Are heroes really a good thing?

How exactly does the "leveling your own heroes" thing workout compared to them being at a pre-determined level like the regular henchmen? Isn't that encouraging people to use heroes over real people just to avoid having their heroes fall behind in levels? I'm already encouraged to use Heroes over real people. Most PvErs who have to PUG suck, and suck very badly. AIs that you can control every aspect of, however, are much better than poor players running sub-par skills and equipment.

Heroes are so much better than PuGs. I'm glad I never have to look for a group of PuGers.

1. Pugs are full of people who are bad. You have whammos with healing hands, power attack and dolyak signet. You have monks with Ray of Judgement, no energy management and the most expensive heals. You have Mesmers who spam the stupidest hexes possible. And, of course, you have the assassin who has no idea how to control agro or to back off when under attack.

2. Pugs are full of immature ***holes. They draw penises, swastikas and other crude imitations of artwork. They swear and cuss at you when you suggest a skillbar improvement. They go "lol res sig is for newbs" and will be the first one to bitch at the monk for a missed heal when they die.

3. Thunderhead Keep. Not so much the mission, but the time it took to form a group (6-8 months ago, not sure how it is now) was ridiculous. Monks were at an absolute premium and no group wants to go without 2 or 3 monks, even though the mission isn't even that hard.

Heroes alleviate all those problems. I control the skillbar of my heroes, making sure they each have a well defined role, good skills, and good specs in attributes. My buddy has his set of heroes and we can literally get a mission going in 2 minutes, rather than 20. On top of that, we can beat the missions on the first try, unlike most pugs later in the game. Heroes play smarter than Puggers, have better skillbars and don't act like immature pricks. Wtf? Healing Hands and Dolyak Signet are awesome tanking skills. Sad when people try to critisize something they know nothing about.

Wtf? Healing Hands and Dolyak Signet are awesome tanking skills. Sad when people try to critisize something they know nothing about. are you kidding me? Who needs to tank when you can kill the monster in half the amount of time. Quit thinking the warrior needs to hold the line while the ele charges up his nuke spells. You can easily drop targets like they were hot with damage skills on a warrior.

Heroes rock, hench are okay, PUGS suck major ass. Whats wrong with Pugs?

I know you can get some fool join and thus the wammo has a hissing fit and leaves with the monk, but most of the PUG's I've been in have been great.