Afflicted HM, Heroes viable enough?

These afflicted aren't significantly harder than anything we've faced before.
A few of the quests put us into difficult situations, but typically it's only numbers that give rise to difficulty. I think there's something of a bias against melee professions though. If you have melee, you have SY, so I would certainly disagree. All you have to do is preprot yourself while you make the party invincible and nothing save massive enemy numbers can take you down. You might have to position yourself somewhat intelligently or take down targets in a semi-efficient order to keep enchants up, but that is hardly a 'bias'.

If you have melee, you have SY, so I would certainly disagree. All you have to do is preprot yourself while you make the party invincible and nothing save massive enemy numbers can take you down. You might have to position yourself somewhat intelligently or take down targets in a semi-efficient order to keep enchants up, but that is hardly a 'bias'. They have better anti-phys stuff than they have anti-caster and the Soul Explosions don't matter at all for a caster. Ever since the Ritualist update, SY has been less important, moreso since the 7 hero update. With spirit heroes, I feel SY is just not important. In fact, I find that unless the player wants to massively abuse the AI via more precise aggro control (body blocking, balling, etc) then SY more allows him to function without worrying too much about the state of his heroes.
Of course, physicals still dominate for damage and the best results are probably going to come from a melee phys, but I find caster primaries just have an easier time of it; at least for the Necromancer and Mesmer.
It is quite possible (and arguably probable) that I'm biased though; I've spent over half my playtime on my Necro. Maybe I just play a physical completely wrong (although I do enjoy success on my Assassin).

They have better anti-phys stuff than they have anti-caster and the Soul Explosions don't matter at all for a caster. Ever since the Ritualist update, SY has been less important, moreso since the 7 hero update. With spirit heroes, I feel SY is just not important. In fact, I find that unless the player wants to massively abuse the AI via more precise aggro control (body blocking, balling, etc) then SY more allows him to function without worrying too much about the state of his heroes.
Of course, physicals still dominate for damage and the best results are probably going to come from a melee phys, but I find caster primaries just have an easier time of it; at least for the Necromancer and Mesmer.
It is quite possible (and arguably probable) that I'm biased though; I've spent over half my playtime on my Necro. Maybe I just play a physical completely wrong (although I do enjoy success on my Assassin). The afflicted don't have anything I would call anti physical except for some enchant stripping annoyingness (things like empathy and dulled weapon don't count, -15 damage on my base attacks doesn't matter when you aren't relying on base weapon damage to kill groups).

Great thing about SY is that it frees up the ST rit slot, rits aren't exactly underpowered in their offensive roles and even if you don't want a 2nd offensive rit you can just change Razah over to a Mesmer and raep moar. Anyone who thinks they have a build that can't be improved by a third Mesmer is probably horribly wrong.

I can't honestly see a caster heavy group being strong/offensive enough to reliably beat Tracking the Corruption without the lame easy mode camping of corners. Granted, Tracking isn't an anti-afflicted quest, but I'm sure this thread is really about WoC enemies in general and Am Fah/Jade Brotherhood pose no special counters more deadly than the afflicted while they also lack any death explosions to annoy you with.

I may be biased considering that the melee class I used was Derv, though. On the other hand the other melee professions aren't THAT much weaker. I didn't even use SY throughout almost all of HM WoC because IMO it just wasn't needed and Death's Charge let me kill groups faster.