Archive talk:Team - 7 Hero BiP Caster Support

Physical support and healing
I feel like rangers/paragons would really like a partial orders in there somewhere, at least as a variant, to make their personal damage a bit less sad compared to SoH-buffed melee (and it could provide dark fury too for easy SY upkeep). It is kinda hard to justify orders just to benefit one character though. Toraen (talk) 01:11, 22 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Yeah as you said it's hard to justify orders for one person who will be doing the least amount of damage in the build. This build is extremely flexible though so if you wanted to you could just drop a mesmer and put in something that fits your set up. I've dropped the ineptitude mesmer for a few places in place of an elementalist and other professions and it's worked great. --Aevics (talk) 01:46, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Personally I feel the build lacks of healing, since the BiP hero can spam BiP and quickly fall at 33% HP, and it's a real problem in HM runs as a R/Rt. I replaced the PoD hero by an UA healer and it was just fine, I don't have the Rt SoS actually but I suppose the team can work better with it. --Raven Mysteries (talk) 01:46, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I do notice the healing can be questionable at times. I'll give the UA healer a try sometime and see how I like it. I also drop the PoD resto because it feels very niche with how much removal you already 'should' have with this build. --Aevics (talk) 15:42, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Not that I'd want to defend this build, but the PoD healer is way less about PoD than mark of pain. People have run such a healer without elite skill regularly in the past – but in this case, as there's no risk to remove a splinter weapon or brutal weapon or great dwarf weapon I'd suggest that you try the mark of pain healer with Xinrae's weapon before replacing it with an UA monk. Or simply go for the signet of spirits ritualist instead, in case you have the required ritualist hero available! --Krschkr (talk) 16:30, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Fair point I'll try out both and report back. So far I'm enjoying the UA healer but I'm open to options. Is the aggressive build worth it with 4 mesmers? I know mesmers are severely broken as heroes but I'm wondering since I have 8 merc slots (meaning I have a TON of flexibility in builds) if it's worth running the aggressive build over the regular build and it what situations would it be worth it. Thoughts? --Aevics (talk) 01:37, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Ghostmirror Light
I did some light testing with this build, and it seemed the hero never used this skill. Could I be missing something? I switched to Soothing Memories actually as it seemed to help with the BiP's energy management. Sonofthort (talk)
 * Tried blood bond? Would help to keep the minions healthy. 4 single target heals spread on two characters is more than enough. --Krschkr (talk) 22:47, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I tried blood bond, that's a fine skill. It's included in the melee version of this team build. Am I the only one noticing Ghostmirror Light is not used by heroes? We could remove it from this build page if that's the case. Sonofthort (talk)
 * From what Ive seen the hero does use it, but not really in the way you would like (after he casts bip for example). It just seems his priorities are MBaS and Spirit Light, Ghostmirror is just there in case those 2 are not available (which is not often). But even with the bad usage it is better to take Ghostmirror than Soothing memories imo. Ill keep an eye out on its usage tho. ZStepmother (talk) 12:51, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
 * in my tests the bip is using ghostmirror light, not sure why you weren't seeing it used. did you remove the spirit from its bar? (not sure that even makes a difference) Juniper real (talk) 15:33, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It might just be that they prefer the other two heals, as ZTepmother said, so in same cases it will seem like the hero never uses ghostmirror. Sonofthort (talk)

Hybrid mesmers
I've been skeptical of the usefulness of hybrid dom/ill mesmer heroes over single trait line builds, so I've been testing extensively. Objectively, I'm consistently seeing my dom-only mesmer improve %dmg contribution compared to the dom-illusion hybrid featured in this build. Not so easily measurable, but exclusive domination speccing allows greater fast casting att, improves chances of 40/40 skill procs, and frees up 2 slots for e.g. enchant removal or other domination-line specific shutdown. The only foreseeable drawback is the loss of interrupt and damage on attacking enemies, but according to TB this clearly isn't beneficial in terms of %dmg contribution and it doesn't change how often the team dies. Is there anyone who prefers the hybrids, and for what reasons? FYI, this is more or less the generic build core I use to compare, placing either the 2 listed ill skills or substitute from the dom line:

