Dear Arenanet: Please expedite paragon fixes

You're right. I just tested it with GFTE instead and it more or less worked the same. Thanks.

Firstly, thanks for the input, and thanks for your kind words. :-)

re: Angelic Bond, it's competing with a non-elite ritualist skill (shelter). I don't think it's OP as described but I suppose that is for Anet to decide.

re: TPIY, it does provide good energy to the group and I think it would be better than BiP in 'normal' groups. Farming or tank-n-spank groups will still choose BiP because it will give much more energy if you spam it everywhere and the BiP does not need to enter aggro to hit enemies to gain adrenaline to trigger TPIY. I think this might give people a good reason to bring TPIY instead of the bizarre uses it has now (P/A dagger spammer, etc.)

re: Never Surrender, I have had the same concerns about it being overpowered, but the power level shown on my page (1..4..5 health regen) is what Anet has it set to now; the only difference is that I removed the trigger condition so that it works all the time. Mainly I want this skill to be capable of being maintained permanently, that way it can have synergy with other paragon skills. If that means weakening the effect that's fine with me. For comparison, Recuperation gives us permanent unconditional health regen on the entire group, but it has a much higher cost and the spirit can be destroyed.

re: Spear of Redemption, I am not worried about removing one condition, it's very easy to stack 2-4 conditions on a target with one hit. (using paragon as an example... poison tip signet, anthem of flame, cruel spear. Spear of Redemption might save you from Blindness if it is not covered quickly and I think that was the original intent of the skill.

re: Bladeturn Refrain... with all of the unblockable attacks out there I don't think this is OP, besides that having Displacement or perma-Aegis up all the time is not that difficult. No one uses it now because it is too weak.

thanks again for the constructive input. the more people we have asking for changes the more likely it may actually happen. I just wish it had happened years ago. :-\

I think Khomet's changes are good for the PvE for the most part. I don't feel those changes will OP the paragon at all. Most of those skills are comparable to other existing skills. With the current state of play, the para needs a boost to be able to compete.

I would like to see some drastic changes to a few skills, kind of like some of the mesmer changes.

Kind of like an inverse to They're on Fire! If target foe is suffering a condition, target foe take 5..29..35% more physical damage for 5 sec.

It would give paragons ability to call target and reward teamwork, which would fit in with the concept of what a paragon is. With TnTF and SY, that skill is rarely used and I doubt many will miss it.

I like alot of Khomets ideas. I have suggested similar changes in this thread and under the campfire section.

For Motivation, alot can be fixed simply by reducing recharge times. I dont think Pargons should out heal a Monk because thats what a monk is supposed to do. But I wouldnt mind it if they were on par with a Rt. A few small buffs can help them achieve this. The reason I want motivation buffed is so that a Paragon can have another role to play, in the event your in a group with another Paragon. Paragons already have a beautiful synergy when used together but in todays meta, everybody only wants one Imba.

I undertand the concern about Paragons not being able do AoE damage. IMO, Paragons should have the ability to indirectly do AoE damage by buffing or adding damage to the skills of his party. Command and Leadership are perfect places to implement this ability. Something along the line of how orders works but in a more Paragon like way. Here again this would allow another option for the second Paragon in your group.

As for Spear Mastery, I dont see anyway to buff it without Rangers, Assassins, Dervishes, and Warriors abusing it. If Paragons get the right changes to add damage through shouts, chants, and echos, then there shouldnt be a need to buff Spears much.

As for Khomets changes, I wouldnt take the armor penalty away from AR and SF. If Paragons get the Motivation buff we want, they need to have a drawback somewhere. And before any shouts like SYG or TNTF are applied, Paragons will still have 76ar. Add a shout, which you almost always will, and the armor goes up to 86. IMO, 86ar is plenty even in HM.

Random skill Suggestion
Remedy Signet-1s 4r-Remove Blindness from yourself, and one additional condition. Blindness can shutdown a Paragon faster than a pissed off Mesmer. I dont see many people using this skill, so a small buff could give it more action. And it would still be less powerful than Antidote Signet.

Yea but every experience with them tells me that it would be a bad idea to put my hopes up. Hell it took 5 YEARS to throw mesmers a bone...

But hey if you're right and I'm wrong I'll be a very happy camper.

