User:Krschkr/Testing Routes/Party Size 8

A testing route for party size 8 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 8 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 8 content, excluding some hard mode only quests and elite areas.

Warmup. Good performance required for a good (4/3 up to 4/5 or 5/3) rating. Suited to get used to a team before diving into the main testing areas.
 * Wind riders (Magus Stones): Resilience against interruption.
 * Elementals (Forum Highlands): Survivability against (mostly armour ignoring) area damage.
 * Speed Test (Tahnnakai Temple mission): Overall speed against somewhat balanced foes. Check against dazed, blind and large amounts of small damage packets.
 * Dinosaurs (Sparkfly Fen): Probing the performance against health drain and large groups of melees.
 * Undead (The Alkali Pan): Checking how well a team can handle multiple resurrection skills.

Main test. Good performance required for a great (5/4 or 5/5) rating.
 * City of Torc'qua NM: General test against slightly more potent balanced groups of foes aswell as energy denial.
 * Ravenheart Gloom: Hard reliability test against hex and condition pressure aswell as the occasional 200 damage hit.
 * Vloxen Excavations: Performance against balanced foes with enchantment removal, hard-hitting physicals, healers, protection and minions.

Note:
 * Unless noted otherwise the tests are to be done in hard mode.
 * Estimated testing time 50–60 minutes.

Testing Areas

 * Tahnnakai Temple: Do the entire mission, note your time.
 * City of Torc'qua NM: Complete the area, take /age when all foes from the final fight against Lord Jadoth are killed.
 * Ravenheart Gloom: Do at least the first quest, To the Rescue!. If successful, you can carry on and complete the area for additional impressions.
 * Vloxen Excavations: Do the entire dungeon. (Recommendation: Start from Vloxen falls to save some time.)

Player builds for generalized testing
In order to make team builds which are designed for general player roles rather than specific builds they will be tested with builds which don't provide anything that's unique to them without being so bad that the player could aswell be idle.

Archive:Team - 7 Hero Quintuple Energy Surge
Build version: May 2019, using main bars with [[energy surge] for the warmup and [[visions of regret] for the main test; paragon player, minor equipment deviations (non-optimal weaponry etc.).
 * Tested by Krschkr (talk)
 * Windriders (Magus Stones): Displaying asura title. Foes went down very quickly, although a third instance of [[shatter hex] would've been desirable for faster kills.
 * Elementals (Forum Highlands): Roaring ethers melt in the mesmer damage, ruby djinns were either unable to cast or neutralized by [["save yourselves!"]. Quick kills and stable.
 * Speed Test (Tahnnakai Temple): 09:55. A hero died when I hit with spear of redemption despite I wanted to miss in order to remove blind, making SY unavailable. Fast and stable overall.
 * Dinosaurs, health drain (Sparkfly Fen): Displaying asura title. Twisting jaws is nasty due to deep wound + unprottable health drain and the low maximum health pool of the heroes, but it didn't force any kills. Angorodons posed no threat, surprisingly, despite having unprottable health drain and this team featuring so few healing. It worked nonetheless: Shutdown and massive damage dealt with them. Mobrin's group itself is also no problem. However, if luring one or two additional groups of raptors in the Mobrin fight, [[displacement] is quickly overcharged and depending on which skills the raptors interrupt deaths can occur. If they sit on the healer, you'll lose a few heroes.
 * Undead (The Alkali Pan): No issue whatsoever. Accidentally lured two mandragors on top.
 * City of Torc'qua NM: Displaying lightbringer title 8. Exterior /age 4, interior /age 8, Jadoth /age 13. Overaggro against Jadoth forced a retreat, costing time. There's no [[panic], so these masses of foes couldn't be handled. Irregularly gave [[blood is power] to myself due to energy denial. Pleasant near-instant removal of spirits.
 * Ravenheart Gloom: Displaying lightbringer title 8. [[Asuran scan] over [[spear of fury], 1x [[shatter hex] over [[empathy]. Cave quest finished /age 6 with a couple of deaths, mainly due to adrenaline denial. Defacto wipe at the rifts between us due to accidental luring of water tormentors. (Might've won the fight if trying, but instead I tried to run to save time – bad idea against water elementalists and without any form of IMS.)
 * Vloxen Excavations: Level 1 /age 3, level 2 /age 14 (with some time spent typing), level 3 /age 6. Pleasant near-instant removal of minions, essentially eliminating them from the fights. The only thing that can be dangerous to the team is a bunch of physicals (at least 4) that are getting healed focusing the player, as he's not protected by [["save yourselves!"] and the healing prevents their usual quick dismissal. If the player dies, the team becomes unstable. Thus, wipe against taskmaster Kurg with his quadruple physical, dual backline dual [[clumsiness] team. Once letting the heroes instead of the player soak up aggro there was no issue, so the previous wipe clearly was an application error. Level 3 no large issues, slightly unstable (few deaths) against the boss's minions.

Variant evaluation: Quick and stable team build. Against strong physicals avoid keeping aggro on the player, SY makes it preferable to hand it over to heroes.

Additional information: Extra test for the quadruple energy surge + MM variant. Playing with 3x [[shatter hex] and replacing [[aneurysm] with [[empathy]. [[Energy surge] for the warmup, [[visions of regret] for the main test.
 * Windriders (Magus Stones): Displaying asura title. Slightly less direct fire power, although offset by running an additional [[shatter hex].
 * Elementals (Forum Highlands): One hero death when luring three groups of foes at once. Minions didn't like this part of the route much, but the rest of the team was still sufficiently striking to go through this well.
 * Speed Test (Tahnnakai Temple): 10:43. Extra pressure on the protection due to minions and many area damage packets, so no increase in stability here (however, the basis already was stable). Overall slower, probably due to having less burst power, minions attacking walls and the likes.
 * Dinosaurs (Sparkfly Fen): Displaying asura title. Fiends soaked up aggro of the melees which were then quickly killed and detonated with [[putrid explosions].
 * Undead (The Alkali Pan): Possibly slightly slower due to no pre-existant minions and lack of second [[empathy]. Still no issues.
 * City of Torc'qua NM: Displaying lightbringer title 8. First try was exterior /age 4, interior /age 8 but I lured all three groups around Jadoth by accident (flag hotkey) and lost my minions to it, restart. Second try Jadoth /age 12.
 * Ravenheart Gloom: Displaying lightbringer title 8. [[Asuran scan] over [[spear of fury]. Minions were helpful at first, but couldn't provide as much damage as the fifth mesmer. Team got overwhelmed during the last third of to the rescue.
 * Vloxen Excavations: Level 1 /age 3, level 2 /age 13, level 3 /age 5. Minions helped a great deal against physicals by soaking up aggro. Let the heroes take aggro against Kurg this time, went like a charm right away. Due to large amount of physicals in this dungeon better performance than the non-minion variant.

Variant evaluation: Stable, slightly slower against caster based foes, slightly faster against stragglers, somewhat more stable against physicals. Bought with having to carry around minions with all their pros and cons, like line of sight trouble, falling behind, requiring corpses, not contributing to the first fight and so on.

Overall evaluation: In both variants the team is fast and stable. Heroes can be tweaked for better performance, improving universality.

Rating: 5 effectiveness, 5 universality.

Additional build overview
Collection of builds tested or intended for testing which do not have a PvX page.