, wait, I've just discovered that Rits are perfectly viable as supporters because of Summon Spirits, and more even since their primary still sucks big time, so that Restoration is played mostly by Necromancers.

How's that any different from Paragons being perfectly viable as supporters with SYS! and TNTF?

Whatever... The requested ability to do too many excellent things simultaneously is what kills the suggestions here. No other class can do that. Not even Ritualists, Monks and Necromancers, surely not to the extent you're suggesting. Maybe just the Ritualist (SoS + Restoration), but at the cost of rather compromised effectiveness of both damage and healing capabilities.

Paragons would also retain two advantages over these classes:

- Unremovability of buffs. How's that hard to comprehend? Paragon buffs are comparatively weaker because of the almost absolute lack of counters to them. Please, were you serious about Spellbreaker for monks? Do you really think the elite slot wasted on a crucial character to make its buffs partially unstrippable on just ONE party members is even remotely comparable to party-wide shouts? Since Chants and Shouts are uninterruptible by design, implementing new counters would imply significant redesigning of the game to make such skills interrumptible/strippable, which would simply not happen.

- Physical, ranged damage. For how measly it can be right now by itself, it would still benefit from most buffs (autoattacking while under the effect of Splinter Weapon? MoP?), which is something Caster classes DON'T have. Sure, you're missing Strenght of Honor, but most other buffs still work.

Spawning power is very good. You were complaining earlier about how spirits were so fragile but with spawning power, spirits really arn't all that fragile. Weapon spells lasting a lot longer is also a very good thing. Finally, there are a bunch of good skills in spawning power for all types of rits. Like I said in my earlier post, the reason why people use restoration on their necro heroes is because heroes (especially healer heroes) suck at managing energy. A necro/rt or an ER hero will always be better at healing/protting than a monk/rit because the first two examples have godmode energy management. On a human, rit restorers will always be better than necro restoreres because maintaining energy as a human restoration rit with gole, energetic was lee sa, or selfless spirit is pretty easy.

What the hell are you talking about ? Rangers being better than paragons in ALL cases ? are you on crack ?. Seriously you are out of your mind , no matter how many replies you write , your suggestions are a joke. You are not suggesting 1 skill change to make it better , you are suggesting A LOT of skills that dont need a change to be bloody overpowered and thats the undeniable truth.

You failed in almost all comparisons you made to suggest such changes and if you are waiting for someone from Anet to tell you "hahaha ... you are insane" ... you can sit and wait because i dont think its gonna happen. Not because its not true .... its just because is not worth , thats out of discussion.

Good luck in your pointless and useless crusade because hell , you are going to need a miracle. For anything else +1 to Halendt on #233.

Lanier already disproved everything you said about ritualist so I'm not getting into that again. Moreover I am not understanding what your point is... we are talking about changes to the paragon skills, not changes to PvE skills.
If you have problems with SY and TNTF that is a separate issue.

Here we go again... making claims without evidence. Well I will show you evidence of how things are now. You overestimate the paragon's capabilities by a great deal, and all of these other professions can perform multiple roles at the same time and do them well. That is why they see a lot of use in the game and paragons do not.

Imbagon: excellent party defense, weak single target damage, some offensive buffing (typically EBSoH and GFTE)
Spirit Spammer: excellent damage (SoS, painful bond, etc.), excellent offensive buffing (splinter weapon), good defense (spirits distract the enemy)
RoJ monk: excellent damage (RoJ and other smiting), condition and hex removal, healing, and excellent offensive buffing (Strength of Honor)
Minion Bomber: excellent damage (death nova, minions, putrid bile), good defense (minions distract the enemy), excellent offensive buffing (orders, barbs, mark of pain, etc. etc)

So your problem with paragons is basically related to how shouts and chants work. We cannot do anything about that and it's beyond the scope of the changes I was suggesting.

The only thing that seems feasible to do would be to give other professions easier ways to counter shouts and chants.

I've already explained this many times. Physical attackers deal damage in two ways, by channeling buffs through their weapon and attacking multiple times to multiply the damage from any buffs they may have. Base weapon damage is insignificant compared to the buffs.

