H/H better than real players true story

So yesterdays Z-mission was the co-op one in Factions.

I was on the foriegn side and saw people spamming for specific builds and professions. I went in on my Ranger first, had a sab/discord hybrid team, other side were two discord players with heroes. They told me to turn off my SS on the necro that has it, which I did, but knew better and then my heroes and the henches basically became overwhelmed in the big fight, and while these two were off killing random mobs and cleaning up trash I had to face the boss spawn mobs alone with one of my elite skills turmned of, long story short all my guys die and we eventually all get wiped because I dind't have a rez and niehter did the real players and their heors apparently couldn't rez other teams members.

So I go right back in alone, turn everything back on, got a spirts spammer who was also H/H we ran the mission, with h/h on both of us is hard mode in 24:38. Then I went in on my monk, went Roj build. Got into a full group because they only needed a monk so I figured I couldn't get "lucky" yeice on the other side so joined up, two full human teams on both sides. We wipe after the first cut scene.

So I load up the monk and his heroes and look for a discord partner, we go in, and we get another Spirit spammer with H/H. We did that one in 31:12 in HArdmodde, but would have been a lot faster but my team mate Dcd or went afk or soemthing, and Togo bugged and we had to run back and get him to move. So we lost about 4-5 minutes so potentially another sub 25 minute run with H/H on one side of the equation.

Third I go in on my dervish, basic AoB set up, I have to go 1 ROJ monk, one full heal/prot monk, and a discord on him because I only have one necro, got a full discord team mate, and the other side was ALL AI, no live players just Togo and the basic henchmen they load with him, we did that run in 25:21.

Fourth time was my mesmer she has not so good hero gear, and minimal heroes to begin with. So I join a team 7 with a discord hero. We wipe during second fight. So we go right back inas we blamed the other side for rsigning halfway through the first fight. We go in, same thing, except the other side either wasn't good, had wierd builds or who knows why. So after an hour wasted I sucked it up redid my heroes, got Olias and levelled him to 19(19 only) geared and runed them all got another partner with an RoJ discord mix team, and we had a full discord/sab duo team on the other side, couldn't tell. Timeon that run was 24:11. Mesmer rocks when live in there especially when they are all bunched up and you hit them when they try to cast.

But basically shows that H/H with a good set of heroes with the right builds, namely discord or RoJ (RoJ nerf is a lie BTW) mobs stayed right in it because I ran with RoJ on every run and saw it first hand, and every run was in HM. But I think 8 or 9 total attempts, only time I succeeded was with one side or the other having heroes and maybe even a few henches. or at least a good double duo combination. The very worst runs were with full human teams or 7 humans and maybe one hero.

Might be because of builds or professions, might be a lot of things. Maybe it shows how overwhelming powerful discord and RoJ are in fights like that. And of course having 30+ minions running around never hurts. But it was painfully obvious that with the live albeit it PUG players their sheer lack of knowledge on targetting was the worst thing, at least when you ping a target heroes and henchies will also target it, maybe not minions, but they are usually swarming something else anyway at least softening it up.

So to all the people who think Heroes killed this game, I hope you all got to experience what it is and would be like if people did everything with fully live players. I am sure many of the less patient ones wouldn't stick around too long.

Uhm. Today I was doing a mission, I had 3 heroes and 3 henches, a scythe ranger (my character) I've put together in little time and one afking character from my secondary account.

I was doing Vizunah Square (Local) and someone from Foreign joined. After I cleared the first two waves of Afflicted, I noticed... that Mhenlo is dying. 5 seconds, dead.

I'm pissed, but I start up again.. SAME PERSON. And guess what, he makes it, and I see that he's a level 17 R/Mo with a level 12 Pet and 3 heroes, all with pets and all on level 17. THEY HAD PROBLEMS WITH 2 AFFLICTED ASSASSINS. After he refused to skip the cutscene, I ragequitted, tried to play again alone then and lost due to the bug where Togo rushes and Mhenlo stays to wand a monster. And I wipe, and I give up and I go to play my Ritualist on main account.

...yeah! Heroes are programmed to use basic motor skills and don't get you banned for 2 weeks for saying "how the hell did that happen?"!

heroes>players all the way.

And why did they want you to turn off SS, and why did you do it?

