Henchman Skill Bar Contest Winners!

What sort of bars do you think Anet should've picked, then?

Some examples would be good. Post the builds you submitted but didn't win, like Lex did.

I still think any choices the dev team could've made would have been met with this much criticism.

It wasnt an easy choice for them,
1 choose META bars that are proven to WORK with heroes (teasebot, taint),
2 choose ORIGINAL bars that WORK with heroes (what i think every wanted/expected),
3 choose META bars that DON'T WORK for heroes (what we got instead),
4 choose ORIGINAL bars that DON'T WORK well with heroes (but are still 'original')

Choices 1 and 2 are obviously out of the question for Anet because that's exactly what they were trying to get rid of by removing heroes - their usefulness in PvP.
So what it comes down to is which these nonfunctional bars they pick would appeal the masses: meta or original ones? My guess as to why they went with 3 is that would demonstrate they at least know what works well in the meta (with humans) - what people recognized people like. Having picked option 4 they would probably have gotten more angry players accusing them of completely randomizing the selection. Imagine trying to pick an original build that people will like when you know it also has to suck. They really cornered themselves with this contest.

i didn't bother submitting any builds, but i'd pick builds that the AI can run. this means, generic casters, N/Rt healers, ranged fighters (paragon and ranger). the AI is notoriously bad at playing warriors and assassins, so i'd leave them out and just add in a few dervish builds.

what's the most effective out of the henchmen of old? the elementalist. why? because it does damage, it's straightforward, and the AI runs it quite well. it wasn't overpowered, and it was very useful in the right situations. the builds for this contest should've been picked on this criteria. unfortunately, anet thought otherwise. their loss.

For HA:

[Double Dragon][Flame Burst][Flame Djinn's Haste][Glyph of Elemental Power][Aura of Restoration][Fire Attunement][Channeling][Resurrection Signet]

Perfectly viable on a hero, does more damage than a player SH does, and with some AI tweaking can be further improved.
It can support itself on energy, and even has some healing in it.
Not ripped of wiki, original and simply better than other ele builds submitted.

[Tainted Flesh][Rotting Flesh][Putrid Explosion][Well of the Profane][Deathly Swarm][Signet of Lost Souls][Smite Hex][Resurrection Signet]

Perfectly viable on a hero, just as good as a human taint. Sure, it's a well known build, but that doesn't change the fact that this is the ONLY necro bar a hero can run effectivly in just about any team build. They clearly said they wanted build who can survive meta shifts... Taint has been around since prophecies, and is still going as a pressure powerhouse. WHY DID LC, which is probably still going to be subject of nerfs, WIN OVER TAINT?

The bars they selected simply suck compared to mine. As pointed out a million times, ever bar will have AI issues, and are hardly "meta shift"-resilient.
People will always need a nuker, and/or a taint is optional aswell.

My bars > 99% of the bars who won...

@tealspike: they wanted to remove heroes to get rid of their rupts, ench removals and hex stacks and replace other stuff they can do with hench.

exactly. they are replacing things they know heroes CAN do with things they know heroes CAN'T do.

He was talking about things he had experimented with in the past.

And here is another problem: given Anet's track record in the past, we all know that their excuse for delaying their next update will be "we were so busy with this contest". Gawd...

I'm griping because ANet fails to admit their failure.

Below is a pool of what I thought were eligible builds. HA builds I submitted are appended with a white dash, GvG in black.

true

but, on the other hand, they did exactly what they wanted to : remove heroes and henchmen from pvp


some of your builds have the same problem that those that were chosen

a snare, or any form of shutdown is useless, as long as you can't control or lock it on a target

EDIT: nevermind....


By the way, last time I posted, I forgot to say congrats to Pansy Malfoy.
So congrats!! ^_^

ANet screwed up bigtime....All that time wasted....All that time they'll waste completing it...All that time they'll waste actually getting it to work...

Bad decision. Doh.

Blocksofwood your bar is one of the best, if not the best. it will definitely see plenty of play. I can't say the same for many of the other bars however.

