pugs or hench. what do u prefer?

Missions - PuG or guild group if I happen to be in a guild at the time
Quest - Hench or PuG if its a Titan quest.

I prefer using Henchmen (including Heroes) the most. PUGs take a while to get into, especially if you're an unwanted profession, and it's just easier to have all the builds you want in your party. Also, it's nice to know that you didn't fail because someone else was being dumb or something.

What I usually do now is: Half and half. I usually have like 2-3 heroes and the rest of the group is pugs and henchies. I just can't stand having complete silence while I am playing an online game, but having a few heroes let have have some control of some of the crucial roles of a group/char, such as good monking skills, an assassin that will actually have a shadow step to escape, cuz if those kind of classes sucked in the group chances are it'll fall apart.

I end up using guild members/alliance members if available. Otherwise I walk thru Nightfall with Heros/Hench.

Example: Ruins of Morah. I chose to be social, tried to PUG with my ranger. Varesh wiped the floor with us twice.

I got frustrated following the 2nd defeat. Brought my heros/hench in (me and 7 AI). Not only did we beat Varesh first time, I got masters on it.

Henched by way to Gate of Madness following that.

Heroes or guild group.

I like to AFK, I like to go at my own pace, I like to get it done right the first time.

the problem isn't that I dont like real people. The problem becomes that 4 times out of 5, whenever I get a real person, and I ask them to click their bar, they have some retarded shit like
R/N: Power Shot, Life Siphon, Animate Bone Fiends, Lightning Reflexes, Charm Animal, Comfort Animal, Ignite Arrows

Seeing this, i realize that the skill level of the player is non-existant and that I can get more skill and a better chance at actually succeeding if I choose to go with my own artifical intelligence party-mates, whose IQ surpasses that of the real players that you find while trying to pug.

I love being in PUGs that know what they are doing.

That said, I do most of my play time with henches now.

i prefer to go with guildies/friends, but if that option isn't available...i'll take heroes/hench over a pug any day. i like to get things done right on the first try, and i like to move quickly. i've been in way too many pugs that move at a snail's pace...which is particularly annoying in cantha.

Because Heros o 45-60% more damage i prefer them when im on a damage dealing character like my Ranger or Tank or Ele or Dervish. When im on a support character like a Monk or Paragon i go with pugs.

Pugs for misson. Heroes/Hench for Explorable.
Ai are for human replacement .They arn't perfect solution but Its their purpose thats all.
See this for answer why ?

heroes/hench

gave up on pugs for pve pretty much

When I want to grab an elite skill real fast or something self serving like that I'm in and out fast with hench/hero. When I want to have fun I find a group of noob pugs.

For me it gos Guildies>Heros>PuG>Hench

In the early stages of NF all I've been doing is hero/henchies because I can take my time to explore the area but later in the game when the missions get harder I like to lead the team and pick what we need. I assembled a team for Gate of Madness and we did really good but the PuG that I was in before was horrible, nobody listened so we got owned.

Hench all the way.
Henches don't:
Ragequit
Flame you
Hench monks dont tell you,"do as i say or i leave/dont heal"
Hench monks don't say,"pay me 3k or i leave"
Hench mesmers know how to play a mesmer
Henches have great interrupting reflexes
Henches are always there for you
Hench can be flagged
Hench follows calls.
Hench warrior doesnt pull Leeroy Jenkins

PuG knows NOTHING about ANYTHING here.
My ranger HENCHED thunderhead keep after failing 4 times with PuGs due to ragequits. When I henched it NO ONE DIED!

Explorabe / quest: Heroes + Hench
Missions: PuG (prefer guild, but they are not that active right now, since 2 of the female members just gave birth to their first child and our guild leader is the husband of one of them). That's about half of the active members gone.

I usually use henchmen, but I prefer soloing things like quests as I need the drops and gold. But, if you wanna have fun at a mission, run rangerspike on Hell's Precipice, you're going to laugh your butt off.

Why? 'Cause the monsters won't hit for sh!t on you as they're elemental based and you're all rangers, plus, you just randomly shoot dual shot+punish+savage on an enemy and he goes to half health, from just one person in like 2 seconds.

I really liked it when I did it, lol.

-Ayumi

With Nightfall, I have ended up using hench and heroes almost exculsively but not because I wanted to. I have found pugs to be a lot less common in Nightfall, and since I was in a pvp based guild and alliance for quite awhile it was hard to find guildies to play with. Guild Wars is still fun with NPC party members, but somtimes its fun to play with real people. Therefore, I really do prefer pugs.

