Heroes and Henches: Why Not?

So I'll start off by openly admitting I've not been playing this game long... a couple months to be exact. I can't speak towards the end of NF/Factions/GWEN. I have however sampled at least halfway into all 3, and completed Proph on a couple different classes, and toyed around in hard mode there.

Second thing I want to make clear is that I don't need groups... I group because I'm one of those social type people, and one that sees into it the fact that if I'm not grouping with people, it's just a single player game (of which I have too many to play through that are piling up all the time, never do I find enough time for that aspect of my life). If I want to get through stuff, I grab heroes and henches and do it, or at most get one, MAYBE two friends, and they bring their heroes and I bring mine as needed. Either way, I never see the requirement of a full group in anything.

I've done alot of going back through the Proph missions for my own amusement, just something easy to do. I go back and usually I try to get in a group with people so I can help them complete it too. I've personally gotten Protector title so it's not like I need anything out of it, it's just as I said above, fun for me to hang with other people and if I don't it's not multiplayer. When I go back, usually in the earlier missions I'll grab my heroes out and pick up 1-2 newbies/rerolls/whatever and help them through stuff.

So my bottom line is this: Why is it that so many people think that heroes/henches are retarded and worthless, and that players are better at everything? Healer Heroes/Henches can PREDICT when damage will happen, specific to how much damage so that they use the correct heal to the timing of a millisecond so that there's no wasted overheal, and they do this on the server side which means lag doesn't stop them from keeping the whole party alive, whereas one spike to even the best healer can wipe the group. Interrupter Heroes/Henches KNOW when the spells/skills are coming, and can time the interrupt better than a player ever could. Don't believe me? Read the walkthrough for the Doppleganger, and how it says the AI will have faster reflexes than you and almost always will interrupt faster than you. Even against players, where they don't know when the skill comes, their reaction time is to the millisecond, so they're practically guaranteed to get off the interrupts.

There's a few good arguments as to why heroes/henches don't do it right. There's certain skills they're programmed to not use for one (maintained enchants for example). They are sometimes not quite understanding of combos you give them for another. And finally they don't get the +20% customization bonus to damage you do. But aside from that, Heroes/Henches are as smart if not smarter about the build than we are.

Now I understand that players can use certain builds better than a hero, and I'm willing to grant that. But when people form groups, half the time they dont care what build the players have, and I've even seen groups take off with no healers (they crashed rather quickly, of course, but it didn't stop people from starting the mission). So it's not like you can really critique what build heroes/henches have. As to gear, if you have the money the hero can have just as good of gear as you do almost. All of my heroes for my main char have full runes/sigs and green weaps based on their builds for the most part. I even have a bonder monk hero that I use effectively for certain zones.

I guess what this all boils down to is this. I've done all of the missions and bonuses in proph, and everything I've done in the other 3 places as well, with nothing but heroes and henches, and MAYBE one other person. I've soloed in hard mode with them, and no trick builds mind you, just my normal all-purpose design. Why is it then that when I suggest while in one of the 3-4 groups sitting in one of the later missions that we could bring healer heroes/henches instead of waiting 30 minutes for a couple of monks to show up that they treat this idea as if I was randomly spewing words from a language I don't speak? Am I one of the rare few who is capable enough with heroes/henches and the right group setup that I can do it solo? Or are people holding out so max people party = max loot, or what?

Someone help me understand the hero/hench hate.

I was doing some quick runs of cathedral of flames with a friend. Anyway, we were fighting murakai and both caught a lag spike and DCed. When we returned, she was dead and the chest was waiting for us. So, six heroes with no supervision, more than capable. She didn't even get a single attack skill off, she just got interrupted every time. Hell, gates of madness masters was easy with H/H while I've been in pugs where half the party die from the first margo group. So yeah, no hero or hench hate for me.

The only weakness is where you need to carry stuff, since H/H don't pick up quest items. And traps and boulders. If you don't flag them, they'll happily stand in a flame trap all day, and get run over by giant snowballs. But that's your own fault for not using flags. And yeah, they may have to run slightly simpler builds, but at least its a usable build with some team synergy.

