Disclaimer: It's not better than triple mesmer.
Right, with that out of the way I've been spending some time experiment with some of the unique attribute spreads that are possible with the new paragon elite Heroic Refrain in the hopes of finding something not terrible. If there was one thing I never played with much (read, ever) it was pets. After some playing around I found they work kinda like paragons; the more, the better.
[build=OQGjUymDKTubxg9YAh1b4Ybgn1A]
The paragon player. We Shall Return and Hasty can be replaced but I don't trust my heroes around AoE and Hasty Refrain is just nice for those long runs and backtracking that happen in places like FoW. Keep a +4 leadership on swap to get the +4 to Heroic Refrain, and if you can, 15 AL/7 req shields to keep a healthy 12 spear mastery. Otherwise, drop spear mastery to meet your shield requirements.
[build=OQOk8gl4Ziuj7OE3h50pYO8IWeD]
[build=OQOk8gl4Ziuj7OE3h50nYOsKWeD]
The support paragons. The attributes can probably be tweaked but this allows you to get 3 hexes removed with Divert Hexes, a healthy stream of energy back from the two adrenaline shouts, healing and burning to trigger loads of times, and still manage the 12 into spear mastery.
[build=OgkkYxXYZaWDw2CXvVlfGOzvZVC]
3 of these. Yup, 3. I was completely surprised by how tanky the pets can get despite their obvious flaws of being melee AI. But, they seem to attract the enemy attacks so very easily. Go For the Eyes, along with the ranger shouts, all trigger off the finales which the paragon heroes are surprisingly intelligent enough to use on the pets. This results in a lot of healing since the heroes don't need to stop to use any of their skills. Heket's ensures the heroes always have an IAS since we don't have any attack skills to cause it to end early. 5 command + 4 Heroic Refrain means we can hit the shield requirement for some hefty base armor. I switched to spears but originally had them with bows. Either can work, but the spear/shield is the clear winner.
[build=OgSkQkq56wyj8dSYIuvs35L9FBD]
Our orders bot with Mel's avatar for condition removal. We have enough healing that Dwayna's isn't necessary, and he manages energy alright on his own.
[build=OAKjYxiMpMYskLuRV+Z4M/mVJA]
It's a ritualist with a pet and splinter. 18 channeling splinter is very nice. It also brings a hard res. Again, not much to say here.
The fun, and odd thing I suppose, about this build is that you're basically autoattacking everything to death while also yelling at everyone. With the exception of the single Scavenger's Strike there isn't an attack skill across the board. Originally I tried running the build with a Mo/R backline for some protection prayers and hex removal, allowing my paragons to run dual Defensive Anthems. If the monks knew how to use Shielding Hands and Shield of Absorption a little better then I would've stuck with that build and added Symbiotic Bond instead. Instead, I strictly rely on a lot of various healing sources to power through the damage. Micro wise, the only key recommendation would be to tell the pets to run in first. They will take all of the aggro, and with heal as one being on a 5 second cooldown they'll come back up just as fast as the enemies can bring them down. It works surprisingly well since there are four pets it means the deaths will get spread all around.
Performance wise? It'll clear FoW hard mode no issue, and that's always been my favorite zone so it was fun to bring something new into there. Vanquishes I haven't run into any problems when doing the Zaishen missions (although I skip the 4-6 man zones because ugh), and while DoA has also been doable the hardmode counter parts have been a touch trickier (I've thrown in the towel with Gloom). I've attached a screenshot of me leveling my first beetle since I've heard they're the best pet; he got 4 levels in the zone!
Have fun!
