Any tips/rules for Hero's?

Any tips or such for building hero's? I've been doing fairly well with them, but latly been looking into how to improve them and been noticing some annoying things.


For one...they just outright refuse to use some skills 90% of the time. Like I had power block on Norgu, and regardless ofw hat I was fighting he use every other skill except that.

Or Magrid had epedemic and I watched her use it like once in 10 matches in zeishan elite arena.

Is there some way to make sure they use certain skills without having to hit the button all the time? Wich doesn't work with reactionary skills since they often have a 5-10 second delay between when you tell them to do something and when they actually bother to do it.

Plus one annoying thing I've noticed, if you tell hero's to run, but they have a skill you've told them to activate, they will wait to use that skill the exclusion of everything else. Like with Wurm farming, you put up wail but if the undead have drained their energy to 0 they will just keep attacking rather then retreat.

Noticed how some skill would not be triggered unless there AI was set to defense or above, but no skills if "avoid combat".

Never thought of that, I usually set them all to engage, as I've found all to often you will have hero's just sit back when a mobs close to death and all you got are mages and no ones tryng to kill it.

I thought necros still made minions if they were set to no combat...

And monks still heal if you set them to no combat.

They just don't use attacking skills

Any skills that should be avoided in particular? Or ones that hero's don't use particularly well?

Oops, right now I was working with Magrid/Olias for a ailement build have them drop tons of conditions then spread them out to everyone.

Most spam skills, especially offensive spam skills. Heroes don't usually spam anything, but they handle defensive spam skills like Tainted Flesh pretty well.

1. Unlock alot of skills. Variety is the spice of life after all.
2. Learn to flag them properly. This is very important b/c your healer heroes will have base of operations and it keeps your other heroes from chasing enemies that kite.
3. Pay attention to skill bars. Heroes do alot of annoying things when equipped with certain skills. Avoid any caster skills that say "adjacent foes" unless you're prepared to constantly heal and/or rez your caster heroes.
4. Have alot of builds. Different areas need to be approached in different ways. Its not a good idea to go into Pockmark Flats with a MM hero b/c there aren't many exploitable corpses(I did that while vanquishing...lol). I suggest just going to GuildWiki and saving a bunch of general PvE builds. Most of them are ok.

Advice?

'Heroes'



Seriously?

I run with the control panel open for each hero, and if I need certain skill I'll mark it. OR, deactivate any skills I don't need them to use to increase chance of the ones I do.

I also make sure I flag my casters just outside of aggro bubble, this tends to make them pay attention more and not run around getting themselves confused or running into seemingly blind spots.

You're best running simple builds with heroes, anything that requires order/reactions you'll have to keep in check yourself and that - while it can be done to a degree - detracts from the fun.

if you check the hero forums theres a nice list of skills that are big no-no's

Tips:
-Heros willa lways want to pay the full price - I find expertise or skills that reduce E cost often dont trigger correctly with heros and they will wait for that E needed for the spell to be reached
-Defence spam (like listed above) is especially good with healing spells, keep your monks running low cost spells to reduce the "Blackout" periods
-Passive management - in 2 ways, heros should be able to work efficently on their own (although you shouldnt lossen your grip) and Passive E management skills of active, skills like attunements and divine spirit works nicley with heros as they tend tend to have less "mess ups" (such as casting flare after a GoLE) than active ones.

just a few tips there from my experiance

My E/Me runs a Savannah Heat, Arcane Echo build frequently and it works great, so I put the same build on Zhed and Sousuke.

It was a disaster in their hands. I caught them frequently Echoing Fire Attunement. So, now I just substitute another skill for Arcane echo.

Something the game needs, but doubt they ever add as it would make it MUCH too easy...:> A FFXII Gambit like system, priortize spells, have them use it WHEN you want.

I noticed this with Gwen (EN Hero) - Had her avoid combat = no skill / not doing anything.

Order of skills on skillbar matters (a lot). It can break build they would otherwise use properly.

heh yet I've seen them ignore skills on the far right and far left.

lol avoid echo for sure... and for energy management use enchantments as heros tend to keep them up constantly.

