Curse

Frozen Ele · Mar 31, 2011, 10:38 PM // 22:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

Well one of the things I see about your teambuild is a lack of Kaolai. You have two heroes carrying Rit heals, but no Kaolai. Considering how powerful the skill is and how well heroes use Kaolai, this is ... weird. Also considering how often Kaolai has saved my party from wipes, I'm inclined to conclude that your teambuild is fragile.

Raisu has one thing going for it in this department: it has Mhenlo and (in our case) Danika to mop up some of the damage. I don't know how significant they are, although I know that I survived Raisu + GoM + Hell's Precipice easily with scarcely any heals myself, so it's possible your build survives as well. But I'd like to see it.

I don't run Kaolai as a default, but look at it on a case-by-case basis (I run it when I think I need party-wide heals). In Raisu HM for example, the only serious damage dealers (or at least ones that I would need a party-wide heal for) are the eles, but there are only a handful of them in the mission (aside from the first room, there's only the ele boss). My set-up is powerful against these eles because they move to approach the team (to use their PBAoE). Using Deep Freeze slows them down so that I can eliminate them before they reach the group. Also, based off agro, most have to turn a coner to get to the team, so minions better traps them in place (so the PBAoE would only hit the minions and not the team, thus no reason for a party-wide heal). Lastly, the ele and mes interrupts also take a lot of the pressure off and if I do take damage, I have the two dedicated healer hero plus Togo (who has some resto).

I guess you could say I kinda set my build up for the area in this regard, but I always consider Kaolai, so to me, I didn't do anything different this time.

I ran Raisu a couple of times yesterday and got into the low 9min area (trying to break 8min before I post screens again), but had too much lag to keep going. I'll see what I can do about trying out Hell's and GoM, but am probably too busy to look at either until tomorrow.

Daesu · Apr 01, 2011, 05:30 AM // 05:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenomortis

On my Necromancer I run a setup that depends greatly on the interaction between my build and the actions of my heroes. If my heroes didn't attack the target I was calling, or I simply didn't call a target or just did nothing, then the strength of my setup falls rapidly.
I hold that my setup is stronger than S/D/M but it very much depends on my build and my actions (although these actions are simple to perform).

The player matters in a build. The player is a strong influencing factor and if you were to attempt to remove him as a variable you're going to get, not so much erroneous, but irrelevant results. At what point do you draw the line?

You can post your player build along with your heroes as a synergizing 8th player in the team.

There is definitely value in posting strong builds that require micro. On the other hand, let's face it, most people turn to sabway or discordway not because they are the most powerful build possible, but because they require very little micro. If you want to influence the masses, that should still be the way to go - posting strong builds that require little or no micro to work well. It is not that most people can't micro, but they are just too lazy to work too hard in a game.

Kaida the Heartless · Apr 01, 2011, 06:03 AM // 06:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by aga

My opinion of S/D/M, is that it is a very viable build, it requires 0 micro'ing, and next to 0 player skill to use. Which is why a lot of people do use it, and this is fine, since the game is made up of primarily casual players who don't really care for speed. However if you are looking to push yourself, and get some fast times, you really should be looking past discord.

I think this summarizes it the best.

If you ARE looking for speed and dedication to play, you are probably running 6 Mesmers anyways. :P

Cantos · Apr 01, 2011, 10:39 AM // 10:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeydra

@Cantos - both, I would say. Effort probably resulted in the biggest increase in speed, but build has an effect as well.

This response didn't really help me at all so I decided to test your build. Science is repeatable, or should be.

I only do PvE on my Warrior, so first I ran a generic SDM build. I didn't like Discord back in the 3 hero days because it felt like it had bad damage, but I like it now. Maybe the efficient bars on your other 4 heros make up for it. I got a time of 11:30 on my first attempt, even after clicking on the NPCs twice each because I forgot to confirm my choices. No one died.

Then I used the exact build you have in your screenshots, but using this bar myself:

Drunken Master
Sever
Gash
Galrath
Sun&Moon
Hundred Blades
Whilrwind
"I am the Strongest!"

This is the same bar I used with SDM. I had to make 3 attempts at the mission before completing it with your invoke build. The first time, 2 eles managed to take out both the heroes with a res simultaneously, and the second, togo died. On my third attempt, I finished it in 12:15.

