User:Dan Dan Teddy Bearz/Archive2

Paragon vs Ranger

-I'll assume all mentioned attributes are 12 for the sake of this discussion.-

Weapon: Bow=15-28dmg, 1.35s. Spear=14-27dmg,1.5s.

Damage (highest damage attack skills): (I don't count Sloth Hunter's Shot because it's simply unreliable versus non-bugged foes other than Abaddon or maybe the Lich) Point Blank Shot/Zojun's Shot=+34dmg, 5nrg, 3scd(second cooldown), 0sct. Mighty Throw=34dmg, 2adr, 3sct(second cast time), 0nrg.

2 Adrenaline is ridiculously quick to recharge, but so is 3 seconds. In fact, because it takes a spear 3 seconds to hit twice (1.5s atk rate), they would pretty much even out except that Mighty Throw takes 3s to "cast". They both provide +34dmg, but 15-28 plus 34=49-62 whereas 14-27 plus 34=48-61. Both the best and worst of a spear being lower than that of a bow. Bows not only attack faster but deal more damage by default (and longbows even have greater range without losing to spears in attack speed or damage).

Buffs: Find Their Weakness is one of the very few redeeming skills attributed to the Paragon, in terms of damage. Glass Arrows or Expert's Focus simply wouldn't measure up were it not for FTW ending after one hit and having an energy cost of 10 and a recharge of 15s. Otherwise, FTW would be ridiculously OP.

Conditions: Ranger: Hunter's Shot, Throw Dirt, Burning Arrow, Crippling Shot/Pin Down, Broad Head Arrow (/Concussion Shot for those who fail at BHA), Enraged Lunge, Poison Tip Signet. Bleeding, blind, burning, crippling, daze, deep wound and poison. Paragon: Barbed Spear, Blazing Spear, Maiming Spear, Spear Swipe, Vicious Attack, Anthem of Weariness. Bleeding, burning, crippling, dazed, deep wound and weakness.

Armor: Ranger: 70base, +30vs elements (total of 100vs elements). +5nrg, +1nrg regen. Paragon: 80base (total of 80). +10nrg.

Compatibility with other Professions: Ranger: Expertise affects all attack skills, binding rituals and most touch skills. Paragon: Leadership affects shouts and chants. That's it. Some skills obviously synergize well with many Paragon skills. This is how the "imbagon" was born. However, there is still some but not much inter-profession compatibility beyond that for the Paragon.

Of course, as with all professions and skills on GW, they each excel in some areas where the other lacks. Paragons make far better party buffers than Rangers. That is currently all I, personally, can think of that supports the Paragon. I just recently created yet another Paragon, myself. I plan on actually putting a little bit of effort into making it useful, this time. My findings may change in the future. There's only one way to find out. Teddy Dan, yo. 15:32, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Paragons can use shields, which puts them at 96 armor, not counting Centurion's Insignia (because there is no reason not to use it). Also, both professions can inflict a number of conditions but not with the same ease. For example, paragons can inflict DW with a lot of skills, most of which have a good chance of succeeding, while rangers only have 1 elite that causes DW, for which you need a pet. Koda Kumi 21:12, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

That is true about shields. I forgot about that, thanks. That brings Paragons to a total of 146 armor while affected by a chant, echo or shout and Rangers to a total of 120/150vs elements while under the affects of a preparation or while its pet is alive (no reason not to use these, either). That shield really does make the difference. Of course, that's only if you're sacrificing a max primary or weapon attribute for 9 Motivation or Commmand. So, you're either not achieving maximum results for one of your most useful attributes for the sake of armor or not getting that full +16 armor rating. Then again, you don't really have to max Leadership because most of those buffs don't get much better with an extra one or two attribute points, so you really could sacrifice a few Leadership points for your shield's attribute and not really lose much.