H/H aren't retarded, but they're nowhere close to the competence level of a good player. They're not capable of executing sensible skill combinations, not capable of properly prioritizing targets (for damage, healing, interrupting, or anything else), not capable of moving properly in response to changes in the situation (you can flag them, of course, but time spent flagging is time where you're not able to do other things that the party might benefit from if you had people who were moving themselves), and not capable of carrying objects/acting independently.

They DO have certain advantages, which you notably list. In short, they're very good at what they're good at, but a group of good human players is going to trump a group of heroes any time. Of course, heroes/henchmen lack all the problems inherent to BAD human players, and are thus worlds better than your typical PUG.

I've said it before, but here it is again:

PUG < 1 player and H/H < 1 good player and 7 heroes (if such were possible) < 2 good players and 6 heroes <<< 8 good players

What? Yes they do, customise the weapon and give it to them.

Vinraith has the ranking perfect there.

Basically Hench are not that bad, but they have certain drawbacks that tend to frustrate many players.

For one simple example they do not react well if you simply leave them to thier own AI. If I take 7 hench into a zone in hard mode and go afk near a fair sized mob there is a good chance that if the mob agros it will wipe out the party. Yet if I am not afk and can direct the hech either with flags or by calling targets and protecting monks finishing off weak foes ect they perform very well.

In the end every player is only as good as their own personal lvl of skill permits, regarless of who they are playing with. A good player is a good player with hench, with heros, in a pug or with guildmates. A bad player will struggle in any of those.

I find H/H infinitely preferable to a pug. I mean, seriously. When do you get a pug that actually calls targets, with ALL party members attacking it?

I agree that they can't execute skill combinations effectively, but they can do just fine with a group of skills that work independently.

They can prioritize targets pretty well. In my experience (prot of tyria, cantha, and elona with almost all H/H), I have found many examples of how they do that:

1. I always run an SF ele in my H/H build, and he always spams SF in the most desirable place (i.e. the place where the most enemies will be hit). Even if I have a single warrior as the called target, he will instead spam SF on, say, a group of bunched-up rangers in the backline.

2. I see Mesmer henchmen casting empathy and other skills on targets other than the called target, spreading damage.

3. All interrupting henchmen use interrupts on other enemies besides the called target. It's great. Sure they can't priortize which skills to interrupt, but at least they get them off reliably. Unlike human players, where you can't expect them to get EVERY interrupt off.

4. I also run my Olias as MM, and he uses Death Nova on minions with the lowest health first. No human I know can click minions with the least hp and cast DN that fast and reliably.

5. Many times, I am fighting a group with a healer in it, and call a melee target. After it dies, the whole party automatically goes after the healer. So henchmen DO know inherently which target to go after.

The only instance where henchmen completely cannot prioritize is in healing and prot. I brought Lina around capping some elites the other day, and if I'm being focused, she will use ALL of her prots on me (PS, SoR, RoF), effectively wasting all her energy when only one prot is needed. But I'm a monk anyway, so I can usually pick up for monking deficiencies

H/H also do respond to situations, just not AS good as a human player:
1. Casters kite.
2. Melee characters do run from battle a bit when they are low on health.
3. They do spread out from AoE very fast, but they just do it stupidly. Instead of just running out and continuing what they were doing, they run around like chickens with their heads cut off.

And of course, you can flag. However, the only times I have needed to flag are when we aggroed to many groups, and need to run.

I'm assuming by your words "7 hench" that you do not have any heroes. You can't expect a group of 7 henchmen to be able to take on the same size mob in HM. If you do, then you are expecting too much from the hench AI.

Basically it comes down to your last thought, which I agree with. I remember reading in a Henchmen guide that a group of henchmen is only as good as the player leading them.

The AI in Guild Wars is pretty retarded but... it's reliably retarded.

Once you work out the flaws and limitations, and what it excels at (hexing the crap outta stuff, minion bombing, interrupting), PvE's a joke.

