Paragon needs a redesign

Hello.


I am aware that there are probably a lot of similiar topics like this one, but I am simply too angered to sit down and don't do anything.

I am extremely sick of the design of the Paragons.


It's not the armors I am talking about (even though they are pretty much the laziest excuses for armors I´ve seen in a while, besides Obsidian and Norn).

It's the skills.


The elite skills are simply too bad and boring and only like 2 and 3 are being used (Incoming!, Focused Anger and whatever elite spear attack).

So many skills are so horribly designed.

Defensive Anthem is like Aegis only elite and it ends on attack

"Incoming!" is just fallback with 5 less energy cost and it doesn´t end on attack.

"You have the power!" is not useful at all...

Angelic bound is awful.

Song of restoration is OK but there are still much better alternatives out there for monks/rits.

And the list goes on and on.


Most elites need a complete redesign.

For starters, let´s take defensive anthem. I have some suggestions for it, for example it could either make so that party members cant take more than 10% hp for x duration or that the next spell against every party member fails.

"Incoming!" should NOT act like an elite "Fall back!" This is just Anet being lazy. It should at least be maintainable or they could remove the healing and make it 50% speed and make the recharge a tad longer.


For "You have the power!" I have no clue really, I think it could be far more useful if it didn't regen and would just give x amount of energy whenever a party member uses a skill.

Angelic bound is a difficult one, but I think it could perhaps use the "Party members cant lose more than 10% hp for x seconds" instead of defensive anthem.

Song of restoration could at least provide more healing if party members are below 50% hp.

Like, it remains in its original form just that they gain additional 100hp (or whatever is max) if party members are below 50% hp.



Do any of you agree with me on these? Don't you think it's time for Paragons to recieve buff/Changes?

The Paragon is overdue for a rebuild similar to that of the Dervish. Agree it is time. However, you do not mention some very useful Elites.

Anthem of Fury, worth pushing Leadership to 13 to get 4 strikes of adrenaline. My party often has a Dervish and a Warrior. Using Anthem of Fury whenever it gets hot is really effective.

Anthem of Guidance and Crippling Anthem are both very useful in certain situations.

Stunning Strike often useful against caster bosses.

No information on when there will be a Paragon rebuild. Seem to remember it having been mentioned at one time.

Paragons are not a priority. The problem is balancing them is a nightmare. Partywide unstripable buffs caused this class to be beaten down with the nerf bat. Any attempt to fix this class will mean it is overpowered. 1 'gon = imba. 4 'gons = game over.

Skill balance updates
In 2009, ANet announced plans to release skill balance changes every other month.[5][6] usually on a Thursday. In 2010, there were 7 updates that involved balancing skills or other aspects of game play: two during each quarter of the year, except the third (which had only one).

These are the pending updates most recently mentioned by ANet:

In April 2010, ANet staff said, "[...] non-“Imbagon” Paragons, and the smiting line for the Monk" are "things we’ve been considering for major updates of their own."[7]. In January 2011, John Stumme mentioned that the Live Team would focus on "smaller balance fixes" instead of "major overhauls" in the near future, instead prioritizing unspecified non-balance changes.[8][9]

I agree they need revamping, and anet are aware too, we are just waiting Personally I'd like to see a change with ranger > paragon atm only because I can't see paras being fun to play with or without change, we'll see

When im looking to group with my paragon it feels like I can only benefit my group (or even get one) with imbagon
when im playing by myself I use one of three builds: imba,disco way caller or an sos.
useing a legit spear build is just boring, and feels way underpowered

On the other hand racway is just amazing; can do almost every thing with just my heroes fairly easily, so if they revamp the paragon there is probably going to be major issues with not making racway just an insta-win hero build.

I recon given enough time they will go over all the classes, Paragons are I believe next on the list followed hopefully by Rangers.

I find the paragon class quite useful as part of a team and there have been quite a few team builds posted mainly paragon rangers I seem to remember.

People would whine alot less with a spear barrage honestly. No really cares how much support they can pump (i.e. the point of the class), they just want big numbers.

