What Henches With Racway

Para, Mhenlo, Devona, the mesmer.
And I don't run the orders guy - I'd rather take Jin.

VQing has never been easier.
and what would jin run?

At the risk of being flamed, compared to any "team build" out there, be it smiteway, sabway, discordway...yees, it does suck... And why would that be?

I know what you're thinking. "i'm killing things slow as all hell and getting mollywhopped in normal mode with this shit... i must be using the wrong henchman!"

Don't worry, you're not. The team build just sucks, rlyrlyrlybaed. One weak point of the build is the D/N. A dual orders build like that loses about 34%hp, which is about 187hp for a 550hp derv, every 5s. The derv requires alot of healing for himself just to continue working, not to mention healing the team if the team is in trouble.

I would watch out for armor ignoring attacks against your D/N, especially hexes. I suspect this is why he has a version for hex heavy areas. In any case, this is not a build for people who are too used to sticking on to a universal build for almost all areas in the game. You need to adapt alot more.

If you compare that to sabway, sabway has target anti-blocking, protective spirit (not just non-armor ignoring damage), aegis, minions, and lots more red barring. The pros of this is in its huge physical damage, but physical damage also has the most counters which goes back to the need to adapt this to certain areas again.

One weak point of the build is the D/N. A dual orders build like that loses about 34%hp, which is about 187hp for a 550hp derv, every 5s. The derv requires alot of healing for himself just to continue working, not to mention healing the team if the team is in trouble.

I would watch out for armor ignoring attacks against your D/N, especially hexes. I suspect this is why he has a version for hex heavy areas. In any case, this is not a build for people who are too used to sticking on to a universal build for almost all areas in the game. You need to adapt alot more.

If you compare that to sabway, sabway has target anti-blocking, protective spirit (not just non-armor ignoring damage), aegis, minions, and lots more red barring. The pros of this is in its huge physical damage, but physical damage also has the most counters which goes back to the need to adapt this to certain areas again.
I run the D/N interchangeably with an E/N using Ether Renewal. It's really hard even for a hero to skrew up their energy, and it's more than self sustaining.

However it doesn't provide the (pretty crappy) heals that the derv's bar has

I would watch out for armor ignoring attacks against your D/N, especially hexes. I suspect this is why he has a version for hex heavy areas. The point of hex removal is to keep the physicals clean.
You don't want to be stuck with something like Binding Chains or Soothing Images. Go try to VQ Archipelagos on a physical team without hex removal.
It's not pretty.

The point of hex removal is to keep the physicals clean.
You don't want to be stuck with something like Binding Chains or Soothing Images. Go try to VQ Archipelagos on a physical team without hex removal.
It's not pretty. Yes, that is important too but the build doesn't have enough red barring and no enchant removal. I expect some to reply, that he has SY. But SY doesn't protect against all damages.

It is interesting though that you mentioned the importance of hex removal to keep the physicals clean but the default pvx build doesn't include any hex removal at all (although hexbreaker aria was listed but only as a variant). This means in many areas, the hex heavy version would be more viable. Without any hex removal and without enough red barring, even degen hexes can be problematic. There is a difference between not having a hex removal for sabway vs not having a hex removal for racway. Sab's N/Rt healer which leverages on soul reaping is a vastly superior healer compared to the D/N who loses at least 34%hp every 5s, himself.

Since the damage for racway is high, if the enemies do not have much anti-physical skills like blocking, then it may still be able to make up for it by killing fast. Otherwise it can be a problem unless you make adaptations to the build for the area.

I finally got around to VQing Archipelagos on my para - and it seemed a bit difficult. And then - halfway though I discovered why.
I forgot to add the monk hench.
So I was running the warrior, earth, mesmer and interrupt hench with the paragon heroes (Hayda had limited motivation) and a RoJ monky (Tahky had no additional healing other the Cure Hex and the DF bonus. Sadly, I had to run her because despite running Emphatic on BOTH paras - the hexes STILL got to me, so she ran with 3 additional hex removals!). We wiped a few times, but at the end managed to do it. I tried replacing the D/N with a fiend MM N/Rt with Splinter Weapon, FF, in Archipelagos HM, and that worked quite well, even with just 1 hex removal.

My 2 Paragon heroes have DA, Cruel Spear, Strength of Honor, Gfte, Fall Back, Anthem of Weariness and Envy, etc. Henchmen taken were Sister Tai, Zho, Kai Ying, and Argo.

The Ebon ward increases the damage of the fiends as well as the paragons. Gfte and Fall Back synergizes with the minions also. Minions provides meat shield, and increased damage.

I am still tweaking it, but the MM goes something like this:

[build prof=N/Rt death=12 sou=8 res=2 cha=10][Aura of the Lich][Animate Bone Fiend][Putrid Bile][Death Nova][Splinter Weapon][Animate Shambling Horror][Foul Feast][Flesh of My Flesh][/build]

Since all my characters are ranged attackers, if I pull carefully, my melee minions will go forward, and soak up attacks, while I stay behind with the fiends and the rest of the party with ebon ward of honor.