I prefer pugs and guildies.

hero/hench. I can't stand some of the idiots or just bad players in general that I find in pugs. I can do 95% of GW pve with heros/hench and those I can't I wait until people I know will do it. I like heros/hench anyway because I win or lose because of my own skill instead of someone elses.

Heroes+Guildy/Friends.

I try to use guildies if they are logged in. If not then it is heros/henchies all the way.
I see no reason to stand around in town wasting time trying to find a group then standing around even longer so everyone can ping their skill bar and be told how their build sucks. In the time it takes to get a group together in most mission towns, me and the henchies can be done with the mission and on to the next quest.
I do like to play with other people but it heros/henchies unless the guild is on.

Man, If you ever come back on this thread: Grats! /clap

You probably are the first one I see on this forum that answer this question while keeping his head cool and without insulting anyone. Bravo! (and I don't want to sound sarcastic here)


Short quest/long-grinding quest(like captured son)/if I'm doing something else/will go afk/mapping
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Hench/Hero (admit it would be foolish to PUG if you know you're going afk)


quest/skill cap/i'm just in the mood/other easy things
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look for people while preparing and selling, but dont wait to actually FIND someone.


Other/mish/long quest/serie of quest
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Generally a small PUG of 2-3 people, the rest is hench. That way you can talk to every one to know who you'll play with, ny the time you coordonate all 6 people the first one is tired and goes noob or just leave. Also, 2 people are easier to "order around" and you're less likely to get a noob. A full group is very likely to just rush while you prepare, if anyone tryed a spirit rit, they know spirits take long to summon and dont move to the battle field when they are out of range.
And I tend to talk too much when I lead anyway, people get tired.

My favorite is family and friends, with heroes/henchmen added as needed.

Next is PUGs. As frustrating as that can be at times, a successful completion gives the same sense of satisfaction as with any team sport, or even military mission.

Heroes/henchmen are great the first time through maybe, but after that it is the same as playing any other shooter over and over, and it gets boring pretty quick. And, yes, with all the mobs, Guild Wars is essentially a shooter.

I really like heroes when I cant get in a group, but pugs are always more fun. When you get into a good pug the laughs keep rolling

for quests: heroes & henches
easy missions: heroes & henches
harder missions: pug / guild

any kind of pvp: Guild or pugs

I'll say this; while I prefer PUGs, I find that I use heroes and henchmen more often.

My PvE experience has for a long time been very poor and very sad. I've tried PUG upon PUG only to run into people who feel they need to yell and swear all the way through the mission, call other people idiots or jerks or "noobs," crack wise about those who are news' parents, or something equally stupid.

And the rage-quitting. Oh, the terrible rage-quitting. Just yesterday I was doing the Hell's Precipice mission with a PUG. I just wanted to cap a skill, but I helped with the mission as well. We had two monks, one of which left the game (didn't lose connection, but left) because someone else didn't heal him while he very brainlessly ran into a pit of lava that was currently spawning little firey dudes to grab a chest (which turned out to be purple; HAH!) while we were in the middle of a very intense battle with a group of enemies a bit too large for us to handle.

After this monk left, the whining ensued. "Oh, we can't do this!" That's about all I heard for the next 30 minutes, which we could have used to see whether or not we could do this. Our winter Ranger decided to dissappear too, thinking it was impossible to accomplish. The other monk stayed, feeling confident in their ability to keep us all breathing. We died quite a bit, built up some Death Penalty, and one of our elementalists left, leaving me as the only "nuking power."

We completed the mission at or above 45%DP (all of us), with one monk and down three other players.

Tough things can be accomplished. I hear people talk about how easy a mission is all the time, but as soon as a good 8 out of 10 people - who I have met, not judging the entire Guild Wars community here - die the first time they want to jet like there is an out of control power pack on their back. Yeah, things can't be done when everyone keeps leaving out of fear. It's almost like the PUGs I've had the misfortune of becoming a part of are afraid of a little challenge. Who wants to play a game that is nothing but easy breezy? Not me.

So, while I love a good PUG, because I've found so few since the release of Nightfall I've taken to playing by myself, accompanied with only heroes and henchmen who don't complain, don't go AFK here there and everywhere, and don't rage-quit. With them I've been able to pull through awful situations, because they will, to an extent - Heroes and Henchmen, now with directable flags, are about as good as the player controlling them in my mind - coordinate efforts.

