Controlling Henchmen

Simple question I suppose. I'm currently a little frustrated at the level of control I have over my henchmen - the no direct control would make more sense if they were a little more intelligent.

For example - having read about how aggro works here, when on my monk I want to instruct my melee henchmen to go in first and grab agro while I sit back out of range healing. This is fine if I only take melee henchmen. However, if I take a caster or another monk henchman they go charging in at the same time, and either get too close or for some bizarre reason run past the enemy group invariably agroing another group on the other side. This problem is even worse on my warrior and assassin, where I want to go into combat but lose agro to lower armoured monk/mage because they followed me in, or when trying to pull a pack they decide to charge the mob because I just shot at it.

So, can anyone please share any tips on controlling when your henchies attack? Some command or setting I may have missed somewhere? Or is there nothing I can do about it.

What I'd like to see really are the following keyboard commands;
Disengage
Hold (so I can go ahead and pull without the henchies following)
Melee engage
Casters engage

The above would also voice verbal "commands" visible to other players so they could be used for group PvE. One last thing I'd like to see is casters/ranged trying to keep max range from their target rather than their current suicidal actions.

Hmmm thats kinda weird. Ima 20 monk and never have that kind of problem. To me that sounds like a bug when they run ahead of the mobs being attacked. But to the casters running in I see that a lot to.

If you know "I'm targetting ... !" then that's about all there is right now. There is nothing you missed, henchmen are just half mental most of the time.

[QUOTE=Damastes]

What I'd like to see really are the following keyboard commands;
Disengage
Hold (so I can go ahead and pull without the henchies following)
Melee engage
Casters engage

[QUOTE]

Actually having those keyboard commands would be great. Working with henchies would be vastly improved. We will never see it with the currently chapters, maybe in Nightfall.

I agree it is very difficult to keep henchies in line.

A. Bring a long bow and aggro from a long distance, so henchies charge in. Once they charge switch weapons and heal away ETC... It seems henchies do not attack unless you attack or they are attacked by a monster.

Heres a tip on pulling a group with henchies. Use a bow, ranged weapon, or attack with it or a spell then turn and run away clicking like a mad man on the ground in front of you over and over and over until you get far enough away from any other groups. (You have to do this because melee fighters will follow you when you click on the ground but stop and attack if they are attacked) so keep clicking and they follow unless they get body blocked or stuck on something.)

I'd just like to have ONE option, a toggle between agressive and passive.

It would be nice for henchies to stay passive and just follow me and ONLY attack mobs when I turn on agressive mode.

I use henchies alot,and I think the whole caster thing is some wierd form of kiting. I notice my healer hench likes to stay behind the baddies, even though this causes trouble.
There is a guide to henching in the..I think its the community works or one of those other forums. It's got some useful tips overall.

For some reason Henchmen have been really weird lately...

I just fought through almost 6 Saltspary Dragons, 3 Rockhide Dragons, and around 3 groups of outcasts. Somehow we were able to survive, and this has happened many times, my team simply lost it's ability to get killed XD.

I'm playing as Warrior though, that's the weird part...

Anyways, it's not the Henchmen, it's up to Anet to change them, it's up to yourself to make effective use of the way they are

(Until Nightfall is released anyways)

yeah luckily they are making the heroes have multiple commands instead of simply being stuck on "attack random shit!" other than that nope there are no alternitives other than just calling a target so that as a monk you dont have to run in first