Hero's

Are certain necro/warrior/ele etc heroes better at different builds?
For example would Mast of Whispers be better at curses over Olias?

No, they are blanks, once you zero out attributes and skills, so one is just as good as another.

Then why do people keep calling zhed a leeroy?

Because he's an emo horse.

Various reasons - mainly I don't think we have ever had any real statement from Anet (and even if they did it wouldn't solve a certain amount of it - see the various farming myths). It is also something really hard to test - it's not like you can keep track of how they react exactly nor can you control the environment they exist in. And lastly, you have a great deal of people believing something so strongly pretty much all evidence to the contrary is ignored.

From my experience there is almost no difference given *exactly* the same build (and that includes weapons and such). At first I found, like others, that Zhed moves off more but once I made the exactly the same and tried to keep track of how the mobs were laid out, how I called targets, and what their *exact* build was I pretty much found little to no difference. It was almost always traced back to something that was different coupled with me looking for it (I didn't really pay that much attention of Souske ran out yet was frustrated because Zhed did), if I repeated it and did differently then I got the expected results.

Others will vary and I will not say they are incorrect.

In the end it really doesn't matter very much, just learn to use them with whatever set of rules you think they follow. I can't prove it either way - if you want the "too many people believe it for it to not be true" then you are at in impasse as about an equal number believe both ways. In fact, as far as these forums are concerned more posters tend to believe they are all the same. Pick one and go.

I think it is partly due to the fact that you can't miss seeing Zhed trotting off. I tend not to notice it when biege clad henchmen monks like Alesia runs off to do something stupid, because she's so well camouflaged.

I tried to give Zhed a build to suit his personality, all Earth and Hammers, but he was exhausting all my Rez Signets. After a while, I was just beating a dead horse.

One thing I notice is that necro heroes are all crap at E-management when they are running a fairly standard Curse build: SS+Reckless+Barbs+MOPain+Price+Insidious...

I know its all 10e and 15e, but they don't pace themselves at all. Casting Barbs when there's no melee attackers, and MOP when stuff aren't huddled. Humans do much better.

If you have no melee, why you have barbs? And those can always be disabled. Cursers emanagement is soul reaping.

I think he/she mean it cast barbs on something not currently being attacked by a melee character - which yes, the AI does have trouble with things like that. The build the person posted is a terrible Curse hero build simply because they spam the high energy skills like mad and some of those need better target choices, even under the older soul reaping mechanics they tended to spam until they ran out of energy let alone now (though a human can go at a slightly slower pace and be half to full of energy 100% of the time).

My ritualist also seem to keep all the casters fully up on Splinter Weapon, gotta have that wand do some deadly damage

It's no big deal, just give 'em a build they like and they stomp through everything in the game - us humans are the same way. There are builds each one of us doesn't play well while others do quite fine with it.

For a simple explination that propably half the people dont pay attention too is that when you first get Zhed as a hero, he's set on attack mode, in which he will run off to a close group you dont want to aggro and start casting at them.

Change all your heroes to "Guard" and your monks to "Avoid" and youre fine.

Does anyone know if heroes like Zhed or Vekk are treated as "different species" for purposes of spreading disease? In other words, if Zhed is diseased, will he/can he pass it to non-centaur party members?

Zhed, Vekk, Talon Silverwing, Brutus, and Sheena (the wallow henchmen in the Kurzick areas) are all considered different species. They will not pass on poison to the rest of the party. Razah also might be considered a different species though I'm not certain.

In my experience, any Ele hero will occasionally just run in and try to cast something.. not just Zhed.