Well then, ANET hate paragons now

[crucifix]

so if any of you checked the update, paragons got beat in the face today. any ideas on how to circumvent energy issues aside from gfte spam and the now nerfed watch yourself?

[Kaane]

Try it before you complain.

Playing my paragon, I have never even been CLOSE to having energy problems. All this update will do is put a little bit more pressure on your energy, making it slightly easier in pvp for mesmers to shut you down. It'll hardly effect pve at all. Also the Energizing Finale change isn't that bad. Monks managed fine before Paragons, they will manage fine now, they just won't have the infinite energy they had yesterday.

[waywrong]

Put more points into Leadership? I've never really been below 10 energy all that often as a Paragon, even with just 10 in leadership.

WY! still provides free energy, and however much armor it provides is still better than no armor at all. Plus, it's not like energize finale really provided amazing energy management anyway unless you built your paragon around it. Leadership has always been better e-management in my book.

[Made In Ascalon]

Watch Yourself needed the nerf. Paragons were utilizing it in a way that it was not intended to with its original creation. Giving the entire party within earshot +20 armor for only 4 adrenaline per 5 seconds without any points in tactics was broken.

Energizing finale needed it too, the energy gain was also broken.

Incoming needed the duration nerf badly. It was intended as a skill to prevent temporary spike damage, not to maintain permanently with vocal was sogolon + enduring harmony.

I congrajulate Anet for giving a bit more balance to paragons. Holdway groups won't be as impossible to defeat anymore.

[Ulivious The Reaper]

i never understood why people see 2 skills nerfed and then complain, play the game like you're supposed to, addapt(sp) learn to have fun, and god forbid don't complain when Anet FIXES things that were OBVIOUSLY being exploited

[furbat]

i never understood why people see 2 skills nerfed and then complain, play the game like you're supposed to, addapt(sp) learn to have fun, and god forbid don't complain when Anet FIXES things that were OBVIOUSLY being exploited

To be honest +20 armor to the team was half the reason paragons were good. The nerf to energizing finale and incomming reduced the effectiveness of paragons a great deal. Now, they no longer feed casters energy and provide defense. Now paragons do what? Bond with angelic bond, support team damage or provide heal party skills with motivation.

[Batou of Nine]

Haven't been in PvP with my paragon... so can't say much bout it...

As far as PvE, hasn't affected me wahtsoever.
Incoming, not needed in PvE. Watch Yourself! my Koss uses it at 11 Tactics anyway. Bah, no worries so far!

cheers!

[Sophitia Leafblade]

Yey way to go Anet, about time u sorted them mass holding builds and u even managed to leave the paragon intact for PvE :D

[Celestial Beaver]

I just read those skill updates:


Aria of Zeal: Increased casting time to 2 seconds.
Energizing Finale: Increased the Energy cost to 10 and reduced the amount of energy gained per shout or chant to 1.
"Incoming!": Increased Energy cost to 10 and decreased duration to 1..5 seconds.
"Stand Your Ground!": Increased energy cost to 10.


COME OFF IT! Now my Paragon is pretty new and not got too far through the game, although I only use one of these skills it REALLY gets on my nerves that this sort of thing has already begun. I swear to god there was no need for this.

[Keilious Ahruhk]

Well I hate to toot my own horn, but it seems like paragons are becoming just as useless in PvE as I said. >.>

I for one, LOVE the nerf, simply because people may finally see how limited the options for paragon are in PvE, and Anet may finally do something about it.
And please people, for the love of god, I'm NOT saying paragons are weak, simply that the vast, vast, VAST majority of their skills are useless in PvE.

(though, I have to say, I have been having ALOT of fun with a P/D build I made since I posted my angry thread that long time ago, and I've actually been having a bit of fun with the good ol' gon, so not all is lost yet)

[LightningHell]

Paragons were nerfed because Energizing Finale was ridiculously broken, and a team with a Paragon meant a team immune to pressure.

[Thom Bangalter]

Unless Fighting IWAY, then they felt the pressure. Surprisingly enough, IWAY saved GVG. YAY for IWAY!

[nSin]

Well I hate to toot my own horn, but it seems like paragons are becoming just as useless in PvE as I said. >.>

I for one, LOVE the nerf, simply because people may finally see how limited the options for paragon are in PvE, and Anet may finally do something about it.
And please people, for the love of god, I'm NOT saying paragons are weak, simply that the vast, vast, VAST majority of their skills are useless in PvE.

(though, I have to say, I have been having ALOT of fun with a P/D build I made since I posted my angry thread that long time ago, and I've actually been having a bit of fun with the good ol' gon, so not all is lost yet)

Motivation healing still works perfect, regular damage with spear builds do too (anthem of flame and gfte) and a protection build with defensive anthem/shields up/WY/SYG (with points in tactics) still works fine aswell.

The skills they nerfed were rediculously overpowered, yet I didn't use any of them other then energizing finale and I still was extremely effective in PvE. Don't act like hell has frozen over, the majority of builds still work fine.

[Lord Zado]

The nerfs aren't too bad. Not nearly as bad as what they did to the Spirit Spamming Ritualist. I play a Paragon in PvE exclusively, but I watch observer mode enough to know how Paragons are affecting PvP too and understand why they needed the nerf.

Personally, this nerf doesn't affect my Command build or my motivation build too much. I run a damage reduction command build with SYG, WY, Incoming and They're on Fire. So Incoming lasts 2 seconds fewer and WY has a little less AL. No big deal in the grand scheme of things.

For motivation I generally run an energy buffing/healing build with Mending Refrain on all, Ballad of Restoration, Aria of Zeal, etc. I just lose the awesome energy buffing power of Energizing Finale, but it's still a useful skill...just balanced now.

[Etrik]

What are you talking about? Paragons own for PvE. GFTE+FTW+OoP+BR=one bad-ass paragon. Slap on Incoming, WY and RSig and you're fine. jeeez.

[Spura]

Guess why people were spreading into 4 attributes with paragon? Because they put all the money skills of the class in one build. Now they nerfed 5 of those skills, which is entirely too much.

Another stupid consequence of upping those energy costs is that you are forced now to go P/W to spam adren shout or 2 for energy.

I am not pissed off at the nerf of Energizing finale. It was overpowered. I am pissed off at the designers of this skill and at cartwright. When designer made this skill, how could he not forseen how powerful it is? 3 energy every time shout ends, load up on shouts and presto infinite healing. Then Cartwright pulls one of his patented "Nerf the skill so hard it becomes useless and people forget about the skill and it ceases to be my problem" (TM), instead of re-designing the skill.

This whole class needs redesign and they aren't about to do that.
Paragons have bunch of redundant skills that do things other classes do better.

For instance all motivation skills renew HP, energy or remove conditions.
Now if you put bunch of Motivation skills that renew HP and remove conditions on your skillbar, you are just a gimped Heal Party+Extinguish spammer.

Conclusion: All motivation was ever good for was energy gain skills. And those got nerfed a lot. So now motivation is pretty much crap, I'd prefer heal party bot to motivation paragon in pvp settings at least.

Why the hell didn't they buff anything on paragon?
Spear skills are trash and many of them are just slight variations of the same skill. Deep wound and 3 sec cast damage attacks in 1000 flavours. Bring some options in there! Of course we will see hell freeze over before that.

Or skills like angelic protection, "help me", "The Power is Yours", do something about this useless trash.

They just nerf anything useful outside primary classes. Just wait till someone finds out a way to out-DPS warriors with dervishes. ANet will be breaking the speed of light to nerf the hell out of them.

[random.name]

I dont get why people are upset about this. After seeing what happened to the Rit anyone could predict this.

The fact is that this game caters for PvP first. The skills that was changed in no way overpowered PvE. As you can see from some of the above posts, you can still be effective in PvE, but then again, even a Rit can still be effective in PvE.

My beef is that changes like this just makes it harder for me to find groups. When Rit was first introduced, I enjoyed it alot. It was fairly easy to find a group because they knew that you made a difference to the group. But then nerf after nerf it became harder. It finally reached the stage where the rit was accepted only because they could not find a monk. Same thing with Paragon. People in my guild and alliance up to now specifically requested that come help/do stuff with my Paragon, because it was easy to see what difference I made.

True, my post might be a little melodramatic, but I just see the Paragon becoming the Rit of NF.

[Former Ruling]

so if any of you checked the update, motivation battery paragons got beat in the face today. any ideas on how to circumvent energy issues aside from gfte spam and the now nerfed watch yourself?

Fixed your post.

Command and Leadership paragons were barely touched (alittle more energy on Watch Your Ground!, but you don't exactly spam it), and yes both of those have been used. CripAnt paragons (with Command skills), and Angelic Bondgons (with stuff like blazing finale and they're on fire) are here and there.

[Feathers]

Well the nerfs always tick me off since most of the time it revolves around some P vs P aspect I could care nothing about. IMHO though they did a great job with this one and left us paragorns in the P vs E community with something worth while yet. It's always sad when the P vs P community gripes seem to over ride what the P vs E community wants :(

After the update my paragorn is still the battlefield commander he once was. What was said a few posts back, adapt and over come ? I couldn't agree more.

[RitualEros]

GG Anet for listening to the crying of pvper's and making paragons completly useless pve. As always, job well done!

[Made In Ascalon]

To be honest +20 armor to the team was half the reason paragons were good.You know paragons are broken when people think that half the reason paragons are good is because of a skill from a different class.The nerf to energizing finale and incomming reduced the effectiveness of paragons a great deal.They went from being insanely imbalanced to balanced. So yeah, I suppose it did reduce their "effectiveness". Now, they no longer feed casters energy and provide defense. Now paragons do what? Bond with angelic bond, support team damage or provide heal party skills with motivation.Oh please. Put some friggin points into tactics for once, and you can do the same thing you always have with it. Spam GFTE and casters will still get a pretty good amount of energy, it just won't be three energy for all of them every 5 seconds.GG Anet for listening to the crying of pvper's and making paragons completly useless pve. As always, job well done! Maybe you're completely useless, but my paragon certainly isn't. If you limited your ability to play to broken skills, then I doubt you're a very good player.

[martialis]

In preparation for Christmas: What the hell??

Can someone explain to me what people are crying about, since they don't explain? You're running out of energy in PvE? You have 10 seconds of down time every minute, instead of 9 seconds? You're dying too much? :confused:

Incoming is almost useless in PvE and Energizing Finale is too much work.

Maybe you're completely useless

...

[ubard]

come on... they mainly nerfed horribley broken skills. Paragons should remain a team build choice, like including a degen ranger... or a dom mesmer... or most any other single character build. NOT running a paragon will no longer gimp your build into oblivion.

no matter what Anet nerfs people are always whining... it's like you don't expect a nerf to change anything...

how anybody could even hope in the very corner of their mind that Engergizing Finale wouldn't be nerfed is pretty much just confusing to me. As much fun as spamming skills like i'm made of energy, energy management should be more than "hey now, keep that shout on me."

cheers. :)

[Kaane]

NOT running a paragon will no longer gimp your build into oblivion. BINGO!

These skills were overpowered and had not only made Paragons running these skills vital, it'd also been a barrier to Paragons built different ways. It's now balanced.

[Takeko Nakano]

Actually Paragons didn't need a major nerf. What ANet needed to do was limit the number of Paragons that could be in a HA build. Seriously dual paragons were the problem, so why not forbid them? Why nerf the entire profession, when you could just cap the number for PvP?

IT'S SO SIMPLE, BUT ANET FOR SOME REASON WANTS TO DO THINGS THE HARD WAY!!!!!

