What would everyone do without Discord?

That's again short-sighted. You do not have to cast Discord every time it's cooled down; neither do you have to cast Rodgort's Invocation. You are perfectly free to cast other spells on your bar if you want to. You are free to "eat into the Discord damage" if doing so benefits you. So the damage output on a Discord Necro is nowhere near ~30 DPS (in fact I'll wager it's way above ~30 DPS, especially if backed by a 40/40 Death Magic set).

Discord is clearly one of the best Necro elites around in the hands of a hero. It's certainly one of the better elites across all professions as well. If you're going to hate Discord, do so for valid reasons.

Discord nerf would make a lot of things change. Except maybe for 2 areas upon all , most can be done with anything . I personally did some with iway warriors and many just with SoH monk + 2 sf eles so....

However , it would be a better question to ask what would everyone do without Shadow Form...

I know Ursan was never a speed clear... thats why I put it in parenthesies. The SF buff was actually a while before the Ursan nerf.

The current speedclear using Sins was actually due to a competition here on Guru where Ursan Haters got together and made a competition to find a team of 7 players (plus a non combatant judge who suicided at the start and looked through deathcam at players to check that no illegal skills were used in the team build).

The idea was to make a team build that works in the UW without using any PvE skills. Cons were grudgingly allowed, because the Judges had no way of controlling the honesty of the teams using personal cons, so all and any cons were allowed for every team to openly use.

Shortly after that Ursan was nerfed for the first time I beleive. The successfull team build was published on Wiki a few months later after being modiffied to be even faster and include an active 8th player. That was the birth of UWSC using Sin teams.

I only put the example of Ursan in the UW situation to show an extreme situation of what crying about a skill can get you. In the end players got creative instead of only playing Ursan "builds" and thought of even more effective builds which after loads of rounds where players cried about skills being overly strong and anet nerfing them we are at a situation where the metas are faster, more effective and a lot safer completing something the players were originally crying about. If for example Anet decided to completely unnerf Ursan again to the point where it was ranged armor ignoring damage you would get teams forming again... but UWSC teams would be laughing at them because they could do the same as them but be able to complete 3 runs in the time the Ursans would take to stumble around in a huge roaring mob.

Takein into context here with this thread... If Anet decided to nerf Discord, players would just find new skill and team combinations which would in the end be much more effective than Discord builds are now... and can you guess what will happen then? Yup... players will whine and cry at Anet because that new build takes no skill, is too overpowered, is boring or whatever untill Anet nerfs that new skill/build... starting the everlasting cycle again.

Again, you can't argue with numbers. You can't say: "I don't think this 2 is a 2, I think it's a 1". Either it is, or it isn't.

Ignoring 40/40 sets, as they can be used for any build, and thus be left out for every build, it's 126 damage/3 seconds (under masochism). This results in 42 DPS, going from the fact that every discord goes through and that you can meet the condition for a hex and a condition every 3 seconds. (Which is reasonable with enfeebling and aoe hexes)

However, the DPS is just that, it's 42. Unlike a physical which can be buffed and buffed and buffed, you won't be able to buff a discord necro. Part of this also lies in the difference between discord and other builds:

In other builds the player, in one form or the other, supplies the majority of the damage, and heroes are there to do what they do best, which is support. In discord, however, you rely on heroes doing the damage, are they're stuck to non-PvE skills. (So non EOTN etc)

Discord is a reliable build in such a way you can pretty much always meet the damage condition, and their support works in just about every area in the game, however the damage they do is just so below-par a physical buffer, or AoE damage bars it makes discord a pretty "bad" elite by PvE standards.

What discord does is takes out enemies one at a time, which is fine for vanquishing, but when talking about speedvanquishing or elite areas (DoA) where there is douzens of balled up foes, one splinter weapon rit will probably outDPS 3 discordheroes, that's with only splinter weapon on his bar.

A non-AoE skill, no matter how powerfull, will never be concidered "rediciously OP" by PvE standards as long as warriors can go in and use one whirling swing to kill an entire group of lvl 28 monsters.