I'd much rather bring H/H than a PuG, which is also retarded, except can't interrupt, monitor hexes or minion bomb, and is unreliably retarded.

ninja edit - I generally prefer my crack AI squad to my guildies, most of the time

They behave consistantly. Once you learn how to set up their bars and pick the right hench (and use their, "AI Quirks," properly) you can pretty much do anything with them.

Its not that we don't approve of the way you play its what happens as a result of it. Not knowing how to work with other players is a detrement to PUGs with people you do not know.

What I am saying is H/H makes for a lazy player. And I mean that in the kindest way possible. I'm not saying you are a bad player by yourself or that you do not know how to play this or any game. I am saying that having Heroes that can interprete ahead of lag, makes the regular players seem like they are all the more sucky.

so every H/H player eventually becomes 1 more PUG player that will not work with the other players as a team as they are not use to team dynamics of gameplay. Or worse they go leroy jenkins and expect everyone to stay on their six no matter the agro size as their heroes do. Ultimately causing the team to fail at times when there was no need to. It just gets people all angry at each other for their bad habits of being too build dependent on Heroes to save them instead of having a player team balance.

Don't get me wrong the same can be said of players that never use H/H as they do not know how to properly control their agro with flagging and may not have a clue how to pull things with heroes or pets or minions. as they are too dependent on other players that do that for them in PUGs. So its a catch 22. Either way being an exclusive makes it seem like the other is not needed to some. while in all reality Both are needed. But each need limitations. Since this is suppose to be a MMO Coop at the very least... with emphasis on the Massive multiplayer part, should imply that this is not a single player game. and as such there is some hate for the people that treat GW as a game that could potentially be played completely off line the way some people are playing it... Which will result ultimately in Anet saying there is no need for them to keep servers online for GW and just make the client side download all the files needed to play it solo at some point. This is something I would really hate to see happen to a wonderful MMO franchise.

I always say that henchies (and heroes) are tools. With them, your success depends only on how good you are at using them. People who hate them with a passion can't work them, people who don't like them prefer PUGs because of the social aspect, people who can manage them play solo.

The problem with any sort of a feedback mechanism (like this fine forum here) is that it only works when the user is moved to participate, and dissatisfaction moves people to voice themselves much more frequently than satisfactory results. The hate actually goes all the way back to the beginning of Prophecies, when people didn't know how to handle henchies and when PUGs sucked less because everyone was still stuck at relatively the same place, but the feedback proportion has held true for many other issues as well.

These days, we have GuildWiki, the official Wiki, and dozens of other fansites where dedicated users have figured out henchie setups and most of their tactics. If you want to, you can examine those and compensate for their shortcomings, but that's not what most people wish to do (want a social game, not bent on beating the game with a handicap, don't have the time, etc., etc.) What henchies present is something that has made Guild Wars as good a game as it is - choice. You can always find friends/guildies/alliance mates, but if you can't or don't want to, there's still something to fall back on.

The only real reasons to hate heroes or henchies, in my opinion, are:

1) They steal drops. If something drops for one of them, it turns into cash, and they leech cash every time someone picks some up. A lot of players would rather see something good drop for someone else than not see anything good drop at all.

2) They focus responsibility. If you're in for a "fun" game, you might not be looking to micro-manage three and compensate for four AI characters, all the while still playing your own. Human players can micro-manage themselves pretty consistently, and while the AI can complete certain tasks with unparalleled efficiency, it has yet to drag a human player through any task. In short, it lacks the sentience to make independent decisions, which would effectively let the game play itself for you - something the lazier or less competent of players would no doubt love

Well, I havn't been on too many teams that will forsake Hero Monks if the outpost is deserted and there are no real players in sight. In fact I've never had to wait more than a few minutes before people are pulling them out willy nilly, and yes, some of them are not that great. I still enjoying PUGing though.

PUGs can be rather unreliable, but thats also what makes them a bit of fun. You have to do twice as good and nail everything to make up for the slackers. Getting Masters on a mission like Vizunah with a bunch of sub 20's is far more satisfying than tearing through it with H/H.

