User:Malokai92/Guide Index/Hero

Heroes and Sabway
When Nightfall came out, people could suddenly customize their own Henchmen and micro the party. You didn't have to use a bunch of half-baked and poorly designed henchmen to meet your needs. You could even bring your own MM, normally reserved for a Necromancer, which replaced monotonous summoning and waiting for things to die. Later on when Eye of the North, Sabway was introduced, abusing Soul Reaping and Signet of Lost Souls so heroes could spam skills and heals to their delight. This made up for the notoriously bad energy management AI has. Sabway also featured using an MM as a minion bomber, since hero AI are 100 times more efficient at spamming Death Nova on their minions. It also abused Spiteful Spirit since enemy AI will continuously attack and various Curses skills such as Enfeebling Blood to counter melee and Barbs/Mark of Pain to abuse minions. Splinter Weapon, which was originally put on the healer and then the SS necro, provided massive AoE for melee characters. The hero combination provided all the utility and damage for almost all situation and was totally independent of the character using, excluding Splinter Weapon for melee. The idea was that a single group of heroes could be taken anywhere in Hard Mode and used to clear the area quickly and efficiently. Thus Sabway became the first true meta in PvE after the introduction of Hard Mode, at least for using H/H.

Discordway
Following along the same lines, Discordway was introduced. The difference was the team killed enemies by spiking them down with Discord, which is spammable and deals armor-ignoring damage. The player simply calls a target and heroes take priority in casting Discord; the resulting spike almost killed any target in one cast. The SS is instead replaced with a second hybrid healer, which used the fact Curses are effective at low levels to use Shadow of Fear and Enfeebling Blood to counter melee. Since the build had an inordinate amount of healing and killed most targets instantly, it became a cookie cutter build for clearing areas. This has prevailed as the 2 man pug for vanquishing and doing missions.

Racway
Racway is also a team build designed to be used with the Imbagon. Although it is outdated due to lack of damage, it is still beloved by some players. The premise was using an Orders Dervish to spam Orders to buff the paragons to deal pewpew damage and charge "Save Yourselves!" and other adrenaline skills quickly. Stunning Strike introduced a spammable daze to make spell casters and bosses easy to kill. Various shouts provided support for the party and made it extremely hard for a group to wipe.

Generic Builds
Of course, more common hero builds usually involved a generic WoH monk with a bar full of heals, fire elementalists for nuking, and lots of gimped melee bars. Most people had enough sense to bring an MM for a minion wall and bring a healer. When RoJ was buffed, I pretty much used 2 RoJ monks in place of nukers since "You Move Like a Dwarf!" will keep an enemy in range and it could spike most enemies down. They also had condition and hex removal to keep me clean and provided extra heals. Using RoJ monks opened up the idea that Strength of Honor could be used with a strong bar. Melee started hitting much harder, notably letting Assassins to kill everything in a one or two chains. There's some Warrior that uses Earth Shaker and dual RoJ to ball up and spike down groups and clear elite areas, but we like to play builds that are idiotically simple to use. Other common builds included Barrage Rangers and using Paragon shouts with melee and casters because the synergy is there.

AI Abuse
One major change for heroes came with the fact AI have superhuman reaction time, sticking a couple interrupts on a hero proved quite effective. This was abused in HA with Tease heroes along with RoJ monks, but we don't care about that. The first notable build to use this was a Shield of Protection hero copied from the Stone Summit Healer, using Power Drain and Waste Not, Want Not instead of Glyph of Lesser Energy to maintain energy. Now most hero Monks and Mesmers use these to maintain their energy as a substitute for Soul Reaping.

Spirits
The more recent update to spirits has introduced the melee biotch and Spiritway. The melee biotch is a generic build on the wiki used on melee characters. It buffs them up with Strength of Honor, spams a high spec Splinter Weapon and Ancestors' Rage, keeps the melee clean, and provides three spirits that make their own little spirit wall. It's pretty much a melee player's dream come true. Using spirits to kill stuff first come to light with the spirit spam farmer, where the spirits did all the work killing enemies. Spiritway involves spamming a large number of spirits to train down targets and provided a gigantic wall of spirits and minions while provided some heals and utility. The question is why you would want a bunch of spirits in the first place? The reasons why spirits are so overpowered in PvE include: All this means is that even if you are the worst player in the world, the spirits will kill everything for you. It also means experienced players can complete high end areas with H/H simply by pulling enemies into the spirits and taking the group out. One such player likes to brag about clearing Duncan quickly with only one healer henchman.
 * 1) They can't be hexed or inflicted with conditions.
 * 2) They are high priority targets since they have low health.
 * 3) They bodyblock, providing a "spirit wall" similar to a meatwall from an MM.
 * 4) They deal armor-ignoring damage.
 * 5) They attack from a very long range.
 * 6) They will all attack the same target most of the time until he dies.
 * 7) They can be set up before battle.
 * 8) They can kill enemies fucking fast.

