PvXwiki:Project Standardized Testing/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.)

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
 * Windriders (Magus Stones):
 * Elementals (Forum Highlands):
 * Speed Test (Tahnnakai Temple):
 * Melees, health drain (Sparkfly Fen):
 * Resurrection (The Alkali Pan):
 * City of Torc'qua NM:
 * Ravenheart Gloom:
 * Vloxen Excavations:

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


 * Tested by Juniper real (talk), all hm unless otherwise, team build originally used as written, insignificant modifications in hero gear, no cons/pcons, screens on userpage
 * rata riders: no problems
 * korshek: no problems
 * timed factions mission: tahnnakai temple, some party wipes and failures secondary to over-aggro/extension; eventually completed, masters reward, multiple deaths; use of DPS by bip often led to steamrolling and party wipes; much more stable with fomf; this may be different with prots on the team and DPS-affected individual has better survivability
 * mobrin: no problems, 1 player death (to rapid health steal)
 * churkeh: no problems
 * city (doa), nm: some party wipes and failures secondary to over-aggro/extension; eventually completed, 19 min, few deaths
 * gloom (doa): wipe at 8 mins at camp
 * vloxen: completed, no problems


 * General Impression: superb ability to train mobs, especially with micro-ed FD and built-up minion army. with proper setup can achieve sufficient melee and caster shutdown. melee support (condition and hex removal, buffs) are generally sufficient but suffer against significant hex stacking. team support is generally sufficient but is susceptible to spikes and single-target training without any prots on the team, otherwise health and energy management are okay, team provides distraction from minions, average mobility with 1 FB. party damage consistently led by player (~23-28%), followed by discord MM (16-19%), keystone mes (14-19%), FD mes (14-17%), thunderclap MM (~9-13%), and rt/mo (~8-13%).
 * Specific Impressions: 1. player provided blind provides excellent melee/wanding shutdown. 2. FoMF is preferable to DPS on bip. 2 copies of rez are usually fine. 3. tanking/pulling is very fragile without prots; consider switching thunderclap MM for n/mo mm with protection prayers, or other alternative
 * Rating: 5 effectiveness, 3 universality. Player build used for the tests: Ogej8NpMLTbXSXBYPXNXih4OygA


 * Tested by Juniper real (talk) Oct 2019, all hm unless otherwise, melee team build used with recd optionals, insignificant modifications in hero gear, no cons/pcons, screens on userpage
 * rata riders: few deaths
 * korshek: several deaths
 * timed factions mission: tahnnakai temple, masters reward, few deaths
 * mobrin: few deaths
 * churkeh: no problems
 * city (doa), nm: 20 min, near wipe
 * gloom (doa): wipe at cave 5 min
 * vloxen: completed, no problems


 * General Impression: fine melee and caster shutdown, high train potential but often finicky 2/t AI, satisfactory melee support (condition and hex removal, buffs), party health and energy management okay, susceptible to single-target focusing, good mobility. party damage consistently led by player (~33-35%), followed by ES (~21-25%), Ineptitude (~14-16%), SoS (~10-11%), and trailed by the RoJs (~7-10%).
 * Specific Impressions:1. The damage contribution from the RoJ builds is underwhelming, and apparently a year ago I tested hybrid Roj/illusion monks and thought they did better. I didn't take screens and it will require more testing to confirm, but as written this build has room for improvement and the change might be as simple as replacing the RoJ monks with something, uh, better.
 * Rating: 4 effectiveness, 3 universality. Player build used for the tests: Ogej8NpMLTbXSXBYPXNXih4OygA


 * Tested by Master Elros (talk) June 2020, team build used with minor alterations, some modifications in hero gear, no cons/pcons,
 * rata riders: no problems
 * korshek: no problems (Don't know how that worked out so well)
 * timed factions mission: tahnnakai temple, 14 min
 * mobrin: no problems
 * churkeh: no problems
 * city (doa), nm: 37 min, I screwed a pull once and died caused a bit of hazzle, went afk for while which screws up the time.
 * vloxen: completed, no deaths


 * General Impression: Really surprised by how stable the team is with only one healer, can survive prolonged encounters and occasional overaggro.
 * Specific Impressions: I think that playing Dervish made a big impact on why the performance was as good as it was, scythe + splinter on balls is great spiking. Player was generally around third of teams damage. Also great energy management on necros allowed running of 2 copies of "Find Their Weakness!", which greatly helped in spiking down single targets.
 * Rating: 5 for effectiveness, 4 for universality. Unsure about the universality score since both lack of corpses and different player builds might effect the results. Player build used for the tests: OgCikysMJdFd9cRTudJGKDSKCA

Note

 * Multiple 7 hero teams are affected by PvXwiki:Project 7 Hero Meta and should be tested within that project's parameters.