What would everyone do without Discord?

A gross exaggeration.
Regardless, Spirit Siphon is still ridiculously broken.

Soul Reaping doesn't increase the performance of a Spirit Spammer bar (certainly not the SoS variant). Runes in Channeling and tougher spirits do.

Spiritway is the new heroes meta.

If discordway is nerfed to oblivion, the impact would be minimal for me. I find it to be only useful to hex casters like necros and mesmers. Even then, I dont use the typical discordway builds, currently my discordway has a SoS rit and 2 discord necros.

My other characters dont use discordway, they use other hero builds that complement their own natural builds.

If they remove Discord, then it's back to Barrage+Pet!!

>.>

Never used discord as a team build...I have the builds and have used them in conjunction with friends' builds and heroes and it worked well. I tend to run balanced with a panic mes, earth AoE/Warder, and an MM as my heroes on most characters.

Discordway is a build that is specifically helpful in 4-6 man areas because of the smaller party size, allowing each hero to pack some damage as well as having healing.

In 8 man areas, there are plenty of builds that work better.

@Above - curious, because the advantages of spiritway over Discordway are most apparent in 4-man areas where you don't have to compensate for henchmen with bad builds. And I haven't run a purely defensive hero since forever ...

That would be a lot more impressive if "the meta" at present weren't completely capable of killing casters without changing builds. OP can grind at whatever he wants, but if bringing the Mesmer not only "prevents" a wipe that never happened but also successfully slows down your kill speed, would you run a Mesmer?

Why would they nerf Discord? Its a pretty mediocre skill. Wow, an elite that does 30 DPS to a single target if you satisfy multiple conditions. Spare me. The only reason it even appears useful is because hero AI makes it spike decently (since heroes will wait to cast it on the first hexed/conditioned foe obviously). It amuses me that people think so much of what is basically an armor ignoring but elite version of Flare.

I would seriously like to thank posters whining about skills and would like to also point you to the results of what people whining brings to the game with an example of the UWSC metas;

• Ursan was once the team meta. Runs took around 1 hour (a little less if the teams were well organized)
• players cried because the rank discrimination stopped them joining (although farming Norn was easy as hell at the time with... again Ursan teams)
• Anet nerfed Ursan 2 or 3 times untill it was completely uninterresting
• Players cried a bit until they discovered SF Sins could do what the Ursans do but a lot faster and safer. (Runs were about 30 Mins)
• Players cried that they needed a sin to go to the UW
• Anet Nerfed SF 2 or 3 times until the old builds were not as fast
• Players still used SF but used different builds (Runs were up to 40 Mins again for a while, but still safe)
• Players Cried... we STILL cant go to the UW without a Sin.
• Anet Added the Skeles, changed a few quests to make them rediculously hard and added Dhuum.
• Players adapted and made new builds... which included SF again and runs are currently down to 20 mins or so.

End effect. players whined so long about elitism that Anet changed things so far that players found out how to become EVEN MORE ELITIST and players who where whining and who would have all been able to go to the UW with a UB after 1 week of Farming Norn rep can not go at all because 1. Players want to see stones, want a sin and Balanced groups have it MUCH harder due to the quest changes... I hope those players are happy now

How does this apply to this thread about Discord you ask yourself? Read the points and add Discord instead of Ursan and you have your answer... Anet nerfs something and players find something that is even more effective (See Spiritway for example in a few posts). Gives for nice build wars and creativity for a while... but in the end you will find the next meta skill and whine about that instead.

>implying everyone uses Discord

Discord is, at best, a mediocre skill. At 15 Death Magic, it does 110 armor-ignoring damage after 2 conditions are satisfied. With a 1 second cast time, and a 2 second recharge, it has a cycle of 3 seconds, making it about 36 dps on a single target. Running 3 of these results in about 110 dps. In the typical discordway hero set up, you get some damage from minions and death nova, a bit of degen (from hexes/conditions -> maxed at 10 pips or 20 dps), and possibly some other small hex damage. Over all, you probably get about 150 dps at most, and most of it is single target only, from 3 heros. A single player assassin can reach 120 dps easily by him/herself and even more with buffs. The standard SoS builds can hit well over 140 dps. Warriors can easily hit 70-80 dps by themselves, and nearly double that if buffed.

