Team Build: 7H HM Hexway Build

Power Block is not an elite you ought to be using in PvE. Better choices would be ESurge or PInstability.

As said above, 5 rez skills is perhaps too many.

I would question whether an EMo would hold up against areas such as DoA. Personally I think ST would be a better choice.

I think you ought to remove one of your Inept Mesmers (by extension one of the eles and replace with the now free mesmer), and run a SoS Hero instead of taking it yourself. Run WotA with Jagged, Fox, Death Blossom instead.

1. Same as above, I hate when non-rits take SoS regulary. It's complete ignoration. Why don't you make rit and you play SoS properly?

2. I apreciate when people make their own build instead of Ctrl+C Ctrl+V from PvX, but man, you must get some experience and try the PvX builds before.

3. I believe this can work somewhere, there are so many shutdowns and crowd-control skills that you won't be getting much dmg, but there's no direct dmg except for SoS. This build must be extremly slow.

4. You should consider major overhaul, because will be be advising you to completely change at least 3 heroes.

5. I'm really curious what hard have you completed with this? For instance how many HM dungeons have you done with this?

I just noticed that you join date was June 2012. If you are not just new to guru, but new to GW as well I apologize for my harshness. I'll try to explain what's wrong with your build without writing too much
Your goal should be to kill as fast as possible while staying alive. But what your build is trying to achieve is to shutdown/interrupt/prevent as much damage as possible while doing some damage and eventually killing your enemies.
That's wrong (imo), boring and slow. But choice is always yours.

Ah, an innovator. I know how to deal with this, dw.

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Thanks for the responses! I ran a 123 assassin for every single mission in factions and nightfall and chose to switch my build to a ritualist spirit spammer build when I started prophecies. The reason for this is that this build is over powered and that it doesn't require other heroes (the 123 assassin requires other heroes to support it such as a strength of honor hero) to support it. I understand and agree that it is weird and seemingly wrong to use a caster build on a melee character. It works quite well but I can agree that this game should have been made to where there is more emphasis on the primary profession, which is what we have seen in GW 2 and more recent updates to this game. The ele's actually always have full energy. I understand that their build looks energy heavy but they manage energy very well. I also understand why many of you may not like power block. Perhaps esurge is a better skill choice because of its AoE effect. I chose not to put e surge because e-denial is seemingly unimportant against PvE enemies that have a lot of energy but I will try it and see just how good its AoE damage is. As for dash and a hard rez on my bar, dash is not necessary as you said. I brought it simply to speed things up but I will consider a different skill choice (maybe another PvE-only skill). I did actually have spirit siphon on my bar back when I ran fall back heroes but I replaced it for dash when I switched to this hexway. Aura of Restoration was placed in the e/me bars for the heal. As for the question about where I have used this build: I used it in all of the missions in prophecies that had a party of 8 and in HM. I have actuallly found that this build kills very fast, which one might not expect from a hex build. There is no degen in this build and many of the hexes deal immediate damage. To be honest, I actually started using it two days ago but haven't used it that much. I have just started Eye of the North and can answer questions regarding how it fares in dungeons once I do those. Thanks again guys and I hope I addressed everything.

Edit: A further question. What do you guys think about the idea behind the build? The idea is to have an armor ignoring build full of hexes. Maybe this build can be better with some tweaks.

I have not tried it but I have no doubt this build should work in most areas in PvE. How are the energy of the mesmers keeping up?

According to the wiki, heroes do not use ether signet well. Leech signet is a waste on a mesmer and has also been recently nerfed. Yes you should try replacing power block with energy surge. The purpose of using Energy Surge in PvE is for the AoE damage, not so much for the energy denial.

You dont have much defenses and less healing. How does it fare against a group of monster mesmers (e.g. wind casters) in HM?

No Fall Back! means the team moves slower which is bad during vanquishing. Only 1 communing skill on your bar? Empathy, Backfire, Power Spike, and Accumulated Pain are nice but they are single targeting.

You call that a hexway?
I also think it's pretty terrible.

Hexes are a slow way of getting things done.
The amount of redundancy inherent in having 5 mesmers is going to make things worse.

