Base Energy Regeneration

You don't seem to understand the concept of skill balance so let me draw you a picture. Dervishes have 4 energy regen, *AND* adrenaline attack skills, *AND* excellent energy management (zealous vow, eremite's zeal, radiant scythe), *AND* a primary attribute that reduces cost of dervish enchantments. They are much better off than warriors, paragons, or even assassins and it has absolutely nothing to do with being a "support class" which is the nonsense you keep posting all around gwguru. That is more an issue of devs being way too powerful (in the energy management department). The solution to a paragon vs. derv comparison would be to tone down the dervs.

While paragons certainly need fixing (and a lot of it), energy management is one of the few issues that paragons do not have a problem with.

You bring up that paragons are a support class. I wish that anet would actually do something to make paragons a support class, rather than giving them all the overly situational, conditional, or randomly-activating garbage that most of the paragon's chants and shouts currently consist of.

No matter how much everyone tries to act like they know, in still pretty sure I understand the point I'm making more than the readers. Khomet, because I know you and respect you I always take your comments into consideration. Everyone else, just keep saying hit to try to sound smart. Thankiessss no worries brother.
when i see someone being attacked unfairly it really gets under my skin.

Khomet, do you think a substantial (and therefore unlikely) update would be necessary to make Paragons a decent profession, rather than a one-trick pony? Or do you think it is possible that small, but very precise changes could be just as effective? I don't have an exact source, but I have heard multiple times that there will be no more large skill updates like seen with the recent Dervish update.

*EDIT* I managed to find your proposed "Paragon Skill Changes" which answers my question and in great detail. I suppose I amend my question to: how likely do you think they will make such an update for the Paragon? Man I get frustrated every time I think about this, but I will try to give the best answers I can. I think that Paragons and Mesmers were balanced around PvP and it shows in their skill sets. Unfortunately, what the devs considered appropriate for PvP was completely terrible for PvE. No AoE of any kind and extremely conditional skills with long recharges. Last year they fixed the mesmers, and look at the things they changed... shorter recharges everywhere, improvement to fast casting to make it even better, AoE effects and lower costs on skills. Paragons need the same kind of changes. Paragons have suffered greatly because of perceived PvP imbalance which imo was only the usual crying about builds that people lose against, like IWAY or bloodspike or rspike or bbway or dervway. Unfortunately a lot of their skills were changed or nerfed before there was a PvE/PvP skill split, and so many (most?) of the skills are weak in PvE even though they might be considered acceptable in PvP. (i think they are weak in PvP too, but that's a separate issue).

Paragons need a skill overhaul like the dervish. Unlike the dervish, I think paragons are fundamentally okay... they have a good weapon, they have good armor, and leadership is good too. It gives good energy gain under certain conditions and with certain skills but I don't think anyone would make the claim that it is as overpowered as Soul Reaping or Expertise. So in my opinion all that is needed for paragon is a thorough look at the skills to bring them in line with the other professions. They need to be able to fill all of their roles well, and they can't do anything well at the moment; the only meta role they have is PvE skill abuse, namely "Imbagon". Shouldn't the paragon be able to do well without any PvE skills? Rit does okay with communing and SoGM, or channeling and SoS... Mesmer does fine with Panic, Esurge, etc.... Ranger does fine with Barrage, Glass Arrows, etc... Paragon should have the ability to do well without relying on PvE skills, and this is not the case at present.

I see the paragon's roles as follows:
Damage (spear, offensive buffs)
Defense (defensive buffs; imbagon and similar)
Support (misc buffs; fallback, energy, healing)

All of these are terrible at the moment; the Defense category is only strong because of TNTF and SY, both PvE skills. All of the skills should be examined so that the paragon has capabilities similar to other professions. For example I had the idea that some of the Anthems should work like Orders, and some Leadership skills should work like existing monk skills. The balancing of these skills needs to examined carefully, but by comparing to existing skills we can get a good idea of the power level that Anet considers to be reasonable, and thus these suggestions should be reasonable as well, being based on existing skills from other professions. The good news is that paragon fans have suggested modifications for almost every paragon skill (see the Feedback page for pages and pages of it) so all Anet really needs to do is choose from this exhaustive list of suggestions, tweak numbers as desired and roll them out. I don't think Paragons need a complete redesign like the dervish, just a comprehensive skill update. I think the PvP concerns were overblown the first time around, but if those concerns are still considered valid then this would be the time to take advantage of the PvP/PvE split. The mesmer and dervish updates completely fixed those professions in my view, and it looks like a great deal of thought went into it. I am hoping that this will be done for paragons, and it would probably be a lot easier to accomplish.

re: the odds of this actually happening, I wouldn't care to bet on that since we have already been waiting 4 years for Anet to do right by paragons. However they did say that they were looking at it when they released the mesmer update, and dervishes got their own much-needed update last month, so I am at least a little hopeful. I think they could roll it out very quickly if they went with some of my ideas that use existing skill mechanics and number tweaks, that minimizes the work required on Anet's part. And that is a significant issue since most of their people are focused on other things.

You can't really look at balance in a localized fashion like that. Derv is imbalanced, but hardly because of vamp mods. This issue is not that important, but I mention it because it is such a simple thing to balance and they still manage to get it wrong. The current logic was apparently based on weapon attack speed, but weapons like scythes and bows get much more benefit out of a Vampiric mod than other weapons because of multi-attack capability. (barrage rangers, anyone?)

This issue is not that important, but I mention it because it is such a simple thing to balance and they still manage to get it wrong. The current logic was apparently based on weapon attack speed, but weapons like scythes and bows get much more benefit out of a Vampiric mod than other weapons because of multi-attack capability. (barrage rangers, anyone?) hey don't have them mess up my vampiric splinter barrage
(yes i know only the initial barrage gets the lifesteal, and man do i love it)

you know, it is kinda messed up that weapons with AoE capability gets more lifesteal than single target weapons

ok you got me on that one