Dear Arenanet: Please expedite paragon fixes

About shouts :

The last couple of pages are full of ideas of counters against shouts, of how they're unstrippable, so I prefer to advise against :mrgreen:

Not really.

Actually, we've been observing how few counters shouts and chants have. This advantage, together with their nature of unstrippable, uninterruptable buffs, is usually counterweighted by the apparently sub-par effects when compared to the options available to other classes.

You can't directly compare, say, Defensive Anthem with Aegis. Aegis has undeniably better effects overall (won't end when target hits, for example). These effects are easily negated by simple enchantment removal though, while once Defensive Anthem is up, it will stay up untill it expires.

agree with this. The anti-shout and anti adrenaline hexes simply arnt common enough in the game to worry about much. I would support making remedy signet remove a hex in addition to a condition (and then making recharge 8ish to compensate) but there is no need to nerf the anti-shout and anti-adrenaline hexes when they already don't see use on player's bars.

I see a back and forth here between a few people. And I hope it doesnt escalate to the point this thread gets closed, because I think this thread is important. I agree that some of Khomet suggestions are a little over the top. But, if your going to constanlty critisize them try to give some specific examples of how you would change skills for the better.

Paragons are susceptible to all melee hate and half the caster hate out there. Soothing Images(rediculously OP when used by HM foes), Soothing, Vocal Minority, Well of Silence, Reckless Haste, Blurred Vision, Price of Failure, Crippling Anguish(I think every foe in PvE has this one), Meekness, and Shadow of Fear are very popular with HM foes. All those anti-adrenaline hexes prevent paragons from using thier own ADRENALINE based hex removal. Crazy right? Sins, Dervs, and Wars dont have any hex removal. But they werent made from the ground up to be a support class. I suggest doing something with Hexbreaker Aria to make it useful, but not expoitable by other professions. Something like, 10e 1s 20sr Song. For 10 seconds, the next time each ally within earshot uses a skill, that ally loses 0..1..2 hexes. Hexbreaker Aria would have to be made a Song for it to activate on skill activation.

Blind, its just one condition. But, it can be devastating to the Paragon and therefore the team. I think Remedy Signet should be changed to remove Blind and one other condition. See Antidote Signet

Besides those counters you have blocking stances and enchantments. But then add interrupted Chants and energy denial, its easy to see there is plenty of Paragon hate out there. I dont mind blocking, interrupts and e-denial. Those are common and provide balance.

As has been suggested before, the Motivation line can be fixed easily by reducing energy and recharge times. I like the Chant mechanic. However they dont see use, because they are too limiting. Besides adding some offensive support(increased damage), they could be triggered on the next 1..2..4 attack skills/spells/etc.

One of my major beefs with Paragons is that I think they should provide more offensive support. "Find Thier Weakness!" and Anthem of Envy are the only skills that a Paragon has that increase damage and they only effect attacks. To fix this for example, Anthem of Fury should give additional damage with the next skill that tagets foe along with providing adrenaline. But, that would make it a Song and not an Anthem.

Anthem = attack skills, Aria = spells, Ballad = after damage, Chorus = chouts/chants, Lyric = Signet, Song = Skill.

So unless Anet is willing to change the names of some skills, they are extremely limited in what they can do with most Paragon skills.

All I really want from the Paragon is 3 viable types of builds. Imbagon, Motivation, and Offensive buffs. Is that too much to ask?

EDIT: Dervishs do have a hex removal.

the nomeclature of a skill isn't nearly as important as balance.

That said, you have to remember that another major, major weakness of the motivation chants is that they can't be controlled by the paragon. Im not saying that the chants should lose their conditions, im saying that the conditions should be different and should be changed in a way that the paragon can control when the effect occurs.

I agree. I emphasized this to show what kind of restictions the TK are going to encounter when they balance the Paragon. And should be kept in mind when future suggestions are made.

Well, "wasted team slot" was badly worded, a more detailed definition would have been "if you create a dream team you would never want a pure xyz ritu in your party".

Hexbreaker Aria only triggers on spells not despite the paragon has no spells on its own but because of it. Hexes are a weak spot of physicals, and it should stay that way.

Echos that reapplie themselves everytime a shout/chant ends need to be redesigned; once applied, they cannot be stripped, cost no upkeep and can easily be maintained. Such skills cannot be balanced, they are either too weak or too strong.

