Build talk:Team - HA Dual Migraine Hexway

This build is only theoreotical at the moment and I'm looking for any optimisations or suggestions anybody has to improve it. I would like to stay with the theme of punishing the enemy with hexes but maybe it's not a strong enough concept to do enough damage. Anyway this is just an experiment and I don't expect it to become meta or anything but would like to see how far we can theorycraft this. Feel free to discuss and debate the builds. Rickyf16aus (talk) 04:21, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
 * This build has some grave issues.


 * It can't deal with objectives found in GvG.
 * Flags.
 * The only character which can run flags is the third monk.
 * You can't delay the opponent's flag running meaningfully. You have three snares, but the snare characters have no speed boost to push up and can't survive if the opponent turns on them.
 * Splits.
 * No character can properly defend against splits, except for the third monk.
 * If there's more than a solo split you're screwed.
 * If the opponent splits you can't run flags anymore and the opponent starts boosting.
 * You have no character which can split itself.
 * Aggressiveness.
 * There's pretty much nothing you can do to accumulate aggressiveness or kill NPCs in the first place. More to that later.


 * It can' deal with objectives found in HA.
 * Relic running.
 * You lack speed boosts.
 * The snares might suffice.
 * You'll get snared a lot. Only one rupt on your non-snare mesmer means that, if you're lucky, you'll take out a ward, but can't do anything else.
 * King of the Hill.
 * If you plan to kill the ghostly hero with just empathy, spiteful spirit and insidious parasite, good luck.
 * No meaningful midline shutdown to take out their damage. Your best bet is to try wiping them if they play on your ghostly hero instead of your midline. But more to that later.
 * The GvG backline lacks skills like shield of absorption to keep the ghostly hero up.
 * No song of concentration.
 * Capture points.
 * No speed boosts on your damage characters, only two of your character can deal damage in a spread-out situation (domination mesmer, curses necromancer). Severely lacking.


 * 8v8/death match. The build won't deliver.
 * You have both a MoI assassin and AoD mesmer which don't deal damage themselves. It should generally suffice to take one of these to enable three to four damage dealers training a priority target.
 * However, that's not how a hexway works. You spread damage. The opponent has to trigger plenty of it, you don't have damage bursts. Neither the MoI nor the AoD make much sense in a hexway. You don't have a frontline which can club a target to death.
 * The only thing they could meaningfully do is to maintain MoI/AoD on healing burst monks instead of having other characters remove spirit bond from them manually (inspired enchantment, rip enchantment, shatter enchantment, drain enchantment). But it'd be better to have some single enchantment removals on characters which provide additional effects instead of wasting an entire (or even two) character(s) for that purpose.
 * You don't need signet of humility as you only have weakness and a very conditional deep wound. The signet is meant to take out restore condition if you play with fragility and have a dervish training targets. This will force their healing monks to draw conditions to remove the healing reduction of deep wound, thus triggering fragility and allowing the team to re-apply conditions for even more fragility triggers.
 * Likewise you don't need frustration. You have neither a ranger nor a wastrel's/PI mesmer to camp a healing monk. You don't even want that to happen: They are meant to cast their skills so scourge triggers.
 * If you want to keep one of these against spirit bond, keep the illusion mesmer, drop signet of humility for arcane conundrum, replace the MoI assassin with a wastrel's mesmer with backfire. Remove one of their midline characters from the game with frustration/conundrum/rupts/wastrel's demise. The backfire is for monks.
 * You don't have good means of dealing damage.
 * No (hex) elementalists which can deal damage on demand.
 * No degeneration hexes to force the opponent to use healing skills on multiple targets or AoE heals which trigger scourge healing multiple times.
 * Weak elite skills. PvP VoR is pathetic, spiteful spirit costs too much energy and takes too long to cast for its not that impressive effects. You can't benefit from the AoE damage properly.
 * No need to cast guardian, so defile defenses won't trigger. You already have parasitic bond as a cover hex.
 * You lack midline defense.
 * All defense you have is weakness, frustration and two rupts in the entire team. Punishing hexes don't take out damage, unless you kill. But you can hardly kill with the few damage you have.


