Henchman Skill Bar Contest Winners!

And I was thinking Anet was gonna do something good for once ...

[email protected] bar
[email protected]+4RuptsBar
[email protected]
[email protected]

Go Anet Go!

I think we are well past deserved outrage and moved to pointless whining which does not help, not at all.

Lesson for devs:

Ok, this is minor failure, considering this is first time you attempted to bring community in and let em decide things more important than boss names in contest, i would consider it learning experience. However, builds do not have to stay the way they are forever, so you have seccond chance.

Next time, instead of allowing free-form contest, run poll instead. Create three builds per henchman, get little feedback, gently apply it and then let people vote which of them to get to game.

What happens when "bad" build wins? Well, people can argue between themselves. You are out of blame, because bad build would be failure of community rather than of devs.

And, i would think that simple set x-builds, let users poll can be automated and rather easy to implement whenever you feel that builds need refreshment, rather than sifting though thousands of builds that takes time and resuslts in this thread.

I had originally written a much larger response, but in light of the giant one up at the top, I'll just summarize:

No, you're wrong. The devs have the last say in anything that gets put into their game. The community can make any bad suggestions they want, but as soon as the devs implement those bad ideas, the devs are at fault for not sieving through ideas and figuring out the ideas were bad in the first place.

In fact, that's part of Reggie's job.

While I want to sit here and argue about the creativity part, it's been pretty much beaten dead with 17 pages worth.

I want to say that while I'm happy for the people who won, I'm severely disappointed in how the bars were chosen. For those of us who actually spent the time trying to tailor a bar that a hero wouldn't completely suck at it's a slap in the face to see things like Song of Concentration and Make Haste. I understand that the game is 5 years old, I really do and I understand that none of us are going to think of a bar that hasn't been said and done before. But really? I'm pretty sure that you could almost argue that bars not in the pvx meta section that were submitted and tailored for a hero would are MORE effective than poorly designed bars that are meant for players.

Even if you "tweak" the AI to make -some- of them work, I fail to understand why of all times you're doing it now. Your player base cried for years about the hero AI in Hero Battles and the maps and you ignored us and finally removed it due to neglect. I find it extremely hard to believe that you're going to fix anything (see "Fixed Syncing in Arenas") let alone make these bars run properly. Your player base is dwindling as the days go by and more people are leaving because of the constant disappointment and your half assed jobs. Instead of constantly crying about how limited your resources are and how "hard" you're working why don't you put forth a tiny bit more effort into your projects or your community involvement and actually listen to what we're telling you about certain things. I'm sure that most of us would be happy if you spent the extra time giving us a quality update, instead of a ton of poorly thought out and executed disappointing updates.

i found an "Hidden message from A-net" : don't use Henchies in HA nor GvG

It's a lose-lose situation for Anet, really.

If they picked only truly original, non-PvX builds, then quite a few of them are likely to have AI issues. Otherwise, they'd be on PvX by now.

If they only picked succesful (and consequently posted on PvX) builds, then they get lambasted because they picked non-original ones.

So, they sort of went 50-50 on this one.

I found one too from A-net: "Hi guys we're too lazy to pay attention to anything that's a problem in the game, so we're going to try to fix it but not really put forth the effort. We just like giving you the illusion that we're trying so that you won't completely desert us."

HA has been ignored for far too long and it's developed into the ugly stepchild that no one cares about. I would be all removing heroes and henchmen from HA if maybe the player base was bigger.

It's pretty evident that the live team is ignoring issues in GvG as well. Instead of fixing their mistakes right away they let things sit for a month-2 months. (lol R/A's) Or they continue to "forget" to fix bars or mechanics that are causing stale meta's and 28 hit the lord and run games. If you want to promote playing without heroes/henchmen you seriously need to take a look at some of the mechanics that have or are being abused.

Loooooooooooooooooooooool, the best part of Regina's answer.

Anyone noticed this? "In the future"!

So, we will get "new" henches as they were submitted and somewhere in future they will announce AI tweaking. Taking into consideration that ANet GW1 team is short on resources (as Inde said and as we all know) it will be probably in 2 years from now, or better, they will anounce it as one of the next anniversary upgrade... A REALLY BIG LOL....

