PvXwiki:Project Standardized Testing/Party Size 6

A testing route for party size 6 teams and the results with various teams.

Preface
The goal is to find general use builds for missions and vanquishing which support all common builds of a certain type, i.e. weapon based melee builds or offensive casters. In order to make general builds they are tested against the more troublesome foes found in party size 6 missions, quests and vanquishing. The assumption is that builds which can deal with those foes very well are likely to be suitable for the entirety of party size 6 content, excluding Titan quests and Winds of Change. Estimated testing time 40–60 minutes.
 * Zen Daijun. Mix of AoE caster pressure, physical single target pressure and out of combat pressure. Teams which have trouble here will probably also struggle against imps and drakes in prophecies, so dealing well with Zen Daijun is a hard requirement for teams to pass the tests.
 * Thirsty River. Forgotten have a somewhat balanced team setup and are encountered in all three crystal desert missions.
 * The Wilds. Best place for a quick test against toucher scarabs; also features some wind riders, which else aren't accessible until far into a mission/area.
 * Haiju Lagoon, Miki the Skull Spirit. Crimson Skull appear in large numbers and thus inflict much pressure.
 * Nebo Terrace, Cerris. Test against war in kryta foes without requiring a war in kryta story quest.
 * Skyward Reach. Test against defensive foes and hydras.

Test Results
Ideally you submit your results on this page before voting on a build. Don't be afraid of going into detail, as it will help making this project a success. You can use this formatting template:


 * Tested by
 * Zen Daijun:
 * Thirsty River:
 * The Wilds:
 * Haiju Lagoon:
 * War in Kryta:
 * Skyward Reach:

Rating: # effectivity, # universality. Player build used for the tests:


 * Tested by Krschkr (talk)
 * Zen Daijun: Solid results. The team is stable due to blind, two sources of weakness and three (potential) AoE knockdowns; adding a BiP healer, ST prot and additional healing from the smiting prayers monk makes playing a melee caster a non-issue. Damage is also decent, the team just lacks some party-wide IMS. The player will be ahead due to [[Drunken Master] and [[Gust@12], forcing him to wait before engaging the next foes unless they're mainly physicals which he can blind before getting killed. Nice little bonus: Rangers won't use [[Throw Dirt] on an elementalist. 06:16 the second time playing this team build. Test video here.
 * Thirsty River: /age 11 is neither particularly good nor bad. The team is stable, but certainly too defensive for prophecies in its current layout. [[Dust Trap]s were a bit annoying.
 * The Wilds: The wind riders were annoying, but not particularly troublesome. Scarabs died in the AoE quickly and wouldn't have been dangerous anyway due to [[Psychic Instability@13]. Very good result.
 * Haiju Lagoon: No issues with surviving or killing. The pressure looked dangerous, but that was only the BiP supporting the team while hexed.
 * War in Kryta: With Shadow and Carlotta, /age 7. Again the layers of defense combined well enough to keep the team very stable even against three teams at once – to be fair, two teams at once, but when the first was down the third arrived. BiP got killed by a [[Splinter Weapon] [[Barrage] ranger once, but those just hit extremely hard. I'm content with the result.
 * Skyward Reach: Killing was too slow because of all the blocking, so I decided to replace [["I Am Unstoppable!"] with [[Asuran Scan] in the crystal desert. That should make playing against enchanted hammers and [[Dust Trap] scarabs less annoying, too. Hydras are no issue thanks to two heroes with party healing, a domination mesmer and the ST prot. I conclude: This team has good to very good results in all 6 test areas, can be recommended to other players and (unless further tests reveal remarkably better teams) deserves a 5/5 rating.