 * No hard rez.
 * I'd love to see you prove that I'm wrong about these things by forming a team and winning with this a lot in GvG. Until then, I don't have faith in this concept. --Krschkr (talk) 16:22, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Well that's certainly crushed my hopes and dreams. I guess reality's like that. Rickyf16aus (talk) 23:07, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Note that both signet of humility and mark of insecurity disable skills of the other profession, so your death pact signet and make haste will be disabled in many combat situations. Of course you can argue that make haste will be available as you don't have to cast MoI on relic run maps if your assassin is the MH. Anyway, the issue of lacking damage remains. How about a classic HA hexway like this?

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 * It comes pretty close to this team. Soul bind instead of scourge, pressure spikes with dervish and death magic necromancer, AoD for the ghostly hero and spirit bonds, rupting for general use and KotH, fragility damage for better pressure spikes. --Krschkr (talk) 23:25, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

It was just a collection of builds I thought could be combined to devastating shutdown effect. I guess this isn't PvE though and players will easily avoid attempts like that. I don't mind if this page is deleted honestly I've got the basic build saved on my userpage. I can't make this viable no matter how hard I try because hexes seem to be inferior to rupts when it comes to PvP. Players can call when they're hex stacked and the monk can remove them especially if Peace and Harmony. But if you interrupt and spike the monks down they don't have an answer to things like that. Rickyf16aus (talk) 23:45, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
 * You'll have to focus on one game plan. Overwhelming pressure or enchantment disvalidification or clean spikes (or split and aggressiveness domination). Combining these usually doesn't work well as full spike builds don't have good pressure for either of the other core tactics, and pressure builds don't allow for more than pressure spikes. Of course some additional options like flag pushing, splitting ability and some skills to pull off an at least somewhat dangerous spike always help, but a build should be good for at least any of these aforementioned game plans to eventually work out. --Krschkr (talk) 00:07, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

I've tried to fix some of the issues you bought up earlier. What do you think of the changes I've made now? Of course this build is not meta and as I said I don't expect it to ever be listed as such. Rickyf16aus (talk) 23:18, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Needs a jack of all trades flux template for the migraine mesmers. Get some sort of snare in there for relic runs. You still have a spike caller in a pressure hexway which doesn't make much sense – but at least the assassin can remove spirit bonds from healing monks a lot. Don't forget to finish the build page so it can moved from stub to trial. I hope you have some people for testing the builds, because I don't. --Krschkr (talk) 23:26, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

I don't have anybody to test the builds I was just wondering how you would design a hexway personally such as this? It's moreso theoretical theorycraft rather than an actual practical build to use. I'm not sure if I even want it to be tested because I'm trying to design it in such a way that makes it the most shutdown possible. An annoying team to fight but not an actually useful one. Feel free to edit any changes to the builds or professions since I've saved them once again to my userpage. Rickyf16aus (talk) 07:44, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
 * A theory craft that's not supposed to be very effective at achieving its gameplay goal and to be tested to verify that it is doesn't have a place in the build namespace. If Cyber Smoke hadn't started to take over the page following your most recent comment I'd have suggested that this build was moved to your user space. I think he has a crew of people to test builds with, so this might solve two problems at once. --Krschkr (talk) 13:50, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm very grateful he did then because I honestly believe a build like this based entirely on shutdown via hexes has viability. Of course I myself would rather try to squeeze every punishing hex I can into the build. Builds like this one I made for example: https://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/Build:Me/N_Hex_Spammer. But I certainly understand that you need interrupts to shutdown monks over just a huge amount of hexes. Rickyf16aus (talk) 18:05, 22 March 2019 (UTC)