Paragons do cause conditions with more than one or two skills, but most of them are conditional. They require something specific that you need to set up and keep up or stacking will fail. Rangers, however, can stack two conditions in one shot without any prerequisite circumstances via Poison Tip Signet and any condition-applying attack skill like Burning Arrow, Hunter's Shot, Broad Head Arrow or Crippling Shot/Pin Down and they can stack as many of them as they want however many times they want without having to wait for certain requirements to be met. So, it becomes a Ranger's ease of application of multiple conditions versus a Paragon's availability of one or two. Teddy Dan, yo. 16:49, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

You have to indent each of your paragraphs for it to look right. Also, I think you have insignia's wrong. They only add armor to each piece, not to your total AL. So, a paragon with Centurion's should have 106 most of the time, and rangers would have 80/110. And I think while "conditions" seems the same to you, applying degen to multiple foes is different than applying deep wound to multiple foes. --JonTheMon 16:58, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, armor insignias are one of the things that still confuse me a bit, so I'll concede to that. I never implied Deep Wound causes degen. Notice, I also mentioned Crippling Shot and Pin Down. They cause Cripple, which isn't a degen either. Also, not all degens are conditions. Some are hexes. I think you simply misunderstood me. Teddy Dan, yo. 00:00, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Paragons cause multiple conditions with attacks every bit as easily - Anthem of Flame and Anthem of Weariness are both cheap, spammable, party-wide buffs that make everyone's next attack skill cause burning or weakness in addition to whatever the attack skill does (namely deep wound or dazed). Apply Poison is quite a bit stronger than Poison Tip Signet, but both are a complete waste of time in PvE - poison does 8 damage per second, which is an absolute joke. You do more damage not bothering with poison at all and taking another attack skill in that slot (or a better preparation instead of apply). -Auron 05:24, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Without wanting to go too far into a flawed discussion about apples and oranges, you are comparing a lot of things that don't matter at all. Conditions being one of them. In order to win PvE, you have to kill the bad guys. The only two conditions that matter to achieve this goal are 1. deep wound and 2. dazed (preferably spammable, to shut down as many targets as possible). If you are bothering with cripple, blind, poison, or anything other than deep wound or dazed, you are doing it wrong and can be killing stuff much quicker with other builds.

The difference in primary attributes is one you missed completely. Paragons have unlimited energy. This means they can bring a slew of very expensive offensive PvE skills and spells like YMLAD, Ward Honor, Technobabble (which is coincidentally the best daze skill in PvE, bar none), and spam them on recharge. Rangers are very limited in what expertise effects, and with regards to winning PvE, spirits and touch skills are both awful. The unlimited energy part of Paragon also makes them very versatile utility classes - many people ran paras with Expel Hexes in areas like hm fow and doa. They also have viable and powerful condition removal - Song of Purification is amazing for keeping the entire party free of conditions, while letting the monk focus on keeping red bars up. When was the last time you saw a ranger with Expel? Never, because they'd be out of energy in ten seconds, expertise notwithstanding.

All of this is in addition to their competitive damage from spear chucking with an infinite duration Aggressive Refrain. Paragons only have to bring one or two attack skills to pump out big numbers, and the rest of their bar can be devoted to utility and party defense. Rangers have to devote their entire bar, elite skill, and all their attribute points to damage to be competitive, and at that point they've lost all utility (and their damage isn't very impressive, either - if I was going to bring a full damage class, I'd opt to bring a hammer war or an ele). The only option Rangers have to do serious damage in high-end PvE is splinter barrage. They lose the benefit of their preparation, but the damage gained from splinter (and barrage hitting a max number of targets every cast) more than makes up for it.

