Team - Path of Fire Open Field Zerg

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Introduction

This team composition revolves around a high sustain, high damage comp that generates large amounts of downed enemies quickly.

The parties listed are a strong open field choice for pug zergs and large guild runs, however moving around classes to suit what you have, dropping or adding healers, swapping DPS roles and using extra support guardians are all viable choices. A list of strong variants can be found underneath the class tables.

The higher your numbers go, the more of these parties you can add to your comp.

Class Roles

Composition Core

Firebrands support their party with boons and sustain, enabling damaging classes to survive against enemy groups. The most important duty of the Firebrand is to provide Stability for their party during engages as well as cleansing of conditions, CC'ing and healing.

Scrapper has enormous AoE healing, superspeed, condition cleanse, and access to stealth and stealth counters. They belong primarily in zergs for their support abilities, but should focus on using CC and securing downstates as well.

Scourge is primarily a damage dealer, provides unique access to AoE Barrier, some reasonable condition cleansing and powerful boon corrupting abilities.

Herald is a powerful spike DPS class that can operate at large ranges, making them one of the best classes to use if you do not plan to engage the enemy group head on but still need to be dishing out damage.

Flex Classes

Core Mesmer will be slotted for the driver, assumming he runs it. It brings good CC and self survivability, with access to unique skills such as

Veil

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72

Veil

Glamour. Create a wall that grants stealth to you and your allies.

Stealth (2s): Invisible to foes.

Curtain duration: 6 seconds

Combo Field: Light

Range: 900

,

Portal Entre

72

Portal Entre

Glamour. Create an entry portal at your location that teleports allies to your exit portal.

Range Threshold: 5,000

Duration: 60 seconds

and .

Tempest is one of the most versatile supports in terms of traits and weapons. It has great access to healing and cleanse, a powerful ground control with Earth and Air attunament skills, and with immob trait; and great aurashare and boon support through shouts and overloads.

Spellbreaker provide AoE and single target burst damage, but primarily belongs in any Zerg due to Winds of Disenchantment, an AoE skill that can annihilate large groups of enemies and enables your Zerg to perform huge damage spikes on vulnerable targets. Can go either full support or damage.

Renegade can replace Herald for similar builds and damage with differing kinds of group support, taking advantage mainly of the 10-man Alacrity.

Weaver has access to extremely high damage and hard CC, cycling through attunements quickly to ensure they are CCing, DPSing and even supporting minimally. The primary focus is to land , as it is a huge portion of your damage.

Party Composition

Pirate Ship

Pirate ship meta (or pirate ship fights) is a playstyle, theorycrafted with the release of HoT specs, in which opposite zergs will fight each other from distance and hardly ever collide (melee ball). In this case, commanders will often be comitting to 900-range damage spikes from their hammer revs, scourges and weavers until they can eliminate enough enemies to do a final push, or force the remaining enemies to flee. Whenever a zerg is under the risk of being melee pushed, they will often attempt to kite or disengage from the pushing zerg to keep the distance. You can frequently notice the 'pirate ship' aspect on triple-way blob fights and battles on large open field areas for example. Mount and stealth engages allows you to quickly close the gap, making then viable counters to this playstyle.

Profession	Build
Party 1
Firebrand	Support Firebrand
Scrapper	Med Kit Scrapper
Scourge	Power Curses or Cele Scourge
Weaver	Backline Weaver
Herald	Hammer Backline
Party 2
Firebrand	Support Firebrand
Chronomancer (Flex Support Slot)	Support Chrono
Scourge	Power Curses or Cele Scourge
Renegade (Flex DPS Slot)	Diviner Renegade
Herald	Hammer Backline
Party 3
Firebrand	Support Firebrand
Scrapper	Med Kit Scrapper
Scourge	Power Curses or Cele Scourge
Weaver	Backline Weaver
Herald	Hammer Backline
15 total

Melee Heavy

With the release of mounts and group stealth being much more accessible, this playstyle is enhanced. It basically consists on engaging (melee push) the enemy zerg, applying heavy pressure with spellbreakers, scourges and daredevils, downing enemies and cleaving then. This playstyle takes advantage of mobile Winds of Disenchantment, scourges' 10-man bombs and scrappers' AoE Superspeed to quickly push into enemy groups, surprising then, and bombing hard. Commanders will often disengage briefly for the squad regroup and to wait for cooldowns until they commit for another push. Noticiable mainly on GvG's and medium-big scale fights. An attentive eye, and calling out whenever an enemy group is pushing/stealthing is essential to not wipe.

