[mpweiher]

> I find it hard, or improbable to achieve a healthy Pyramid of Tests on a large monolith

I'd venture to say that this is a strong indication that You're Holding it Wrong™

> a high level, black box test of a service endpoint

Then maybe don't do these kinds of high-level black box tests?

Because...

> requires mocking external dependencies

...if you're stubbing out everything, then it's not actually a high-level, black-box test. So no use pretending it is and having all these disadvantages.

Instead, use hexagonal architecture to make your code usable and testable without those external connections and only add them to a well-tested core.

See: Why I don't Mock (2014) https://blog.metaobject.com/2014/05/why-i-don-mock.html

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7809402