Now on to apples and oranges. Find their weakness is an awful skill, and no paragons ever use it because it's trash. Compare it to Vicious Attack, which almost always crits because paragons spam GftE for the previously mentioned unlimited energy thing, and you'll see how bad it is. Also, the attack skills themselves are hard to compare to one another - bow autoattack damage is very low compared to spear autoattack damage (especially considering paragons have permanent 25% IAS), so the bow skills have to be more powerful to make up for it. In most cases, however, they aren't. Rangers simply have a long list of terrible attack skills, very few of which offers any utility - this is mostly a product of many of the skills being nerfed due to abuse in ranger spike. The ED ranger was the closest thing to dealing scary damage in PvE (replacing interrupts with more damage skills), but again, it fell far short of being able to touch real damage classes pumping out numbers.

In the end, a ranger with barrage/splinter or barrage/GDW will out damage a paragon - on some pulls. Anything other than barrage will be on equal footing with paragon spear damage, but will be at a severe disadvantage overall because rangers lack utility. Paragons, however, travel best in packs. If you have hero spots, paragon heroes are very powerful (far more so than ranger heroes). Their additional shouts will aid to maintain agg refrain, apply burning from Anthem of Flame, and add defense or healing to the party. Volleys of spears also land more often than arrows, so dazed bosses are much less likely to get skills off. GW has such an easy PvE game that you can run anything and still win, but if you want to min-max for "hard mode," your best bet is to bring paragons over rangers in most scenarios (and eles or warriors in every other). -Auron 04:51, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Anthem of Flame? 3 second burning duration with a 10 second recharge? Anthem of Weariness is okay. Never is any condition-applying skill worth mentioning with a recharge longer than its duration (edited for oops). Poison+bleeding(Poison Tip Signet+Hunter's Shot)=-7 degen. Poison+burning(Poison Tip Signet+Burning Arrow)=-11 degen. Degen caps at -10, so we can say poison+burning=-10 degen. That's 20dmg/s in one hit, plus the +26/31dmg of the attack itself. 20dps vs -20% max HP. It's debatable. Please use a better example or provide math to explain your findings.

Again with Technobabble? It is the single WORST daze in the game. Why? Look at the duration versus the recharge. If that doesn't say enough, you clearly don't know what spammable or enduring daze are. Use it near a boss caster and see how long it lasts versus how long it takes the mobs to kill you while you're busy waiting for Terribabble to recharge so it can fail again. GG. Your arguments are fraught with "dis dun matturz cuz it dun kilz n wun hit" and no evidence to support such claims. Do you kill absolutely everything with one hit? Guess what, Deep Wound does not kill in one hit, either. No conditions do. "Yoo nedz to kilz it" is a flawed argument because most conditions contribute to killing.

Ranger Expertise affects all Ranger skills, attack skills, binding rituals and most touch skills. So far, the only things it doesn't affect are spells(, glyphs if you count them), shouts, chants, echoes, non-Ranger regular skills and many (but not all) PvE-only skills. That's quite a range. I'm pretty sure I've asked not to make claims without evidence to support them. "Spiritz iz bad" is not good enough. Tell us why.

I thought I mentioned the imba being one of the only two useful jobs of Paragons. I'm especially familiar with them in DoA. Unless it's imbagon or party runner, though, I simply don't see much use for it that another profession can't do better. Competitive damage with Aggressive Refrain? Okay, let's looks at Rapid Fire. AR=25nrg, +25%atkspd, -20arm. RF=5nrg(2-3 with Expertise), +33%atkspd with bow. Since bows are already faster than spears, addind Rapid Fire into the mix versus Aggressive Refrain widens that gap even more. Rangers can bring Point Blank Shot/Zojun's Shot (in PvE) and pump out quite the damage, as well. Heck, they can even ditch Rapid Fire in favor of Glass Arrows and pump out little under 80dmg without crits with each attack skill even versus 100armor. Glass Arrows+Point Blank Shot=(+)17~21+34~42=(+)54~63dmg. +54dmg itself is noteworthy. Spamming PBS and ZS with the damage bonus of GA every 2~3 seconds is really all you need. If you're in PvE, you can bring Glass Arrows and Triple Shot and spam PBS/ZS while it recharges. Your links "one" and "two" provide a damage bonus of +21 at 16 Spear Mastery. Point Blank Shot alone provides +34 at 12 Expertise. Shall we vote on the math?

