Xander's Hero Builds

Yoooo!

So I decided to post some of the hero builds that I use. I will also be posting builds I created but haven't tested out yet.

The ones I have posted now I would mostly run on a Melee character or atleast a physical attacker^^

I have tried to come up with some comps that may not be meta, but more fun. It also might be nice to run a hero comp where you need to bring a certain hero with you that you normally don't use.

More to follow for sure:)

I know that most of these builds are still quite meta, but would people be interested in quite wonky builds that somehow do work? Maybe use elite skills people generally dont use

Here is a new one I just made for a new dervish that I will be playing very soon.

Will be going for GWAMM + all story (including WiK and WoC)!

This is the setup that I came up with, IMO it looks kinda fun to use 6 Dervishes (5 heroes).

Let me know what you think and if you have any requests for specific team builds or a custom team build centered around your favourite build!

I will be changing this into the same format as used in the original post soon and add it there for easier access;)

Well I was thinking about running with 8 Dervishes, but I wasnt sure if I'd like it. And I really like some necro utility that it brings for physical classes^^

But I have been a bit busy. I have created a few more and will be adding them to the main post once the weather stops burning over here and I feel like I can play;)

Not gonna lie.... I think I have a problem... ;))))))

I am really loving just tweaking builds and just making stuff... work? I dont know

Also idk, just something about naming them is also kinda fun xd

For future requests, please use my thread in Services Offered:

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Xander's Amazing Build Service! Now also providing Farming Builds!

Heyo people!

Welcome to this post!



Option 1: Player and/or Team Builds

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Option 2: Farming Builds

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As has been requested:

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Gentleman Xander

July 11, 2023 at 10:32 PM

I will get right on with it and post them there!:)

Thought I could share the team setup I am currently using to get GWAMM on my monk. It works so well, I just face tank all dmg with prots on myself, if they're not on me, they are eating away at the minions and they're dead in no time. It's truly beautiful to see how they just melt;D

Also fun thing: with cons+Serpent's Quickness, Psychic Instability can be used for perma KD. It will recharge fast enough before they are able to get up. Combine this with a Keystone Mesmer who can spam both Wastrels and abuse Signet of Toxic Shock in combination with the Minion Bomber. All in all just a fun team build to run. Most of the time I am just pinging their targets and just waiting for them to die. I dont even have to do that much half of the time The Me/Mo Keystone also has very fast Heal Party + Healing Seed (which is very nice if you're just facetanking a lot of hits combined with Shield of Absorption) to provide some extra support while still dealing dmg/rupting. Serpent's Quickness on the Esurge heroes allows them to have quite fast hex+ench removal and very strong damage with an even faster Esurge, Mistrust and Cry of Frustration.

Note: I am using consets to just make VQs more bearable so I am unsure how this will function without it.

If people are interested, I will post gear and templates. And if there's even more interest in the builds that I have used across my account so far (7 GWAMMs, Monk @ 29/30 (22/34 NF VQ), Necro and Rit still need to start) then I will try and post those too:)

Monk Player:

N/Rt BiP Resto Hero

Me/R PI Illusion Hero

Me/R ESurge Hero x2

Me/A Keystone Wastrels

Me/Mo Keystone Healer

Me/N Keystone Minion Bomber

So since I am going for Necro GWAMM next, I am creating some builds that I think might be fun but I will just make a few more and see:) Here are the first two:

The idea behind the first one is pretty much the same as the one I have been using on my monk, but even further decreasing the amount of prots and trading it for extra damage and interrupts. The player build helps the explosive power of all the AoE with more cleanup capabilities.

The second one is a little more interesting. A whole Bone Fiend army (3 Bone Fiend Necromancers) together with 3 Me/Rt Keystone Splinter Rift Spammers to give them that explosive AoE power that minions lack. According to wiki, Heroes will cast Splinter Weapon on Minions, so if you give all Heroes caster weapons, their only target for Splinter would be the Minions. I think this is a pretty cool idea considering the possibilities Throwing in Spirit Rift for a good AoE that doesnt have such a huge cast time anymore (but a good delay, I know I know), but considering the energy usage on the Keystones won't be that big with only Splinter Weapon, Spirit Rift and the occasional Symbolic Celerity. The Curses Necro Hero has Healing Breeze, which I thought might be a good perma regen for the player, considering the health sacrifice from Order of Undeath. I am considering micro-ing Barbs since it won't have much of an impact unless the target is a Boss or just a big boii.