I prefer PUGs, but sadly that isn't always the best thing for me to pick up, it seems.

Perfect example of why to use AI over humans;

Tahnnakai Temple mission in factions. I think its fair to say thats its considered one of the more difficult missions (if you consider any hard).

This week I needed to complete it for my Rit.

I've done it before several times with my ele and my ranger, so I knew what it was about. Ive got master on it before both times.

But this time I figured ill play through factions with PUGs if possible....

...first pug we had 3 leavers after 5 minutes. We all left afterwards.

...second pug chucked me out because they had 6 players and only added me thinking I was a healer Rit, which Im not. I dont have any healing skills (due to lack of funding to get many skills and choosing dmg and protection ones).

...I then spent the rest of the day posting "Rit lfg for mission". No one accepted or invited.

I gave in and tried it with my hero MM and 6 henches. First try the NPCs died about 3/4 way round. Second try we breezed it with masters.

The moral of the story? I could have been stood there the rest of week trying to get a PUG and Im not optomistic that we would have got masters, let alone survived.

Especially since this particular day most of Tahnnakai Temple was full of people spamming insults at one another. I didnt really want to PUG with people liable to being extremely immature.

I always use hero/hench to do everything in PvE bcos i can explore everywhere I want.

Heroes are better than normal pugs.
I got my 3 Protector Titles with them.
I cleared all Titan's Quest in Prophecies with hero also The Final Assault too. ^^

I prefer to Pug it for the most part as it is good to have others to talk to and help you think about the mission.I am aware that a lot of player prefer to use guildies/heros/henchies but some of Us don't.I prefer not to as it especially trying to figure the mission out.The reason is there could be some bad players out there is because they could come from bad guilds with leaders or officers that aren't even on line so in essence or they have bad leardership just think how many guilds are out there.

As I've previously said, I prefer not to pug because of some horrendous experiences; however every now and then I give it a go again. Take these 2 recent examples.

Sunday morning, hubby and I take our NF chars to Imperial Sanctum. We'd had a couple of runs at numpty the night before with our heros, but it just wasn't working well. Get in a pug within 2 mins of being there. We both always say "hi" to the team as a matter of common courtesy. 1 person replied, no-one else said a thing. Once in Divine Path, hubby and I said heartfelt thanks to the team, and again not one response.

Yeah we got through numpty with masters, was it an enjoyable experience? Goddess no!!!

Monday, planking about in Tyria with our NF chars again doing the early missions. Hubby was in a good mood, so we decided to help out any low levels looking for help. We took a necro through Nolani Academy that said nowt all through the mission, and when we got to Yaks Bend left without a word.

Picked up a Mo/Me lvl 10 in Borliss Pass; what a great time we had. We took our time and had a laugh and a joke whilst we played. Took the same person through Frost Gate and when we hit Beacons, offered to get them to LA because we were having such a good time. Got to Gates of Kryta, added the monks friend and picked up a lvl 11 ele too. Had a great time with them all, and ended up with another 2 names on my friends list.

As you can see it's swings and roundabouts, sadly most of the time it swings the wrong way, but as someone else said (was it Sophitia??) A good pug is like a diamond, I couldn't agree more, it's a shame that most of the time you get the charcoal.

I usually hero/hench most of the missions and quests, infact I hero/hench the majority of the missions in factions and nightfall, but some times there ARE GOOD pugs out there. Pugging is some thing I enjoy because it gives a neat experience and a oppertunity to make friends, I only hero/hench when I've tred at least 3 times with pugs, or simply there are nobody there!

I highly recommand going with friends and guildies, henching alone is lonely!

Another thing is if we don't show the ropes to new people, what will happen to GW after this wave of players quit? How will they teach new players and etc

Hench/guildies for everything - I only pug if I absolutely have too.


Mort

PUGs sometimes are fun to do missions with, I usually try a mission with a PUG first few times and if it doesn't work I'll just take the henchmen.xD

PUGs can be fun or frustrating depending on your luck.

PUGs works best for my monk, since all groups need monks and you can be picky about what group to join. The bad groups can usually be spotted during pre-mission chat, giving you a chance to bug out. I don't leave once the mish gets started though.

Have sometimes had trouble recently finding good groups for my Necro, since I'm not a MM and everyone seems to assume you are or gets p***ed when you're not. When the game first came out, that kind of thing didn't seem to matter.

Henches/heroes obviously work best for side quests, since it's hard to find groups for them.