As dasmitchies said, it is difficult to balance Paragons. If ArenaNet makes them more viable in PvE teams, they may become overpowered in PvP, in a sense. For example, two or three paragons could deal decent amounts of damage and make a GvG team too defensive to take down.

I agree with Angelic Bond being bad; it's almost the same as Divine Intervention, though it's of elite status and doesn't benefit from HSR. At least it can't be removed. However, a Monk with Mending and Blessed Signet has the potential to restore more health in the 30 second recharge of Angelic Bond. Bad example there.

I like Paragons in PvE, nonetheless. It's a fun class, and with mulitiple Paragons, teams can end up being very solid.

Anet knows that paragons need a buff and buffing skills wouldn't be hard. But the problem is(as mentioned above) that when multiple paragons are in a party they would be unbeatable, becuase of too high defence. Only Armor-ignoring damage or burning may bring them down. In other words it's Mesmers/Necros VS Paragons. And the other professions won't have a chance.

Btw: if they buff the other paragon skills, they should nerf the imbagon. i.e. make SY a strength skills instead of a PvE skill.

you come to this conclusion 5 years after release..?

it needed a change on day 1, it's a bit late now.

Quote: Originally Posted by shinyglove

you come to this conclusion 5 years after release..?

it needed a change on day 1, it's a bit late now. what about mesmers and dervs? they got their update pretty late

Paragons do not need a dervish sized rework, they need tweaked like mesmers. The problem with paragons is that too many of their skills are far too specific (skills triggering on signet, ect) or have far too large a recharge for use in PvE (motivation). However i have stated my ideas far too many times to regurgitate in this thread.

Paragons also do not need an AoE spear attack, as they are not a damage class. Pick a different class if you want AoE.

I don't see any redesign needed, paragons do their designed roles pretty well already.

Step 1: Nerf imbagon.
Step 2: Buff motivation skills to be worth bringing again. Most importantly: get rid of stupid triggers. No one brings enough signets for Lyrics to be worthwhile, for instance.
Step 3: Change elites around. Paras don't need 3 party condition removers.

Spear and command lines are basically fine, they do what they do and they do it well.

I usually run two dervishes or one dev and a warrior too and Anthem of Fury is really good to use. Also, my para hero seems to hang in there even when the whole team got wiped out and he would be the only one left following me when I run for the hills. I think the paragon deserves some praises.

But I seriously do not like what they wear too.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kojima

I usually run two dervishes or one dev and a warrior too and Anthem of Fury is really good to use. Also, my para hero seems to hang in there even when the whole team got wiped out and he would be the only one left following me when I run for the hills. I think the paragon deserves some praises.

But I seriously do not like what they wear too. Your para stays alive becuase your other heroes are more dangerous. And ost of the time they don't really need a superior rune.

Quote: Originally Posted by Kentz

Hello.

For starters, let´s take defensive anthem. I have some suggestions for it, for example it could either make so that party members cant take more than 10% hp for x duration or that the next spell against every party member fails.
nice, partywide prot spirit or spellbreaker that can't be removed

Quote: Originally Posted by Coast

nice, partywide prot spirit or spellbreaker that can't be removed
You are idealising a bit about what I said...

The "party wide prot spirit" should have some sort of downside which I can´t figure out just yet, and I don´t think that it would be OP If just the next spell on each party member failed, if the skill had a decently long recharge time.

paragons don't need a dervish-update sized rework (which is good cause anet isn't doing any more of these). What they need is a mesmer-update sized skill update.

I agree that several elites are pretty useless (in PvE). All of the command ones need an update. For anthem of guidance, they could give +dmg onto the next attack skill in addition to the unblockability. For crippling anthem, I would suggest adding more conditions (cripple, weakness, and bleeding maybe). For Incoming, I would suggest lowering the recharge to 10ish and making it so that the next damage done to each party member is negated and each party member gains 10% of the damage done to them in +armor for x seconds.