I don't mind the skill changes too much, but honestly I don't see why they always attack the profession and not deal with the way they are being used. Also I am really unhappy with what they've done to Watch yourself! You now need 11 Tactics points to get your +20 armour back. Seriously that is ridiculous. I think ANet should drop that down a bit by a point or two, so that Warriors get a REAL reward for using tactics. It isn't easy for Paragons to afford even 9 Tactics points.

[B Ephekt]

GG Anet for listening to the crying of pvper's and making paragons completly useless pve. As always, job well done! Sort of ironic that you're crying about pvpers crying, right?

Honestly, if you think paragons are useless in pve you obviously haven't looked into the class very far.
Actually Paragons didn't need a major nerf. What ANet needed to do was limit the number of Paragons that could be in a HA build. Seriously dual paragons were the problem, so why not forbid them? Why nerf the entire profession, when you could just cap the number for PvP?Because that's a stupid idea. Why would they limit the number of a certain class in a party just to indirectly address some broken skills? That seems horribly nearsighted and foolish, when you consider that they could simply... and this may sound really crazy, but... actually address the skills in question.

IT'S SO SIMPLE, BUT ANET FOR SOME REASON WANTS TO DO THINGS THE HARD WAY!!!!!More like Anet actually wants to approach skill balancing some with some form logic and sense.

[Made In Ascalon]

In preparation for Christmas: What the hell??

Can someone explain to me what people are crying about, since they don't explain? You're running out of energy in PvE? You have 10 seconds of down time every minute, instead of 9 seconds? You're dying too much? :confused:

Incoming is almost useless in PvE and Energizing Finale is too much work.Energizing finale isn't any work. You put it on someone, then spam "Go for the eyes!" People are complaining about the energy gain not being broken anymore

... I speak the truth. If people think the class is useless, they tend to play it uselessly.

[Saider maul]

lol i agree for the mostpart on the skill changes.
I dont understand the change to arie of zeal and we could have done without the increased energy cost to stand your ground, after all the paragon is a 2 pip E-regen.

Energizing finale was broken to an extent. it should have been set to 1-2 energy gain or to give back energy up to x amount similar to warrior's endurance.

Not broken but taken to a point of balance maybe even slightly underbalanced atm but we will see and adapt.

What other choice do we have.

[Keilious Ahruhk]

I see people here speaking from the typical PvP perspective, "replace teh paragon with teh something teh else... teh!"

I, as most people probably, have no beef with this. The problem is PvE, there are people who have poured countless hours into their Paragon character, and now have it even more useless than before. You say that incoming is good now because it is only used to prevent spikes? In PvP, yeah, I like it that its now going to be used properly.
Though, how many monsters spike in PvE? Oh yeah, that's right, zero.

At the core of it, this just strengthens the idea that PvE and PvP skill actions/variables CANNOT be the same, due to how the game has changed.

Anet has decided to make PvE an important element of Guild Wars now, so in the opinion of many, the overall uselessness and inflexibility of Paragons in PvE is unacceptable.
Seriously, how many different, effective PvE builds are there now for paragon? Two? Maybe three, with slight skill variations accross them.



As I said before, I'm still having loads of fun with my Parascythe build, but I'm just pointing out that I see why people are becoming increasingly annoyed.

[B Ephekt]

I primarily pvp, but I put a good amount of time and gold into my PVE Paragon (probably more than most pvers since I was making him pvp-ready), so don't push your sob story off on me. This game gets balanced for pvp, that's simply a fact of life for anyone who choses to play Guild Wars. People should be used to it by now.

A for the nerfs, I fail to see how Incoming losing 2 seconds hurts your pve experience in any significant way. Energizing and Aria of Zeal shouldn't hurt pve either, since monks hardly ever need any serious energy management. Watch Yourself needed a nerf, it was way too good. Most warriors in pve have a lot of Tactics anyway, so it actually got a little buff for those guys. For the people who liked to run it with 0 Tactics, well sorry, but most skills require attribute points to be worthwhile... this is just another one of them now.

I'm sorry, but I just refuse to believe that anyone who's actually spent some time playing a paragon, and actually understands the class, can say they're useless in pve now.

[JoeKnowMo]

[QUOTE=Keilious Ahruhk]Anet has decided to make PvE an important element of Guild Wars now, so in the opinion of many, the overall uselessness and inflexibility of Paragons in PvE is unacceptable.
Seriously, how many different, effective PvE builds are there now for paragon? Two? Maybe three, with slight skill variations accross them.
/QUOTE]

I'm primarily a pve'er (altho I pay attention to pvp, cuz I learn a lot there) so let me say this:
There are about a dozen or more viable builds with a paragon. All of those builds are not released yet due to this being a new class.

A paragon has almost as much armor as a war and can gain energy (from adrenaline shouts) efficiently.
Can a warrior run Searing Flames in pve? No.
Can a war run Thunderclap? No.
Can a war spam Barrage? No.
Can a war put Succor on 2 monks and not run out of energy? No.

You still have unlimited IAS (Soldier's Fury or Aggressive Refrain), energy gain from adrenaline shouts/chants, awesome protection (They're on Fire, Blazing Finale, Anthem of Flame, Burning Refrain), daze (awe and stunning strike), a lot of deep wound options (vicious attack, merciless spear, etc.) terrific party heals (Song, Ballad, and Aria of Restoration), battery capabilities (Aria of Zeal, Zealous anthem, lyric of zeal), condition removal abilities (song of purif, purif finale, lyric of purif, cautery sig), spike support (anthem of fury, anthem of guidance, anthem of envy, Go for the eyes), can inflict cripple on multiple foes (crippling anthem), can deep wound multiple foes (It's just a flesh wound + plague sending), and more that my puny brain can't think of right now...

Let's not forget that you can have mending refrain on you w/o gimping your energy (like a mending wammo).

You should be glad that wars and rits aren't coming over here complaining about how the para ruined their niches.

Since you're using a scythe build, you can proly tell that a para axe build does more dps than a war.

There are still Angelic Bond builds, Cautery Sig builds, Focused Anger builds, Song of Restor builds, etc.

You lost 2s off Incoming and now you can't play pve anymore? Sure, I have to limit my aggro to 2 mobs instead of 4 since the update, but taking on 4 mobs w/o breaking a sweat is pretty overpowered.

Anet would not make change mid-season unless it was ruining a lot of things. As much as I love my paragon, I have to admit he was overpowered. As a longtime Rit player I can say that he's still way better than a Rit.

If ppl think that these few skill changes mean the end of the paragon, I can't complain since spear prices will drop :D

What would make the paragon extinct? If Anet had gimped the Leadership attribute or some other such insanity.

Right now, Paragons are running just fine.

[lilnate22]

oh wait he searing F. is still a good to go good job analnet..i mean arenanet! why not nerf that?

[InfernalSuffering]

I'm primarily a pve'er (altho I pay attention to pvp, cuz I learn a lot there) so let me say this:
There are about a dozen or more viable builds with a paragon. All of those builds are not released yet due to this being a new class.

A paragon has almost as much armor as a war and can gain energy (from adrenaline shouts) efficiently.
Can a warrior run Searing Flames in pve? No.
Can a war run Thunderclap? No.
Can a war spam Barrage? No.
Can a war put Succor on 2 monks and not run out of energy? No.

You still have unlimited IAS (Soldier's Fury or Aggressive Refrain), energy gain from adrenaline shouts/chants, awesome protection (They're on Fire, Blazing Finale, Anthem of Flame, Burning Refrain), daze (awe and stunning strike), a lot of deep wound options (vicious attack, merciless spear, etc.) terrific party heals (Song, Ballad, and Aria of Restoration), battery capabilities (Aria of Zeal, Zealous anthem, lyric of zeal), condition removal abilities (song of purif, purif finale, lyric of purif, cautery sig), spike support (anthem of fury, anthem of guidance, anthem of envy, Go for the eyes), can inflict cripple on multiple foes (crippling anthem), can deep wound multiple foes (It's just a flesh wound + plague sending), and more that my puny brain can't think of right now...

Let's not forget that you can have mending refrain on you w/o gimping your energy (like a mending wammo).

You should be glad that wars and rits aren't coming over here complaining about how the para ruined their niches.

Since you're using a scythe build, you can proly tell that a para axe build does more dps than a war.

There are still Angelic Bond builds, Cautery Sig builds, Focused Anger builds, Song of Restor builds, etc.

You lost 2s off Incoming and now you can't play pve anymore? Sure, I have to limit my aggro to 2 mobs instead of 4 since the update, but taking on 4 mobs w/o breaking a sweat is pretty overpowered.

Anet would not make change mid-season unless it was ruining a lot of things. As much as I love my paragon, I have to admit he was overpowered. As a longtime Rit player I can say that he's still way better than a Rit.

If ppl think that these few skill changes mean the end of the paragon, I can't complain since spear prices will drop :D

What would make the paragon extinct? If Anet had gimped the Leadership attribute or some other such insanity.

Right now, Paragons are running just fine.

That pretty much sums up what I was gunna say. Im probably a more experience pve paragon, having beaten the game and all, yet this lessens their effectiveness zero to nil for me. However, another point I would like to say is that since paragons are the COMMANDER/GENERAL of the group you need to think like that. Most people are looking for way too much synergism in the paragon and its secondary itself. Paragons have great synergy with MANY CLASSES and you should use it. This means that you should use many skills from other classes in you GROUP BUILD. Put wy on ur warrior, let your mesmer handle energy management, and do wat paragons do best and COMMAND.

[Blkout]

Actually Watch Yourself improved for my Warrior since I run 13 in Tactics, I now get more armor than before the patch.

[JackDeath]

The nerf is a pain but paragon is still good in pve just got mine to Legendary survior (3) and completed all missions with just heros and npc .
Its was so easy.

[OlMurraniKasale]

The nerf is a pain but paragon is still good in pve just got mine to Legendary survior (3) and completed all missions with just heros and npc .
Its was so easy.

Then please dear gods in heaven, share your build in the Paragon build forum! I went through the game with my Paragon, shuffling builds and doing great with each. Wizzed through them is the actual phrase I'm thinking of.

As of the update, I get slaughtered right and left. I don't even have the nerfed-4 in my skill bar. I'm lost because I don't know why my paragon went to hell.

I am getting slaughtered. I can't get anywhere near the Realm of Torment. Bad player I guess.

[JackDeath]

Ok mate here are some of the things I do

Never try and finish a mission the first time thats the key , always watch and learn that the enemy has instore for you.

If it looks like a trap it is :)

I use the full range of skills depending on what iam facing
Like the last mission for example I used balanced stance because of the knock downs and it worked very well. I also made the heros take that stance.I the end that was one of the easy missions ehhehe

I try and be a commander of a army telling them when to attack and when to run and when to sit and wait.

Give your heros the best stuff like my MM Hero has max death rune of course but he also has bloodstain boots and a superior vigor in fact all my hero's have a Superior Vigor on them.He also uses The Nightbringer or Ghial's Stall depending if we are up against enemy MM's.

Look for skills that help the team you have picked and a paragon can realy be a team player.
Good team player skills for your hero's and npc's
Go for The Eyes ,Stand Your Ground ,Anthem of Flame,Song of Purification and Watch Yourself still works well with 9 points in it.

