Team Build: Markway / Physway 7H

ST+Shelter is, 90% of the time, totally unnecessary if you're not playing badly and 100% uptime on shelter is, as far as I can tell, unnecessary 100% of the time.
Shelter is a crutch which you take out of laziness and the template it goes in is invariably going to be an ugly one to behold.
That said, the power of it, with ST, is such that the bar pushes itself ahead of most of its competitors, regardless of what else is shoved on it. Preaching to the choir, Xeno.

I'm curious what other people take on their ST bar. Since shelter spam isn't needed 100% of the time even in zones where ST is useful, I've found the best option is to fill up the rest of the bar with offensive spirits and let Razah run with them in general use.

More AoE damage isn't really necessary; and I don't think it will deal much damage anyway. If Splinter doesn't hit, then they won't be below 90% health. If Splinter hit, odds are they died from MoP spike. If your AoE nukes hit something else and then the Splinter/MoP hits, you could very well eliminate that something else instantly. Not much use for the Death's Charge insta-kill part of the build, but EoE might prove worthwhile for the other 50% of mobs you face in the meantime.

Updated OP with new build. I have re-tested ER prot and decided it's good enough to sidebar both ER and ST, but the Infuse seems indispensable at the moment.

Shared Burden is clearly superior to any water snares, and Fragility+Withering Aura+Reap Impurities is epic synergy. With Arcane Con. and Shared, Overload becomes amazing AoE damage also and very consistent. 75 adjacent AoE damage on a 1s recharge is pretty cool. Not sure if the Dom bar is lacking anything else like CoF, but I'll see what you all think.

I don't know if this can get any better right now. It has all the survivability and killing power possible.

Thoughts? Shared Burden is one of the best elites in PvE, but Illusion is not a great attribute line. Ineptitude, which you can't take, and wandering eye are pretty much it and in most areas even those are not as useful as Domination. That's not a problem however, because with 8 spec (13s/15s) or 10 spec (15s/15s) you can use it on an X/Me that doesn't need its elite or a primary dom mes that has BiP support (not relevant to this team build).

The range and duration means you only need one cast on a ball and don't need the lowered recharge from having it on a mes with FC. The only problem is the 2s casting time, this can be a pain if you don't micro it sometimes as called targets die before a 2s cast can land, wasting energy. It's the only >1s offensive skill in my team build other than barbs, but it's worth it. On my nec I take Shared Burden instead of OoU on the bone fiend MM hero. You lose 112 Al ignoring dps from OoU, but overall Shared Burden is op enough to warrant this.

Putting Shared Burden aside for a bit, if you have an ST rit and running MoP why not use a bone fiend MM in addition to the two dervs as others have suggested in this thread? You only really need animate, masochsim and BotM and can spec 8 or 10 in a third attribute. They don't always pick the target you want, but watch the field and you can most of the time get it working. The way I think about it is that it's an extra 5.9 MoP triggers per second. Compare that with 3.6 or 5.3 (splinter) for a derv, but with the added benefit of meatshields to confuse mob AI and body block more easily than relying on the sometimes really retarded melee AI. A fiend volley is an extra 462 dmg from MoP. So that's an extra 250 adjacent range dps during a spike. If you cast EBSoH and they are under OoU they do 200 single target DPS. Add barbs and that's 300 AL ignoring single target dps. Their base damage is not too bad either now after the update and the target will be under cracked armor from the dervs too.

As for the overall build, I switched from R/P beastmasters to dervs a few months ago. They are not as nice for switching targets or positioning. The retarded melee AI is frustrating if you don't plan well in open areas where balling is harder when the player build can't ball. The unbuffed single target dps is lower than RaO R/P. However, despite all this, the fact remains VoS derv deals 2x more physical damage procs than an R/P + pet under RaO. This shoots up to 3x when under splinter weapon. And when you are MoP nuking, all that counts is the number of physical damage procs you can squeeze out. They also perform better if you screw up and MoP is recharging.

Going back to Shared Burden, if you are using it mainly for anti-scatter, then the best skill for this purpose is Psychic Instability (backed by Earthbind on an ST rit where required). But that's because like in all games, stun is the best snare and cc all wrapped in one, and PI is the best stun in GW PvE, it has the best combination of low recharge (2x its duration), large enough range and easiest to meet requirement. The only annoying thing I find with PI after testing it a lot recently is that the AI doesn't seem to give it enough priority on a normal bar or want to use it even if it's all they have on their damn bar. I have been trying weird builds where it works for me. Stupid things like a non-IASed (sigh) 12 spear mastery and high command mesmer with only one or two other skills with cast times and/or aftercast and just spear attacks and shouts. The other that works actually weirdly okish in an MoP nuking build is a Me/R beastmaster (yes you can start laughing now) with only one other skill with cast time other than comfort animal. The recharge needs to be >10s-15s after FC (e.g. Hex Eater Signet but not Shatter Hex). If the recharge is low on the skill, it needs to be conditional and not met constantly in battle (e.g Mirror of Disenchantment) but not related to foes casting or not casting. If you give them wnwn, they tend to cast it at bad times like during aftercasts so they can't rupt the next skill because they are themselves in aftercast when the foe casts. If they would only use it on foes KDed from PI, it would be great energy management. Sometimes they are not in the middle of an attack animation, don't have a skill queued, are not moving but yet will not cast PI. Not sure if it's related to being in auto-attack and animation delay, because after they stop auto-attacking after a spike and a mantid caster rezzes from False Death, PI almost always rupts the first skill they try to cast even if it has very low cast time. If anyone can abuse PI consistently with MoP, without microing it or resorting to retarded bars as described above, I wouldn't mind some advice...

maybe throwing it out there, with that extra slot, why not bring interput/EoE Ranger. EoE for even more bomb on mobs and interputing help. What extra slot? The one on the screenshot shows 9 builds, with a separator to show the last two are either-or.

