The Horror of Frost Gate (or, Why I love H/H)

Sigh.

I like running with humans. Really, I do. But it just isn't worth the effort...

Case in point, today's Z-Mission, The Frost Gate.

I have two main characters, a Ranger and a Ritualist. I'm sure you can guess which one can find a mission without even trying; my Rit gets pinged the moment she land sin an active district.

My ranger? Not so lucky. My most effective HM build is based around my pet and Enraged Lunge; I gave up a long time ago trying to run that with humans. So I run Splinter Barrage.

The Rit gets a group in a few minutes; it usually takes 15-20 minutes to find a group with the Ranger.

The Rit got thru, with bonus, in one shot. Not bad.

Alas, my poor Ranger was not so lucky.

Her first group argued halfway in about the route. Multiple people drawing on the map, eventually someone rage quit and the group broke up.

Second group started well, then 2/3rds of the way thru, the warrior/leader went afk and never came back. We forged ahead, got to the last set of mechanisms, and we near-wiped; the lone survivor was our SoS Rit, who wasn't carrying a rez. So he quit, group failed.

Frustrated, my ranger took Jora (Dragon Slash), Gwen (Pain Dom), Vekk (Dirt Bunny), Alesia, and Orion. Took about 15 minutes, I got bonus + mission on Hard Mode.

Oh, and I ran my favored Enraged Lunge build.

The heroes and hench didn't bitch about my build; none of them went AFK (though Alesia did die a lot for some damned reason). I didn't use any consummables or magic cookies; there were no arguments. Oh, and most of them carried a rez, too!

So when someone claims that heroes and henchmen ruined PuGs -- that's a load of BS. What ruined PuGs were ill-behaved players who argue and don't bring a farkin' rez.

Yeah, people are stupid. I realised this in 2005. If you want reliability and success, play H/H. If you want to play with other people, find in-game friends or guildies who want to play as well. Being in a PuG when H/H is an option is just making life harder for yourself.

most missions I do with my h/h the exceptions are the ones that peeps need to be in 2 places at the same time (eternal grove comes to mind).....otherwise, yeah my mesmer can run her pet build and dunko never says anything bad about it

Just a bit of advice, if doing HM with h/h i would drop jora for a soul twisting rit, using Soul twisting(elite) displacement, union and shelter. these 3 spirits will make it nearly impossible for any one on you're team to die. Other skills i use are boon of creation, w/e that signet is that gives u energy when in range of a spirit and the one that makes ur spirits take half damage. This build provides 75% blocking cannot lose more than 10%-15 health. Garantee to work 100% of the time for any mission. Also instead of Dirt Bunny(assuming you mean he's running earth build IE. Sandstorm/Unsteady ground) I would run an SoS rit with the basic signet of spirits, bloodsong, splinterweapon(with melee) Anc. rage w/o. and 3 resto skills being protective was kaoli, mend body and soul, spirit light. With siphon spirit for easy emangement.

The only situation in which a PUG beats out a H/H group is when you want to roll a Healer, and even then, a properly built H/H team will get things done, just slower and with less direction.

Even when healing the amount of dumbassery is astounding. My ER ele is by far a more efficient healer than my Mo and he takes a good 15 minutes to find a group that knows it's s*** enough to send an invite.

This is not new or exciting; PUGs (especially during USA primetime) blow chunks and H/H don't backtalk and are adequate.

This, pretty much. Outfitting my heroes has been the best IG investment ever.

Thanks for the advice, but I know all of that. Oh, there are lots of other hero combos I could use; my two mains have 26 heroes each, of which 12-15 are fully insigned (sp?) & runed. I could run any of the popular "ways", even the new Mesway. In fact, I have Mesway and Spiritway available to both mains.

I just don't use them. Here's the funny part: I've vanquished, quite comfortable, across Tyria, running Jora, Hayda, and Gwen or Livia. It's not that I'm awesome or any such thing -- it's that there are many ways to play the game that don't include Spiritway, Sabway, Discordway, Mesway, or whatever.

On my ranger, I like to run a group that different from what my Ritualist, Necromancer, or Mesmer run. That keeps the game fresh across different characters.

My favored heroes: Jora (Sword), Hayda (many builds), Gwen (love Panic/Psychic Instability), Tahlkora (RoJ SMite), Vekk (Sandstorm/Churning Earth/Wards), Xandra (Prot Spirits), and Livia (various MM builds).

