Henchmen Skill update suggestions

In normal mode, henchmen have NO mods WHATSOEVER. Not even runes. In hard mode, supposedly they have mods on all their equipment, though which ones are kind of hard to figure out. As far as I can tell, they don't seem to get runes at all (which is kind of weird, you'd think they'd at least have minor runes in every attribute)

Time for another one

This time, our favourite Necro gal, Eve!


Henchman: Eve
Campaign: Core
Original Skill Set: Blood Rit, Deathly Swarm, Grenth's Balance, Shadow Strike, Vampiric Gaze, Rez.

New Full Skill Bar:
[skill]Vampiric Gaze[/skill][skill]Life Siphon[/skill][skill]Strip Enchantment[/skill][skill]Faintheartedness[/skill][skill]Barbs[/skill][skill]Grenth's Balance[/skill][skill]Blood Ritual[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

Reasoning:
All core skills here, making her very useful to casters (BR) and melee attackers (FH and Barbs). Some self heal. She's always been very good about her use of BR and GB. I changed her from Blood and Death, to Blood and Curses so she was a little more hoopy for all round usefulness.

I know her lore has her as Blood and Death, but Blood and Curses have always synchronised better for me (as a Necro player).

I like the bar you suggested for eve, but if your going to touch sogolon, seriously DO NOT reduce his healing ability.

Sogolon's healing support rules in NF. All he needs is aria of zeal added, and mending refrain removed.

Actually, I really dont care what they do. I havnt played GW for 4 days now, and have no intention of resuming play because the only thing that would make it fun for me is 7 heroes.

Hey, let's get this thread ticking over again The discussion is still alive "elsewhere", let's keep interest up!

Thoughts about Factions hench: I actually think they're very well built. There's a lot of variety and usefulness there - the interrupting hench are awesome, I love have a Rit Hench with Splinter Weapon. Probably the changes I would make would be to Talon Silverwing and the elementalists. Talon's a little too Leeroy, with not much defense, while the eles don't have enough damage power.

Talon Silverwing:
Current Skills: Charge!, Healing Signet, Silverwing Slash, Sun and Moon Slash, Tiger Stance, Rez
New Build:
[skill]Silverwing Slash[/skill][skill]"For Great Justice!"[/skill][skill]Balanced Stance[/skill][skill]Seeking Blade[/skill][skill]Healing Signet[/skill][skill]Jaizhenju Strike[/skill][skill]"Charge!"[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

A tad more defence, a tad more damage output, and the always useful charge, all with Factions and Core skills.

Those skills are not unknown, you just need to type quotation marks like [ skill ]"For Great Justice!"[ /skill ] and [ skill ]"Charge!"[ /skill ] just make sure you take out the spaces in the code brackets . Also, I think you have some excellent ideas, keep up the great work.

Aha Thanks Hazard. I tried mucking around with it...didn't think about quotations.

C'mon peeps! Keep the ideas flowing!

When coming up with potential henchmen builds you need to take into account not only what a skill does, but whether the AI knows how to use it properly. I am especially talking about Elites in this regard. A spell can be an awesome Elite, but if the henchmen can't use it right then it can still be worthless. (I am ignoring all the stuff about core/campaign limitations since it's already been covered)

That's the problem with Light of Deliverence. A hero setup with LoD will rarely ever use it, even when he clearly should. The one nice thing about WoH is that at least the AI will use it properly, and it works as a big but fairly cheap heal.

The same thing goes with Hundred Blades. There are better sword elites out there, but at least a hero will use Hundred Blades properly, whereas I set Koss up with Soldier Stance and he only occassionally activated it despite having Watch Yourself up all the time. He would choose to use energy attacks before using Soldier Stance and even if you took all other energy uses off his bar he still didn't run it 100%. At least with Hundred Blades it can be used to build up adrenaline, although whether it's worth carrying is still questionable.

As far as improving the henchmen, the biggest things that need to be changed is to make it so they actually do what they're supposed to do. Either the healer or protector henchman should be able to remove conditions. The archer should be able to interrupt and maybe pin down, etc. Little Thom should not have Wild Blow when he constantly spams it and never builds up enough adrenaline for Eviscerate.

There are small changes that can be made that can make a big difference. Henchmen don't need to run the perfect setup of skills and Elites (and anyway they wouldn't use half of them correctly).

For starters they could just give all henchmen 8 skills. I've seen at least three henchmen in Prophecies with only 5 skills, even at level 20.

If you look back in the thread, SerenitySilverstar linked to an older thread, in which the builds posted weren't too dependant on conditionality, and (except for bhavvs' posted ones) technically viable for henchmen use with the clause that they would only use skills that are core and native to their land. Even the ones posted in this thread are mostly non-conditional, and shown that even heroes can use them. As far as I can tell, heroes and henchmen use the exact same AI, assuming heroes are set to aggressive and aren't flagged individually. That is why "Charge!" is the preferred elite choice for Stefan, as he has no other skills with which the AI can handle and/or is decent/perfect for the situation. At the very least, it allows for kiting.

Problem solved.

I see some people still have such a grasp and appreciation of the rules and mechanics of the game.

Moving on, here's my next henchman build.

Henchman: Lina
Chapter: Prophecies
Current Skills: Aegis, Protective Spirit, Restore Life, Reversal of Fortune, Shield of Regeneration (E), Shielding Hands

New Build:
[skill]Aegis[/skill][skill]Protective Spirit[/skill][skill]Mend Ailment[/skill][skill]Remove Hex[/skill][skill]Shield of Regeneration[/skill][skill]Blessed Aura[/skill][skill]Reversal of Fortune[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

Reasoning: Lina needs a rez she has more attribute points in, and needs a condition and hex removal. The protector hench in Factions and Nightfall are much more efficient because of their skill choices, and while she is a good hench, she needs just a bit more oomph.

Just giving them some e-management would be a good start.

K, a quick wrap up of AI suggestions for the henchmen:

- Better energy management
- Full 8 skills on their bar
- Better adrenaline build/hold on warriors
- Runes for attributes
- Better attribute spread