For something you call a hexway, you have a surprising lack of variety across 5 hexers. You have a total of 7 different hexes and 4 of them aren't 'typical' hexes; they end on a certain trigger.

Daesu, I will try channeling instead of ether signet if the heroes don't use ether signet well. They have been okay on energy. I will also use esurge over powerblock. There is certainly a lack of defensive skills but many of the defense comes from offensive skills. For example, I lock my illusion heroes on different melee targets to have both blinded and I can choose to lock my anti caster heroes on different casters. I have also had success in micro'ing mistrust on multiple different targets at the very start of a battle and usually all three of the enemies will ball when they immediately cast through it and fail, and the nearby damage hits them all which instantly drops all of their health considerably. For these reasons, the defense for this build has been manageable. It is weird to have only one communing skill on my bar for sure. I do not need shadowsong because I have blind from ineptitude but perhaps I could squeeze in Anguish or something. I kinda dunno what to take out though. My attributes are split at 12 channeling and 12 communing.

Xenomortis, I agree that there is very little variety. Is this problematic? I find that having three mistrust's is very good. They work almost every time and the hero won't overlap to where one of them goes to total waste. Three empathy's could be viewed as excessive. When I fight mostly melee groups, I'll micro each empathy on a different target right off the bat and they seem to die fast. As for the illusion mesmers, it can be overkill to have two ineptitudes. This is because the mesmer hero may use ineptitude on a target that was already blinded from the other ineptitude. Micro or locking can bypass this problem if needed but that problem could still persist. The other illusion hexes like clumsiness are fine together because they do not really overlap.

edit: I forgot to mention that when I was first making this build, I considered the use of necromancer hexes to add to the builds variety. I did not feel that many necromancer hexes synergized in this build too well and maybe many of them would take a while to kill with. I think it is apporpriate to restate that even though this build is mostly hexes, many of them are instant damage and this build kills a lot faster than what it may appear. Do you have any suggestions to add to the build's variety while keeping it a hex-oriented build?

Dash is pointless it "speeds things up" as you put it... please explain to me how? and AoR for hero E management is sooooo pointless.


/thead done

I try running mes team before couple month ago. No matter how wide spread the hex cover are I have to say any team with more then 4 mes is counterproductive (unless is human of course). I say if you like mes 3 is the best bet. Even at 3 or 4 mes you really need to spread out the skill set because Ai hero doesn't stack casting on foe. At 4 mes you pretty much need a battery because their fighting each other trying to gain energy if you don't.

As for mes do AP damage true but their not the only one. Nerco with shadow damage and steal healing also does direct damage. And their skill stack will along with mes hex.
Power Block in PvE just a waste of elite, as it got long charge time, big cost and only get 1 foe. Also 99% of the time in PvE you inter counter a group with more then 5 foes.

As for mes hex sure lot of them are good, but from your mes bar each mes is only bring 3 to 4 damage skill (not to say lot of redundant one that can't stock, your also missing couple good shutdown signet with you should have bring)? Why not compress 5 mes to 3 and still have the same damage skill. Also it would work much better for you mes if there a frontliner to hold the aggro group together. I see your SOS so i guess your using sprite as blocker, but Sin can do a much better job doing that.

Agree 5 res is 3 to many. Last please let mes to be mes. I understand you mention this is for people without merc. But without pumping some pts to fast casting attrib most good mes hex/skill are close to useless, so its really counterproductive at the point.

Having faced hexways many times before, this isn't hexway. This is just 5 mesmers with questionable bars.

I use dash to run past things or to run away and then rez if I accidentally aggro'd too many enemies. AoR is more for the heal. Thanks for the advice Drk.

If you want a PvE hexway, you shouldn't be taking so many single-target shutdown skills. One copy of Backfire/Empathy at max. No copies of Power Block and only take one Ineptitude. You need more necros for "hexway" to sound at all applicable with some degen spam and melee hate. Mesmers are better with anti-caster stuff anyway. One Esurge for some push damage, one Inept, one Panic. Run daggers on yourself with SY (obvious) and you need minions. Maybe Death Nova-Bone Minions-Putrid Bile and Toxic Chill and Malign Intervention.

By the way: YOUR ER PROT HASN'T GOT INFUSE.