I am continually amazed at the Guild Wars community that after more than 4 years of A.net showing how completely incompetent they are toward PvP, people are still surprised when A.net screws up.

It has been said already but I will say it again because some people just don't seem to understand this. A.net doesn't understand how PvP works. They don't play PvP at a significant enough level to understand it. The only person working for A.net that had somewhat of a clue of how PvP worked, was Izzy, and some of his ideas of how the game should work were still complete garbage. A.net will never get it right until they do one of two things, hand over all decisions to a selected committee of PvPers (all decisions that revolve around PvP) or actually spend the time learning how the game works (by spending the humongous amount of time learning how to actually play it).

A.net saw the builds submitted and they chose them because they thought they were good. They didn't how certain skills were used and why they were on the bar. All they saw was that people use similar builds and the skills description and thought to themselves, that could be useful. They really don't have any understanding of why things work.

The second thing I don't get is why people are upset that the builds aren't good. I understand the whole PvX argument because of their rules. I understand the whole this won't work with AI argument because you don't want the henchmen to be completely useless. But here is the catch. Ideally, you don't want henchmen to be used at all. They shouldn't be something you want to use in replace of a human player. The only reason henchmen are essential is for emergency situations (similar to the Dirt situation in the monthly last weekend). If you are in a tournament and the lag bug hits you, chances are you could end up taking a forfeit that was beyond your control. Having henchmen allows you to add them at the last second and click join so that you at least avoid the forfeit. Sure chances are you are going to lose because you now have a henchmen instead of a real player, but at least you don't get a forfeit and can take a loss and move on. I guess the Dirt example isn't the best considering it was the finals and adding a hench (even one of these new bars) would have ended in a loss anyway, but the point is that it could help in earlier rounds.

Say it is the first round of the mAT. About 10 seconds prior to starting one of your players lags out. He doesn't have enough time to reconnect and get back to the guild hall to join the party. Instead of taking a crap forfeit and ruining your chance to play the tourny before it even starts, you can add a hench, save yourself from the forfeit, and move on from there. Chances are you will lose but at least you can still play the latter rounds and hopefully overcome the loss.

That is the only reason why Henchmen should be in the game and why they shouldn't remove them completely. Henchmen should not be a substitute for real players.

I have no idea why henchmen should be in HA, so don't bother bringing it up unless you have a good reason why.

Good reason: when one of your team members got dc on your run to HoH, GW will put random henchmen as replacement on next map. I'm not saying henchman is the best solution in this case, but it is still better to have additional AI controlled party member than 7/8 team. And that's primary reason why I would like to have some useful henchman available than useless ones.

There do seem to be a few misconceptions about the AI here. First of all the hero AI knows how to cancel frenzy, Joe Kimmes already changed the functionality after I submitted a bug report about it. The way it works now is that the AI will use Frenzy like usual, but if they drop down to 50% health they'll immediately use any other stance available to cancel Frenzy. This change has been in effect since the AI update in June 2009. A Primal Rage hero is by far the best PvP warrior hero, since PR effectively dumbs down warrior gameplay. Secondly, AI interrupt capability is greatly overrated. The AI is only good at interrupting when they can mindlessly button mash interrupts on recharge. I've done a lot of testing on this and could only determine that the hero AI is no better at interrupting than an average player (with a good ping). They rarely succeed at interrupting a 1/4 cast (I'm talking about a 3% success rate here) and even miss 3/4 casts more than 50% of the time, and that's on a mesmer hero with 10 fast casting. A ranger hero is worse at interrupting since the AI can't predict skill casting. I can only conclude that most of interrupts on 1/4s skills happen because the player is chain casting or because of AoE interrupts.

What's broken on heroes is their ability to multi-task, switch targets instantly and their ability to gather information which real players do not have access to (like which particular enchantments/hexes are active on a player). The problem with the result of the contest is that there may still be henches that have skill bars that can use those advantages and find their way in certain gimmick builds, in which case they'll have to be nerfed to make sure none of the henches see play. That's also why I don't understand Anet's intention to upgrade the skill usage AI for these henches. After being told there was no time for AI upgrades for HB so they had to delete the entire format, why is there time to upgrade it for PvP formats where people don't want the AI to be useful to begin with?