Are you referring to Aggressive Refrain when you mentioned a "permanent 25% IAS"? If so, though they may not be "permanent", Rapid Fire and Never Rampage Alone do last longer than their recharges and NRA receives enough benefit from Exprtise at 13 or higher that it can be said to have a low energy cost of 5~7, which recovers nicely between groups of mobs (during your run toward them). If you bring a bunch of Paragons, you're likely sacrificing something just to prove a point. Eles for AoE, Wars/Dervs for tanking, decent healers of whatever profession. My point with all of this was: Rangers versus Paragons. It was not "Paragons are completely useless and Rangers pwn all." That would be ridiculous. Rangers simply deal more damage and inflict more conditions upon foes. Although, Paragons do win the hero vote. Ranger heroes tend to continue their futile attempts to shoot through obstructions and their best contributions to the team are damage and conditions. Paragons, though still behind in the race for damage, provide more for the team. Rangers, by typical fantasy genre lore, are loners by nature. It makes sense that they provide less ally-related benefit. Paragons simply provide less foe-related detriment, based on the math provided above. I didn't imply the usefulness of any one condition until the subject was brought up by you. It was irrelevant to the original subject. I didn't mention PvE-only skills, either, until you brought them up. Teddy Dan, yo. 06:52, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Please, again, if you're going to state an opinion, provide evidence to support why you feel the way you do. Don't just say something is bad or better than something else. Tell us why. I try to do the same. If I've failed to do so at any point, please tell me where. I can discuss personal opinions, but I prefer not to. I'd rather discuss the numbers. I like discussing the numbers, especially when there are links to pages that credit those numbers. I know I don't provide links. I haven't yet tried to figure out how, because none of my numbers have been challenged. If they ever are, I will devote my next response to providing my source. If I ask you to do the same, please humor me. If you refuse, I'll look them up. If I don't find the evidence to support your claims, and you continue to refuse to provide them, I'll simply dismiss them as inaccurate. I'm open to discussion, not gullible. Also, please remember that I'm currently experimenting with my latest Paragon. My Ranger is currently 57 months old. I know Rangers well enough in-game. I'm aiming for the very same with Paragons. If I'm wrong, please refrain from insults. If I seem condescending, tell me. I try not to be, but it seems it's simply in my nature to reflect the people I talk to. That was a joke. Do tell me if I seem hostile in any way, though. Before that, though, please be sure to refrain from your own hostilities. This is a talk/discussion page, not a flame war/trololol page. Thank you. Teddy Dan, yo. 06:52, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll jump in on this. I'll just say two things about Auron's comments. Barrage is only suitable for setting up spikes with sw, which really doesn't work out well with H/H; Barrage itself is pretty shitty and it's easy to burn sw with a scythe, daggers, or even an axe in the same way. I don't know what auron is getting at with IAS, dwarven stability+lr is more than enough to get by with. Deep Wound is applied on top of your attack damage, it's literally a free 100 damage ceiling on most enemies. That means you're doing around the total damage of the degen aforementioned in a single attack. Technobabble is oped because it's an aoe daze that doesn't require a spec. Keeping daze up half the time is way too generous, casters are literally shutdown the entire time while you pummel them. It's easy enough to not cast it on the boss. Degen is terrible in PvE since it kills ridiculously slow. I have no idea what your argument was in the last paragraph since it made no sense. Paragons aren't designed for just damage, that's why you bring utility and support for the group like auron said. The sad part is that it's better than devoting your entire bar to single target damage, since the damage for ranged attacks on both rangers and paragons is complete shit. On a final note, you theorycrafted all your responses; if you want people to provide evidence to their statements (which Auron surprisingly took his time to do so), you should at least be able to back up your own. Your comments so far indicate that you grossly overestimate your knowledge of PvE.--Relyk 09:10, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Apparently you missed the numbers. I got those numbers from the skill/weapon pages, themselves. But I did say I'd post links when those numbers were challenged. So, are you challenging the numbers or simply refusing to see the evidence I provided so you can dismiss my point to insult me? Technobabble is ADJACENT daze for a maximum of FIVE seconds with a recharge of TEN seconds. Sorry for the caps, but I feel like I'm just wasting my time repeating myself. Have fun chasing the casters around, because your melee is chasing them, while trying to keep them bunched up for Technobabble's adjacent range to have any effect on more than one non-boss foe. Why do I include non-boss even though they can be affected by it if used adjecant to a non-boss foe? Simple 5s-1/2(Natural Resistance)=2.5. You have 2.5 seconds to kill that boss. If it's a healer monk boss and there are any healer monk non-bosses nearby, GG. No, keep trying. You'll end that stalemate eventually. I have not once implied that I am all-knowing in regards to anything GW related. I did say I know Rangers well enough in PvE. Rangers. Specifically. Meaning their skills, armor and their potential damage/condition output. My comments so far indicate nothing to suggest I overestimate my knowledge of anything. If they did, I wouldn't even be considering these discussions. I'd be a conceited, insulting ass who is quick to point the finger at others for not providing any evidence when I myself would be failing to do the same. "Barrage is pretty shitty..." Where's the evidence? Didn't I specifically ask not to insult the effectiveness of something without evidence to support it? How many times have I posted a similar message on this very page? Do you truly fail so hard at reading comprehension that you've missed it every single time? GG. Come back with a better argument or not at all. Teddy Dan, yo. 17:38, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Er, Dan, bows don't shoot faster than spears. And chants like Anthem of Flame, while it may only be 3s burning on 10s recharge, the paragon gets 6-7e for casting it, and it affects all physical attackers, so if you have 2 others, that's 9 potential seconds of burning. Gets even better if you're going physicalway --JonTheMon 13:42, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