Juniper real (talk) 15:33, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Ive also been testing quite a bit, comparing the hybrid bars to this one:


 * Attributes being 16 dom, 11+2 FC and 6+1 Inspiration, uses dom staff with 40% HCT and 30 HP (cause of the major FC rune). Might be able to go without PDrain, but Spiritual is quite energy intensive as the hero likes to spam it. Their damage output seems to be very similar, so I cant really back your statement. I do prefer the spiritual pain version, cause it has more flexibility. ZStepmother (talk) 16:07, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it's crucial to give Dom Mesmers two energy management skills. Quite often, when things get ugly in HM, and the Mesmers are out of energy, and your BiP is too low health to use BiP to give them more energy, they are standing there at 0 or 5 energy, doing nothing, and you have lost your interrupts, pressure, and damage. Since heroes do not know how to manage energy well without a bringing an elite skill (!) for energy management, it is important to bring backup energy management, even with comps that have BiP. The thinking behind bringing a BiP is that it frees up skill slots for the rest of the team - 1 elite skills should theoretically replace 7-14 energy management skills on the rest of the bars. But again, heroes are not as intelligent as players are, so you need to bring backups of everything - backup damage sources, backup healing, backup prot, backup energy management, etc. In the end, having Power Drain and Leech Signet or Ether Signet (which I find heroes using outstandingly well when they're at 0 energy) will increase the overall DPS that your hero can do with the rest of his or her bar.--Saxazaxx (talk) 23:09, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * sure, so it seems a couple are in agreement domination + e-mgmt > illusion. Anyone using dom-ill hybrid over domination only? Juniper real (talk) 23:51, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I have better results with inspiration than illusion magic, as discussed elsewhere. Someone should poke Misty, he prefers hybrids afaik. --Krschkr (talk) 20:49, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

SoS vs MM for the Merc alternative
So, I have been desperately trying to figure out why SoS is preferred over an MM in that slot. The 4 mesmers, BiP, and ST all make sense, but the SoS doesn't make sense to me in an all caster team. The damage an SoS does is quite a bit less than an MM does, and the MM provides a frontline which helps to protect your casters. You could still run it as resto too so I don't really see the reason to bring an SoS over an MM for a caster only team. Am I missing something here? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by IBrodoFraggins (talk &bull; contribs) 20:56, 27 March 2019‎.
 * It's really up to preference. I still stand by the stuff I wrote on the AotL, he provides an immense amount of damage while also protecting your team. Some people just don't like minions because they might aggro stuff you dont want to aggro. As you can see in that reddit thread there are also a lot of people that don't know what they're talking about:
 * "Resto MM spends too much time summoning minions, and trailing behind." - I really dont get why people repeat this nonsense all the time. Unless you skip fights all the time (which is something I do often when I dont HAVE to kill everything) he will still contribute way more damage than the SoS (very easy to compare if you run Toolbox, and I totally get if people dont want to run it, but then you don't get to talk numbers...)
 * "People don't like minions in AoE-heavy areas, because they eat Shelter charges." - While it is true that they eat up Shelter charges, it does not really matter imo. The minions still prevent damage being done to your team, so your healers don't get stressed too much. If shelter dies he can still put up another shelter instantly, and if you are fighting dangerous groups just precast your spirits.
 * Think the person who wrote the merc team just doesn't like to run the MM, thats why he listed the SoS. ZStepmother (talk) 10:18, 28 March 2019 (UTC)


 * I agree, and people saying that heroes don't ball up like minions consuming a shelter instantly is nonsense. Ever done the Ebon Battle Standard of Honor quest? Those mobs aoe the hell out of your heroes and they don't even really scatter lol. Have to always micro them for that quest.


