Why Discordway is the best possible 7 hero backline.

I wrote this as a responce to another thread, but since the post ended up beeing a longer post then I had originally foreseen I am posting it in a separate thread as this is something I was planning on writing down anyhow.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wenspire I would like to see some people doing HM material without an MM. I know a few of you say it's possible (which it is, I know) but I feel that a great majority of people just rely on an MM as a crutch to skilled gameplay.


Just my $0.02... Bleh, i've been playing a few days with 6 mesmers, ER Prot and a monkie now and it feels completely moot. Having either a MM or Spirits is a must, and solid single target damage is allso very benefitial for the remaining mobs after the main group is spiked as it saves your mesmers from using energy intensive spells to finish off easy mobs. For some zones such as Raiasu Palace explorable of UW\FoW mobs group up easely enough for a pure mesmer team \ AoE focused team to work sure. But in atleast 90% of this games zones and missions having a MM is without a doubt the way to go. Most importaintly, 4 mesmers is enough to spike down any kind of clumped group in pretty much the same time as 6 mesmers does it, and anyone saying mesmers are the best choice versus the remaining single targets is just plain wrong. Allmost regardless of what character I play my primary build uses very little variation from this one currently.



3x Discord Heroes (Standard setup apart from subbing putrid bile in for shadow of fear)
4x Mesmer Heroes (PI, Panic, Esurge and Ineptitude)

I may end up making a longer post about this at a later point but in short, my experience is that no matter how much testing I do. Nothing is superior to discordway as a backline as you simply put, got enough AoE with 4 mesmers to wipe any kind of clumped up group and discord does a great job in every single aspect of the battle.

In the start of the fight, discordway heroes will not be spamming discord as conditions for it are not met, so they will focus on casting skills such as putrid bile and enfeebling blood.

In the middle of the fight, they will be bizzy healing and protting the team, and they do a great job at that, peticularily at outhealing elementalists as they can instantly drop Ashes for a quick and powerfull team heal.

When the mesmers have taken care off the main group, they will use discord to finish up any stragglers that got outside of the mesmer AoE.

And perhaps most importaintly, on top of doing all that other great stuff they supply minions which basically triples the amount of pressure your team can handle. Because basically, a group having no minions will be targetted one hell of a lot more then one that has minions and once that patrol comes in towards your back or you fail at sneaking past a couple of groups. Thats a huge deal!

With a nuker group, an ER prot and a monk and no minions. You can clear house incredibly quickly versus grouped up foes. And you can handle between 1 and 2 HM groups without much strain as long as theyre both coming from more or less the same direction. But you will have trouble versus multiple foes with fire spells \ chaos storm \ RoJ as they will target your group directly. Even if you flag them away that is in a matter of secounds a huge amount of damage to your group. And you will allso have trouble if the enemys are coming from too many directions, some encounters in this game have foes coming from 2-3-4 directions at the same time in small groups. Those give you trouble because your big damage AoE spikes cant hit them all and therefore has too long cooldowns.

With a nuker group and a tank, say 5 mesmers 2 non MM necromancers or ER prot + monk and an assassin with flashing blades or shadowform. You can handle 20-30 HM mobs coming from one direction, alternaught with a little strain on your team. But groups coming from behind or not attacking your assassin first can quickly cause a lot of trouble.

With Discordway and a 4-5 mesmer nuke group or a human ritualist, you can handle 20-30 foes at the same time coming from multiple directions and you can allso use the time given by the minions to reposition yourself and get to a more advantageous position where the enemies arrive at a more proper pace or more clumped up. And you can more easely deal with single targets.

With Discordway + SoS and SoGM ritualists along with Panic and Ineptitude mesmers you can handle the sky falling down with baboons raining from it and about a hundred enemies coming from 200 different directions at the same time as a monkey farts "God Save the Queen" in reverse! But because of the lack of AoE damage it will be slower over time as you practically never do those 6-7 secound fights and often end up running away from the spirits and not having them for the majority of the next fight.

So in the end, my conclusion is that Discordway + Mesmers and no non human ritualists is the best way to go and that ER Prot setups are subpar for the majority of the games zones. And people tend to forget that discordway doesnt just deal single target damage, it allso deals amazing amounts of AoE damage thru Putrid Bile and Death Nova. And while that damage was insignificant in the past that was because of the lack of other sources of AoE damage, when combined with mesmers it gives necromancers an easely triggered in the area armor ignoring nuke instead. Which combines very well with the allready existing mesmer AoE damage.