Just because you can vanquish with discordway does not make it the best build. I once did THead Keep (back when it was proph only) with an empty skill bar and 7 henchmen and had no problem. Does that make an empty skill bar + 7 old proph hench good? The power of discordway really comes from the AP caller. The player can call and the heroes can put down key foes (such as monks) quickly. However, discordway ran without AP calling is not really effective. You are MUCH better off with sabway if you like necros that much or spiritway.

I have run discordway for a while, and dual discordway. However, AP calling is VERY boring, and takes out the entire point of have interesting builds. I went back to spiritway, and spiritway + sabway + PI mesmer when going with a friend:

Myself + friend -> whatever we want

Heroes:
Rit1 -> SoS/Resto
Rit2 -> SoGM
Necro1 -> SS/Channeling
Necro2 -> MM bomber/prot
Necro2 -> Resto/IV
Mesmer -> PI/Domination

It allows us both to run whatever we wanted, caster or physical based. Whenever 7 heroes comes around, I'll be using the same thing, except I can run one extra hero (maybe a para) if I'm not playing with a friend.

Discordway is overused, but definitely not overpowered, and does not warrant a nerf.

Edit: Also, you will not get a constant 110 dps from Discord heroes, as they also need to cast other skills (minions, hexes, conditions, healing, death nova, etc...)

Although the DPS of discordway is mediocre its spike damage is not, being able to kill monk monsters before they can react is pretty useful.

Actually I do run Discord, but not with the AP caller build (Wont touch that with a long stick). However I will only run it while Im running my Curses Necro. Most of the damage coems from Mark of Pain if I can manage to predict which foes the 25+ Minions are going for in the middle of a group and Barbs+Weaken Armor for single target spikes to take down most bosses within 2 or 3 seconds.

The only reason why I prefer my modded Discord over Sabway is because theres so much more synergy between my bar and the Heroes bars if there are 3 Minionmasters instead of only one.

On all of my other Chars I prefer either Sabway, balanced or Spiritway depending on the situation or my build on whatever char Im playing.

P. S. The other advantage to playing one build on Heroes such as Discord on my Heroes is that they are always runed and set up perfectly for their builds. No more re-runing and wasting space on 20 different Weaponsets depending on what build you are going to use.

With discord you can pretty much kill 2-3 monster well before a spirit hero placed all their spirit.

Number like dps and stuff like that are really useless most of time.

Completely uninteresting for basing a team around, perhaps. Still very interesting and useful for regular use, even lasting only 60s and with Ursan Strike being half armor-ignoring & half slashing damage and Ursan Strike being all physical damage. It's only bad point is that it doesn't transform you into a bear for the duration (ditto for Volfen & Raven Blessings), something the devs could probably do very easily if they wanted to.

Weird things, running a decent caller bar - and doing it right - makes discordway 10x more powerful, useful and foolproof, even in heavy hex-removal areas.

Yea, but while the AP caller is a single spike build I concentrate on Massive AoE with Mark of Pain. While the AP build will kill one foe in 3 seconds Mark of Pain will do the same for a whole Mob if propperly balled in a close area using walls or by waiting for a few secs for them to settle.

A can of tuna fish is, at best, a mediocre meal.

But add some mayo, some sweet relish, onions, hard boiled eggs, celery, spices, cheese, bread, lettuce, tomato, and a toaster oven... and you have a very tasty sandwich.

Giving me the raw, mathematical DPS of Discord itself and ignoring all the other elements that go into the team build, as a whole, isn't very useful (or honest).



(omg now i need a sandwich)

Well, I'm not saying that Discordway is a bad team build, but from what I experiment with heroes (vanquishing and hm missions mostly), discordway is not as cracked up as people make it out to be. I understand the point of it (hybridizing 3 heroes for a balance of offensive and defensive skills and taking advantage of the AI that can easily preform both offensive and defensive measures with little to no trouble), but I just don't find it as effective as some other builds. Sure discordway is leaps and bounds ahead of henchmen (and most people's random crappy hero builds), but that's not that hard to accomplish.

Again, discord really shines when the player calls and has a hex/condition ready to apply (non necessarily the AP caller build, although AP calling is one of the better ones). I like having the freedom of running anything thing I want, including crazy builds just for the fun of it without worrying about the efficiency of hero builds if not running a tailored build.