Observations:
Although SDM clearly performed better for me, there are some problems with concluding straight away that it is better. The invoke build seems to be tuned for an ele or other caster player not warrior, and I did include extra hex removal and a SoH for myself on the SDM.

The mantra that Eles cant do damage in hard mode is clearly false. Things died fast, especially smaller groups. It didnt feel like two invokes were slowing me down. Survivability was the big issue.

My ele heroes are not well runed compared to my Rit/Nec/Mes heroes, and some of the disparity should be accounted for by this.

Overall not hugely impressed by the build in the sense that it is a good build to run, but impressed that it is not a bad build.

What does a 6 mesmer build look like? Is it 6 Mes, an SoS and yourself?

FoxBat · Apr 01, 2011, 01:58 PM // 13:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaida the Heartless

If you ARE looking for speed and dedication to play, you are probably running 6 Mesmers anyways. :P

You don't need skill to make mesway work, and work vastly better in nearly every area without fine-tuning. It really would be the new meta if mercs were free. Playing discord at a base minimum level is harder even as you need to spike out select problem targets first instead of just trashing the whole group at once.

Daesu · Apr 01, 2011, 03:25 PM // 15:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cantos

....

And this is what I was referring to. People who have used Jeydra's build, but without the micro, coming up with a much lower performance even in Raisu.

If you are looking to create a new 7-heroes meta, the build ought to require little or no micro, like sabway or discordway. In a timing contest such as this one, the winning entries would most likely be done through micro.

In other words, sabway and discordway are not popular because of their fantastic clearing speeds but rather, they can be effective enough with little or no micro involved.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaida the Heartless

I think this summarizes it the best.

If you ARE looking for speed and dedication to play, you are probably running 6 Mesmers anyways. :P

I am still waiting for the screenshots of your 6-mesmers build. Have you posted it?

Jeydra · Apr 01, 2011, 03:57 PM // 15:57

@Cantos - it's definitely tuned for caster primaries. I personally find it difficult to imagine playing a melee without Strength of Honour, for example ... or Splinter Weapon. Also don't know about you, but my failure rate in Raisu without micro is like <1%.

I strongly agree with Xenomortis about micro, although I micro far less than some people seem to think in standard gameplay (aka when not pushing for super-fast speeds).

Can't comment on 6 Mesmer builds since I've not used them. Unless of course someone wants to sponsor me mercenary heroes. Anyone?

Kaida the Heartless · Apr 02, 2011, 01:01 AM // 01:01

@FoxBat: I'm not disagreeing with you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daesu

I am still waiting for the screenshots of your 6-mesmers build. Have you posted it?

Not yet. I stopped running it because I'm going for Survivor the long way, and you will take a death here and there with it. If you look around the forums, most people have already posted their versions. It's mostly Panic, Inept, ESurge/Keystone, ESurge/Keystone, ESurge/Keystone, ESurge Keystone, Healer of Choice, and E/Mo Protter.

Chthon · Apr 03, 2011, 05:25 PM // 17:25

Well, since it seems that interest is waning here, maybe it's time to try to wrap this one up. So, what did we learn? We learned:

1. People on Guru have egos that won't allow them to back down, ever, even after they've been proved wrong. Shocking, I know.

2. Many people on Guru would rather nitpick the rules of a contest than participate in it.

3. Once the screenshots came out, S/D/M ended up without any real defenders. There were a few non-believers who ran S/D/M just so that it got representation, but all of the true believers suddenly disappeared. I'm told that Gabs posted a screenshot, but then deleted it.

4. S/D/M lost. None of the S/D/M times compared well with non-S/D/M times posted by Jeydra and others. I'm told that Gabs' deleted time was 10:XX, which would have at least been in the ballpark of respectability. So, if you define "best" with reference to the speed with which a build can complete content, then S/D/M definitely is NOT "the best possible 7 hero backline," and is, in fact, a pretty mediocre one. (I'll address in a minute the conflicting opinions on the criteria for "best" hero backline.)

5. Discord was the weakest link in S/D/M. Builds with similar spirit+mesmer cores outperformed it. This shouldn't be terribly surprising.