Angelic bond is one of the most useless elites in the game. I wouldn't even use it if it were non-elite. I suggest changing it back to its original functionality (except with a 5 energy cost and 5 sec recharge), as it was useful in gimmicky builds with its original functionality.

Defensive Anthem could use a small duration buff in PvE.

Anthem of Fury is sorta fine as it is, but it is also sort of limited in usefulness also. I don't have a specific recommendation for it, but I would like to see another effect added onto it in addition to the adrenaline gain. Recharge or energy cost could be increased to compensate.

Focused anger and soldier's fury are fine as they are, as are stunning strike, cruel spear, song of purification, and its just a flesh wound.

Song of Restoration needs pretty significant reduction in recharge (10 sec I would suggest) in PvE.

Cautery signet is too redundant with song of purification and its just a flesh wound. I would recommend turning into a kind of party-wide hex removal, as this would give paragons a unique niche. Recharge would have to increase of course to compensate, and a more severe downside than burning on the user might be necessary as well.

The Power is yours is pretty bad at its intended functionality, and is really only commonly used to fuel the user with energy. I would suggest changing it so that it gives x amount of energy to all party members. Pretty simple functionality but pretty useful as well. Of course, recharge and energy cost could be adjusted to balance the skill.

Anyway, there are my ideas for the elites. Several non-elites need updates as well but I'll leave those alone for now.

Definetly agree Paragon needs some help. Though it's true it doesn't need as big an update as the Dervish did.

Both Commander and Spear Mastery are currently servicible, but could do with some tweaks. There is quite a few redundant attacks in Spear Mastery, that need their functionality changed, and Command has a handful of regular skills that need to be reworked also, aswell as pretty much all it's elites. For the most part these two lines are okay though.

However, Leadership needs some help. It's an odd line; It has about 50% very useful or powerful skills (They're On Fire, Blazing Finale, Enduring Harmony, Awe/Spear Swipe etc), and 50% useless or incredibly underpowered skills (Angellic Bond, Natural Temper, Defensive Anthem, Burning Shield, etc). The truth is, a couple skills would fit better in other lines anyway. It's passive effect could probably do with a rework or at least some tweaking (energy gain should scale with party size), though as far as reworks are concerned I don't really know what to suggest.

Above all, Motivation needs a total rework though, and I feel is the most important thing that should be addressed. Almost all of the skills in the line are too situational, have vasty inferior healing (and "they can't be removed!" isn't really a good excuse, seems neither can a heal spell...), even some of the elites have stronger non-elite equivalents on other professions (compare Ballad/Song of Restoration to Divine Healing/Heaven's Delight. Yeah.), and are just generally weak overall. Unless you team up with 7 other Paragons, then you activate god-mode. Some synergy with other Paragons can remain but needs to be vastly toned down, and the skills all need to become usable or workable when the Paragon is the lone shouter in the group.

A Motivation Paragon should be a viable party healer in the same way Restoration Ritualists are now (Paragons actually were on NF release, but PvP centric balance updates changed that, and never got reverted enough with the skill split...), since this is clearly one of their intended roles (as Factions also added another healer, it makes sense to make one new class a party healer for helping the influx of new class players on release form viable teams, even though the game is beyond that stage now of course) but currently this is certainly not the case. The manual also stated that one Paragon role was to help the party resist hexes and conditions, and while they manage the conditions resistance rather well, I'd like to see them with more options than Hexbreaker Aria for dealing with hexes too.

If the Dervish's role was (and certainly now is focused on) pressure damage, then it makes alot of sense to have the Paragon a class focused on resisting pressure damage - many of the skills in the Paragon lines actually reflect this intention too as one original function of the class (Mending Refrain and Never Surrender are both prime examples of this), but most have been nerfed too much to really be able to fulfill this role now. They need to find a way to reimpliment it while retaining class balance.

The Ritualist has strong passive and on-demand spike healing, with solid condition removal, but no hex removal and limited hex resistance.
So the Paragon should have strong passive healing, with solid condition and hex removal/resistance but weaker and/or limited on-demand spike heals.