Edit: Number 3... cuz lol? xD

Alright so this next one is a little different again. Seems to be fun to use to play through campaigns and NM missions etc without wasting cons etc.

Here's an example of my Monk team in action. As you can see, all mesmers deal decent dmg, I was unfortunate with the Tengu flare here as I got 2 monks (so less dmg). But all in all, 353 foes in 26mins aint too bad :p

Big brain moment just happened. I realised that on some builds I was running Symbolic Celerity for really just one signet (Signet of Clumsiness), so I removed those skills, added all the points to Domination Magic, threw in some more signets and Domination spells. I will try my last VQ on monk and see how they do.

This is what the setup looks like now: I have dropped all the Esurge mesmers as well, since Mistrust etc is now on 4 keystoners.

Based on what I was running on monk, I am considering one of these two:

Or a more offensive variant

I have decided to go for a non-meta approach to Necromancer :3

Player: N/W Soul Taker Axe

Heroes: BiP Resto (1), AotL Prot (2), Curses Heal (3), Channeling SoH Rit (4), VoR Mesmer (5), Wastrels Keystone (6), and Minion Bomber Keystone (7)

The idea behind this: Player has "You Shall Not Pass!" in order to prevent foes from running away / keep them balled up so you get a better spike. BiP Resto is obvious just a good support hero, bringing Blood Bond to prevent suicide hopefully;). AotL Prot has Dark Aura for the player, and fuels more minions through AotL for the keystone minion bomber to Death Nova (additional meat shields FTW). The Curses brings cracked armor / weakness while also doing damage through Mark of Pain and Pain of Disenchant (good ench removal so you can do full dmg^^). The two heal skills have a short cooldown and good heal, even on 10 Healing, they heal 132 each. I just thought the extra healing might be necessary since I assume doing a lot of AoE damage with axe will make it hard for the heroes to keep me alive otherwise^^. Rit brings obvious Smiting support with Splinter Weapon (considered using a Mo/Rt with Spellbreaker but it just seemed too much of a hassle to have to micro it all the time and use it, so I decided for a more user friendly build. In certain areas Mo/Rt with Spellbreaker might be very good, if there are a lot of strips, melee hate such as empathy etc). Mesmer builds are kind of from previous versions, besides the VoR mesmer. I decided to go with VoR since I am running less mesmers (so less interrupts etc) so it should pump out good damage I'd assume. The nice synergy with wastrels (which cancels after a spell has been cast, but before VoR damage) so VoR does the full amount of damage. This ensures that either Wastrels does damage, or VoR will trigger.

Alright so I gave it a try. Keeping it short, it sucked ass

If there were a lot of mobs or minions getting summoned right when I was using an AoE attack, I ended up killing myself and the Dark Aura hero instantly.... So I guess that's why people run N/D with grenth's aura to atleast not suicide^^ On that note, I came up with this. I noticed that when everything was going right, it was all smooth kills. Just noticed that there really wasnt much hex removal and the N/Mo with Heal Other was slurping energy. So I changed it up a bit, also made the Rit Channel/Resto with serpent's quickness for some more fast heals which should be manageable I think energy-wise considering BiP is there too. I am not sure about the Me/Mo Keystone with Balthazar's Aura. I am unsure if it will scatter but it seemed like a good skill to throw in since it costs a lot of energy and has a cast time of 2 seconds (which allows Fast Casting to do it's thing).