Chance problematic chants and shouts from affecting everyone in aggro range to target based skills that only affects the selected target (and sometimes also adjacent or nearby allies). That would give the paragon more control over their shouts, therefor some conditions on their effects could be removed, and it would make them harder to use, therefor you could make them more powerful.

I'm not talking about his changes really. I think like anything they aren't perfect but they aren't completely worthless either. It seems to me that you think only your answer to changing paragons is the right one. Which I don't agree with. But this is just the impression I'm getting.

Well since they aren't MY changes I don't agree with everything in them either. I agree that they aren't perfect but I think at least a few of his skill ideas are worth looking at. If anet did end up using some of his skill ideas and it became overpowered they could just nerf it afterwards.

In any case maybe this thread being active as it is will motivate anet to fix para's quicker? Let's hope eh?

God how many times have someone suggested fixing Paragons on this site? If Anet hasn't already "fix" them yet they aren't going to anytime soon.

Anet has said that their next focus is going to be on dervishes, paragons, and smite monks.

Thanks, I'll try to clean up future posts.
I am writing them from Linux, Windows, a (very old) Mac notebook, and/or an iPhone depending on where I am at the time and the functionality varies with platform.

Haha, thanks for digging that up CK. :-)
As everyone can see I've been making noise about this for a while now, and I'm far from the only one.... but another 6 months have passed and nothing has been done about it. Hopefully now that the War in Kryta is over Anet can devote some resources to the paragon and dervish updates and roll them out.

BTW, I loved the War in Kryta... gj guys.

But as you have explained above, any character that uses shouts and anthems is overpowered by definition because such buffs cannot be removed. This being the case, what would you do to fix it?

From another point of view, I'll make the case that for many of the warrior and paragon buffs the fact that they are unremovable is largely irrelevant. Imagine that you have some skills that will completely remove shout effects from a target... now with that in mind, let's examine potential uses of such skills. The anthems typically have a recharge of 10 seconds, so anything you managed to strip would be reapplied very quickly... trying to strip Order of Pain, Order of the Vampire, etc. would be similarly pointless as it would be reapplied as soon as you stripped it from someone. The shouts such as Go For The Eyes, TPIY, Stand Your Ground, Never Surrender also end quickly and are reapplied quickly and besides that are hardly worth stripping. Save Yourselves falls into this category as well... even if you allow ways of stripping it off, it will be reapplied within seconds, so this is really a futile effort. The important things to strip would be Refrains and Echoes then, because they last a long time. However I challenge you to find any of these that are actually worth stripping, as opposed to Protective Spirit, Life Bond, or Ether Renewal which are definitely worth stripping.

There are plenty of effects in the game that have no counter, for example the weapon spells and spirit effects. Additionally we have unstrippable spell immunity such as Shadowform and Obsidian Flesh which *still* exist in the game. If one is concerned about balance then logically these should also be topics of concern. Given their power and the apparent lack of motivation to change them properly I am really not concerned with minor buffing from shouts when major effects like these remain unchanged and unstrippable.

1- that's because the warrior has some good skills, the warrior and paragon both use adrenaline. logically these are good skills to emulate. can you suggest a better option?

2- this is patently false, the monk and ritualist blocking skills are far superior to anything the paragon has and superior to anything I suggested. For example the paragon must use their elite slot to get the same effect as the monk's non-elite skill Aegis, or a lesser effect than the ritualist's non-elite skill Displacement. That is not balanced by any objective standard.

3- you haven't mentioned anything specific but I'm guessing that you think Mending Refrain is ZOMG overpowered. IMO this is pretty laughable, as health regeneration hardly matters in PvE at all. If it is very powerful (as you imagine) then explain why Rangers, Dervishes, Assassins and Monks all have skills that they can maintain forever that provide +10 health regeneration for 5-10 energy, and explain why those skills are not overpowered compared to Mending Refrain.

On a serious note, if you want to make suggestions then please do so. Tell me how the suggestion I made for Skill X is way overpowered, and also tell me what you would do to make it better. If you think Skill Y needs a buff, tell us so and be specific. Saying that all of those skills are overpowered without giving examples or explaining why is useless to us and it's useless to Anet, whereas if we give them useful suggestions to work with things will get done more quickly.

This.

A lot of those changes were suggested by people on gwg, others are my own ideas. How will we know if they are bad or good without discussing them? And by discussing them we give Arenanet an idea of what issues the players consider important and what kind of changes the players want to see.

If we give them nothing to work with it's far easier for them to do nothing, since we all know that they have plenty of new stuff (gw2) to occupy their time. Therefore I want to give them everything I can and make this as easy as possible for them to implement.

