User talk:Krschkr/Team - 7 Hero Melee Triple Mesmer without Zei Ri

Nice!
First of: you figured out a nice way to get the 16 Channeling-Splinter Weapon, while keeping the 3 Mesmers and a mercenary-&-Zei Ri-free-team. I commend you. --Haquillo (talk) 11:42, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Condensing shelter, splinter weapon@16, three mesmers, blood is power, 80% IMS uptime and strength of honor into a single team comes at a price. The reduced ST looks phantastic, but it is a very troublesome build. And it isn't even a new idea, mind you, I was able to track it down to august 2011. Let me point out a couple of issues the build has in comparison to a full communing prot (could be soul twisting or ritual lord, depending on playing style) with flesh of my flesh and signet of creation.


 * Hybrid AI. Unless all dangerous foes are dealt with a player would know to always prioritize protection over offensive support. The hero, however, doesn't discriminate. Quite often you'll find that the hero is using its offensive skills when he should be renewing the spirit that has just expired. This reduces the team stability, especially when running no protection prayers on the other heroes.
 * Spirit durability. Shelter@16/14 is level 13 with 81 AR and 406HP, 43 loss/trigger, 22 loss/trigger(AoU) = 10(19) charges. Displacement@16/14 is level 15 with 93 AR and 468HP, 60 loss/trigger, 30 loss/trigger(AoU) = 8(16) charges. Shelter@15/5 is level 12 with 75 AR and 288HP, 45 loss/trigger, 23 loss/trigger(AoU) = 7(13) charges. Displacement@15/5 is level 14 with 87AR and 336HP, 60 loss/trigger, 30 loss/trigger(AoU) = 6(12) charges. 10(19) vs. 7(13) charges means 100%(100%) vs. 70%(68.4%) spirit durability. It gets even worse when foes actually hit the spirits: Due to lower health, armor rating and level (remember the level difference damage coefficient) the spirits will take harder hits that take a lot away from the already lower HP pool. For an example let's assume fighting a Tortureweb Dryder in hard mode. It is level 30 and has 20 fire magic and hits the spirit with meteor.
 * Shelter@16/14 reduces the incoming 147 damage with its armour rating of 81 to 102. This damage is then affected by the level difference with a factor of 2.42, so we end up with 247 damage (124 AoU). Meteor costs 60.8% (30.5%) of the spirit's health points, which is the equivalent of 5.74 (5.63) protection charges (or in other words: In terms of spirit durability it's preferable that four to five people get hit by meteor than the spirit itself).
 * Shelter@15/5 reduces the incoming 147 damage with its armour rating of 75 to 113. This damage is then affected by the level difference with a factor of 2.55, so we end up with 288 damage (144 AoU). Meteor costs 100% (50%) of the spirit's health points, which is the equivalent of 7 (6.24) protection charges (or in other words: In terms of spirit durability it's preferable that six people get hit by meteor than the spirit itself).
 * Lack of Union. I know that union is generally seen as the least effective of the three communing spirits. Shelter catches the big damage, displacement saves shelter from triggering and thus reinforces the big hit protection – on top of preventing adrenaline gain and disrupting dagger attack chains. Union just causes a slight negative damage shift. However, one that should never be underestimated. If union is used after shelter it means that all incomding damage is reduced to max. (0,1*character max. HP)&minus;15. In this team the heroes usually have about 400 health points, so the maximum damage received in one package is (0,1*400)&minus;15=25 (&minus;37.5% than without union). A single mend body and soul can heal slightly less than 4 such damage packages, a spirit light slightly more than 6, a spirit transfer slightly more than 8 – which results in the marvelously efficient BiP/ST backline for mesmer midlines. With union gone there's need of some backline assistance from the midline, so either protection prayers that restore health points or plain healing.
 * Soul Twisting Charges. 2 rather than 3 charges feel bad. If need be, the full communing prot can place all three spirits and then focus on just shelter, allowing to use up to 9 shelters in ~30 seconds. This one doesn't have the option for that.
 * Soul Twisting Duration. The more often soul twisting runs out, the more often there is a risk that the hero is currently creating a spirit while the effect ends, sending the spirit on recharge.
 * Spirit Siphon AI. On the paper spirit siphon looks magnificient in this build. The hero AI is a tad bad with it, however. Instead of simply sucking the spirits' energy when creating them, he may instead wait to use it until low on energy, and then potentially use it on the same spirit repetedly (or none at all...). I should try the build on a player ritualist, there it looks more promising. :p
 * Equipment. Due to the required +3/+3/+2 rune setup the hero ends up at 355 health points, which leads to the recommendation of a hale staff of mastery. This is... uncommon. I doubt that the majority of players will actually bother to get that.
 * I think about reducing channeling magic to 11+3 with 12+1+3 communing and 6+1 spawning power, which should make some of these issues slightly less prominent at the cost of losing the 16/17 splinter weapon for a still acceptable 14 splinter weapon. More testing is required. But right now I'm not yet happy with this team because of the reduced ST in particular. --Krschkr (talk) 13:06, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * By the way, until this team is improved to a point that it becomes recommendable, here's the state of the art:


 * Take this with a grain of salt. --Krschkr (talk) 13:35, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

More July 2019 State of the Art
Adding a couple more tables in the same style as the one above; might be useful?