One doesn't rule out the other. As a primairy mesmer, i use Mistrust and Technobabble, along with Chaos Storm or another AoE to pump out some pressure and damage, as well as at least one necro hero has a nice AoE skill, oftenly MoP.
I spike one target in a second, severely damaging/disabling the balled group for long enough to kill the tactically important targets before they can respond. Sure, it doesn't always work - the lag can kill me easily, the poor heroes' AI can screw us, something important may get rupted/diverted, and so on. Still, it's far superior than most current H/H builds, both in terms of speed and versatility, provided the caller knows what, when and why to do.
On the other hand, wrong calling, not covering AP when necessary and overaggroing are deadly for the whole build. This might be the main reason why people find it lacking. With spirits, or even a decent and well-picked balanced build, you can usually just run into a mob and use whatever skills you like, on whichever target you like. Plus, i've never really used discordway in 4man areas.

That said, i still believe that the build should be nerfed - both by killing AP to the ground and doing something with either secondary mechanics / SR / N/Rt / Discord (though it's, oddly enough, the least faulty here).

mmmmmmmk so. This thread has three sides. The people that think it should be nerfed, the people that dont, and the people that dont care.

Everyone is sayin that its good its bad, they have never used it etc.

A lot of people will use a build from PvX and never change it- These are the people that get annoying in teams when they insist the build on wiki is the only one to run

Some people get discord from wiki and then make some changes to it, adapt it to the area, change the skills up to work better in the team and actually think about it. - these people accept someone has had a good idea and use it themselves.

Some people refuse to accept that a build on wiki is actually good, that all builds on wiki are no good and anyone running them is a noob that cant think for themselves.- These people fail to see a good idea or adapt someone elses idea.

Discord is a good team build if used knowing that the enemies will actually take the damage from the skills.
You need to keep the foes hexed and conditioned even with them stripping hexes and conditions. They need the ability to rend enchantments too in certain areas. The combination of the three necros has the potential and the SR gives excellent e-management.

To put it simply. There is a finite amount of skills in the game. There are a finite amount of skills that synergise well. Lets assume that you are the first person to put a build together. You go and get Legendary Vanquisher with that team build and you post it on wiki becasue it works really well, it allowed you to VQ every area with ease and your sharing that build.

That build works and others try it and also find it works. Is it wrong for people to start saying its bad? No, it works and is being shared to help people out.

Odly helping other people can feel rewarding.

The use of an AP caller is also considered a noob thing. Again, it works, people have tried it and share it.


Killing AP would kill assassin builds that use it for non discordy things lol.

PvX provides us with the builds that people have found work if the skills change then so will the bars that players use.

Some people will just get new ones from wiki which is fine if they dont want to spend their time doing that.

Some will make the builds and put them on wiki.

You [being who ever does assume thing] assume that making builds is a part of the game everyone wants to do. Thats like saying everyone wants to get gwamm. Or Everyone wants to pvp or everyone wants to sit in kamadan and powertrade. Just becasue its what you think players should do doesnt mean they should or have to.

If someone wants to come on for an hour a day and vanquish one area using a build from wiki then thats totally fine.

Yes, if the builds where nerfed it would mean a lot of people changed there bars, but so what?

/leave guru for a day from the QQ /agree with :P but big deal. I got gwamm on my ele before discord and i have used discord to get gwamm with my monk. It was easy to get on my monk just time consuming. It doesnt work in all the dungeons so I had to change the bars and try this or that. But thats fair enough.

Why do people use Rodgort's Invocation on MB Eles? It's a useless skill. It does 127 damage with 8s cooldown and 2s cast time = 12.7 DPS. Hm ...

As much as I dislike Discord, arguing that Discord does 30 DPS is just way incredibly shortsighted. What, seriously, is stopping you from casting other spells while Discord is cooling down? You don't seriously think a Discord Necro has just Discord on his bar right (and no wand to wand with, too!).

Are you implying that pre-nerf Ursan and Shadow Form were not overpowered? Or that nerfing Ursan somehow actually made speedclears faster?

I think he was saying that the more we dig for new stuff as overpowered skills get nerfed, the more gimmicky and even more broken builds we find to SC.