Let me brutally honest with my opinion: Don't get your hopes up for any major skill changes before WiK is finished. I don't think that it will be done until WiK is.

For the most part, I agree with most of what is on the list. These are some really good recommendations. I like the second option for both of the "never..." shouts. Command shouts really need to be less conditional and the second option removes the conditionality without overpowering it. I might suggest reducing the health regeneration by 1 pip. Anthem of Guidance, however, would still be very much underpowered in PvE. In my opinion, it should be a party damage buff like OoP. Maybe increase the adrenaline cost to 8ish and give it a 5ish second recharge and then make it last like 10 seconds at 10-12ish command.

Like your recommendation states, Anthem of Envy would be good as a miniture version of OoP (less of a positive effect but cheaper to use as well). I would recommend lowering the attack bonus a little though.

As for Godspeed, I really think it needs a different function altogether. Paragons already have a good party movement buff with fall back and a good single target one with make haste/hasty refrain. Maybe, in order to stay in line with the name, have it affect attack speed in some way (maybe make it a very expensive party wide attack speed buff.)

I would go ahead and recommend lowering AR's energy cost to 5 in PvE. The energy cost already doesn't matter since it's maintainable, so lowering the energy cost to 5 would not provide a buff but it would remove an annoyance.

Angelic Bond is the one skill that I am really going to have to disagree with you on. In my opinion, it should return to its original functionality but should cost 5 energy and cause a slight damage reduction (that scales with leadership) to the damage redirected to the paragon.

I'll get around to looking at the other suggestions later when i have more time but so far, i like what i see.

EDIT:

So, I looked at the rest of the list. When I saw anthem of fury, it reminded me of my suggestion for anthem of guidance. I guess they could both be made into similar skills but with one costing energy while the other costs adrenaline and one boosting adrenal gain while the other provides unblockability. These would both, however, be pretty powerful effects for an unstrippable chant. Their costs would have to be adjusted so that the skills would be balanced.

On the motivation skills: Honestly, I don't think that the suggestions you made for the healing skills were enough. Their were previously two problems with these chants: their recharges were very long and their effects were too conditional for a balanced party when the effects can only be activated by the other party members. What I would like to see is both the decrease in recharge (that you already suggested) and a way for either the conditionality of the skills to be erased/eased up drastically or for the conditions to be activatable by the paragon. For example, rits have a pretty good healing ability. Although many of their skills have condition for the skill to take full effect, the rit is the one who meets the condition by providing the spirits/weapon spells. The rit doesn't have to wait for their target to fulfill the conditions.

Also, as I have previously stated, I really don't think paragons need or should have AoE options beyond the AoE through party buff options they already have (blazing finale and the use of any attack buff on a physical with AoE).

lol agree'd

i don't think para needs aoe on it's primary it just don't make sense. now maybe with a chant or something? sure.

Like the other guy said you can strap a little powder keg or something to the end of the spear. That kind of feasibility is really a non issue.

And once again no class needs anything at all. But it would help put them on par with everyone else who all have aoe (in their main no less). But both of these arguments have been had...

Removing the conditions of AoE buffs is the worst move you can make because they're the main reason that prevents those from turning into mindless, broken skills (either to strong or to weak).

The final balancing is up to Anet, of course, but hopefully we can give them suggestions on what the community thinks is appropriate. I'm trying hard not to suggest anything too radical so that the changes have a better chance of being accepted and implemented.

re: Anthem of Guidance... as written in the suggestion, this is basically Order of Unblockability, and it can be maintained 100% given enough adrenaline. I thought that the effect was quite strong enough to justify the elite skill, especially compared to its earlier incarnation. It's worth noting that this skill has always done what it does now, and it was too weak to prevent "turtling" in GvG and HA with heavy defense like Aegis, Ward against Melee, Weapon of Warding, Defensive Anthem, etc. This version will cut through all of that making for more interesting and less defensive play. In PvE it will cut through all of the blocking spam you see in Kourna and the Realm of Torment. And besides, making attacks unblockable is what the skill was meant to do.

I've already suggested that Anthem of Envy become a rough equivalent to Order of Pain, and Anthem of Fury is the same thing plus adrenaline, so having yet another +damage "order" skill might be a little redundant?
As far as damage goes, it is a direct copy of Order of Pain so I don't think it is imbalanced at all.

