Archive talk:Team - 7 Hero Z-Way

I have received permission by the original author of the build to post this popular and especially powerful 7-Hero team setup on PVXWiki. Since he was unable to do it, I offered him to do it myself. I am in no way the original author of this build. All concerns, suggstions and questions can be posted below this line. --Jorre22225 (talk) 18:04, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

This was a huge thing to make. I may have made errors, there might be some style formatting problems or things. Please do point them out, or fix them if you can. Finally people can find this build on PvXwiki and use them for themselves. Since Guild Wars Guru is going to shut down it was inevitable that it would be more difficult to find the Zway thread, so I made it a permanent option to add it to PVXWiki. --Jorre22225 (talk) 18:04, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Suggestions
My suggestions are going to be mostly for the presentation of the page, but I do have $0.02 for the melee variant:
 * 1) Combine the first two teams: the only difference is that the first team uses ER Doms and the second replaces them with two Esurge Mes mercs. This can be easily listed as a variant rather than repeating 6 builds.
 * 2) Most of the player suggested builds don't need to be listed here. They're essentially stock bars listed elsewhere, and for the melee team you could substitute literally any /W melee build on the site. There's some healer builds listed for players that aren't found elsewhere on the site and those could stay (they could get separate pages if they're viable outside of this build though).
 * 3) The melee team may also just be better off listed as a variant (an ER dom is traded for an ER prot to make up for the lost heal/prot player). This seems designed for a healer player first and foremost though, and melee players can likely get better synergy out of heroes that can buff them (this build contains no buffing for melee). A smiter or necromancer with splinter weapon may be a worthy consideration over the damage mesmer in that team. --  Toraen  wiki  09:41, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Hey, thank you very much for the changes. I agree it was an overload of information. It has better oversight now on the variants. I was gone for a good while so I haven't been able to check back on it, sorry for the absence. Is there anything else you think should be changed? Should a melee buffing build be added to the DPS variant, which ones do you recommend that are on the site? --Jorre22225 (talk) 18:41, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
 * For a compact melee buffer, probably a curses/channeling hybrid necro (to get both Mark of Pain and Splinter Weapon) would probably be ideal. Basically this build with the Blood Magic skills and Weaken Armor replaced. This would obviously replace the other E/Me and should grant you far more of a spike than the single E/Me could put out. I'm not sure how well exactly it'd mesh with the team but it would likely work. It's basically a different build concept though since both E/Me are replaced at that point (the primary mesmer midline is part of many team builds - most distinguish themselves by the remaining builds). On further thought, it may be best to leave this page as is to not have the concept be muddled. --  Toraen  wiki  20:50, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Hey, I just tried with a curses physical support necro. It works wonders, I think it works better overall than either the E/Me or the ES Mesmer. It could be added as a optional over the damaging mesmer or elementalist. --Jorre22225 (talk) 18:08, 18 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I've added it, although it's not really complete since I just copied the equips from the other page and filled in some logical options. Also, see if running Strength of Honor on the ER Prot is worth it. You can probably fit a decent spec on it if you drop healing prayers (infuse doesn't really need much spec to work in this case) + a little prot and one less-important skill. This variant is kinda looking like a reshuffle of Archive:Team - 7 Hero Melee Support, but it's ok if we stop the changes at that I think. -- Toraen  wiki  11:17, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Some thoughts
So this seems to be two builds, which is fine since they seem to follow some concept. I have some doubts about the player DPS build though, it looks strictly inferior to other team compositions. For example, a 12/12 attribute spread on a necro healer is pretty pointless. A rit primary with Spirit Siphon can maintain their energy just as fine, and allows for high ranked channeling spells. Doing so would allow the curses necro to function as a healer, which makes me doubt the usefulness of both an ER prot and an ST rit. As for using the player as a healer in hero teams, I can see why you would want to do that and have no doubts that it works. The simple truth though, is that players will always have more powerful tools for damage dealing at their disposal (pve-skills or just optimizing properly) than heroes, while healing can be done just as well by heroes. Cruzberry (talk) 20:50, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Counterpoint to your last statement: dealing damage as a monk in general content is a miserable experience and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
 * Everything else, fair enough. This build does seem to have redundant defense for pretty much any area that isn't one of the elites. In many areas a player healer should be able to keep up without the N/Rt healer at all (unless you're running that derv party healer or N/Mo prot I guess) but mainbarring what works in the hardest area makes more sense. The melee variant always seemed like a sidenote to me and attempts to optimize the layout of the heroes for melee basically makes an entirely different build (I'd definitely be rearranging the two N/Rts and probably trading one of the E/Mo or ST for something else depending on how I'm feeling). I personally wouldn't bother with all 3 of ER Prot + ST + N/Rt if I was doing the tanking role myself. In the end a variant isn't what the main build is primarily judged on though. It's there if you really want to use a similar setup on melee to your casters (however, the recently added N/Rt moves the variant away from being similar). -- Toraen  wiki  23:45, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

