Effective paragon guide

''Note: this article is intended to provide guidance for experienced characters playing a new Paragon or experienced Paragons looking for additional options. If this is your first time playing Guild Wars, please see Getting started (Nightfall).''

The Paragon profession is only available in the Guild Wars: Nightfall campaign. Users of other Guild Wars campaigns will not be able to use this profession unless they add a Nightfall key to their account.

What is a Paragon?
Paragons are a hybrid support class. They sport the second highest armor in the game, ranged attacks, and shouts that give a variety of bonuses to teammates (or a variety of penalties to enemies).

A Paragon's Place
Most Paragons stand between the frontline (Warriors, Assassins, and Dervishes) and the backline (everyone else) usually with rangers. When enemies get through the front line, the Paragon is called on to body block, preventing the enemies from attacking the squishy characters.

PvE Paragon
In PvE, the Paragon's job is to support other classes and fill out holes in your group's roster. If a group only has one Monk, the Paragon would bring healing skills, as well as battery skills to assist the Monk. If a group is short on damage, the Paragon would bring some Spear Attacks. Paragons also look at their group's composition when choosing which build to play for that Mission or Quest. If the group has 4 Warriors, energy-replenishing skills like Aria of Zeal might be wasted. If the group has 4 Elementalists, Aria of Zeal would be extremely effective. Also because paragon shouts can affect the entire party, paragons focused on healing and party support can mitigate a significant amount of pressure on the team much more so than monks and on par with spirit spamming ritualists.

PvP Paragon
In PvP, Paragons are versatile as they can deal damage and support the party at the same time. Angelic Bond is used with high frequency in Hero's Ascent to protect the ghostly hero, as well as other team mates if needed. Party wide healing chants, and supportive shouts are also used frequently to hold off against enemy pressure. Also paragons are fairly effective in keeping some enemies constantly burning by using Blazing Finale on the tanks and spam "Go for the Eyes!". With many enemies burning from that combo, using "They're on Fire!" significantly reduces the amount of damage received. As an Anti-spike role, paragons can use "Incoming!" if they can anticipate a spike by the enemy team.

Attributes

 * Leadership: With only two pips of energy regen (2/3rds of an energy point per second), Paragons have to use Energy extremely carefully. Leadership returns energy to the caster after each shout cast. Note: the energy gain is capped at the number of allies within earshot, or the rank in leadership, divided by two (round down!). This means that Paragons almost always opt to have an even number of ranks in leadership (10, 12, and 14 are extremely common selections).


 * Spear Mastery: This, obviously, increases damage dealt with spears. After the rank required to use the optimal weapon (usually 9), the benefit of additional ranks is negligible next to increased ranks in Motivation, Leadership, Command, or the secondary.


 * Motivation: This tree has energy management and healing skills that help your entire party. Most Paragons invest heavily into this tree for its healing capabilities.


 * Command: This tree sports an odd assortment of abilities. For a variety of reasons, Command is the most neglected tree. The chief reason is that the Command skills are inferior until the skill trainer in The Desolation, or at least into Vabbi. Players who have played previous campaigns, and have level 20 characters for PvP, can alleviate this by unlocking skills with Balthazar faction, which will allow the Kamadan skill trainer to teach them.

Example Paragon Builds

 * Healing Support: Their first responsibility is their party's health. Spike healing from Paragons is not very effective compared to Monks. However, they can keep the party alive from AoE damage as well as any other profession, and with Finale of Restoration up on the melee classes, they can significantly reduce the healing burden on the Monks. Like the Battery Paragon, they sport Aria of Zeal to help with energy and a few spear skills to help with damage, but have a heavy emphasis on healing.


 * Angelic Bonder: This build utilizes a similar theory to Monk Bonders, but, instead of Life Bond and Life Barrier, the P/any Angelic Bonder utilizes the Leadership skills, "They're on Fire!" for initial damage reduction, and then further covers with Angelic Bond. Allies are then further enhanced by Command skills. When used correctly, this build is capable of providing as much (or more) damage reduction than a bonder and unlike monk bonders, Angelic Bond cannot be removed which makes for more consistent reduction. This build is primarily intended for PvE but a variant can be used for HA.