Building a team

First off, this isnt the type of thread that would get a straight answer, more a general topic, but it would be good if some of you could give me some pointers.

My main issue, as GL for our guild is how to setup a working team for different missions + quests. The average team composition is 2 Ele's, 2 Rangers with all players being able to go SoS spirit spam aside of their professions more standard builds but then none of those are "meta".

So say its an 8man area, what would you load up?
I tend to default to adding 1 dedicated healer (icy veins necro/rt), 1 MM/prot/heal hybrid as appropriate, 1 curses (so basically sabway) and then 1 mesmer with either panic, physic instab or inept (if melee heavy).

Is that how others would fill out the team? Should each hero provide more hybrid? Occasionally ill drop the curses for a ST if we are getting hit hard (HM vanq, particularly bosses like Yanma Etherlord). Offense doesnt seem to be a big problem, spirits, SF, Enraging Charge Rangers/Splinter barrage but thats as far as the level of skill goes most of the time, i dont think anyone would go calling us pro any time soon

Obviously we have other toons too which we play too, but an idea of general team composition for most people would be useful (i know it can be area dependent, thats a given)

Thanks in advance!

I don't really see the point of bringing a curses Nec in your case. None of their elites are really great, and if you absolutely need one, you can have the resto Nec bring it (Pain of Disenchantement in some areas, for example). Utility like weaken armor/enfeebling blood can be taken by a /N secondary.

I would replace it with a Channeling rit (splinter weapon is invaluable for your rangers) ; a generic SoS-resto bar would be nice.

About the mesmer, Panic for harder areas is good, but Esurge on general HM is usually enough (heroes are quite bad at psychic instability, from what i've seen).

Don't bother with your teambuild not being "meta", you don't need it to beat the game with relative ease.
Your players can go SF/barrage/melee-rangers/AP callers/beastmasters/whatever you like, as long as it dishes enough damage.

This may not meet with general approval, but as a primary ele, for HM, (admittedly in an all-caster hero team) I tend to run Earth AoE.

Earth Attune
AoR
Elemental Lord
Unsteady Ground (e)
Churning Earth
Eruption
2 x PvE Skills - generally EVAS and PI or Snowstorm

Some might say "Oh noes - no AP!!!!!", but it works for me. Your mileage may vary

If you are planning to venture into HM, then having someone bring Protective Spirit or bringing a ST rit with Shelter would be the norm. A typical hero to bring with PS would be a N/Mo minion bomber or an E/Mo ER.

As for the number of healers, it depends on your play style. Some players are more cautious and flag their heroes more often with proper pulling and some players prefer to c-space when they can. Typically, people bring 2 healers (dedicated or not) so when things are going south and one of your healers die, you still have the other one helping to keep the team alive until you can res him. Typical heroes for healing would be a SoS/restore, a N/Rt blood BiPer or curse/restore, or a UA healer monk.

This leaves you about 5 more slots (including yourself) in your team for damage and utility. In a 7-heroes team, since you are the only one with the pve skills, the expectation is that your skill bar would dish out the most damage.

I've found that the simpler the better, so boiling the basic teams down as far as possible, this is what you want. Before anyone starts whining about GWPVX copypaste, yes a whole lot of these are copied from there and many without edits. I'm just picking out builds that perform reliably and work in any team thank you. Any and all builds can be substituted for builds with similar quality, but dump the crappy melee builds, curse necro or imbagons please.

Any of the basic hero teams recuire an additional healer, either player or hero.

No physicals in team


Single Melee in team


Multiple Melee in team


Don't mix MM and ST, it works to some degree but not reccomended.

Filler heroes:


Picked out a few melee builds that I believe perform reliably and work great in most teams.

Player Melee characters:


Caster characters are focused on getting the damn job done, AP builds are extremely good and AP does stack. Simply put choose builds with decent recharges and solid packets of damage. Reliability is key.

Player Caster Characters


Most importaintly, to a large degree people can play what they want. As long as they're not mucking about with builds that ends up not dealing good damage because shit is dead before they have started doing any. You want low cooldowns or LARGE AoE's though. Adjacent RoJ damage rarely works well in practice unless your aggro control is downright amazing.

PS: Don't be afraid to bring multiple copies of pain inverter. It didn't exactly stop working and is often the difference between life and death in unorganized teams.

Id have both the eles do damage with seering flames.

Have 1 of the rangers run a generic SOS build, for spiritwall. insert Great dwarf weapon or splinter weapon here.

The other ranger can go Daggerspammer, With or (i prefer) without pet.
Use the basic chain with Jagged strike - Fox fangs - death blossom. Consider some defense as pve skills, and pewpew.

Heros:
- Panic mes,
- Aotl or Jagged MM,
- N/Rt with 8 in blood, 10 in Soul reaping and 12 in resto. Elite Blood is Power, (+5 energy regen) so the eles + panic mes hero can enjoy nearly infinite energy.
- ER Hero with prots and Infuse health, he will catch every BiP cast by your healer

Enjoy! Ill ping the builds if ya want, PM ingame -> Naughty Nurse Necro

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