Allowing one mercenary or Zei Ri could allow to merge most teams into one with a variable midline. A melee player without Zei Ri would still need its own build page. Casters with access to mercenaries are on a whole different paper.

I still intend to get back to the triple mesmer solution with reduced ST prot at some point. Getting that one to work reliably would be fancy. --Krschkr (talk) 22:41, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

KSS or ES
I was wondering why you chose to use Keystone-Mesmers, rather than ESurge? Is it to offer more defence as you have less Shelter-proc's compared to the usual set-up of the ST-Rit (with 12(+3) Spawning Power) or are there other reasons for it? --Haquillo (talk) 11:42, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Exactly, more defense is required. Any triple KSS solution should complement the team very well (edit: Excluding minion bombers of course), panic with dual ineptitude may work too, but triple energy surge is currently too dangerous. Maybe with more midline optimizations on the shout and SoH characters. --Krschkr (talk) 13:08, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

Mo-hero
I am not good with monks as I never really played one and also seeing as the meta for the last 10 years was to use mainly N/Rt healers. However, I see that it makes a lot of sense to take the monk with 16 Smiting, but seeing as you have less Shelter-proc's compared to the usual teams, wouldn't it make sense to make the monk hero use Protection Prayers, rather than Divine Favor? --Haquillo (talk) 11:42, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I found the divine favour solution to be almost on par with protection prayers, bearing in mind it has a different focus. The divine favour stuff is nice because of its additional party healing, which protection prayers don't offer outside of the unreliable shield guardian. Alternative builds, which are to be used together with the dual IMS bone fiend MM, are these:


 * N/Mo at 8+1+3 soul reaping, 12 protection prayers, 10 smiting prayers; E/Mo at 11+1+3 energy storage, 10 protection prayers, 10 smiting prayers. I found the N/Mo to perform better than the E/Mo. A primary monk would never have the required energy for spirit bond. --Krschkr (talk) 13:13, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

IMS source
I feel that this team would work better with a different approach on squeezing the IMS in. There are only two characters that can still be worth bringing with both IMS shouts on one bar: The bone fiend MM and splinter weapon support. However, the first one is the character I'd like to get rid off and the second one is out of question due to the primary profession. Any ideas which would be good combos of two characters that provide "fall back!" each and one of them also strength of honor? I guess we're inevitably going to end up with a monk like this:

Now the question is which second Any/P character works best with this and which defensive mesmer midline should be picked for ideal compatibility? I thought about dual ray of judgment. This solution would put a lot of pressure on the BiP due to their horrendous energy consumption, so the midline should be 3x KSS due to its comparatively low energy consumption.

Another option would be a discord/fiend character. Fiends would still be there as they'd be required as distraction to keep the team somehow functioning in terms of defense. Because of discord this would probably work better with a paneptitude mesmer choice.

For this option I have no other word than heresy, and the MM would still be there. Combine with paneptitude mesmers.

There's still a lot of testing to be done. I'm not yet happy with this comp, but with more refining it may become very good. Improving the IMS solution would be one step. --Krschkr (talk) 13:28, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

With free party slot
pwnd0001?download pawned2 @ memorial.redeemer.biz | Copyright 2008-2018 Redeemer >bOQNEAawj4I9CgAmnRCwBNCREMPAAAAACcBACWSGVybyAxCmh0dHBzOi8vZ3dwdnguZ2FtZXBlZGlhL mNvbS9pbmRleC5waHA/dGl0bGU9VXNlcjpLcnNjaGtyL1RlYW1fLV83X0hlcm9fTWVsZWVfVHJpcGxlX 01lc21lcl93aXRob3V0X1plaV9SaQcOQhkAoB8AGK0LACYeGJAHUGQP1FDAAAACcBAAKSGVybyAyCgYO QBDAqwDO0gpXOw0hTzAEhhAAAAACYhAAKSGVybyAzCgQOQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACASGVybyA0Cmh0 dHBzOi8vZ3dwdnguZ2FtZXBlZGlhLmNvbS9Vc2VyOktyc2Noa3IvVGVhbV8tXzdfSGVyb19NZWxlZV9U cmlwbGVfTWVzbWVyX3dpdGhvdXRfWmVpX1JpaOAljUwGopSUB4BKgbhVV8Y7Y1YAAAACEQAAKSGVybyA 1CgZOAhjQkGZIP3hhWVVaO5EeDzxJAAAACgQAAKSGVybyA2CgbOACkAyiLpFKD206FOhmYMvJz8iBAAA ACYiAAKSGVybyA3Cg< Last slot could be an air ele (cracked armour, maybe gust for the fun of it), maybe discord (run 2x discord/fiend n/p) or the likes. Should add a bit of healing if possible, even if it's just never surrender.

I wonder what'd happen if one was to run two reduced STs – should be superior protection and splinter weapon availability. --Krschkr (talk) 19:16, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

For Reference
I found a couple of links that were commented out on my user page. Those 2011 forum posts present the following keystone based team builds: {| class="wikitable"
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A very interesting look into build history. --Krschkr (talk) 22:51, 23 September 2020 (UTC)
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