Did not notice this earlier.

Yes, but two things as I said before:
- standard good build for human IS NOT standard good build for hench because of flaws in AI.
- ANet's rule was originality - for me it IS NOT copying bar from outer source, including wiki.

How will we be able to use heroes as this contest's aim was to replace heroes by more customised henches and remove "own" heroes' usage from HA/GvG?

And you think that is acceptable behavior when using Frenzy or Primal Rage? =/

Your paragraph on multi-tasking is one of the bigger reasons that AI is good at interrupting. They can spread hexes and interrupt effectively, they can Monk and interrupt effectively, it doesn't matter.

Every 1s the AI checks the entire enemy team for spells being cast, and can immediately fire off an interrupt. This means it has next to 0 reaction time between knowing a spell is being cast and starting to interrupt it. It doesn't need to tab through people either, it already knows who is casting what.

There may have been some failure rate or delay built into that mechanic that I am unaware of, but that's how it worked a few months ago - and it certainly makes AI far too good at interrupting.

So... a henchman will switch out of Frenzy/PR when they drop below 50% health. The player monk will heal them with WoH/Infuse.... and then the henchman will immediately renter frenzy/PR (since they are now over 50%) and catch the later half of the spike?

complete joke. Gz To the winners. Seriously though... Didn't they want unique, original builds? Half of the builds on there were already in use. Can't wait to see more Henchway in HA should be easy quest updated!

I was also hoping that there was a W/Mo build with Frenzy Healsig haha!

agreed.

also props to sierra for pointing out the minor tweak of "super henchmen" ai VS complete removal of HB. contradictions & hypocrisy ftw.

Just to make sure, you know that the SoA dmg reduction is cumulative right? I.e. -5 on first hit, -10 on second, -15 on third and so on.

What cracks me up is that
a) They lied about the rules
b) They spent a good amount of their time setting up this contest
c) They'll take even more time programming the henchies

all so... they can be rendered completely useless with the next nerf to the meta!

So what, are they planning to take God only knows how long out of their time to make a new henchie contest every time they put out a skill update?

My "make Norn Fighting Tournament-style NPCs available for PvP" idea was better. As in, only half as batshit-crazy.

I actually made an account to respond to this!

Do you think that could be done, since it does say you may not taken from other sources, so in theory, I could claim that prize! And tbh, most of the henchman bars can be found on PvX with listed Variants that some of the henchman use too.

I would lol if so :>

Frooosty Welcome to Guru

Answering your question: I think - yes. You were the person who created this page and this page was created earlier than thew whole contest started. I do not claim you are created the build but this page can be for sure recognized as one of prototypes for this build.

You know what the saddest thing about this thread is? Despite 20 pages of people's posts that are largely unfavorable with valid complaints, the people at ANet who made this decision aren't listening to us and will make it again.

We are probably getting that "we aren't the community" poop again and are being ignored. :\

Piss off ANet.

Neither Regina nor Martin ever post in threads like that. They love to post about stuff that don't actually need their attention, but when the community is really in need of attention they never post.

And now if they post, It'll regard this post instead of actually replying about the topic of this thread.

Oh well.

Well, to be honest, we are. But it doesn't make our point any less valid. The non-Guru population of Guild Wars is more kind, more open, more calm, but it is also more complacent, more likely to ignore ArenaNet's shortfalls in the name of peace. We may be more obnoxious, more stubborn, more rebellious, more intolerant - but we are more honest, and we will continue to point out failings of leadership though the whole playerbase may cry for us to sit down and shut up. Nothing may be accomplished by our ravings, but at least we may say we did not sit down or shut up in the face of blatant lies and misuse of resources.

It's just the way it is.