I wasn't trying to say anything new; I'm just tired of all the whiny anti-hero crap. Most of the people who whine won't run with my characters anyway.

Why do groups stand around for hours, spamming "GLF 2 monks 2 go!" -- particularly when it's a six-man mission? Who NEEDS two healing monks on a six-man? And why not just throw on heroes and GO, rather than spam for hours? Really dumb.

I just helped my daughter through the Attack on Jalis' Camp quest. We had two healer heroes, both N/Rt (She was running Discordway, I think). My monk was running a Smite-only build! No problem -- no deaths.

Sadly, this proves a very real point.

If you choose to run an okay or mediocre build, you will likely be grouped with people who will do the same. Your chance for success will diminish, causing frustration and rage, and your time will likely be wasted one way or another.

Dervish, Ranger, and non-Imba Paragon PvE buffs can't come sooner.

H/H'd this not long ago for Guardian. No problem at all.

Just H/H when you don't get into PUGs when you won't be permitted to run your happy builds. Problem solved.

While we're on the subject on posting personnal toughts on forums :

maybe I'm just lucky and unlucky. Lucky because I can find group fast with any character and I rarely dramatically fail with pugs, but then again mes and rits are mainstream classes, so maybe that helps.
Unlucky because on any character I alway take longer than people say to find groups. Like 2 min... Short anyway.
Or maybe my criterias for failing is higher than other people... Wiping once isn't that bad, the second times gets on my nerves tought.

Doesn't change anything.
There's more whiny anti-human crap.

Communicate with your current group, find a different group, make your own, or H/H.
But choosing to do so goes for all professions.

My point was that hopefully your guild of choice contains members that aren't complete idiots. Otherwise why would you bother sticking around? PuG people tend to have an 'omfg of course I know more than you idiot, why are you telling me crap suggestions' mindset but if they know the person thats talking to them (i.e, guildies) that should actually process the information.

So advice or a suggestion from a guild member is correct or good? If a suggestion or information is good it's good and bad if it's bad. The player will still have to "process the information."

No, I was saying that hopefully the people in the guild you choose to be in are intelligent. I don't know about you but I don't like to spend my time listening to stupid immature 12 year olds. I would trust what my guildies say over what random people say because I know that my guildies are mature and use their brain. I imagine the same applies to other people.

Most of the best players I've played with or befriended came from PUGs and I'd never give them up. Bars become tighter in harder areas anyway regardless if you PUG or H/H.

Once again...I love PUGs...you've just got to take the bitter with the sweet. Given the option...I will wait for a PUG over h/h even though I can h/h it np. I met most of my guildies/friendlist in PUGs and I consider PUGing a way to meet more ppl like them, who I enjoying playing with. I know I am one of the few, but I really like them for the most part and am very exicited about future PUGing possibilities that Embark might propagate(sp?).

If one magically finds themselves in a pug filled with stupid immature 12 year olds it's their own failure. People still need to discuss builds and tactics before starting any given zmission. At that point you either know (if) everyone on the team is a cretin, or if the party leader starts the mission w/o a word you can safely map back to the outpost (also without a word) and look for a team that's not doomed to failure.

Your information about the bickering, know-it-all 12 year olds seems to be based entirely on the pseudo high end VSF/SC type pugs, where people often do know what they're doing, and are so obsessed with completion time and efficiency that they'll tear apart any weaknesses they come across.

ZMission pugs aren't all sucky failures, the vast majority get stuff done, just not in the optimal timeframe.

Meh. I only PuG occasionally when I forget how bad they are. Immature 12 year olds is a bit of a stereotype, but I generally find most people are not inclined to listen to advice or even bothering to talk. Even if I bother trying to explain why the SoS Rit should have splinter they usually just stop responding so they don't have to change their 1-2-3-4-5 build. During my usual playtimes, there usually aren't enough people to simply ditch a group of bad players and find others.

PS: I never said there were no good players in PuGs. There are just very few of them. I imagine they've figured out H/H are better than 99% of other people.

I find the best PuGs early in the morning, EST, before 10AM. Really good ones, too. They just seem to be in the minority. I did Gyala Hatchery the other day with PuGs. One was great fun, one was very dull but functional, and the last one SUCKED irukandji tentacles.

I'm more than happy to discuss builds and strategy. My characters can run multiple builds; in Gyala yesterday, I ran my Rit as an Explosive MM in a very fun group.