And as a final word:
YOU DO NOT NEED THE DISCOCALLER BUILD WITH AP\YMLAD\EVAS AND FH! Mesmer and necromancer heroes will be enough by themselves to meet the requirements for discord beeing casted.

And anyone that disagrees can feel free to PM me ingame if they want a heads up for any kind of task that doesnt require as super specific build. Cons\No cons\SF tank or whatever I dont really care. That means no DoA \ FoW HM or UW in short, as those zones are very much unlike any other zones in the game. -Yuri Zahard ingame

And im starting to get real tierd of the bullshit people sprout about discordway beeing subpar to say an ER focused setup. Because I probably have around 40 heroes fully kitted out in this game across my different characters, I have triple warriors, dervs, rangers, I have lots of necros in all shapes and sizes I have sins and monks all with perfect equip, runes and sup vigors and whatever. I've tested so many builds now and in the end theres simply no way outside of this beeing the generally best backline you can get for the majority of the game regardless of your class.

I get by with only one healer, with the rest of my team being the damage+MM. Discordway is... ok, but in an area with a lack of exploitable corpses you lose a lot of efficacy and have to change the build around, and possibly even change multiple heroes, whereas a build that is strong without multiple characters relying on minions for damage mitigation can simply switch the MM out for another utility/damage role.

true this but i still prefer to get a bomber MM as well as a discord.

Your argument is more: minions + spirits + shutdown (2 mesmers) = win.

This is true, but it does not exactly require Discord. I only run 2 necro heroes (PoD prot and AotL mm/para) and a command para instead of 3 discord necros, there's probably more sense in that.

Quote: Originally Posted by AndroBubbles

I get by with only one healer, with the rest of my team being the damage+MM. Discordway is... ok, but in an area with a lack of exploitable corpses you lose a lot of efficacy and have to change the build around, and possibly even change multiple heroes, whereas a build that is strong without multiple characters relying on minions for damage mitigation can simply switch the MM out for another utility/damage role. Now without knowing youre exact team setup it's hard to say wether this is correct or not. If you say play an imbagon yourself, I can easely understand how you get by using a single healer and minionmaster, you allso dont mention wether you have spirits in your build which further help reduce the hatred towards your heroes or wether you in some way tank for your heroes by say running straight in to the groups yourself and thereby remove a lot of the hatred from the group.

What I can say is that unless youre running an imbagon a single healer backline without prot support either thru an ST, Imba, ER prot or MM with prot is highly vulnerable towards strong elementalists such as elementalist bosses. Even when running 4+ mesmers youre still not allways going to reliably interrupt every single spell, and say a "Dragon Stomp" from Earth Magic used by a boss and hitting in excess of 300 damage by itself is going to cause you huge amounts of trouble. And while a monk would need a few secounds before fully outhealing that kind of party wide damage the two restoration discorders will simply drop ashes of protective was kaolai and instantly giving you the buffer you need to survive another similarily strong hit.

You are allso wrong in the presumption that discorders are in any way the cannons of the team responsible for taking down the majority of the opponents. That kind of a job is better left to other classes and in peticular mesmers, discorders does in the new metagame, with the same build, have more of a supportive role then they did in the past. They provide healing and protection and help clean up after the battle is decided, in short what that means is that if youre pulling 10 mobs at the same time, mesmers will have the most effective toolset for cleaning up the first eight. But once the real battle is over and youre left just to kill those couple of melees that ran away from the caster group or that single monk standing in the back. Discord is going to save your mesmers valuable energy cleaning up those last mobs.

And in my experience, discordway is allso faster then ER Prot + Monk and another damagedealer in corpse light areas for the same reasons listed above. The benefits of having the minions around doesnt clearly show up uintill you accidenally or intentionally double or triple pull groups in order to achieve your goal.

Im still curious about that single healer setup of yours though. Would appriciate if you could either PM it to me or post it here so I can know what youre talking about.

Single healer? I get through most HM content with just 4 prots on the PoD necro and only MBaS, Spirit Light and PwK on the SoS hero. No dedicated healer is necessary.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dzjudz

Your argument is more: minions + spirits + shutdown (2 mesmers) = win.