My new mesmer has a hard time finding groups (the fools) and as a consequence I have gotten Masters on every single mission first try so far with H/H in Factions up to Boreas Seabed. ( I jumped about a bit to pick up the Hero's, you know). I won't have to backtrack, but it's also pretty boring.

I guess there's no real morale here. H/H makes things easy. I still prefer real people.

Touche. My experience (as a practically exclusive H/H player) isn't so much that I have problems playing with other people (that's how I started out...and mostly the reason I rarely PuG now) as I've little idea how most other people play the game. If you play H/H, read up on current trends before grouping.

I usually go with a few guildies and fill up with Heroes. Henchies annoy me and I try to avoid using them whenever possible: you can't modify their lvl of aggression, you can't flag them individually and you can't choose their setup.
But I definitely prefer heroes to the usual PUG's where you have to spend time putting the team together (always waiting at least 20 min. for the 2.nd monk), argue on skill setups, waiting for people who are afk. etc.

I dont' have anything against teenagers with a chip on their shoulder (been there myself a few centuries ago) - but why can't they go bug their parents and teachers instad of me?!

Another good thing about H/H - they never err7 on you in the middle off the end-fight (you still might though)

Heh..... I don't get the herohenchhate either....

Yesterday.... Darkrime Delves.
I'd JUST got to the final boss-chamber.... full of Jotun.... and due to rampaging minions we inadvertantly aggroed the boss ahead of time. There were something silly like 10 to 15 Jotun rampaging around us....
.... and my Internet connection cut out.

I was disconnected for about 10 minutes, and when I eventually managed to reconnect, my party were still standing in the same place, with the room half empty, and both myself and all my heroes were on 10% morale boost. The dungeon chest was sitting a short distance away in the middle of the room.


Funnily enough, this ALWAYS seems to happen when I get connection trouble in the middle of a big fight. I come back to find the fight is over and my herohench wiped the floor with the monsters.


O'course if that had happened with PuGs.... I'd either be dead when I got back... or left standing there while everyone else was somewhere else in the dungeon..... or both.

It all depends on the type of play.
In a 7/8 team, a good human monk is far more valuable than a hero.
Specially in the missions that are 'hard' for most players.
But that's a very limited number of missions.

The main advantage of a good human player (in my opinion) is the ability to oversee the battlefield and predict what is going to happen.
Back to the monk, (s)he will be able to see who is going to be hit while the AI monk is reactive (you get hit hard and right after that you get PS, where a human monk would have cast PS before the first hit).

However, for the average PuG, it would be the inexperience with heroes and their own bad gameplay that makes them think heroes and hench are bad.
When people Leeroy the entire game and are at 60DP the entire time, fail mission after mission, they think the hench are not up to the task.
When they run horrible skillbars on their heroes and see the heroes energy and damage being zero all the time, heroes are bad.

I'd like to comment on =HT=Ingram who said:
"What I am saying is H/H makes for a lazy player."

I don't fully agree with it.
Playing with H&H requires a different kind of gameplay than with humans.
The advantage of heroes is their predictability.
And they have very good reactive skills, without having lag problems.
The disadvantage is that the heroes lack the tactical insight a human player could have.
Also, as H&H player, you are always in command, whatever profession you play.

Now, on the opposite, we have the full human team (assuming decent players).
Less predictable, less reactive.
However, more proactive and more tactical insight.

Now we put a player that played H&H through the game in a full human team.
That player needs to switch his mindset, which is build around reaction and predictability, to proactive and tactical, with less predictable reactions.

I sometimes advice H&H guildies that want to join a full human team.
I tell them that they might know the area by the back of their hands, but they need to stay back and watch the others play (except when they tank).
See how and where they position and how the enemies react to them.
Do what you are told to do by assigned group leaders.

This is because I want them to realize they are part of a team and not in command anymore.
That way, it's possible to learn them the pro-active and tactical parts of play that put human teams in advantage of H&H team.
Some already know the basics and learn fast.
Others take more time to teach.
However, when they played a couple of times in human (guild) teams, they became better players in both H&H and human teams.

