Core skilled Zaishen Henchmen idea

I thought I would make this thread for an Idea I have had for a while now from challenging myself to play through PVE on normal mode using only core skills on my new account.


This idea was initially only intended to be used by myself on a personal level, with heroes from both of my accounts being used together with only core classes and skills, but the recent post from Regina got me thinking and I think that this would be nice if implemented as a new type of henchmen - Zaishen henchmen using core skills only, but available in every single PVE outpost as well as GVG and HA, with heroes ultimately being removed from use in the PVP areas.

Note that the idea is for current henchmen to be completely unaffected by these new ones, they are not meant to be replacements for the current henchmen, but rather just a new set that could be used as an alternative:



The reason why these Zaishen henchmen skillbars are limited to core skills only is because my idea is to have them available in all three campaigns, meaning that cross campaign skills would not be allowed. However, as you will see from my ideas, as well as my testing so far with using these skillbars myself in PVE, it is very possible to create some great and universally useful skillbars for every ain class using just the core skills.

The skill bars I have made are one for each core class, and two for monks with one heal and one protection bar, as these are the two monk bars that I have been using. Please note that these henchmen are supposedly intended to be available on top of the ones we currently have, they are not meant to be chages to the current builds, so if you dont like these builds or wouldnt want to use them, you would still be able to use the current henchmen instead.

*I decided that my seperate protection and heler monks were crappy, so have now replaced this Idea with a zingle Zaishen WoH hybrid monk using Balcu's suggestion*


So here are my ideas for the new core skilled Zaishen Henchmen that I hope can be made available for use throughout Guild Wars. They all have some self healing as well to be more reliable in hard mode:









The Mesmer and the Necromancer may seem a little OP for PVP henchmen, but they arent any better then what a human player would use, and the idea there is for these henchmen to be able to replace a player when you cant find one, so something decent like this is still welcome. They are not perfect by any means, and wount interest every player, but for the intention of being core skill bars which need to work universally throughout the entire game and in as many situations as possible, I think that they suffice for these reasons.

P.S. I know that there is no mention of making new PVE henchmen, but I like this idea of having decent core skilled henchmen available everywhere in the game. I do use these builds myself on my heroes for fun, and they have been very effective for me. You can agree / disagree, but if you disagree with the builds then please also make suggestions as to what can be changed that would be usable from the list of core skills only so that these ideas can be kept open to work as henchmen in all three main chapters of Guild Wars.

Also, all the henchmen, including monks are equipped with Res Signets instead of hard resses as you dont really want monk henchmen to be casting 5 second+ ressurections mid battle which they often tend to do. Instead, they can fire of a res signet which some people will like, and other people wont. If you like your monks to have hard resses in PVE, you could use the current henchmen, or put hard resses on your heroes, in PVP, i'm sure no res is prefferable on monks, but they need to be universal for both PVP and PVE, so res signet was placed on them.

Thanks for reading.

I wrapped quotes and bolded the skill bars around each suggestion which makes them much more easier to read now.
Skill Icons dont seem to work anymore

Terrible builds for pvp, sorry. Would work as pve henches but the pve henches already have builds like these.

I personally would absolutely not ever play GvG with henches, even if their builds were good. You'd be at a disadvantage and end up losing badly even if the henches were running meta. Res signet on monk is pretty fail as well.

barrage? in HA/GvG? and determined shot? I'd rather have Quick Shot than Barrage, even though it's a terrible skill. and no preparation? lame. needs moar apply poison, distracting shot, antidote signet, resurrection signet. those 4, at least, are necessary.

as for the war.. how about an axe or hammer war instead of Sword. preferably hammer. devastating hammer, irresistable blow, bull's strike, heavy blow... maybe berserker stance... considerably better than sword.

and as for the monk bars... healing seed/signet of devotion are BAED. healing touch is bad. no protective spirit on the prot monk is bad. no infuse health on the monk bar is bad. swap healing seed for infuse health, and healing touch for holy veil.

as for the prot monk, signet of devotion for prot spirit, rest is sorta meh but core skills leave little options.

Wow.

Henches would require a huge ai upgrade to worth anything at all in pvp, as it is heroes only work because of careful micro'ing.

Daisuko barrage removes all preparations so there be no point in having them if the henchman had barrage.

I like this idea, although I would scrap healing and protecting and go with "Zaishen Monk". You have other hench with three attrib lines so I'd make the monk a hybrid like so:

Divine Favor: 11 (10+1)
Healing Prayers: 13 (11+2)
Protection Prayers: 11 (10+1)

Reversal of Fortune
Word of Healing [Elite]
Mend Ailment
Remove Hex
Shielding Hands
Protective Spirit
Aegis
Resurrection Signet

Like your mesmer and nec, would use em to fill out a party for sure. Like the rez sigs on the hench as well. Reusable rezzes on a hench is unnecessary. If you need that, then you've failed anyway. So, like the idea, /signed.