Do the dervs do well with four adrenal skills?
I assume that HoF is the most important of those skills, and from my own experience heroes are pretty bad at prioritizing IAS skills, especially adrenal IAS's. On my own dervs I run RI and HoF as the only adrenal skills in an effort to prompt them to use those two skills more frequently. I haven't really found that they need the extra e-management of Radiant Scythe, and, as far as losing Aura Slicer, I usually pack Weaken Armor on my N/Rt. Don't know why I didn't reply to this earlier, but:

Currently, these are the best derv bars possible. They spam their adrenal skills as and when they get adrenaline and the effects are just what's needed. Aura Slicer adds bar compression, so my necro doesn't *need* cracked armour, and Reap is spammed quite heavily, yeah. The IAS doesn't matter that much with VoS really, but there's a new debate in town.

Dagger sin heroes are now viable. The question is, is the damage and survivability of them better than the dervs? Well, we know they lose on armour, but what about damage?


Throwing it out there.

I like AoS on the dervs for extra survivability, but speccing into Wind just for one skill when you can use Victorious seems like a waste. Do two PI heroes function well? I've never found having two copies of Splinter necessary since I can precast when entering a mob, or it gets cast on one of the dervs and is enough to cause massive damage.

The main difference between your variant is the Minion master and AoD. I have been thinking about a MM as a platform for Dark Fury, because Reap spam is nice, but I don't like that AoD bar; it seems just like a platform for SoH, which you can easily slot on the MM instead of Life Attunement, with SoLS over Aegis, then you have a free slot. With that spare slot you can take the standard SoS hybrid and change Splinter on one of the mesmers.

Also, you really want to be using technobabble over Ymlad; there's no use in snaring one foe (and EVAS can already do that) and Dervish already cause weakness with Withering Aura.

But if you've been having success with it, gg. AoS is nice to make up for no Union, but the only issue with it is that it's not a flash enchantment so unless you pre-cast it the dervs will cast it once in battle and they start taking damage, still worth it I think. It'd be nicer if it had no cast-time. The wind cross-spec was an attempt at finding extra damage that doesn't come from attack skills but I can see how it might not be attractive esp if running minor scythe rune. Still playing with how to achieve this, not much in Earth for this purpose.

I would definitely recommend you try a bar with less attack skills however if you run any form of adrenaline gain increase (to maximise reap spam). My original builds when I swapped from RaO/spear to dervs had reap, aura slicer, victorious and crippling sweep. I found it to be too much. Two seems to be the sweet spot for me. With aura slicer always available you definitely only need one copy then.

The dual splinter is just to minimise microing because I am lazy, but like you said one is enough if pre-casting. Dual PI works well if you micro one, or force one to cast something else at the start of battle so that they automatically alternate it. Or lock one on an off-target. Otherwise like all rupts stacking they can end up using it at the same time, which would make only one PI better. I find panic works better if you have really large groups, of course. PI is OP enough that I don't mind microing it.

SoH can easily go on the MM (but at slightly lower spec). 2x PwK has the advantage that it's not random and gets used when you need it most, but I've found AoD to work really well with minions (esp. OoU MM), EVAS and when I had them, pets. I can also stick dark fury and withering aura on it instead of SoH and AoE cripple when I switch the MM for something else. It could also be a UA Smiter with party healing and high spec SoH. The 2-hero healer/prot backline can be anything that meets the heal/party heal/prot requirement. I do like to separate hex removal and condition removal from healers so the AI has only one trigger to react to however (except MBS if running SoS ofc).

Enfeebling blood is mainly for cases where melee mobs break aggro and go for casters. Weakness + Aegis means I can then just ignore them. I might give enchant removal or a fish hex a go in that slot. Ymlad instead of EbSoH, however, I am finding is just extra damage that's not that great. I have EBSoH there when I have OoU instead of AotL and used to have Mindbender before it was nerfed. Might try technobable again although I find panic or PI to be enough when I tried it last year.

Yes the downside is not as bad assuming that the hero manages to cast it on a number of nearby foes. The hero AI doesn't consider those decisions when it casts spells so I expect there will be times when Shared Burden or even Panic would be cast on single targets. But like I said, there is a downside but it is small. When you're only fighting one foe, you won't expend much energy; you'd most likely only get one or two skills off before it dies. Doesn't matter what hexes are removed because in a mesmer gaining more energy, they will just recast. In the time it takes to recharge a skill you've generally killed everything anyway.

When you're only fighting one foe, you won't expend much energy; you'd most likely only get one or two skills off before it dies. Doesn't matter what hexes are removed because in a mesmer gaining more energy, they will just recast. In the time it takes to recharge a skill you've generally killed everything anyway. Not necessarily that you are only fighting one foe, it could be 1 foe by itself on 1 side while the rest of the mob are on the other side and the AI may choose to cast the hex on that 1 foe and the other mesmer hero may choose to remove that as he runs out of energy.

Yes, they would just recast after gaining energy which means they have to deal with a recharge. Like I said, I don't think the recharge is that long (<15s with FC) so it is not a big deal in this case. But since there are other decent energy management skills besides Drain Delusions, I wouldn't bring Drain Delusions.

Yes, they would just recast after gaining energy which means they have to deal with a recharge. Like I said, I don't think the recharge is that long (<15s with FC) so it is not a big deal in this case. But since there are other decent energy management skills besides Drain Delusions, I wouldn't bring Drain Delusions. What skill would you suggest as a replacement?

Just to note; when calling with this build, you'd be a fool to cast on a single foe when there is a mob of foes waiting to be nuked.