Anyone who said "they will improve AI" now see: they will but we got unuseable henches at start (lol) and this situation is not going to change in predictable future (lolx2).

I checked that builds and I comment that at two words-SCANDAL!
Why?
I hope somebody from AN will read that post. You are an idiots if you can't see that's meta player builds.
I wanna show ALL of the builds of contest!

Leet T H E O R Y:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:W/an..._Smash_Warrior
Look at optionals.
Next one:

I Will Win Ff:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:W/an..._Slash_Warrior
This Is Trigger:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:W/E_Primal_Rage_Axe

Etron In Vitro:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:R/Mo_Cripshot
This player placed some of different that in this build skills.

Lulu Xan:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:R/Mo...ne_Shot_Ranger
Placed opt skills.

Tannaros Tower Rush:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Me/D_VoR_Mesmer

Cassie Santiago:
The only self created build! Congratulations for him!

Sacred Wolfy:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Mo/any_GvG_WoH
Opt. way ftw!

Il Juliya Il
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Mo/W_GvG_RC_Monk
Changed Holy Veil

Bellicus Magnus
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:N/an...pt_Necromancer

Dark Rising Shadow
OAdTY4D/HyR4QgRc3JBsSoBSAA
OK,changed skill, a bit of creative.

A Papaya In There
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:E/any_Blinding_Surge
Opt way again.

Luzy Of Fire
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:E/an...t_Elementalist
Look opts.

Mala Aurora
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:E/Mo_Shatterstone_Gank

Hajime Hinata:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:E/any_MoI_Elementalist
Changed 2(?) skills.

Saint Reapers Sin:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:A/E_Wastrel%27s_Conjure
Changed secondary to W

Pseudo Antipathy:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Rt/a...rae%27s_Runner

Zen Si Ert:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:D/an...Strike_Dervish

Aria Of Nerf:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:P/any_TPIY_paragon

Aurora Alessandra:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:P/an..._Spear_Paragon


Time for HA!:

Tiny Tina:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:W/E_Shock_Axe

Iarwain De Llanowar
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:W/an...Blades_Warrior
Few skills changed

Adepte De La Guerre:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:W/an...Hammer_Warrior

Haldibarn Earendul:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:R/Mo..._Arrows_Ranger

Unfaithful Servant:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:R/W_Bunny_Thumper

Syn Spellstrike:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Me/Rt_Migraine_Mesmer

Leet Noobified:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Mo/M...%27s_Boon_Monk

Healing Blocks:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Mo/Me_HA_LS_Monk
Few skills changed

The Necromaxime:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:N/E_HA_Lingering_Curse

Eric The Devistator:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:N/E_...nd_Necromancer

Our Guild Is Leet:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:E/an...y_Elementalist

Bacchikoi Bacchikoi:
As Hajime Hinata:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:E/any_MoI_Elementalist

Der Held:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:E/any_SH_Elementalist

Rolol Lololol
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:E/any_HA_Mind_Blast
Opt....

Pnoy Pride:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:A/W_Coward_Pressure
1 skill changed...

Hi Captain Obvious:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:Rt/any_HA_OoS_Utility

La Boucher Alsacien:
As Zen Si Ert:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:D/an...Strike_Dervish

Uto Pro:
^ with changed elite skill.

Khai Kemnebi:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:P/any_Crippling_Paragon

Noodle Legs:
As Aurora Alessandra:
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:P/an..._Spear_Paragon


Gz AN and all guys who can only Crtl+C Crtl+V!

I think you are wrong. It is better to have/choose real build for hench with minor issues than hench playing with human bar with much greater AI issues.

Also on wiki there are rather most popular builds. It is still hard to find good builds for several professions played as hero/hench without supervision of human.

These skill bars made me lol for the reasons im sure have already been outlined.

I can picture it now

WTF the warrior henchman isnt doing anything???
He can't, his energy bar is gone due to shock spam
The hammer war keeps spamming hammer bash!
Why the hell did he just infuse me on 80% hp??

oh my god this'll be great!

oh and also lol at the thumper bar

Even I that barely do any serious pvp feel outraged with this, not only are those bars made for humans - and sorry to say Anet, but you're deluding yourselves if you think that whatever AI update you'll do will ever make henchmen run those bars properly - but in the current state of GW PvP and PvE, it's absolutely idiotic the amount of time they spent creating this contest, picking those bars, implementing them in the game and the amount of time they'll waste updating the AI for them to run even remotely effective.