I think that's accurate. I use henchmen on a regular basis and have no major gripes. They're very predictable, which makes them reliable. Their "dumbness" can be reduced to a non-factor by careful leadership and flag usage.

That's my exact thoughts. Sure, Heroes are awesome, but they can only work with so much. You can't just give them one of the builds that you like to use because there is a large list of skills that they either tend to ignore or use straight away (good example: interupt build that interupts Flare and is unable to interupt Meteor Shower).

Lol, that happens to me as well. Guild Wars - the game that plays itself.

I play mostly with heros and hench, simply because there aren't a whole lot of people on in the morning when I'm zipping through storyline. When I need help I usually grab a guildie or two and just hero through whatever I'm stuck on. There are times where I absolutely hate hench, because I feel they are stupid, but most of the time they are adaquate for what I'm doing. I've beaten all 4 games using hench and heros, although there are some missions where I simply prefer people. Hells Precipice, Raisu Palace, and Jennur's Horde for example. I find them just simpler with at least one other person.

Admit it: sometimes cycling through the attack sequence over and over again for enemy after enemy and trying to react to their occasional threat can get tiring.
Sometimes I prefer to split the load by bringing a build capable of soloing.... and running to attack one group myself while flagging the herohench to another. It gets the job done so much more effectively.
I also used the herohench the same way when I was doing Elonian Cartography. Since I was using a running build, I'd just flag the heroes at any groups of enemies in my way or likely to get into aggro range and ensure that my wall-grinding went off without a hitch.
And that is without mentioning the joys of starting a fight, then going to get a drink from the fridge and coming back to find the enemies conveniently dead.

My philosophy is that heroes and henchmen are only as good as the person using them. If you don't know how to pull, target and control aggro H/H aren't going to do it for you. With heroes, if you don't know how to play the various professions you won't know how to set up your heroes to do the job. In general, if I want to have fun and be social I go with guild/alliance groups, but if I want to get something done I go with H/H.

The AI is not retarded. It kites better than nearly every PvE-only player I've ever seen. Claude and Eve are absolutely amazing with BRs - better than 80% of human BiP necros. Lina can outprot any human playing the same bar as her. Olias is a better tainter than your average garden variety r9+ (who iwayed all his fame anyway).

The real deficiency of heroes and hench is that they cannot strategize. Luckily, the human(s) controlling them have flags. Team wiping to massive AoE is a fault of the human doing the positioning and pulling more than anything else. But then strategy is hard and humans are just as likely as AI to fail spectacularly at it.

As much as I see the benefits that Heroes have brought to the game I also see that, in my opinion, it has become less fun. Pugging may have its risks, but there's some conversation going on there and you might have a couple of laughs. Heroes are just fancy henchmen that will do anything (die too) for you except jumping.

Yea Like I said I meant it in a more kind way then it sounded when quoted out of context. I just couldn't think of the right word. A better description may be too dependent player then lazy... I think that is more in line with what I was meaning.

And trust me guys I agree. Heroes have the advantage of sitting server side so they react faster then ANY player with even minimal lag can. Hell my ranger heroes can interrupt Impossibile Odds!!! I can't even do that on my ranger with a short bow and megabane shot while in active Drunken master with booze. Not on purpose. So I understand it. But then when you group up and you end up with player that lag a little and they can not interrupt anything except the long casting things. Which is pretty normal. Then your build falls apart because of that. That there in is the problem, and why some people get so nasty with pure H/H players that come into a PUG because they need help, then they do not know how to play with others well. I'm not saying that everyone. that just seems to be a lot of H/H players is all... I have been just as bad. I used to be a really good monk. but lately I have trouble keeping up with the energy because I got out of practice because of heroes... I mean if it got bad I would flag them to hold up a sec. its hard to do that in a group. I ping my energy but others have no idea what that means when I flash I only have 5 energy left and the warrior goes off to charge into the next group... Then he starts dieing and is like WTF monks heal you fing n00bs... then it just gets nasty from there...