6. What was quite surprising though, to me at least, was that spirit+mesmer teams are as fast as they are. They have a lot of mitigation (mostly in the form of decoys and shutdown), but they really do not pack a lot of offense -- spirits are solid, but single-target damage; minion bombing is relatively low DPS; mesmers are high damage on long recharges that results in low DPS; etc. And yet, they are fast. This basically turns on its head the mantra of "bring just enough defense to survive, everything else should be offense." I have to admit that I haven't quite figured out why this works like it does. If you're looking for the big development here, reread this paragraph. Sooner or later it will prove important.

7. Despite all his talk, Bright Star Shine's build and time were both pretty bad. I don't expect him to ever expressly admit that he lost (big), but I suppose that his continuing silence after his time was demolished is a sort of tacit admission. I don't plan on taking his unsubstantiated comments seriously in the future. (Not that I did before...)

8. There's a lot of disagreement on what the criteria should be for the "best" hero build. The premise here was speed. Others have argued for foolproof-ness, basically a combination of survivability (to deal with foolish tactics) and complete independence from the player character (to deal with foolish (and worthless) player builds). I have four thoughts:

8.a. First, yes, speed of content completion is the correct metric for "best." Surviving and completing the content in question are implied prerequisites to even being in consideration; they are givens. What's left is speed.

8.b. Second, it's not as if we cannot have separate, parallel categories for "best" and "most foolproof." There's definitely a "market" for foolproof builds. The real problem is the confusion between "foolproof" and "best" that leads to all sorts of stupidity like "Discordway is the best possible 7 hero backline," "if I can't do it with discordway, it must be impossible," advice to new players that discordway is the be-all-end-all of GW, and so on.

8.c. From a balance/game design perspective, foolproof hero builds are bad. They remove challenge; they remove effort; they remove interaction; they remove most incentives to get better at the game. In short, foolproof builds reward fools. If I were a-net, I'd really start looking at some nerfs to the spirit+mesmer core.

8.d. We've already seen that S/D/M is not the best 7 hero build, but it also looks like it may not be the most foolproof either. Some of the other spirit+mesmer variants appearing in this thread seem to have similar levels of survivability and more damage capability.

9. If we remember that it's really Bone minions + Discord + Spirits + Mesmers, we get BDSM, which is a little amusing.

Life Bringing · Apr 03, 2011, 05:56 PM // 17:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

9. If we remember that it's really Bone minions + Discord + Spirits + Mesmers, we get BDSM, which is a little amusing.

Highlight of the post. I might start running discord now just for the lulz of saying that im using BDSM

Bright Star Shine · Apr 03, 2011, 05:59 PM // 17:59

You obviously missed a lot.. I stopped posting for some reasons.
1. I didn't care about this from the start.
2. Life Bringing was right, I did overreact and I shouldn't have provoked Jeydra either.
3. I had better things to do.
4. I never supported S/D/M ever, in any way, anywhere on this forum, so me participating in this had nothing to do with anything, the reason Jeydra wanted me to join was to prove that monks did not outdamage eles, which in a hero build is quite easy to prove, because taking 3 offensive monks anywhere outside SoO is pretty stupid and eles have way better options to take next to elite skills than monks.

So, before you start getting a bid mouth, get your shit straight.

To answer your silly post:

1: I never said I don't have a big ego, if you would read my posts, you would have noticed this. I did back down on this challenge, and I admitted my defeat, multiple times. Your ego just prevents you to see this, and enables selective reading.

2: Of course I would nitpick the rules if they dictate me to do retarded shit, or puts words in my mouth I never used. Telling me to use S/D/M because if I don't, I have to back down my claims for it to be superior, when never ever having said it's superior is retarded, and that is why I refused to. I most likely would have been better of using S/D/M than that retarded shit build I threw together in a bout 40 seconds, but I just refused because of my ego (see 1).

3: Again, I never defended it from the start, so that's a pretty sad one too, Gabbs does defend it, so can't talk for him.

4: Not much to say here, since it's not directed at me.

5: Again, not much to say.

6: No idea, don't care.

7: Again, stop selective reading, I said I was defeated, and I even admitted Jeydra and others are way better than me at using heroes at least 3 pages back. I admitted my defeat multiple times and I never ever claimed I would have had the slightest chance of winning this competition from the start. I joined because Jeydra said I wouldn't, that is all. I knew I was gonna lose (said this before as well) because he knows a lot more about heroes than me. So stop being such a fool and read my posts before talking shit about me.

