Paragons; Anet why ?

I took a very long break from this game and just recently came back to work on HoM/play with friends.


The paragon used to be one of my favourite, if not my favourite profession, I'm one of the few people that really enjoyed the synergy paragons had with every other professions, they were the perfect support class, they had heals, prots, good synergy with secondary professions ( for example, /E for wards or /W for Shields UP/Watch Yourself) and they could also assist in spikes with fast spear attacks.

Basically I thought Paragon was very well designed profession, much better designed then the Dervish in my opinion but Anet completlely killed them, why? I just went through reading a few of the skills that were used a lot before such as Bladeturn Refrain, Incoming, Mending Refrain, Angelic Bond, Song of Restoration etc and they have been completely nerfed, no, they haven't been nerfed or toned down, they have been literally destroyed to the point where they are useless, I mean, Incoming used to be an amazing skill and now it's nothing more then a "Charge" which is considered one of the worst elites. Anet, you have destroyed the paragon class the way it was suppose to be designed, the only thing left for it is a weakened/dumbed down version of a physical damage dealer that's inferior to D /W/A and even R/P.


What do people here think about the way Anet decided to deal with Paragons? Too harsh or was it necessary to render this profession useless? I even feel sorry for people who like me loved this profession and invested a lot of time in it.

Come back in 2014, they have probably realeased a new rework for..ranger? by then, and you can repost this thread.

The ranger is still a very useful class and pretty much used in every team, interrupts and condition spam is never going to die. If they aren't as good in PvE then I'm sorry for that but it's worse to be completely useless at both sides of the game rather then just 1.

The problem with Paragons is that they weren't balanced for 8 man PvP and they got exploited. When they were nerfed it was before ANet started doing PvE/PvP skill splits. Once the skill split balances started happening, no one at ANet reverted the Paragon skills to work for PvE again. Take a long look at the Motivation line for Paragons. Other classes have better versions with shorter recharge than some of those skills. It's lame. I wish they would just revert Paragons back to release day for PvE.

yup this^^

Paras got nerf'd due to pvp....not that paras themselves were the problem, but other profs going para secondary in pvp that caused the demise of the paragon. So now we are left with a whole prof, that due to formats that not many play....is the weakest (exception imba) of all.

Paragons were not well designed.

They have several huge flaws:
* They have way too many skills that target all party members or even all allies within earshot.
* Their skills are far from versatile. Most of them do just one thing that requires certain conditions that doesn't happen often or in many builds. Like using a shout or a signet.


If we look at ways to fix that, we don't have to invent anything new. There's already things in skills:
- "Effect pools" and effect counters like the spirit health with ritualist spirits and the counters in ritualist weapon spells, that limit how many people the effect can affect and how many times they will work. For example, chant that heals should be limited on how much it should heal, if it heals more than that, it should end in all affected creatures even if they didn't trigger it. And if a chant makes party deal a condition or extra damage, it should not happen more than a certain amount of times. That way if the chant affects more than a certain amount of creatures, the effect is not multiplied for all affected creatures, instead it is spread between the creatures.
- Extra effects and multiple effects. So if the condition is not met, something still happens, not as good as if the condition is met, but good. And different things happen depending on affected target. A skill that heals those casting spells should do something too for those without spells.

Because they were a terribly designed profession. They scale exponentially with the number of paragons in a group because of echoes and refrains; none of their mechanics have any counters that are useful against other, more common mechanics (like enchantments); and all of their mechanics promote passive defensive play. This is of course talking about PvP. As a result of this, they had to be nerfed.

Maybe they'll be buffed in PvE (using split skills) some day. Maybe they'll rework the entire profession so it isn't so degenerative. Either way, that's why it's nerfed now. Imbagon is still ridiculously powerful, though.

Aside from pre-release when expertise worked shouts, the only significant /P stuff has been wild throw and fall back/make haste/song of conc. The former was nerfed because it was actually used in GvG, and that's it. All of the other nerfs like the mentioned incoming, mending/bladeturn refrain, angelic bond, etc were from paragon *primaries* making their party impossible to kill, particularly multiple paragons.

No it wasn't neccessary. They went overboard and Smiter's Boon'd many skills and almost the entire Motivation line, taking the easy way out and just weakening the power on all the skills until the class effectively became removed from play, instead of using their intelligence and thinking of the simple, creative, alternative ways they could have fixed it (that pretty much the entire community has, that would work too) but they were never willing to take on.

Fortunetly in the past few years with changes to other professions they've started to put some effort into it and actually redesign the way certain problematic skills or professions work instead of just making them utterly useless, but alas it'll be a long time before Anet get around to fixing the damage they did to the Paragon in there less enlightened phase, if it ever happens.