Rating: 5 effectivity, 5 universality. Player build used for the tests: Build:E/A Dagger Spammer – variant: [[Shockwave]


 * Tested by ZStepmother (talk)
 * General info: I chose to not play the optimal build, because this is more representative for the casual player. I wasn't really pushing for time, otherwise I would've done a lot of things differently. There were some fights where some form of Blind would shine, but that wouldn't have been necessary if I didn't run such a bad build myself. These tests made me notice that Splinter Weapon is not really useful for most 6 Man content, but it can really shine in WiK because of the higher density of mobs. Of course, if you actually flag heroes, pull and bodyblock every fight, it could see some decent use, but I don't think that is a playstyle that suits everyone. I think this is the best general teamcomp for 6 Man areas.
 * Zen Daijun: I wasn't really trying too much. Even with a bad player build it was easy. Died once because healer decided to run to the furthest enemy to cast on him. Nearly wiped because I intenionally ran into a group with 3 eles while Shelter was on cooldown and not active. Final fight was a bit messy because I didn't want to put too much effort into this. Video: https://youtu.be/y0OA_U9nZak
 * Thirsty River: Would've been a lot easier if I ran a build that was actually useful. I often didn't notice that my heroes weren't helping because I was attacking from max distance (flatbow, not really optimal). Video: https://youtu.be/vhSjVBjUjQ4
 * The Wilds: Same comment on the player build here. Video: https://youtu.be/nHDtESnPTWE
 * Haiju Lagoon: Finally my build could show it's "strength". Video: https://youtu.be/Ii_4pkBniy0
 * War in Kryta: WiK provides bigger groups so my build could "shine" again. Replaced 1 ESurge with Panic because this content is more difficult for some people, and it helps mitigate the damage loss because of my weak build. Video: https://youtu.be/nHOJRTxhLGw
 * Skyward Reach: Again, performance suffers because of player build. At the end of the centaurs, I managed to get a decent ball on me, so at least Barage saw good use. Still, would've been so much easier with a decent player build. Also, this run made me notice how dumb hero AI is when it meets Chaos Storm. Video: https://youtu.be/PetWdsTPgPY

Player build used for the tests: OwJikxjMtYgrpa8WKTq/UDuICA


 * General info: To be absolutely sure the team performs as expected, I completed the tests again, with a player build that is not entirely trash. As expected, the foes that gave me some trouble were cut down like paper.
 * Zen Daijun: 6:43, got blown up by the initial ele spike (north of temple double group), but mesmers wiped them out the second after, so not a big deal. Did few runs, all pretty smooth. Afflicted eles are still very scary tho.
 * Thirsty River: Not a challenge at all. Was age 10, could've been age 9 easily, but my greed put some heroes in danger so I had to slow down a bit.
 * The Wilds: Everything went down with ease. Scarabs get spiked really quickly thanks to ESurge and CoF.
 * Haiju Lagoon: Not a challenge. Accidently aggroed entire village at the boss, wiped but still took down half of them. Too much sustained damage (auto attacks, spirits, rangers) for the healer to handle, but if you put in a little more effort than me they don't pose a threat at all.
 * War in Kryta: Age 6 Cerris, forgot to take Panic, but that matters a little bit less if the player build isn't absolutely trash. Accidently overaggroed and got myself killed, and then the ST, but team managed to clean it up anyway. Killed myself at Cerris because of facetanking the Death Nova minion army combined with SPain. Noticed I could really make use of Splinter here, perhaps this is a location where you could swap a mesmer for a SoS + resto rit, both for extra heals (which can really help against WiK groups) and the AoE of Splinter.
 * Skyward Reach: Chopped through the enemies with ease.

Player build used for the tests: OwpjMyp86QAYaXXXhZvl6P1gLiA

Rating: 5 effectivity, 5 universality. I've done some of these test runs multiple times with a different player build, and I think I can claim that this is the best general teambuild for 6 Man areas I've used so far.
 * Obviously you sometimes miss a blind, but if you don't want to swap runes, weapons and builds every area you can just play a bit more careful.
 * Splinter is really useful, but it often gets wasted because the groups are simply too small, and I don't think it's worth taking over a third mesmer. For areas with a big groups (WiK areas for example), I can totally see it outperforming the third mesmer, but in general I don't think you should take it. Maybe other tests will prove Splinter is the better option.
 * One big thing I noticed in all the runs I've done, is that the BiP seems to have a bad habit of casting Blood Bond while he should be healing instead, resulting in someone dieing. Maybe it is safer to replace Blood Bond with something else, if the BiP is the only healer. Could be bias tho.
 * Edit: Further proof: Team easily handles WoC HM, see https://youtu.be/2s656-xrmYQ (Cleansing Zen Daijun HM)