 * One thing that I'm curious about is the use of Psychic Instability. That skill seems to be incredibly underrated. It synergizes incredibly well with aoe such as ESurge and even VoS and Hundred Blades. I've been taking that as either the 4th mesmer slot, or instead of the Ineptitude on my melee chars and it's incredibly effective both for keeping enemies balled and for general cc and denial. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by IBrodoFraggins (talk &bull; contribs) 21:18, 28 March 2019‎.
 * Please sign your talk page contributions with --~ in the future. --Krschkr (talk) 13:45, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
 * In general the use of sos (and, until recent cleanups that finally purged pvx of them, sogm rits) imo has been grossly overvalued and gets me scratching my head, especially in 7h caster teams. an MM is almost always what I include in the caster setup for superior dps, meat shield, and utility over sos. Since you brought up PI, I’m not convinced it’s the best for the cc slot; it potentially might cut your dps of builds like mistrust/trigger shutdown (I understand it might increase complimentary non-action-dependent aoe by locking foes in place), and you eat the opportunity cost of a damage elite (more important if you don’t have mercs). I’ve been toying with snares to improve my 3 mes aoe midline + aoe/dot from my player build, and I’ve have had encouraging prelim results running multiple copies of 0 att deep freeze on the mesmers >:D Juniper real (talk) 16:10, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
 * This question was about SoS vs PoD, why are you bringing AotL into it? The AotL is already included in the team because its too good not to take, unless you are talking about merc teams in which case you should specify that. About the other stuff: its not worth it to replace ESurge by either Panic or PI unless you are trying to beat the hardest content (some HM WoC, HM DoA and UW). Deep Freeze is way to costly to even consider taking it, on top of it being unnecessary. ZStepmother (talk) 15:48, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * the header clearly specifies all this is absolutely not about the pod but rather an mm (not even aotl) vs sos and definitely for the merc team (“SoS vs MM for the Merc alternative”). The other stuff is matter of opinion atm and I disagree with you Juniper real (talk) 16:28, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Okay so bit of a brainfart there ^^, my bad. I wouldnt say the other thing is an opinion, Deep Freeze costs half of the energy bar (more if not running energy armor). Unless you are running aoe that scatters enemies there is no need for such a snare, as melee foes are rather ineffective anyway. If you are running aoe that causes scatter then its a more reasonable choice, but still not the best imo. ZStepmother (talk) 16:37, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I see, what do you usually prefer when using a snare? I like freeze since I don’t find my heroes have energy issues and I don’t sacrifice ESurge for cc. Juniper real (talk) 17:02, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