Wait in that order? What about ele's? BAWWWWWWWWWWWWW

I guess my ele still produces birthday gifts...that's something right?

Oh, Jesus... Reading comprehension is not optional:

- Shouts are designed to be inherently INFERIOR to other buffs due to their UNSTRIPPABLE, MOSTLY UNINTERRUPTIBLE nature. They're not overpowered right now, but they would be if you make their effects directly comparable to other buffs such as enchantments. So, some tweaks are ok, like reduced energy cost, lowered recharges or improved functionalities. Giving the Paragon an unstrippable, perfect replica of, say, Monk enchantments would definitely be unbalanced and stupid.

It isn't. It's their strong poing indeed. If you fail to see that, I'm not surprised that you can't see the imbalance in some of your suggestions.

But we haven't, and there's no chance that Anet is ever going to implement a new mechanic like that so late in the game.

I'm frankly appalled by this twisted logic. You know what "by design" means? By design, Chants and Shouts have weaker effects as a compensation, because the are not removable. If they were removable, them they'd probably be designed as stronger buffs since the start. Whatever, as of now they aren't removable, and they'll likely never be, so this brings nowhere.

Weapons spells, ok. But then again, most weapon spells have short duration, end on next hit or have just moderate effects on the target. Surprise, surprise: they behave just like Shouts and Chants.

Spirits not having counters...? Without Summon Spirits, Spirits are much sensible to most damage sources even after the vast improvement they benefitted from. Having to care about their survival and protection is enough of a burden.

So, what relevance do these skills have in this discussion? Making it a matter of principle? The mere fact that we have an imbalanced environment doesn't justify the introduction of more imbalance.

Those skills you mention are self buffs, they're not support skills and are single, self target. They don't offer "spell immunity", but just "spell targeting immunity", which is a whole different thing.

Anyway... Yes, they do exist in the game, like many other design absurdities we've got lately. They're imbalanced. You know where the Imbagon name comes from, do you?

EDIT:

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the correct place for game/skill suggestions is the Official Wiki, as most Developers won't likely bother checking such a thread. The Wiki is easier and quicker for them to browse, so your ideas are better proposed there. Forums are for discussion, we're discussing, some of us have reservations about your suggestions and still you keep on making unreasonable comparisons between different classes instead of providing arguments, turning this more into a rant than a suggestion thread.

Also, please, edit your posts or try to multi-quote. Following the thread with your replies fragmented in multiple, sequential posts is becoming annoying.

The last part makes me lol.

"Yea, it's clear that warriors, necros, ritualists, and monks are only way more useful than the other professions, and we really feel they should be shittons more useful."

It's nice that you're buffing paras and dervs, but seriously, if several classes are useful in many ways, they shouldn't be the priority for buffs. Rangers are still the shittiest PvE profession out there and eles aren't doing much better. At the rate these updates are coming, they won't get a buff until GW2.

My suggestions cover all of the things you mentioned here; Hexbreaker Aria is the same as you suggest (except it still costs adrenaline, not energy), some of the anthems have been buffed so that they are similar to Orders, the motivation chants have variants that provide healing over time instead of large party heals and other variants that simply reduce the recharge time of the existing skills.

It's also important to stick with existing names for skills and stick with existing themes, because Anet has never (to my knowledge) created new skills or renamed existing skills when they issue updates. So our proposed change to Hexbreaker Aria would create an anomaly since its effects would classify it as a Song, not an Aria. There are plenty of anomalies in the game though, so I'm not too concerned about that.

Another thing I would like to caution against is balancing the paragon assuming the use of PvE skills like SY and TNTF. The paragon should be balanced to stand on its own without any PvE skills at all. If certain PvE skills are considered to be overpowered then they can be nerfed, but that is a separate issue from what we are discussing here.

