Bleh, i've been playing a few days with 6 mesmers, ER Prot and a monkie now and it feels completely moot. Having either a MM or Spirits is a must, and solid single target damage is allso very benefitial for the remaining mobs after the main group is spiked as it saves your mesmers from using energy intensive spells to finish off easy mobs. For some zones such as Raiasu Palace explorable of UW\FoW mobs group up easely enough for a pure mesmer team \ AoE focused team to work sure. But in atleast 90% of this games zones and missions having a MM is without a doubt the way to go. Most importaintly, 4 mesmers is enough to spike down any kind of clumped group in pretty much the same time as 6 mesmers does it, and anyone saying mesmers are the best choice versus the remaining single targets is just plain wrong. Allmost regardless of what character I play my primary build uses very little variation from this one currently.



3x Discord Heroes (Standard setup apart from subbing putrid bile in for shadow of fear)
4x Mesmer Heroes (PI, Panic, Esurge and Ineptitude)

I may end up making a longer post about this at a later point but in short, my experience is that no matter how much testing I do. Nothing is superior to discordway as a backline as you simply put, got enough AoE with 4 mesmers to wipe any kind of clumped up group and discord does a great job in every single aspect of the battle.

In the start of the fight, discordway heroes will not be spamming discord as conditions for it are not met, so they will focus on casting skills such as putrid bile and enfeebling blood.

In the middle of the fight, they will be bizzy healing and protting the team, and they do a great job at that, peticularily at outhealing elementalists as they can instantly drop Ashes for a quick and powerfull team heal.

When the mesmers have taken care off the main group, they will use discord to finish up any stragglers that got outside of the mesmer AoE.

And perhaps most importaintly, on top of doing all that other great stuff they supply minions which basically triples the amount of pressure your team can handle. Because basically, a group having no minions will be targetted one hell of a lot more then one that has minions and once that patrol comes in towards your back or you fail at sneaking past a couple of groups. Thats a huge deal!

With a nuker group, an ER prot and a monk and no minions. You can clear house incredibly quickly versus grouped up foes. And you can handle between 1 and 2 HM groups without much strain as long as theyre both coming from more or less the same direction. But you will have trouble versus multiple foes with fire spells \ chaos storm \ RoJ as they will target your group directly. Even if you flag them away that is in a matter of secounds a huge amount of damage to your group. And you will allso have trouble if the enemys are coming from too many directions, some encounters in this game have foes coming from 2-3-4 directions at the same time in small groups. Those give you trouble because your big damage AoE spikes cant hit them all and therefore has too long cooldowns.

With a nuker group and a tank, say 5 mesmers 2 non MM necromancers or ER prot + monk and an assassin with flashing blades or shadowform. You can handle 20-30 HM mobs coming from one direction, alternaught with a little strain on your team. But groups coming from behind or not attacking your assassin first can quickly cause a lot of trouble.

With Discordway and a 4-5 mesmer nuke group or a human ritualist, you can handle 20-30 foes at the same time coming from multiple directions and you can allso use the time given by the minions to reposition yourself and get to a more advantageous position where the enemies arrive at a more proper pace or more clumped up. And you can more easely deal with single targets.

With Discordway + SoS and SoGM ritualists along with Panic and Ineptitude mesmers you can handle the sky falling down with baboons raining from it and about a hundred enemies coming from 200 different directions at the same time as a monkey farts "God Save the Queen" in reverse! But because of the lack of AoE damage it will be slower over time as you practically never do those 6-7 secound fights and often end up running away from the spirits and not having them for the majority of the next fight.

So in the end, my conclusion is that Discordway + Mesmers and no non human ritualists is the best way to go and that ER Prot setups are subpar for the majority of the games zones. And people tend to forget that discordway doesnt just deal single target damage, it allso deals amazing amounts of AoE damage thru Putrid Bile and Death Nova. And while that damage was insignificant in the past that was because of the lack of other sources of AoE damage, when combined with mesmers it gives necromancers an easely triggered in the area armor ignoring nuke instead. Which combines very well with the allready existing mesmer AoE damage.

And as a final word:
YOU DO NOT NEED THE DISCOCALLER BUILD WITH AP\YMLAD\EVAS AND FH! Mesmer and necromancer heroes will be enough by themselves to meet the requirements for discord beeing casted.

And anyone that disagrees can feel free to PM me ingame if they want a heads up for any kind of task that doesnt require as super specific build. Cons\No cons\SF tank or whatever I dont really care. That means no DoA \ FoW HM or UW in short, as those zones are very much unlike any other zones in the game. -Yuri Zahard ingame

And im starting to get real tierd of the bullshit people sprout about discordway beeing subpar to say an ER focused setup. Because I probably have around 40 heroes fully kitted out in this game across my different characters, I have triple warriors, dervs, rangers, I have lots of necros in all shapes and sizes I have sins and monks all with perfect equip, runes and sup vigors and whatever. I've tested so many builds now and in the end theres simply no way outside of this beeing the generally best backline you can get for the majority of the game regardless of your class.