But it still doesn't beat spiritway or even MoP damage when it is done right. That AP caller bar is just ridiculous on a warrior because a warrior can generate more damage with his natural build.

The problem with people and generic team builds like discordway is that they don't optimize the build based on the area that they are in. They are too lazy for that. And what is worse? They dont even optimize the team build based on the character that they use! They are too lazy for that too, even though they only need to do this once per profession. The more you customize and optimize, provided you do it correctly, the better your performance would be.

Case in point, try beating EFGJack's times with your discordway, if you think discordway is so great for every area and every professions. Use the AP caller build on your warrior(lol) if you wish: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/p...t10434178.html

Regardless of Discordway's viability, thats not really a fair comparison considering that a hero build doesnt exist that can beat those times in every area. Sure, spiritway can beat the kath time, but gets destroyed in, say, ooze and SoO.

While I agree EFGJack's builds are far better, the point of discord is that it can be played with 0% microing the entire time. EFGJack's clears require tons of microing from what I've read.

My point is, if people would bother to customize and optimize their team builds to the area and/or to their character's profession, they would yield better results than old generic discordway. I laugh whenever someone claims his warrior does well using the AP caller bar with discordway, because my warrior does way better with 100blades+MoP and SoH.

Discordway is overrated and it is hardly the best hero build possible. It is meant mostly for lazy people and even then, spiritway trumps it for most of the general areas.

Actually I am implying exactly that.
If you look back at what "Speed"clears of Ursan Groups were doing back then (1 hour runs with 6 players leeroying around dealing damage and 2 dedicated healers) and compare it to the current meta where areas are SOLOED by players doing exactly the same job that 6 Ursans were doing back then and taking about a third of the time it took back then (Also taking onto account that the Quests have been made immensely harder to complete and the addition of Dhuum). Even if you say that Ursan groups were completely overpowered back then... they are nothing compared to the various SF Metas.

If Anet decided to completely unnerf Ursan to its original status of Ranged attacks, then UW players would scorn it becaus eit is slow and inneffective compared to the Meta that is being used now.

Even the first SF SC Meta was slower than the curent one and that was also before the addition of Dhuum, the Skeles and the Quest changes.

I wasnt saying that Nerfing Ursan or SF made Speedclears faster... but nerfing the skills made players look for new team builds which in endeffect were even more effective than what people were complaining about.... thats the ultimatte irony to every whiny post in the lines of "OMG nerf skill X nao it be breaking the economei/1337ist/I iz too lazy to farm rep for a few days so they not let me in on the funzes".

P. S. If you think im saying that because you think im an elitist jerk who lives and breathes to go to the UW in an incredibly fast UWSC team, then your wrong... I havent beaten Dhuum ever and have not been to the UW (Bar a few Spider runs) in over a year. I played the old Pre Dhuum UWSC as Vale Necro and got bored of the UW since then.

Losing discord wouldn't bother me in the slightest.


I tried a discord build once. Livia refused to use Discord unless she was told to use it.


Figured out it was crap, my way was faster and moved on.

This.

12charas

So sins actually prefer AP over other elites in some builds? Thought it was only abused by casters.
Funny assumption. As noticed earlier, i've changed the original discordway to fit my mes, have more AoE pressure and feel better. I often change a few skills to reflect all changes in the area i'm approaching. I know people who do the same.
Sure, there are lazy people that just copy the build from wiki and never bother manipulating it, and usually those people blame the build for being subpar or not working.
Your example with warrior is pretty silly and based on idiocy of people copying builds without thinking about it. The melee in GW1 is terribly imbalanced in PvE when compared to casters anyway.
That said, a caster with PvE skills and sentient approach to the battlefield can steamroll through nearly every area with discord, changing only a few skills on heroes' bars on the go.

I disagree, because you are over generalizing. Should all casters go with the AP bar and discordway as that is the best H/H build to go? I don't think so.

I also don't see the point of mentioning PvE skills in your argument to support discordway, what is to prevent casters from taking PvE skills in their own bar when using spiritway instead?

My example of using the warrior is merely an illustration of how people overrated discordway and use it for all professions and all situations. And I have tried many variants of discordway for my casters and found it to be lacking when compared to spiritway.

