Henchman Skill Bar Contest Winners!

Bah, I wanted my P-instibility bar to win...Would've made HA fun with the kd spam

Ah well, grats to all the winners...I'm jealous

O.O u get a EL Henchmen tonic ahhh

I knew I shouldn't have submitted original builds, but should've copied meta builds.

waste not is a good skill! and heroes do use it fine... but its pretty much the lazy man's power drain. Power drain is just straight up better, except for the fact that you got to be good to use it. something that henchmen do BETTER than most players. But there were probably 10 of the infuse bar with power drain, and only 1 with waste not, so guess what...

If the AI used the builds properly I would have no problem with it, the builds are on wiki for a reason (they are good). The problem is that the AI doesn't know how to use the majority of these skillbars and will therefore end up totally useless as a henchman.

So according to Regina, the Live Team (Robert, was it?) spent a lot of time being "ridiculously busy" for determining the winners, only to come up with those the AI has no hope of using properly? Okay... seriously, if a company really wanted to waste resources that badly, they could have just hired a bunch of people to build a house in the middle of a desert; it probably would have made just as much sense.

Actually, Waste Not is actually one of the few skills that the AI CAN use properly. But yeah, meh.

I guess they didn't want AI interrupt builds anymore .

http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:N/E_HA_Lingering_Curse
should have just copy pasted, and hope that i was the one picked, wonder who else copy paste that bar and didn't hit the lotto.
On a side note, if they do change to the henchy ai to use the relic snare right and body block the runner, ha would be even more broken with 0 lag body blockers.

and in other news, linsey and co do not know how the AI works. if they did, they'd never picked most of those builds.

you know what i think will happen? You know those Happy rr day people? Yeah, welcome them to ha and gvg! Just grab some shit henchmen and click enter for your free zkeys.

holy shit i won?!?!
Psuedo Antipathy
I'm shaking lol. I'm so lame.




So how/when do we get prizes?

You guys are really that blind, huh?

They chose some of the most useless meta builds ever so that people won't use any AI in PvP. Or at least as much as now.

Also, if they actually chose builds that only AI could use better than players (Tease, KD spam, etc.) then you all would be f'ing pissed off.

Granted, they have some templates that will be chosen due to what AI will use best (Migraine mes, LC/SB necros), but if they didn't do this, then no PvE pugs would be able to have a chance at starting out in a PUG.

No, this is the closest to a ''no AI players" PvP that we will get.

Lol, I thought that was you. It was the antipathy that did it. Go us!

Researching before you post FTW. Here it is. I'll even bold the important parts for you:

This tells us that they spent a significant amount of time on this little project. If they had wanted to get rid of AI altogether, I'm sure it could have just been easily done without this much hassle. There probably won't be many who would miss them anyway. But now you have a lot of pissed off players who view the results to be an epic failure, both in accordance to what the original goal for this contest was supposed to be, as well as a lot of time being wasted that could have been spent on the upcoming updates.

There are a few OK builds here, but this is mostly epic fail. Unless they are going to write special scripts for each bar, the AI will mis-use or fail to use most everything. I can't believe I wasted any time actually testing when the live team clearly didn't.

Did nobody really expect them to choose poor AI-oriented skills?

Sooooooo, isn't Charm Animal a completely wasted skill slot on the HA RaO Ranger now after skill update? O_o

/agree... which is why the more I look at this, the more I feel ANET just wanted to get rid of AI almost all together in these areas and do a band-aid on a gun shot wound to cover it up... But also, it doesn't give a good explanation as to why people who copy pasted from PvX should be given prizes...

Yes, please grab him and explain to us the other interesting facts. Not because of the poor AI skill choices... but I really want to hear the build styles that were submitted since my #1 thing in this game is builds.

I guess some people still have false hope? Some people never learn.

Well you know what it does begin to sound like they just smiter booned AI players. I had assumed they spent the extra week delay to test out the new builds to make sure they work properly. But many of these are generic builds that henchmen will suck at and you can't even manually control their skills. Forget about flagging them if you have more than one of them. This is anet's way of kicking us in the nuts and pissing on us when we're down. Every second I think about these builds the more glaring flaws i notice.