8 - 9: Didn't even read it.

tl;dr you should read people's posts before talking crap, or getting on your high horse.

Chthon · Apr 03, 2011, 06:09 PM // 18:09

@BSS:

1. One item is about you in particular, one item certainly included you, but none of them are "directed at you." This is summary, not provocation.

2. I commend you for admitting defeat. Now retool and improve. These threads are useless of they're 100% ego stroking and 0% learning.

3. I was initially confused as to the point of contention between you and Jeydra. Once it became clear that you did not support BDSM, I tried to change the challenge to accommodate your "monks vs eles" thing. And you did not run BDSM anyway, so I don't see the harm in my initial confusion.

Bright Star Shine · Apr 03, 2011, 06:26 PM // 18:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

@BSS:

1. One item is about you in particular, one item certainly included you, but none of them are "directed at you." This is summary, not provocation.

2. I commend you for admitting defeat. Now retool and improve. These threads are useless of they're 100% ego stroking and 0% learning.

3. I was initially confused as to the point of contention between you and Jeydra. Once it became clear that you did not support BDSM, I tried to change the challenge to accommodate your "monks vs eles" thing. And you did not run BDSM anyway, so I don't see the harm in my initial confusion.

Sorry I misinterpreted you then, just kind of sick of people pointing me out in this thread, although it's entirely my own fault.

FoxBat · Apr 03, 2011, 07:50 PM // 19:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

6. What was quite surprising though, to me at least, was that spirit+mesmer teams are as fast as they are. They have a lot of mitigation (mostly in the form of decoys and shutdown), but they really do not pack a lot of offense -- spirits are solid, but single-target damage; minion bombing is relatively low DPS; mesmers are high damage on long recharges that results in low DPS; etc. And yet, they are fast. This basically turns on its head the mantra of "bring just enough defense to survive, everything else should be offense." I have to admit that I haven't quite figured out why this works like it does. If you're looking for the big development here, reread this paragraph. Sooner or later it will prove important.

Massed esurge is an enormous front-loaded offense. You'll just have to party with someone that bought the merc packs instead of trying to theorycraft it, but there's a big difference hitting 3x 110 damage in a nearby AoE at the start of every battle, and at least two 140-ish and 75ish nearby triggers each following it, and then some adjacent aoe from unnatural to finish things off. Nearby is wide enough to hit most incoming groups without needing an SF tank tightly balling stuff. Alot of groups will be dead before your esurge recharges, meaning you recharge running to the next one. As for those that aren't though, you have to factor in the FC recharges, plus IMO when running 4+ mesmers you ought to bring standard of wisdom for them.

The past wisdom for general PvE has focused on spirit/minion masses for dealing incredible damage and being incredible tanks at the same time. The only way to really improve on their damage is to support a melee player, or else adopt a careful tank-n-spank balling strategy that most don't care for in "general" PvE.

Mesmers are outside this paradigm, while they have many shutdown capabilities, outside of enemy eles, they just aren't as reliable as wet paper bags taking the hits for you. Running massed mesmers will expose you to more stupid deaths if you overaggro, particularly if groups are running at you from opposite directions. The tradeoff however is their raw aoe damage ability, which is much higher than the summons. So now those willing to take on extra risk will get extra reward; there is a real conundrum now of survivability vs. speed. Overall I'd take the occasional death because you're still ahead speed-wise with mesmers even encountering such setbacks (convenient they can all cast hard-rezzes quickly), but you can't reduce survivability to a simple prerequsite vs. speed. Some speedclears are all about letting players die and be UA'd rather than investing in defense, and that is the situation "average" players are facing now with mesway.

Keira Nightgale · Apr 03, 2011, 11:56 PM // 23:56

I figured out I could add my two cents.

HM TOPK Lvl 1

NM TOPK Lvl 1

NM TOPK Lvl 2

Builds

I was too bored to continue :S

No cons used, 0 deaths (both NM and HM). There is no sensible difference between HM and NM, assuming you pull correctly. Save yourself or defensive spirit spamming could have helped rounding down the timer but I wanted to gimp myself while enjoying the look of Melonni exploding stuff.
Tombs isn't the ideal place for casters, tight corners and interrupts make it a boring experience, the only challenging parts would be the dryder corridors on lvl 2 and rushing the wurms.