One thing that could be -helpful- for your hexway, is Anguish, since it deals double damage to hexed foes. I don't understand why people who want to run Signet of Spirits don't use Anguish, it makes no sense, it's the highest damaging spirit. Aside from that, you're an Assassin, use your own damn skills you'll be more effective that way, without Spawning Power or Armor of Unfeeling, your spirits are barely doing much of anything.

Also, Ether Signet isn't used well by heroes, they use it once they hit one energy below and after the casting they have higher energy than allowed to gain the energy, as per:

From wiki: Heroes cannot effectively use this skill as they will begin to use it when they are at the upper cap, thus overpassing it due to natural energy regeneration and receiving no energy.

Edit: WotA in PvE is idiotic, way better choices for elites

Thanks again guys.

Daesu, I returned to PvE and made a characer 6 days ago after taking many years off. I do not know what Frostmaw is but I will try some EoTN dungeons in HM when I get to them.

HigherMinion maybe I miss-named this build. I guess it's not exactly a hexway. Perhaps what I am looking for is a build of mostly armor ignoring skills which has some hexes associated with it. Thanks for your suggestions.

Andemius, thanks. Here I'll share what I use when I run daggers
1. Flashing Blades
2. Jagged Strike
3. Fox Fangs
4. Death Blossom
5. Critical Eye
6. Save Yourselves
7. Asuran Scan
8. Critical Agility

Is WoTA ok to stack with critical agility or should I drop Critical Agility for another PvE skill?

WarcryOfTruth, I agree. Anguish is good but I guess I didn't bring it because I have to re-apply it so often but I will be less lazy and bring it. My spirits die very fast without armor of unfeeling...that is true :[

Thanks Radian. I suspected as much.

Without a second healer your heroes would succumb to hexes and degen which Frostmaw has many of those. On top of that, you don't have paragon defenses like "Stand Your Ground!" or "Save Yourselves!". In short, I don't think you would have enough defenses for many of the HM elite areas.

The build I use consists of 2 healers, 1 prot, and 4 mesmers (or 3 mesmers + 1 SoGM rit in certain areas).

http://www.gwpvx.com/User:DarkSpirit...ter_characters

You can always just swap the ER prot for an ST rit. Solves most survival issues.

frostmaw is a terrible place to test builds

Thx for the suggestion, I'll try to add in some more defense. Idk what BLA is and I haven't started WiK yet. In my experience, I have found this build working well for me in most HM missions but I do not think that it will survive some of these HM dungeons or elite areas such as domain of anguish. I haven't actually done domain of anguish before though. I assume that many of these elite areas may require a build focused specifically for that area in order to survive.

You're really brave Radian, uploading a screenshot of yourself failing at a certain build. Good for you, you deserve better then. Here're several concrete points on what your build fails at, and what you can do to improve it.

1. Illusion Mesmers are basically antimelee Mesmers because you can't make a good Illusion bar without using Ineptitude, Wandering Eye or Clumsiness. I don't like them, although they have their place. Still using one Illusion Mesmer is not necessarily bad. Using two, however, is overkill. You weaken your teambuild against anything that doesn't attack. Individually, I'm deeply skeptical of Channeling because you generally don't want your Mesmer within range of monsters for it. If you find you need the energy the Inspiration line isn't short of options - Waste Not, Want Not is probably the best replacement.

2. You're using three Dom Mesmers whose only damage on demand skill is 2x Energy Surge. Yes, there are other skills there that deal damage but they're all reactive. You can't get damage on demand, so you can't kill anything on demand either. Incidentally, you have multiple stacked hexes such as Empathy. Since casting two Empathy's on one target doesn't make Empathy more powerful, this is a waste. Also you have Panic + plenty of interrupts but also Backfire, which is bad because interrupted spells don't trigger Backfire.

3. You're using Elementalists as your mesmers, which is definitely not a good idea. Elementalists can only cast Dom spells at 12 Domination Magic, way worse than the 16 Dom that Mesmers cast at. This applies to your build as well. You cast your spirits at 12 Channeling, which is way worse than the 16 at which a primary Ritualist will cast. It doesn't help either that you've got spells with long cast time (Energy Surge, Mistrust, Empathy, Backfire) on those Elementalists who necessarily cannot have Fast Casting. Unless you have very strong reasons to use the secondary - Ether Renewal is one such possible reason, as is Soul Reaping - you are much better off using your primary skills.