Fall Back works well in some missions when you need to run past the mobs too


http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/6687/gw0191wq9.gif (http://imageshack.us)

Look for me in game if ya need a hand with skills on a tuff mission.
Sunspears Goddess [AUST]

[holymasamune]

I don't see why everyone is crying over a few skill nerfs from the paragon. It is not going to make a big difference in pve, and for those who think it will, choose other skills to use then. all anet did was make overpowered skills less powerful, and i'm not feeling sorry for anyone who exploits overpowered skills and then whines like a baby when they can't abuse it anymore. if you can't deal with it, then try another profession? if you can't deal with nerfs/buffs, then quit the game and do something else with your life.

[Keilious Ahruhk]

I don't see why everyone is crying over a few skill nerfs from the paragon. It is not going to make a big difference in pve, and for those who think it will, choose other skills to use then. all anet did was make overpowered skills less powerful, and i'm not feeling sorry for anyone who exploits overpowered skills and then whines like a baby when they can't abuse it anymore. if you can't deal with it, then try another profession? if you can't deal with nerfs/buffs, then quit the game and do something else with your life.
Heck, if people DO choose other skills and find a way to make say...

"Brace Yourself!"
"Can't Touch This!"
"Help Me!"
"Make Haste!"
Song of Concentration
Angelic Protection
Awe
Enduring Harmony
"The Power is Yours!" {E} (Don't bring up focus swapping, its still terrible)
Leader's Zeal
Lyric of Zeal/Lyric of Purification
Purifying finale
Song of Power
Harrier's Toss
Unblockable Throw
Stunning Strike
or
Wearying Spear

...So much as remotely useful in PvE, I'll be happy.

[pah01]

I just read those skill updates:


Aria of Zeal: Increased casting time to 2 seconds.
Energizing Finale: Increased the Energy cost to 10 and reduced the amount of energy gained per shout or chant to 1.
"Incoming!": Increased Energy cost to 10 and decreased duration to 1..5 seconds.
"Stand Your Ground!": Increased energy cost to 10.


COME OFF IT! Now my Paragon is pretty new and not got too far through the game, although I only use one of these skills it REALLY gets on my nerves that this sort of thing has already begun. I swear to god there was no need for this.

Energising Finale was retardedly broken. I dont think you realise how broken it was. It meant that monks could afford to do everything they wanted.

The best example i could give was this.

We were playing esoteric warriors.

Dorm kept shaming me before the spike. I had the excess energy to trigger shame every single freaking time so that I could respond on time.

EDIT: This was from one frigging paragon.

This is how you know that the skilll was completely RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed.

Joe

[Avarre]

Heck, if people DO choose other skills and find a way to make say...


"Can't Touch This!"


...So much as remotely useful in PvE, I'll be happy.

Stygian Veil, against the packs of Touchers. Takes all of 5 seconds to notice that.

Practically every class has PvE-worthless skills, I don't see your point with regards to paragons.

Maybe you're completely useless, but my paragon certainly isn't. If you limited your ability to play to broken skills, then I doubt you're a very good player.

Glad to see that people are capable of rational thought.

[crucifix]

there are a few things that need to be outlined here. lets start talking about what paragons were for:
-energy battery
-backup party wide gimp heals
-massive damage reduction
-skill assist with song of conc

now lets take a lok at how the nerf leaves paragons:
-backup, gimped heals
-damage reduction, almost useless now
-song of conc still works
-no more energy batteries

So now we ca see the problem, the main reason paragons were so good was because of the backline and party wide buffs. Lets take a look at the other attribute that paras gain absoluely nothing from: Spear Mastery:
-now what we have here is a plethora of skills that really need a buff moreso than others nerfed. Thereare quite a few skills here, including two elites, that give paragons almost nothing. there are all sorts of conditions in the attribute line along with an easily appliable daze. This would be great if a paragon was any good with spar attcks, unfortunately they arent. I guaruntee that a ranger could easily out dps a paragon any day (packhunter anyone?) along with several other classes. The bane of the attribute line is that its useless because of the incapability of paragons to run anything other than a main spec in motivation and command.

What i think the majority of you that think this was not a bad nerf are overlooking is the paragons use in a party. by gimping the skills that were nered, they intriduced harsh competition from other classes occupying the party slots that paragons used to own. On a partywide aspect, the paragon is better replaced with another utility character.

One other consiquences of this nerf is the insurgence of almost one specific team build (searing flames) in HA. before, monks had no problem dealing with the pressure that an sf group put out, almost exclusively due to the pressure supression of paragons along with the massive loads of energy that paragons gave to monks to counteract the energy needed to upkeep a party against that much damage. so in one update, paragons were almost completely removed from HA and one party build reigns supreme. I think the easiest way to fix this is just to go back to 8 man party halls. Oh if only anet listened.

[B Ephekt]

Actually, the spear line is pretty nice for spikes. I don't think the paraon was ever meant to be a long ranged pressure class though, outside of their easily applied conditions. Many people have been running paragons to buff offense in pressure builds, however; things like Go For The Eyes and Find Their Weakness are amazing in that regard. Go For The Eyes gives melee classes with 16 weapon mastery about a 90% chance to critical every 3 seconds, and Find Their Weakness is an almost guaranteed deep wound. Dervishes under a high specced GFTE is absolutely ridiculous damage without dedicating an attack skill to it.

Defensive buffs are still quite viable: Stand Your Ground, a decently specced Watch Yourself (Paragons CAN put points into Tactics, you know?), Incoming, They're on Fire (in a build with the burning condition) and Angelic Bond are all very good ways to reduce pressure. The Motivation "restoration" skills are still there, untouched, as well. The "battery" aspect of the motivation line has been reduced but still allows for 2 monks to gain a respectable amount of energy over time, provided the build has enough shouts. I don't think the issue is paragons being underpowered at this point, I think the problem is players who lack an understand of game mechanics and only want an easy way to be nearly invunerable.

As for SF, yes it is annoying fighting it on almost every map, but it's ridiculously easy to beat. No decent monk should have an issue with these builds, if they are then you should be looking for better monks, or a whole new party. Tombs is dead now anyway, and I doubt it will ever be worth playing again unless you're trying to grind out your tiger against NPCs so you can feel leet. Time to move over to GvG if you haven't already, imo.

[Keilious Ahruhk]

Stygian Veil, against the packs of Touchers. Takes all of 5 seconds to notice that.
Buuuuh... Never been to this Stygian Veil place.
Even so, a skill that's only of use in one area in the entire game seems silly to me.

Its not a matter of the paragon having some useless skills in PvE, its a matter of the paragon having far more useless skills than other classes. To put it on even footing, lets compare with a dervish.

Armor of Sanctity - Great
Aura of Thorns - Great
Conviction - Great
Dust Cloak - Great
Ebon Dust Aura {E} - Great
Fleeting Stability - Pretty useless
Mirage Cloak - Great
Mystic Regeneration - Great
Mystic Sandstorm - Great
Pious Concentration - Debatably Useless
Sand Shards - Very good in 50% of the game, very useless in the other 50%
Signet of Pious Light - Could be put to fairly good use
Staggering Force - Great
Veil of Thorns - Great
Vital Boon - Great

Arcane Zeal - I really don't know, I don't play a dervish, do they have energy problems? O.o
All the avatars - Great, obviously
Balthazar's Rage - Great
Eremite's Zeal - Once again, dunno if they have energy problems
Extend Enchantments - Lots of fun
Faithful Intervention - Great
Heart of Fury - IAS? How can I lose?
Heart of Holy Flame - Great
Imbue Health - Its like Infuse without sacrifice or div. favour, great
Meditation - Great
Mystic Corruption - Seems fruity, I'll say its useless to be fair
Mystic Vigor - Great
Pious Haste - Great
Pious Renewal - Another energy one, I dunno
Vow of Silence - Horray! I cannot be healed! D:
Watchful Intervention - Can't go wrong with this one
Zealous Renewal - Great

Banishing Strike - Of somewhat limited usefulness, depending on where you are
Chilling Victory - Great
Crippling Sweep - Eh. Crippled isn't so great in PvE
Eremite's Attack - As with all attacks with an activation time, awesome.
Irresistible Sweep - Great
Lyssa's Assault - Its free, I guess...
Mystic Sweep - Great
Pious Assault - There are better ways of using your enchantments, methinks, but still good, this one is.
Reap Impurities - Great
Reaper's Sweep - Eh, stuff dies a bit too fast for this to really matter, but at least its got a low recharge
Rending Sweep - Seems pretty useless for PvE
Twin Moon Sweep - Great
Victorious Sweep - Free healing, yay!
Wearying Strike - Useless
Wounding Strike - Great

Attacker's Insight - Seems pretty useless to me
Dwayna's Touch - Pretty much just a self heal
Enchanted Haste - Great
Featherfoot Grace - As above, but an enchantment rather than a stance, unfortunately
Grenth's Fingers - Great
Grenth's Grasp {E} - Somewhat limited use in PvE, but still okay, I guess.
Guiding Hands - Useless
Harrier's Grasp - Useless
Harrier's Haste - Somewhat okay, enemies don't move that much before they die anyway though.
Initiate's Blessing - Something random to through into a build, seems okay.
Lyssa's Haste - I have no idea, but it doesn't seem too bad.
Mystic Healing - Half a heal party for 5? Great!
Mystic Twister - Great

etc etc, I'm too lazy to keep going.
The thing is, I only even listed the absolute worst paragon skills in my last post, even more of our skills have a good, but extremely limited use.
As you can see from my long, out-of-place list, other classes DO have more useful skills. :/

[holymasamune]

Heck, if people DO choose other skills and find a way to make say...

"Brace Yourself!"
"Can't Touch This!"
"Help Me!"
"Make Haste!"
Song of Concentration
Angelic Protection
Awe
Enduring Harmony
"The Power is Yours!" {E} (Don't bring up focus swapping, its still terrible)
Leader's Zeal
Lyric of Zeal/Lyric of Purification
Purifying finale
Song of Power
Harrier's Toss
Unblockable Throw
Stunning Strike
or
Wearying Spear

...So much as remotely useful in PvE, I'll be happy.

Make haste- for running scenarios, especially if you have 2 paragons with each other.
song of conc- for ms, firestorm, etc
angelic protection- 2 esurges coming from roaring ethers can do 140 damage
awe- enemy monks and casters to make killing easier
enduring harmony- are u serious, or are u just plain stupid
leaders zeal- compare with ether signet. i'd use leaders zeal any day.
purifying finale- perfect condition removal

i'm not gonna bother to keep going. if you really want, people can give longer lists of more useless skills than these paragon ones from other professions. it's just like how energy drain and the rest of the inspiration line was hugely nerfed, people will have to deal with it and find better alternatives, not dwell in the past and whine like a baby

ok, just to shut your whiny ass, how often do u see these ele skills being used a lot in pve compared to the paragon ones listed:
blinding flash, gale, storm djinns haste, energy boon, ether prism, ether prod, ether renewal, armor of frost, blurred vision, oh wait the entire water and earth magic line outside of some earth skills for farming/tanking, glyph of sac, second wind

[Spura]

angelic protection- 2 esurges coming from roaring ethers can do 140 damage

What the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO?!?!? What kind of argument is that? Target other, 33% time coverage.

enduring harmony- are u serious, or are u just plain stupid
That's what he should be asking you. How many shouts profit from extending duration by 50% on a single target that you would spend a slot and resources in game for it.

NONE.

Unless you decide you wanna go through the chore and immense energy expense of keeping this up on all team. More power to you then.