True story, I've had that today aswell, went in as a pug starting from Local square, they had decent builds but failed miserably in first 2 minutes - omg even mobs can now scatter from RoJ but players ball-up in it and die!
Then went to Foregin square, and did hm masters easily while the local team was just 1 man+3hero+4HENCH.
gg

Cool stories bros. I did Vizunah HM yesterday on my survivor and we had 4x discordway. Needless to say we mastered it and I'm still survivor. These blind two-sides missions all depend on having luck with getting a good party on the other side.

I beg to differ.

Abedeus > Heroes/Henchmen

1st attempt, me with sabs, got a random pug as m allies, they whiped 10 minutes in. 2nd attempt all henchies (HM) and completed in 23ish minutes.

Funny I went in With alliance group (on both Sides) team setup was Basically BYOB and we were all on vent we completed the Mission on time without any deaths.

People are better than AI just play with the right People. This game is 4 years old and not everyone is Clueless.

I was kind of dreading the Vizunah Square mission because you have to rely on the team on the other side to do their job. Went in with friends on Foreign, said hello to some guy who was on the other side, and just as we get past the second Am Fah ambushers, Togo dies. Oy.

But we managed to finish it twice with actual players on the opposite side, within Masters timing. Even if one of them didn't know how to target the Afflicted Ritualists.

Seriously, OP has just outlined problems with clueless PUGs. They're real players, yes, but not everyone in the game is a clueless PUG guy. I think, eventually, people would have retreated into their own guild/alliance circles anyway, heroes or no. =\

I kinda got the impression you think heroes SHOULD have killed PUGs. I don't though. I agree with you that many people fail at playing with a team. Either their build sucks, their knowledge of the quest/mission sucks, their aggro control sucks, or they have some connection issues. I play mostly with heroes and hench myself because I get tired of failing due to some PUG incompetance. However, I think the reason most PUGs fail is because of heroes.

Heroes allow a lot of things to be done with no interaction involved other than moving your character. If you take a PvX build for 3 heroes and take the recommended henchmen you can normally do nothing and still succeed. Hero AI and the ability to cast/attack instantly makes them better than humans at certain jobs. But the ability to load a specific skill set on a hero means you can 'freeload' using nothing but heroes and hench and a build taken from the internet.

Now, since people learned how to get hero builds from places like PvX they don't need to do as much to succeed. This means they don't learn things like build design, target priority, aggro control, pulling, etc., etc., etc. Pull a person playing a GOOD Heal/Protect hybrid build on a Monk that is used to running RoJ with heroes, and you end up with a crappy Monk. They won't know things like pre-protecting, hex/condition priority (lets remove blind from physical damage classes, not casters), kiting, etc., etc.

I play with PUGs only when I have to. But the problem isn't in PUGs, it is in the ability to use heroes that do the job for you. This allows people to do well in the game even though they suck at it.

I wouldn't consider connection issues fail on the part of the person, though. Sometimes bad luck just kicks in.

I think the fact that you can access HM on any character once you finish the game on one probably messes up quite a few PUGs for ZQuests, too. Especially since they recently increased the Zcoin reward for the PvE quests. Vizunah's a tasty 100 coins, and people are going to try to get as many as possible. If they have 6 characters who can access Vizunah HM, they're probably going to try to get all 6 through Vizunah HM, even if three of them aren't really HM ready.

Its not a lie they never attempted to fix it for AI they did this.

Heroes are more likely to scatter appropriately when affected by Ray of Judgment.

They changed it so your heros didn't just stand in it like it wasn't an DoTAoE.

Heros made it possible to do RoF islands!!

Never mind the heroes, how about the hench? I did Vizunah yesterday on seven local and foreign characters, all of whom got masters (although it took some of them several attempts as the night wore on and the quality of players in local dropped), with a variety of combinations of players, heroes and henchmen on both sides. The best ally performance of the night was from a full hench team on the other side. Those guys are HARD. I was genuinely amazed at how much better they were than players and heroes.

