Balanced 7 Hero Team Builds

So I was having a thought today about balanced hero team builds. I don't know about other people but it gets boring after awhile just hiding behind your Necro, Mesmer, and Ritualist heroes. Does anyone even do balanced teams anymore? When I mean balanced I mean using warriors, ele's, monks etc! I believe it's time to dust off your Dunkoro and Koss and have some fun like the good old days!

I understand that balanced teams may not be meta like Discordway or Sabway. But not everything in this game is about breezing through it. I challenge people to come up with some pure balanced way teams. I would love to hear what you all would think could work.

Happy Wintersday everyone!

Balanced does not mean purposefully crippling your team by taking underpowered hero professions.
Balanced means that, across all 7 heroes, there is moderate healing, defense, utility, support, control and offense. This is why most 7 hero builds use a lot of mesmers, necros and ritualists, because they can provide lots of this easily (shutdown, armor-ignoring damage, spiritwalls, minionwalls, lots of energy for healing etc etc), allowing bar compression.
Taking a war or ranger makes it unbalanced (specifically, weak).

EDIT: It is also scary that people still refer to discordway and sabway as the "meta" for 7H builds. They were good because of the 3H limitations. Now they are awful. this should be meta.

I would just like to point out that discordway and sabway, now because of the 7H party did not suddenly become awful. They still work and are still very efficient, especially for the tough, limited party vanqs like minister cho's. It is simply that there are better options for full 7H teams, just like that there are better options than the "balanced". Certainly it will work, it just won't be as efficient.

It's difficult to really define "balanced" for PvE since almost everything is imbalanced in one form or another.

I'm currently using something that reminds balanced team. There are:
1 SoS
2 WS derv, tank
3 minion bomber, commander
4 panic mes with rupts
5 inept mes with anti-psych skills
6 invoker, commander
7 healing burst monk with mimicry
8 UA hybrid

However for small areas (4-6) I still prefer discord.

If you want, I'll ping you the builds as soon as I get home.

Quote: Originally Posted by Denar

Balanced does not mean purposefully crippling your team by taking underpowered hero professions. Actually, thats exactly what it means. Balanced teams are ones with a more balanced mix of professions.

What is scary is that some people nowadays see using underpowered heroes as "crippling". Uncommon hero professions may not be nearly as efficient as rits and necros, but you'll still be able to breeze through much of the game in HM with them (just not as fast as you would with the meta profs).

Then we'll have to agree to disagree. Balanced means that the end result of the build is that it is versatile. It does not mean inherently taking lots of different professions - though I would agree that in PvP this is what tends to happen.
However, in PvE, and when talking about heroes, a balanced build would not use warrior heroes as "tanks" or monk heroes as dedicated healers. Simply because either those roles are obsolete and unusable by the hero AI, or because other professions are simply better and bring more to the table (i.e. a necro dedicated healer is far more versatile than a monk, when any skills that may be lacking - prot, hex removal - can be spread amongst the rest of the party).
To give an example, the 7H build I linked to earlier would be balanced. Would you disagree? This would be an example of a build that is not so balanced - whereas with 7H Player Support you can generally c-space through everything - this requires a different playstyle entirely; if you muck up the pulling and balling required, the team will not be able to deal with any aggro on the backline as well.
And saying "lolPvEiseasy" is not justification for arguing useless hero professions are as effective as others.

Quote: Originally Posted by Denar

I use a 7-hero team based upon Mercenaries. The Mercenaries are based upon my active characters, not insta-PvP Mercs. So, my 7-hero team consists of me, me, me.
I don't give a rat's ass about whether it's 'balanced' or not - it works just fine for everything except some high-end HM DoA stuff and I have fun.
At the moment, the team consists of:

2 Rangers - 1 BHA/interrupt/volley, one splinter/volley
2 monks - 1 HB, 1 prot/resto
1 MM
1 SoS Rit
1 Mesmer
1 Ele (air)

With me filling whatever role my character is, and the rest heroes. Except, when I play my Necro, I play as an SS and let Livia do the MM, and when I play some character who's not on the list (I have toons of every class), I substitute as appropriate. Sometimes, the hero's builds are tweaked according to the situation, or I will change the team setup for specific areas, but generally speaking it works 99% of the time.

Every one has their own approach to the game, but for me, I'm not interested in optimizing things to do things as fast as possible or with as little effort as possible. I mostly want to enjoy myself.