So while paragon has similar base damage to other physical attackers, he will always do less than melee (because Strength of Honor doesn't work) and he will always do less than a ranger (because the ranger has preparations which add damage), and the paragon will do less damage than either melee or the ranger because he has no way to deliver multiple hits with one attack. This means that no matter what buffs you have for your team, the others get more benefit from them because they can deliver multiple damage packets with one skill. This is what allows Whirlwind Attack, Triple Chop, S&M Slash, scythes, dual attacks, barrage, volley, triple shot, dual shot, etc. to deliver more damage... it's not just the extra weapon damage, having multiple hits delivers extra damage from buffs as well. Paragon cannot compete with these because he's got no multiattack at all, not even weak skills.

i've shown you (in great detail) why the paragon is inferior to other physical damage dealers and also inferior to other support characters such as ritualist and necromancer. I've shown you evidence and explained my reasoning, but all you have countered with is your opinion.

re: "rangers are better than paragons in all cases", I was referring specifically to damage potential, and here is the evidence. I won't bother with extensive math because the difference in damage is obvious.

paragon best case: cruel spear, spear of fury, blazing spear, etc. good single target damage and deep wound.

ranger best case: sundering shot, penetrating shot, triple shot, dual shot, glass arrows, favorable wind.

ranger will always win in single target damage because he has Glass Arrows and Favorable Wind adding up to 26 damage to every arrow on top of whatever additional buffs he may have from teammates. He will also win because he delivers additional damage packets from multiple hits (triple shot, dual shot). paragon does not have inherent damage buffs nor can he deliver multiple hits.

ranger will always win against multiple targets because he has Barrage, Volley, and Incendiary Arrows which can deliver multiple hits at once, thus multiplying the effect of whatever buffs he has. In addition this can deliver all hits from Splinter Weapon at the same time which results in massive spike damage to a group. paragon cannot deliver multiple hits so he is not even in the game vs. multiple targets.


I don't want this thread to turn into a pissing contest, but Gill was already lolpwned by Lanier in #220. But you are right on one count, I am hoping for a miracle because paragons have gotten the shaft from the day they were created.

Khomet Si Netjer, there's edit and multi-quote buttons.

This "undeniable truth!!!!1!!1!" garbage is starting to irk me. There's OBVIOUSLY a split opinion on what should be done with paragons. You repeatedly talking about how right you are doesn't make you any more right.

I personally see a need for Paragons to get at least some for form attention at some point. I think if they get overpowered Anet is capable of nerfing them to something reasonable. I also don't see how giving paragons a boost can hurt the game. Sure some foes might become more dangerous. I don't really see that as a big deal.

Im not shure if its this thred or another one, but i mentioned a couple of idea's that arnt overpowerd but makes para more usefull.

i will have to dig out the page and post it.

Alot of the skills i compared to are monk spells. simmilar effect and recharge with about the same energy cost. (i also took leadership energy gain into considertion)

Para is my main and has been from the release of NF. and yes they do get nerfd alot and they can be a pain as you are restricted on builds. (I mean SY is the best skill for para pve and thats a war skill)

Altho you can put out alot of good heals with serpents quickness or Assassins Promis on your bar.

The biggest problem i came to while trying out heal builds for para is the lack of direct healing. And direct prot for that matter. Also Ally healing /protting on some missions is hard with paragon's

For an example:
Skills that party heal like Song of Restoration Look nice but infact are wasted. Slow recharge and doesnt Directly affect the party member(s) thats taking the hate, (they may be unable to use a skill/spell to get the benefit of the heal while the rest of the team doesnt need healing but get the hp)

Here is a link to some ideas we were all throwing around a while back.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/c...tml?t=10424144

No, it's not MY problem. It's THE problem.

You fail to see why most Paragon skill look subpar when compared to other classes. Well, this is the reason why their buffs are weaker. Since, as you say, we can't expect this mechanic to change, you should stop making direct comparisons between classes. Other classes have stronger buffs and indirect defenses that have multiple counters (you know, that enchantment and hex removal are really frequent, do you?), the Paragon has weaker buffs that compensate this weakness with advantages such as unremovability, uninterruptability and easy party-wide diffusion. You can expect tweaks to make Paragon skills more viable and I'm all for it, but you shouldn't expect Paragon skills to become directly comparable to other classes' skills, because that would simply be unbalanced for the reason stated above.

