In my 7-hero build, I actually play the main healer, which is basically a resto rit with expel hexes and a lot of party healing. As the backline I don't have to worry about my own position quite as much so I'm free to watch the field and micro my heroes as I see fit. I've done most of DoA (I actually have yet to try Mallyx, and I don't remember exactly what is needed specifically to defeat him), every dungeon in HM (including each area of Slaver's Exile), quite a bit of vanquisher, and I'm almost finished with Legendary Guardian. I know a lot of people will call my setup lackluster because it doesn't abuse PvE skills a lot, but to be honest I'm pretty lazy and dislike having to be the source of my party's damage.
Setup is basically as follows.
Me: Rt/Me expel-utility resto rit
SoS hero with smite utility
Offensive ST rt for more mobile spirits (I throw in enfeebling blood as the last skill since it's basically free aoe weakness and I have the slot available)
Panic (often micro for better placement)
Ineptitude with arcane conundrum
Esurge utility (shatter hex, etc)
AoTL with prots
Soldier's Fury paragon (anthem of envy for spirits, stand your ground, anthem of weakness, additional damage+occasional DW, hard res)
Dual rit spammers+MM+3 mesmers catching most of the main spellcaster/melee with some added passive defense from the paragon means a single healer is all that's really necessary. Again, I'm fairly lazy so this is why I made the setup like this. My team has strong healing, strong damage, amazing hex/condition control, decent defense, and gets the job done, which is what I basically want. In an area with little to no corpses, I'll often just put in something that fulfills the same role as appropriate. (Obviously, different areas call for a different replacement, but this is often a non-issue anyway)
I'm not saying my build is the absolute best, but I prefer it to a similar setup that has discordway, which is the point I was addressing.
Why Discordway is the best possible 7 hero backline.
AndroBubbles
Oopsies. I overcounted.Morte66
Well, lately I've been grinding Mt Quinkai a lot, leading from the front on my warrior or my spirit spamming/summoning rit. I've perceived a problem with my usual teams and various meta teams: the mobs don't bunch quite enough for pure AoE teams to be efficient, but they do bunch enough for single target teams to be a waste. So I tried a couple of things.
I tried going for really big AoE to get more foes in, using a couple of blood necros. That works ok, but only when I'm on my aggro-hogging SY-spamming warrior to keep them alive as they run into traffic.
I also decided to combine two things I've never used before: 3x searing flames and 3x discord. I played the rit and used 3 discord necros with resto/prot/curse secondaries, 3 E/P with "Fall Back", and a Fevered Dreams mesmer. It did work out pretty well. SF + weaken armour kills groups (monster AL is not too high on MQ), Discord kills outliers, the eles chain "Fall Back" outside combat, and Fevered Dreams sometimes improves SF's AoE. The times are level with my best teams, 17-18 mins, limited by travel time rather than kill speed. It's fragile at the start before I get minions raised, then pretty safe.
ISTM that when you want some single target damage but you don't want to build a whole team around it, Discord on the heal/prot/mitigation crew is decent. Now to see if I can find some other way to do the same thing better...
I tried going for really big AoE to get more foes in, using a couple of blood necros. That works ok, but only when I'm on my aggro-hogging SY-spamming warrior to keep them alive as they run into traffic.
I also decided to combine two things I've never used before: 3x searing flames and 3x discord. I played the rit and used 3 discord necros with resto/prot/curse secondaries, 3 E/P with "Fall Back", and a Fevered Dreams mesmer. It did work out pretty well. SF + weaken armour kills groups (monster AL is not too high on MQ), Discord kills outliers, the eles chain "Fall Back" outside combat, and Fevered Dreams sometimes improves SF's AoE. The times are level with my best teams, 17-18 mins, limited by travel time rather than kill speed. It's fragile at the start before I get minions raised, then pretty safe.
ISTM that when you want some single target damage but you don't want to build a whole team around it, Discord on the heal/prot/mitigation crew is decent. Now to see if I can find some other way to do the same thing better...
