PvXwiki talk:Project 7 Hero Meta

Presentation
I suggest to stick to the concept in Build:Team - 6 Hero Dual Melee as it features Depending on whether and how the multiple midline variants information is conveyed deviations from the concept may be necessary. --Krschkr (talk) 13:30, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) an easily readable table of contents hierarchy
 * 2) links from the overview to the specific builds on the page
 * 3) a pawned team build code for advanced users
 * 4) the most relevant information about each hero (skills and equipment)...
 * 5) ... with a link to the individual page for more information.

Areas to Optimize on
I think there are a few things the community has converged on as optimized. A given for every build:
 * 1) 3 Mesmers - Razah is required, and is a mesmer
 * 2) BiP Support
 * 3) Prot Rit - recent changes to Rit Lord make that possible, but ST is still the favorite

I've got a few ideas for things to optimize on/include in build discussions:
 * 1) Mercs/Zei Rei - does the build require/is this optional
 * 2) Including a movespeed boost
 * 3) Splinter Weapon/Strength of Honor - always in build? I think making these optional can make pages messy.  I think SoH can be easily added to a mesmer, but I understand that there are differing opinions on Splinter Weapons minimum attribute requirements.
 * 4) One Size Fits All builds - How much has to change for 4 and 6 man areas? Can we get away with using different heroes on the same character, so that individual heroes don't need to be re-specced.  For example, I use an EMo hero in 4 man areas to cover heal and prot, and don't take a BiP or ST rit, even in HM.  This means that I don't have to change up the BiP or ST, and can just drop Master of Whispers and Xandra, and add Zhed, without changing anything else.  I'm not saying this all needs to be on the 7 man page.  We can use branding and linking within the pages to show how the 7/5/3 hero variants relate.
 * 5) Is Save Yourself an important player requirment for the build?

Presentation/Distribution: I know we have a Meta tag, but can we make a Meta Team Page? At the moment, I'd want to be able to like a page that shows the following links to builds:
 * 1) Beginner Team - Outside of scope of project, but useful for people who just started playing and want the "current best team". Already covered by Krchkr's beginner team build.
 * 2) Campaign/Vanquishing Team - Must include movespeed boosts and optimizes on damage
 * 3) Cost Effective Team - Not sure on the name, but something like Paneptitude where a Minor/Major Dom rune and 2 Superior Illusions will suffice instead of 3 Superior Dom Runes
 * 4) Dungeon/Generic Elite Team - Includes more defensive choices (Panic) and doesn't necessarily have high movespeed uptime (maybe add fallback to just ST rit or something like that)
 * 5) Merc Team - If you could use anything, what would it be?

I think the benefit of a page is that we show the discussion/trade offs in one place, and would reduce confusion on why there are so many "Great" team builds. I know that truly elite area hero team builds (DoA/UW) could probably be addressed, but I think we can cover that in Phase 2 of this project :) Grokwell (talk) 15:35, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Alas, I can't agree with your first point. There's not yet an agreement whether three mesmers are mandatory for optimal results (see here). However, that won't be an obstacle we can't overcome. The associated build testing project will help a lot in discovering the best build variants. This project itself is based on the idea that there is a certain type of team build, which consists of this core:


 * A communing prot which provides party-wide protection because area damage and imperfect usage of targeted protection make it the best general protection hero choice.
 * My tests so far indicate that soul twisting remains the go-to elite skill and ritual lord is only useful for micro management purposes – but in those cases clearly superior. A standard ST's shelter has 81 armor, 416 health points and loses 43 (21 with armor of unfeeling) health poins per trigger, which means 10 (20) charges. Using ritual lord the spirit has 99 armor, 512 health points, loses 35 (18) health points per trigger and has thus 15 (29) charges. People who do micro management are bound to love ritual lord. Else the recharge time may come at an unopportune moment and prove burdensome. It did in selvetarm and foundry HM, but of course those aren't usual testing places and I'll have to look into the build a lot more before I'll have an opinion on its viability.
 * Blood is power healer as the main source of healing and with blood is power to extend the effectivity of other characters, most notably mesmers. Even more important to help characters back up when they fail to use their energy management effectively or they've been affected by energy denial.
 * This is not the crucial character in the team. The build type functions very well without it, but runs at lower effectivity and is less resistant to unforeseen events. Or in the words of our rating system – lower universality. ;)
 * A midline of at least two mesmers which provide damage, but more importantly shutdown. Reducing the amount of incoming damage packets is crucial for the efficacy of a communing prot. Without shutdown such a hero is quickly overcharged and stops functioning properly or at all. Teams without shutdown instead need distraction (low-level minions, spirits) and, if hard protection is required, a reliable source of protective spirit and/or spirit bond (N/Mo or E/Mo).
 * With three energy surge mesmers the combination of burst damage and sheer amount of (area) interruption and spell prevention creates sufficient shutdown for the communing pret to remain functioning.
 * Else more defensive combinations are required, usually featuring panic as general shutdown and ineptitude/arcane conundrum as martial and caster shutdown. But psychic instability (2x + potentially energy surges) is better against casters.
 * Other sources of damage packet reduction don't prove anywhere near as effective or reliable or are lacking very much in their damage output. An example for this would be an earth elementalist which is susceptible to interruption and enchantment removal, doesn't deal very much damage but provides respectable defensive qualities through blocking, knock down, blindness and scattering.
 * In case of a melee player, a source of splinter weapon with 14+ channeling magic.
 * It's possible to get that from a communing prot, but that requires two superior and one major attribute rune(s) and drops the spirit level from 13 to 11. In case of shelter that means 69 armor, 326 health points and 47 (24) health loss/trigger, so 7 (14) charges. Just looking at shelter a proper splinter weapon on the ST is paid with a protection durability loss of 30% (or 53.33% in comparison with ritual lord).
 * This team build type is generally barely supporting martial builds. Its only involvement with a melee's functionality (aside from general shutdown) is to turn hexes on the melee into damage through shatter hex. But apart from that, these mesmer + ST based teams are much more suited for caster players. A splinter weapon/strength of honour ritualist combines offensive support of such power in one hero slot that he's worth taking for melee players. Bow/spear based builds don't benefit much from this support as they can't translate the support into much/quick damage. For such player builds it's probably best to give the communing prot brutal weapon and apart from that drop all thoughts about support in favour of more well-functioning caster heroes.
 * Basically I'd call this build type Mesmerway. I wouldn't go for a name as "Team - 7 Hero Meta" since that's a silly name that doesn't provide any information about the build page content just by its title. Currently there's a bunch of team builds of this type, as listed on the project page. Maybe we can organize them better – on one page, or on subpages, or with a similar name and a navbox to show that they are variants of the same core team concept, just with a different individual focus in terms of what the heroes counter, which player build or playing style they support and which requirements they implicate. There's definitely a point in featuring builds for players without Zei Ri aswell as those with Zei Ri and with mercenary heroes. But until we find a couple more people which are interested in working at this project I doubt that we'll get anywhere close to a proper representation of this team build type and its most important variants.
 * Side note to cost effective teams: Take Archive:Team - 7 Hero Triple Energy Surge, replacing the mesmers with Build:Me/any Domination Signet Hero. Using a major rune of domination magic is not ideal, but it's cheap and doesn't reduce this hero's effectivity much. Artificer's insignias are very cheap aswell and the additional shutdown will increase the team stability until players have their heroes properly equipped. I don't think that a "cheap" team really deserves a build page or even a major variant slot on any existing build page. Barely any team needs perfect equipment. Most teams just run with reduced effectivity, but they don't turn dysfunctional if the equipment doesn't fit. --Krschkr (talk) 18:44, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Some impressions: Mesmer setups
I did a couple of cathedral of flames runs. After a warmup each of these teams was used twice for doing the dungeon. The results of both runs were about the same regarding both stability and speed. Player build: OQoiExpM9WKUYUMetDqVYXQTCA Used dual superior equipment setups in every test, resulting in heroes with 400 to 440 health points (exception: Rt/P splinter weapon with 485). Mesmers had 40/20/30 staves, except for secondary profession ineptitude mesmers which had a 40/40. Splinter weapon with a 40/20/1 (had no fitting alternative in the chest), BiP with 40/20/20 restoration magic, ST with a random +10 armour one. Armour insignias everywhere. Playing style: Frenzy victim c-space idiot.

Result of this set of tests: All teams provided adequate results. The teams that felt best were quad mes balanced and extended paneptitude. --Krschkr (talk) 03:37, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Some lost talk entries
The following talk entries were put on a user subpage that resulted in this project. The user subpage is no longer needed, but I don't want the talk page's content to vanish with it. --Krschkr (talk) 22:55, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

General
There's Archive:Team - 7 Hero Quintuple Energy Surge too, which probably doesn't need to be unique (since it's basically just the concept that having a defensive player build allows you to run less backline). whoops, missed that this was already listed Ruscur (talk) 23:30, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Probably because I referred to it by a different name in this list. Would've been too easy and useful if I didn't do that! --Krschkr (talk) 23:40, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