All of this when both sides of the game are in dire need of dev intervention. Seriously, it's beyond understanding. Shadow Form has been raping PvE for over a year and the devs are still at a complete loss as to how to fix it (just smiter boon it and be done with it, that's a skill that should have never been in the game to begin with), yet they waste more time on this.

PvP is also in dire need of skill balance since the last months, even ignoring the constant delays, were everything but impressive, and now they're even moving these updates to a bi-monthly schedule. I do appreciate what they tried to do with the contest when they're going to remove heroes, but the outcome was so miserable that they might as well have a) ignored the problem a little longer and used the time to do some PROPER skill balance, at least it would make people somewhat happier; b) remove heroes all together and be done with it; c) improve player grouping (admitedly something that might be hard to do at this point).

But overall I think that this was nothing but a gigantic waste of time so far, and will be a bigger waste from here on because I honestly can't believe that if in 4 years you haven't tried to correct the flaws in AI I doubt you'll be able to do it now, and even then this will be another bandaid-on-a-gunshot-wound. If in any day from today until the day GW servers are shut down, they'll ever make the henchmen run these bars efficiently, I'll kick myself in the ass.

Sad, just sad. For the first time in years, after always feeling sorry for the dev team and how everyone outright attacked anet at every update, I feel cheated and forced to agree with all the bashers. And for the first time, you've messed up in a way that together with what's been going on these last months, that I went from a player extremely excited with GW2 and everything you're set on accomplishing with the sequel, to a player that's uncertain of what we'll end up getting on the final product and how things will be handled then. I understand the difference between the GW2 and the GW dev team's sizes, but you should have never taken up something like this when the game is in it's current state.

All I can say, I feel sorry for the GW community in general when the time wasted on this could have been used for something much better, and I especially feel sorry for the PvP community. My 2cents.

On the bright side, now I'm fairly confident that due to delays we've grown so much to, and all the bandaids they'll try and make for this, we might get a couple of more RR days. For that I thank you, 1M gold in zkeys in a 24h without doing absolutely nothing is honestly a gift from the heavens for me.

Your point was clear, my point was more of a "are you really sure that's what you want?" I was under the impression that the problem with heroes was that they were just too good at certain areas(knowing who has what enchant/shout/hex, AI reflexes for interrupts/prots). I would be really happy if the henchmen were so bad that you were forced to pick up a guy from spamadan instead, wouldn't that just be good for the game?

Now the henchmen have really good bars for a human, but aspects of them will not be run well by the AI. Anet's solution is to buff the AI. You don't see the problems this will certainly create? (Given of course that Anet actually does buff/tweak the AI) Can you imagine a cowardsin spamming his skills on you with AI reflexes to interrupt you or shout at you instantly? How about henchmen who can detect a relic or flag and able to actually bodyblock? An infuser who will only infuse when necessary and will do so reliably within a quarter of a second every time?

Yep, keep on buffing the AI so we won't have to deal with stupid people anymore. Can't we just disconnect the clients from the servers, everyone can play HA alone with 7 heroes vs 8 AI bots, farm their titles and reconnect in about 1 or 2 years to show each other our hard-earned titles since that seems to be the main purpose for most of the players left in this game.

I'm also sorry for all the people who actually spent time and energy on creating medium-effective thought-out builds for the contest. This is a good opportunity to say "I told you so", however. I think I said something along the lines of "Yeah, anet is going to put 30 devs on the task, review all submitted builds, playtest them all and vote on the most suited bars". Maybe it wasn't clear then so I'm saying it now: That was sarcasm. FYI, I've used sarcasm in this post also.

May have already been mentioned, but the inclusion of a WC Sin in these winning entries makes me think they have no intention of changing this skill in the near future.

Woohoo.