Henchmen are not meant to be perfect. Prot Spirit / Aegis are already available on the current henchmen in every campaign, so I tried a different approach.

But a single WoH hybrid monk as suggested would also work instead with Prot Spirit and Aegis and WoH. Henchmen AI with healing touch seems to be very well to me, but if there are problems the AI could be tweaked so that they only use it as a self heal.

Healing seed is a life saver on AI when they get bunched in AoE. It is a useful skill to have, it is just highly underrated by people who have never tried it.

I thought to try and keep the skillbars different to the current henchmen, although they arent meant to be so good that you would want to use them over a human player. Except for the Necro and Mesmer.

The barrage ranger also has some good single target spike skills and would synergise well in PVE with the air elly build, and also barrage synergises well with hundred blades for some powerful AoE damage.

Barrage is actually a good skill even against single targets. Even if it isnt perfect for PVP, they are only meant to be used as fillers when you cant find one or two final people.

As for the warrior you already have Devona on hammer, also hundred blades is rather powerful in its current form. The options were meant to different to current PVE hench.

Again, if you would like something different, you need to suggest a full skillbar of core skills. I will be adding the hybrid monk idea to the list as well as any others that are suggested, please suggest full skill bars of core skilled only henchmen that could be used everywhere in the game.

The builds would have to be worked out, but the idea it self is a good one. The problem still occurs that in order to maintain effectiveness, anet will have to continually update the skillbars if anything gets changed during an update. Personally I would like them to do whatever takes less time so they can focus on skill balancing, because we are going in the right direction and I'd like to make sure it continues. If they really are set on making Henchmen better though, they should do whatever is easier. Whether that be making new henchmen and putting them across all campaigns or updating the skill bars of all previous henchmen constantly when needed.

It is going to be a lot of extra work and useless work for PvP, because no one will use henchmen that is serious about winning.

Exactly, I dont really see the point to designing henchmen around PVP, instead I think they should be fully based around effectiveness in PVE, for which the suggestions I have made work very well. They can then be used in PVP in the case that you cant find a full player group.

I dont like my idea for the two seperate monks anymore, I much prefer the single hybrid idea that Balcu came up with. I made the two seperate monks because usually people want a seperate healer and protector, but the core skills are pretty lame to allow this. A single hybrid WoH protection bar is a lot better an idea.

Basically just have one of each core proffesion Zaishen hench with the most effective core skills available for PVE like these, thesy are still a lot lot better than the current henchmen throughout the main campaigns anyway. If their skills get affected with nerfs, then they could be adjusted as neccessary to keep them effective, although this was never done for the factions protection henchmen when Lif Sheath was changed, plus they still use rebirth.

The Factions healer and protection henchmen are my number one problem with henchmen skill bars, but rather then going through the draining process of changing everysingle one, just putting in Balcu's hybrid monk idea into every outpost and using this on top of the Rit healers would be a major improvement.

I think it will be better to just remove my two monk suggestions and put in the new one instead.

Ok, so my changes are made now. I think that most of these ideas are fine, just except that the Ranger and Warrior might still be improvable. If you can come up with a better idea for these two, then please post your suggestions for a full skillbar using only core skills, and I will consider changing the ones I have.

Ok, so I came up with some alternative ideas myself for a Quick Shot Ranger, and Axe and Hammer warrior:


Ranger - [quick shot][hunters shot][dual shot][Apply Poison][throw dirt][lightning reflexes][troll ungent]

This one would be able to fire the poison condition rapidly using quick shot, but I am not too sure if the AI would automatically swap targets to poison different foes while you are calling to attack one, so I still prefer the Barrage ranger. You would also have a lot of degen coming from the necromance build, so an apply poison henchmen as well would be pretty meh over the barrage suggestion that I initially had, at least for PVE.

Another alternative would be to put Savage and Distracting Shot in place of Dual and Determined shot, I think that this is a better idea actually, I overlooked it initiall as I were trying to creating a damage build. I changed my original idea to include savage and distracting shot instead.


Axe Warrior - [power attack][cyclone axe][exectioner's strike][cleave][for great justice][distracting blow][endure pain][ressurection signet]


Hammer Warrior - [power attack][irresistable blow][Mighty Blow][Devastating Hammer][for great justice][distracting blow][endure pain][ressurection signet]


I think that either of these, or the intial hundred blades suggestion would be completely fine, I dont really have much preferance out of the three, but would use any of them over the current warrior henchmen with charge. If I need speed boosts, I find it better to use a paragon hero with Fall Back and Incoming instead of any warriors with Charge now.

If it was going to be core only, I'd like this better for a hench war bar:

Axe: Dismember, Executioners Strike, Axe Rake, Disrupting Chop*, Battle Rage, Healing Signet, "Shield's Up!"**, Res Sig

*or distracting blow
**just there to fill a slot

Anyways: Deepwound, Crippled, Interrupt, IMS with adren boost, self heal, res sig. Wasn't too sure about frenzy so I didn't put it in.