split page
I'm pretty sure it's impossible to accurately rate this, since the merc variant will obviously significantly out-perform the basic one, and the DPS player one is different again. Please create a separate page for each variant, and clear up the recommended player builds to explain just what is required from the player. Houroftheowl (talk) 13:40, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Clean up
Was bored so I made this: Team_-_7_Hero_Zway_CleanUp, thoughts?
 * That outline looks good, and better than stuffing essentially three teams on this page. I personally wouldn't ever run this as a physical player since you have to make so many concessions to the theme to get the fun buffs in (splinter, SoH, MoP). It basically becomes a different team. I'm fine with ER Doms relegated to variants as well. Even with being inferior to the merc version aside, they only really shine with healer players (which most people don't run in hero teams) where you aren't calling targets too often. I'd also ditch all of the suggested player bars because they're unnecessary for the page. Just note that E/Mo hero should be taken if not playing a healer, Me or ER Dom otherwise. Maybe list certain player skill suggestions like EBSoW. Toraen (talk) 02:54, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello from the future
Does anyone still run this? --Xanshiz (talk) 02:48, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately yes. I'm in favor of archiving this, with a link to real builds (mesmer mercway seems to be the best candidate, since that one is also suited for mercs). This build is inferior in every way, and does nothing special. ZStepmother (talk) 08:11, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree, this should probably be archived imo. This build had a lot of hype years ago, but to be honest nowadays Mercenary Mesmerway is just definitely better. Feydslynox (talk) 14:25, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
 * The one thing that was always good about this build was its excessive amount of defense and the resulting reliability even if players weren't doing anything. Modern mesmerways expect more from the player (and give better results in return) and can crumble when used badly. --Krschkr (talk) 17:25, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

How about a revamp?
The team as-is is clearly inferior to 7 Hero Mercenary Mesmerway. But, if the vote is to keep it because of the unique defensive mesmerway setup, I suggest revamping it by fixing some questionable skill choices, upping the fast casting of the mesmers, and running a BiP. I propose BiP Z-Way. I tested it in Gloom HM and Foundry HM (1st quest only) and it was fairly formidable. I still had more consistent results with Mercenary Mesmerway, but the Panic + 2x Ineptitude for defense versus the second set of resto is at least an interesting comparison. --Xanshiz (talk) 17:50, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I support the rewrite based on my experience with extended paneptitude, a fairly similar setup. --Krschkr (talk) 12:38, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll test it some more alongside mercenary Mesmerway to see if show similar/improved performance in some areas. If so, I'll transfer it to the build namespace.
 * On a side note -- it's pretty hilarious to see this comp breeze through Foundry HM while barely taking any damage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pmigW6QiQ0). My worry is that it has less comeback potential if things go south. We'll see --Xanshiz (talk) 02:03, 16 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Upon further testing, I found BiP Z-Way and similar variants to be clearly less consistent than Mercenary Mesmerway. Often, the results were great -- Panic shutdown large groups of casters, ineptitude shut down large groups of melees, and the team steamrolled even with a solo resto. But with a misplaced panic here and there, big AoE hits could be hard to recover from due to the lack of healing (particularly AoE healing). I experienced more wipes/near wipes with the solo resto + Panic + 2x inept setup than with the dual resto mercenary mesmerway setup.
 * Now going back to the current Z-Way bars -- I'll offer a third vote for an archive. I want to push back on the argument that Z-Way provides excessive defense and is thus reliable even if the player isn't offering much. When playing the emo setup, there are three obvious shortfalls. First, enchantment strip will heavily cripple the emo, and the emo overall is somewhat underwhelming. Second, without a BiP, the team has far less sustain in long term fights. This is exacerbated by running command on two mesmers, which practically necessitates a BiP. Third, the team deals far less damage than Mercenary Mesmerway. Only two energy surges compared to three, 7 fast casting compared to 13, no spiritual pain. I would argue this makes the comp more dependent on the player, who needs to deal a large share of the damage otherwise the team's damage output is very low, whereas mercenary mesmerway deals very respectable damage even with a useless player. --Xanshiz (talk) 00:13, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Very cool stuff, and geat video. @ User:Xanshiz I was wondering if you could let me know what mods you have for your UI,custom hero flags and damage tracker? -- 14:47, 8 May 2020 (UTC)Devuu ((Yuko Asakura [PhD]))  14:47, 8 May 2020 (UTC)