Actually, it implies that the statement it's attached to, or precedes, will be blunt or otherwise unwelcome news to the reader/person being responded to rather than sugar-coated, not any actual dishonesty. Maybe it's a regional distinction. *shrug*

Only for a relatively minor, but VERY vocal, portion of the community. The rest of us mainly used Ursan as a placeholder 'til we got decent Elites for our professions or because we listened to all the hype and then dumped it out of boredom with the all-Ursan teams (assuming we had the r8 Norn being demanded most of the time) and went back to regular builds. (I fall into both categories and most of the people in the guilds I've been in over the years fall into one or both of the categories as well)

Tank-and-spank is hardly stupid, especially in GW where it actually takes effort to do at all reliably and with any sort of safety for the tank thanks to the way aggro works (with players holding caster weapons and lower armor & health being the priority targets, even if they're at the very edge of the critter's perception). In other games you just need someone to go in first and beat on things and/or have taunting skills (usually class-based to make things easy) that specifically focus aggro.

Yeah, I don't think a single Whirling Attack/Crude Swing/Yeti Smash is going to do much to a group of level 28 critters. I'd really love to know how other Warriors are able to get good damage 'cos those skills rarely do more than 30 or so damage per hit for mine...

Missing the point.

The strength of Discord teams is repeatable spikes.
Equivelent DPS over time is irrelevant.

One player with 3 Necros can spike a called target for 378. Easy kill every three seconds. Assuming the caller brought appropriate skills and knows what they're doing.

One player with 6 Necros can spike for 756. Insta-gib, every 3 seconds. That's me, using extra heroes from a second account.

Buffed Warriors generally have to move between targets to pull off spikes like that. Which is comparitively slow, and in doing so they become vulnerable to AoE. Necros can be spread out and hardly have to move, if at all.

Stuff like splinter weapon and other AoE requires enemies to be bunched to be effective. Discord does not.

That simplicity and effectiveness make it popular. There will probably always be tactics, builds etc that can outperform it for a given situation, but Discord teams are the Path Of Least Resistance for a lot people, no thought or planning needed. I use many different team builds, but I also use Discord plenty, cos a) I'm lazy these days and b) don't care what anyone thinks of me.

While it's true, don't forget that to be a powerful, imba warrior, you need either some microing on your heroes or other players. Discord is easy to use - you never really need to micro anything on heroes - and works well while H/Hing.

I never use/d this skill. Again it would be another community "disastrous" change with no significant impact on casual players but with significant amount of whine on gw forums.

Even if this were true, you're missing the point:

Discord "only" does 42 DPS. This number is a set amount, and won't ever, ever, increase. There is nothing you can do in this intire game that would increase the damage on a discord hero.

However, if we're talking about a warrior with AoE attack skills, the more foes you hit, the higher your DPS gets. In HM, I average at around 25 damage per hit with Cylcone Axe (and triple is about 50). If you run triple chop and cylcone axe, you got, ignoring auto attacks, (25*2)+ 50= 112,5 Damage per 10 seconds per foe.

This means that for every foe you have around you, your DPS increases by 11,2. (And this is full ignoring auto attacking) When you have 4 foes around you, which isn't much even by regular play standards, a single unbuffed warrior does more than a discord necro.

This all is assuming you're not using splinter, Strength of Honor, Mark of Pain or other warrior buff's skills.


The point I'm making is: Single targe damage is nothing compared to AoE damage.


And you seem to forget: In the 3 seconds it takes you to kill 1 foe one warrior with splinter weapon and/or Mark of Pain will have kill an intire mob. What you say is intirely true: Discord does kill a foe every 3 seconds, esp with 7 hero team.

So let's say there's a group of 5 foes, a discord team would need 15 seconds to kill all of them. (Or 12 if you wanna argue the first discord comes at 0 seconds)
A team with AoE skills, lets assume splinter, would kill all foes simutaniously after the second splinter, which is at 10 seconds. (or 5 if you want to argue te first splinter comes at 0 seconds)

Discord will definatly get the "first" kill, but getting the first kills means nothing when you can kill all of them 5 seconds later. The fact that discord has to kill one by one is it's weakness, and the reason why discord can never be truly overpowered compared to AoE skills.