Profession	Build
Party 1
Firebrand	Support Firebrand
Tempest (Flex Support Slot)	Midline Auramancer
Scourge	Power Curses or Cele Scourge
Herald	Hammer Backline
Spellbreaker (Flex DPS Slot)	DPS Spellbreaker
Party 2
Firebrand	Support Firebrand
Scrapper	Med Kit Scrapper
Scourge	Power Curses or Cele Scourge
Herald	Hammer Backline
Spellbreaker (Flex DPS Slot)	DPS Spellbreaker
Party 3
Firebrand	Support Firebrand
Scrapper	Med Kit Scrapper
Scourge	Power Curses or Cele Scourge
Renegade (Flex DPS Slot)	Diviner Renegade
Scourge	Power Curses or Cele Scourge
15 total

Variants

Replacing Flex Slots with other builds will not change the core concept of the composition: Firebrand + (Scourge/Herald) + Support, with coordinated necro cooldowns and push/pull. The meta defining aspects are the Scourge, FB, and Scrapper (thanks to gyros), in the same way Herald defines the 'pirate ship' comp with the ranged spike gameplay.

Diviner Renegade is a solid pick due to Alacrity and is good to have at least 1 every 20-man, but deals less damage than Hammer Backline. Feel free to replace it over a Herald or a Scourge if it suits your team composition.
Merciful Frontliner can be used in this composition, replacing Firebrands for those lacking expansions, but is not recommended.
Scourges of "Pirate Ship" section can be replaced by Hammer Heralds or Staff Weavers, which trades boonstrip for a greater ability to range and 'pirate ship'.
Blood Magic Support scourges can also be used in either of these comps for extra downstate control and Barrier at the cost of damage and corrupts.

General Usage

Opening

Melee Heavy group Guardians start fights with at a distance. Blast smoke fields from Thieves or use to stealth engage. Upon engaging enemies, Scourges should use together as an initial spike, following up with and for an additional instant damage spike. This should create enemy downstates, enabling your group to snowball the fight in your favor.

Pirate Ship fights begin similarly with . Stealth blasting or Veil is still recommended to enable quick burst from Stealth. At this point, rather than engaging the enemy directly, Chronomancers and Weavers can use long range CC skills such as and to catch enemies, creating a cluster of caught players for your group to eliminate with long range damaging skills. Save your Scourges high damage skills for when the enemy group attempts to push against you, stopping them from closing the gap between groups with a high damage and boonrip spike. Alternatively, use the Scourges to push against enemy downstates to quickly secure them and potentially snowball fights.

Extended Engages

Melee Heavy groups heavily rely on support from their Firebrands to stay alive during extended engages. If you have not managed to end the fight quickly with a high opening burst, there will be a great deal of incoming pressure as you stay engaged in Melee range. The most important thing for a Melee group to do is to focus on the main group of enemies, preventing them from recovering from your initial engage, and generating continuous downstate enemies. When wells come off cooldown, if your scourges save them to use at the same time and place, this can create powerful damage spikes that can turn fights.

Pirate Shipping comps favour extended engages, trading out the melee spike for considerably higher sustained DPS and the safety of long range. Continue to pull and CC enemies, whittling down their numbers. When you have significantly weakened enemy groups with your ranged pressure and secured some kills, you can move in with Scourges to push over what remains of the enemy group.

Focusing Downstates

One of the most important things to do once you have generated enemies in downstate is to finish them before they can rally or be revived. This is a good time for quick CCs such as or

Fear. Corrupting boons is also important if enemies are trying to revive their team mates, as it will remove stability or resistance and make them easy prey to the damage you are laying down in the area. Above all, focus on maximizing damage on downstate enemies. Cleaving out enemy downstates to rally your own allies is also extremely important when in large groups, often turning the tide of fights.

Allied downstates bring up two options- either ignore completely or coordinate your efforts to save them. Guardians can instantly revive allies if they are fast to use their , but if allies are left on the floor and cleaves a considerable amount revives can be extremely dangerous. Going to revive downed allies is usually an easy way for enemy groups to force you into their damage, and so displacement skills, such as , are extremely useful for getting allies out of damage to safe revive locations. Attempting to revive on any DPS focused class is 9/10 times a deathwish, and all downstates should be communicated with commanders so that numerous frontliners can work together to save you.