According to the wiki, longbow IAS=1.35s while spears=1.50s. 1.35<1.5 Spears have a lower shelf/arc, but unless the wiki is lying they're still slower. As for Anthem of Flame, that 3s burning doesn't stack with multiple applications at the same time. If three players hit the same target at the same time under the affects of Anthem of flame, that's still only 3s. Multiple applications of the same condition at the same time do not increase its duration. If I'm missing something, please explain it to me.

By the way, Jon, thank you for being mature and level-headed even after all of this. It's refreshing. No sarcasm. Teddy Dan, yo. 17:42, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

You are looking at the range. Longbows are the slowest weapons in the game, and the fastest bows (shortbows) still have an attack rate of 2 seconds. Koda Kumi 17:50, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

You're absolutely right, I was looking at the range instead of the interval. I feel so silly, now. That pretty much dismantles my whole argument. Thanks for pointing that out to me without being offensive. I'm going to archive this section, now. Teddy Dan, yo. 14:05, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm done. Because you obviously don't understand the basic game mechanics behind rangers, paragons, and PvE in general, this discussion will lead nowhere. I tried to teach you and you refused to learn. In a few years you might be able to hold up your end of this discussion. Feel free to post back to me then. -Auron 14:35, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

So be done. You obviously don't understand the basic mechanics behind Rangers, Paragons or PvE in general. This discussion lead nowhere because you failed to provide a decent argument. You're the one leaving before you've provided anything worth discussing, and have simply been dismissing everything I've posted, so who is the one refusing to learn? In a few years, you might be able to learn what a discussion is, and maybe then will you have anything to offer worth discussing. Feel free to stew in your ignorance until then, hypocrite. Teddy Dan, yo. 17:38, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Paragon vs Ranger

See archive 2. Thanks, again, to Jon and Koda for their maturity and understanding. For some, as unfortunately short-lived as it was. Teddy Dan, yo. 05:02, 18 April 2011 (UTC)