I don't know if you've played warrior in PvE, but I've recently vanquished all of Tyria, I'm currently working on cantha and elona, and I've done UW NM with heroes aswell. (Tried HM)

I've never, ever, came to a situation where "moving between targets" was an issue for the obvious reason that PvE monsters do not kite. Even in HM, you can just flail away as a warrior without having to worry about them kiting whatsoever. (which is why skills such as bull's strike are useless in PvE) The ONLY monsters that do kite is healers when there's more than 2 people in their "party" that are already wanding/casting spells, and even then they often just wand themselves instead of kiting.

There's not reason why splinter rits, Ineptitude mesmers, insert any form of AoE damage dealer, wouldn't be able to kite.

Also, foe being balled up is a non issue in PvE, you should know this by now. Even UW HM, concidered to be the hardest area in the game, gets farmed solely due to the fact that you almost insta kill mobs with aoe skills. (keystone for example)

Wrong.

There's these things called Essences of Celerity. And Mesmer Fast Casting. And if you're human, there's also Slices of Pumpkin Pie. And Rock Candies. A Mesmer could also use Arcane Mimicry to have both Discord and Assassin's Promise on their bar, for instant recharge on Discord (they'd have to drop signet of illusions, which could cancel any DPS avantage. I'm not gonna bother to test it).

Faster recharge and/or reduced cast time -> more frequent casts of Discord -> higher DPS

You can also use Grail of Might to increase hero attributes by +1 thereby increasing Discord damage, and DPS. Human players can get another +3 with Lunar Fortunes, Candy Corn and Golden Eggs.

Ha! :-D

Yes I have. And I found it extremely rare that all enemies come and stand right next to me, so I can hit them without having to move. I have to move to the targets, frequently. Many PVE monsters certainly DO kite. And hero Warriors, being pretty dumb, move around even more. Discorders don't need to move around so much.

Everybody knows what AoE can do. There's no point banging on about the maths of it. It's not going to convince anybody to stop using Discord, for the reasons already given. Discord is too easy, too brainless, and works in too many places with no hero micromanagement.

Discord? Who gives a shit? I've never even considered using this skill. The fact that shadow form still exist in this game says it all really. Not to mention they have tried to stop it by every means available save changing the skill itself. Try doing a full uw run now without resorting to crap like "sf sin", "tank'n'spank" and "emo bonder".

IMO get rid of these 3 gimmicks and restore uw to what it was and people can actually pug it and have fun. Discord, save yourselves, SoH, spirit spam etc does not even come close to the current shit meta.

When scrubs can be more successful running buttonmash and permanent invincibility than people relying on key interrupts, positioning and active prots something is terribly wrong.

DPS isn't everything. Frankly, damage per target is every bit, if not more, important.

I envy you somehow managing to get more than one or two critters to stay adjacent to you instead of running around like mad to chase the squishies...

Lucky you. For me, pretty much everything melee is in constant motion chasing after the squishies. And the spellcasting types start running as well if I get even one hit on them, stopping only to cast. The running around is bad enough, especially in HM, that I rarely bother with an IAS since I have to have Sprint running pretty much non-stop (and, at 13 Strength, it's good for that with only 2s, plus a little for my slow reflexes, downtime - and even when I run 0 Strength, its 8s with 15s recharge is still damned good), and even that barely lets me keep up since most things seem to be running at +33%. :/

And forget about having more than two foes adjacent at one time, not counting Ritualists who're still on top of their spirits. Happens so rarely for me that it can't be relied upon.

We might as well be playing two totally different games, frankly.

I do not know, because this isn't something I participated in. But I'm one of the pioneers of spiritway (in fact I'd go so far as to say that I put together the current form of spiritway), and I know how I came up with the builds I use. Like many other people I used Discordway prior to the spirit buff. After the buff, I started experimenting with Ritualist heroes. The builds went through multiple changes: at one point for example the SoS hero had Communing defensive spirits, while the SoGM hero had Shelter and Displacement etc. It took quite a while (months) before the builds crystalized into their current forms.

Although I do not know how SC builds originated, I would scarcely be surprised if they were any different. In fact they'd probably take even longer to put together, because you need 8 players to test a build. If it took months before spiritway surfaced after the Ritualist update - and that happened without a nerf to Discord, by the way - then it would take months for SF-based SCs to happen.