Thanks. I'll test the warrior skillbars tomorrow on battle isles.

I kept them as strength / weapon initially as I dont really like healing signet as a self heal on heroes or hench, and thought that endure pain would be good as they tend to just rush at everything while taking lots of damage.

I like this idea a lot Bhavv, but I really think you should make it every campaign available to them. Not only will this allow better bars, but it will also make them the first Henchmen to be this way, it also makes sense if you word it as they are the best of the Zaishen who travel all over the land etc etc etc, since they'd appear in every Campaign, this wouldn't be too far fetched.

Here's my idea for them if you decide to let them use every campaign's skills. Since Linsey also wants to take a look at the normal Henchmen's bars, this shouldn't be too bad, and if she does do that, I'm pretty sure all your current bars would be outclassed :/.

I'm thinking:

These would all be awesome for PvE, but in PvP some of them are OK, but they are less good, which is OK because if you are taking Henchmen in PvP anyways, you're probably not expecting to win but just want to play a few games for fun.

Its not up to me about cross campaign skills though, it is up to Anet.

When I have suggested builds in the past, I were always told that henchmen could not use skills outside of their campaign.

Unless Anet change their stance on this, then cross campaign skilled henchmen are not viable in each of the three main chapters.

The idea of using core skills only was to remove this limitation so that each henchman could be made available in every campaign. For example, I really dont think that Anet would be ritualist henchmen into nightfall, or paragons into prophecies, and I know from past discussions about this that gaile gray was in disagreement with allowing cross campaign skilled henchmen into each game.

I am trying to suggest something with henchmen that may actually be possible for once.

P.S. Ewwww... Glowing gaze on A mind blast build lol. Needs some liquid flame instead =D.

The problem with your ideas is that you have taken builds that people use, which is hardly ever a good idea for AI - I wouldnt ever dream of putting VoR together with Auspicious Incantantation on the AI for example, they do not priortise which skill to use auspicious incantantion with.

You need builds that are not going to be problematic with the AI, not builds that a human player would use in PVP.

Then again, that is probably why a henchman would need glowing gaze on a mind blast build.

Now, if you just want cross campaign henchmen everywhere, it would be a lot simpler to ask for EOTN henchmen every to be made available everywhere else.
But unless we get told by Anet that they will use cross campaign skills on any henchman, it is something that they have already said no to in the past.

Ya, I put Glowing Gaze on there because heroes won't use MBlast as much as they should when combined with RI.

Also I tried the AI bar on a hero and they seem to use it with Conjure Nightmare as much as possible, because it has a higher energy cost. None of the other builds are that AI intensive except maybe the Ritualist bar and the obvious problems all melee builds have aggro wise, and would be runnable on Henchmen since they use the same AI as Heroes and HM NPCs.

The cross campaign skills isn't a technical limitation tho, it's just something they've never done, and Gaile may personally disagree with it, but I can see them doing it because Linsey said she wants to improve Henchmen bars and about the only way to do that for general PvE is to make them multi-campaign tbh. There's very few improvements you can do otherwise. :/

But ye, just throwing that out there.

I would like to hear confirmation from the current team that they would allow cross campaign skills on henchmen in PVE first, otherwise it is still something that wont happen from the discussions I had on it a year or two ago.

The thing is that my core skills only builds are still a lot better then devona / cynn / aidan / eve currently are, as well as many of the other hench.

Also, Im not to crazy about VoR post nerf, just backfire and empathy are plenty fine, and better then what we currently have (no mesmer henchmen have backfire anyway, just giving them this one skill across every campaign is a huge enough improvement).

Erys Vasburg is the only decent mesmer hench currently in the game, and available in so few areas.

The core skills only idea also keeps it a lot simpler, otherwise Anet wouldnt need our input. The EOTN henchmen skill bass were mostly decided by the community, a lot of the builds were close to what I had discussed before EOTN was released and they listened .

But they still havnt done a thing for the crappy monk henchmen in factions, even after the life sheath change rendered the prot monk skillbar into totally WTF???, they didnt make any amendments, and they still cast rebirth mid battle, so if Anet do care about improving henchmen, it doesnt really show.

With those 6 core builds in the OP, you could create far better H/H groups then you currently can, that in itself would be a huge improvement to H/H play. Hundred Blades for example is awesome with a Barbs / MoP minion master, and the necro and mesmer ideas already have a solid hexway going - you could just add SS and VoR yourself on your heroes if you like. The monk hench covers all of the key important prots and WoH, and you could add either a UB or HB healer monk on top with your other heals like dwaynas kiss, words of comfort and whatever else.

As for the ellys, we already have enough fire and earth ones, I want a decent air spiker too, but Vhang is too weak with too few damage skills, lightning surge is good and puts in some huge single target damage with lightning orb, which henchmen currently dont do. Its a lot better then the current second wind / energy boon / mind burn ellys which all have wasted elites.