5-6 Paragon Mercenary Heroes for 7H team?

TLR - is a team composed primarily of paragon heroes viable in HM for non-Paragon primary professions? I saw the 7h Racway build on PvX, but that is for a Paragon primary, however, if the player character combined Order of Pain and EBSoH on their bar, and brought an extra 2 paragons in place of the necros, would it still be viable?

Hey all,
I have been working on making a team build that is extremely survivable in HM while also dealing plenty of damage. I bought the 8 mercenary heroes. My main is a warrior, and what I ended up with is:

2 monks running Unyielding Aura, heals, and Fall Back
1 Necro with BIP and curses
1 SoS rit + 3 hex removal
1 ST Shelter + 3 hex removal
1 ST Displacement + heals and 3 hex removal
1 ST Rejuvenation, Recuperation and heals and 1 hex removal

A lot of defense, and I, as a W/A dagger spammer, am the offense along with the spirits.

This build works great for my Warrior, Assassin, and probably my Dervish, and possibly my Ranger as a R/A. However, it sucks for my casters, as Casters are not great in melee and the build needs the player to do the damage. So with my casters, I was going to go discordway. However, I am dissatisfied with the results thus far.

I had created mostly ritualists, necromancers, and a couple mesmers from my mercenary heroes, but here is my question:

Have any of you made a team of 5-6 paragons, with you as the Order of Pain and Ebon Vanguard Stands of Honor caster, with 1-2 slots for ritualists? I remember reading that a full team of Paragons is brutally powerful and difficult to defeat, and wondering if that was any of your's experiences. If so, how did you set up your team build?

It would be nice to be able to just set my heroes, plant EBSoH and cast OoP, and let my heroes do the work. I just want to see if it is actually viable before investing in remaking all of my mercenaries and equipping them.


All I need to know how survivable and offensive such a build would be from your experience, not whether it would be "boring" to play.

Thank you in advance.


For the Mods, in case the build posted above was not enough justification for this post, my paragon team would be:

5 paragons:
2 command
3motivation

2 ritualists:
1 ST shelter
1 SoS (or a healer if I need more healing)

Myself as an Order of Pain and EBSoH caster.

I can't remember the exact team set-up, but I vanquished the world and did the dungeons in HM on my main with a team almost exactly like that. It consisted of 5 Paragons (2 Motivation, 2 Command and 1 Leadership specialist), 1 Panic Mesmer, 1 SoS Healer Necro, and 1 Soul Twisting Rit.

However, I wasn't playing an OoP caster, being one of the Paragons myself, infact I didn't have Order of Pain at all, and the only Enchantments I was running were Protective Spirit and Shield of Absoprtion, as I had the Paragons all under Brutal Weapon (which as I'm sure as you know doesn't work when you are enchanted) relying on the Paragons and the ST Ritualist for all other defense. This had the added benefits off making the team just as capable in areas with heavy enchantment removal as it was in those without (as Shouts, Echos, Chants, Spirits and Weapon Spells can't be stripped as I'm sure you also know).

However it all worked very well and kills were fast indeed, with an untiring defense. As a result I can't see any reasons why a similiar team set-up (just using OoP instead of Brutal Weapon) wouldn't work, you'd just have to be more careful in areas with heavy enchantment removal.

So if you configured your team right, you would have no problems with surviability and offense at all, and it's certainly very viable.

However, you probably wouldn't always be able to sit around and let the heroes do all the work, due to the nature of the A.I. and obstructible objects, you'd have to make sure to micro-manage your heroes at times to stop them throwing their Spears endlessly at visible and invisible walls and what not, and at times you'd have to plan your offense against mobs too (mostly in some HM dungeons), so you wouldn't always be able to sit back and let the Heroes do everything, though it's true most of the time you could just charge in and come out on-top due to the multi-layered defense such a team tends to offer.

Just going to say that you are probably overkilling it a tad with spirits and heals in the first one. A better method, in my opinion, would be to bring a mesmer and just stop the mobs from doing damage, (panic, ineptitude, physics instability) as well as bringing minor damage as well.

The idea of paragons, is indeed a fantastic one, as long as the party is equipped correctly. Instead of straight spear attacks, a good way to pile on the damage is equip all your paragons with...bows.

Using the skill volley, which attacks three targets, in conjunction with splinter weapon, mop, and effective targeting, will decimate balled mobs, while creating a ton of adrenaline for the paras.

You would want 2 using command, 1 leadership (anthem of flame, they're on fire) 2 motivation. You should use orders and wards and mop, that leaves you room for a mesmer/prot hybrid (they really are good) and a minion master/healer hybrid like http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:N/any_Minion_Bomber

When pulling, all you really need to micro is protective spirit on yourself, flag heroes away, and then pull the enemies effectively, and line of sight should be no problem.

With 3+ p/ I'd consider shifting bip onto one of the paras.

If you're going to be running a bunch of para heroes, you'd probably get more out of using an AP MoP build rather than being an orders bot.

Offensive spirits and minions synergize well with Command line shouts since they affect allies. So a minion master and SoS Rit would fit well into a 5 para team. With so many physicals, maybe 2 copies of splinter weapon are necessary. This team would shine in NM and low pressure HM areas. However, I don't think this group would work well in high pressure HM areas due to lack of unconditional damage, single target damage and lack of hex removal.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User:Khomet/Kway

If you are P/W, W/P, R/W you can bring Save Yourselves and be a quasi-imbagon even if you are not a paragon primary. Ranged attackers are preferred because time spent chasing enemies means less attacking, less adrenaline, and less Save Yourselves. If you can't (or don't want to) play a defensive role you can go all offense and bring an ST Communing rit to provide the defense.

Try to play to the team's strengths by bringing things like Orders, more paragon chants and shouts, Splinter Weapon, Great Dwarf Weapon, Judge's Insight, EBSOH, etc. I vanquished every continent with a team like this, it works.

re: splinter weapon, I find that physical teams need at least one copy of splinter for every two physical attackers and possibly even more if the physicals have multi-attack capability (barrage, scythes, whirlwind attack). bring as much as you can.