Don't get me wrong. Dom Mesmers are top tier heroes, and rightfully so, but you're not using them right.

4. Finally you're trying to run with one healer. The ER Ele isn't a healer, because he doesn't have heals (only prots). I've tried hard to make builds with only one healer work, but against the more difficult areas they're not safe. Yes, it is possible to make them work if you micro like a madman, but you WILL see your team's party bars go up and down a lot, which is always a danger because once that happens deaths aren't that far away. In this case the problem is not with your specific bars, but with the concept itself. I've tried all sorts of builds with only one healer. Even with a very powerful healing build (Monk with Healer's Boon, or N/Rt with pure heals only), it does not work. Exact reasons I don't particularly know. Maybe when you do take damage the healer cannot outheal the damage even if he has the energy, maybe he was KDed, maybe he was interrupted, etc.

In any case I strongly suggest using two heroes with bar push. You don't need to have strong healers - these days I run with one Kaolai, one Spirit Light, one Mend Body and Soul, and 2x Divine Healing (backed by UA) as my healing skills. But you need them on two different heroes.

5. Five resses is not good, especially the resses you're using. In general the best resses in PvE are UA, Death Pact Signet, and Res Sig, in that order (Res Chant has a place as well, but you can really only use it on a Mesmer). That's because if you're dying, you really need to avoid taking more damage. Flesh of my Flesh pushes you further down the road to wiping, many other resses don't put your resurrected guy back to high health, etc. Flesh of my Flesh does have a place once you know what you're doing, e.g. if you're microing it it works just fine, but until then I suggest against it.

How to fix this build:

Use something from the Assassin line on the player. If you don't want to go to melee, spec something from Deadly Arts. Note: if you do go into melee, the rest of your build must change to accomodate it. I suggest asking Relyk then, because I'm no melee expert.

Assuming you stay ranged, then cut one Illusion Mesmer for something else (minions are great, as are spirits - there's a reason why just about everyone are using them).

Assuming you switch off SoS, use a SoS Rit. The standard SoS template is the most powerful hero out there right now for all ranged players.

Cut your two Dom Eles for something else. If you want to keep the Dom Magic skills, I would replace the Panic Mesmer and, using the free Mesmer switched over from Illusion Magic, use two Dom Mesmers (i.e. two Dom Mesmers + 1 Illusion, no Panic). If you don't want to use Dom Mesmers, then you can spec your Eles as real Eles (the EA Fire template is good), or you can try dabbling with Necro bars (if you're not already using a minion master, seriously consider one).

Put some bar push on your ER Ele. Infuse is good; if you don't use Infuse then you'll have to spec into Healing Prayers and bring some healing spells.

Good luck!

Spiteful Spirit doesn't work so well with the rest of your build. You have 3 mesmers that shutdown enemies, so SS isn't an effective elite. Go with Pain of Disenchantment or Lingering Curse. I like LC for the 20% heal "effect" of it, and because I usually run Enchant Removal on my mesmers. PoD is good too though, or IV as both will help you more than SS at this juncture.

The N/rt healer is good, but I would change one thing, drop the elite for IV. If you choose IV on both Necro's its decent damage output and considering how my next piece of advice adds ANOTHER weapon spell to the build you will be overwriting yourself like a MOFO. Also consider dropping life for Recuperation, it works wonders for me.

As an alternative to the above would be drop the SS all together, use a Smiting monk with either RoJ or UA as the elite, and go /P for another copy of Fall Back. You can then fit the curses skills on the N/rt healer. Enfeebling Blood and weaken Armor are the most important ones.(drop the res and weapon of warding for those skills, and seeing as they work fine at a very low spec, like 5, you're not losing out on anything)

As far as the SoS goes I would drop Painful bond for Splinter weapon because as a melee, it can add damage to your build like nothing else, Especially with Channeling at 16.

The Mesmer with remove hex should just have shatter hex.

The illusion mes should have sig of clumsiness over accum pain imo.