Team Build: 7H Raidway

what kind of microing (if any) is required?

And do you have to be running sos on the player, or will any damage build work?

And my 2 cents on the build...
I think overall in most areas, dropping one esurge for panic would help tons. The damgae lost would be greatly compensated by the shutdown provided. Helps with large pulls and immense pressure.

To No Name Josh:

Normally there isnt any microing involved in caster variant, as for melee variant pre-cast splinter weapon helps but not required. In high end area some hero flagging is generally needed to make life easier.
I have ele and run caster variant as well and found no problem running it, but I haven't tried ele in DoA so I could give it a shot and report back.

3 x Esurge is suppressive firepower and normally kills 1/3~half of groups with air ele in blink second. And I don't find running panic is needed in vanquish, but you're freely to run panic in 1 esurge to ensure best survival rate. I tried running 3 esurge in DoA foundry but it's very hard to proceed without panic so I used panic instead.

I rarely use air element because their lack of aoe spell but . Thunderclap interesting elite with how good does hero spam it, I might try it sound nice shut down + 2 conditions + little damage.

It seem you got a lot of redundancy skill. Ie

1. why bring a shadowsong when blinding surge probably does all the blinding already. Anguish might be better for damage with all the hex flying around.

2. Enfeebling blood but there weakness in Thunderclap. For Rip enchantment you can replace it with Strip enchantment which is under bloodline then you don't need to take curse line. If you don't take curse then you can pump those attrib pts to blood to break Bip to +6 pip.

3. 3x pack signet.. a nice spike can wipe the entire team if those rest signet is used. Should consider changing 1 or 2 of those to be FoMF.

4. 2x Shell shock.. why not bring whirlwind for AoE damage + KD its the same cost. Shell shock give crack armor but you already got 2x shock arrow, and Thunderclap which already does crack armor.

To Drk Dervish:

In the team build I use, there is no aegis or any blocking spell/stance. So it's purely on blindness and weakness to do their job to reduce as little damage as possible. In theory blind surge takes care of blindness and thunderclap takes care of weakness/crack armor, but in the field the true scenery is more than often melee split in multiple ways, or melee/range combo presence call for more blindness and weakness. For a team without blocking I chose to go with redundancy.

But I'll monitor on BiP carefully and decide if Enfeebling blood isn't earning its place. Thanks for the suggestion. The reason for using shell shock as cheap 5e spell to apply crack armor where thunderclap doesn't hit, but I'll keep close eye on it as well. I tried chain lightening on thunderclap ele and at the end I went against it because the 2s casting time, 10e energy and 5 exhaustion are not healthy for hybrid healer.

Whirlwind is melee spell and caster will mindlessly run to front-line to cast it, which is not something I'd want my casters to do.

Death Pact Signet is there for urgent revive with decent energy restoration. It is there for rare case if hero goes down, I might try resurrection chant on mesmers however, but so far I am pretty happy with death pact signet. Most of my party wipe were inevitable ie. boss aoe, annoying dot aoe spells result in hero going beserk, overwhelming pull etc.

Overall, the team is stable enough unless over-aggro or bad hero flagging.

I like the team as a whole, but there are a few cases where the team falters and appears weak. I direct all of my points to the caster team.

1) The whole team is primarily healed by the three copies of spirit light and the two copies of mend body and soul. With your SoS build this should be perfectly fine, but with another primary, the healers have 3 fragile spirits to prevent a 17% life sacrifice from heals.

2) I personally think that recovery added onto the enfeebling blood spot or to the air elementalist would help to keep the build safer. The shorter condition length helps in a lot of areas in the game where the mobs carry mass conditions. e.g. Mandragors

3) Guilt seems inferior to mistrust considering the focus of your team. The aoe spell comes at the cost of 10 energy, which is heavy considering the paragon skills on that bar. You could consider an extra copy of signet of clumsiness, which would remove the energy from spiritual pain, which is not very effective in practice (my opinion!!!).

4) I feel the two shell shocks might not be the best choice depending upon the primary profession of the player. In your case, cracked armor is not effective for your SoS, hree mesmers, the ST, and the second rit (besides wand/spear). Unless the player uses armor effected damage, it seems that Shell shock weakens enemies in a form that won't be exploited except for by two heroes.

5) A copy of Union over Death pact signet for the ST rit might be more effective because the two mesmer heroes should out-res the ST because of fast casting, leaving the ST with a skill slot that is never used. You might have had a reason foregoing Union, but it could serve a good purpose on the last bar even left disabled, just to be pre-casted before a boss fight etc.