re: paragons, shouts, anthems, and unremovable effects... I have a couple of observations to add to what has already been said.
Paragons are easy to shut down because they must attack to gain energy, therefore empathy, insidious, shackles, etc. shut them down completely if they cannot be removed. Paragon skills are also 'spammy', so anything that hurts on every skill activation (e.g. Spiteful Spirit, Spoil Victor, Visions of Regret) are going to shut them down or kill them. On top of all that you have the usual block, blind, miss, kiting, line of sight issues, etc. of a physical attacker and the adrenaline shutdown hexes and spirits to contend with. Anyone who has played physicals knows that hexes destroy them. Personally I feel that there is already plenty of physical hate in the game, but if it is deemed a good idea to add more counters to shouts then I think the best approach would be to add shout countermeasures as an additional effect to existing skills, rather than having skills solely targeted at paragons such as Vocal Minority and Well of Silence. These never see play in PvP because they only affect paragons, and since paragons have been crippled in PvP, no need for them anymore. The better approach is to take an existing skill such as Soothing and give it an additional anti-shout effect along with its anti-adrenaline effect. This would make it more useful and might actually make it worth bringing on your skill bar. Backfire could be modified to do X damage when a spell is cast and some lesser amount when a shout or anthem is activated. If skills are multipurpose they are more useful and more valuable.

here's the link:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/User:Khome..._skill_changes

I agree with you, paragons and dervishes and rangers need help more than anyone. Monk does have some useless smiting skills though... Word of Censure and Defender's Zeal for example. Shield of Judgment could also use some tweaking so that it is useful for something besides 55 monks. Balthazar's Aura is wayyy too expensive for what it does. Smite is also too expensive for what it does... compare to Spear of Light.

My comments in boldface, I hope you enjoy the new formatting. :-P

Where's all the people who say that you suck if you can't use a paragon, just abuse PvE skills, PvE is suddenly hard, and why don't you just use another profession?

They must be in hiding. They'll all show when the update preview comes.

I doubt they want to read through the giant walls of text.

So using PvE skills makes pve harder?
Cuilan, is it me or that post does not make the slightest sense.

Never said all those things will or are said by the same person.

hah, i dont understand it either, im just quoting what emily said.

Anyway, tbh id like to see the kinds of updates that they used to have where they didn't focus solely on on profession or on a couple of attribute lines but instead on specific skills that really seemed broken or overpowered. It was nice after an update to see which skills were different for which professions. I mean i know they should focus on the weaker classes but there are still useless and overpowered skills in the other classes that can be dealt with as well.

Actually, no, but whatever...

I don't think you've understood anything I've been saying so far.

Listen, I don't know if you're playing the fool or what.

- I'm not claiming that shouts are overpowered. How could you read that into my sentences is really beyond me...
- You want evidence for... a design characteristic? Well, evidence is everywhere: no source of unremovable buff is comparatively stronger than removable ones, it's always been like that. It's called "taking the risk": for the sake of balance, Enchantments MUST be functionally stronger than Shouts because they're easily removed and countered. Hopefully you'll get the point now.
- You keep on making absurd comparisons that make no sense: comparing supportive buffs to self-buffs such as damage boosts and preparations? What for?
- Last time I checked, pretty much EVERY Weapon Spell ended on next attack (Ghostly Weapon), or on the next few hits (Splinter Weapon). When they don't, they usually have some other form of compensation in the form of high energy cost (Guided Weapon), no mantainability (Wailing Weapon) or secondary effects (Brutal Weapon doesn't work unless the target is enchanted). Off course some Weapons Spells are mantainable, cheap and also have no collateral effect: take Weapon of Warding as an example, it's apparent lack of negatives is in the skill progression. To mantain it you have to fully dedicate your bar to Restoration and Spawning Power so that the duration coincides with the recharge. They behave exactly like Shouts and Chants to me, and hopefully you'll know why by now: unstrippability takes its toll.
- Weapon Spells can't be buffed with spell bonuses, such as Enchantment mods. Just like Chants and Shouts.
- Weapon Spells don't stack, while Chants and Shouts do <- there you go, here's another aspect you're grossly understimating.
- Weapon Spells are single target by definition, while most Chants and Shouts affect party members/allies in earshot <-
- Try playing as a Resto Rit and let us know how fun it is to let your teammates die because you waste your time moving defensive spirits out of AoE. Then again, this is fine with me, I usually care about positioning when playing Rest. Then, if that's it, get out of that Well or have Hexes removed from your Paragon before complaining...

It is very difficult to have a productive discussion when you misunderstand people, put word into their mouths, ignore their observations on your suggestions.

My stance should be clear enough as of now: I believe most Chants and Shouts - expecially Motivation - should be made more functionally interesting (by giving those skills some unique peculiarity and functionality) and more usable (by working on costs, recharges, duration). Buffing them to the level of Enchantments is simply out of question for the reasons stated multiple times since #201.

Well dude , thats what we ALL are talking about.
If you get another impression i have tou tell you that you are wrong. Mainly because i never said so and i never suggest any specifical change ...... i just said "dont fix it if its not broken".