/end overdramatization of events

I am very much surprised, either the soon to be deceased HvH community came here to lecture anet about AI builds (probably as some kind of revenge) or the pvp community is so fond of their cute little AI buddies that they just can't let go: henches/heroes do not belong to pvp and they are not meant to be good. Henches are what they are: a replacement character with well known builds/performance.

I am 200% sure they did not select the builds based on overall effectiveness, they are more like examples for human players, which is a really good idea....at least if they keep updating them as meta changes.

Meh 20 pages, too much time spent on this whole thing already.

I wonder whether, IF some of the people who did the build selection are not going to intervene (of course after the week-end, say in the middle of next week), it'd be worth cancelling these winners and spend more time, say a month, thinking more carefully about these henchbars.

Martin is not here because he's at the EVE fanfest in Reykjavik and I bet that Regina can't do much during the week-end, where most Anet employees are off-duty (anyway, talking scarcely on Guru is a cautious behaviour for any GW CM who knows how Guru works, Guru is definitely NOT the community).

You didnt read whole topic, did you?

Yes, taking a hench IS NOT primary aim for any good players who, in 90%+ cases, will find human player on his friend list.

BUT even a good PvP player can be FORCED to play with hench in stressful situations:
- in HA - during long run after team member's dc and cant reconnect
- in GvG - during tournament after team member's dc and cant reconnect

So do not be surprised that even good player would like to have an option of good henchman to choose from.


EDIT: I forgot to mention: GW population is not stable. GW is an old game and players base will decrease in future. Then PvP players will be forced to play with henches more often.

Why would anyone bother reading over 20 pages of crap? lol

completely agree with your whole post. what i fear is that if they indeed do improve the ai to the level of effective (impossible), wouldn't that make the henchies become replacements for players? kinda defeats the purpose of removing heroes in the first place (complete waste of time).


so if i spend all day every day for a month polling the people in the ha districts, the majority will approve of these ha bars? i can guarantee that when (if) these henchies are released, people will rally in the ha outpost and rank spike the henchies out of spite.

I think it's because threads like this have already built up a pretty strong case against something that they seem to have been excited about putting forth. Not only is it a kick in the butt to them to have this pointed out to be a colossal failure by a majority of the community, but as if realizing that wasn't enough, just about the only thing that people want to hear coming from Regina or Martin at this point is something like, "Look, we realize now what we've done with this, and we messed up. We're sorry, and we'll try to do better next time."

It's not the first time ANet has done something in GW that immediately receives a reception like this, but I don't remember ever seeing anyone from ANet come out and say that they realized that something that they did was flawed, until months down the road when it has already become a severe issue, and this kind of behavior from them and from the community being a repeating scenario sends the message that ANet really isn't getting any better at fixing these mistakes or catching them before they happen.

I'm certain that ANet has the best intentions for its game. It's just that when it comes to execution, they fail to impress.

The solution is not hench but the improvement of the reconnect function.

I guess you are gonna have to pick up a guest if hench is too bad? From the point of view of the devs that is actually a bit of a help to reconnect the fragmented player base.

Not always reconnect will be viable. What if this could be problem on player's net side? That player could not connect to Internet for longer period of time - how can his team wait for him for so long? And I doubt enemy will also kindly wait for (example) one hour.

I guess I am gonna have to pick up nothing if population of players decrease.

Anyone care to answer how the henchman bars with Grasping Earth And Ward Against Foes, are suppose to be able to snare to the same level as actual players. I wasn't expecting to win, but after looking at 50% of the bars that won I was in shock. I'm not sure that this move is going to make these parts of PvP better. I still would rather wait 5 extra minutes forming a party than add a hero that is going to have to be flagged by the relic and pray that it can put up a ward and not use grasping right after... Guess we will have to wait and see how they really perform. Of the bars that won, I think we can all say that we have the exact same one saved (speaking for the Players which play HA and GvG).
GG good Luck hope everything works out. :S

There's definitely a deep-seated refusal to admit error. This comes through in the balance updates. Lingering Curse hung around for some six months without a nerf, then still required two nerfs to bring into line?

There's a long litany of such examples out there.