Just a selection of minor criticisms from me. I really just want 5 mesmer heroes .

The Thunderclap ele doesn't need Esurge. You only need one copy of hex eater signet, use Shatter Hex like in melee or something like spiritual pain or shatter enchantment. Using spirit's gift with just Shelter isn't spectacular. You could drop bsurge altogether if you bring Displacement and then bring an EA fire nuker for example. You enough offense as it is but it's a thought. I don't think the spot heal on ST rit is necessary. Drop a fall back for never surrender on bsurge, you only run two copies in VQs and easy shit like missions. You'll want 10 command if you do.

For melee, stick SoH on the ST rit. If you bring spirit spammer as a caster, you don't have to worry, but you'll want SoS healer as melee for the high spec splinter weapon and spirit fodder. You don't need the spot heal on ST and you get the same 10-11 smiting spec you'd get on the hybrid bar.

To Ryan2:

Thanks for your concern but so far life, shelter and shadowsong are enough to keep the whole team going without SoS (I have ele and I run it no problem). But I'll consider the option to slot in recovery in thunderclap ele in place of shell shock if the offense isn't hampered too much.
Guilt in 3rd domination memser is an energy source and another layer of defense. As paragon skills you mention on that bar, the energy will be very tight without some sort of energy management. Also I don't find running more than 2 copies of mistrust to be fruitful, in my personal opinion.
Spiritual pain is a nice unconditional 79 armor ignored damage to clean out left over foes, and it deals huge damage in area to summoned creatures. There is no MM in my team so chances are foes will summon something from the corpses.

But I'll keep my option open, I don't know if I can afford to put signet of clumsiness in spiritual pain because the attribute points limitation. If only a few points invest in illusion I don't know it's justified to bring signet of clumsiness.

Regarding Union, because I have been doing fine without union so I don't see running it is necessary. But I'll mess around with union and see if it has place in st bar. Death pact signet on st bar acts as backup urgent rez in case 2 mesmers are out of action (it happened though rarely).



To Relyk:

I don't get thunderclap ele doesen't need esurge, can you explain? The shattered hex on melee team variant is used because melee has high chance of getting hex, and shattered hex on melee can cause huge damage around melee, similar to ancestor rage. Where not all encounters in caster team variant get to foes in close range to take full advantage of shattered hex. But I may swap out 1 shattered hex on 2nd memser and see.

Spirit's gift is there because while it's not spectacular it is decent to pump extra healing and condition remove with shelter during battle. Again I can try removing it and see if the healing isn't needed in big battle.

Bsurge is an integral part of my team, the blindness is must in this team. Relying on just displacement will either end up in eating all st recharge or worst case getting whole team slaughtered in big battle. I tried ele fire, and the damage is great, but losing blindness causing unstable team survival. As you mention, the team packs great punch already, adding ele fire is not that necessary.

The spirit light may seem unnessary on st bar is because I run sos build, in other caster profession they may need more healing due to more aggressiveness on team members. But, I could drop spirit light and try on my ele and see.

Drop fallback on Bsurge ele? I only have 2 copies of fallback in my team build so I don't get what you meant.

Thanks for the suggestion about putting smite on st bar, I'll give it a try on my war later.

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A minor update to caster variant build



The tweak is taking suggestion from Drk Dervish, Ryan2, Relyk.

I decide to replace hex eater of signet with shattered hex on 2nd mesmer as another possible damage source to melee foes. Also slotting recovery in thunderclap ele in place of shell shock. St rit gets mesmer as secondary and now brining hex eater signet and signet of clumsiness instead of spirit light and remove hex.

General vanquish shows the minor tweak improves the killing speed somewhat without losing too much survival. But I will test it out in high end area later until then I'm still keeping the original version caster variant Raidway.

He doesn't need Shell Shock, I see you fixed that. I think of one skill while typing in another. I find Displacement rarely drops, but that also has to do with running an Illusion mesmer and spiking groups. Even if it drops, you have 3 charges on ST so the hero should never, ever overcast shelter or displacement. You can also bring Armor of Unfeeling to avoid that from happening. It's fine to drop a copy of fall back in high end, where you aren't moving around much. Not having FB up constantly won't kill you.

How effective is mirror of disenchantment in practise for you? When on a melee character, I find that there aren't many situations where a mob-wide strip is required. Shatter's damage is better in most cases where it helps to push kills in general, and the only other situation is AI mobs stacking prots (eg. dwarves spamming sb/sor) where I'd want a deep strip like PoD/rend or at least strip enchant @ 12+.

