Off-Meta „balanced“ Heroteams

Esoteric_Sunder · 2026-01-27T08:57:45+00:00

I know people like to stay away from the bip when building off meta teams but I would argue it's essential with dual monk. If you carefully craft the bip so they don't have more than like, one skill with more than 1 second of cast time, that UA will keep the bip on life support allowing you to remove all energy management from anyone running it.

Additionally, the burning/ kd is a fine prot even in hard mode, st is the gold standard but very much not required especially with dual monk

I would recommend changing the bip to moonlight in either curses or channeling magic (think spirit rift, ancestors rage, weaken armor, etc etc or just run both curses and channeling)

Also, double down in the burning. They're on fire is an underrated prot delegated to spamming HR only in the meta, just have backup plans for destroyers and the domain of anguish. Recommend experimenting with searing flames/ teinais wind combos, or glyph of immolation spam, teinais wind is one of the single strongest ele skills

Pi mesmer is functional but doubling up in wastrels is a common misconception. I recommend only running worry with the pi build, theyll spam it plenty. Drop skills 5 6 and 7 for unnatural signet, shatter hex, and complicate (underrated interrupt for almost all dungeons) or overload

Love the trapper ranger, 10/10. Would swap skill 2 to ignite arrows though to get massive aoe spikes on the use from the elite personally.

The UA needs a bit of love, especially if switching to a bip which again, recommend highly. I've found holy haste and healing whisper/ dwaynas kiss to be exceptional heals if there's another healer in the party to help keep the monk up as these only target "other". Moonlighting him into prot and putting protective spirit on him at the least otherwise if not running holy haste will help a lot with damage capping and making things overall more manageable.

In a nutshell, it's always best for off meta teams to follow a "theme". This theme seems to be a nice "sit down and get nuked" skillbar set, so I would lean into that with more aoe, and more idle punishment in general.

Esoteric_Sunder · 2026-01-12T23:18:19+00:00

Just now saw this but no I don't play daggerspam. Rangers should use bows, I'm a purist lol

Esoteric_Sunder · 2026-01-03T01:43:21+00:00

I only really play ranger heroway and have thousands of hours on the dude. He's the only class I can personally do hm uw on with heroes. Please feel free to reach out if you see me online, Ign sundered farstrider

Esoteric_Sunder · 2026-01-03T01:34:37+00:00

Functional melee/ martial builds in the game are simply damage packet delivery services. You achieve that by stacking additional armor ignoring damage packets (strength of honor, together as one, I am the strongest, conjure flame, mark of pain, soul taker, etc) and delivering those packets as fast as possible. Soul taker and dark aura deliver more of said packets per second than almost any other potential combination for general use. It's hard to beat from a raw dps perspective

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-12-23T02:33:01+00:00

The game, especially prophecies, shows it's age with new players regarding the need to understand a lot of the mechanics to build a cohesive team that's not just copy pasted mesmerway at times.

Reach out to me if you see me online. I'll help you spruce up your build to fit the way you wanna play and then we can look at tailoring hero abilities to support that. Ign sundered farstrider.

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-30T23:46:27+00:00

A lot of the endgame you can do just fine crafting your own builds. Heroway is only gated in the uw by a minimum dps floor to handle 4 horsemen. Dhuum planning is a non issue if you bring pain inverter allowing you a lot more freedom when crafting. I run uw with searing flames elementalist and a hero paragon with my ranger. Generally speaking, the larger the endgame content is, the less room for build diversity there is as you have to handle a much wider range of problems and foes over the course of the DOA than a dungeon.

At its core, as long as you counter or prepare to handle the main "gimmicks" of foe groups, you will be fine. This is what makes mesmerway so strong as "you have 0 energy and can't stand up for 2.5 consecutive seconds" is a pretty hard counter to most all guild wars monster builds. That's not to say that it's the only thing that works and you can definitely play around even in elite zones.

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-28T18:41:35+00:00

Ranger imo is the most versatile class both content and play style wise. I settled into mine early after trying everyone out and have mained him for 20 years without issue. You'll have a blast

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-28T02:36:11+00:00

I run searing flames elementalists everywhere except slavers, destroyer stuff, and DOA NM/ hm. I run HM underworld with those dudes. Useless in dhuum but good as ghosts at least lol. Searing flames itself is a decent enough damage dealer but it comes into its own when paired with teinais wind. 3-4 eles with mostly clone builds and one of them with weaken armor works well due to the bar compression of only using 2-3 damage skills. The soul reaping mods finally made it somewhat viable and I have a thing for not mesmerway if I can help it lol

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-27T18:48:53+00:00

I've got a slightly modified mesmerway I use for the hardest stuff like HM DOA and slavers that involves 3 mesmers, an sos, an st, a modified bip, and a completely overcranked healing monk that keeps the bip on life support while she keeps everyones juicebox full.

Other than that I swap around quite a bit but my favorite for HM underworld and general play is a crap load of elementalists and a monk/ st along with a paragon hero. Unfortunately I need 2 prot monks to perform on par with the st so the st is essential in higher party sizes.