This is true, but it does not exactly require Discord. I only run 2 necro heroes (PoD prot and AotL mm/para) and a command para instead of 3 discord necros, there's probably more sense in that. No, spirits are immobile and with the current meta unnessesary unless used by a player. Even with a bit of distance between groups, the first fight will usually be over around the 8 to 15 secound mark (depending on group composition and scatter) and the secound fight started around the 18-22 secound mark and over before 35 secounds. (I tend to use my skills as timers to keep track of these things, especially deep freeze (22 sec cooldown in my build) is usefull for this purpose as I tend to use that to start every single fight even if it means waiting a couple of secounds to start it )

My point is more along the lines of 3x Discord beeing fantastic at killing the leftover mobs that were not hit by AoE's and Putrid Bile giving heavy support for the clumped ones. And since many fights end just as minions get there and start fighting discord is conciderably better then AoTL, PoD i've allso tried but with multiple mesmers I find it better to leave the enchantments for the mesmers so they have something to use Drain Enchantment at. There allso isent a need for more AoE damage as 3x domination mesmers is easely enough to take care of the grouped up mobs by themselves. With 1x Ineptitude mesmer as anti melee.

And on the AoE and curses side of things in general:
PoD + Enfeeblind Blood and perhaps MoP and Barbs is the only skills worthwhile in a curse setup.
Discord + Enfeeblind Blood (6 curse magic) + Putrid Bile deals as much AoE damage in a significantly larger area and provides the same benefits outside of that. Shadow of Fear only serves to hinder mesmer skills from working effectively.

I do run only PoD + Enfeebling + MoP. Shadow of Fear can be nice, it does not hinder mesmer skill working at all (only Empathy which I don't take anyway).

Putrid Bile and Death Nova are slotted on the AotL necro, making them even stronger than with Discord.

P.S. most people don't run 3-4 mesmers as they don't have Mercs.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dzjudz Single healer? I get through most HM content with just 4 prots on the PoD necro and only MBaS, Spirit Light and PwK on the SoS hero. No dedicated healer is necessary. Well i've allready stated what I think of SoS heroes. So if that is your solution I'd say chances are youre allready slower then you could be or spending more time then nessesary doing aggro management and battlefield control because I dont see that kind of a setup pulling 2 or 3 extra groups and surviving it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dzjudz I do run only PoD + Enfeebling + MoP. Shadow of Fear can be nice, it does not hinder mesmer skill working at all (only Empathy which I don't take anyway). Putrid Bile and Death Nova are slotted on the AotL necro, making them even stronger than with Discord. Apart from the fact that I slot two instances of Putrid Bile and 1 of Death Nova. No reason what so ever to only use a single Putrid Bile.

Aggro management and battlefield control makes it go faster because you can focus AoE to hit more targets.

The reason not to take more than one Putrid Bile is that it would require bringing another necro which would not bring anything more to the table.

So is your argument simply:
"Discord is better for damage since nuking setups rely on balling the enemy up and they're sometimes dispersed"
"Multiple sources of weaker heals beat a single source of strong heals"
"Setups with ER Eles aren't as good as Discord"

The first point is so horrible to discuss without any context that I'm not going to. Needless to say it's one that's been hammered at before and I don't feel like having another go.

On the second point, of course it's true. It's trivially true! The advantage a dedicated healer gives is that he's got a strong heal (WoH, Healing Burst or even Infuse) whereas 3 N/Rts have three weaker heals.

The last point I really don't get. Very few people run two dedicated backliners in their setups and why do you insist on making the comparison to a team with an ER and no minions? You've dismissed a lot of things out of hand and have come very quickly to a conclusion that given this, a lot of people are going to disagree with.

Quote: Originally Posted by Xenomortis So is your argument simply:
"Discord is better for damage since nuking setups rely on balling the enemy up and they're sometimes dispersed"
"Multiple sources of weaker heals beat a single source of strong heals"
"Setups with ER Eles aren't as good as Discord"

The first point is so horrible to discuss without any context that I'm not going to. Needless to say it's one that's been hammered at before and I don't feel like having another go. In short, the majority of zones have some degree of scatter among mobs and with 3 or more well setup mesmers having single target damage brings more to the table then having more AoE damage. I concider 4 mesmers to be the optimal, 5 only if you play as a mesmer yourself.

Quote: On the second point, of course it's true. It's trivially true! The advantage a dedicated healer gives is that he's got a strong heal (WoH, Healing Burst or even Infuse) whereas 3 N/Rts have three weaker heals. I disagree, spirit light is strong enough as a big heal to compete with WoH or Healing Burst. You allso have better condition removal and hex removal can be left to mesmers.