BSurge update
Discussions on GWGlobal Discord and elsewhere have led to some major changes in the team: Further changes are being considered and tested: Many of these changes are also applicable to Build:Team - 7 Hero BiP Melee Support, so I've written this on that discussion page too. Houroftheowl (talk) 15:55, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
 * To make the most of the available mesmer heroes, the Me/P Ineptitude is replaced with a Blinding Surge E/P, which provides similar utility (Blind) for slightly less damage and frees a mesmer to run a third copy of Energy Surge.
 * Tests show that hybrid Domination/Illusion mesmers do slightly less damage than those with higher Fast Casting, but without the Ineptitude in the team, it makes sense to keep one hybrid mesmer to provide Arcane Conundrum and some attack interrupts.
 * The N/Rt PoD healer was widely hated, so that is deleted, along with its SoS alternative.
 * The MM now has the Restoration heals instead of the Command shouts.
 * Enfeebling Blood is moved to a mesmer.
 * To relieve pressure on the BiP, a mesmer now has Drain Enchantment, Power Drain, and Hex Eater Signet.
 * Drain Enchantment replaces the PoD as the only enchantment removal in the team.
 * Hex Eater Signet is effective against AoE hexes that hit the entire team. Unlike melee support, the player is unlikely to be near many enemies, making Shatter Hex somewhat less valuable.
 * Tests have shown that Aura of the Lich is bad for damage (although it does provide meat shields), so the MM has room for improvement.
 * Without AotL exploiting so many corpses, Putrid Explosion is probably better than Putrid Bile.
 * Spirit Light, Protective was Kaolai, Mend Body and Soul, and Xinrae's Weapon, at 10 Restoration, are strong and affordable heals. Unfortunately, PwK means not wielding a 40/40 Death set.
 * E/Rt with Thunderclap and the 3 non-elite resto heals is a reasonable replacement for areas where MM is especially weak e.g. Ooze Pit, Vloxen Excavations...
 * "Incoming!" and "Fall Back!" are nice to have on the MM, so the minions can more easily keep up with the team. If the E/P BSurge and Rt/P ST can make effective use of the freed slots (probably resto heals on the ele and perhaps a res on the rit), this could be a good option.
 * Order of Undeath barely improves DPS, whilst costing enormous amounts of health and energy, so that is not very viable.
 * To relieve further pressure from the BiP, the Me/Rt can replace Spiritual Pain and Power Spike with Drain Enchantment and Power Drain at 6+1 Inspiration. More than one copy of Drain Enchantment is generally unnecessary, so the Me/N replaces it with Spiritual Pain. This balances those 2 mesmers with 2 Inspiration skills each, so neither is heavily reliant on BiP.
 * With 2 other fast recharging spot heals, Ghostmirror Light is largely unnecessary on the N/Rt BiP. Instead it can bring Blood Bond, primarily to help keep the minions alive.
 * Having a res skill on a healer is unpopular (usually when someone dies, the team is in need of heals, so the healer being otherwise occupied for 3 seconds is quite dangerous), so the Me/N takes Flesh of My Flesh at 2 Restoration and the BiP drops Death Pact Signet for Enfeebling Blood at 5+1 Curses.
 * To spare the attribute points for Enfeebling Blood, Blood Magic is dropped by 1 point, and the major rune is replaced with a superior, to still hit the +6 breakpoint on BiP. The loss of 40 health should not be an issue - most health loss is either from sacrifice skills or large damage packets reduced by Shelter. These are all reduced to a percentage of maximum health, so the BiP should in fact be losing LESS health, making it easier to heal.

Alternative for Rangers and Paragons
I see that this has been discussed briefly on this page, but I'd still like to ask the question: wouldn't it be nice to add some alternative setups (to this build or the Melee support one) for people who play as Ranger or Paragon? Currently I almost always play as a Splinter Barrage ranger myself, but haven't put much thought into synergizing with my heroes properly. -a rno s luismans (talk) 08:41, 2 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The issue with ranged physical damage dealers is that they are nowhere near as effective and support affine as physical melee damage dealers nor as powerful as casters without a large amount of support. That support, though, takes away from the effectivity of other characters in the team and is usually not worth it regarding the over all result. Using multiple supportable characters with party-wide support doesn't pay off either in the end. It leads to effective teams, but they don't strike as hard and reliable as this kind of mesmer based teams. Ranger or Paragon damage dealers are about the weakest choice for mesmer based teams. But I'd say that at least paragons do have some merit: Due to the protection a paragon provides to his team while still dealing and directing (!) damage, you can usually run a BiP + communing prot backline without lacking stability, giving you the option to run 5 mainly offensive casters in the midline. If you have mercenaries, the paragon optimized team may look like this. Without mercenaries it'd probably be three energy surge mesmers and two support characters with "fall back!", such as thunderclap elementalists, a putrid explosion necromancer, bone fiend minion master or, what was intended for conset usage and is not yet tested, fake mesmers (OAVDYTxCTnA4U5AmOVVbhKgfB) – they'd of course lack the IMS shouts, but combined with the bone fiend MM you'd have two of them nonetheless. I hope this little food for thought will be of use for you. --Krschkr (talk) 12:46, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