I like this idea a lot! Except for the "very expensive" part. If the cost is too high it is simply never going to be used. What about a party-wide +25% IAS that only works on allies who are not enchanted. This goes with the original theme of the skill, and it prevents abuse by gimmick teams full of shadowform assassins and the like. However this variant would also prevent it from working on dervishes at all in most cases.

Fine with me, but this seems unlikely to happen. I have tried not to change the numbers too drastically so that they stand a chance of being accepted. 5e is probably not going to be accepted given AR's history, and even getting 15e without the armor penalty is possibly too much to hope for.

I can sense that you have some nostalgia for the original Angelic Bond. :-)
It was nice, but looking back on it from 2010 it seems to me that it was just an inferior version of the monk's Life Bond skill. Life Bond halved the damage but only passed a fraction of that damage on to you, while Angelic Bond made you take half of the damage without reduction. Angelic Bond could not be stripped but in my mind that hardly made it elite-worthy or even equivalent to Life Bond. Given Angelic Bond's history (and the unstrippability that led to its abuse in PvP) I think this one is unlikely to be reverted as well.

Yeah, final balancing is clearly up to Anet, but I want to caution against making the cost too high. Because the Orders have a very short duration the cost of the skill must be paid frequently, especially if multiple "orders" style skills are used. This can be a heavy energy cost even for the necromancer which usually has energy to burn. The cost for the paragon is higher because he doesn't have as much energy to start with, and his energy renewal depends on turning adrenaline back into energy, which takes time. If he is spending all his time activating Orders, there is no time to attack. And if he spends all his time attacking to gain energy and deal damage, he doesn't have time to activate the anthems. The necromancer doesn't have this problem because he can just sit there and gain energy as things die. I made these new Anthems have a similar duration to Orders + 20% enchanting mod which would be standard practice on any character with Orders. Even at 1s activation time (plus aftercast) that means you are losing up to 2 attacks because you chose to activate the anthem instead. Making the activation time too long will make it unusable.

You're probably right about this, let me explain though. The suggestions were made with the idea of not changing the skills very much so that there would be less resistance to getting the updates in place. Therefore changing recharge times, skill cost, etc. is easier than changing functionality. Motivation could probably use some functionality changes though, since Anet has stated that the Motivation nerfs were due to PvP abuse with shout stacking and chaining. What if we changed some of the motivation chants to deliver healing over time (e.g. Vigorous Spirit, Spirit Light Weapon) rather than a large packet of healing? This would allow the healing to trigger more often, have a long duration (which is beneficial for some skills and Centurion Insignia), and prevent chaining. For example, Aria of Restoration heals for 15..90 when affected allies cast a spell and then it ends on them. Instead, we can make this a chant with a fixed duration (10s? 15?) and have it deliver smaller packets of healing throughout the duration. If it is X healing per spell, that clearly favors short-activation-time spells that can be spammed, whereas long cast time spells will gain less benefit from it. Perhaps this should be changed so that it heals for +X% of the cost of the spell, similar to Aura of Restoration, that way it would have a more balanced benefit for all casters. For Inspirational Speech we can change it to work like a mass Vigorous Spirit where targets heal whenever they attack. If it lasts for 10s and we assume that characters can attack once per second they will get about 10 healing packets out of this. Based on the numbers we have in existing skills, we should expect up to 90 healing from one of these chants, perhaps more because it is spread out over time. So healing of 5...12..15 per attack might be reasonable.

Okay fair enough, everyone has a right to their opinion. However I believe that balance dictates that paragons must be given some form of AoE damage and/or multi-attack capability since *ALL* of the other professions have it. Even the so-called healers. The changes I suggested will not infringe on the superiority of the melee professions in this regard, they will still be dealing more damage.

Eh... i don't know. With its adrenaline cost where it is, Anthem of Guidance can already be upkeeped almost continually (Enduring Harmony + FGJ makes i spammable after every other attack). I don't think this would be much of a buff to it, and in PvE, I think there really needs to be something else on top of the unblockability. Nothing major, just some minor change to the utility of the skill to put it on par with +dmg elites. One idea that I kind of like is increasing the +critical hit & of all party members for a certain amount of time. This would work well with the naming of the elite and the numbers could be adjusted to balance it.