To Relyk:

I'll consider displacement if blindness/weakness are insufficient, otherwise the team is fine without it right now. The point of the build is to move fast, even in high end hence Raidway lol joke aside you can replace fallback with other skill in your liking.



To Premium Unleaded

Mirror of disenchantment is good for removing multiple ele enchantment, aegis, dervish enchantment etc. Although it doesn't provide damage but its usefulness is something I want to keep. I will give shatter enchantment a try though.




I took the suggestion and ran DoA Foundry NM again with minor caster team update.



To my surprise the clear time still the same as last time, though I'm still unclear whether the change to caster team build is needed or not. But I'll give it more try later.

About the ele trial in DoA because my ele isn't r8 LB not even R7 so I'll save the trouble and hopefully someone can try it.

IMO DOA is not a good place to test a team that is build for normal area. Because if you want to be effective you need to bring skill that you don't need or wouldn't bring a whole lot of usefulness in regular VQ or mission. ie like eoe, panic (especially when you got 3+mes), and other skill.

Also testing a build in NM is not very good either because the different between HM and NM is so different. Larger group, faster attack speed, higher armor, higher HP make you rethink your team. Higher armor might not be a different for your team because mes damage ignore armor, but faster attack speed and higher HP would put more pressure on a team. Making you to consider maybe bring snare, kd, or more front line blocker to buy more time for your caster team to finish off the foes.

To Drk Dervish:

Yes you're right DoA isn't necessary the place to test team build, but Raidway is designed for hard mode and elite area in mind, or least I hope to achieve. Normally normal mode is not able to gauge how capable a team build is, but DoA is different. The mobs in there got immense power and numbers even in normal mode, at least foundry is harder place to test. But I agree hard mode really push the team build to get better.



Screenshot where ele completed rand stormweaver in HM, no cons used.




I tried this in 4 times, and previous 3 times I didn't bother to bring FS and the result were pathetic. I was hoping I can overcome defender, warder and other mob who rez with mighty power, but it was not pretty. So in 4th try I decided to bring FS which works like a beauty.

A slight update to caster variant raidway is I slotted displacement and armor of unfeeling and micro shelter/displacement before fight. The rest are untouched to updated caster variant raidway. I think the displacement helps on non-SoS build that gives more time for casters to finish up melee/range. I haven't tried the displacement on SoS but it should help in same degree.

I might test out more and see the displacement and armor of unfeeling is to stay. Thanks to the suggestion to Relyk.

I will update the caster variant build once team build is tested more thoroughly. And sorry about not trying out more melee variant raidway, I will spend more time on it later.

gz 2-3x dom/battery build your pretty much done with the build actually. For melee you just drop a ele and bring a Roj with SoH, with melee bring some kind of snore or kd. General HM + Elite area team is hard to build. IMO Elite area always desire a customize team. I do have a question for blind+damage now is Blinding Surge compare with Ineptitude.

For testing i usually do some quick spot testing, these are in HM and just normal aggro attack no pre-flagging or special prepare or title bonus.

- test for melee pressure - out side of Gadd's Encampment aggro the pack of raptor and Angorodon to see how the team defense can handle dealing with fast pace melee pressure. Raptor is super fast its easily by pass your body blocker and go for your caster. Angorodon life steal help put more pressure on your healer.

- test for range spiker damage: Exit Doomlore Shrine and aggro the large charr group off the left. Those seekers with burning arrow and dual shot can put a big ass hp spike especially if their synced to one target (to see you got enough prot/healing). And those flameshielder will put pressure on a team with lack of shutdown skill.

- test for team output damage: go into Bogroot Growths: 1st and 2nd level - Aggro Parasitic Growth and their spore and see how fast your team and put down raw damage. ie a team with to much defense and not much offensive would have a hell of time keeping up with the spore and Parasitic Growth.

- test for aggro/condition spike: go to Jaga Moraine in the area just before entering the vatteir farm spot, their 2 pack of Mandragor aggro them and test your team healing under condition pressure. They can travel underground and popup next to your group put more pressure on your caster.

- VQ:
-Raisu Palace (most groups is balance with ranger,melee,ele,mes,monk,sin spiker). Not a hard area but just to see how fast and smooth you team is. ie the well balance team (with skill that deal with melee, caster, healer, spiker) would be much smoother.
-Any one of the harder dungeon.
-The Hidden City of Ahdashim (nice normal place to test for shutdown)

All these are not hard places but a good easy fast area to get to for some simple initial testing.

