Paragon DPS

No, they're not. Swords, Axes and Daggers all attack faster, and Scythes attack at the same speed while doing more damage and potentially hitting 3x as many targets (thus 3x as much damage). Bows attack slower but still win out over spears because they can hit 2,3,4 or 7 targets at once... thus 2-7 times as much damage as the spear, potentially.


No one has to work hard to get a good IAS unless he is a warrior or paragon. The warrior IAS are all crippled because of pvp concerns and the paragons likewise. Dervish, Assassin and Ranger have it quite easy by comparison.


It doesn't have to do +damage... isn't it clear that 2 sword attacks or 2 arrows does twice as much damage as one? Other professions all have this ability, paragon does not, and that's why paragon damage is mediocre at best. If you haven't seen this concept in action go try Barrage or Whirlwind Attack sometime.

BTW one of the paragon builds I tested was P/E. It is not enough damage to keep up with the other weapons. What's worse, other professions can also load up Conjure and do even more.


BURNING. Blinding. Crippling. Cracked Armor. These are all useful, and dervish can inflict all of them with AoE effects now.

If the ranger and paragon are supposed to be masters of condition spreading (as a perusal of their skill set might indicate) then they are quite poor at it compared to the new dervish.


Oh dear. Autoattack dps is not important in any way shape or form... anything can out-heal it, even with Healing Signet and the like.



Thanks for proving my point... you've just outlined various options for every profession to deal a lot of damage involving self buffs like Vow of Strength, 100 blades, WotA, Glass Arrows and multi-attack skills like Whirlwind Attack, Barrage, Death Blossom, etc. Paragons don't have access to any of that and that's why their damage is bad in PvE. Single target damage is not enough... if it were, you could say that Eviscerate axe warriors would be just as good as 100blades warriors, and they are not. Not in PvE anyway.



In PvP you are almost always attempting to spike single targets, and the paragon's single target damage is pretty good. The rules and goals are different. Also notice that they are using the paragons for utility like stance removal, enchant removal, energy regen, and condition/hex removal. If they were interested in pure damage they would be taking more melee.



I was talking about profession skills only, it's pointless to include PvE skills in this discussion since all players have equal access to them and heroes don't.
BTW I agree that signet of strength is pretty bad, but it's still more than the paragon has. Swords/Axes attack marginally faster if you're assuming 33% IAS (soldier's fury). 0.8911 sec for them rather than 1.005 for spear. (~11% but spears have a higher damage range) Spears still attack faster than hammers (1.1725) or any bows. Assuming a Dervish is using Heart of Fury/Pious Fury, 1.125 is the same for Aggressive Refrain.

Rangers' IAS "have it easy", but the only one that sees use is Lightning Reflexes which is on 1/3 uptime. WoTA is gimping your elite, critical agility takes a PVE slot.

Bows only have a handful of skills with multi-hit (Dual shot, Forked arrow, triple shot, Barrage, volley). Since they attack roughly 1/3 slower even with the fastest refire rate, and preps other than Glass arrows add about +10 at best, I'd say it's fair. Compare Burning Arrow with Blazing Spear and tell me that Paragons aren't better. Multi-hit (i.e. dual shot) isn't what is hurting the Paragon. It's the lack of buffs (preps) and AoE. If you run Anthem of Envy+GFTE it's pretty much a damage boost. Without Barrage and balled mobs, Rangers' damage fails hard due to attack speed. So as I was saying, all you're doing is arguing for more AoE on Paragons (Like Mesmers complained about before).

In Hard mode, multi-hit means you do double of autoattack damage without critical that's really rather low: at most 19 or so on 100 armor assuming 15>50 customized and 26 on 80 armor caster mobs. Double strikes with critical from sins do an extra 33 on 60 armor or 17 on 100 compared to one strike. Hardly anything to write home about in Hard mode.

I ran eviscerate+ body blow +whirlwind on my pve warrior over 100B most of the time when I used to play it. Why? I'd rather spike a target for 200 in HM than do a pitiful 7-15 damage PBAoE. The only difference is if you run EBSOH (dumb if your team kills fast due to recharge) or MoP (on a hero that's pretty hard to do). Even with barbs, unless your target is dying in over 10 seconds then it's still less than +38*2 + 100 deep wound. 100B has no access to deep wound unless you waste 2 slots on sever-gash.

The most popular PVE builds atm are single target high damage: SoS, AP callers.

If autoattack DPS is irrelevant then we'd run Demonic Flesh blood necros with Dark Pact, Touch of Agony/Wallow's Bite, or Blood of the aggressor. It's 40+ damage armor ignoring after all. In fact, with SoH and conjures, autoattacks do matter because they are about 1/4 to 1/3 of the damage. SoH is the only one Paragons can't use anyway.

TBH if someone is going for pure spike they'd run A/P with sundering weapon on midline or some sort of caster like E-surge+MindWrack+Shatter Delusions or ShellShock+Invoke. The 2 Paragons apply non-kitable pressure from spear DPS and can swap targets on the fly when the enemy prot monk puts up Guardian/Shielding Hands. The dominant builds are all pressure. Spears have non-kitable, target swapping goodness. Hence why warriors and Dervishes spear things until they can get in melee range to build adrenaline.

If anything, as before, all I think you're suggesting is Paragon should have AoE skills and SoH + Dervishes need a nerf.