BSurge update part 2
After the original BSurge update, this build became very similar to Archive:Team - 7 Hero Triple Energy Surge. Specifically when this build was being replaced with 7 Hero BiP support, it shared 6 out of 7 hero bars, resulting in this page being reverted to its pre-blinding surge version. This older version is severely outdated and many improvements have been realized since this older version: the illusion mesmer can be replaced by a BSurge to provide AoE blind while freeing up another slot. Illusion isn't worth taking on a dom mesmer unless it also brings arcane conundrum (a higher fast casting version with spiritual pain provides higher dps). AotL is a poor elite due to the significantly reduced damage compared to fiends. The PoD bar is garbage. Rather than leave the bars in their old, crippled state, I incorporated these improvements while trying to stay separate from Archive:Team - 7 Hero Triple Energy Surge: Right now, I don't see an easy way to merge this with Archive:Team - 7 Hero Triple Energy Surge without removing these defensive additions. Only 4/7 elites are shared, and this bar represents more of a "balanced" rather than "aggressive" variant of the 7 hero meta. I expect this will all eventually be resolved within PvXwiki:Project 7 Hero Meta, but until then, I figured this page was due for an update.Xanshiz (talk) 06:19, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
 * This version runs Panic instead of a triple ESurge midline. This helps keep true to its description as a "balanced setup" rather than the more offensive variant Archive:Team - 7 Hero Triple Energy Surge
 * Having one dom mesmer go secondary illusion allows for Arcane conundrum, which provides additional defense against casters.
 * The inclusion of AoE blind provides strong defense against melees and saves ST triggers
 * Inclusion of a second resto backline
 * These changes sound good. Updating these teams seems much more reasonable than archiving them given their popularity.
 * For the melee version, does Xinrae's weapon not cause issues? Usually heroes overwrite offensive weapon spells with defensive ones, and as Xinrae's is a quartercast with 3 seconds recharge I usually tried to avoid it when using splinter weapon of brutal weapon in the same team. If just there were any decent alternatives... might try discord or jagged bones or go without elite skill using putrid explosion/blood of the master. Depending on the area spirit bond + aura of faith would also work. That said, perhaps the minion/restoration magic hero would work more efficiently without masochism. Neither melee nor caster version feature recuperation, healing burst, dwayna's avatar or other sources of untargeted frequent party healing, so the hero will probably have to selfheal regularly due to masochism, which is an inefficiency best avoided.
 * Now there's the question whether the old ratings on these two teams can stay or whether the build changes are so large-scale that a vote-wipe and re-vetting are called for. In my opinion the changes to the melee team are not so drastic as to require a vote wipe. In case of the caster version of the team the changes are of a large scale and I think that it needs to go through vetting again.
 * On a side note, the archival proposal should not have been removed prior to reaching consensus about it in the discussion. However, since the party that was in favour of the archival stopped responding I guess not much harm has been inflicted. --Krschkr (talk) 10:55, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The elite on the mm is still up for debate given the structure of these teams. For now, they've been swapped to discord, although this could still be changed. As far as the scale of the changes: while a lot has been changed, the underlying structure is still the same. The BSurge and the Inept fill the same role, just under a different profession. Skill choices on the mesmers are quite minor. I don't consider the shuffling of secondary roles (command, for instance) between different bars to be particularly major. 6 of the roles are the same: 2 dom, 1 aoe blind, BiP, ST, mm. The biggest difference is the inclusion of a third dom over a PoD, but I don't think any would argue that it's a downgrade. Other than that, it's just shuffling which bars have resto secondary versus command secondary, etc. to make everything fit. Xanshiz (talk) 19:35, 27 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Apparently minor differences can cause a great performance difference, as seen in the comparison of triple energy surge and BiP support. With a vote wipe we'd be on the safe side, and I guess it won't be that much of a problem to find enough people to vet the new bars to give them a provisional rating – you and i.e. Misty would suffice for that. --Krschkr (talk) 21:04, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Update proposal
I updated the build to be more in line with the melee team, and also because it was outdated. It still keeps the spirit of the team: 2 esurge + 1 inept, but now it has a Bone Fiend MM with shouts, and a healer that is actually useful. On my userpage (BiP Caster Support), there is a variant for people do not like to play with an MM (even tho it's the best build available), but this way (3 esurge + BSurge) it might be too similar to Triple ESurge. Honestly I'm already happy the way it is now, it is greatly improved since it's last revision, but perhaps it might be good to list said variant? ZStepmother (talk) 13:13, 11 September 2019 (UTC)