While I feel your post is a bit of an overreaction, I think you have hit something important here. I think this is one of the first times that the MASSES realize that Anet has much less of an idea how their game works than the players do. PvP players have realized this for years due to several ridiculous attempts at balance over those years (which has caused most of the PvP community to leave), but this henchmen incident is possibly one of the first times they have exposed themselves to PvE players as well.

I submit this argument:
There are only so many skills out there, and only few of them are really worth taking into a competitive GvG/HA environment. Therefore, there are not that many really proper bars you can come up with. And you can probably already find these proper bars on PvX.

And no matter what, there will always be AI issues. Having a full bar also complicates things.

At the risk of derailing this thread completely...

What's to be thrilled about getting to play RR longer? No one can possibly enjoy mapping back and forth and cashing in a free reward every 5 minutes. To me this is just like entering a cheat code in some old school offline game. Sure it's fun with invincibility and unlimited rockets and lasers.. for 5 minutes! Then you're fed up and will leave the game forever.

I'm probably the only gw player who does not care for weapon skins, wealth or fancy titles. In all my naivity I keep thinking what's wrong with everyone else? If given the choice most of you would accept a free offer from Anet of getting all your titles maxed for free, a glowy torment shield on all your chars, 30 stacks of ectos in the bank and 30 stacks of zkeys for some lottery amusement. You'd dance in joy and show off your titles in all the outposts. Only to realise everyone else has them too and there's nothing left "working for" in the game and you'd quit.

I keep reading threads where people QQ about devaluing or removing some title, reason being some have "worked hard" for their prestiguous title. Am I the only one who thinks it's a problem that people "work hard" in a video game? Working hard is something you do in real life for real rewards.

I'm probably a sick and masochistic bastard but I greatly prefer playing pvp with real people or running around in pve with players who run abysmal bars and do more wrong than right. I remember the old days where getting past thunderhead keep was a true challenge.. that was actually a lot more fun than loading 3 necro heroes, 4 henchmen and "working" my way through eotn.

Titles and heroes screwed the game over. But I'm the only one who thinks this, right?

Again sorry about the derail, the only relevance to this thread is that I couldn't care less about what skills they put on the henchmen bars as long as they suck so hard they'll never see play.

I really don't enjoy it but I do need the money, and the last RR day (wich was the first I tried this) I made 350k in less than 3 hours. It's that good. And since I don't do any kind of SC's and barely do any farming at all, it's the best way I have to make money.

Title hunting is all I have left in the game before I either uninstall it and wait for GW2 or seriously commit to PvP. I don't really need the money as well since I already have pretty much every armor and weapon skin (I don't care for them that much too) I want, but titles sweet tooth and party animal do cost some gold and if I have the chance to max them, I'll take it.

But I still take some pleasure in the game, I'm about to finish my vanquish, guardian, cartographer title and I've only used 3 necros on few ocasions usually I run a balanced team without any of that easy-mode crap, so I'm not one of those players you're refering to. I just need the money mostly for titles that's all. :P after that I might start taking HA and GvG serious but atm I felt like I missed the PvP boat already and I'm wondering if it's really worth joining a pvp-only guild.

This is one of builds I submitted myself:



Skills in this build support the rest of team, and, in my opinion, they are worth taking because they could have use. I would be glad to have such henchman in team in cause of team member's err7 during full HA run.

I cant find my build on PvXwiki....

I tested my build with hero - and guess what? It works great. There is no lack of energy, adrenaline and so on. And it is full bar hench.

So, your argument is invalid.

Dragon Arena!

And this is where we have to see through the adorned facts conveyed by the community managers, where relevant (but overlooked by most) information is omitted.
What makes a "unique" submission? This is a very important detail. From a technical standpoint, I'd guess builds were submitted as template codes, which in turn contain information about skills and attributes. Heck, I wonder about the skill order too.
That a standard shock axe was only submitted 62 times, I can't really believe (unless Guild Wars players are way, way worse at the game than I expected). A shock axe with that particular distribution of attribute points, yes, it's very much more likely.