They seem far keener on 'fixing' classes that didn't really need fixing to begin with now, like the Elementalist. It's unlikely we'll see a Paragon update before GW2 comes out now, if we ever do. They appear to have mostly abandoned the class, with the only Paragon skill changed in recent years being Wild Throw, which was yet another nerf (albeit one aimed at Warriors, not at Paragons, fortunetly it didn't affect Paragons too much).

The only positive change they've had in years was making them gain upto 2 energy per ally instead of only 1 (which shoulda been that way to begin with TBH), which has helped make Paragon 'playable' in the smaller PvP arenas and earlier PvE areas, but unfortunetly hasn't done much else to help the class gain some respect and lose many of the other problems that ail it.

Having Izzy on balance for GW2 does make me worry sometimes that we might see this entire problem again in GW2 for some classes (like the Guardian, looking at the ridiculous 1min30sec+ cooldown on some basic Guardian skills at various points in it's development, I guess he really hates defensive classes...at least they are more reasonable now so maybe someone else at Anet stepped in), but I guess that's a discussion for another thread. For now we should just be glad he's no longer on GW1 balance I guess.

Paragons are in a horrible state at the moment, mine cries in the dark every night. There have been a lot of complaints about it in the last years, and they said they're gonna rework them someday...but who knows when? They've put em in a raffle together with ele, ranger(not really needed imho) and smithe monks, they're currently doing eles and taking long months for it...so who knows, maybe in next life...

The reason that "paragons suck" in PvE is not because of nerfs, but because very few actually make team based builds in PvE. PvE formation is about individual builds that work well, then just adding them together. The only paragon build that really fits into this is the imbagon.

Paragons, particularly when stacked, can do a hell of a lot for a team, but it requires tailoring the whole team's build. And no one wants to take the time to do it. Paragons can still greatly increase physical damage, in pairs can backline, and can still put out good damage.

The root of this issue is that there is nothing that Paragons particularly do better than any other class. People don't have as many paragon characters because there is no reason to create one (like oh say a shadowform assassin), because it is not best at anything. Since they are not best at any one thing, they must suck.

Without a doubt Paragon are still reasonably strong in numbers, but if a class has to have an entire team centered around it, for it to be good, something is wrong with the class, non? As that is a handicap like no other.

And besides, many of their skills are just watered down, weaker versions, of similiar skills on other classes, that sometimes carry an Elite skill tag with them just for giggles. Shield Bash -> Burning Shield, Aegis -> Defensive Anthem (E), Divine Intervention -> Angellic Bond (E), Spirit Bond/Protective Spirit -> Angellic Protection, Mending -> Mending Refrain (PvP), Shelter -> "They're on Fire!", Aura of Stability -> Brace Yourself, Windborne Speed -> Make Haste!/Lead The Way/Hasty Refrain, "To The Limit!" -> "Make Your Time!", any other IaS -> Aggressive Refrain, Protective Was Kaolai -> Any Paragon party-Restoration chant (including the elite Song in PvP) except maybe Aria, any 'Disrupting'/'Distracting' named skill -> Disrupting Spear, Blood Ritual/Blood is Power (E) -> "The Power Is Yours!" (E), Martyr (E) -> Cautery Signet (E), Antidote Signet -> Remedy Signet, etc.

Other skills are just almost utterly useless to begin with (this can maybe said the same for any class, but as the Paragon skill pool is so limited, it's more important here), such as Bladeturn Refrain (PvP), Help Me!, Stand Your Ground (PvP), We Shall Return (PvP), Awe (see: Spear Swipe), "Incoming!" (see: "Fallback!"), Inspirational Speech, half the deep wound causing skills, Mending Refrain (PvP), Natural Temper, Zealous Anthem, Song of Power, any of those skills that only do something if you target someone with higher health than you, and probably more.

Granted the Paragon can do a bit of everything (except AoE damage, heh, Holy Spear non-withstanding), but it can't do most of them to any worthwhile level unless with 3+ other Paragons, which is silly.

The Paragon should not have it's skills punished because it can do so many things, seems due to the 8 skill limit in Guild Wars, there's no way it could do them all at once anyway.

?


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Paragon is Awesome for PVE
If anything SY/imbagon gave mainstream paragon users a lack of imagination

PVE Paragon is fine right now, you can argue you need more Ias and AoE ... but barrage/volley/flurry/AggRef will do that for you easily.
Paragon can pretty much be used in any area of the game very effectively.
After all you can't strip shouts/chants/echo ect

So what do they suck at ? Dps .... (without team backup)
but since when was Paragon ment to out damage Other "dedicated" melee classes. I think this is more an issue with the game in general as weapons are getting less and less effective.