I tend to avoid my monk unless its with friends that I can talk to on TS now. BUt my ranger, necro, and Mesmer. No problem... Getting PUGS to take you on the other hand. Not always as easy, I have to admit. My paragon seems to be the hardest to get players to group with. So I play it almost exclusive to H/H... The other that is H/H is my ele... Mostly cause I have bearly touched it in thet last 3 years... Its my new profession I am focusing on with paragon outside of GWEN. Course I went and got the GWEN PvE skills ASAP and it seems like that makes the other campaigns alot easier. BUt that may just be me...

Heroes are fantastic when used right. Henchmen in GWEN are pretty decent. Henchmen in the main campaigns are retarded. Pugs and 90% of the PVE community are worse then henchmen.

Meh, the henchie hate was very big around Prophecies, but it's died down increasingly as the game ages. Nowadays, it's very very rare that I see someone say, "Don't bring a hero, they suck," if you can't find a PUG player to fill up the group.

No one and nothing can predict damage, Henches and Heroes aren't phsycic.

And their AI DOES overheal pretty much all the time, their way of using Regeneration spells and spells that heal for more then 100 Health. (just let your health drop by 10% and they will heal you with overheal)

Henches and Heroes also don't know how to use Hex removal, they simply use it when they see a hex on an ally, regardless of it's importance.

Henches and Heroes don't know how to manage their energy properly, They will use Zealous Benediction without recieving the bonus from it which is pretty vital for a Monk.

When you kite, Heroes and Henches happily kite along, even if they were casting something and will even cancel any other attacks.

It takes way to long for Henches and Heroes to get out of AoE damage.

They use Protective Spirit on Minions as they degenerate. (where's the logic in that?)

But sure, they have some advantages.

Best way I have ever seen it described is that Heroes and Hench are stupid, but they are stupid in predictable ways. Thus an intelligent player can tear through everything with Hero/Hench with ease. However, for a bad player they will make their heroes bad and use their hench wrong and end up wiping. I know how to build Heroes so Heroes are more useful than other players to me. However, other people may do bad things with their heroes and unknowlingly sabotage themselves.

Well, let me rephrase. They don't necessarily predict that damage will happen, they predict how much, and are quickly winding out the correct heal associated with the damage. And perhaps it's not prediction, just more of that millisecond reaction time. But speaking from the perspective of a former healer, predicting damage spikes to the degree of how much and when is not an easy task, and I was one who could do it in WoW. This game... the speed of a fight is considerably faster, so the reaction time becomes shorter and the difficulty just increases.

I'll grant that, but then again most human healers can't make good use of it in general either. This isn't necessarily the human healer's fault though, I'd be more apt to blame the game itself. In WoW, you could see what debuffs were on who, and as a result it was easy to know who needed dispel/abolish/etc, and who was affected by something that didn't matter. You can't tell even by selecting the person in this game, you only know they have one of the few hexes available to the current bundle of mobs. And players could indicate they have it by ctrl+click but usually by the time you can process that while watching healthbars while watching your position to avoid aoe, it's kinda not needed to be removed anymore.

They know how to manage energy as well as your understanding of their concept of energy management is, and the degree of thought you put into their build. In other words, there's better elites for heroes than that one, like Word of Healing or Light of Deliverance, or in protection SoR or Restore Conditions. It's a matter of tweaking to figure out what they'll use best. Sometimes they'll use a build better than you, sometimes they'll screw it all up. I'll admit they're not always able to figure out the combos, but if you work on them, it isn't too hard to find a setup they can understand and get them to use it right. And well, if you're too lazy for that, just go to pvxwiki and look at great hero builds.


The rest of your statements I can't disagree with (though I'm sure the PS on minions thing was as a result of them taking damage outside of the degen, either that or the divine favor heal bonus perhaps if you didn't give them a normal heal?). As has been said here, heroes and henches are pretty dumb, but they are predictably dumb, so much so that if you set them up right you can make them play smarter than the average player (barring the whole AoE thing, that's a non-fixer until the developers add individual flags for all of the henches too).