Oh man, tell me about it. I spawned on the foreign side and someone else spawned on the local side. I'm fighting the Am Fah, not even to the Afflicted yet, and the noob on the other team lets Togo die. I try again, SAME PERSON SPAWNS. We get to the second room, once again Togo dies due to the bug. I try a third time, different person that gets disconnected, resulting in all their heroes and henchmen dying and me unable to res them. Fourth time, person leaves the game. JUST LEAVES! So once again, other team dead, I can't res them. So I try again, the other team is all NPC's. Guess what? It made no difference, because we still wiped due to not being able to res the other team and Togo running off like a chicken with his head cut off. All in all I'd say the whole mission sucks. I finally got through it after going with 2 guildies who knew what the heck they were doing.

I want to second Mister Smartypants.

I did the mission only a few days ago as it was the last mission that one of my Tyrian chars missed for Legendary Guardian.
And I am glad for it. Because it worked out. I used one of the cheaty 33% red whatever candies and just had a hero/hench party and a full hench party from the local quarter.


They need to address this for GW2. It is just sad!
GW is unique in the way it makes players shy away from other human players.

In summary, heroes and henchmen are better than the average player. Common knowledge really, unless you're new to GW.

I found that in those cooperative missions, having a real person on the other side = fail. All my masters came from having an all hench team on the other side, with me and my heroes on one side.

And yet there's all this complaining about how RoJ/CoP/this skill/that skill/etc. is ruining the game because everyone steamroll through the game...

Yeah i mentioned this in guild chat, they fixed the hero ai but the real problem is human intelligence.

I gave up after a couple pug's and went off to HA.

Easily farmed like 1700 zcoins.

Didn't have much problem with pugs, especially if you make sure nobody puts up their fail monks on the team. I think the henchmen were great because they sometimes healed allies on the other team whereas for other humans it would've been much harder to manage.

Until they give it the same response as every other DoTAoE in the game its still broken. Its not even RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing close to how much things flee from Fire DoTs.

Sadly with Vizunah/Unwaking HM, i'd rather H/H it. It was such an epic failure making these dual party missions, the only saving grace is that a HM hench team from the other side have a very nice stat buff, generally making em more favourable than a pug imo.

But heros can't do PvE-only skills. Sometimes, if they're experienced enough...PUGS can be good, and mostly humans can be good too, depends on what it is, and who it is.

Only applies to the full henchie team, though. My team (three people + heroes) spawned with a guy who was h/hing with discordway, and it was really, really annoying because he seemed like he was c-spacing his team. Wow, there are three rits near you, and you go for the ranger... my friend was like '...is he a discordway bot?' I ended up occasionally jumping in to save one of his team - like dear dear Olias who camped under ROJ. Or the henchies scurrying around like headless chickens.

bad players are bad and good players are good.

can this thread be deleted now?

Benefits of heros:
You can put whatever skills you want on a hero, upgrade their armor how you choose, and give them the weps you want them to carry

Heros dont talk back

Heros follow instructions when flagged (for the most part, sometimes they like to leeroy)

Heros don't lag out, and keep fighting when you do

Heros are always available in PvE, no waiting around for a group to do something

Heros don't leech

Heros are as good as the player who configures them, and for certain builds that require quick reaction, they outmatch real players by a long shot.

They run out of AoE more often than noobs

Downsides of heros:
If you dont know the heros class personally, you're going to give them a bad build and they will fail

they can't run specialty builds for farming b/c their AI isn't that advanced

they do tend to stay in AoE

they don't know what pre-protting is, you have to do it manually

They will let themselves die to get to where you flag them (most of the time)

*I know I didn't cover everything 100% on both sides, but off the top of my head thats it

Heros are good to the point where they know what to do with the skills. But humans have a mind of their own, which is where they beat the heros even though they arent as good as the heros at using skills.

If you're good at micro-management, then heros might be better than humans for you.

Vizunah Square in general is just a nightmare.

It took me something like 4 tries to get my Dervish through it, because of the idiots on the other side (one attempt I was paired up with some level 15 A/E with similarly leveled heroes. I'm sorry, but with how easy it is to level in Kaineng, wtf are you doing, trying to run that mission at such a low level). Finally I bugged my friend into going on his assassin and starting on the local side so I could get through the stupid mission.