Flare + Weaken armor = greater DPS than discord. The only reason discord is popular is because it works in ~95% of the areas in GW and you don't have to change out hero's and think about what you are doing. Only places that don't have corpses, or do have massive hex removal, really spoil it. Still a team setup catered to the area you are playing will ALWAYS be faster/better than discords. Also Mesmers are superior damage dealers in every area and also provide control. Spiritway is undeniably effective (arguments against this are ridiculous) although you must move slowly for it to work. I find that my hero's spirits are behind me and thus ineffective most of the time since I prefer to move quickly through areas. Again, it comes down to play style preference.

Conclusion: Discord is idiot proof, Mesmers and Eles do the most damage, Spiritway is powerful but slow. Regardless of how you feel about any of this its possible to destroy HM with any of the above. I really do hate discord myself, but I completely understand its popularity.

Personally I use 2X SF ele warders, 2X Mes (elites switch up for area but LOVE psychic instability.) MM (if corpses) with condition removal or prot, Energy/"They're on Fire" Motogon, and an HB. At least that's the setup I use for an area that doesn't require any special consideration. I like this because I can chain aggro in HM with no problem 99% of the time.

Quote: Originally Posted by Gabs88 I disagree, spirit light is strong enough as a big heal to compete with WoH or Healing Burst. You allso have better condition removal and hex removal can be left to mesmers. Spirit Light loses to Word of Healing and Healing Burst. It loses by quite a long way. Then again, one should expect that; two elites boosted by Divine Favor should be better than a non-elite of similar functionality. Word beats it because it has a faster cast time, lower recharge and heals for much more (conditionally, but if the condition isn't met they didn't need a massive heal to stabilize). Burst beats it because it has an AoE heal and a faster cast time. Spirit Light just has a lower opportunity cost (it's non-elite) - that's not trivial and SL is strong, I'm just saying that in terms of power it's not fair to compare it to the big Monk heals.


Quote: Originally Posted by Gabs88 In my experience minions barely arrive at the battlefield by the time the battle is over. So the protection they provide as a bodyshield when clashing with the melee foes is more importaint then the damage they deal. So a dedicated minionmaster such as a Jagged Bones \ Prot bomber brings less to a team then a Discord \ Prot bomber even by itself. So if non-discord setups with a MM are killing fast enough for the MM to be a non-factor, why are Discord setups (with effectively two to three MMs) faster when their minions are a factor? The rate at which minions travel is independent of setup (assuming AoE IMS skills (e.g. Fallback) are constant between them). Or are you saying then that the difference here is simply the skill Discord and the minions still aren't really a factor?

Quote: Originally Posted by Xenomortis

On the second point, of course it's true. It's trivially true! The advantage a dedicated healer gives is that he's got a strong heal (WoH, Healing Burst or even Infuse) whereas 3 N/Rts have three weaker heals. This, but the biggest argument against bringin heal/damage hybrids is that these will concentrate on healing instead of doing dmg, when the team is under pressure, thus making the battle longer and thereby more dangerous.

Of course some builds are better fit for hybrids - for an example SoS and MM, since these don't need to do much during battles. their role is more passive than, say, discords.

Quote: Originally Posted by Xenomortis Spirit Light loses to Word of Healing and Healing Burst. It loses by quite a long way. Then again, one should expect that; two elites boosted by Divine Favor should be better than a non-elite of similar functionality. Word beats it because it has a faster cast time, lower recharge and heals for much more (conditionally, but if the condition isn't met they didn't need a massive heal to stabilize). Burst beats it because it has an AoE heal and a faster cast time. Spirit Light just has a lower opportunity cost (it's non-elite) - that's not trivial and SL is strong, I'm just saying that in terms of power it's not fair to compare it to the big Monk heals. Discussing this just ends up overcomplicating things so gonna skip it. Youre right but I like resto better over time, I think this is more because of the double Protective Was Kaolai instant drops then anything else.

Quote: So if non-discord setups with a MM are killing fast enough for the MM to be a non-factor, why are Discord setups (with effectively two to three MMs) faster when their minions are a factor? The rate at which minions travel is independent of setup (assuming AoE IMS skills (e.g. Fallback) are constant between them). Or are you saying then that the difference here is simply the skill Discord and the minions still aren't really a factor? Because minions are there to handle pressure not to deal damage.

Say youre killing 3 groups in a row, more or less grouped up. Minions hardly catch up before things are dead. In this example, a dedicated minionmaster is practically useless but youre group is doing pretty good regardless, discorders will be bringing more to the table then a ER+Healer+Minionmaster backline in the terms of saving energy that the mesmers would otherwise spend killing single targets and speeding up the process even further.