After completing some dungeons, I've come across an issue. I saw there were times mesmers don't cast esurge on boss and just wanding in prolonged battle. Then I realized something, boss's energy was drained to zero lol No wonder how many times I called mesmers just stood there, wanding. A revision to caster variant raidway has been worked on and this time I took the team to CoF. I know it's not a hard dungeon but I just want a quick run through and see how the new build fare.

Screenshot



No cons is used, and everything seems fine and smooth. I will give new build more try later.

BTW i tried Bsurge and Thundercap. VERY nice.. hero spam it like crazy just want I like hero to do on both of these elite. Like it so much i give the ThunderCap hero Glyph of Swiftness so he can spam it more lol. Finally some good option for an ele for my team.

Good to see you like Bsurge and thunderclap Drk Dervish. I found both of them compliment each other well. I used thunderclap ele as standalone air elementalist with other skills like chain lightening, shell shock etc, but I found the damage output isn't quite there. However, when using on a hybrid ele/rit it works pretty good.

Currently some aspect of raidway is being reworked, and the new build will be released after it undergoes rigorous test

Also I took out the melee variant raidway right now, because I don't have time to update it. Melee version will be put up again when I am completely done with caster version.

yes that wat i did with them. Thundercap hybird with para command buff and Bsurge hybird with rit restso spot healer. Which fit well so far because its always been kind of odd to fit command buff on a offensive caster hero. Was ThunderCap got new buff (I just got back to gw recently from long absence), I remember it wasn't that good of an elite, at least for the shutdown effect seem new to me.

Thunderclap got reworked post-ele update. The old ability was deal damage to single mob, after 3 seconds, applies dazed to all mobs in adjacent range to where thunderclap landed.

I also like to mention I took raidway on ele to SoO hm with new build and panic, but the whole dungeon clear time was 50min+. I wanted to stay true to 3 esurge but fendi and his minions really punished ele and raidway. There were 3 wipes fighting fendi, it was some ugly fight lol I would actually recommend not to use raidway in SoO because holy damage prevails in that dungeon, unless raidway is modified heavily for it. If taking raidway to SoO, consider running SoS build on player bar which should be lot easier being meatshield for team (which I didn't do on ele).

Thanks for sharing this. I'd given up on air magic and didn't realize those skills had changed.

Have you considered dropping the Paragon elements and adding prots? You wouldn't lose any offense, but would up your defensive capabilities, particularly on demand.

Nothing earth shattering, just the standard Prot suite tacked onto the end, like:

Air Attunement - Aura of Restoration - Blinding Surge - Chain Lightning - Shock Arrow - Shield of Absorption - Aegis - Protective Spirit.

You wouldn't lose much dropping Air Magic to 11, and could then put 10 points in Prot to hit the break point. Seems like it's win/win.

ST + Shelter is far more effective than monk prots for a caster team, not to mention for general vq/playing, double fall back is incredibly helpful.

Hello, I've been having problems doing missions on HM (especially the ones on Ring of Fire island), or doing dungeons with this http://www.gwpvx.com/Build:Team_-_7_Hero_Player_Support hero team build, also vanquishing is very slow.
Will I get better results with your build? I am playing SoS rit, I am not a very skileld player and I just can't get myself to make usable builds for all my heroes so I always use builds what I find on the internet. I would like to play HM PvE with ease, but right now I am very frustrated because I have been wiped many times with the build meant above and I am stuccked.
Thanks...

Lyon812:

I've done something similar to that before, and it made air ele too busy doing things, which hinder his offensive ability. Shouts work out well because there is no casting time. But you could swap out for protection line and try them out.



Derelikt:

I didn't run that team build before, but I would imagine it should work. But one thing I can guarantee you is raidway will clear area faster due to the offensive nature and speed of raidway than the team build in that link. That being said, raidway got some decent protections, and the biggest protection comes from offense.

I found SoS player bar works very well with raidway because the extra protection spirits bring to raidway, and the ability to ball monsters as well.

I haven't done missions on Ring of Fire island with raidway in hard mode and the only threat I could think of is spark of the titan. The post ele elite update makes mind burn a potent wiping spell for careless team. St + Shelter should handle it well imo.

