Discordway post 6th jan patch

To be honest, I think it's funny how people attribute the downfall of Discord to the introduction of 7H. Discord is actually stronger since the acquirement of seven heroes.

You have your three single-target, hybrid Discord heroes dealing single-target spike damage with hybrid stuff, like heals and command skills/prot, etc. then you bring AoE stuff on the other characters, it's obvious. You don't have to take two monks, etc.

People are jumping at the chance to say they dislike Discord because it makes them look less stupid, when it's having the opposite effect. Or rather, it would have the opposite effect if everyone wasn't following suit. It's true.

Discordway's true strength was being able to compress damage, heals, minions and/or prots on to one hero bar. It was very strong and still is decent today. With 7 heroes, you just do not need that kind of bar compression. Nowadays, you can get the same kind of single target spike you'd get with 3 discords, without taking discord.

For reference, I completed all of Slavers' HM with H/H discordway.

No other H/H setup for casters was remotely as powerful until spirits got buffed.

Completely untrue. Discord was never a great build even back in the 3H days. It was passable, but you could never handle elite areas well with it. If by elite area you mean DoA HM, then no.

If you mean slavers, then yes, it could (as I stated in the last post). In fact, other than spirits (which came later) name me one H/H build for casters that was capable of slavers HM?

Some more history:

I used to play ALOT of H/H, and I tried out almost every possible combination. A few years back, when I asked for discordway alternatives, I think it was either Xeno or Jeydra that recommended 2 paras + minion bomber for my AP-MoP necro - this failed hard and was nowhere near as powerful as discordway. It was at this point that I realized people dissing discordway either 1) played a physical and not a caster (in which case, admittedly discordway was limited) or 2) duo-ed and had access to 6 heroes. Being forced to take 4 henchies was a huge limitation, and so you needed to basically cover every base on your heroes.

That's how guild wars was back then. Whether you mainly duo'ed/grouped or H/H'ed being a main factor and whether you played a melee or caster class being a secondary, represented a huge difference in the outcome of your game experience. And that's why people developed such differing opinions on discordway, and not one opinion was necessarily wrong.

The Rit update changed the game for the solo player dramatically. Before then, physicals had a massive advantage in both damage and stability when H/Hing thanks to Save Yourselves and the natural damage properties a physical has. After the Rit update, caster balls gained a lot in damage and stability, effectively robbing physicals of their advantage. I'm not even sure the 7 hero update really compared to that; since that just boosted everything and didn't really change much fundamental, other than make everything easier. This is true. Physicals have been able to roflstomp PvE ever since Nightfall (SY + Splinter Weapon)

That said, Discord was still never a "good" build, the good part came from AP which was the only worthwhile build for casters for a long time (and in many cases arguably still is). Without an AP player back then Discord fell flat on its face and failed horribly.

Discord builds should really have been called AP Spike builds, GW players are horrible about naming things correctly.

I have no memory of anyone completing the Slaver's dungeons H/H with Discord.
I know a few managed it with other setups before spirit way came about, but not with Discord. If you managed it, you never shared it. I did duncan several times with discord/resto, discord/MM and 1 random (usually SS or VoR) with myself as SS usually. I never did manage to get a "perfect" run, but it was very much possible.

Forgewight on the other hand I just could not finish without DP removers. There was no necro version of ER that jeydra used to finish it :P

@Kunder: repeating what you've said again and again doesn't make it true.

Forgewight on the other hand I just could not finish without DP removers. There was no necro version of ER that jeydra used to finish it :P Yeah, thanks for doing that for me.

Discord is really inferior now because of the 7h patch, henchies are not that great so there had to be a condensed version of a spike and utility. aka discord. nowadays, because you have so many more heroes, discord lacks the spiking power that you could have if you had chosen a different setup. ss necro, iv necro, ST rit, and a triple mesmers with esurge, AC and ineptitude.

Small history lesson, when 7 hero builds was launched there was a build competition in Raisu palace. In first place came Airway, second place RoJ Heroway, third place Waterway (almost identical to airway and only playable by a primary ele really) and in fourth and fifth place came spirits \ discord \ minions variants. Airway is nerfed, RoJ Heroway only really works for melee and waterway is tied to a primary ele in order to be played proficiently.

Adding in the armor reduction which means you can bring Deathly Swarm and discordway is starting to look like a top contender.

That said, Discord was still never a "good" build, the good part came from AP which was the only worthwhile build for casters for a long time (and in many cases arguably still is). Without an AP player back then Discord fell flat on its face and failed horribly.

Discord builds should really have been called AP Spike builds, GW players are horrible about naming things correctly. This is not true.

I did discord successfully with a Dagger/Scythe/Axe Warrior.

Discord actually got better with the Asuran Scan change. Your own DPS got nerfed but in return you got a spike every time through Blind and Anti Melee hexes.