That adjustment was only done for PvE. The PvP version of Comfort Animal isn't any different.

Yup... like i said... Band Aid on a gun shot wound

What I want to know is how they determined which of the 50 people that entered the same skillbar actually won. Or did they remove all duplicated skill bars and choose from what was leftover?

they said they would do a lottery

More like, of the 4000.

Congratz to anyone who won without a cookie cuter build.


Question: Perhaps I totally don't know this elite, but on the para with The Power Is Yours, isn't that only, what, 1 energy per party member? So how is that a good elite?

Really the PVX-ness of it irks me so much. I actually sat in front of that stupid npc making builds and making sure they weren't on PvX or like PvX ones, because anet said unoriginal builds won't win, but nope...


Really though, to anyone who won w/o pvx stuff, congratulations! I am glad we have at least a few good henchies to use!

There is really nothing you can do but laugh
Gratz to all the winners i suppose.
sucks to be the people who actually submitted bars that arnt meta but might actually work


And really why remove Hero's from HA if your just going to give Hench the same freaking bars the Heros ran in the first place?

They didn't. The new bars cannot be run properly by heroes. The old hero friendly bars didn't win anywhere in the contest.

Keeps Mending Refrain up and triggers Finale of Restoration while being an energy engine from Leadership (like what "Go For The Eyes!" used to be able to do in PvP before it was hit with the 4 second recharge) and provides some energy to the party as well.

Very good point. I would have liked to see abusive AI builds for the lul factor though.

I get angry whenever I see Smiter's Boon, and I didn't even use it.

Ahhh thanks; I was never sure. That makes a lot of sense though.



Yeah, I mean some of the builds are interesting, but some are... bleh. Oh well... I can't say I'm terribly surprised anet took this seemingly lazy route.

I don't understand you people at all. Smiter's Boon was a broken mechanic that didn't belong in the game. They had two options, kill it or delete it. Deleting it is far more complicated then just killing it.

The Smiter's Boon nerf was an example of A.net finally learning they screwed up and actually doing the necessary thing to fix the problem (keep it out of the game because it had no business being here). Some of you guys need to realize that not every skill can be balanced because the mechanic behind it is imbalanced. We already have way too many skills in the game, so trying to come up with a new mechanic would be just as dumb as keeping the skill in its imbalanced form. Killing it was the best option and honestly they need to do this with more skills. Primal Rage comes to mind...

I can't resist: "I know thousands of players that are going to quit after the implementation of this". You give us heroes and then you won't let us use our creative minds to use them in PVP? Hereos are just an extention of oneself yet you separate them from us like siamese twins. Just because I don't actually play every skill they use doesn't mean they aren't made from my skillful mind. Henchies are near the same except they have retarded builds now. They cannot be adjusted for specific counter builds for specific guilds. I have to say in truth I think Anet is the most nerf happy ruin the game type of development team I've ever encountered in all my online gaming years. So, comon now I need at least 1000 players to quit with me. )

I ABSOLUTELY agree with Zesty. This looking at these bars I'm sickened by Anet's choices. Almost every bar has skills/necessary tactics that AI cannot use the same way as humans.
Frenzy et al will make all warriors easy targets, and lower adrenaline skills will be used first rather than building up (hammer bash before dev hammer?).
Ranger bars are interesting but overlapping poison means they can't be used together, and 3/4 are basically wiki copy-pastes.
Mesmer AI isn't able to prioritize targets as well as humans. (backfire won't go on casters holding martial weapons but frenzy will, etc)
Monks often incorrectly use infuse, and are incapable of pre-protting.
Necromancers have poor energy management and no common sense to pace themselves till people start dying.
Ele AI is unable to distinguish between martial attackers and casters holding spears (blurred/blinding surge on monks?). They are also programed to use spells mostly in regard to damage making water and air almost useless (not to mention the lack of <b>originality</b> in a FOTM wiki build. What happened to that criteria?).
Assassin henchmen have no way of prioritizing chain skills to lengthen chain (to them, +20 damage dw and bleeding is better than +11).
Rit and Derv bars are fairly meta, but the AI can actuallly handle them so I won't complain.
Even if Paragon is the most boring C-Space face-roll buff class ever, henchmen rarely have use skills on recharge, and even more rarely save them till the correct moment (I'm looking at you Song of Concentration)
All classes: Stance use will be erratic and based more on recharge than opportunity (flail/dash/natty stride misuse). Energy management will be off for all classes because melees likely won't use Zealous weapons, and casters won't switch weapon sets to hide energy.