You can certainly cast other spells while Discord is cooling down. On its own, Discord might do 42 DPS, but a Discord Necro does not do 42 DPS. For the same reason a Fire Elementalist with Rodgort's Invocation does not do 12.7 DPS. What is stopping you from using Putrid Bile / Rising Bile / Vile Miasma, for instance?

40/40 sets don't apply to everyone. Physicals can't use them.

The player should indeed concentrate on damage. They have access to PvE skills and human intelligence. But Discordway doesn't rely on heroes to do damage. Take a look at the bars. In the current version of PvX Discordway, two of the Necros carry more Ritualist healing than damage, and the last hero has prots. Do you call them damage heroes? I don't.

Sure Discord DPS is low compared to buffed physicals. Pretty much all caster DPS is low compared to buffed physicals. But the AI can't play physicals well. So that removes buffing physicals from consideration, unless you the player are a Warrior. Which you might not be.

PS: Warriors are able to kill a horde of level 28 monsters with one Whirlwind Attack not only because of Splinter Weapon. If you've done it before, you know what skills are involved - Inspirational Speech, Mark of Pain, Hundred Blades, "By Ural's Hammer!", Shadow Form, Splinter Weapon, Death's Retreat. But then let's see you do that with a hero-based team.

Just capped Discord last night and took it for a spin. Certainly does seem a bit overrated. As far as I can tell, my Rit's spirits and the offensive henchmen the PvX page for the build says to bring were doing far more damage than the Discorders were, even on bosses. And, yes, I was constantly calling and had bound skill 1 for all three Heroes to easy to reach keys (F, V, and B). Generally, the henches and my spirits had killed the called target before I even had a chance to hit the Discords.

Of course, my Rit's a SoS spirit wrangler, so is blatantly overpowered and not really needing any *way for most spots, but if I do go with a *way for him, I think I'll stick with Sabway.

Not really, SoH, Splinter, barbs, OOP/DF, etc. do not need any micro during combat other than disabling SoH and casting it on your warrior, hero would maintain it.

MoP needs more micro, but even if you don't bother, you can still get some benefits out of it for those times when the hero happens to get it right. Even without micro on a warrior, you can out damage a lazy non-micro discordway.

Me thinks you did it wrong, I don't care what spirits you bring, they cannot spike an enemy like your discord team can. I like my sabway build way more than my 8 necro team. But comparing a VQ or HM mission between two teams and the discord wins most of the times.
Also my Rit with spirit team does do a lot of damage, but the annoying thing about spirits is mostly after the first kill they have the stupid issue of attacking multiple targets, does not speed up kills.
Just that discord team is kinda boring just like a spirit spamming rit is boring as shit.

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all three use kerrsh's staff and full survivors and the mm uses the one that decreases corpse exploit time. mm uses minor death and minor soul while the other just use minor soul all have sup vigor but majors do fine.
these are the builds i use when i use triple necros with my warrior. they all are designed to complement my play style. basically i wedge myself into the enemy group and tank while the heroes spam ancestor's rage, spirit rift, and xinrae's weapon. it works for almost every single hm area i rarely change it. the mm can be swapped between healing prayers/protection/or more rage spamming if i have either more necroes/heroes or a monk henchmen or something that uses healing or protection. and when im in cantha and i use the sos henchman i swap the sos necro's elite to icy veins. when the 7 heros come i can optimize the builds a bit by supplying more overall damage or healing because i wont be limited to 3 customizable npcs. the main thing people need to do is work on proper usage of heroes/henchmen like proper pulling and flagging techniques. target selection is also a big one. ive sued sabway and discordway both are nice when used right. discordway is more caster friendly where sabway is nice for melee players the builds i used now i came up with because of what i didnt like about sabway.

Run spiritway, mesmerway, paraway etc. Enough imba options these days.

All of these replies which get hung up on the "dps" potential of Discord in a vaccuum are silly.

Why even bring up how much dps Discord does? We all know that number isn't germaine to any discussion about a Discordway build. Why do y'all keep falling back on the "dps rating" of that one skill, and then quoting it like it's a relevant metric? That's just soo weird!