Maybe make spear 17-41 damage and slower...

Bottom line:
If damage is made better, Party support will suffer and vice versa.
Its a tough issue!....So yeah 2014 can't wait

I don't think it's them sucking at dps or at anything in particular, the problem is rather the number of usable skills. It's already punished enough for being a nightfall class, and so having an almost null skill pool compared to the other classes. Add the fact that a great part of its skills are pretty bad or too much situational...and you'll have an hardly versatile class. Sure imbagon is...well imba. Sure you can do good builds and beat all the game with it. But, compared to the other classes, it's very gimped. And imho the lack of possibilities makes it very boring for people who like to change their bar every once so often.

EDIT: all this about PVE ofc

Dude, Anet started screwing up the whole game after GW2 was announced. Simply put, They just don't care enough to balance much of anything anymore. The last several updates was Anet responding to a select few players and watering down some skills so other professions looked better. They will never get around to ranger,monk or paragon updates now that GW2 is to be released. They fail to take in account current balance or such when releasing updates now and i doubt they even tested the "hero ai update" prior to dumping it on us. GW is dying and ANET knows it. If GW2 isn't commercially viable then ANet is toast anyway.

I completely agree with this. Paras, when combined with a few more paras, can be amazing. The synergy they can create within a team, especially when that team utilizes skills that compliment the para, can push you through the toughest of areas. The thing is, though, people don't want to put in the effort to utilize this, because they cannot simply go to PvX and load in random builds on their heroes/their own bars to make paras work.

I think the number of usable skills is fine to a point, infact i have enough
trouble picking which skills to take for 3 paragons team as it is.
Your probably right though, because: paragon has got to be the worst class to have such a limited "total" of skills since a support/offense "class" obviously needs more versatility than any other class.
Compared to other classes.. it has no comparison except maybe Ritualist?

RT= party wide defense and weapon skills. + body block
P=party wide defense, offense and single target shouts n echos. without using an elite slot to spam just need leadership.
But Rit has splinter ect..! and also WAY better synergy with secondary.

Paragon isnt living up to the name
Paragon = large, flawless diamond/a perfect embodiment of a concept

This isn't a good thing. Professions shouldn't only be useful when used alongside themselves. There is definitely a problem with a profession when the only way to make one useful is to have to build a team around them.

The main problem with paragons is that they are a support profession that is awful at supporting. There are a couple of decent motivation elites, but no good motivation non-elites to run beside them. Most, if not all, of the leadership support skills are complete crap. Command has a couple of good non-elites that are for physical support, but aside from gfte, anthem of envy, SyG (which is completely overclassed by SY anyway..), and maybe fall back, command is also crap. Necros and Rits have so many good options for supporting the team. I just wish that paragons would be given the tools necessary to be effective supporters, like they are meant to be.

I don't really mind the dps of paragons. Spear single-target dps is actually pretty good, and if you care that much about AoE, just add splinter weapon or MoP. What anet needs to focus on is the supporting capabilities of a paragon.

Hopefully, the paragon update is the next task on the list of PvE updates. I certainly can't think of anything else that is needed more.

@above post: No, a major problem with paragons is the lack of useable skills. If the only way for paragons to have useable skills is to use many of them in the same team, there is a problem. Once again, it is a bad thing if the only way to make a profession viable is to have to build a team around them.

This is nearly spot on for why Paragons are bad for PvP. You just missed the complete reliance on 8v8 (preventing any kind of interesting split play) along with infinite energy 4 teh lulz.

Now for PvE:

Passive prots/buffs are generally designed to be anti-pressure. Spears are designed to be pressure. Neither is what happens in PvE, its all about spike vs spike protection, and paragons lose out on both counts for the same reason degen/regen aren't used.

Shouts that take time to activate are bad for the same reason that Derv enchants that took time to activate were bad. Its a sad fact that every offensive anthem the paragon has actually LOWERS their DPS unless there are 3+ physicals in the group.

Refrains are an absolute PITA to keep up.

This leaves us with the good paragon skills being: GftE, SYG, FB, and an IAS. The rest are either always bad or only good within a very specifically tuned build (in which case sacrificing other elements for group cohesion hurts more then the paragon-specific abilities help).


PvE fixes needed (won't make them a well designed profession but at least workable outside of SYtardation):

Make Chants instant cast or at least no cooldown and .75s cast.

Greatly extend the duration of refrains/finales. 30s minimum on refrains, finales at a 45s-1 min.

Buff AR to +33% IAS.

Make SoH work on ranged attacks (ranger needs this too).


PvP fixes needed:

lol no chance I'm trusting Anet with this.