Concerning the practical validity of the builds, I really don't have much to say that hasn't been said already. Honestly, it would've made much more sense to implement e.g. a Power Attack spammer, which would likely work with the dumbest AI, than choose a shock axe and make it do a half-assed job until resources are allocated to update the AI (knowing ANet, months to come).
As this guy said,
which tells you that it would've been much better to pick original bars that work on the current AI (under the premise that small modifications could've been made to make them fully functional/more effective), making the contestants happy & saving yourselves the trouble of recoding the AI to make henchmen perform underwhelmingly with bars made for players.

It would've been win-win. Everyone I know has always been happy with their trusty Mage Henchman.

Lex, incoming is bad. Also, paragons are poorly designed. All a player paragon has to do is mash buttons on recharge, so naturally a hero can do that just fine. It isn't a huge feat to design a paragon build that heroes can run, because they can run most of them.

I certainly wouldn't want a fall back... er, incoming para on my team to replace a dc'd one.

Auron, I didnt say this is the best paragon build. It is ok for me, could not be for everyone. I brought it only to prove that Jarus's arguments are wrong.

No,

You see, community decides what is good or bad. Devs will not know that untill they release changes to public. They can think they did damn fine job and actually do it well, but community can and will disagree because they have different point of view.

Idea is to let community disagree *before* idea is implemented and choose best from several options.

Anet really failed this time, heroes fail at using those builds and most of the builds can be found from PvX.

For putting skills you dont like to henchmen?

Are you completely insane?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6hL6fkJ1_k

No, for breaking rules.
Everyone must follow rules, if these are broken there must be punishment.

ok...all the builds suck.
GZ on making henchmen just as useless as the originals!

I agree that those skills are worth taking (for a phys-heavy team). That's not my point though, is it? My point is that there is a limited selection of skills that should be taken at all. A better counter-argument would be to point out a viable build using skills like Song of Concentration, "We Shall Return!", Signet of Aggression, "Make your time", or many other skills which you wouldn't rightly see in PvP.

Not much that can go wrong with that bar.

http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:P/any_Toolbox_Paragon
Swap the attack skills (the selection of which aren't synergistic to the rest of the bar), and you're looking at something quite similar.

Sorry, Lex.

So imagine, Lex, if you'd won with that bar, people would be saying that you c&p'd from PvX wiki.

That quote itself suggests you dont have idea what is happening in current PvP.

Song of Concentration not in PvP? 95% of good HA teambuilds have this skill.
"We Shall Return!" not in PvP? I often saw this on paragons to keep Aggressive Refrain up.

The problem with these skills is - they are bad on independent hero. SoC wont be used before altar cap, and WSR! wont be used before any res (tested).

Yes, swap 5(!!!) skills and you will get mine. Swaping over 50% of skills could get you probably any other build, lol.

I agree that the builds that won (most of them) are bad for hero/hench use. What scares me more though, it the AI tweaks that they say will be coming. I may not understand it well, but the way I do understand it, the tweaks will affect ALL henchment. So if targeting is changed so they would use snares well, does that mean the AI for Little Thom, Sogolon, Cynn, etc. will also change, and they may not work as well due to the new targeting setup? And if I have heroes set up that work very well, but use skills that are on those builds, will my heroes change due to the AI tweaks? Will the monsters that use those skills in PvE now be harder/easier to deal with?

They should have limited it to builds the CURRENT AI can handle. Meta builds on NPCs is a crappy idea, so they succeeded in removing heroes from HA and GvG, but they failed on the contest.

Doesn't look like they said AI tweaks will be coming. It says, "may decide...in the future"...and "if they feel it's appropriate..."


Remember when you were young and a parent said, "We'll see"? Uh, that meant, "No".

I translate that to = We're not wasting any more time/resources on this. While the intent was to...blah, blah, blah...it just wasn't doable. What's placed in game is done. Be grateful we did anything and be quiet now. Oh, and buy GW2. Thx ~ Anet.

"We recognize that the changes to this skill will essentially remove it from play. In the future, we may consider whether or not there is an incarnation of this skill that would be viable but balanced. For now, we do not expect it to see serious use."
From Smiter's boons nerf over a year ago. It seems to me "In the Future" means never for Anet.
I guess they got what they wanted, they smiterbooned henchies, because no one would take one as a serious replacement.