That said, I only use my own version of spiritway+discordway hybrid for my mesmers and necros because they use hex-based builds. For my rit, I get better results with my variant of spiritway and similarly for my ele, so don't over generalize casters. My monks don't need discordway either. It is silly to over generalize all caster professions and builds simply because you find discordway useful for your mesmer in particular.

If disco got a nerf i would most likley use balenced builds on my heroes as i do now.

Having said that i use my para most of the time and i would stick to my tripple para builds.

No skin off my nose

That is a good thing.

It keep the game alive.

I only use Discord heroes when someone asks me to bring them; otherwise, I take whatever fits the area I'm in and who I'm playing. So, if it got nerfed, I wouldn't really mind. I hate being a caller, anyway. And if people started asking me to take spiritway instead, that won't really bug me, either, since it doesn't force me to play a certain role.

sidenote:
i never use AP + discord, just discord and my own builds

as for the topic:
i mentioned earlier i will make my own builds if they ever nerf discord to hell, or beyond
but i could also try to give em hench builds and a few more skills if that certain hench has less than 8 skills, or just hench build + monk res, just for fun

tbh, i can't be bothered copying pvx, but i could try and make 1 build from 2 pvx builds, its not my own for 100%, but could be funny

also, i only use discord because it works well, and i dont use spiritway heroes
should discord become useless, i try pvx builds and see if i can make some nice team of them.... especially with 7 heroes once its here

i wouldn't like it much if they did, although i dont care that much if they do
as for it being overpowered or weak, i say no, its an alright skill
i use discord, although its not from pvx, someone i know has edited it and gave me

oh yea, i said i will make my own team, but i also can say, that i'll find out builds mae for certain areas, like cold dmg at fire enemies (maybe toxic chill) and such on my heroes

without discord some of us would have to make new builds/copy other builds, and as long as i make own builds, and some others keep using pvx, a nerf wont hurt much
i would say its not required, i mean, pugs asking for discord isnt the skill's fault, but the pug's fault

well, thats what i had to say, hope i didnt go too offtopic at some points, although i didnt go more offtopic than some others

ps. i did search for good general pve builds for heroes without using skills which exploit corpses, but i will make them myself.

(sry i did go offtopic a bit, just wanted to make something clear )

Wasn't UWSC with pre-nerf Shadow Form something like 7-8 minutes? As for Ursan, it's less a SC as it is a simple build. Today's UWSC clears things faster than Ursan not because Ursan was nerfed, but because Shadow Form was buffed.

Also it takes time for a newly buffed skill to be implemented. Spiritway in its present form didn't take hold immediately after spirits got buffed, same should apply to Shadow Form.

Reading about the ursan nerf solely in terms of underworld speed clearing: Ursan was not nerfed solely because of UW clears. It was nerfed because of EVERYTHING clears. It was overpowered EVERYWHERE, with absolutely no limitation. You could roll anything under the sun with 6 ursans and 2 monks(or 3 ursans and 1 monk, or 4 ursans, one monk and one whatever), period. It eliminated ALL the other skills in the game besides those that directly improved ursan blessing.

You answered your question with the point you made. The problem is that to even maintain 30 DPS with Discord the Necro has to spend 1.75s (1s + .75s aftercast) out of every 3 seconds. To be realistic, a Discord caster can't even cast other skills without eating into the Discord damage unless his bar is entirely full of spells that take .5s or less to cast (hint: it isn't). Rodgorts Invocation on the other hand is only spending 2.75s out of every 10 seconds, costing a caster less then half as much time as Discord. Rodgorts invocation also has a high AoE multiplying the DPS with every enemy inside it, inflicts burning (an extra 42 damage per hit, though not stacking with multiple characters), is not elite, and doesn't have asinine requirements to be met before its used. And let me also mention that Rodgorts invocation isn't even a great skill, its only really good in stupid tank-n-spank situations where you can ball enemies up to massively exploit the AoE. It still beats Discord though.

My main is a monk and most of my friends no longer play.

...I could use spiritway, but my remaining vew vq's are AoE heavy, and I don't much like having to wait for the spirits to recharge between battles.

Knocklocking with ymlad & evas is more than enough to deal with healers, 9 times out of 10.

It's fun being a spirit spammer and doing more single target damage than 3 discord spammers.