1) Flag your heroes properly.
2) Heroes love dancing in AoE, so run yourself around a bit to get them outa there.
3) Some skills just won't be used at all.
4) Some skills will be used ALL the damn time, like traps and winter on Rangers whenever they stop for a second.
5) Having mixed heroes works great but so does all one type. Ever run all mostly Rangers on that mission to assault the Kornan city? Epic!
6) If you don't like micromanaging and KNOWING every skill, the basic skills plus an elite works nicely.
7) Do use the control panel occasionally, like on Razah I have to activate some of his skills because he will just stand about looking at flowers and bunnies if I let him.
8) Don't be afraid to use Protection Henchmen with heroes.

I guess a question is...if your going with H+H what MUST you take with you? I mean what classes just really can't be left to the henchmen.

When soloing with H&H, I use W, MM and nuker heroes + 2 monk, mes and earth henches; if I'm on my W, I sub a R hero (with Apply Poison) for the W one. This seems to work well in most situations. I generally only use my Mo heroes in pugs, when the other profs are already covered.

i leave healing to the hench...i prefer the major dps boost from hero nuking/warrior than healing. If you're trying to run a specific build like gc/winter with mantra of frost, you might want higher al hench and make at least one hero a monk with mantra. With no other players you also have the ability to target your warrior hero on mobs without getting anybody else in agro range so that the warrior can actually tank. i find that useful. if you want to try having your warrior hero tank while the whole gruop goes in, give him crippling and kd skills and have him target the melee boss (or whatever).

As long as you use skills that don't require specific targeting, heroes should be fine. They also like to spam, so don't include 8 25 energy skills or they'll be sitting around empty all the time.

Also, please at least give them some energy management. I've seen too many ele's who don't even carry attunements or GoLE for themselves, only 7 or 8 fire spells. I shudder at what they've given their poor heroes.

Interrupts are good, they do it better than most people you'd find in a pug. Actually, I'm usually surprised if I actually see anyone with an interrupt in a pug. But still, heroes are good at it.

Try and give them at least some defence, a ward, blind, weakness etc. Between that and kiting, you should be able to simply ignore them. Do your own thing, and know that they'll keep themselves alive.

Not sure about your margrid and epidemic. I know my olias spams epidemic on recharge, but my party is full of DW, burn, bleed, weakness, poison and disease so he's got plenty to work with. But that's in pve. Been awhile since I played the zaishen elite, but I remember most teams were pretty good at keeping some separation so they're not all standing adjacent to each other. And since they're not next to each other, you can't epidemic them. Might want to go back to the zaishen challenge before that (can't remember what its called) and choose to fight the IWAY team. They're likely to be in close quarters so you can see if margrid epidemics then.

Well one thing that I'm finding is...that even with Dunkaro/healer henchmen there are many times when they just arn't healing enough. Though I recently switched Dunkaro to a protection build and taking two healer henchhies and it's working a bit better.


One thing I want to try to get out of...is relying on zhed/Sosuke, they work great and have single handidly helped me win while spamming AOE's along with my dervish, but I'm trying to find something that works better...relies a bit more on weakening rather then destroying everything at once.

One thing I've been seeing that I really don't like, is that Zhed/Sosuke won't use AOE's or rarely use them against bosses if he's the only one left. Couldn't kill this one monk boss, nothing was going on couldn't figure it out and then I noticed all their AOE spells were chargd and they were just spamming fireball and the other spell over and over and over again. One I manually targted firestorm/meteor shower and such the boss died in seconds.

I know the big thing (since NF) is Searing Flames but I still prefer to have Ele Attune as the elite on both my own ele and the heroes as well. Mark of Rodgort, Fireball and Liquid Flame work pretty well to keep everything on fire, giving Koss a fiery weapon and Margrid or Jin a fiery bow helps that along.

For Dunk and Tahlkora, they starting doing much better energy-wise when I made them Mo/Me and threw Channeling in that 1st slot - before they were always running out, now they usually seem to have plenty in most situations.

I've noticed too that Dunk is sometimes reluctant to heal, even with plenty of energy; Tahlkora, as a Prot, seems to be much more effective at what she does. Koss, Sousuke and Olias and also much quicker on the res than Dunk.