[Keilious Ahruhk]

Make haste- for running scenarios, especially if you have 2 paragons with each other.
song of conc- for ms, firestorm, etc
angelic protection- 2 esurges coming from roaring ethers can do 140 damage
awe- enemy monks and casters to make killing easier
enduring harmony- are u serious, or are u just plain stupid
leaders zeal- compare with ether signet. i'd use leaders zeal any day.
purifying finale- perfect condition removal
Make haste - So you're saying that this one skill is specifically for the one or two missions where you can CHOOSE to run it? k.
Song of Concentration - Sure, if you have your entire team in PvE on TS, otherwise, timing this one will be a massive pain.
Angelic Protection - You've now saved one of the 5-odd targets which were hit... Point taken, I guess.
Awe - Nothing lives long enough in PvE for daze to make any difference. Just take a hero with interrupts, if you REALLY need to int that badly.
Enduring Harmony - Of course I'm serious. What's the point? Its safe to say that its useless for chants, as they're a trigger thing, and spending time to extend the length of Watch Yourself or Incoming on ONE target seems silly to me, especially considering Incoming is an anti-spike thing, so you don't have time to waste.
Leader's Zeal - Ether Signet doesn't COST energy to start off with, LZ does.
Purifying finale - Err, are you REALLY being hit by THAT many conditions in PvE? Just hit Cautery signet, or get your monk to tap Mend condition.

i'm not gonna bother to keep going. if you really want, people can give longer lists of more useless skills than these paragon ones from other professions. it's just like how energy drain and the rest of the inspiration line was hugely nerfed, people will have to deal with it and find better alternatives, not dwell in the past and whine like a baby

ok, just to shut your whiny ass, how often do u see these ele skills being used a lot in pve compared to the paragon ones listed:
blinding flash, gale, storm djinns haste, energy boon, ether prism, ether prod, ether renewal, armor of frost, blurred vision, oh wait
Charming.
Blinding Flash - Of course somewhat limited in usefulness, but its still great to disable pesky warriors while you eliminate the enemy casters.
Gale - Stop the enemy from moving, stop the enemy from casting, while you beat down and kill it within those couple of seconds, I see no problem here.
Storm Djinn's Haste - Okay, one elem skill that's useless in PvE, noted.
Energy boon, Ether Prism, Ether prod - Last I checked, elem spells cost alot of energy, and these spells give alot of energy, what's the problem?
Armor of frost - Its... 40 extra armour. Why wouldn't you like 40 extra armour?
Blurred Vision - See Blinding Flash

the entire water and earth magic line outside of some earth skills for farming/tanking, glyph of sac, second wind
Earth has quite a few buffs, in addition to the infamous wards, and lets not forget things like Earthquake, Obsidian flame, stoning... The list goes on.

Water hexes are even required for some air skills to function at full effectiveness. In addition, why not hit your enemies with a slowing hex and then rain some firey death upon them? Then their AOE AI pops up, but they can't get away. Lets not be forgetting the Water armours, as well as maelstrom (seeing as you said that interrupting monks in PvE is very important)

[oinkers]

I have to agree with the OP - Paragons are the new Rits - they're useless now for most things after the nerf. I've been playing GW since chests needed no keys to open and everyone got an item from it, and the pattern of nerfs is very noticeable - rangers/monks never get nerfed significantly. Only significant nerf rangers got was the EoE change, which was comparatively minor if you consider how eles have been nerfed into the ground until recently. Necros still get all the action in Tombs, SF, FoW, UW and you name it. Monks never get touched - except for the minor spirit bonder thing. Rits - the whole resto/communing line got nuked due to higher energy costs. 5 energy to cast spirit light? Whats the point if your spirits are gonna cost 25 to bring up?

Paragons occupy that uneasy space between warriors, rangers and monks. It's a very cramped space and the nerfs have obliterated the paragons as far as I can see.

Here's the reasons why I shall be deleting my paragon.

Energizing Finale should return 2 energy instead 1 considering its high energy cost and duration. As it stands, it takes up 1 too many slots on a skillbar.

Incoming is useless in PvE, duration is still too short in PvP. Recharge times suck heavily.

2 bips regen is laugahble on a small energy pool.

The only synergistic second profession was warrior, and the only skill that worth was running (WY) is also totally nerfed. Putting points in tactics is hard because you need to buff up the main lines so hard to get a decent effect in the first place. P/Mo? yeah right.

No hex removal at all - hexbreaker aria works on others.

Party wide buffs are ill-thought out. Song of Resto only heals for 100 odd? weak. Song of Purification removes 1 condition? weak. Song of Power needs 25 energy and terminates prematurely? very weak. Most songs are elite? crap.

The whole spear line is utterly useless, worse than channeling for rits before the buff. ANet may recognise this, but when the buff arrives it will be too late - like for the rits. All the spear skills look like clones of each other - there's no variation, no room to innovate. All deal lousy damage, all seem to have a preoccupation with deep wound or bleeding. Too easy to block spear attacks and the attack rate is too low to deal any decent damage. No AoE at all.

DoA will likely not need paragons at all, as the core classes from Tyria are still more powerful. Look at the DoA builds and you will see no slots for Paragons at all.

In terms of damage, you have to rely on GFTE and your team members - this is absolutely crud. You can't buff them good enough after the nerf, you can't deal any decent damage from the start, Paragons are dead on arrival.

So to sum up, you can't do anything as well as the other core classes and the one thing that might have included you in a user group was party wide buffing which doesn't really work effectively anymore. Shame, as I've spent so much on vabbian armour for my Para.

I'm getting really annoyed at ANet now - most of my chars have been nerfed so hard because they haven't thought out how the new classes will inter play with the core ones. I regret ever making a Rit and Para - both are now useless at support, and non-core and therefore getting impossible to find groups for.

To Gaile - whats the point of a paragon anymore? I can find poorly configured core classes that work better in every PvE mission in all the chapters.

[OlMurraniKasale]

Paragons occupy that uneasy space between warriors, rangers and monks. It's a very cramped space and the nerfs have obliterated the paragons as far as I can see.

Here's the reasons why I shall be deleting my paragon.

To Gaile - whats the point of a paragon anymore? I can find poorly configured core classes that work better in every PvE mission in all the chapters.

I cut your quote down to the three basic elements so I can use them in my post - these apply big-time.

1) I finally found a somewhat useful Paragon build (and it was actually discontinued in GuildWiki, under P/W Centurion). I had to slug my way through Domain of Fear, dying every which way at EACH mob. I mean SLUG. It took hours, and I and all my peeps were at -60. It was the Shiro's Master quest. I saved the spirits of two, then headed over the span towards the Gate of Secrets.

Somewhere along that FUBAR mobs-fest, someone got too close to the gate and poof! The quest was over, reset, have to do again.

Guess what ANet, ain't gonna happen. Abandoned!

2) Everytime I enter a zone, I think "just delete this stupid toon." On the other hand, who knows, ANet may pull their head out of their collective assets long enough to make the Paragon a little more realistically useful. I'm pulling up my old Factions warrior to play that. At least I know it can't be nerfed into oblivion - just build nerfs, not whole character class nerfed.

3) Gaile: Too few builds that work worth a damn - not an equal playing partner. Why would I subject my playing PUGS to my uselessness. I'd rather go to the Domain of Torment as a level 5 toon that deal with my Paragon even one more moment. Go back to the drawing board.

[pingu666]

my pve para is fine, mind i only used 1 of the nerf skills..

[Riotgear]

Water hexes are even required for some air skills to function at full effectiveness.
Like Gust, which is crap, and Arc Lightning, which is also crap. Your point?

Your notes on the effectiveness of what are obviously PvP skills in PvE is completely ridiculous. Final Thrust is a bad PvE skill, does that make it a BAD skill? Hell no.

For PvE, just bring Aggressive Refrain and some fast-recharging chant like Burning Anthem to keep it alive, give your war hero Watch Yourself, and go kill. I'm not having any problem.

Energizing Finale should return 2 energy instead 1 considering its high energy cost and duration. As it stands, it takes up 1 too many slots on a skillbar.
Energizing Finale is not an energy management skill, it's a BUFF, just like Blood Ritual. And in that sense, it was disgustingly overpowered before.

[Keilious Ahruhk]

Like Gust, which is crap, and Arc Lightning, which is also crap. Your point?

Your notes on the effectiveness of what are obviously PvP skills in PvE is completely ridiculous. Final Thrust is a bad PvE skill, does that make it a BAD skill? Hell no.

For PvE, just bring Aggressive Refrain and some fast-recharging chant like Burning Anthem to keep it alive, give your war hero Watch Yourself, and go kill. I'm not having any problem.

Er, there's nothing wrong with Gust, in my opinion at least. If water hexes only affected one target, then yeah, it'd be pretty lame, but the fact is, its a cheap gale without exhaustion, and does damage.
Lightning Touch is also very powerful.

Your point about that axis of skills is somewhat redundant, the very thing I'm upset with is the fact that everyone (read: The vast majority of people) has to pack Aggressive Refrain, Burning Anthem and/or Watch Yourself to be effective.
Sure, there are one or two more "essential skills" to add to that list, GftE is one.

Now, the next point I'm sure someone will bring up is "But monks have essential skills too lol that they have to pack or they suck lol lol lol!!1!eleventy"
I'll cross that bridge when we come to it though.

Edit: Incidently, I'm fine with EF being balanced now. However, I don't see the justification for raising its cost to 10. The problem with it was that it gave too much energy, not that it was being spammed everywhere. Even now, you can comfortably put it on 3+ people if you so choose. But I'm not here to whinge about that, this is just my 2c on the matter.

[oinkers]

[QUOTE=Riotgear

Energizing Finale is not an energy management skill, it's a BUFF, just like Blood Ritual. And in that sense, it was disgustingly overpowered before.[/QUOTE]

Returning 1 energy is not a buff. It may have been overpowered before, but it's totally useless now. Of all the so-called buffs the para should be able to do, energy is now arguably the weakest. EF is not even party wide.

I repeat my assertion that Paragons are not front-line (despite their armor), not core (because they dont heal or do damage well unlike the 6 primary classes), and can't even support properly these days. Which means they are simply a non-character.

[Riotgear]

Returning 1 energy is not a buff.
"Returning"? You missed the point completely. My point is that EF is not there to be used on yourself to recover energy. You don't need an echo for energy management, that's what your primary is for. The whole idea of it is that in a team build with 2 paragons, there are going to be enough shouts and chants flying around to provide a good deal of energy gain from it.

Energy is an extremely valuable resource. Anything to recover it has some sort of cost attached.

Now, the next point I'm sure someone will bring up is "But monks have essential skills too lol that they have to pack or they suck lol lol lol!!1!eleventy"
I'll cross that bridge when we come to it though.
Cross it now, please. Every one of my PvE characters has AT LEAST one skill that has practically never left their bar.

[B Ephekt]

Edit: Incidently, I'm fine with EF being balanced now. However, I don't see the justification for raising its cost to 10. The problem with it was that it gave too much energy, not that it was being spammed everywhere. Even now, you can comfortably put it on 3+ people if you so choose. But I'm not here to whinge about that, this is just my 2c on the matter.Actually, the problem was that it could be maintained on 3-4 casters AND that it gave them unlimited energy. For a paragon to maintain it on 3-4 people now would require too much energy for him to do much else without something like Watch Yourself fueling his energy. Energizing is still a viable skill in a build with a lot of shouts or chants, it's just not so good that it grants the monks infinite energy. QQ


Energizing Finale should return 2 energy instead 1 considering its high energy cost and duration. The duration hasn't changed, and 2 energy would still grant targets with a nearly unlimited stream on energy.

