Team Build: 7H Shattering Flames

I think panic would be a good idea as another aoe hex with shared burden as fuel for shatter...overload isn't great even on humans.... Three copies of fall back seems excessive.Vital weapon is bad. Over all i think this team is going to be screaming for energy even with a bip(especially mesmers). I definitely suggest maybe weakness, and less hybriding on the mesmers....just makes less damage. Take off mirror and spritual pain, kind of useless. UA on that mesmer just seems wastefull for sure. You do know Panic somewhat compete with CoF right and he have 3x of it. Using a elite hex as a cover hex for SD is so wasteful (but he does have a point for another blanket hex cover for SD). He also have 2x wandering eye, unnatural signet, signet of clumsiness that is more then enough for shut down coverage adding all of them deal damage via Panic do not. So adding a panic to this team does nothing at all except causing issue with his other shut down skill.

If your bring 1 or 2 mes with a self energy management bar yes Panic is great general shut down since you have not much room to bring other shut down. But when running full mes damage bar team is counter productive.

But he's right your team will be screaming for energy. Especially if Bip also going to support those two SF (which i think he will). You might need to pump blood to 13 pts the next breaking pts for Bip to +6 pip and take out "Protective Was Kaolai" and bring a 20% ench staff. Because your losing 2 sec less in the Bip Enchantment, that like losing 5-6e per cast your hero is not getting.

I don't see why he should take out mirror if so replace it with what? Mirror is free self healing to off set Bip you can't get something better then that. Spritual pain kind of useless? Most area have sprites and everyone hate those SoS rit. What better cheap spammable skill you can find better then Spritual Pain.

I also second that with lack of line holder. My guess is everything is good if you keep them KD with meteor but once the group break free. Your team might be in trouble with no melee, or mm to hold the line or sprites for your caster to duck behind with. (But I have not idea what kind of 2x SF damage can do your team. It might blow up enough foe during meteor period, anything break off might not even going to be an issue).

Your second version looks good. I disagree about the minions/spirits. You have your ST rit which works best without minions, because they take the prots from the spirits as well. Also, the point of this is to vanquish quickly. Dedicating a hero to making minions which are a detriment to the team as a whole instead of straight damage for faster mob kills is stupid. That is a common wrong thinking. There are several reasons why:

1. If you take a MM hero, most of the MM builds would include prots like Protective Spirit. If you already have Protective Spirit then bringing both ST and a MM with Protective Spirit would be overkill for most vanquishes. Therefore in most situations, you would only pick either one.

2. There are many different types of MM. What you are thinking of is called a minion bomber and not all MMs are minion bombers. There are MM builds that do not carry death nova so they do try to keep their minions alive as much as possible so as to maintain a wall of flesh against your enemies. An ST would still synergize well with that, assuming that the MM does not bring prots on his own.

3. Even if you have an ST rit with a minion bomber who doesnt carry prots, that is not too big a detriment. The worst that can happen is that the minions would live longer and you have a stronger wall. They death nova less often but you have a stronger defense, not necessarily an all-bad deal.

4. Yes, a minion bomber has a problem of lagging behind to cast 2s death nova. But that can be easily solved by flagging, so it is stilll worth bringing him considering his usefulness.

5. You have a team of squishes with no minions or spirits to hold the line in HM. How would it perform in the tougher areas? Minions and spirits provide a good source of defense by taking away hits from you. Minions also take potential hexes from you. They are very useful for survivability in tough areas, especially for an all-squishies team.

6. A good vanquishing build should be scalable. They should be able to scale down to 6 or even 4-man areas, not just for 8-man areas, as a matter of universability. What would the 4-man version of this build be like? A MM would shine in a 4-man area much more than a ST rit by providing the much needed additional bodies for both defense and offense.

@Daesu
About scalability, this can scale down to 6-man areas but not so well to 4-man party areas, in such areas I simply drop all the heroes to load MB protter, SoS resto and SoGM (I just did it for the daily ZV at The Breach). Good idea, that is what I have been using for my 4-man areas as well.

Yes, adding some meat shields would be an improvement.