I have also thrown in pretty much all the self-healing skills a derv can offer :p Twin Moon Sweep + Victorious sweep should be a fun time (I am thinking of running 11+1+2 Soul Reaping, 11 Wind Prayers and 6 Scythe Mastery (or 12/10/8 not sure yet, but you dont need high scythe mastery since it does heal quite a bit at such a low requirement, especially if you have the anniversary scythe). If the Me/Mo keystone seems to underperform or just seem meh, I might swap him out for a Curses necro with smiting support but I guess we'll see how this goes first.

Decided to go for this instead. Still kinda figuring out the optimal hero builds, tried a lot of different secondary profession & skills but not sure yet. Player build def very good and fun to play. I usually just jump in and go 1-2-3-4 and things die^^ IAU is good if you know there is KD or cripple, skill 6 is also very good as it blinds around you, so you are able to tank even better

With cons/pcons skill 1 steals 34hp from all nearby foes and target, skill 2 hits for 86 on nearby foes, Skill 3 steals 80hp from 5 foes nearby, LoD hits for 80 nearby.

Here you see an example of Tahnnakai Temple NM (finished in 8mins with cons, still seemed very fast imo)

I changed it again a bit and ended up with this:

Reason why I didnt go for Icy Veins: Sure it can deal decent damage, but from what I have experienced from playing with all these Keystone mesmers is that usually the target I ping is the one left alive since keystone is so crazy in the AoE damage. That's why I decided to try this out (Already tried Fevered Dreams over Psychic Instability but it wasn't used enough (or couldn't be used enough to be worthwile):

N/Rt has Oppressive Gaze (Weakness+Poison) and Weapon of Shadow (Blind)

N/Mo has additional heals over some small prots. Also has Restore Condition for some guaranteed healing (Signet of Agony (bleeding) and Poison Heart (poison) on player & Chilblains (poison) on Me/N)

Me/A has Signet of Toxic Shock (112dmg @17FC) and Signet of Deadly Corruption (130dmg cap @17FC only 3 condis needed) while providing strong Domination and Illusion spells

Me/N has huge Enchant removal with Chilblains (Bleeding and Cracked Armor) -> (dropped minions since I jumped in anyways and stuff dies very fast, so wanted to try without)

Player has good Life Steal (34 per target from Elite and 80 per target from Unholy Feast (max 5) @19 Blood) while also providing an AoE Poison around you. "You Are All Weaklings!" provides damage reduction and also functions as a cover condition.

Total amount of conditions: 6 (optimally, realistically atleast 2-3 should be possible on all foes, including Poison)

The Me/A builds definitely deal a lot more damage than any of the Keystone builds I have ran so far. With two very strong single target signets, spikes could be more even than before.

Btw sorry for the build spam:D

I have tried AP spammers before and I have to say I am not a fan. If AP gets stripped/interrupted you are pretty much useless for the duration of the CD. Besides that issue, I honestly dont see how it would benefit this current setup. I am free to run certain skills still, but by the time I have done the usual AP skill spam, I wont have much left to do anyways. I know EVAS will act as a tank in most cases, but on HM they die so fast that it'd say it's only really worth it if you bring full shut down compared to a more heavy damage team than the one I made above. Furthermore it's a very non-interactive build (aka press 1-8 and win; and which I really want to avoid) whereas this build makes me feel like a Necromancer can be invincible and also gives a feeling of control over mobs (you can jump in and pretty much survive for quite a while; especially if you precast atleast Prot Spirit and/or Spirit Bond). And another "problem" with AP builds is, is that imo they are very limited to what "works". For example, you are saying EVAS, YMLAD and FH are pretty much must haves - this means you have already lost your pick of 3 potential amazing PvE skills that you can't really play around with. Besides that, since your PvE skills are already limited, and a 2nd profession (has to be Assassin for AP), there aren't a lot of good skills to really fill it up. Sure you can throw in some good damage etc, but it wont synergize as well as I would like it to xD