Showtime
I prefer ROJ > Discord in most areas now.
But they scatter in hm?
ROJ + KD's + minions/spirits = open area massacre's
Basic team:
1-2 Spirits (SOS restoration build can cover healing some areas in hm with a little help or a full healer.)
1 MM (AoTl restoration Sabs build, etc)
2+ RoJers (Monks/Necs with various prots and KD's)
1+ Mes PI interrupts/kds.
+1-3 ETC
RoJ Monk
RoJ Necro
Para support BIP w/they're on fire etc.
Earth Elem w/KD's and wards.
Sabs restoration Nec.
Monk healer
2nd Mesmer
???
Current lineup
SOGM with my ranger rit (would SOS, but dont want to heal)
1 SOS Restoration Hero
1 MM AoTl + Fiends (Dont need em, but like with Ebon Battle standard)
2 RoJ Prot Monks
1 RoJ Nec
1 Para Necro Sup BiP
1 Monk Healer (Works much better than a 2nd restoration, but could bring another ROJ here and hybrid the MM)
When played properly, not much kills mobs faster than a ROJ team. Sometimes you can use walls etc to help ball bad guys up, but even without walls it works. The most you might have to do is flag heros back a little and micro/click AoTL every so often. Since my main is a ranger, I've been using spirits with pve skills. You could AP or play any character with this team.
Set heros, set spirits, aggro, and they start dying. Battle standard for extra damage. Vamp spirit since I'm not a primary rit. Summon spirits works great. Can split aggro 4 ways to avoid area dam buy using 1 flag. I also help surround monk etc with spirits so they cant back away.
For big groups or multiples, I try to pull them to the spirits a little ways out and have the heros just outside aggro of the spirits. Bad guys go after me and spirits, I unflag, they go down. Basic stuff really. BiP helps for any prolonged fights. I vq'd all of cantha and most of tyria this way. Mostly start the fight then go scraping for cart title. Lornas pass.. no problem. Triple healers no problem. Just stretch them out a little, lock em up and nuke. Seems to work even better in Elonia. I've aggro'd 3-4 groups and as long as I keep the spirits and minions between the bad guys and my squishie roj team, not many problems. Talhora gets killed every so often. She seems to be the most aggressive smiter/hero. If I take a second to flag the mm a little back, she doesnt get touched.
Wars and sins can do some areas without spirits or minions, though walls etc will help. Flag heros back, ball up mob, unflag 5+ Rojers, watch em drop. There's a detailed thread somewhere on guru. Mines is just easy and mindless. His is a thing of beauty.
I'm still a fan of sabs nec teams. I've finished the game using a variation of sabsway (war) and discordway (nec). But in most areas RoJ is faster and less close calls or wipes. And that's using what can be considered a subpar class (ranger).
But they scatter in hm?
ROJ + KD's + minions/spirits = open area massacre's
Basic team:
1-2 Spirits (SOS restoration build can cover healing some areas in hm with a little help or a full healer.)
1 MM (AoTl restoration Sabs build, etc)
2+ RoJers (Monks/Necs with various prots and KD's)
1+ Mes PI interrupts/kds.
+1-3 ETC
RoJ Monk
RoJ Necro
Para support BIP w/they're on fire etc.
Earth Elem w/KD's and wards.
Sabs restoration Nec.
Monk healer
2nd Mesmer
???
Current lineup
SOGM with my ranger rit (would SOS, but dont want to heal)
1 SOS Restoration Hero
1 MM AoTl + Fiends (Dont need em, but like with Ebon Battle standard)
2 RoJ Prot Monks
1 RoJ Nec
1 Para Necro Sup BiP
1 Monk Healer (Works much better than a 2nd restoration, but could bring another ROJ here and hybrid the MM)
When played properly, not much kills mobs faster than a ROJ team. Sometimes you can use walls etc to help ball bad guys up, but even without walls it works. The most you might have to do is flag heros back a little and micro/click AoTL every so often. Since my main is a ranger, I've been using spirits with pve skills. You could AP or play any character with this team.