Mesmer Update and Panic
The newest meta change is probably the update to provide Mesmers with AoE skills such as buffs to Energy Surge, Chaos Storm, Shared Burden, Wandering Eye, and so on. The most powerful skill to come out of this is Panic. Panic works by inflicting Panic on the target and all nearby foes, so if one foe uses the a skill, the rest of the group is interrupted. For PvE enemies who love spamming their skills, this means the entire group will be disabled from using skills while you pound away. While this is extremely effective against prevent nuking from wiping your party, it also means the monks will have a hard time healing, melee will interrupt each other or the group, and enemies are very easy to take down. It also helps that Mesmers can deal high armor-ignoring damage with Mistrust, Wastrel's Worry, and Wastrel's Demise to further nuke groups to death. There's room to bring Splinter Weapon, "Fall Back!", or other utility as well and the AoE hex provides fuel for Discord.

Embark Beach Update
The long-anticipated 7 hero update was finally released at the start of March. The implications of this update would be what you might think. You can bring a full party of heroes to any area. Elite areas are formally without henchman, forcing players to group with another player just to attempt them. Areas such as Domain of Anguish, Tomb of Primeval Kings, War in Kryta quests, and other elite areas are possible where having a full, effective party was not possible before. You no longer have to pick and choose which vital builds you want to play with. Subsequently, the most balanced hero teams are a combination of vetted hero teams such as sabway and spiritway. The ability to put sabway, spiritway, and mesway together makes any area possible to complete in Normal Mode; Hard Mode isn't as much as a pain in the ass due to shitty henchmen. Those who prefer to play solo can now do elite areas by themselves. You will still wipe without aggro control, balling, and modifying builds to suit the area.

Soul Twisting
The ST Rit has been around since the spirit update, but went under my radar until far after the 7 hero update. This build is as much of a game changer as Panic. It was pretty hard to fit into 3 man, especially with problems using it with an MM. With 7 heroes, there is enough room to fit it in.

Shelter acts as a party-wide Protective Spirit; unlike Protective Spirit, it can't be stripped. This makes it a fire-and-forget skill to protect your party against nukes and hard-hitting monsters. Formally, the only way to truly protect your party from wiping for a hit by Rodogort's Invocation or Searing Flames was "Save Yourselves!". However this doesn't apply to armor-ignoring damage and hard to keep up on your party at all times, so Energy Surge and other skills still hurt and you still needed Protective Spirit for pulling. Shelter gives you an easy way out, no microing or careful preparation set up. The obvious drawback was the long recharge and high cost. Soul Twisting allows a hero to spam Shelter indiscriminately, keeping it up at almost all times. The build throws caution out the window, allowing you to rush in with your heroes without a care of the common nukes and AoE attacks that cause group wipes.

Displacement has a similar effect, making melee trivial to fight against. Be aware that casters will trigger it with their autoattacks. The meta with Panic and Ineptitude nicely counters this, along with casters in high-end areas after casting more often than not. By the time casters bother to start autoattacking, they're either dead, kiting, or scattering. The main purpose of using Displacement however is to prevent training by enemies. This is why Displacement is powerful:
 * 1) Displacement prevents initial enemy attacks, consequentially the initial rush, when healers act lethargic.
 * 2) Any attacks that get through will get reduced by Shelter. This is common with Unsuspecting Strike from sins and high level melee.
 * 3) Damage is reduced by Enfeebling Blood and other defensive skills.
 * 4) Displacement will buy time for a hero to get heals or Shield of Absorption up if melee starts training a single hero.

Union is the final common spirit used with Soul Twisting. This generally faded out of the meta because it drops fast and the hero is likely to overcast Shelter/Displacement with it. It is quite useful to fill the gap with many packets of damage such as melee groups, nukes, and Chaos Storm. I've found that it works quite well as long as you micro it to avoid wasting the spirit.

Ele Update
This update lowered the armor of HM enemies and increased their health. This works similar to the Massive Damage flux. Armor used to scale with level, where enemies get +3 armor for each level after level 20. This is on top of the base armor rating for professions. This made armor-respecting damage pretty terrible in high end HM areas. After the update, all enemies now have the base armor of their appropriate profession. The net result makes using physical and elemental damage more effective in PvE. On the other hand, armor-ignoring damage becomes less effective because it doesn't scale with armor to make up for the increased maximum health of enemies. You can ignore most of the skill changes as everyone will just be spamming Searing Flames to kill shit. The changes have little if any effect on PvE beyond making HM more annoying and some HM enemies really annoying. Oh and Arenanet tacked on some random skill changes that apparently do nothing.

More information on this update can be found at User:Malokai92/Guide Index/Ele.