Anyhow, if Discord got removed, I bet we could make similar hero-based spike teams... maybe ShadowStrike->VampGaze (like the old days!) or something? Channeled Strike might work work too.

switch back to sabway.

ha

Discord is a spell that does nothing but damage. If we aren't rating it based on the damage it does then what should we rate it by? How cool the spell animation is?

get one human friend, 6 necros, 6x discord/putrid bile/shambling horror, some necros with suffering/shadow of fear/enfeebling blood/weaken armor.

counters: cry of frustration spam from wind riders in asuran territory

Judge it on the rest of the bar and on skills that could possibly replace Discord.

I never use it... soooo... there you have it

The rest of the bar is irrelevant if we are talking about whether Discord is overpowered or not. Necros in general are overpowered in PvE (though to be honest what class isn't nowadays?). That doesn't mean that any elite you stick on an already overpowered bar makes that elite overpowered.

As for skills stronger then Discord, the most obviously ridiculous examples are AotL and SS. Both stronger then Discord and don't require the necro to spend time spamming one skill to the neglect of the rest of the bar. As you point out, its the entire bar that matters. Using Discord effectively means you can't use the rest of your bar.

What? AotL does zero damage on its own. All it does is summon one Bone Horror. It won't summon more unless you wait another 45 seconds, and even then you'll only have like 3 minions max because you can't heal them. And you claim it is stronger?

Of course you have to include the rest of the bar when evaluating Discord. Discordway is a teambuild, not a one-skill show. AotL is arguably stronger than Discord, but that's only after you include the rest of the bar.

I can't believe you think using Discord means you can't use the rest of the bar. Is there some kind of supernatural force compelling you to keep using Discord?

Precisely the reason why heroes are good at Discord builds is because they can use Discord on enemies while simultaneously using other support skills. Ofc if you take some noob human and give him a Discord bar he'll just keep spamming Discord without doing anything else.

no effect one me, i'll just run a standard balanced group as always.

works well and while it ain't fancy or fast it works

discord blows for a human in my opinion u can easily just use necrosis the small drop in damage is worth it for the freed up elite slot and you dont have to spec into death magic if u dont want to. not to mention its easier to meet necrosis' needs. and its very very easy to get to rank 6-8 sunspear where the overall damage is good enough.

Have you tried putting Necrosis on your heroes?

Wait what?

AotL exploits all corpses in the area plus one for each exploited corpse and gives you a +1 to Death Magic. If your Necro hero is runed, that is an easy ten minions instantly when in combat or after combat.

Even during downtime, I'm sure you have a Monk hero that just loves to heal those minions non-stop. I know mine do all the time.

AotL gives you a mini army at all times basically. And when you start dropping mobs left and right, they just feed that army with one single spell instead of having to have a bar full of different minions and only being able to summon one minion at a time. AotL gives you ten minions instantly in one spell and bumps up your Death Magic.

OT: I don't use Discord anymore. Did at first when I was new cause it was easy to use. Now I use my own setup for heroes. All depends what kind of character I am playing. But gave up on Discord awhile back.

Im not a fan of Triple discord, but I am a fan of other triple necro hero builds and tend to use the 3 necro's (Livia, Olias, Whispers) all the time except if i want Rt SoS or need a hero monk.

I love the Triple vanquish setup found on PvX, which is SS, MM and Restoration Support.

Currently working on my own triple necro builds though.

Sooo much fail in one post its painful to read.

From what you are writing you have never used or read the skill description of AOTL. It exploits EVERY corpse in the area (Agro bubble + a little bit more) and resses a Bone minion out of EVERY exploited corpse and one additional Bone minion out of thin air. If you are nowhere near an exploitable corpse then you will be only getting the +1 minion

The downside of using AOTL on any bar is that any other MM will be basically useless for most of the time because of how AOTL uses up every corpse even if the minion cap has been reached.

As for calculating damage /spamming like theres no tomorrow from Discord builds... Discord is the hardest hitting skill on the Heroes bars and has such a short recharge that heroes should be spamming it and nothing else to maximize the damage dealt. The rest of the skills are there to support Discord (Conditions from Death Nova and Curses) and healing / Prot to keep the party alive.