Set heros, set spirits, aggro, and they start dying. Battle standard for extra damage. Vamp spirit since I'm not a primary rit. Summon spirits works great. Can split aggro 4 ways to avoid area dam buy using 1 flag. I also help surround monk etc with spirits so they cant back away.
For big groups or multiples, I try to pull them to the spirits a little ways out and have the heros just outside aggro of the spirits. Bad guys go after me and spirits, I unflag, they go down. Basic stuff really. BiP helps for any prolonged fights. I vq'd all of cantha and most of tyria this way. Mostly start the fight then go scraping for cart title. Lornas pass.. no problem. Triple healers no problem. Just stretch them out a little, lock em up and nuke. Seems to work even better in Elonia. I've aggro'd 3-4 groups and as long as I keep the spirits and minions between the bad guys and my squishie roj team, not many problems. Talhora gets killed every so often. She seems to be the most aggressive smiter/hero. If I take a second to flag the mm a little back, she doesnt get touched.
Wars and sins can do some areas without spirits or minions, though walls etc will help. Flag heros back, ball up mob, unflag 5+ Rojers, watch em drop. There's a detailed thread somewhere on guru. Mines is just easy and mindless. His is a thing of beauty.
I'm still a fan of sabs nec teams. I've finished the game using a variation of sabsway (war) and discordway (nec). But in most areas RoJ is faster and less close calls or wipes. And that's using what can be considered a subpar class (ranger).
FoxBat
I do have to agree that dedicated healer heroes are somewhat questionable, and even if going that route, no more than one. There are scenarios where you need some extra healing to live, and many where you don't, including the start of nearly every battle; and you don't want your healer doing nothing during the latter time. The fact that you can distribute skills across your heroes does nothing to change that healing is simply unneeded at the start of every fight, and in PvE you will be facing alot of "start of every fight" as well as easy mob downtime where excessive healing is just not needed.
Discord is just far from the only way to set up an offensive backline, I've found spirits work at least as well, there's also curses, RoJ, or mesmery stuff. I'm not really convinced that discord is vastly inferior for all options and situations, but neither is it clearly superior either.
My only real issue with S/D/M is you ought to be running more AoE. 4 mesmers + 2-3 discord OR 2 spirits + 1 hybrid healer are fairly close. But either is miles ahead of standard S/D/M, considering both spirits and discorders are largely single target damage.
Discord is just far from the only way to set up an offensive backline, I've found spirits work at least as well, there's also curses, RoJ, or mesmery stuff. I'm not really convinced that discord is vastly inferior for all options and situations, but neither is it clearly superior either.
My only real issue with S/D/M is you ought to be running more AoE. 4 mesmers + 2-3 discord OR 2 spirits + 1 hybrid healer are fairly close. But either is miles ahead of standard S/D/M, considering both spirits and discorders are largely single target damage.
FoxBat
Quote:
Originally Posted by thetwistedboy
Quote:
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Who cares about cleaning up the "stragglers"? They should not be any kind of threat to your group and dealing with them isn't a problem at all.
Maybe this just shows your interest. The tacit part of this argument is about speed and efficiency. If mere survival is your goal, then yes dedicated healers will do that better.
thetwistedboy
@FoxBat, I have read that and noticed that sometimes, but when I was testing and using Discordway back in the old days of 3 heroes, I'd gotten wiped several times do them using discord instead of healing. Just my experience. All in all, Discordway wasn't particularly great on any of the characters then I played on. That's why I am really opposing it's usage in so many hero teams that are coming out.
Miteshu
Barrageway spikes faster than Discordway.
Don't forget Barrageway is AoE too!
AndroBubbles
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaida the Heartless
Quote:
Quote: Discordway is just a reminisce of the old 3-heroes system when you dont need to micro your heroes for an effective build. With 7 heroes, there are now lots of better builds with higher DPS and better prots than S/M/D, that almost anyone can use without micro either. Quote:
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