Originally Posted by DutchSmurf

Rebuffing energydenial would be a good start.

Originally Posted by Keithark

The paragon is one of the most nerfed classes in game..

Originally Posted by Thom Bangalter

The only problematic skill around right now at the stand is ward against melee, as it's unstrippable, has a short cast time, too long a duration at 9-10, and with weapon swapping can overlap itself. every other block skill is just people crying.

Originally Posted by Riotgear

I thought I would stop having to address this ridiculous "point" when I left WoW. Nerfing is a relative change, and you can not use it as an argument for balance without mentioning the starting point (which, in the case of Paragons, was "absurd"). It's like saying that I could throw a new stereo into a rusting Geo Metro, and saying that makes it better than an unmodified brand new Mustang because it's been "buffed more."

The fact that you're suggesting Empathy and Insidious is a joke. Neither see use in higher-level play for a reason: You can practically ignore them. If a Paragon gets Empathy on them, it's weak damage that's easy to heal and will probably get recovered incidentally from LoD alone. Insidious is crap damage and the cost makes it insane for anything but self-defense.


Because it's a waste of time. Attacks spent on Paragons are far less likely to result in a kill or even strain the monks' energy the way an attack on a squishy midliner with almost 40 less armor would do. Throwing hexes and blinds and such on them means not throwing them on the frontliners who demand far more attention for such things, especially with the shortened durations that prevent just fire-and-forgetting on the Paragon.

Most of what Paragons do is not reasonably counterable. All they have to do is be able to hit something and they have a virtually unlimited supply of energy at their disposal. They don't have to position themselves to hit. They barely have to worry about the opposing offense because they're armored like a SWAT van. Their most important abilities can't be interrupted or removed. Paragons are a class without reasonable counters, which is why they're terribly-designed and overpowered in general.

Originally Posted by Thom Bangalter

The only problematic skill around right now at the stand is ward against melee, as it's unstrippable, has a short cast time, too long a duration at 9-10, and with weapon swapping can overlap itself. every other block skill is just people crying.

Originally Posted by DIH49

I don't buy this for a second. If Ward melee is a problem, take some AoE. I really hate to say things like "lern2adaptlolz," but honestly in this case I feel it's more than justified. And, unlike many scrubs who say such things, I put my money where my mouth is and take some AoE into our builds. It has been quite effective.

Originally Posted by Keithark

But you have failed to answer the main point, if the class gets nerfed any farther what would it be good for at all?

Originally Posted by DIH49

I don't buy this for a second. If Ward melee is a problem, take some AoE. I really hate to say things like "lern2adaptlolz," but honestly in this case I feel it's more than justified. And, unlike many scrubs who say such things, I put my money where my mouth is and take some AoE into our builds. It has been quite effective.

Originally Posted by Burton2000

Shields and to a lesser extent ward melee are the 2 most imba skills atm. In my opinion just because they are unstripble and the effects are very great. Shield up especially.

Originally Posted by Yue

Pretty sure shields up is a bigger problem.

Originally Posted by Keithark

So we should just delete it?

Originally Posted by Thom Bangalter

the problem with shields up is, leadership and aggressive refrain need retooling before you can play around with the hard counter, as relatively passive offense (paragons) is just as bad as passive defense.

Originally Posted by Lorekeeper

Bit bored and i havent posted in a while so i wanted to add my thoughts on this topic.

What do i think is wrong with the meta? Well its a combination of several things.

1. Fast Cast Ward against Melee Combo
2. SoR/SoD base defense
3. Shields up + Defensive Anthem Combo
4. Lack of build innovators
5. Lack of real incentive to excel at GvG

I think its wrong to say that passive defense is outright bad. The reason why passive defense has gained such negative connotations is due to the nature of passive defense that has plagued the GvG meta for seasons and seasons. Im talking mainly about the old aegis chains and the prenerf anti melee hex stacks. The impact on these slowed the game down considerably, they were a form of passive defense which required a concerted effort to counter. Rangers and mesmers had to watch carefully for casters to put up aegis. But this was not so easy with the prenerfed aegis because its range was not limited to earshot. Flag stand casters could put up their aegis and kite away from potential interrupters, a third aegis was on the flag runner which was basically unstoppable. It gave the mainteam 11+20% seconds of 50% block.
The problem with the aegis chain cannot be understood in isolation. It was all about layers of defense. The problem was peeling each layer away. The problem was not having enough shutdown or utility to peel enough layers to force kills. Of course, taking out aegis chains was possible, but in countering aegis chains you still had SoD, blinds, and wards to cope with. The number of layers in the defense was overwhelming.

