So What Are We Doing at the Moment?

henchmen are a lot more limited in terms the degree of control. you don't have access to individual skill usage and movement controls.

basically, as long as anet implement the right builds, it will make sure that builds that revolve around AI will never form.

Alas this relates back to my comment on I think page three of this thread. Why do added work? When the end result is going to be, the playerbase not even taking henchmen into PvP zones when they are sub par to heroes/humans, end result is Anet wastes time making mediocre/static skill bars that no one will want, thus forcing those last 2 slots to be human. Effectively all it does is push heroes out of play and that was the initial goal, so why bother beating around the bush and just remove them from play...
It's really either or, black and white here.

Furthermore it's not like Anet needs more food on their table, they can not consume what's already there, if new henchmen are introduced would it be wise to waste further time on balancing said skill bars if they don't give the desired effect? Which again relates back to being sub par to heroes.

Which is a good thing. There have been heroway builds in the past that were very effective because of the reaction times hero have over humans. One of the most famous ones recently was Hero/Smiteway. It wasn't unbeatable, and even bad guilds could get through it if you played smart and played as a team. The problem with it was that it was effective mainly because of the heros and not the actual players. I've played heroway before, and it is ungodly easy and effective. You can basically play the game on auto-pilot and pay little to no attention and do fine because of the heros.

Even though it was beatable, it did win, and it won a lot. It got even worse when in the middle tier of gvg, it was what every other guild ran. They would reach a certain level where they started facing top tier guilds and would get stomped. But the heroway was too good to drop them out of the middle tier. They stayed there and would steal a lot of wins from players who were more talented than them. That was evident when they would give up on heroway and try balanced and then fall out of the middle tier.

Hardly anyone liked playing against heroway. It made the game dull and it ticked people off to no end when you lost to it. Playing heroways over and over again caused some people to give up on guildwars because they just didn't want to see it anymore.

But it is too little too late I guess. If anything I guess it stops future hero ways from popping up. But as people have said, the damage has already been done and it wont make today's meta any better.

The only thing I can think of this being good for is if you are in an AT and someone lags out with about 1 minute til gametime. He isn't able to log back in in time and you cant get a guest in this short amount of time. So grab a henchmen with a halfway decent skillbar and hope for the best. If it does nothing else it at least allows you to avoid the forfeit and move on to the next round of the AT.

This has crossed my mind but; when skill balances are released no matter the henchmen picked or used, is going to give you sub par results based on skills getting altered, sooner or later. So no Anet is faced to update henchmen skill bars every skill balance if effected skills have been altered, we all know how this has gone over the years. They update the bars like once a year...

You can already do this now, except doing so would be detrimental to having the slightest hope in winning that GvG. So it really doesn't matter, unless of course, you have been paired up with a real weak opponent.

I'm not suggesting removal of all AI within PvP modes GvG/HA, I'm simply pointing out adding more henchmen won't do anything in the grand scheme of things, except added work load which they seem to have a problem with.

Maybe I should apply for quality assurance within, shoot down wasted resource methods/ideas.

I agree with that and I do wish they would be spending time doing other things rather than coming up with a skill bar for henchmen that many will never use. I was trying to dig into this problem and find a positive reason for them to be doing this and I found a very minor one, but I didn't think up that bit about them needing to be updated which is an extremely good point, and something they might want to consider when giving these henchmen bars (because we both know they aren't just gonna scratch this idea).

Overall I think we are all in agreeance this is way too little way too late and the only positive of giving henchmen good skills that we can think of has negative consequences in future updates, not to mention it takes time away from balancing the game...

<----Wishes to sign up for the Krewe.

PVP henchmen arent spamming healing breeze, blessed light and Jameis gaze on one, and RoF, Life Sheath, Draw conditions, mend ailment plus mid battle rebirths on the other.

Yea ok, its only the monks I really have a problem with.

P.S. I would love to join the krewe as well.

As discussed earlier in this thread by people like Echo and I, updating PvP henchmen would be a waste of time. The only time they will ever be used is in emergency AT situations where you need to fill a spot to play, and even with an amazing build, that henchmen puts you in a situation where you are most likely going to lose. Not to mention Echo's point about the henchmen needing multiple updates in case their build becomes nerfed due to skill balances.