Only once have I ever had good luck in doing that mission with a random person, and that was doing it a few days ago on my Ritualist. I went into the Japanese district, hoping I'd get paired with henchies...got paired with a random person who apparently had the same idea I had, but he was competent with well set-up henchies and we had no problems :P

H/H is more consistent if you know what you're doing.

http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n...Dove/gw088.jpg

Good PUGs are out there. This coming from someone who didn't PUG a Z-Quest for several weeks after the first few tries because of crappy PUGs. They're still not my favorite, but it can be a fun adventure and if they work, hey, they work.

Aye. Good players > hero/hench > bad players. Been known for years.

Heroes also mean you can configure your team to your liking (in most zones outside of Prophecies you can find henchmen to fit, although it might be harder in HM Elona now with Odurra nerfed). If you're good at putting team builds together, that can compensate for the lack of PvE skills. H/H groups also share your title rank in zones where that matters, which can be an advantage over real people if yours is above average.

It's exacerbated in two-team missions like Vizuneh and Unwaking because if you get an all-hench team on the other side, they're treated as NPC allies... which means they get buffed in Hard Mode. Plus I don't think I've ever seen a full hench team fail to get to the first cutscene in Vizuneh intact as long as your team does... while as we know, human teams don't carry the same guarantee.

Aw drat, the Japanese districts are getting more crowded. :P Seriously! I went in there with friends hoping to get paired with henchies, and ended up paired with a full team on the other side.

Sometime in the last year or so, I think it changed such that all dists combine for missions like vizunah and unwaking. At least I have ended up with humans on the other team, more than once, after starting from a dist, where I had checked both foreign and local, and they were empty.

As this thread has pointed out, hench teams always get at least as far as the first cut scene. In my experience human teams reach that point less than 50% of the time. So it's been kind of annoying since the change.

Oh, they do? I thought that too, but I figured I might have been wrong because I was expecting to get non-hench teams far more frequently than I did. I mean, it being the zmission of the day and all.

true for me.

First time 1 other player and their sab team, i played with discord team. The other team was a few real players and their heroes. My guy just went back and forth across the place and split from the group, which is the key to the success of the mission. The focus wasnt there, so failed.

Second time I opted to control my whole group, went henchies and my discord team. Other team was half n half, success cuz i stuck with the other team instead of trying to lead them.

This was true since about April, 2005.

Encountered a local team in Viz Sq only twice.
First was two players who both left.
Second was a lone assassin with hench. He wasn't playing too well, when we got to him his entire team was down.
So we fought the remaining foes, guy gets res at cutscene.
From then it was a breeze. I just kept my eye on him, gave him some great dwarf weapon from time to time. Since I was playing with three guildies (one imbagon) we had easy time.
Think he wasn't that bad, just overaggroed the first time.

Other story, also yesterday. Playing with two guildies in Urgoz's (with heroes).
All caster team :P
Taking long. One of them afk's a couple of time for smoke breaks.
Then a somewhat longer break, their baby needs attention.
I afk for roughly 30 mins to make and eat dinner. They also go eat.
Shortly after they afk to put the baby in bad and then to bed. After that their youngest son needs to be put in bed.
Then we went on with a couple of small breaks. This turned a ~2.5 hour Urgoz's HM (no cons except DP remover) into a 4 hour walk.

In those situations I prefer to take Heroes instead of human players to spare them the long waits

Heh!

Well my theory is is that it's only the people who know that mission and want to get it done quickly and competently that think of doing something like that, so at least it isn't so bad, right?

Really? Huh. Whenever I'm trying to make sure to do the mission with a friend from the other side, we usually use International because there's generally few enough people that we have no trouble getting paired up with each other.

cool story bro, i think i stppoed reading at time 2

Vizunah can be a pain with PuG groups, but then again, so can any mission.

I ran Vizunah in HM for the zquest on my ele, with my fiance. I go local, he goes foreign, 3 heros, 4 hench, same team composition every time we run it and get masters everytime. We build HM shiro books for our titles. Its a nice break from AB, JQ, and FA.

First sync attempt we get separate instances and miss each other. I got a Mesmer and h/h......who died just after the cutscene and of course we cant rez the other team. Epic fail.

He gets a group of 2 people and heroes, they made it through in just under masters time. Yay him.

Second sync attempt, no issues. We get same instance and breeze through the mission.

Moral of the story - some people suck, some don't. Sort of luck on the draw when you have to do missions like that. But yes, for the most part h/h are better than most people.

Editing: My spelling cause it sucks