There is one reason why the pvx discordway has mostly healing skills on 2 of its discord necro bars, the other one being a MB.

Discord is usually the only offensive skill on a discord necro hero bar because it has a short casting time and a fast recharge. This means you do not need another offensive skill on that bar, to compete for casting time when the hero AI determines that you are going on an offensive attack. Having a short recharge and fast casting time also works better with heals, when heals are needed, on the skill bar.

Never played Discord..waiting for minnions is too slow..me thinks.

I don't think people are getting Jeydra's post at all.

Saying Discord sucks because of its lonestanding DPS capability (35 DPS) is like saying AotL sucks because, lonestanding, it produces 1 minion with a 45 second recharge, which is crap.

What makes those skills good is bar compression and synergy. Discord is good because you can pack a full healer bar on top of it. 35 DPS isn't the issue, 105 armor-ignoring spike damage with party and spike heals on the same character is the issue. AotL is good because you compress an instant minion army and attribute buff into one skill and the rest of the build can carry whatever else, usually Death Nova and prots. The reason Discordway is effective is that you compress damage, de-buffs, prots, and heals into 3 characters. Each aspect on its own is rather unimpressive... there are lots of things that can play offense, defense, and shutdown better than Discord, but it's the compression that makes it worthwhile.

So please read before you attack someone. Honestly. Jeydra even says AotL is arguably better than Discord.

no because its a pve skill. someone further up the page was referring to discord on a human compared to heroes and i merely said its stupid for a human to use discord. i just forgot to qoute him.

No it isn't. Discord is able to perform a pretty specific task (spiking) on its own without too much dedication, which means the heroes have room for other stuff, while also enabling powerful minion spells through DM spec. It's pure bar compression, a strength that should certainly not be ignored.

I never claimed that. It's about taking the optimal skill for a specific team build. I'm arguing that Discord is exactly that.

Eh, you got it backward here, Discord usage is done in the time the hero is not healing up/spamming minions and even if it wasn't, 2 seconds is plenty of time to cast useful shit. If you're uncomfortable with the amount of time Discord is consuming, micro it. Not hard.

Concerning AotL, the power of the skill is that it allows you to put all the needed minion mastery in one skill, freeing up party space for non-Necromancer bars. It's pretty much completely uncomparable to Discord as Jagged Bones is favored over AotL for heavy Necromancer teams. More minions dying means more energy for the backline.

Concerning SS, same story really. If you're taking this skill, you won't be taking minion skills on the same bar, which either means you're running another Necromancer dedicated to minion mastery or no other Necromancers at all.

What you seem to be arguing is Sabway vs Discordway. They both require minimal micro, feature a lot of Necromancers and both have big defenses, lots of minions and lots of pressure. They, however, serve different purposes. Sabway is meant to be ran with physical-heavy teams whereas Discordway is best ran with casters. PvXwiki even puts an AP caller in the discordway by default. I'm pretty sure people run Discord because it's best for caster spike teams. If you want to argue otherwise, go ahead.

Continue to do what I currently do - use something better...

If you say Discord sucks because it deals 35 DPS (or whatever number it is from xxx damage / 2.75s), you say AotL sucks because it raises 1 minion. AotL alone does no damage, so you won't have 10 bodies to exploit, unless you think that 1 minion can kill 10 monsters.

The point is that you have to consider the rest of the bar. Discordway is not 3 Necros with Discord and nothing else. Discord Necros are not Necros with Discord and nothing else. Claiming that Discord does only 35 DPS implies the Necro has nothing else on the bar, which is ridiculous.

I think it's hilarious you think I've never used AotL when I've argued repeatedly for AotL over Jagged Bones or Discord on the Minion bomber.

If you really think spamming Discord is the way to go then I suggest you put a Discord Necro with no skills other than Discord against the MoD, and see what DPS you get (go ahead and bring skills that apply hexes / conditions on yourself). I'll do the same, with a Discord Necro that has other skills. If you get more DPS than me I'll concede defeat. Interested?

PS: Strictly speaking Discord does 0 DPS on its own because it's neither a hex nor a condition. Shows you how silly it is to claim that Discord does 35 DPS (or whatever number it is), no?