Where it gets ugly: People who want to DICTATE builds. That, and few wish to discuss how to approach a given mission / dungeon.

I often have very limited time to play. I've been doing this for five years, and I know what does and doesn't work; I don;t want to debate for an hour over some minor detail of my build (or someone else's, for that matter). SO my goal is to get in and get things done.

I'm not saying all humans are bad players -- I am saying that playing with humans is very hit-or-miss. Heroes & henchmen are very consistent. If my goal is to simply play the game, H/H is the way to go.

I'm not in-game often enough to participate in a guild -- in fact, that's one of the appeals of GW, in that I can play without or without people according to my needs and desires.

What's wrong with that?

The short of it is that they are fools, the long answer: human monks are INHERENTLY better in every single way shape and form because they can actually play triage intelligently (this is the presumption). A good monk 'can' carry a bad grp of players through content where a bad monk would have let them all fail.

It may also stem from the fact that many people who play with monk heroes may not necessarily have a lot or bothered to procure a lot of monk skills so they slap stupid #&@^ like Sig of Devotion and Healing Breeze with their totally awesome UA build.

Assuming you are playing in a North American Timezone, you were grping with the euro crowd, who are by and large just plain better than NA crowds (yes this is stereotypical beyond belief but Europe does have the majority of the competitive player base)

This is intelligent game play, and is what makes GW PvE what it is.

If your point here is that hero/hench teams allow you to get things done and run the bars you want to, I think a lot of us here were aware of that years ago. Pugging with a setup that's unfamiliar to the rest of your team doesn't work when more than one person on your team wants to play "hero".

- There was a Monk today who would leave if the first boss wasn't the Monk boss known as Shalis Ironmantle. Apparently, he said it would be impossible in HM if the Monk boss doesn't show up first.
- There was a Mesmer today that used a Visions of Regret who wouldn't join a group unless there was at least two Monks already in the group.
- There was a Warrior today that got angry at us for pointing out he was using an axe with the elite skill Dwarven Battle Stance and deliberately aggroed a lot of enemies saying "it does work, watch!" and then we all die.
- There was a Paragon today that thought Paragons use bows, not spears.
- There was a Dervish today that was Level 17 and wondered why no one wanted him to join. Best part was he couldn't do HM and said he could... on his Warrior... that he deleted.

Good times today. Good times.

That's just you, dont assume the same for ALL of us.

The difference is heroes obey your skill planning for team synergy while PUGs usually do not.

It is actually funny you are right. Also with 3 open slots and heroes you can add an incredible amount of power skills and gaps you need to fill.

Here is a funny/sad event: Ethernal grove on HM trying to get the bonus.

With 4 guildies we did not manage to complete it 4 times in a row. But once we split up with 2 people + heroes, we both steamrolled at the 2nd attempt.

Point is that once you have the option to synergy your party, the succes rate is a lot higher then that of a pug/guild group.

On my ranger I found it easier an faster to find/form a group while spamming: "Ranger looking for nubs for HM + bonus". Lucky me, most of them at least know how to follow orders.

they did ruin PUGs... They made PUGs unneeded...lol

Thankfully so. If people dont want to PUG there is no point forcing them to, they would just sabotage the team and leave in the middle of the mission.

Hurrah for Enraged Lunge! And Otyugh's Cry that is always on my BM build.

Thanks so much for this post. New players who wonder why vets either play with Guildies or use Heroes and Hench will understand our point of view a bit better. PUGs are the absolute pits!

Poor Alesia. She dies so much because her full name is Alesia Baptiste. If only she had been named Alesia Methodiste she would have been much smarter!

Just yesterday I saw someone in need of Ooze Pit HM, so I decided to join the PUG since I hadn't planned anything else anyway and I like helping out people. Of course they ask me to show my build, which is pretty much your average 100 Blades build, and get to tell to bring other specific skills because "we can't do without it this and that" crap story and force me to bring another build. I refuse and get kicked of course.
Of course you can't do it with a 100 Blades build... oh wait, that's why H/H'd it that morning under 30 minutes using that exact same build.

Makes me go /facepalm, and it's a nice reminder of why I don't play much with human players anymore. Heroes don't complain about what I bring. Heroes run the builds I want them to bring, and run them well. Even henchmen are often better than human players, at least they're reliable and don't complain and moan or force you to run lesser builds.

Omg, melee hero, seriously? Alesia as heal? Orion for HM?