In conclusion: WTF anet? These Henchmen won't even be able to be used for 6 months while they update AI, and before that, meta-shifts and skill changes will make these obsolete in 3. Either this contest needs to be bi-monthly, or there needs to be a PvP-Henchman version of most of these skills. (Such as "Frenzy (PvP-Henchmen)- Attack 33% faster, take double damage. Ends if you take 200 damage")


PS. I'm not knocking you winners, you guys submitted very good GW bars. Mad props. But either the contest should have said "the AI will be updated to work with new hench bars" or they made the wrong choices. That simple.

If you needed heros to play GvG and HA you should have quit a long time ago. If you lack the ability to be social and build up a friends list to field a team of 8 you really shouldn't be playing PvP at all. It is Player vs Player for a reason.

Lol wtf is this shit.

Hammer bash on an adren bar on a henchie.

Normal Hero PvE HB build won

Frenzy+Shock on a henchie, ROFL

Honestly Anet, you let a RaO win?

Lol at the migraine bar

Lol at the meta infuser, henchies can infuse good?

Lol at a henchie with slow wards.

Lol at henchie with song of concentration, they can use that well, OH and make haste too? Leet sauce! Good thing they can target!

Lol at a sin hero.

My god anet, these are HENCHMEN, all you control is their RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing flags, not their bars.

The RaOs will never get anything daze, the warriors will frenzy and die instantly or shock themselves into exhaustion constantly.

And primal rage won...the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO.

Serpent's Quickness on a cripshot, okay.

Lol at EXACT MB meta won.

Lol at a damn wastrel's spike sin, really anet? you think your awesome sin AI can pull this off?

There's maybe 8 builds that can be actually executed, about 0 that'll be run well.

I at least thought a tainted flesh would've won..since that all henchies can do well.

EDIT: I just want to quote dbulger from a few pages ago on this
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hero_behavior

Heroes will overwrite weapon spells with other weapon spells.
This makes the GvG rit bars essentially shit.

Heroes do not seem to use Falling Lotus Strike or Falling Spider on their own.
Gg, one whole wasted bar

Heroes will not use Rage of the Ntouka, "Coward!", or Deadly Paradox.
Gg, other sin bar dead.

Death's Charge and Death's Retreat are only used for healing.
Okay..so the warr GvG bar has useless secondary

The disturbing part is that many of these bars are clearly suboptimal, in addition to being poorly run by heroes.

Crip Shot, Serpent's Quickness and Determined Shot? Crip Shot doesn't recharge fast enough for you? As an alliance member pointed out, SQ has great synergy with the Nat Stride on that bar.

Migraine and Frustration on a hero? Really? Like it needs it. No cover hex for the Migraine?

Soul Bind, Faintheartedness and Defile Defenses with nothing but GoLE to power all that? Really?

A Hundred Blades without an IAS? But with Plague Touch?

Is there a reason the GvG LC uses Signet of Lost Souls for energy rather than going to a secondary for a better solution?

Disappointing.

Thats my point, you are not understanding me... if that are trying to kill it for Heros then why even bother introducing henchmen to replace them when they are just going to turn into Smitter's Boon. My point is your point... except for the fact they do have the ability to delete it (Heros).

My bad then. I thought you were complaining that the henchmen bars could have been balanced better and then comparing it to smiter's boon which would insinuate that you believed Smiter's Boon could have been balanced. Sorry for misunderstanding you.