@ Derelikt:

A full caster build like this with no melee or MM or heavy spirits support you need to play more tactically (ie. try not to ctrl+c + space all the time). Use choke points, select what group to aggo and kill first. With MM in team is a little slow in general not because damage but because most of the time you need to wait for MM during traveling from group to group.

The trade off with MM is you have room for mistake because of minions fill body on the field so your hero don't get target as much (ie over aggro, click and forget not a big issue). Anyway since your a rit you can setup your spirits blocker before aggro a group, and watch your aggro closely, over aggro with a full caster team pretty much mean a full wipe. But do it right a caster team can spike down a group faster then most team.

Ok thanks, and what insignias shoudl I use on these heroes?

I use radiant on mesmers, tormented on necro, blessed on ele, radiant on rit (although been thinking about shamn).

Can you post your latest version of this build w/ skills & attributes? How would you modify it for areas with a party size of 6? Do you think this kind of setup can work with the player as monk profession?

I've been using a lot of physway for vanquishing using some combination of Order of the Vampire, Strength of Honor, and/or Winnowing (and a minion master). One of the annoying things is that the heroes have to close the distance to the enemy before dealing damage and meanwhile the enemy casters get to cast though multiple interrupts help. Your build certainly does not have that loss of initiative with the 3 copies of Cry of Frustration and 2 Mistrust. It also has plenty of armor ignoring damage.

Divineshadows:

Been away for some vacation, and bad news for my laptop. One of my hard drive failed and my laptop is having overheating issue. It will take some time before I can play guild war again. I haven't finalized the team build yet.

This build will work for monk profession, or simply just run sos build on monk. The six man area consist of 3 memsers, 1 mm/prot, thunderclap ele and necro/rit.

any idea what i should be running for weapons? pretty new on this, so im not finding it so clear cut, since the mesmers are hybrid, for example.

I'd say 40/40 dom sets for mesmers, 40/40 air for Surge ele and 20% ench spear + shield for rest. At least that's what I run in a similar build, I like the added defense on rit as well as on healers when PwK is down.

thanks, i'll give it a go, my only issue with this build is how low the battery seems to get, scary xP
edit:
ended up swapping back to my discordway for A time for heros on hard, as well.

bring Ghostmirror Light on the bip and Never Surrender over a Fall Back or other slot. You don't have to worry about bip's health because ST rit removes any threat of him getting spiked or even attacked while he sacs health.

hmm, had issues trying this at A time for heros on hard, any idea what I should do for areas like that requiring more healing?

http://oi45.tinypic.com/2ew1jjm.jpg

Just bring a Pain Inverter. Tried it just now with the exact build that's here + my usual mesmer bar. No special tactics, just stormed it, half of the great guy fight I was just trying to find the deldrimor title. Nobody came even close to dying.

hmm i actually didnt try pain inverter before i swapped to discordway(on which i did use pain inverter, and suceed) i'll give it a go again later xd

akelarumi:

Thanks for the suggestion of renaming it to rushway, I'll think about it Regarding the ether seal, although I didn't attempt riverside assination hm, but I did beat abbadon's mouth hm with ease when it was zm.



Divineshadows:

Hi, the six man consist of 3 mesmers, thunderclap, mm/prot or sos, necro/rit. Sorry I didn't make it clear but you got it Good to hear the build works for you.
This hero build works best with SoS player bar, but it still works for casters pretty well. There are three variant of team builds are being tested and I'll post the result when I satisfy with it.

At last, I made small change to raidway caster build, and you can find it in first page with details.




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Below are the SoO I attempted on my rit with SoS bar and I can clearly say SoO is very doable and whole dungeon run was in 28mins. Though the result may vary time to time but should be less than 30mins. Unfortunately I can't comfirm how effective a non-sos player bar can handle with new build in SoO. Excuse me that gwen bar wasn't shown on screen but I'm so tired so I forgot to display her skills when I exit guild war.



There was one wipe fighting fendi and that was all. The elite on gwen is esurge, whole team used the new caster raidway updated in first post.

PS: I should mention I opened all locked chests but no LoD.

Why put Ghostmirror on ele instead of necro? ele is probably the safest person in my group and gets attacked rarely (mesmers eat most attacks, and for some reason mobs prefer beating Razah in my group ). BiP, on the other hand, sacs health often and Ghostmirror provides him with self-heal

big thanks for the Aneurysm idea though. As I run Esurge myself, I got used to frequent target switching with 4x Esurge, but some boss fights were annoying when boss gets drained. I forgot that such a spell even exists, will definitely try it some time