Quote: Originally Posted by Lanier I guess we will have to agree to disagree because I do not find the 7H player support to be a "balanced" build. It consists entirely of casters, and to a large extent, all those casters are either mesmers, necros, or rits (although I know that occasionally a monk is used). OK, you seem to think balanced means that you need to take certain professions simply for the sake of taking a variety of professions. Look, I didn't use any hyperbole in that so you'll have to address that point rather than the words I used.

Quote: Originally Posted by Lanier It may not be balanced, but with the current imbalanced state of PvE skills, its a lot better than a balanced build would be. Oh wait, no! Now "balanced" means how powerful skills are relative to each other.

Quote: Originally Posted by Lanier Also, you might want to read my last post. I never said that non-monks, rits, necros, and mesmers were as effective as others.

Quote: When I mean balanced I mean using warriors, ele's, monks etc! From the OP.

The current argument is pointless because it's just one of semantics. The term "balanced" is abstract; as far as I know, no one ever set a definition for it on Guru and declared that the term was only supposed to be used in that one way. Consequently, it's pointless to argue about the meaning of the phrase, because the OP already explicitly stated what he meant by it. If it makes you feel better, pick a different term to describe what the OP wants to discuss. How about "diverse" hero teams?

With that said, I haven't experimented too much with balanced/diverse team formations, though I did use to play with a melee Derv hero, and I rarely noticed him having any problems with his AI (he alternated between VoS, AoB, and AoD builds, mostly). The main issue was keeping him alive against large mobs. Even with minion support and prots, when he went plowing into a group of 15 enemies or so, his survivability was shaky. Probably would have been a different story if I ran more melee support, but it seemed sort of silly with a caster main to base my team around supporting my one physical hero. Now, though, I run him as a tanky BiP build in a full CasterWay team.

Quote: Originally Posted by Denar OK, you seem to think balanced means that you need to take certain professions simply for the sake of taking a variety of professions. Look, I didn't use any hyperbole in that so you'll have to address that point rather than the words I used. Uh, yea, thats exactly what I think balanced is. Its not like I think this is ideal or anything.

Quote: Originally Posted by Denar Oh wait, no! Now "balanced" means how powerful skills are relative to each other. Silly Denar, there are multiple definitions of balance. The power of skills relative to each other is skill balance. This is what anet does (or fails to do) when they release skill updates. A balanced team build is completely different than balance among skills.

Quote: Originally Posted by Denar Contradiction much? And that's in two posts -.-
Also a bit rich, you telling me to read your last post again. I made the point that having a balanced team build means it has the capacity to be able to adapt to most situations - by having the shutdown, offense, defense etc etc I listed. Is that wrong? Should I really throw in an Earthshaker War instead of an SoGM rit or Illusion Mesmer (losing a LOT of defense and offense)? How would that make it any more balanced?
Why is it that 7 caster heroes can't be balanced? What are they lacking? Yes, yes, I know what balanced is in your opinion. I did read your two previous posts.

And wait... what? When did I ever say that bringing a warrior was superior to bringing a SoGM or Illusion mesmer. It might result in a more balanced team, but it wouldn't result in a better team.

Disregarding the arguments above, because tl;dr.

I personally don't like the meta "balanced" team builds. I find them to actually be worse than having dedicated roles. Too often I find my prot/MM and heal/SoS rit busy doing other things when I actually need them to take care of the group. Whereas a dedicated monk or N/Rt healer will be solely focused on healing, rather than maintaining minions or wasting Splinter Wep on my mes heros who happen to be equipped with caster spears...

On the argument of N/Rt vs a monk healer: the N/Rt is more efficient and lasts longer, but I find that my monk does better spike heals.

My team comp is as follows:
Me: HB/DSlash war
Healer's Boon monk
Prot monk
N/Rt healer
Rt/N AotL MM
Inept Mes
Panic Mes
Random other hero.

I usually fill my last slot with a R/P command barrager or PoD necro, sometimes an orders derv.

Quote: Originally Posted by Quaker

Quote: Originally Posted by Soryuju From the OP.
Quote:

The team I bring with me to in HM, in Slavers and only thing need to bring on my char is FS, consists of

Rit *2
Mes *2
Necro *3

imbalanced ;p

That being said, I will try something different with upcoming change to elementalist. Would like to see something different and still works as good.