The solution came when the range of aegis was reduced to earshot range. No longer could a flag runner provide a link in the aegis chain on the other side of the compass. Flag stand casters have to stay within range of the enemy in order to catch as many allies under the aegis... meaning interrupting aegis is far easier. The aegis chain has lost its reliability, which would have opened up the highly defensive GvG meta excellently.

As long as it wasnt replaced with something else.

But it was. The fast cast ward. When the aegis nerf landed, i think the majority of GvG monks were caught with their pants around their knees. They had been spoiled by the previous defensive metas. Reliable Aegis chains... wards... blinds... sod... what more could a monk want? It took some real effort and some bad mistakes for a full team wipe to happen. Monks became complacent, they didnt need to be THAT good. So when the aegis nerf landed... things got interesting. Positioning became important (like it should be), good pre protting became important (like it should be), good SoD monks became important (like it should be). But in the defensive meta... positioning was no problem, everyone was covered by aegis. Preprotting was not so necessary because the amount of passive defense gave monks the much needed time to react to spikes, and pressure was nigh on impossible to inflict. SoD monks had much more time to react to spikes too.

The aegis nerf left a vacuum and forced the average monks to face the reality of high level play. But instead of adapting to the new demands, instead of accepting that the defensive meta was a abberation, people tried to find ways of replacing the aegis chains. They couldnt imagine GvGing without the amount of passive defense they had become so used to.

And so we see the old MoR mesmers, who used to be Mes/Monk or Mes/Rit for hard rez, changed to Mes/Ele with ward against melee. The ward against melee offers the same if not better passive defense than the aegis chain. Mainly because it is impossible to remove once it is cast. The old aegis chains were partially counterable by enchantment removal. Ward agaisnt melee can only be stopped by interrupt/kd. But on a fast cast mesmer with earth items, interrupting the ward is impossible. Voila... we have the replacement for the aegis chain.

The ward not only is a problem for the meta because of the passive protection it provides... which is on par with the old aegis chains... it also encourages ward camping, which means that position play is suffering. Your average top 100 GvG match is incredibly boring to watch and play. Teams are so reliant on passive forms of defense that they happily camp wards until the end of the game.

With MoR the casting of ward melee is not so easy to predict because its downtime is lower than its duration. And because it is so hard to counter, it allows teams a comfort zone on the battlefield. The comfort zone makes a job easy for a SoD monk because catching a partymember being spiked within the ward relatively easy. The only time when the SoD monk needs some proper awareness is if a party member ventures outside of the ward. But take a look at the characters who would dare to do such a thing. Frontline characters like warriors and melandrus dervishes - which generally are very difficult to spike out anyway. Or the midline paragon, which generally has over 100 armour and is just as difficult to spike as a frontliner. Its not hard to catch a spike on these party members even if they do venture outside the ward against melee. The only time a SoD will be sorely tested is if a softer party member spends alot of time outside the ward and they are being harassed by a diversion spamming mesmer (notice how i say ''spamming'' rather than a ''good mesmer with diversion''). But if this happens, that marks 3 faults, the first being the SoD monks failure to spot a vulnerable soft party member, the second being the soft party member not being more careful with positioning and the third being the teams inability to stop the enemy mesmer from locking down the SoD prot.

The defensive layers have also been augmented by the single paragon midliner who was a rare sight in the prenerf aegis meta. In those seasons if you saw paragons in a build it was usually in twos, so they could replace aegis chains with a defensive anthem chain. But today, the single paragon with defensive anthem and shields up adds just enough passive defense to give teams a bit of protection against any ranged interrupts and a little bit of extra protection against melee. With DA, being outside the ward is not such a risky activity. And the absence of aegis chains has not meant that mesmers have become interrupt fodder for rangers either.