Boreas HM 5mins. First few bosses were easy spikes, it was almost too easy

Alright so after this screenshot above was taken, I encountered some difficulties in some Cantha HM missions (mostly due to my "yolo let's just jump in and see how it goes" playstyle with this build (it's a lot of fun to test the limits! :D)), I changed one Me/A to Me/Mo with Heal Party and Healing Seed along with more damage signets. But now that I think I know what is doable and by giving the N/Mo Unyielding Aura, I think I can go back to 3 Me/A for ultimate DPS (honestly, it's no joke! I even added more poison sources on heroes to make sure there is as much of it as possible. Even though they wont have much attribute points invested in blood magic, they will last long enough for the Me/A to cast atleast Toxic Shock (they will only use it if there is poison so it works pretty well), whereas Signet of Deadly Corruption they use freely as long as there is atleast 1 condition on them (I try to put atleast 2 on them (Poison and Weakness) but we also have Blind (N/Rt), Cracked Armor (Me/N PI), and Bleeding (Me/N Keystone) while also having Oppressive Gaze for the extra Poison+Weakness that again fuels Signet of Deadly Corruption. With Psychic Instability and the amount of rupts from Keystone, it'll be very hard for them to remove conditions from that many targets in between the Keystone siege + Ravenous Lifesteal Bomber build that I play.

Or... Should I try something like this:

I just tested whether Deadly Paradox also works on the Signets, and it does. This will make (@17FC):

Signet of Toxic Shock (112 Damage; 10sec CD -> 8sec CD with Essence of Celerity)

Signet of Deadly Corruption (130 Damage; 8sec CD -> 6.4sec CD with Essence of Celerity)

Sadist's Signet (44hp per condition; 5.4sec CD -> 4.3sec CD with Essence of Celerity)

---> This will ensure that there are a lot more Signets to be used for the mesmer, while also providing some self-heal capabilities (up to 5 conditions with current setup -> max 220hp heal every 4.3sec) which is kinda insane tbh. I might run 1 of these instead of the Me/A illusion hero atm to test out the dmg etc. And since you also put attribute points into Deadly Arts, it wont be as bad if Symbolic Celerity gets stripped as the Deadly Arts signets will still be at 12(13 with cons).

Can also take Mark of Death instead of Sadist’s Signet. Since it has kind of a long cooldown, it’s also worth keeping Deadly Paradox. Energy wise should also be kinda okay, BiP will probably be necessary but still a decent way to kill harder enemies if there are healers.

Okay so the deadly paradox kinda sucks more than the other Me/A Keystone builds. Also something I love about Keystone, is that you can change it super easily based on what you need or what works (better). For example, I am about to do Gate of Desolation HM and Poison doesn't work on all of them, so I decided to drop that for this mission. Basically all foes you fight outside of the wurm are undead, so the obvious decision was to go for Me/Mo with some holy business. Give me a bit and I will provide a screen after the first phase (before wurm). Zhed is here because he has to be, so I decided to give him a weird build cuz why not^^ Aura of Restoration offsets the energy cost of Zealot's Fire so it might be quite interesting. Too bad it deals fire damage and not holy:(

Here is after the first phase

And here is also at the end (had to fight 2 groups in wurms cuz I couldnt run through safely) but the rest of damage was on Margonites.

And here's proof why this team is so amazing: Gate of Madness HM + Bonus in 14mins lol

Here's something that I have been working on for a bit.

Should both be pretty fun team builds. I think this is the most broken Spirit Spam build there is! AoS is required to reduce cd of Mimicry so you can use SoS more often if needed.

Alright I think I found the team setup that I will use to get GWAMM on Necromancer (VQs, Title Points and Skill Hunter remaining).

So I have already done a couple of VQs to try and optimise this build. Reasons why I run this:

- N/Mo: Restore Condition is just very OP since it will remove all conditions and has very short CD. This hero will be #2 damage thanks to Dark Aura. Holy Veil is there to make hexes have double cast time on Player, and this will also help the heroes interrupt those spells more.

- N/Rt: Standard BiP Support with Blood Bond to counter health loss from Soul Taker on Player bar.

- Rt/Me: Channeling/Restoration split for more heals, weapon support and strong hex removal thanks to Expel Hexes

- Mo/X: Healing Burst is just a very good skill. I have decided to bring an extra Healer since damage really is not a problem with Dagger Necromancer. Vigorous Spirit also counters Soul Taker's health loss.

