Wanted: Extreme noobs guide to getting a discordway team

Hello forums!

I played GW at launch back in 05 but lost the account simply cause I can't remember the password/character names/etc. I (like many others, I'd assume) just picked up GW: complete edition with the goal being 30 points in my HoM before GW2 comes out. I have decided the easiest way of doing this would be a discordway team.

So, with that in mind, my main question is this: What content should I tackle and in what order, with the goal being obtain a discordway hero team asap? Keep in mind I am a pretty much brand new player as well so I'm not quite sure how I'd fare on more difficult missions on my own (w/ henchmen of course). Also, I currently have an ele/mesmer that I started off in prophecies, but I wouldn't be upset if I restarted in a different campaign in order to get the required heroes faster.

Thanks for any help in this area. The sheer amount of content I am facing is baffling!

If you want heroes quickly play Nightfall first and then EotN. Don't recommend that though. Discord is massively overrated, mostly by bad players that don't know any better. Don't make it your absolute first priority. As a new player, I'd recommend starting with Prophecies, then Factions, then Nightfall, then EotN. That way the content gets harder as you go along rather than being thrown into the hard stuff right away and having to try and understand all the professions at once (with heroes).

All campaigns plus EotN are needed for an optimal team. Go to Nightfall first for two of the Necro heroes, one of which can be obtained before even starting the first mission. The third can be obtained quickly in EotN. Most of the skills needed for the builds, including Discord itself, are in Factions. As Marty said though, Discord is a last resort option, if you have trouble finding parties for things. Focus on getting heroes that support your character, which for a Warrior, would be a Rit or Necro or Monk.
Something I encounter is that PuGs NEVER accept Assassins. But if I ask for a Discord partner, I get a party invite quickly.

In order to gain the 3 Necromancer heroes you need to do quite a bit of playing.

Olias
Get access to Consulate Docks in Kamadan for the quest and Lions Arch to progress the quest.

Master of Whispers
Make it through the NF story to after the Sunspear Sanctuary and follow the primary quests, after completing the Mysterious Message you can get this hero.

Livia
You must make it to Eye of the North, take the Asura quest line. Get through all the Asura areas to Vlox Falls do the Finding Gadd quest and then the Finding the Bloodstone quest.

There are quick ways to do this but remember that the Elona mainland is designed for level 20 players, if you start in Nightfall the idea is you reach a high level before you leave Istan (and get Olias). If you start in Prophecies you can get to Kamadan but you may struggle trying to get to the Master of Whispers quest.
Eye of the North will bump the stats of a player that isn't level 20 but the quests are more challenging and designed for players that have at least completed another campaign.

Another thing to consider is, do you have all the skills available for these heroes if you did get them? The Discord Necros, while popular do require specific skills (Discord obviously included), you can unlock the skills with Faction if you have any, but to get them through PvE requires even more traveling and fighting.

If you're just getting back into the game I would advise against aiming for specific hero builds, like Marty says, play through the campaigns and pickup heroes when they come available, it will help build your knowledge and aquire skills that can be used on your heroes at a later date.

Discord way would probably be the easiest way but you won't get the full enjoyment of the game. Since your doing it just for the 30/50, it should be fine. Discordway is an extremely powerful team build with high single target spiking power and a lot of defense making it ideal for HM guild wars.

Since you are a "new" player you will probably want to make a necro or elementalist, is my suggestion. Necro for the very powerful soul reaping, giving you almost endless energy, and elementalist for the high initial energy pool. Starting in factions you can easily get to level 20 in 2-3 hours. Do the main quests until you get of the initial factions island. Run to kaineng center and take the quest to LA. You should be level 10 by now and can start the quest to take you to boreal station. Once there fight with your henchies until you reach gunnars hold.

Do the dwarven boxing dungeon with exp scrolls until level 20. It should be relatively quick. Now would be a good time to do the obtain olias quest. Since, your already in eotn, get a run to vlox falls, pick up finding gadd quest, then get a run to gadds encampment. Finish the finding gadd quest and now you have livia. Get a run to Rata Sum and cap Assasin's promise from the raptor boss right outside.

Now, I recommend doing the quests to get You move like a dwarf and finish him. Once you have these 3 skills you can do a semi discordway build with your two necro heroes and those 3 skills. Now you should be able to easily rush through nightfall and get Master of Whisperers.