Now say youre suddenly finding yourself straight in the middle of those 3 groups. Minions will spread out to all directions while you will be standing in the middle fighting or run back a bit for the mobs to approach you from the same directions with minions holding them back. Now in this case, will it really make a difference wether you have a Jagged Bones\AoTL setup or a Discord setup? Youre backline will mostly be doing healing and minionsummoning anyhow, and but both backlines will be doing more or less equally good.

So the conclusion from this is; Having minions OR spirits helps a lot in handling extreme pressure situations like severely overaggroing, groups that are close to eachother or when getting attacked from multiple directions. And they therefore deserve a spot in the team, but a dedicated minionmaster is generally not worth it because it spends a lot of time bringing allmost nothing to the table while a discord MM allways brings something.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SmokingHotImolation This, but the biggest argument against bringin heal/damage hybrids is that these will concentrate on healing instead of doing dmg, when the team is under pressure, thus making the battle longer and thereby more dangerous. Of course some builds are better fit for hybrids - for an example SoS and MM, since these don't need to do much during battles. their role is more passive than, say, discords. When adding multiple AoE focused characters to the team the discord role changes. You're no longer calling the targets for the discords to kill, actually i practically NEVER call targets as mesmer heroes are generally very good at choosing clumped up groups for themselves. And I cant say I very often experience discorders to missprioritize healing vs damage dealing with the exception of healing out of party allies essential to the quest\mission\task at hand. That sometimes needs a little micromanaging

Quote: Originally Posted by Gabs88

discorders will be bringing more to the table then a ER+Healer+Minionmaster backline Ah I didn't know this thread was about 4 heroes + 3x Discord vs 4 heroes + ER+healer+MM. I thought it was 4 heroes + 3x Discord vs 7 heroes, not necessarily including 2 dedicated prot/heal heroes.

Quote: Originally Posted by _Alice_

Flare + Weaken armor = greater DPS than discord. The only reason discord is popular is because it works in ~95% of the areas in GW and you don't have to change out hero's and think about what you are doing. A couple points here.

1. Yes it may be lazy, but most player don't want to spend a half hour or more setting up their heroes for every zone.

2. Necro elites on heroes. Discord is a filler elite because other than your MM's elite there are no outstanding elites. PoD is ok but rip is usually enough, IV is ok but diminishes with HM armor. Discord is a cheap way to add damage to help take down single targets. Most builds already feature hexes and AoE conditions (enfeebling blood, weaken armor, searing flames etc.) that are being spammed so there's no reason to play the AP caller if you don't want to either.

I cant be bothered reading through this thread. Some people will always stick to the old ways no matter what. And yes, there are still people using sabway in the game.

new discordway: 2 rits, 2 mesmers, 3 discord necros (including a discord MM)

new meta: 2 rits, 2 mesmers, 1 MM, 1 commandgon, maybe 1 Orders necro (if physical) or ER or some curse necro variant.

The difference is not that great since half the team is the same anyway. If you are playing a physical, you probably have to make a choice between Orders or discord because of the attribute spread, skill slots, and recharge requirements of orders vs discord.

Discord is alittle less flexible if you need to ditch the MM in certain areas, you also lose orders if you are physical (no DF/MoF for SY, OOP, or BB), and you lose the commandgon FB, SYG, Gfte, AoE, AoD that also synergize with spirits. If you are a paragon, you also lose the opportunity cost of going with 3 paragon heroes to synergize with.

The other weakness with discordway is that you need to prep hex and condition before it can start spiking. These are best brought by the player character (either through AP+YMLAD or other means) or you can micro your heroes or otherwise, just go with a lower performance and wait for your heroes to prep. You lose DPS especially in places with hex and condition removal.

Quote: Originally Posted by Daesu

If you are a paragon, you also lose the opportunity cost of going with 3 paragon heroes to synergize with. I don't understand what you mean here, because on my paragon (the only one I run heroes with), my main team is 3 Paragon heroes, a Dwayna Orders Dervish, and 3 Eles. I also don't run a dedicated healer, but each paragon has Motivation, I run Command. I never have any issues whatsoever with anything I need to do HM. I'm sure if I try DoA HM or something for instance, I will have trouble, but I have no desire to try that. I generally never have any issues with HM areas that I do, I recently completed FoW HM with this team without consumables. I also don't run Save Yourselves, so that massive party wide damage control is not there, I threw that out there just because I'm sure everyone was assuming I use it. But, the main point, I don't use Necros, sure I've considered wanting to add an MM into my team, but taking one thing out totally destroys my synergy