Kunder · Apr 04, 2011, 02:01 AM // 02:01

Good lord, why do people keep running SoGM? Doesn't any decent player realize that without summon spirits and with hero AI the build is almost worthless, or am I going crazy here? Discord I can understand even if its sub par, but SoGM just plain doesn't work as a hero bar.

Elfblade · Apr 04, 2011, 06:46 AM // 06:46

Pre cast spirits, aggro mobs, activate Sogm during aggro, mobs die, run to next mob, rinse and repeat.

Recharge is short enough between mobs if you pre cast. my hero uses SOGM and keeps it up, i just make sure it is up at the aggro to get the maximum effect.

Daesu · Apr 04, 2011, 09:28 AM // 09:28

If anybody still cares, Raisu HM, with Discordway: 12+ mins, with my own build (configured to be more damage centric): 10+ mins

All done without cons, micro, or any acquired celestial skill.

Gabs88 · Apr 04, 2011, 11:30 AM // 11:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

3. Once the screenshots came out, S/D/M ended up without any real defenders. There were a few non-believers who ran S/D/M just so that it got representation, but all of the true believers suddenly disappeared. I'm told that Gabs posted a screenshot, but then deleted it.

Don't see the value in doing a hundred redo's. My time was 10.01 on first run (37 sec behind Jeydra's original) but I brought a few wrong skills like VoR instead of Esurge which is rendered practically unusable in my build due to the amount of interrupts, panic and the likes. That said I'm against running spirits on heroes as I don't think they do a good enough job without a little micro and my screen is simply too small for me to keep the bars open so I can micro them.

And I still think that this competition is moot, because Jeydra's build can only be played proficiently by a primary elementalist because of cracked armor + elementalist approach. It would also require heavy calling of targets where S\D\M requires absolutely none.

You also have RoJ-way approach which is only made efficient by the fact that a Warrior main is tanking and holding the groups together so the puny little adjacent AoE can take good effect.

So I maintain that this thread is as much of a farce as it ever was. Yes S\D\M is beatable, and I have several builds I run myself that would easily beat it speed wise. But the reality is under normal play opposed to competition play like what we see here, most people don't push that hard in order to make good times. While I probably would be able to talking to some random nub-cake of an elementalist and recommending Jeydra-way, there's no way I can do the same with a random warrior and RoJ-way.

I can however, easily recommend S\D\M to anyone whom I don't know the play-style of regardless of who they are, what class they play and what bar they run themselves and tell them they're gonna be able to easily vanquish every zone and easily be able to beat all missions NM+HM with masters reward and do good times.

So congratulations to whoever did fantastic times here, but you haven't actually presented viable options to what S\D\M is. This is almost like going back pre-patch and arguing over whether "Human Rit Spiritway" is better then "Spiritway" when the reality is it's a 4 man team vs 3 man team + random nub.

Elfblade · Apr 04, 2011, 12:40 PM // 12:40

S/D/M ''overratedness'' can be attributed to mesmer and spirit facet of S/D/M, that is where the dps comes from. S/D/M is not very different from other current ''Meta'' builds which often include 2 spirit spammers (SoS+SoGM), a panic+ineptitude (or any other mesmer combo), an MM (although often more dedicated in the form of an AOTL bomber). the other 3 slots are just filled with healing, protection and damage.

Discord just compresses the healing, protection and damage in 3 necro's. in my opinion the prot and healing part are fine on the 3 necro's. You have soul reaping + minions to fuel all the healing and protection. But it comes down too is that discord is low dps. sure it is ok at spiking down single targets but lacks the AOE punch that other builds have. you need spike down at more than half of the group depending on how you aggro the group.

Other ''meta'' builds can pack more AoE and still have the same amount of protection and healing needed to survive general HM (1 1/2 healer is able to do the job). Granted the person can ball decent you can cut the time you are killing monsters down by a mile instead of killing them 1 by 1. This means that you are more efficient as you will take less time to reach your goal.

It boils down to personal preferences do you want to run a build that can do it but in a slower time or do you want to be efficient and reach your goal faster.