Best current hero/mercenary team build?

The build wasn't replaced with the Mercenary version, there had always been a Mercenary version with more Mesmers.

The build was replaced and consolidated into the Offensive Mesmerway that you linked as there had been multiple 7-Hero Team Builds created on PvX and various people worked on consolidating it into one new build page now named "7 Hero Offensive Mesmerway".

It combined the BIP Caster Support and BIP Melee Support Team builds into one Build Page with small variation.

The suggested Meta Team build is now the "7 Hero Offensive Mesmerway" (with alternates for Melee & Caster) as you linked: https://gwpvx.fandom.com/wiki/Build:Tea…nsive_Mesmerway

Or if you have Mercenarys it's the "7 Hero Mercenary Mesmerway" also as you linked: https://gwpvx.fandom.com/wiki/Build:Tea…enary_Mesmerway

You can probably find more details on the Talk Pages of the various builds as that's where the discussion would have taken place.

Well, you can see that the non-mercenary version is almost identical to the old BiP Melee Support, while simply also incorporating a non-melee version. Both builds were intended to be for players without mercenaries and without Zei Ri. From what I recall, the "Offensive Mesmerway" is simply a merger of the old BiP Caster Support and BiP Melee Support builds.

The Mercenary Mesmerway is then an improved version relying on at least one mercenary hero. Since many people do not have mercenaries (and most characters do not have Zei Ri), there is value in having both versions available. So generally, one would assume that the mercenary version is stronger (though note that there might be situations where the additional mesmer would perform worse than the minion master).

EDIT: Well damn, I took too long to fix my typos.

Hell, you can *get through* almost all PvE content with any old meme build.