The aegis nerf was needed and i applaud Anet for finally hitting it. But unfortunately the nerfed skills that made up the components of the defensive layers that were so popular just got replaced by other forms of passive defense. This is aa unfortunate symptom of Anets inability to balance the bigger picture. Skill balances only tend to deal with problematic skills that are in use and dominating the meta. MoR+Ward against melee was always a possible combination in need of balancing, but it wasnt dealt with because it was not in use. It was not in use because it was overshadowed by the aegis chains. Now aegis chains have gone... MoR+Ward melee is in use. Its a tireless and unnecessary battle against the tide caused by Anets balancing policy.

What was needed was a comprehensive look at ALL forms of passive defense. Failing that, Anet need to recognise much quicker that they missed something. Like i said earlier, the aegis nerf was great, but in order to fully achieve the motivation behind the nerf (that being a metagame less dominated by passive defense), the combination of MoR+Ward melee needs to be dealt with too. And maybe the paragons ability to spam high energy shouts like Defensive anthem and shields up.

Another problem with the meta is a symptom of the fact that we have lost a large proportion of the higher tier guilds that occupied the top 50 in 2006. For many reasons, which can be argued over forever, the top 50 of today looks very different to the top 50 of 2006. One thing i am sure of, is that the top 50 of today is generally made up of the guilds who were kept out of the top 50 by the guilds who are not gone. Now those older top 50 guilds are gone, the guilds who were kept out of the top 50 have taken their place. I know i grossly oversimplify a complex situation but i strongly believe that the current meta is suffering from the absence of the better players and a dominance of yesterdays meta build players.

Just look at the builds being run by the top 50 guilds. Forget for the moment the over reliance on layers upon layers of passive defense because i do realise that has a huge influence on build diversity. Another factor is the lack of real innovators. Innovation in GvG is not easy. It takes a huge amount of experience and confidence in skill for a team to run an innovative build. vD not only maintains number 1 slot on the ladder by running a slightly modified meta balanced build better than anyone else, but they also run different builds from time to time. The Ex-Reno players whos current guild name i cannot replicate, maintain their high rank with non-meta builds which take advantage of their experience in playing GvG, they mainly consist of a very strong split with a highly destructive flag stand team which is extremely difficult to fight against at VoD.

Im sure there are a few other examples of teams, like Be Team and their condition build with a smoke trapper, who are not only willing but able to run non-meta builds in GvG. But the overwhelming majority of teams do not.

Unfortunately, although these guilds might claim to have the willingness to run something else, they usually explain their reliance on meta builds on the lack of diversity in skills. But the reality, which we can see from the rare guilds who can run non-meta, is that they just are NOT ABLE to run anything else but the most defensive of balanced builds. They are not good enough. They stick to meta because it works, and what works gains them ladder rating and rank. Non-meta builds can work, but they require alot more dedication, and the desire to excel at the game. However, running effective meta builds and farming ladder rating and ranks is the overwhelming focus of guilds out there.

What i think has caused this is the lack of any real incentives to actually diversify as a individual player and therefore as a team. In the past the Gold and Silver cape was generally awarded to the best of the best. iQ, EW, vD, EviL, RenO. But with gold and silver capes being awarded monthly, they have lost their value. Fail to get one this month? No problem, you can get one the next month. And the next, and the next. So whats the point of diversifying in build and skill? If it becomes just a matter of time and perseverence, its no wonder that the GvG meta has become so stale. In the past, gold and silver capes were awarded on such rare occasions that guilds who seriously wanted to compete for them had to make sure they were equipped and experienced enough to put all the aces on the table in the seasonal championships because if they could not compete at the level of other guilds they would have a long wait until they got another chance.

i really think that anyone who focuses on the tools in the game as the problem with the metagame have lost touch of the other important factors that affect the meta.

it is possible to run non-meta.

ward camping is meta... so run something to punish the static positioning.

run a proper split build, they cant put up wards in two places at once.

the amount of teams running dedicated splits is pitiful.

the amount of teams running stuff that punishes ward camping is pitiful.

If you stick to meta to fight meta, you have no right to complain about it, you are actually part of the problem.

Get good enough to run counter meta, or non-meta, prove that it cannot be done, then complain. But until then, dont.

thankfully there are a handful of guilds left who can do it. And gosh, they are the ones i like to watch most on obs mode most.

/yawn at all the other guilds

Lorekeeper

Originally Posted by You just got tomahawked

This post won the interwebs. Every Anet empliyess should read this.