Incoming is useless in PvE, duration is still too short in PvP. Recharge times suck heavily.I agree with Incoming sucking in pve, it's just one of those skills thats rightful place is in pvp. I strongly disagree with you in regards to pvp, however. Incoming is a very powerful anti-spike skill; 5 seconds is more then enough to reduce a spike to nothing while preventing the skill from being abused to grant invulnerability. The duration adjustment also makes it harder for paragon secondaries to chain the skill for 18 out of 20 seconds.

The whole spear line is utterly useless, worse than channeling for rits before the buff. ANet may recognise this, but when the buff arrives it will be too late - like for the rits. All the spear skills look like clones of each other - there's no variation, no room to innovate. All deal lousy damage, all seem to have a preoccupation with deep wound or bleeding. Too easy to block spear attacks and the attack rate is too low to deal any decent damage. No AoE at all.Actually, a paragon with an IAS and 16 spear mastery can deal a pretty respectible amount of damage. Also, there are a number of +42 damage spear skills. Spear attacks are quite good if you put some thought into how to use them. Sadly most people seem to think they should be a warrior that can attack at range, which is quite stupid imo. And how exactly do you expect a spear, which is a single target projectile, to deal aoe damage?

In terms of damage, you have to rely on GFTE and your team members - this is absolutely crud.GFTE is an amazing skill in any build with heavy physical damage. At 16 Command it grants an additional 78% chance to critical. That means that a warrior or dervish with 16 weapon mastery will have about a 90% chance to land a critical hit nearly every three seconds. I’m sorry but you’re crazy if you think that’s “crud.”

[Spura]

Stygian Veil, against the packs of Touchers. Takes all of 5 seconds to notice that.
At best you will waste some energy of touchers, at worst you will do nothing because touchers will go for your team. Either way effect is way too small. "Can't touch this" is only good vs shock, and decent against blackout, expunge enchantments etc in pvp, that is till they just pick on some other target. In pve too many monsters for this shout to counter anything, they have energy to spare.
Eremite's Attack - As with all attacks with an activation time, awesome.

You are forgetting about 3 sec activation time attacks spear mastery has. Those are mediocre at best.

[Keilious Ahruhk]

Cross it now, please. Every one of my PvE characters has AT LEAST one skill that has practically never left their bar.
Very well then. *steps onto precarious rickety river-crossing*
Lets start one by one.
Warriors: They have entirely different trees which are mutually exclusive, so there's no one "needed skill"
Rangers: Although they have a fixed skill "arrangement", ie. take one defensive stand, take two or three bow attacks, you have alot of options in terms of which skills will fill those slots. Even then, the variations of builds pretty much nullify the "required skill" idea. Trappers, Touchers, Thumpers, Int-ers.
Monks: Not unlike warriors, due to their different "trees", they don't have a "required skill" per se. (though some would argue Signet of Devotion is one such skill). Granted though, a prot monk will always take reversal and guardian.
Mesmers: I'm terribly inexperienced with mesmers, so rather than make a fool of myself, I won't comment. EDIT: Oh, I suppose some of the inspiration e-management skills might be must-haves, like energy tap...
Elementalists: Like warriors, different "trees", so while within those trees there may be must-haves (lightning orb, fireball), the rule doesn't apply to these guys.
Necromancers: Much like elementalists and warriors. You typically choose one attribute, put points in it, and soul reaping. Within each attribute there are skills which are close to must-haves, such as Shadow of Fear/Faintheartedness
Assassins: There really is no argument against me for this one, you typically have a lead, off-hand and dual, and there are plenty of each. Some would argue that Shadow refuge is must a must have, I say learn to shadow-step.
Ritualists: Another class I'm not too experienced with, but I'm fairly sure you can at least either go with spirits or with weapon spells.
Dervish: Similar explanation to Assassin or Warrior.

Now you might say, "sure, but like paragons, they have a small number of skills which are 'must haves'". Granted. But the "must-haves" of paragons are all either in one attribute, or in ANOTHER CLASS. Now that's just fruity, don't you think?

Actually, a paragon with an IAS and 16 spear mastery can deal a pretty respectible amount of damage. Also, there are a number of +42 damage spear skills. Spear attacks are quite good if you put some thought into how to use them.
Really now? Can you name 2 spear attacks which do that kind of damage (without a negative side-effect) which you can have all of on your skillbar at the same time? :D
EDIT: well rather than be an obnoxious jerk, I'll just continue this right in this post: The only skills which do +42 without negative side effects are BOTH elite, ie. the only spear elites.
The remaining two attacks both has hideous negative effects. One has a 3 second activation time, and the other weakens you for 20 seconds.

You are forgetting about 3 sec activation time attacks spear mastery has. Those are mediocre at best.
Don't remind me! I like to pretend they don't exist! >.<

Seriously though, I mean attack skills with an activation time of less than 1. :P


EDIT: Oh, and since now "Incoming" is kinda shoddy, does anyone know of a good elite Paragon non-motivation shout to use? Y'know, seeing as how shouts are the theme of the Paragon, I really want an elite one. >.>

[Sophitia Leafblade]

As far as i see it, Paragons are meant to be a support class, there not meant to be heavy healers or strong spikers, there designed to do a little of both to assist in the team generally, buff allies a little to help monks/Rits & punish enemys a little to keep the enemys dropping. Ok so the update changed there skills to a lower degree. This is becauses:

A- Shouts and Echos cant be removed and there is only a few ways of stoping them being used therefore there is little u can do to counter them. (ofc there are a few ways but these are rare in PvE and not always effective in PvP)

B- the buffs they were giving were making them more of a heavy protector, even the once mighty Aegis couldnt reduce that much damage generally and monks are designed to be full protectors not buff protectors. It should be the other way around Monks heavy protectors with weak attacks and Paragons with medium protection and medium attack.

C- the skills arnt meant to be keep up 100% of the time, how often have u seen a team that keeps up Aegis 100% of the time and/or spams heal party non stop the entire fight? i would venure a guess and say either none or hardly ever

Everyones entitled to there opion but in my view these changes were needed and im glad to see them in effect.

[SparhawkJC]

I have a question for all the people whining about the paragon having 2 pips of energy regen. Do you even have any points in leadership and do you realize that a lot of your skills require adrenaline? If you do have points in leadership do you understand how it works?

Since we're talking about paragons in pve lets see how this change affects us.

Aria of Zeal: Increased casting time to 2 seconds - Seriously though how many paragons actually brought this skill with them. I would say a good 75% of PvE paragons go with command over motivation anyways.

Energizing Finale: Increased the Energy cost to 10 and reduced the amount of energy gained per shout or chant to 1. - Again how many paragons actually brought this with them on their regular bar. Assuming you've got 2 or 3 spammable shouts/chants the energy gain is still up there with things in the inspiration line. Casting this on your self is useless anyways, see Leadership and Adreanline.

Incoming: Increased Energy cost to 10 and decreased duration to 1..5 seconds. - It now takes more timing to use, while still being a good skill.

"Stand Your Ground!": Increased energy cost to 10. - So Stand Your Ground actually costs energy to use now. With decent leadership I don't see why anyone would whine about +24 conditional armor than can't be removed. So you'll be paying about 6 to 4 energy every 45 seconds.....even a warrior can afford that.

[Avarre]

At best you will waste some energy of touchers, at worst you will do nothing because touchers will go for your team. Either way effect is way too small. "Can't touch this" is only good vs shock, and decent against blackout, expunge enchantments etc in pvp, that is till they just pick on some other target. In pve too many monsters for this shout to counter anything, they have energy to spare.


It's not a counter. It's a buffer until the full force of your traps/aoes brings down the group, allowing you to hold position for an additional second or two, which can be crucial.

[Spura]

I doubt it buys you even that much time. 2 of those touch necros will punch through this shout in less than 2 seconds. And it works only on you.
Completely utterly useless!


Should have been: For 20 sec, the next 1..8 touch skills targeting target ally, cast 150% longer. It would be way way way better than current skill. Advantages:
- It would nerf touch skill spam harder, touchers just can't punch through in a second with plague touch.
- It would nerf shock less, currently exhaustion is too much to get through current version of this shout with shock.

[Valium]

Geez people, learn to deal and be creative.

Some of you throw worse temper tantrums then my 1 year old. lol

[Karmaniac]

Since we are discussing about useless skills I'm amazed no one has mentioned signed of aggression before.
If you are under the effects of a Shout or Chant, you gain 1 strike of adrenaline.
1s cast and 10s recast: so basically you gain the same amount of adrenaline as when you throw a spear but no damage. Every 10 seconds. Hey Anet plz gimp this skill before people will find out the awesome power SoA spamming.

[random.name]

After the skill changes I made one post, and told myself to wait for a few days and calm down. Since then I have exclusively played my Paragon to get a feel on the changes.

I have now finally decided to stop playing it. I regret spending all that time getting survivor, sunspear castellan, rank 6 LB, cartographer and elonian defender. Sure, any class can be played, but why should I continue to play a class that wont ever be as goon as a core class? I for one feel that Anet should actually stop adding new professions with the next chapters.

I dont know if the original creator of the professions moved on to another game company or what, but the 4 additional classes has been major failures.

I will just stick to my trusty warrior, monk and ranger for PvE.

[Riotgear]

Warriors: They have entirely different trees which are mutually exclusive, so there's no one "needed skill"
I'd be insane to run an offensive build without flail. I'd be insane to run a tank build without dolyak sig.

Rangers: Although they have a fixed skill "arrangement", ie. take one defensive stand, take two or three bow attacks, you have alot of options in terms of which skills will fill those slots. Even then, the variations of builds pretty much nullify the "required skill" idea. Trappers, Touchers, Thumpers, Int-ers.
You don't bring touchers to PvE. Distracting shot goes on any bar I make that has a bow.

Granted though, a prot monk will always take reversal and guardian.
Practically any good PvE monk build includes ROF. Pure-heal monk builds are not good builds.

Like warriors, different "trees", so while within those trees there may be must-haves (lightning orb, fireball), the rule doesn't apply to these guys.
Elemental attunement. Or SF.

But the "must-haves" of paragons are all either in one attribute, or in ANOTHER CLASS. Now that's just fruity, don't you think?
There are only two things that even look like "must-haves": WY and Aggressive Refrain. And WY isn't really even needed because you can just bring GFTE at the same cost. You don't NEED Burning Anthem, because you can bring Blazing Finale.

the other weakens you for 20 seconds.
http://gw.gamewikis.org/images/0/0d/Remedy_Signet.jpghttp://gw.gamewikis.org/images/6/69/Signet_of_Malice.jpg

[Spura]

Basically you have spear skills which are crap, party heals + condition removal which are inferior to heal party+extinguish spammer, bunch of small utility which is too specialised and usually ineffective at what it does("can't touch this, angelic protection etc) and energy skills which is the only thing paragon does better than other classes. Well these were nerfed now. So that is why people don't like this nerf. Energizing finale was overpowered but battery was all paragon was useful for because every other aspect of paragon is inferior to some other profession. And you can't have them all either(don't have the slots or attributes to be medium damage medium healing).

[oinkers]

"Returning"? You missed the point completely. My point is that EF is not there to be used on yourself to recover energy.

Where did I ever say I was using EF on myself? You think I'm that idiotic not to put enough points in Leadership!? This kind of attitude sums it up about the Paragon fanboys on this forum really. Anyone who is a half decent player knows that the sweet spot for EF was on monks/eles and now it's not even good enough to put on warriors.

It's amazing how people ignore the valid points I've made and concentrate on some tangent which I didn't even imply.

In particular, you haven't addressed the small regen, small energy pool lack of hex removers, and underpowered/monotonuous spear line.