You are using the same flawed logic as ArenaNet. Let me try to explain:

If this was a contest to design builds for PvP character templates then yes, it would be silly not to use popular and proven builds. Player builds have been designed to death over the last five years as you say, and there are no original ideas left. That's where your point stops working, because this is a contest about henchman bars, not player bars.

Good bars on a henchman and good bars on a player are apples and oranges. Sure, there are *some* bars that would work well on both, the Necro bars aren't terrible, but they are still not optimal for AI.

The very idea that the chosen builds would be gimmicky meta builds from PvXWiki (or whatever) undermines the entire idea of the contest. It's like running a contest for your villages prize bull, and people only entering with sheep.

It's even worse than that, sadly. The few bars that aren't just ineffective and poor (split characters, etc) are effective for all of the wrong reasons. They are gimmicky bars that abuse AI. The idea of an AI Magebane bot in PvP is mind boggling, that could well be the most annoying and frustrating bar you could give an AI character.

In an attempt to get effective and desirable bars, ArenaNet chose to go with popular player builds. The logic being: If people want players with mindblast bars, they will want henchmen with those bars too. I'm afraid that's just not true. People want henchmen who aren't going to suck. Akaraxle said it pretty well here:

Effective henchmen bars should be designed entirely around what henchmen can do well. In the case of melee, that is train targets and spam damage skills. Shock on a henchman bar is always going to be pointless. I could see how AI might be improved to make Frenzy more viable, but it's always going to be a weakness. Give them some other IAS without that major drawback. Again, just because Frenzy is by far the best IAS on a Warrior, doesn't mean it's ever going to be the best IAS on a henchman.

It would be pretty easy to come up with two bars for each profession that are both original and that would work well with henchman AI. They would be more effective, more desirable, and healthier for the game. Instead we have gimped metabuilds shoe-horned in, because the entries were judged on entirely the wrong criteria. It doesn't matter how much they try to patch things up with improving AI, chances are it will just make a bigger mess.

That would make my day.

No. The derogatory comment "unique snowflake" springs to mind - it's what gets said whenever someone tries to be original.

*

Agreed -1 for choosing builds on wiki despite them saying they wanted original builds, agreed -1 for choosing builds that the AI can't cope with; however, +several million for choosing GOOD bars. Not a single poster has complained about how shitty the bars are, how the skills on there are crap, how utterly useless they'd be in a HA or GvG setting. ANet should get some credit for that, surely.

JR is sexy.


It's like ANet is trying to keep people happy with decent ideas that involve the least effort possible, and STILL keeps f***ing up on the execution. I hope whoever is in charge of the "not f***ing up" department wakes up by the time GW2 comes out.

What does make the bar GOOD? Yes, skills, but not only. Its "the mind" who controls them. Yes, for human these bars are GOOD, but for the current AI state they are BAD, and we all know that AI improvement will not come soon.

If the AI can't run the skills then they are useless.

So ANet has to add to their already overfull workload and fix their screwup by making their chosen bars work with the AI. Their choice their problem. If they don't, well, the contest was even more a waste of time than everyone already thinks it was. If they do, good, it's about time the AI was fixed.

I've always given ANet the benefit of the doubt in most all of their blunders....but this is just ridiculous. Either they have no idea how the hench/hero AI actually works (a frightening thought), or they just did this contest as a way to remove NPC's from high level PVP. They are already saying all the time that their resources are spread fairly thin, I can't see them even thinking about tackling something like hench AI in order to use some of these builds semi-effectively.

Either way it was a huge miscommunication on their part as to what this whole contest was actually about. This has to rank up there as one of the biggest blunders in ANet history.

it's been proven that anet (and especially the live team) have no idea how GW actually works. listen to the live panel discussion, more specifically, that robert guy they just hired. what's the first thing he said? well, he wanted to see "if empathy triggers once or twice with dual shot". well no duh it triggers twice! i don't know if he's being sarcastic or just trying to pull an example, but that's been known for years. he supposedly have been playing GW for years.

anet has no idea what their game is about. they have no idea how to play it. therefore, they should never make decisions on how it should be played. they need to get the Test Krewe thing going with the best people available, and listen to them. or, fire the entire live team and hire devs who actually play this game.