Heroes + henchies most of the time.

I'll go heroes + PUG if it happens to be a mission that requires multiple things be carried... or splitting of the party into multiple groups... but otherwise its typically AI all the way.

With tougher missions or special challenges to get title points however, I'll consult my friends list.... typically consisting of people in guilds I USED to be a member of.... and the occasional intelligent human meatbag I've come across in my travels (few and far between).
Generally though I find most of my friends list is offline most of the time, and those that are online are doing other things.... so its rare that I manage to actually get their help.


There is of course the other rare occurrance.... which is where I have to go back and do something fairly easy... and feel confident enough to take a substandard PUG or so along with my heroes JUST to make the PUG/s feel inadequate. Did that recently with another assassin in Vizunah Square. I was kind enough to get her a Master-rank there despite the fact that she spent most of the time picking up items and staying out of battle.... then was also kind enough to rub her face in it after.

friends > hench > pugs

I haven't played a pug in months and doubt I ever will again now that heros are so much better. I haven't found a quest or mission yet that could be puged but not henched.

I love PUGs. I've definitely had bad experiences with them, but I've had mostly good experiences too. Heck, even the bad ones make for some good storytelling later.

Someone mentioned Tahnaki Temple further up I believe. I agree with that poster, it can be very difficult to find a decent pug there. I brought my Blood Necro to the temple one evening and immediately received an invite. I accepted and said "Hi". The group was inviting others, so I brought up my skills and started building (this was before the templates existed). I saw some chatter behind my skills window, so I closed it only to see a very highstrung teammate screaming at everyone on the team...
"What is your build"
"What necro are you"
"We need a monk!!!"
"Kick the warrior!!!!"
"Kick the Warrior and Ranger, get 2 monks!!!!"
"Kick the ranger!!!!"
"What is your build!!!!"
"What is your build!!!!"
"What is your build!!!!"
"What is your build!!!!"
"Kick the Necro!!!!! She's not answering"
"Kick the Necro!!!!!!!!"
"Kick!!!!!"
<at this point I typed "bllod necro" a bit too quickly and typoed Blood>
"Kick the stupid $%^#& Necro!!! Dumbass can't even spell Blood!!!!!!!!"

Btw, all this was typed within less than a minute. Our team leader wisely kicked our caffeine addict friend and we replaced him with a monk and started the mission.

Another time, my Ranger was attempting Tahnaki and my PUG was struggling for a monk. There was a lot of chat in the lobby and one line that flew by was
"Monk for hire. 2k for mission". 2 folks in our pug spotted him and said "invite that monk over there".

I honestly don't think the PUG leader saw his "for sale" sign and neither did most of the players in our group. The chat was just flying by too fast. The monk joined and asked for his money and at the same time the leader started the mission. We had a good natured, but totally dysfunctional group. The monk wanted his money, another player said he'd pay when we finished and 2 other guys kept dying every 5 seconds and yelling "Hey!! If we're paying you, REZ ME!!!!".

The monk said he'd play thru to the 4th boss, but that he'd leave afterwards if he wasn't paid. The player who promised the monk money finally said he had no cash and the monk stopped playing. Once the 4th boss died he refused to move without payment (and I don't blame him). A couple guys got mad at him, but I feel that the monk was upfront and honest about the deal going in. The problem was that most of the team were the type of players that won't pay for mission runs (like me) and the leader started the mission before the monk was able to clarify his "for hire" status. The monk stayed in the mission and watched us continue our pitiful efforts and he didn't have any hard feelings and was actually rooting us on from the sidelines.

We finished the mission with 2 missing folks (the monk and another drop out). We only got 1 sword, but at least we finished!

I love doing it with PUGS
I dont care much about his build as long as he uses it effectively. Ive pretty much done pugs for a lot of missions and I got to say its fun.. more fun really that having to use Heroes and such.
Thing about PUGS is that it gives you an idea on just how complete strangers can properly mesh together as a fighting unit.
Builds are ok but more often than not should not be the reason why people should kick pugs out of their group.
Hell.. I've done a number of missions without monks but heck thats hard as hell and damn lucky I was with a group who knew how to aggro as well as disengage.
Funny thing is... none of us had DP in those missions.
Overall, PUGS are VERY fun. Frustrating but fun

Depends on the mission/quest, certain professions seem to be better played by Henchies/Heroes while others by human players. I've had a nice balanced team both of all sorts, all humans, half-half, to henchie/heroes.