- Me/Rt: Standard Domination PI. PI allows for cleaner spikes since mobs wont be able to scatter

- Me/E: Keystone with Deep Freeze. Prevents scatter

- Me/N: Keystone Curses. Strips all those annoying Enchantments

Alright hello here I am again. Just finished VQ'ing Poisoned Outcrops and took a screenshot to show you the damage this build can do :D. This is Holy Damage against Undead but still... Highest damage I've seen this VQ was ~350 lol

Also funny timing on I am the strongest! and the screenshot. It clearly shows that I am, indeed, the strongest xD

Alright so I have been working on my Warrior setup a bit, since I am almost done with NF VQs. After that, it's pretty much only Skill Hunter left:)

So this is what I have so far:

The last slot will be one of the following ones. I just can't decide on what I like more. If I go for the Me/Mo PI, I will change the Me/Rt PI Domination to either Hex Eater Vortex or Esurge. The most useful I think will be the Rt/Mo since I am using scythe, Splinter Weapon will only last 2 attacks (if I manage to hit 3 targets each time) so having a 2nd one will increase the chance of having it on you. The Water Magic E/Mo is nice as it also provides snares in addition to the knockdowns from PI.

Fun fact: If you "pre-cast" PI on a hero (aka give it a green tick), the hero will use it on your target as soon as it uses a skill^^

Alright, tried to compact it a bit more and dropped Orders since I felt like there were other better options. Not too sure about the Me/Mo (I have tried the rit build but it felt lacking for some reason) and maybe the Shared Burden Mesmer... I do think the first 3 heroes are as solid as it gets. It's just a matter of finding those last few missing pieces :p

Or should I go a kind of different route.... I call this "Main Character Syndrome". A full supportive team to give the Main Character a bigger ego

Quote from Baklawa

Quote from Gentleman Xander

Or should I go a kind of different route.... I call this "Main Character Syndrome". A full supportive team to give the Main Character a bigger ego

Do it but you might need scan !

I was thinking of running that for the areas where it would really be necessary (for example if there are a ton of rangers/warrior with blocks), or running Wild Blow to just cancel the stances themselves. I doubt I'd have a lot of trouble against Enchantments that block since I can always add additional Enchantment removals

Something that I did notice a lot while VQ'ing on my Necromancer. I am not sure if there are any differences between Hero AI and Merc Hero AI, but I have noticed that my Rt/Me Hero LOVES to cast Splinter Weapon on Shrines (EotN) or Priests (NF), even if they aren't even close to the group. Anyone encountered something similar? :o

Okay, so I tried to make a Rit Heal build with a team. Kinda came up with something interesting imo^^

So the R/Rt brings Rt spirits for quite low energy cost thanks to Expertise (Life (4 energy), Rejuvenation (4 energy), Recovery (5 energy) without cons (3/3/5 with cons)). I choose this as a half support half offensive hero since I had a free PvE skill slot and thought GDW+Barrage might be a very good combo on a hero. Theoretically, the damage you lose from dropping Marksmanship and investing in Restoration is negated out by the damage buff from GDW with an additional chance to KD the targets. I also threw on two rupts for those extra fast attacks, since Barrage should be the main attack skill of this build.

The rest of the hero builds are rather normal.

As for the player build, I decided to go Rt/Mo for some prots and the best skill in the game; Selfless Spirit. Since I have the R/Rt bring all the Rt spirits I want/need, it freed up another slot on my build.

Let me know your thoughts;)

Quote from Baklawa

How about derv hero with like avatar of Dwayna ?

Edit or frenzy 100b koss with deaths charge !

I dont really like hero AI with Dervish Avatar skills, they only use them during combat and are therefore rupted quite often. Besides that, I'd assume that if I'd take a melee hero (without death's charge), they'd probably be useless if they'd get snared and not cleansed with this many mesmers. That's why I decided to go for a Barrage ranger as it provides the most targets without losing time from running towards the mobs. I could also just take another mesmer but I thought that this might be an interesting way to change it up a bit^^