I agree Paragons need help and I'm glad they'll be seeing attention. I just don't think everything that's being suggested here is perfectly reasonable. Some proposals need some revision, which is exactly what me, Desert Rose and Tenebrae have been saying since #201. I think Paragons should be made viable again, not simply overpowered.

I see what your getting at but there are anti shout skills (Well of Silence Vocal Minority Ulcerous Lungs) energy denail Soothing images and stuff that stops you gaining benefit from adrenaline, VoR and SS affect shouts plus any anthem can be interupted and most are random to whom they affect. not to mention lack of ALLY support.

I ( and some others too ) already stated WHY those suggestions fail . They are based on a flawed logic , like saying 2+2=7. Repeating it in every post is not worth , check them.

Who disagrees with that ? not me dude , not me. Motivation NEEDS a boost in ways of casting ti ... wait , im repeating myself again and you dont want that right ?.
I ( and many ppl ) disagree with those changes in that wiki page of the OP. Those are not changes , those are not boosts , those are bloody overpowered skills that are about 80% of times BETTER than any other skill of any other class that does something similar ....... no , that is not the way.
You simply CANT take any skill you want and go like :
- Mmmm this DPS skill , i want it to be the same like warriors X skill
- Aham , this blocking chant , i want it to be better than aegis and any monk stuff related to blocking
- This healing skill .... i want it to be better than any Rit spirit that does that.
And so on . If you do so , you would have better skills at doing X, Y and Z task that almost any other class and that pal , its by definition unbalanced.

Quoting Halendt once again.....
I agree Paragons need help and I'm glad they'll be seeing attention. I just don't think everything that's being suggested here is perfectly reasonable. Some proposals need some revision, which is exactly what me, Desert Rose and Tenebrae have been saying since #201. I think Paragons should be made viable again, not simply overpowered.

We've already discussed this: sure, there are some counters, but they're nowhere near as common as enchantment and hex removal.

Most of these counters are hexes themselves and can be easily removed from the Paragon, while, say, a stripped enchantment is gone unless you reapply it. Also, those are preventive counters. Once you're out of that Well, or are cleaned of that Hex, you get your buffs up and nothing can remove them.

SS and VoR affect the Paragon as well, sure thing, but then again, they affect pretty much anyone and can be removed.

I fail to untersdand in what are the shouts/chants of paragons troublesome ?
As they are, they give a little bonus to all party for their next attack or spell. As half the party have no attack and the second hald no spells, it usually means three or four people get a little boost (one critical hit, inflict burning for two seconds, remove one hex or one condition). Most of them have either high energy and long cooldown or high adrenaline. That's far to be so useful. As a matter of fact the really useful shouts are go for the eyes (spammable), they're not to fear (PVE giving prot half the time) and save your ground (prot the second half of time). No, I won't speak about Save Yourselves, as this shout is not a paragon shout, and as many people already said, tie it to strength, and maybe give it +24 armor only with 0 strength.

There is really no need to nerf paragon shouts.

Frankly I feel paragons good to defend party, but what the matter if you could kill all the mobs in ten, or fifteen seconds ? That's like being very good at something useless the way PvE is.

I think, the way PvE is, paragons need more heavy damage skills. They really don't need anything else. Oh, yeah, they also probably need to have their casting ... well singing times reduced, as two seconds for a not-so good effect are two wasted seconds.

That's why making those skills more usable/cheaper/interesting to use would be a great change for Paragons. Nothing like that is being suggested here tough: Paragons are being compared to other classes all the time, underlining their weak points while always failing to mention their unique strong points.

Paragons must be given some peculiarity to be viable, they should not become a highly-armored, shouting clone of some other support profession. Making their buffs as good as Monk or Ritualist defensive methods, or even better than those, simply makes no sense and would be overpowered for the reasons stated above.

Who ever thought about nerfing them? Have you read anything of this thread before replying?

EDIT:

Yup, I would support that: give Paragons some focus. Either boost their Damage capabilities, or make their defensive role more significant and worthwhile, so that they're at least good at something.