Well when I was thinking "very expensive", i was just thinking of a energy cost of ~15e and maybe a recharge that is high enough that the shut can only be maintained at high levels of command (possible 12 sec duration w/ 15 sec recharge at 9-10 command and 15 sec duration somewhere aroung 13-14 command.)

Well in PvE, it was kind of an inferior version of life bond. Thats why I suggested making it less clunky by giving it a 5en cost rather than a 10en cost and giving a little damage reduction on the damage redirected back at the paragon. This would be enough to balance it but not to make it too overpowered compared to life barrer/bond monks. This change could apply only for PvE. PvP can keep the current version (or possible a buffed version of the current version) of the elite.

did you have any specific skills in mind?

if we look at AoE buffs from other professions such as the ritualist we will see that they provide blocking, damage resistance, etc. to everyone in the group with no condition. AoE healing from monk and ritualist (heal party, divine healing, PwK) also have no conditions. Party-buffing skills such as Orders have no conditions either. So I am not really understanding what you mean...

I agree. Skills definitely can be balanced without the conditions. Plus, many of the conditions are soooo conditional or situational that there really is no way to balance the skill while the condition exists. Recharge, cost, and casting time can all be used to balance skills.

As others said, Paragon already has AoE attacks - like that burning chorus.
Paragon is also supposed to have multi attacks with chants that affects the party. It's indirect but still multi attack.

The problem is that Paragon is a broken class by design and only supports gimmick.

Paragon and balanced party just don't go together. If you give Paragon a "+15dmg next attack skill", you're just asking for entire party of physicals which sucks.
If Paragon has "next signet gives +x energy", you're either asking for a gimmick - overpowered or underpowered skill. Nothing in between.


Paragon needs a complete redesign including primary attribute. As I've been saying from the beginning of Nightfall - Paragon is a perfect example of how not to design a profession.



ps: And please don't be silly with some suggestions on how to buff Paragon. Like trying to make him an unconditional ranger warrior.

Did a Paragon beat you up when you were a kid? Does a man wearing a skirt make you nervous? I dont know where all this Paragon hate is coming from.

So Leadership is OP? Soul Reaping and Crtical Strikes are just fine I suppose. Im also guessing that when the Mesmers got a buff, you thought that was OP too? I think we have different ideas on what gimmicky is. To me a gimmick build is when an assassin uses SF or when a profession exploits his secondary better than the profession it belongs to, like an ER prot/orders or N/Rt Healer. Lyric of Zeal says Hi. Its fairly rare for anyone but a Mesmer or Smite Monk to have more than one or two signets, how does that unbalance things? Order of Pain and Physical Way have something different to say about physicals. It sounds like youve only played a Mesmer. You should really try the other professions before you jump to conclusions.

Alot of the discussion in this thread is reasonably balanced, and so far has had alot of postitive feedback. Dont start trolling it up. If you have some helpful suggestions to balance the Paragon, by all means, lets hear them. Otherwise your just trolling for no reason.

In particular "Never Surrender!". That skill is a prime example how paragons skills should function; it has a condition that the paragon player himself can control and is very powerful if used right but next to useless if mindlessly spammed.

Your way to balance the paragon: Look, class X has a skill with function Y, lets give the paragon also a skill with function Y, only three times more powerful than the skill of class X.
I don't have the motivation to go into detail because I'm sure it has been explained to you why exactly most of your ideas are way overpowered in the other thread where you already showed your ideas a couple of months ago.

Ehhh I wouldn't like this. If it has something like that then packing aegis or any type of order will completely screw this skill over. I still think in general the idea of a party wide ias isn't a great one because it' either going to be mostly useless (You're the only physical on the team and you have AR) or only kinda helpful for mostly physical teams (in which everyone should be packing their own ias anyway).

But I am probably not seeing the whole picture or something because people keep suggesting this over and over.

Let me know when you grow up. I don't see a point in talking till then.

Actually many of the suggestions I posted were almost exact copies of skills from other professions... skills which are theoretically balanced already. Please read more carefully.

If you are simply here to spread paragon hate, don't bother.
If you are saying that paragons are fine the way they are, Arenanet disagrees with you. They have already stated that updates are planned.

So... why are you here?