Personally I'd rather see neither PvE nor PvP henchmen messed with because there are far more important things to be addressed right now. But if I had to choose one, I'd say update PvE even though I don't play it just because they will be used more. Personally I think the EOTN henchmen are just fine and they should model the other ones according to that.

I have made a suggestion here:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10382201

Not to change any of the current henchmen, but to add a new type of core skilled Zaishen Henchmen to be made available on top of the current ones but everywhere in the game, both PVE outposts and in HA and GVG areas.

Let me know what you think of this idea in that thread thanks.

WoW as in Weapon of Warding. I'm proud I've never touched a Warcraft game in my entire life.



Son of a...

I do think its a great idea what they are doing, one that should have been implemented ages ago before heroway killed big part of the pvp.

You see, most of the guilds out there cannot get 8 players to play GvG/HA, so AI becomes needed. Current henchies are too bad, so its like one less player, while heroes got the potential to be overpowered and abused, as they were multiple times in the past.

Just removing heroes but not giving some AI worth of taking to pvp will just decrease the number of pvp even more.

The one potentially good thing would be if the hench bars were adequate for entry-level gvg. That could be a step better than heroes because people wouldn't need to know builds, important when the AI badly botches most human bars. It could also be a passable but weaker replacement for casual guilds and the bottom half of ladder. As mentioned though, this depends on the bars being maintained through balance updates, which hasn't been done in the past.

Test servers?
DO WANT.
I own all campaigns and I have finished school with an A mark in English (extended).
So hit me up if you want.

The live krewe is an awesome idea
and I'm glad anet is involving the community in the changes
sadly I'm 17

Hey, now, Warcraft III is pretty cool ;p

I'd be happy to join the live krewe, but I'm only 17, too. Oh well.

The Testing Krewe idea is really good! I think this is going to really be a helpful addition for ANet and a lot of fun for the Testing Krewe too!

Like noted here several times between Echo and Still... it would be a waste of time to build out new henchmen and re-update them every skill balance... Reason being, probably no one will really use them except for maybe like a Rupt-Bot.

As for the suggestion for removal of AI in GvG and HA... I frankly wouldn't mind that. Like I said before, PvP means PLAYER vs PLAYER... not a PLAYER and some AI Bots capable of interrupting and such that are not humanly possible vs PLAYER.

If you want to play in a Guild v Guild... then you should have a full team of players. Ergo the mAT rules of having all members of the team being from the same Guild. Heroes and Henchmen, not part of a guild last I checked. And if you want to use heroes, HB is the place to go... if you don’t have enough for an 8v8 team... guest out of the guild, recruit OR TA. I am just playing advocate and making counter points that there are PvP arenas already set up to fill those needs/roles. I don’t understand why there needs to be an excuse, or exceptions, to fill spots just to create an imbalance of play (the addition of AI verse Human). If you want to truly balance PvP as a whole, eliminating the AI and making it true Player vs Player is a nice direction to go in.

That krewe sounds like a very cool idea, you know i'm gonna sign up for that.

hmm removing heros from gvg and ha, now it will take more time to get all the people to play an already dead game, and A) im somewhat glad that arena net is finally listening to us after basically 3 years, but a little to late, and B) hopefully anet gets some non-pvers that actually knows what PvP is for their live team or whatever. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE TAKE OUT THE 14 DAY RULE FOR AT.GUILDWARS IS THE ONLY GAME YOU HAVE TO ACTUALLY WAIT TO DO SOMETHING. ty

Unfortunately its not easy to get 8 active players to pvp. I have been in a few guilds where we couldnt get 8 players online at the same time, and heroes enabled us to still play when we wanted to.

Considering the number of teams you see in gvg/ha that have heroes, i am sure i am not alone in this. Of course i am talking about mid-low ranked players/guilds.

Their decision to take out heroes and add henches is good cause it enables people to play gvg/ha without the need for 8 players and still doesnt unbalance it as heroes would.