You are talking ( with that "they arent perfect" ) like they were close to be good , just need a few numbers tweak and no . They are hell far from being balance due to the points that some ppl ( me included ) already posted and no matter how many times we say it , the OP keeps ignoring them and asking for a FULL REVIEW of his suggested changes ( lol @ that , i could write a book for god sake ) wich is kinda pointless when you can refute 80% or more of them with 4-5 simple points.
I guess they are not so simple because he wont understand and keeps doing flawed comparisons like "hey , warriors use adrenaline , paragons too , they should have same DPS skills effect and bla bla" and even misreading and twisting words like saying "omg you think mending refrain is overpowered" and so on ...... its not worth pal , not worth wasting time on that guy and even more when someone ( Halendt ) is already doing it so +1 to everything he said.

You have put so much effort into this, but you still don't understand.
You fail to see that the effects of spirits stack and are similarly unremovable.
You compare the weakest weapons spells (guided weapon, ghostly weapon) that no one uses in an effort to prove your point.
I'm not suggesting any skills to replicate monk enchantments, Defensive Anthem and Angelic Protection ALREADY act that way, I am simply trying to make them worth using.

I already agreed with you on that point Gill, and I'm not suggesting any skills like that. I'm not sure how you got on that tangent.
I urge you to follow up your Motivation ideas with some actual skills so that we can discuss them.

Spirits ARE removable: they can be killed, instantly destroyed or possessed. Sure, they're harder to remove with some clever positioning, but they're also rarely comparable to Enchantments in functionality. Just, compare Displacement to Aegis, the Spirit will die in a matter of seconds, but it sure is harder to remove than Aegis on a target.

Weapon spells offering unblockability to attacks, weak... Really?

They were just a few examples anyway. There's no weapon spell in the game that provides infinite, big advantages and never ends. Even Splinter you keep on mentioning ends after a definite number of hits. Most Shants and Shouts do the same...

Functionality is similar, but effects are weaker. Wonder why? Need me to explain again?

To me, it looks like you're merely suggesting to make them worth using by making them directly comparable to buffs offered by other classes. You're suggesting the Paragon to become an effective alternative to Monks, Ritualists, Necromancer, Rangers and Warriors alltogether. How's that even remotely reasonable?!

About defense, most of the suggestions you made put Paragons ahead of Monks and Ritualists on functionality alone. And that's even before we take some aspects into account, such as the unremovable nature of Shouts and Chants. But then again, when I tell you this, you take some wild tangent and list some self-buffs that are not removable as well. So? Monks rely on Enchantmens and Spells to play their support role. Enchantments ARE removable, Enchantments MUST be more effective than ANY unremovable buff because of this. Ritualists rely on Binding Rituals and Weapon Spells, both are funcionally weaker than Monks Enchantments but harder or impossible to remove, so both have strong points balanced by some countereffect.

Wanna know why? Hadn't you been making direct comparisons with Monks and Ritualists for the whole thread ignoring some significant differences between those classes and the Paragon, maybe we wouldn't have gotten the idea that you want to buff Paragons to make them functionally on par with these classes, while still retaining all of their peculiar advantages.

err, what peculiar advantages do healing paragons currently have over resto rits or monk? I certainly don't see any.

We weren't talking about direct healing here, but more about passive defenses.

I insist, passive defenses that cannot be removed need to be functionally weaker than removable ones and, guess what, pretty much every Paragon buff is non-removable. So, again, turning every Paragon skill into a copy of some Monk or Ritualist skill while still retaining non-removability is plainly and simply not balanced: just check his suggestion for "Never Surrender!"... why would anyone use Recuperation, a Binding Ritual that costs 25 Energy, can be interrupted, can get killed pretty easily, when you have a much cheaper, stronger Shout that cannot be interrupted or removed and can be mantained indefinitely? And that's just to name one out of his many suggestions.

EDIT - Just to make a few other examples... While some of these buffs sound reasonable, most of them are direct conversions of some other class' skill without any reasonable adaptation. Just take Cruel Spear, it would become a ranged, cheaper Eviscerate...

Yea, i dont agree with the spear mastery changes. In my opinion, spears and spear damage is fine as it is (and no, i don't think it is weaker than bows...).