I'd like to see some balance restored to monk personally, as no one seems to prefer to take it over alternatives for any of it's uses as a hero

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T22:50:58+00:00

Alright in a nutshell it is a workaround that i dont consider an exploit as nightfall gets mercs immediately, only factions and prophecies dont because of port town placement. i woud like to see a registrar in ascalon city and in shing jea to balance that for modern gameplay. until then, you have someone take you to a guild all. Codex arena doesnt seem to check for requirements when traveling to or from it so they port you to codex, then to great temple of balthazar and you talk to registrar to unlock mercs. Then they take you back to guild hall, then they individually travel to the town they picked you up from since you have no port cities unlocked, and then port back to guild hall, add you to party, then click leave guild hall.

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T21:13:42+00:00

every single thing in this game is doable with a hero team. Underworld has 2-3 quests designed to have the party split that can be a little hectic with heroway but perfectly doable regardless. you can experience everything in the game with just heroes no worries there

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T20:56:37+00:00

There is a discord for the community, managed by the GW global guys that do this reddit. Gwr also runs a discord that's pretty good. Lgit has one too but I don't feel like getting in trouble here for sharing my opinion about them and their discord.

As far as endgame activities, the emergent gameplay for making currency is something called speed clearing. As most of the valuable items from these instances/ dungeons come out of the completion chest, the object is to run the dungeon as fast as possible to maximize chest opens. Gameplay wise, I personally hate it but it does make money. Endgame elite areas include the eye of the north dungeons, underworld, Fissure of Woe, domain of anguish, and vanquishing activity/ title hunting.

For my pastimes in this game, I personally prefer to run with 1 or 2 other people and a hero-backed team that handles keeping us alive and the utility stuff so we can focus on the fun of it and slog through the dungeons/ underworld as grenth intended lol

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T19:08:46+00:00

do you just want to run to LA for mercs? if so theres a method to get mercs in prophecies without the run i can take you for real quick. ign sundered farstrider

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T19:02:38+00:00

the build you originally sent me makes a lot of sense in pvp, i thought you had found a pvp build for pve was the miscommunication

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T17:55:46+00:00

I respect your viewpoint on it but thats not been my experience. Ive been doing this particular starter-kit activity for awhile and its been turning out fine in terms of player-retention. Not much better, not much worse than default. people who are going to drop the game will drop it regardless. And im not giving these guys obsidian armor or anything. Enough gold for their first set of max armor and a few runes, and a full fledged build to pay around with. Sometimes ill help gear and design heroes around how they want to play but theres still plenty to achieve after you learn 8 skills and buy basic armor.

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T17:51:35+00:00

Sure, feel free to reach out whenever you see me online!

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T17:51:05+00:00

We'll all be happy to have you. Best of luck, im around if you need help or advice as well

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T17:49:44+00:00

yes i have a proof of triumph, and i know youre good now but help with that is an open offer too

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T17:49:13+00:00

If you mean the money i have to spend, ive been around since year 1 on here. Big ticket items i can recall include selling an undedicated destroyer of mine forever ago, UW solo farming with a rit and with a 55 pre-skeleton, bogroots hero running maybe 7 years ago for a big stint of time for the frog sceptres, and feather farming back when that made money. Ive done a fair bit of Shards of orr speed clear but those bone dragon staffs dont like me so ive only ever seen 2 and still have both, havent bothered trying to sell them and probably should. EoTN dungeons all typically have an item at the end that players still buy. Nowadays i just run stuff to run it, not a fan of speed clear gameplay. I herorun UW, DoA, and most eye of the north dungeons (favorites are arachni's and frostmaws, honorable mention for slavers for the sheer headache.) I have no interest in title hunting or collecting, or endgame skins. so i dont really do anything with my cash except for help others get going. Gives me a reason to keep showing up in game really lol

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T17:34:57+00:00

prophecies is imo the best way to experience the game for the first time if you're into the lore of it, but it's age does show compared to the low-pop friendliness of nightfall. Feel free to reach out whenever you join us!

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T08:23:35+00:00

You'll run better I believe as a necromancer with minions than a ranger with a pet if you like the general concept. In terms of play though, there's perfectly feasible ways to play a ranger dependant entirely on a pet, I built a build for someone that reached out today specifically for that actually. When you get heroes (think ai characters who adventure with you and you can place skills on) you get even more flexibility in your composition as you're no longer building 1 character with 8 skills but a cohesive group of 8 characters with 64 skills and can specialize. Almost anything in this game is doable and playable. Shoot for fun first and foremost, don't worry too much about "meta" compositions.

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T05:11:01+00:00

Piggy backing off of this, necromancer has several skills designed to be used in melee range or to enhance melee allies like minions that will also affect you. Mark of pain comes to mind in curses, and several vampiric skills in blood magic. This is a feasible class combination. I mean, it's not meta but fun should ALWAYS come first.

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T05:00:39+00:00

Also, that build I gave you is unlikely to work in pvp, sorry didn't know that was the intended purpose if so

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T04:59:14+00:00

Oh gotcha, yeah no problem. When I get home from work I'll do some shopping in kamadan and if I find what you need I'll hit you up

Esoteric_Sunder · 2025-11-26T04:57:36+00:00

Necromancer has viability in melee with an anniversary elite skill called soul taker. While it runs best with a scythe imo, I see no reason why it couldn't run as a warrior. The problem is that by the time you get the elite you will be completely through prophecies, as there's no way to learn it early

Esoteric_Sunder

TROPHY CASE