Mercenary Variants
For the mercenary variants, I feel the inclusion of a fourth Mesmer is superior to one of the necros. Following this template, defensive would be panic + ESurge + 2 inept, balanced would be panic + 2 ESurge + inept, offensive would be 4 ESurge or 3 ESurge + inept. Command would be put on the inept. Both would still have ST + BiP. Melee backline would include an SoS resto like this: Xanshiz (talk) 08:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I mostly agree with that, however, this page here is just my personal dump. It'd be much better to add your thoughts over there, as that's the official PvX community project about exactly this topic. So far there haven't been any thoughts about teams with mercenaries, so if you're laying the cornerstone for the mercenary approach that'd be most appreciated. --Krschkr (talk) 13:12, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Non Mercenary Variants
For the non-mercenary melee variant, I feel the inclusion of a third mesmer is more important than a high channeling splinter weapon, as the SoS Smiter could be played by a monk at 12 channeling. This would also mean merging the mm command and the arbitrary third backliner with a mm resto, and slot command on a mesmer. Alternatively, could put splinter on the ST at 10 channeling and just replace the SoS with a mesmer. Xanshiz (talk) 08:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I've personally not made good experience with Me/P builds due to the attribute split and energy consumption, so I'd like to avoid that approach to get the IMS into the team, which is just convenience after all. Since there are four to five non-mesmer heroes in a mercenary free melee player's team it shouldn't be hard to get the shouts on a monk, necromancer or elementalist hero. Splinter weapon, on the other hand, is crucial for the effectivity of a melee player's team. The difference in effectivity between a splinter weapon at 10 and 16/17 is enormeous (560 vs. 1060/1344 total damage, 140 vs. 265/336 per affected foe). If foes ball the power of a prepared and a second splinter weapon is basically sufficient to spike half a group of foes right away (with, say, eremite's attack and twin moon sweep, which will both use up an entire splinter weapon if foes are losely balled). But that won't work with a splinter weapon that runs at ~50% of its power. I'd go as far as to say that a splinter weapon below 14 channeling magic may not be worth the attribute investment in many cases. Apart from this skill and the meek ancestors' rage channeling magic doesn't offer anything particularly interesting, so mimicking the Rt/Mo build with a primary monk is an odd choice to me. We take signet of spirits on Rt/Mo support heroes not because it's such a great skill (it isn't on heroes), but because all other channeling magic elite skills are very bad, smite elite skills not worth it either and non-attribute elite skills unnessecary as all they do is covered by mesmers and mend body and soul. Curses necromancers with mark of pain and a splinter weapon@10 would come to mind, but due to curses' general weakness that option isn't worth it either – unless specializing with hundred blades or vow of strength on triggering that exact hex after preparing a ball of foes. Or in other words, that would be an option for a physical trigger/tank'n'spank/mesmer spike hybrid team. I think a reddit user called Cailhan (?) made exactly such a build: The heroes would buff him with prots and spell breaker so he could easily ball the foes without playing a tank build and would then spike them. Sadly I can't remember this exactly and as I lost my bookmarks a couple of months ago I can't look it up either. Me/Rt hybrids are sacrificing too much mesmer power. Splinter weapon on a communing prot is a risk as the hero will often use splinter weapon rather than protective spirits, which is a risk for the team if there is no protection prayers prot to catch damage during that time. There are multiple approaches to compress splinter weapon and communing protection into the same bar, but in the end they all fall somewhat short due to AI issues, at least much more than a full communing prot which has nothing else to do.
 * Currently I'm looking into different teams for melee players without Zei Ri. Quite good results have been procured with three teams: Dual Mesmer Discord (should be ideal for dagger assassins), Dual Mesmer Smiters (should be ideal for hammer warriors and scythe users) and a different Triple Mesmer Solution which operates with (what I call) a reduced ST prot. This is the ST/splinter compression I found most promising, but as I mentioned before, the protection results are still lacking in comparison with a full communing prot. Without looking at the reduced amount of charges and the lack of union, the ST's shelter will lose 30% of its power, which does hurt. I think that the build would actually be better off without minions, so I'll keep looking into improvements, such as using two Mo/P smiters or a Mo/P and an E/P, which would probably use thunderclap or blinding surge. Also: Signet of disruption over signet of lost souls on the celerity mesmers, which should probably both use illusion magic. I know, we all love domination magic, but on those 16 fast casting mesmers it's still quite nice to have dual clumsiness + wandering eye/arcane conundrum. That simply needs more testing. However, so far the dual mesmer solutions are more promising. I've already asked a couple of people, i.ee Eric and some of my guild mates, to assist me with testing to find improvements and compare the efficacy of these teams in different areas with different playing styles to find the build variant that's overall most acceptable. If you feel like joining the effort, feel free to do so! Most of us are currently quite busy and don't have as much time for build tests at their disposal as usual. --Krschkr (talk) 13:04, 11 July 2019 (UTC)