However, passive defense is more like + armor or -% damage type stuff (like stand your ground and tntf). The healing that is in the motivation line isn't so much passive defense but instead far inferior to monk and rit healing. Im referring to stuff like song of restoration, ballad of restoration, aria of restoration, etc. The fact that they are unremovable doesn't really matter since they dont have any effect until the chant ends. This is why what i would like to see for paragon healing is:

a. the chants need to have a conditionality rework. Im not saying make them (at least the non elites) unconditional, but they need to activate on a condition that is controllable by the paragon. For example, make the choruses (like chorus of restoration) activate the next time an echo is placed on the target ally. The condition for the ballad could stay like it is. The condition for aria's could change to the aria being activated when a signet is used on an ally. Songs could be unconditional (thus turning song of restoration into a more powerful but longer recharging Light of deliverence).

b. Chants need a recharge reduction in order to be of any use no matter their functionality. I would suggest putting their recharges ~10 seconds depending on the chant.

c. Paragons need one (im just asking for one) viable single target heal. I was thinking maybe about changing signet of synergy by giving it a 5 second recharge, eliminating the healing of the paragon using it, and making half of the current heal conditional based on the target being under the effects of a chant.

d. I also think that if the above changes were to be made, a second signet should be changed to a target ally support signet (so that activating arias wouldn't be impossible). One idea is making signet of remedy remove a condition from target ally and raising the recharge to 5 or 6.

Oh, a thread I haven't responded to yet!

Keep Paragon irremovable buffs dead, please, they are baed for balance.

I like them. Interesting changes that don't simply distort the class, don't bring any particular imbalance and contribute making the class more usable and involving.

I think these would be good changes. I don't really think they would make paragons any more fun to play but they might get hero slotted more often.

That along with some damage boosts (controversial I know...) would be just right in my opinion.

for the record,
Shelter is mass Prot Spirit,
Union is mass Shielding Hands,
Displacement is mass Aegis (but better).

they are directly comparable to monk enchantments in functionality.

yeah, you can choose Ghostly Weapon to make the next 1 attack unblockable (useless) or you can choose Guided weapon to make target ally's attacks unblockable for 4..9..10 seconds, at a cost of 15e and 2 seconds. That may be acceptable for PvP but the cost is way too high for it to see use in PvE. For that cost I'll take 3 casts of Splinter weapon or some Great Dwarf Weapon, or simply cast Painful Bond. Anthem of Guidance as it exists today provides mass unblockability with the next attack skill, and even so it is too weak to stop defensive turtling in PvP, and too weak to stop blocking spam in PvE as well. Making it into an Order of Unblockability could solve both problems without altering the purpose of the skill.

Great Dwarf Weapon and Brutal Weapon and Vital Weapon do this, they have a long duration. Splinter Weapon ends but it is spammable. In any case we're getting off topic, the point is that weapon spells are unremovable.


hysteria!! drama!!! too bad it isn't true.

That's the way balancing is done; you compare skills to other skills and see where they differ. If there is a better way to do this please enlighten us.

re: paragon skills in general, I think the offensive buffs are most similar to the necromancer's Orders spells, and the defensive buffs are most similar to the ritualist's spirits. The paragon's offensive echos and refrains are most similar to weapon spells, while the defensive echos and refrains are most similar to monk enchantments. So we can see that the paragon has a number of skill types from all different professions using the skills as they were designed by Anet.

Anthems ~= Orders
Chants ~= Spirits
Offensive Refrain/Echo ~= Weapon Spells (ex: Burning Refrain, Blazing Finale)
Defensive Refrain/Echo ~= Monk enchantment (ex: Bladeturn Refrain, Mending Refrain)

Ahh, Gill... the two examples you mention are ALREADY like that, all I have suggested is minor changes to them.

My suggestion for Never Surrender is to make it at least partly unconditional, and this may involve weakening its effect.

My suggestion for Cruel Spear is to remove the non-moving condition. Though this rarely makes much of a difference it is annoying nonetheless. This skill is ALREADY ranged eviscerate, but with a condition.

That said, I think you are right about the balance between Never Surrender and Recuperation, I think the number of people using Recuperation in PvE is pretty small because of its huge (and imo, unwarranted) cost. I often put Never Surrender on the team somewhere because it counters mass degen very well and for 5e it can't be beat. I'd suggest reducing the cost of Recuperation to 15e or less (at least in PvE)... but I'm not really concerned with Ritualist skills at the moment, they got plenty of love in their last update.

The shouts needs to last the duration instead of ending too quickly for a condition the shout is used for. At least let the actions be used more than once before they end the shout.

There you go, the problem with your suggestion. If you really believe those are just "minor" changes, well, sorry, nothing else I can say...