If you take all that into consideration, there's not much left for Paragons - maybe 1 or 2 semi-useful builds and that's it. And that's exactly the situation Rits are in.


Actually, a paragon with an IAS and 16 spear mastery can deal a pretty respectible amount of damage. Also, there are a number of +42 damage spear skills. Spear attacks are quite good if you put some thought into how to use them. Sadly most people seem to think they should be a warrior that can attack at range, which is quite stupid imo. And how exactly do you expect a spear, which is a single target projectile, to deal aoe damage?

GFTE is an amazing skill in any build with heavy physical damage. At 16 Command it grants an additional 78% chance to critical. That means that a warrior or dervish with 16 weapon mastery will have about a 90% chance to land a critical hit nearly every three seconds. I’m sorry but you’re crazy if you think that’s “crud.”

If you're gonna put 16 in spear, you're gonna have to cut down seriously on motivation - which makes you a spear chucker. Fine. Compare DPS and tell me they are better than even channeling Rits - they're not. How's does a spear do AoE damage? It doesn't, that's one reason why it sucks. I vote for something like Barrage for spears - at least Rangers have better damage on supposedly 'single target projectile' arrows.

GFTE is very nice to use, although you get shutdown easily with Vocal Minority - with no spammable hex breakers on Paras this is a real downer. Plus, GFTE's real strength is in relying on the rest of the party to do damage - hardly a first class skill on its own. OoP or OoD on necros would be even better than this half-thought out line.

I'm going to repeat that my original points which haven't been addressed. Paragons are begining to look like Rits - supposedly "flexible", not very good in any one area and dropping out of PUGs fast.

I'm gonna quote Sparhawk to illustrate how many of you have missed the point entirely:


Aria of Zeal: Increased casting time to 2 seconds - Seriously though how many paragons actually brought this skill with them. I would say a good 75% of PvE paragons go with command over motivation anyways.


So another brain-damaged skill to add to the long list of already semi-useful-but-not-really-ones-I'd-use skills. Fine. You're not making the Paragon anymore convincing to run as a char.


Energizing Finale: Increased the Energy cost to 10 and reduced the amount of energy gained per shout or chant to 1. - Again how many paragons actually brought this with them on their regular bar.


You're kidding right? EF was one of the best things for Paras other than being a WY/GFTE spammer. I'm beginning to seriously doubt you've properly played a Para per-nerf before.


Incoming: Increased Energy cost to 10 and decreased duration to 1..5 seconds. - It now takes more timing to use, while still being a good skill.


Subjective. Many people would say Incoming is only useful for PvP now (see rest of thread), and I'd go even further to say it's wasted as an elite entirely even in PvP.

You've basically agreed that most of the useful skills have been nerfed, because the stats speak for themsevles. But you then overlay it with a subjective opinion that says they're still "good". I think you'll find that PUGs will come round to the fact that Paras aren't really good party buffers anymore, and that primary monks/eles/bips will dish out more healing/damage/energy (in that order) more effectively than a second-rate char occupying a precious slot.

ANet, where's the beef? Where's the compelling build to run like MM/SS for Necros, or barrager for rangers, or nukers for Eles?

I'm gonna quote Sparhawk to illustrate how many of you have missed the point entirely:


Aria of Zeal: Increased casting time to 2 seconds - Seriously though how many paragons actually brought this skill with them. I would say a good 75% of PvE paragons go with command over motivation anyways.


So another brain-damaged skill to add to the long list of already semi-useful-but-not-really-ones-I'd-use skills. Fine. You're not making the Paragon anymore convincing to run as a char.


Energizing Finale: Increased the Energy cost to 10 and reduced the amount of energy gained per shout or chant to 1. - Again how many paragons actually brought this with them on their regular bar.


You're kidding right? EF was one of the best things for Paras other than being a WY/GFTE spammer. I'm beginning to seriously doubt you've properly played a Para per-nerf before.


Incoming: Increased Energy cost to 10 and decreased duration to 1..5 seconds. - It now takes more timing to use, while still being a good skill.


Subjective. Many people would say Incoming is only useful for PvP now (see rest of thread), and I'd go even further to say it's wasted as an elite entirely even in PvP.

You've basically agreed that most of the useful skills have been nerfed, because the stats speak for themsevles. But you then overlay it with a subjective opinion that says they're still "good". I think you'll find that PUGs will come round to the fact that Paras aren't really good party buffers anymore, and that primary monks/eles/bips will dish out more healing/damage/energy (in that order) more effectively than a second-rate char occupying a precious slot.

ANet, where's the beef? Where's the compelling build to run like MM/SS for Necros, or barrager for rangers, or nukers for Eles?

Basically you have spear skills which are crap, party heals + condition removal which are inferior to heal party+extinguish spammer, bunch of small utility which is too specialised and usually ineffective at what it does("can't touch this, angelic protection etc) and energy skills which is the only thing paragon does better than other classes. Well these were nerfed now. So that is why people don't like this nerf. Energizing finale was overpowered but battery was all paragon was useful for because every other aspect of paragon is inferior to some other profession. And you can't have them all either(don't have the slots or attributes to be medium damage medium healing).


Agreed. I'd add to that that paragon party-wide heals (*** of Resto) are inferior to E/Mo running as prodigy/HP pumpers. Song of Purification? Pffft - get Extinguish already!

There are only a few things you can buff the party with:

1. Health - inferior in almost every respect, even to Resto Rits running Attuned was Songkai
2. Energy - nerfed. BIPs are still supreme.
3. Armor - nerfed. Only synergistic skill was the lonely WY anyway.
4. Damage - spear line is like poking people with toothpicks. GFTE might still be the best thing going for a Para, but that's neither here nor there when you consider what OoP/OoD can do on necros.

Paragons are not really compelling. None of the builds are must-haves like MMs or nukers or booners. You'll have to agree at some point with the original issue I raised: Paragons are the new Rits (post-nerf).


Practically any good PvE monk build includes ROF. Pure-heal monk builds are not good builds.


Counter example: In the Deep, monks are almost always pure heal WoH/HP pumpers. You won't find bonders or boon prots in that high end PVE mission. RoF? eeesh....

I'm gonna quote Sparhawk to illustrate how many of you have missed the point entirely:


Aria of Zeal: Increased casting time to 2 seconds - Seriously though how many paragons actually brought this skill with them. I would say a good 75% of PvE paragons go with command over motivation anyways.


So another brain-damaged skill to add to the long list of already semi-useful-but-not-really-ones-I'd-use skills. Fine. You're not making the Paragon anymore convincing to run as a char.


Energizing Finale: Increased the Energy cost to 10 and reduced the amount of energy gained per shout or chant to 1. - Again how many paragons actually brought this with them on their regular bar.


You're kidding right? EF was one of the best things for Paras other than being a WY/GFTE spammer. I'm beginning to seriously doubt you've properly played a Para per-nerf before.


Incoming: Increased Energy cost to 10 and decreased duration to 1..5 seconds. - It now takes more timing to use, while still being a good skill.


Subjective. Many people would say Incoming is only useful for PvP now (see rest of thread), and I'd go even further to say it's wasted as an elite entirely even in PvP.

You've basically agreed that most of the useful skills have been nerfed, because the stats speak for themsevles. But you then overlay it with a subjective opinion that says they're still "good". I think you'll find that PUGs will come round to the fact that Paras aren't really good party buffers anymore, and that primary monks/eles/bips will dish out more healing/damage/energy (in that order) more effectively than a second-rate char occupying a precious slot.

ANet, where's the beef? Where's the compelling build to run like MM/SS for Necros, or barrager for rangers, or nukers for Eles?

I'm gonna quote Sparhawk to illustrate how many of you have missed the point entirely:


Aria of Zeal: Increased casting time to 2 seconds - Seriously though how many paragons actually brought this skill with them. I would say a good 75% of PvE paragons go with command over motivation anyways.


So another brain-damaged skill to add to the long list of already semi-useful-but-not-really-ones-I'd-use skills. Fine. You're not making the Paragon anymore convincing to run as a char.


Energizing Finale: Increased the Energy cost to 10 and reduced the amount of energy gained per shout or chant to 1. - Again how many paragons actually brought this with them on their regular bar.


You're kidding right? EF was one of the best things for Paras other than being a WY/GFTE spammer. I'm beginning to seriously doubt you've properly played a Para per-nerf before.


Incoming: Increased Energy cost to 10 and decreased duration to 1..5 seconds. - It now takes more timing to use, while still being a good skill.


Subjective. Many people would say Incoming is only useful for PvP now (see rest of thread), and I'd go even further to say it's wasted as an elite entirely even in PvP.

You've basically agreed that most of the useful skills have been nerfed, because the stats speak for themsevles. But you then overlay it with a subjective opinion that says they're still "good". I think you'll find that PUGs will come round to the fact that Paras aren't really good party buffers anymore, and that primary monks/eles/bips will dish out more healing/damage/energy (in that order) more effectively than a second-rate char occupying a precious slot.

ANet, where's the beef? Where's the compelling build to run like MM/SS for Necros, or barrager for rangers, or nukers for Eles?

Basically you have spear skills which are crap, party heals + condition removal which are inferior to heal party+extinguish spammer, bunch of small utility which is too specialised and usually ineffective at what it does("can't touch this, angelic protection etc) and energy skills which is the only thing paragon does better than other classes. Well these were nerfed now. So that is why people don't like this nerf. Energizing finale was overpowered but battery was all paragon was useful for because every other aspect of paragon is inferior to some other profession. And you can't have them all either(don't have the slots or attributes to be medium damage medium healing).


Agreed. I'd add to that that paragon party-wide heals (*** of Resto) are inferior to E/Mo running as prodigy/HP pumpers. Song of Purification? Pffft - get Extinguish already!

There are only a few things you can buff the party with:

1. Health - inferior in almost every respect, even to Resto Rits running Attuned was Songkai
2. Energy - nerfed. BIPs are still supreme.
3. Armor - nerfed. Only synergistic skill was the lonely WY anyway.
4. Damage - spear line is like poking people with toothpicks. GFTE might still be the best thing going for a Para, but that's neither here nor there when you consider what OoP/OoD can do on necros.

Paragons are not really compelling. None of the builds are must-haves like MMs or nukers or booners. You'll have to agree at some point with the original issue I raised: Paragons are the new Rits (post-nerf).


Practically any good PvE monk build includes ROF. Pure-heal monk builds are not good builds.


Counter example: In the Deep, monks are almost always pure heal WoH/HP pumpers. You won't find bonders or boon prots in that high end PVE mission. RoF? eeesh....

[falling demon]

Nerf Nerf Nerf.. Buff Buff Buff.. there's no making you guys happy is there? If Anet listened to everybody, there would be no point making a build, because likely one of the skills gets nerfed the next day.

Stop whining, stop crying, get over it, ADAPT.

[oinkers]

Nerf Nerf Nerf.. Buff Buff Buff.. there's no making you guys happy is there? If Anet listened to everybody, there would be no point making a build, because likely one of the skills gets nerfed the next day.

Stop whining, stop crying, get over it, ADAPT.

Adapt? I already said I deleted my Paragon.

Who's whining and crying? I'm merely pointing out why Paragons are now inferior to every other core class and explaining in detail at the skill-level. Unlike your approach to shutting down the issue by flatly telling people to ADAPT like it's some kind of magic pill.

If you don't want to discuss the issues, don't post anything - otherwise you're missing the point about discussion forums like these in the first place. If you don't want OTHER people to discuss the issues, then you've got serious issues about cramping other people's style. Don't be selfish, let other people carry on discussing.

