What would everyone do without Discord?

Discord is only 35 dps per necro. Spiritway kicks it down the stairs and steals its lunch money.

I've never run it, but it looks like it has advantages and disadvantages. Both spirit heroes are vulnerable to AoE and can't move turrets between battles. Minions' limitations are obvious, as well.

And I'm not defending Discord, either, especially after this thread. Didn't realize so many haven't run or use it even occasionally, it's inspired me to drop it.

The main advantage of spiritway in my opinion is having all the extra bodies. When Im in a lazy mood (aka when i choose to run a gimmick like this), I choose spiritway. Plus, rits > necros. However, when 8 hero teams come out, I plan to run balanced build, just balanced builds, and nothing but balanced, non-gimmicky builds.

Weird I steamrolled every vanquish with discord

Also question I haven't been playing lately but they are going to make it so we can have more than 3 heroes? Link please.

What I would do without discord? The same as I always did. I doubt me or my heroes even used the skill once.

When discord was buffed i used it until i was fed up. Now you have far more ideal builds that does not lay heavy on hexes/conditions. and perform excellent on their own and synchronize very well with other builds.


- A smiter with ray of judgement + strength of honor works great with melee.
a soul twisting ritualist can give great protection.
- 2 earth shakers + renewing smash + for great justice will lay down any mob literally on the ground.
- Give an necro just 1 minion skill for your minion army and invest the rest in either curse/protection/motivation/domination/smiting to fill in the rest of your needs.
- panic mesmer
- full ritualist team.
- prot horse (ele protter)
Conclusion: if it is nerfed an other powercreep will just rise out of the ashes.

Spiritway or whatever with Panic or stuff

I wouldnt miss it because I hardly use it. Discord makes things too easy, drains the fun out of things.

I could be wrong, but I think what the OP is grinding at is that without the meta to rely on, people would lack the capability to go into an area and figure out that if all the enemies are casters then perhaps a Mesmer hero would be good at disrupting those skills that are wiping their now-nerfed party.

Call me far sighted, but it sounds to me like the stone-age-old-beat-to-the-ground-dead-horse-good-god-I-can't-believe-you're-actually-ranting-about-this-people-couldn't-play-games-on-their-own-without-guides-rant. It's very true. PvX wiki, while giving insight to build ideas and how to improve them, also coddles to those who don't want to read anything past "Push this button when this happens. Win."

Now, I'm not going to claim I'm the best or the worst at making personal hero builds, but the ones I run usually work fairly well. Granted, I'm not going to role my heroes for every area. It's a pain, takes time out of my play, and is generally only going to yield me a 5% increase in effectiveness versus just falling back that something that's been tested and proven to work. I might switch out a few skills on their bars, but in most areas I just leave some "Clap On" hero builds relatively intact and go do what I need to do.

It's also a matter of recognizing that a lot of people don't actually play Guild Wars to sit there and push the percent of their odds against abundant mobs in any given area by modifying their build. If I played like that I wouldn't be playing for long before I had to take an Advil or two. Now, I realize that that isn't what the OP is asking for, but that's the other end of a presented extreme.

All in all, meta is meta for a reason, just as a quest walkthrough works for a reason. It's a pretty broad comparison, and it may not make sense in your head, but it clicks in mine, so I thought I'd put it out there. To give a bit of a clearer outlook on that to people who don't happen to be reading my mind at the moment, I picture a person on their computer looking up how to do a dungeon, and then looking up what build to use. The two are almost synonymous in a game like Guild Wars.

I won't take the -age-old-bla..blaa... argument any further. I don't think there's much point in arguing about it TBH, as there will always be players who use guides.

Lastly, if the OP is just ranting about Discord in particular and I totally missed the ball on the swing at insight, it's, well... just a good working build the same as any other good working build. There are better, there are worse. Not much else to it.

I don't even use Discord any more. I always preferred Sabway, and nowadays I run a heavily modified Sabway on necros (AotL instead of Jagged Bones, SoH on the curses necro if I'm going with a melee profession and SoS and Splinter Weap on the N/Rt).

I'm really starting to love AotL + masochism again over jagged bones. Also Sabway + my warrior is 100 times more fun than Discord. I still use Discord for when I play with my Necro, and I still think Discord will never be nerfed. Doesn't have to be coz really it's not the discord skill that needs any change.

My main is a warrior so I run Spiritway rather than Discord, a nerf of Discord wouldn't affect me in the slightest.

Have stopped running discord as with spiritway I do not have to call a target every few seconds which will stop me from gaining a deformed finger from pressing ctrl in an unnatural way.

Woulnt change a thing for me , never used that skill even once

Spiritway > Discordway

Indeed. 12 chars.

is this thread for real? everyone would run spiritway or sabway ofc

My level of annoyance would depend greatly on what part of it they nerfed. If they nerf Discord itself, that's hardly a loss at all. If they nerf minion bombing, that's a little more annoying because minion bombs are an extremely potent build on a hero, offering damage absorption and big damage to mobs. If they nerfed Soul Reaping, I'd be really upset because even without Discord/Sab/etc, Necro heroes are excellent in PvE because of the high kill rate that triggers it so often. I'd much rather run a hybridized WoH Necro than a WoH Monk hero.

I've said it before: Discord was one of the first builds to incorporate all necessary team elements into 3 heroes and give an option so generally effective that it could be used on nearly the entire game. Since then, hybridized builds have become more creative and effective, but people don't switch or try new things because of their successes throughout the whole game with the Discord setup.