My Reccomendations for customizing your discordway
1) Have Discord, Death Nova, Animate Bone, Signet of Lost souls minions on all your necros
-This will give you a huge minion army and create a nice exploding wall of damage. Minions are awesome because they are generally targeted before players and heroes/hench. They also will be doing ~100 armor ignoring damage and poison spread on death with all the death novas.
Note: Other useful skills = Masochism, Rip enchantment, Putrid Bile, Enfeebling blood, Shadow of Fear (HM lots of melee)

2). For the last 4 skills there are 3 main paths I recommend
- N/Rt Life, Mend Body and Soul, Spirit Light, Flesh of my flesh or Protective was kaolai
- N/Mo Protective Spirit, Aegis, Spirit bond, Reverse Hex or any other prots
- N/P Fallback, Stand Your Ground, Putrid Bile (backup hex), enfeebling blood (backup condition)

3) always take the 2 healer henchies if available

4) Never take melee henchies because they will most likely cause over aggro. Look for Necro/Mesmer/Ranger interrupt henchies. If Normal mode take Ele henchies.

5) Ebon Vanguard Assasin support is a very good 3rd PVE skill to go on your bar

6) When you finish eotn use your filled book to upgrade norn title so YMLaD and FH are more effective.

Finally, for normal mode I recommend not using discordway, as discordway provides way to much defensive measures for NM. You should use another build focusing on AoE damage in normal mode.

Agreed. Just remember it's not enough to throw three builds on heroes' tabs to run a fully successful discordway. You have to be the caller, providing necessary hexes, conditions and utility skills, so that your necro heroes can fully focus on healing and dealing sheer damage. Lack of a caller is what usually make people fail with discord or switch it for something else because 'it sucks'.
I find that primairy mesmers excel at calling, but apart of that, they are lacking. With their PvE update and given that you're to be considered as a totally new player, with running discordway only (or mostly) for most of the game, mesmer in NF might be your best option. They have plenty of cheap and great cover hexes for Assassin's Promise, can easily remove enchantments and pump up their own energy and health, can pick hexes off your allies and so on.

For PvE skills, i agree with YMLaD - it's your basic condition skill that fuels discord. On the longer run, i use Technobabble + Pain Inverter rather than Sin Support - necro minions are enough to entertain foes, AoE daze from Technobabble proves superior when facing a caster heavy group (and also provides a cover condition for YMLaD), while PI gives you the opportunity to cast it on a foe using AoE and focus calling on someone else, possibly eliminating two of them in mere seconds.
Your greatest bit of job is to prioritize the targets accordingly, killing healers and hex rupters first, AoE damagers and ressers next, then general rupters and the rest of opposing team later. With a little practice, it's something one gets used to and does automatically.

When it comes to heroes, i never use Death Nova with discord build. Necros simply waste too much time and energy enchanting their minions rather than dealing sheer damage, as they should, or they don't use Death Nova at all as they react to your calling. That said, minions are only to bodyblock and provide additional entertainment for foes rather than actually deal damage.
I use two N/Rt heroes with Discord, Animate Bone Minions, SoLS and healing spells from resto (Life and Protective was Kaolai included), and one N/Mo hero with Discord, Animate Bone Minions, SoLS and specced into prot prayers. On top of that, i use two healing henchies and two nuking henchies (whenever possible) - no Cynn against the destroyers, however. No physical henchmen whatsoever. Mesmer hench is usually superior to others if 2monk/2ele is not available.

In normal mode, you can freely switch one healing hench to another caster for more damage. In most places, when you're experienced enough, you can go for pure damage and keep heals/prots only on your necromancers.

In HM 4man areas, i actually always prefered a balanced build over discord. N/Mo minion master with Death Nova and prot prayers, Mo/Me with heals and Leech Signet / Power Drain, water/earth Elementalist with wards and AoE stuff, plus myself with spirits or heavy AoE damage => win in every 4man area.



Just an end note: i started using discord only when i had to max out my EotN titles and i had to fill out a lot of books in HM. I found that discord excels at doing Destruction Depths quickly and much more stable than my original balanced builds. At this point, i had about 70% of the game vanquished, all (or nearly all) missions done in HM and NM, and i can't say it was slow or unstable. Discord is just one way of achieving stuff with minimal effort from yourself, as you do the same all the time, no matter who you face. There are, however, situations when a decent spiritmaster with a balanced team, rupting mesmer hero included, is far superior and faster than discord with a caller.
Also remember that discord works GREAT when it comes to tough, yet not many foes. If there's a situation when you face decent lvl 20+ foes, yet not powerful or strong, in big numbers, it's where discord with no AoE backup and good utility support may easily fall.