[RandomEngy]

If you think Paragons are now useless, either in PvP or PvE you are insane. Motivation paragons are still great. Mending Refrain is one slot and gets your whole team +4 health regen, with zero extra effort to keep up and almost no chance of being shut down. Finale of restoration is also incredibly efficient healing.

As for command, There's plenty of choice skills: Stand Your Ground, Go For the Eyes, Find their Weakness and Make Haste come to mind. Also you can't really compare OoP/OoV to GftE. First, GftE actually gives you energy rather than taking it away, thus fueling other useful skills. Second, it can't be interrupted. Third, since it's instant cast, you're not making a character spend all of his time just doing it. Fourth, the character using it can also do damage himself and benefit from the buff.

With Leadership you've still got Aggressive Refrain, They're on Fire and Blazing Finale, all 3 amazing skills.

And for spear mastery skills, I agree that for the most part they just aren't very good. I've used one or two as a supplement to command but never really a dedicated damage build.

Someone said that Searing Flames was going to take over HA. But in my 2-paragon 2-henchmen team I routinely beat SF teams with human players.

But really, a couple of broken skills were balanced. This does not mean that paragons are now useless.

[B Ephekt]

Really now? Can you name 2 spear attacks which do that kind of damage (without a negative side-effect) which you can have all of on your skillbar at the same time? :D And plenty of the lower bonus damage skills are
EDIT: well rather than be an obnoxious jerk, I'll just continue this right in this post: The only skills which do +42 without negative side effects are BOTH elite, ie. the only spear elites.
The remaining two attacks both has hideous negative effects. One has a 3 second activation time, and the other weakens you for 20 seconds.A 3 second activation time is negligible for a spike. Cruel Spear is like a ranged Eviscerate, so I wouldn't consider its elite status to be a bad thing, especially if you had 16 spear mastery like I stated (and wouldn't likely be using a command or motivation elite). Wearying Strike is easily handled by a monk, but this is admittedly more pvp oriented.

Seriously though, I mean attack skills with an activation time of less than 1. :P
Yeah, I was aware of that since you so clearly stated it previously. A paragon with an IAS, and only Spear of Lightening can still do a ton of ranged pressure damage.


Also, Energy Tap is a horrible skill I had to laugh at that. :)So another brain-damaged skill to add to the long list of already semi-useful-but-not-really-ones-I'd-use skills. Fine. You're not making the Paragon anymore convincing to run as a char.
Giving your monks/casters 8 energy every 20 seconds isn't really bad in a high pressure enviroment. The fact that it allows monks to gain energy without wasting a skill slot on your monks, or a party slot on a blood necro with BiP or Blood Rit, makes it a viable skill for a motivation paragon.

Subjective. Many people would say Incoming is only useful for PvP now (see rest of thread), and I'd go even further to say it's wasted as an elite entirely even in PvP.
Posts like this would cause me to qestion how much experience you have in high level pvp. Incoming is simply amazing at stopping spikes, which is why you see it in almost every GvG match. A well timed Incoming can win a match in tombs, or turn the tide of a fight long enough to make a morale push in GvG. The skill is still very viable. I'm gonna quote Sparhawk to illustrate how many of you have missed the point entirely:
So far you've complained that paragons can't deal as much damage as a channeling rit, can't heal better than a monk or ele with heal party, can't remove conditions and hexes better than a monk and can't do aeo like a ranger. It seems that you're the one missing the point of the paragon. You seem to want paragons to be super ranged warriors with aoe attacks, better healing and removal than a monk and better energy buffs than a necro with an elite skill.

Could you stop for once and try to grasp that elusive concept of balance? Paragons are not meant to out perform any of those professions, they're meant to provide a little healing, protection, damage and yes, even some aoe burning.

Compare this to a Resto Rit: they can heal, but not as well as a monk, they can offer some prot, but not as well as a monk. They're good for niche roles, however, like operating under QZ with Attuned - something a monk would crumble under.

Paragons are similar in that regard. The resto skill are meant to be dumb healing; they're not supposed to replace heal party, but rather to provide enough dumb healing to releave pressure and help out your monks.

Incoming isn't meant to be a non-removable Life Barrier; it's meant to stop the amount of damage a spike does, or to give your monks some reprieve from a lot of heavy pressure.

Energizing Finale wasn't meant to outperform a necro with an elite skill, it was meant to add enough energy to be viable, but not so much that it granted unlimited energy to the target. NoO matter how much you whine or rationalize, when a non-elite skill can grant more constant energy gain than an elite, you know it's broken.

Look at the paragon skills, and consider what attribute they're placed under. A command paragon can buff his party's defense, buff their offense, and still run a constant IAS with 9 spear mastery and deal damage. A motivation paragon can give his party some dumb healing, removal, help with energy a bit and still do damage. What other class can do all of that with a simply 3 attribute split (15/9/12)?

The problem isn't that paragons are underpowered, it's that people got used to them being overpowered, or that they want them to be carbon copies of other classes.
If you're gonna put 16 in spear, you're gonna have to cut down seriously on motivation - which makes you a spear chucker.Thanks for stating the obvious, and ignoring my obviously implications of an offensive paragon.

Compare DPS and tell me they are better than even channeling Rits - they're not.This is just ignorance. I was running a 4 paragon build in tombs, each had an IAS a condition attack, Spear of Lightening as a spam skill and Cruel and Harrier's as spike skills. These paragons can deal a ridiculous amoung of DPS, can do a pretty nice spike and can buff their party enough to be quite resilient.

Channeling rits suck at DPS because they require attack skills to deal damage, a paragon can auto attack a target and still deal nearly as much DPS as a warrior would auto attacking, while doing so at a distance.

If you're complaining that a paragon can't do as much DPS as a warrior, then you seem to lack a fundamental understanding of balance. In which case I don't know why I'm bothering to reply.

How's does a spear do AoE damage? It doesn't, that's one reason why it sucks. I vote for something like Barrage for spears - at least Rangers have better damage on supposedly 'single target projectile' arrows.
So you basically just want paragons to become rangers? Good idea. Let's add in Savage and Distracting spear too, that'll be balanced.

GFTE is very nice to use, although you get shutdown easily with Vocal Minority - with no spammable hex breakers on Paras this is a real downer.This is why Guild Wars has a class called "monk," Divert Hexes completely negates the threat that Vocal imposes.

Plus, GFTE's real strength is in relying on the rest of the party to do damage - hardly a first class skill on its own. OoP or OoD on necros would be even better than this half-thought out line.GFTE requires no effort on the paragon's part, no health sac and fits into an attribute line that actually has other useful skills. Blood necros aren't very useful in pvp.

[oinkers]

So far you've complained that paragons can't deal as much damage as a channeling rit, can't heal better than a monk or ele with heal party, can't remove conditions and hexes better than a monk and can't do aeo like a ranger. It seems that you're the one missing the point of the paragon. You seem to want paragons to be super ranged warriors with aoe attacks, better healing and removal than a monk and better energy buffs than a necro with an elite skill.



No.

I want the Paragon to be actually good at something (just one will do, like the other classes), instead of <b>meh</b> in everything. I hate poorly conceived classes. I dislike classes that regurgitate existing attributes in supposedly new forms, but the game engine hasn't fundamentally changed. The damage/health/buff attributes of a paragon hinge upon existing categories, it strikes me that ANet was too lazy to implement a new damage type for Rit channeling and used Lightning instead which was already used by Eles. The seams are now showing, and it ain't pretty. Similarly, spear chucking is incredibly lame.



Paragons are similar in that regard.



I rest my original case. Paragons are the new Rits. Rather second class at everything, and not likely to be included in PUGs for much longer.


Incoming isn't meant to be a non-removable Life Barrier; <snip>

Energizing Finale wasn't meant to outperform a necro ... <snip>



Skill X isn't this, skill Y isn't that. You've just highlighted how intrinsically poor the Paragon is. All the skills I can see are half-hearted regurgitations of existing combinations. You can't build a 1st class char like that.


Look at the paragon skills, and consider what attribute they're placed under. A command paragon can buff his party's defense, buff their offense, and still run a constant IAS with 9 spear mastery and deal damage.


The ENTIRE point was that the paragon can't do one thing well, and that cripples the entire class - everything from getting included in a PUG to having a sweet spot like the necros/rangers/eles/monks do. The Paragon has nothing to boast about except a finger in every pie, and a very piddly little finger it is too.


So you basically just want paragons to become rangers? Good idea. Let's add in Savage and Distracting spear too, that'll be balanced.


I was just pointing out that rangers are better in barrage mode than spear Paras could ever hope to be. They have longer range, hit more targets and do more damage, and dont feel half as sluggish as a Paragon. That is the fatal problem in the spear line, which is symptomatic of all the remaining skills.

[Kaane]

Adapt? I already said I deleted my Paragon.

Who's whining and crying? I'm merely pointing out why Paragons are now inferior to every other core class and explaining in detail at the skill-level. Unlike your approach to shutting down the issue by flatly telling people to ADAPT like it's some kind of magic pill. :D You poor fool.

I still love my Paragon and don't see her as being nerfed at all. Then again, your loss. Deleting your Paragon because a few skills have been toned down isn't much different that a rage-quit in a PuG... sounds like the sort of thing a rage-quitter would do, actually.

[oinkers]

:D You poor fool.

I still love my Paragon and don't see her as being nerfed at all. Then again, your loss. Deleting your Paragon because a few skills have been toned down isn't much different that a rage-quit in a PuG... sounds like the sort of thing a rage-quitter would do, actually.

If you can't see Paragons have been nerfed despite the skill stats saying otherwise, you sounds like the kind of dumb ineffective player I can do without in my group actually.

[Spura]

A 3 second activation time is negligible for a spike.However it sucks for DPS.

Cruel Spear is like a ranged Eviscerate, so I wouldn't consider its elite status to be a bad thing, especially if you had 16 spear mastery like I stated (and wouldn't likely be using a command or motivation elite).
Eviscerate doesn't require target to stand still. At least in pvp people these days are only slowed 66% not actually standing still.

But yes it is an ok elite. But what we would require is just plain vanilla +40 dmg attack like Galrath slash to use it with Focused Anger. Right now all +40 are either elite or have 3 sec cast/weakness.

A paragon with an IAS, and only Spear of Lightening can still do a ton of ranged pressure damage.
Not nearly as much as dervish/assassin/warrior.

Posts like this would cause me to qestion how much experience you have in high level pvp. Incoming is simply amazing at stopping spikes, which is why you see it in almost every GvG match. A well timed Incoming can win a match in tombs, or turn the tide of a fight long enough to make a morale push in GvG. The skill is still very viable.
Agreed it is, though rising costs work negatively for build diversity, it is hard to run command paragon now(usually has incoming, stand your ground) without some kind of adrenaline shout. Also makes paragon way too hard to run in party of four. The whole cost raise was unneeded.



So far you've complained that paragons can't deal as much damage as a channeling rit, can't heal better than a monk or ele with heal party, can't remove conditions and hexes better than a monk and can't do aeo like a ranger. It seems that you're the one missing the point of the paragon. You seem to want paragons to be super ranged warriors with aoe attacks, better healing and removal than a monk and better energy buffs than a necro with an elite skill.You are putting words in our mouth, we never said we wanted paragon to be all of that. We complained it isn't good at anything any more(at least not enough to be taken for that role over some other build). The negation of being good at nothing is being good at something. You implied it was being good at everything. Well we basically need at least one role that can be preferablly pugged in pve where paragon is stronger than other options. It used to be energy battery now it is nothing.