In other words, there are already more powerful builds out there that just aren't meta. And in all honesty, ANet would have to nerf some skill or aspect from every single profession to remove effective hybridization from the game. They would have to nerf SoS, Panic, Death Nova, Fast Casting, Smiter's Boon (lol), Psychic Instability, Smite Hex/Condition, Reversal of Damage, Ether Renewal, Expertise, cheap Paragon adrenaline skills (GftE, Anthem of Envy), Earth Shaker, Hundred Blades, Jagged->Fox->DB combo, and a handful of other things spread across every single profession.

Then the game might be a little bit harder, but in lieu of recent updates I don't think that's what ANet is going for. And at this point, they shouldn't be aiming to make the game harder anyway.

I streamrolled through my Canthan vanquisher title with Discord, it was so easy I had to make sure that I was in HM.

NF, at least for me, was different. Sure Discord was helpful in some areas, but you start getting into Roaring Ether and Ruby Djinn territory and they weren't so nice. I always call targets for my heros, but a single target spike didn't work with multiple ruby djinns and roaring ethers and the minions were quickly dying.

Someone here will probably post the link to the developer who said we will be able to use a full party of heros. It was during an interview about the WiK content and survey. I'm too lazy to find it.

I can't wait for that full party. Although I prefer to play with guild/alliance mates, sometimes there's no one doing what you're doing and you just need that hero party.

I prefer spiritway. It works better than discord for some classes.

I use a discord setup sometimes, but not always.
Right now I usually run a panic mes as a core hero, then I switch between SF, SoS, SS, etc; whatever I'll need on the area/mission

necro heroes can do almost everything a rit can and even better. Personally, I only use my rit heroes when I need spawing power, like the soul twisting build or a channeling/command utility. otherwise, soul reaping > rits

It doesn't affect the fact that SR is probably the most broken primairy attribute in the game.

This statement would have been accurate, had it been made about 2 years ago. Today, however, spirits are actually worth using, and ritualists are far better with them than necromancers are. Skills like Spirit Siphon and Boon of Creation effectively cancel out SR's edge, and spirits (like minions) benefit disproportionately from runes.

Spiritways. And if Spiritways were nerfed to hell, then the next highest armor-ignoring team build would be generated. And if that gets nerfed too, well then I'll be damned. Along that stream of nerfs though, a lot of players will be lost due to low morale based on all the goodies being taken away from them plus all the progression "slow-down" the nerfs will inflict. And personally, I wouldn't see why any of the above would take place, tbh... unless Anet wants to drive players away to cut down on server occupancies and thus take down servers. But all of that would be a little bit too extreme and outlandish, imho.

The reason people use necro heroes is because necros are one of the best classes in pve. Soul reaping is very powerful, they have power armor ignorning aoe and single target damaging skills. They have very powerful team wide defense by means of minion master. Also using Soul reaping they make very durable healers energy wise which is one of the most important factors. They also are the key elements in sabway/discordway which are very powerful team builds. Necro heroes are even used in spiritway as two of the three heroes, resto and minion master. They are also useful in physicalways involving mark of pain and barbs, and also can easily spec into channeling for splinter weapon/ancestors rage.

The only reason discordway is powerful is because heroes actually know how to use it. I could easily create something just as powerful if heroes could use overload correctly.

I would just switch to spiritway/sabway or possibly even find another skill that heroes can use to quickly do single target spike damage.

Most powerful version of spiritway uses 2 rits.

The elite versions uses 3 rits, and more.

I use those heroes but I never use Discord. Modified Sabway is the shite !

Well, can see that I mist the forum a few days

What tot do without Discord lol, Discord...shure you can do a lot with
that skill, but I never use discord in the setup as it being used at 3 necro hero's. Alltough mine main char is a necro I seldom use 3 necro hero's
There are so many strong builds without Discord....

So no would not mis it, would not make a difference on my play style.

You bring boon into almost any HM area and it will get stripped in the first second.

Spirit siphon alone is better than soul reaping if there will be enough spirits to siphon, heroes just can't use it too well.

Nothing would change for me, my necro's don't use discord, locks me into AP calling, or whatever, sounds boring.

Would not bother me at all, since I don't use discord. Once tried the discord team build, found it very effective but it completely eliminates any class-specific play style. This was no fun. The build is ugly to the bone, and the caller build as well. All and everything you do is hex your enemy, then some condition, Assassin, wait a second or two, then the next one. And so on. This dumbs me down so I become somewhat incapable of playing a real build and fulfill some team role together with other people.

i like that caller build a lot. I like running it when I'm tired of healing H/H on vanq/missions

It would change nothing to me. I dont use it.

waah. other people use effective builds and are lazy. waah. why do you care?

I don't use discord simply because I never bothered unlocking the skill.

Up until very recently I've been running:

Me (R/Rt): SoS channelling build
Pyre (R/Rt): SoGM communing spirits
Gwen: Dom mes
Ogden: UA healer

Just unlocked Xandra and Livia last week so now:

Me: back to splinter/barrage
Xandra: SoS channelling
Gwen: Dom mes
Livia: Minion bomber

I can use henchies for prot/heal. I'll eventually give Discord a try, just because I've heard it's great and want to see how it fits in with my play style. (I'm also messing around with being a touch ranger. Just for fun. But so what? Maybe it sucks. Maybe Discordway sucks. Again, why care?)

I don't get why people give a crap that other people use template builds. Being able to come up with your own builds or tweak PvX builds to suit yourself better and/or having faster reflexes when pushing the 1-8 buttons on your keyboard makes you neither a genius nor particularly awesome at anything. Get over yourself. It's a game.

The crap starts when people expect other people to run template builds. Other then that, use what you like.

I'd swap to echo cos it synergises better with mending!

Never use it no need to my Mesmer owns the game ...basically all of it with one skill

discordway is over-rated...