Remember it is way easier to unlock Xandra in EOTN than get Livia or Master of whispers. With Xandra as a sos/resto rit you have some serious addition to your team. Olias is really easy to get so get him first. And Gwen will be unlocked when you reach eotn outpost. With a spirit spammer, olias as jagged bones MM and gwen as mass rupter you will have great team that can take you anywhere in the game.

I disagree with some on melee hench but that may depend on what your main char is.

People underate the support and damage you can get from a RoJ monk in NM. It has massive damage, and you can run it as a full heal bar apart from RoJ if you want to. Otherwise, it can provide smite damage supports, and party heals depending on how you spec. Its very nice.

As for the order, I would get some heroes and complete the 3 games + expansion in NM first (aiming for masters in each). Ideally aim for survivor whilst your doing it, its not that difficult, and completing the 4 campaigns without dying and with books will get you close to the 1.3 mill xp.

After that, its really up to you. Having the outposts available, guardian titles will get you some more statues there, as will just clearing out fow/uw etc.

Since you are going through Normal mode, you can run things other than discord and do just fine.
I might suggest starting in Nightfall. For Istan island, you can run whatever is fun and you'll be fine. Pick acolyte sousuke and once you can go to eye of the north, pick up Vekk, ogden and Gwen.

Make a pvp character for quick access to either fort aspenwood or jade quarry. Run around and have fun in these casual pvp formats and collect 3000 balth faction (should take about 4 matches, regardless of whether you win or lose). Use that 3000 faction to unlock searing flames. Set up Vekk and Sousuke as SF eles, using hero skill trainers to unlock the skills that you might need.

http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:E/an...s_Elementalist

In nightfall, Cynn also has searing flames, so if you bring her you get a team with 3 characters with a 1 second cast, 2 second recharge ~100 damage elite. In normal mode when foes have normal armor, this works fine. You can then easily burn your way to getting Olias and then through early Nightfall to Master of Whispers. At this point, you'll know more about the game, have a bit of cash and have more skills unlocked and be on your way to 30/50.

Wow, thank you for all the quick responses. It seems you guys are split on which campaign to start in, either go proph/factions/nf for difficulty increases or just straight to nightfall for heroes. I'm still undecided on this myself. But thank you for all the information on heroes/where to obtain them. It's exactly what I was looking for

I'd strongly recommend doing NF, Prophecies progression is glacially slow, as is the rate of skill acquisition, which combines to make for a very boring experience.

Do NF, get heroes, enjoy the other campaigns.

Factions is somewhere between the two. You level up fast, and you get decent skills, but you still lack heroes.

edit: For clarity, Prophecies is a great campaign, but leveling from scratch in it is not a lot of fun.

For an experienced player, starting in Factions would be the way to go. Level up fast, then cross to Nightfall and pick up your heroes at level 15.

However, for a new player, starting directly in Nightfall would be a better choice. You have a lot to learn about gameplay before you can effectively use Discord (or any other team builds), a lot of skills that need to be acquired, and a lot of equipment/armor/upgrades to get. It will be simplest just to start in NF and follow the story until you obtain Master of Whispers, picking up Olias along the way. Then you can decide whether you need to finish Nightfall for additional experience, or jump to EotN and pick up Livia.

I have started in NF and am currently level 7, so far so good (ele/mes). My char name is Noodles Are Omnom if anyone is bored and feels like helpin out Thanks again for all the responses!

I highly recommend starting in factions even if you want to do the other campaigns first. It is the quickest that will let you off of the island and traveling to all three continents as well as leveling up. Hell, you get a level up just for zoning into the first city.

You'd be missing out on a lot of the game by aiming for necro heroes from the very beginning, but if you insist on rushing it: I'd start in Factions where you level to 20 the fastest, then jump to NF, grab Olias, play through NF enough to get Whispers, then jump to EotN and make a beeline for the Asura areas for Livia.

Also, remember that you'll need to acquire the skills needed for each hero as you unlock them, some of which may require a detour now and then, but use the wiki and pick your closest/fastest acquisition options from there.