Could you stop for once and try to grasp that elusive concept of balance? Paragons are not meant to out perform any of those professions, they're meant to provide a little healing, protection, damage and yes, even some aoe burning.
But nobody wants characters like that. They will just take specialised character.

Compare this to a Resto Rit: they can heal, but not as well as a monk, they can offer some prot, but not as well as a monk. They're good for niche roles, however, like operating under QZ with Attuned - something a monk would crumble under.

Paragons are similar in that regard. The resto skill are meant to be dumb healing; they're not supposed to replace heal party, but rather to provide enough dumb healing to releave pressure and help out your monks.

Actually I think restoration isn't about party heals, it is about spot heals. They are freaking powerful.

Incoming isn't meant to be a non-removable Life Barrier; it's meant to stop the amount of damage a spike does, or to give your monks some reprieve from a lot of heavy pressure.

Energizing Finale wasn't meant to outperform a necro with an elite skill, it was meant to add enough energy to be viable, but not so much that it granted unlimited energy to the target. NoO matter how much you whine or rationalize, when a non-elite skill can grant more constant energy gain than an elite, you know it's broken.
However at 10 energy they are too expensive for what they do now. Otherwise I don't mind the EF nerf that much.

Look at the paragon skills, and consider what attribute they're placed under. A command paragon can buff his party's defense, buff their offense, and still run a constant IAS with 9 spear mastery and deal damage.That lame build with 9 spear everyone runs is just pathetic. I do more damage with conjure fire and wand on elementalist.

A motivation paragon can give his party some dumb healing, removal, help with energy a bit and still do damage. What other class can do all of that with a simply 3 attribute split (15/9/12)?
E/Mo for instance. Offers party heal, great warrior damage migitation through blind, great spike assisst through orb or gale, condition removal through extinguish.
Paragon packing Song of restoration, ballad of restoration, Aria of restoration heals less than Heal Party spammer if he keeps spamming. Also heal party has radar range which is a big plus. So heal party spammer can run flag AND still reach with party heals 75% of the time.

The problem isn't that paragons are underpowered, it's that people got used to them being overpowered, or that they want them to be carbon copies of other classes.

This is just ignorance. I was running a 4 paragon build in tombs, each had an IAS a condition attack, Spear of Lightening as a spam skill and Cruel and Harrier's as spike skills. These paragons can deal a ridiculous amoung of DPS, can do a pretty nice spike and can buff their party enough to be quite resilient.
Yeah well sounds like iway, except instead of ward vs melee being a counter, shields up is.


If you're complaining that a paragon can't do as much DPS as a warrior, then you seem to lack a fundamental understanding of balance. In which case I don't know why I'm bothering to reply.



This is why Guild Wars has a class called "monk," Divert Hexes completely negates the threat that Vocal imposes.
Go to DoA outpost. Then first spend 30+ minutes getting a group as a paragon, then tell the monks in the group that they need to drop their monk elite for divert hexes for you. You will get instantly kicked, as you should. Any sane team would rather just bring any of the good standard builds than taking a paragon who also needs monk babysitting so he may be able to use any shouts or chants, a paragon which already doesn't bring anything to the table in high end pve and as such isn't worth bringing special skills for. Easier to just replace.

Let's compare vocal minority to other total shutdown.
Total spell shutdown = Shroud of silence, duration 10 rechrage 30, single target, elite, disables own spells, touch range
Total attack shutdown = Pacifism, duration 20, recharge 30, single target, ends when target takes damage, non-elite
Total shout/chant shutdown = Vocal minority, duration 20, recharge 20, WARD AOE, non-elite

Doesn't seem very fair now does it? There is a reason why Shourd of silence and pacifism are like that. First they have lower duration than recharge so you can't 100% shut down a single caster or attacker, then you also have a drawback(shroud of silence disables own spells so you can't cover on your own, also needs touch range, pacifism requires target to not take damage).

But Vocal minority just shutdowns Shouter/Chanter 100% with big aoe and no drawbacks. Completely unfair. And the largest groups paragon has that it doesn't affect are echoes who are indirectly affected(no shouts refrain drops and finales don't trigger).

[InfernalSuffering]

Could you stop for once and try to grasp that elusive concept of balance? Paragons are not meant to out perform any of those professions, they're meant to provide a little healing, protection, damage and yes, even some aoe burning.
That was exactly my point. Paragons aren't the next big thing that would outplay a necro, monk, warrior, ranger, mesmer, or elementalist but simply to provide a general group buff. While part of that buff is in energy management, that is not (or wasnt supposed to be) their main function. And you must admit that when a non-elite skill performs much better than an elite skill it is broken.

I still love my Paragon and don't see her as being nerfed at all. Then again, your loss. Deleting your Paragon because a few skills have been toned down isn't much different that a rage-quit in a PuG... sounds like the sort of thing a rage-quitter would do, actually.
I would have to agree, just what a rage-quitter would do. You don't just delete your character because of an update, you (and your going to love this oinkers) ADAPT. And by the way, adapting isnt a magic pill. It requires no prescription, no money, no anything. All you have to do is think really hard (no not like that I mean really, really hard) and you come up with a way to put that class/skill to good use. Have you done random arenas lately? There is practically a rt in every group. And no thats not because theyre useless. Its because they WORK. A class/build isnt bad simply because it doesnt perform the function you simply implore it to. Do you get angry at flag runners because they dont heal you? do melee damage? aoe damage? use smite skills? No I bet you dont.

:ninja: :ninja: for more information on ADAPTING consult your local wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaption:ninja: :ninja:

[oinkers]

That lame build with 9 spear everyone runs is just pathetic. I do more damage with conjure fire and wand on elementalist.


So true. It's a sad day for paragons when a lame wanding ele does more damage.


E/Mo for instance. Offers party heal, great warrior damage migitation through blind, great spike assisst through orb or gale, condition removal through extinguish.


I'm consistently amazed how durable E/Mos are - I sometimes play a HP spammer with Ether Prodigy in the Deep when monks are scarce and was surprised how effective it was. Paragons even when fully bulked up on Motivation simply can't compare, because it's too conditional and limited by range. I also play E/Mo with WoH on 90+ energy in SF when monks are scarce and I can't pump out WoH fast enough to use up my energy. Again, Paragons with 35 energy and 2 bips regen is fragile and plays like some Tinkertoy. A mis-speccd E/Mo trying to be healer is a better build that the entire Motivation line that Paragons have.

As for Paragons, good luck trying to get a DoA team - you'll get shut down totally by Vocal Minority and if you try to get a monk on the team to remove hexes, you'll be laughed at. As mentioned before, I find it inexplicable how come Paragons cannot counter hexes at all, when the main shutdown for Paragons is precisely a hex. Change to P/Me for Inspired Hex? Lose 2 out of 3 useful Paragons builds when you say bye bye to W secondary.

The 2 professions who will find it impossible to get Razah are paragons and sins.

Put 16 in spear chucking? Bleh. I prefer farming in pre-searing Ascalon with Gwen. At least her broken flute does more damage than my Darksong spear.

[oinkers]

I would have to agree, just what a rage-quitter would do. You don't just delete your character because of an update, you (and your going to love this oinkers) ADAPT.


You can adapt all you like, it's not going to make getting into a team any easier for Paragons. Non-paragons team leaders adapt by choosing core classes over Paragons - how's that for adapting your way into irrelevance?

Don't just bandy about words unless you mean it. Come up with a must have build that only Paragons excel in, and not some so-so healing here, so-so armor buff there. Make me a build that's as famous as nukers, or boon prots or meatbag tanks. Until then, your suggestions are exposed for being the empty soundbites that they are.



... class/build isnt bad simply because it doesnt perform the function you simply implore it to. Do you get angry at flag runners because they dont heal you? do melee damage? aoe damage? use smite skills? No I bet you dont.


At least those classes have a FUNCTION. A Paragon has NOTHING that can't be replaced by others doing it BETTER without wasting a char slot.

Paragons

1. don't do melee damage like warriors can, can't rake thru enemies like dervs can
2. can't do AoE like nukers and SS can
3. can't spot heal/split-second infuse like monks can
4. can't mass prot like rits can
5. can't spike damage like sins can
6. can't provide meatbags like MMs can

That's a lot of can'ts.

They CAN do many things in a half-hearted fashion, which if you think is valuable then I say good luck to you!! (Someone earlier called this flexibility 'grand' lol - not like you're gonna get Grand Flexible Bender of Elona title or anything). But I don't think many people will think is a sufficient reason to keep around a char like that.

There's a reason why warriors and eles and monks are still around and outnumber the new professions - the game wasn't really designed with the 4 newer ones in mind and it shows.

[vespertine]

I would have to agree, just what a rage-quitter would do. You don't just delete your character because of an update

no, you do it because paragon just sucks.. i really was happy to see a new utility class, but after playing half through the game i just can't find any motivation at all to finnish nf with the paragon..


All you have to do is think really hard (no not like that I mean really, really hard) and you come up with a way to put that class/skill to good use.

as allready said somewhere in this thread: plz feel free to post some REAL practical builds to the paragon forum.. all that i can come up with is like a wasted character in any team.. i want to FEEL a difference between a group WITH and W/O a paragon..

Have you done random arenas lately? There is practically a rt in every group. And no thats not because theyre useless. Its because they WORK. A class/build isnt bad simply because it doesnt perform the function you simply implore it to. Do you get angry at flag runners because they dont heal you? do melee damage? aoe damage? use smite skills? No I bet you dont.

well.. rits had the chance to establish themselves.. first they were great for def-buffs with their spirits, after the standard spiritspammer got (partly) nerfed it just lasted about a month until the whole channeling line got buffed ALOT. so now they even got 2 very usable operational areas..

just as you may have not noticed.. i don't think the recent update/nerf is the problem.. the problem IMHO is, that this class is defective by design..

[B Ephekt]

However it sucks for DPS. Well this is quite obvious, but tantamount to complaining that Dual Shot (2s activation, 10s rechrge) isn't good for DPS. It's cearly a spiking skill - this is obvious to anyone who understands the game - so why cry about it?

Eviscerate doesn't require target to stand still. At least in pvp people these days are only slowed 66% not actually standing still.
Not nearly as much as dervish/assassin/warrior.I'm well aware of what the skill does, thanks. However, you might be surprised how easy it is to get the deep wound from it.

Not nearly as much as dervish/assassin/warrior.
Correct, but they have the advantage of being able to deal damage at range. A paragon being able to deal as much damage as a melee-ranged class would be quite broken, so I fail to see your point.

The ranged damage is actually quite good pressure, much better than a ranger in fact. The 4 paragon build I mentioned earlier rolled absolutely everything, inluding builds with heavy assassin/dervish/warrior damage.
The whole cost raise was unneeded.No, it's something you should actually have to think about and conserve energy for. Like Infuse Health being 10 energy (which is a lot for a monk).

You are putting words in our mouth, we never said we wanted paragon to be all of that. Actually I was replying to oinker's posts, and only said that he "seemed" to want that. I was not addressing YOU with my post, nor was I putting words into anyone's mouth; I was merely making an observation. I'm sorry if you misunderstood my replies.

The ENTIRE point was that the paragon can't do one thing well, and that cripples the entire class - everything from getting included in a PUG to having a sweet spot like the necros/rangers/eles/monks do. The Paragon has nothing to boast about except a finger in every pie, and a very piddly little finger it is too.We complained it isn't good at anything any more(at least not enough to be taken for that role over some other build). The negation of being good at nothing is being good at something. You implied it was being good at everything. Well we basically