Henchmen have been dumbed down

This is perhaps the most frustrating thing in the entire game. The klunky AI of the henchmen has been an itch that I cannot scratch for a long time now. Why is it that our henchmen get the worst elites, worst skillbars imagineable, and don't even use it right?

Example: the warriors are equipped with charge. They are there for fighting. They are not running us anywhere. That is a terrible elite to have if you are there to help FIGHT.

How about Eve? She has blood ritual. Not a bad skill to haev actually...except when you use it while being attacked by a couple sins and another necromancer.

Ok now let me give an example of a very good monk. How about the forgotten sages? I've seen groups who decided to target something other than those sages before and couldn't kill them until the sage died. That's an example of a really good monk. I also want to know why our monks have such slow reflexes. Real live monks aren't that bad. So please, stop dumbing down the henchies. I know you don't want to make the game too easy for us by giving strong henchmen, but when we have to compensate for 7 other players lacking in AI and decent skills, it makes things difficult for us. Far more difficult than it should be.

The reason is because the henchmen are all anet mods. They do stuff like that on purpose just to annoy us. I.E.- when you are in the maguuma jungle, you swear that there is some guy in a cubicle looking over the top into another one saying "DUDE LETS GO STAND IN THE POISON AND SEE IF IT TICKS HIM OFF!!!"

^ LOL

I just.. don't use henchmen

agreed...
Don't like henchies, don't use henchies.. Take heroes if you dislike henchies, heroes are superior imo and if you decide you don't like heroes as well, there is always the PUG option of course

/signed

Every level 20 henchman should have 8 skills including an elite.

Kihm works great despite only having 6 skills, but a lot of the other Nightfall-exclusive henchmen have serious problems. Odurra, Herta and Gehraz have no elites. Sogolon's decent, but it's annoying that he has the one-shot Resurrection Signet instead of the reusable Signet of Return.

And Aidan and Reyna need to either get new elites or get preparations that are actually worth using with Practiced Stance.

well... i'm no henchie lover but i dont think they're that bad...

the charge is allways usefull so u dont take forever to travel from one place to another. The interrupter henches make impossible interrups, and so on.

of course they're not as good as human players, if they were most ppl would not make parties to do missions and quests. And since this is a team game i think anet wants to promote relacionships between players, otherwise it would be just boring.

at least the henchmen dont hang out in shing jea and spam "naked dance party" or other retarded stuff that the real people are so fond of doing....

They are not human, they are not Heroes, and they have only skills available for their campaings.

THat's it all.

That doesn't mean that they can't have a full skill bar, or useful elites, or elites at all.

Except that you can't take 7 Heroes so you are forced to fill out your party with crappily-skilled henchmen.

OP is right, having "Charge!" skill on henchmen is completely worthless and there's no need for them to have such a worthless elite skill.

/signed for giving Henchmen good or at least combat functional skills

I think this is the right answer .

On the contrary. Devona's repeated use of "Charge!" was an enormous boon for my trip through Elona; it makes the entire party able to run away from battles that you may not wish to fight.

Henchies are bad?
Why did I meet dozens of people that would do Vizunah Square (Factions) with 7 henchies and bail out if the entire opposite team had less than 8 henchies.
Could that be because the average PuG is even worse than hench?

For me, hench allways worked on missions and on bonus most of the time.
On both Cathan and Tyrian missions. Probably on Elonian mission to, but have done only one or two without a PuG.

Could it be that you think that hench are bad because you don't know their strenghts and weaknesses and use that to your advance?

I always take devona only because of charge. She let my group complete quests faster.

But she has nice hammer skills as well. I don't like most of the other npcs (except interrupter). those really need a buff.

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. If I need to go AFK, henchmen will wait on me, If I want to map the entire world where I want, when I want, henchmen are there, If I want to cap any elite anywhere in the game, henchmen are there. People just plain suck because it takes time and coordination to get shit together, not to mention people can drop out, people can make stupid choices like run off and aggro shit. Heroes aren't available to every campaign, and even then you can only bring 3.

Edited by Faer: Hey hey hey, let's play nice, mkay?

I dont even know where to begin here. There ARE more then 8 skills for each class in EVERY campaign, including an elite that doesnt suck something awful. More then half of the current henchie skill bars seem like they were built to piss people off on purpose and/or they were made by someone who smokes too much weed.

haha agree to last 2 posts

No flames please, let's keep it civil.



Personally I can't stand PUGs either. Every time I try to use one they stuff the mission up in some way or another or simply drop out at the worst times possible. The times that I try to create a decent PUG myself nearly always fails as no one has patience enough to allow me to build a decent one, if they don't have a full group ready to go in within 5 minutes they leave.

That being said I don't really have much problems with the henchies. I do agree that they should at least have full skill bars, simply because it doesn't make sense that they don't, especially when your henchmen are supposed to be huge players like Devona and Cyn, or the headmasters of the Monastery in Cantha, but I don't really care if they have good elite's or not, as logically they would have to capture it like any other player and thus they simply might never have had the opportunity to do so (story-wise that is).

I also think that if the henchies were any better it would indeed make the game too easy. I think it's already too easy with them for many missions, which is why for the most part now I only use Heroes, as they are better than henchies, but you can only have 3, which is all I really need. Of course there are missions that are near impossible if you don't have a small army, but usually Olias can make up for that.

So yeah, I agree with filling up their skill bar, but that's as far as I'd go with it.

I also find Devona and Talon's use of Charge to come in handy as I can't stand crawling through large areas.

Livingston

/signed for filling their skill bars. I think it would add another level of intensity that alot of players are looking for. Otherwise I think they're fine. I've got a Protector of Tyria title and a Tyrian Grandmaster Cartographer title (100%), and most of it was done with henchies. From what I've seen they act better than the average PuG.

Probably the best argument against my original post is the one who said that A-Net purposefully made henchmen terrible so that people would be more likely to form a team. This is a valid assumption, however, no NPC can ever match a group of good human players. Dumbing down the henchmen for this reason is redundant. I will always try to find human players in some missions. Why? Because I can get people with certain builds to fill in certain roles. Example: minion master.

At any rate, most people play online games so that they can play with other people. When our fellow guild wars members get frustrated with other players, I would say that it's a good idea to give him the option to play through a mission with another team that he cannot offend. I doubt he'll cool down though, if sister tai just watches his health run down into nothing while her energy bar is full. Which is something else I'd like to mention, why do the monks have such bad reflexes? No real monk is EVER that slow. There have been times when I was below fifty percent health for well over ten seconds before they healed me. I'm lucky I wasn't targeted (aoe got me).

In short: the henchmen have the potential to be alot more effective and efficient, yet they are built with very little substance for reasons unknown.