Real men would use some sort of SoS heal rit hero with splinter , N/Rt heal, MM + necro hench + mesmer hench along with your beast mastery build (enraged lunge + you chucking with spear spreading splinter).

Also anyone who insist to bring melee heroes in ... well anything (xcept nf require) is a no no tnx cya, from me.

Well i think thats your problem , otherwise i wouldn't mind having beast mastery ranger with me in mission.

I usualy don't have problem finding good pugs in z missions etc. (and by pugs i mean another person with heroes).

Anyone using PuG's for hard mode content is asking for trouble. It's not generally worth the miniscule reward in extra zcoins for zaishen missions to get frustrated over.

Sure PuG's can be great fun for messing around in normal mode with but the more random people you take the greater the likelihood you have someone in your group that doesn't know the area / mission, and the greater the chance of failure. Hard mode is pretty unforgiving, especially in the 6 and 4 man team areas. I'd rather not take that risk personally.

He pointed out earlier that he plays with those hero's because he likes it. He knows that sos, mesmers and Necros all exist but chooses not to play with them and the meta hero builds.

Clearly the heroes/henchmen he chose are sufficient to get through the mission on HM. Not everything need be a speed clear.

I'm ok with that.

BUT

How can he find fun in running melee heroes. I mean just observe the AI behavior of melee heroes. They attack one target. Then you call another target. They go insta retard mode. They bump between foes desperatly trying to get to the called target. After target is dead, you call another. They come first to you (to say hi or w/e i don't get why that's happening) then they go to targeted foe. Not to mention the AI does not use melee skills properly or often as they should.

I think players should also learn to trust other players' judgement. As long as they are not some noob builds why can't they bring along their build as long as it has a rez in it? Sometimes, surprises can and will happen.

the rule is :


guild groups > H/H group > good pug group (yes, they do exist) >>>>>>doggy poo >>>>> bad pugs (about 95% of them)

even with pug, i never change my build of read the wind , prep shot, dmg skill, dmg skill, three pve skills (usually vanguard assassin, technobabble and "i am the strongest") + rez skill

i have all pve titles maxed, so i use prep shot to spam them . I used to run sabway years (i've quit the game for two years, just came back) and now i am running some dual ritualists build , after reading all the great pve buffs rits got. Hm is getting even more easier now.

I usually never have problems at euro time, excepting with French people (sorry guys, of course it's not all of you, but it has been too many of you). During weekends, when I stay until later, it's a bit harder to get a decent pug.

But it's not about their builds or how they play. It's about OBEDIENCE.
If they don't OBEY, but instead they act on their own, we don't have a party, we have a bunch idiots soloing to their death.
When they understand simple radar commands like:
- "Let this patrol pass, and slip without agroing them".
- "There are some coming from here, fall back so we don't over-aggro".
- "Don't go through here, follow this other path"
Or calls for target, then the party is done.
I miss the /facepalm emote when a mesmer tries to interrupt a warrior instead interrupting the Meteor shower I've been pinging for 4 seconds.


After they tweaked the henchmen builds to something somehow more proper (Dunham now Interrupts and all!!) you no longer need so much help in Prophecies if you get some heroes, so I only party with people to help them, never to make things for myself, since excepting the elite areas and a couple of dungeons, I work better alone.

Try /doh =p

Anyway yeah, I also hate it when you're party leader in a PUG, and give out basic instructions and people plainly ignore them and go their own way, splitting up the party into two. /doh

What a condescending, elitist, and insulting attitude you have there! You're a perfect example of the kind of player that drives people like me away from human groups, and online games in general.

GW isn't chess; we don't have to play with identical pieces.

Here's the shocker for folk like you: I can beat the game IN HARD MODE well, quickly, and have fun WITHOUT running your so-called "optimized" "manly" builds. Really. I clear dungeons, roll through missions, and vanquish with groups that would make you shudder. All in Hard Mode.

So who's the better player -- the one who uses a few cookie-cutter builds, or the one who uses a wide variety of classes and builds?

As for melee heroes, here's what I run on Jora. I watch her skill bar, and she plays it quite well:

Dragon Slash
Sun and Moon Slash
Hamstring
Kneecutter
Deadly Reposte
Remedy Signet
For Great Justice
Watch Yourself

Hundred Blades doesn't work as well. The AI seems to say "I have an AoE skill, so it runs around looking for more than one target to hit when running HB. With Dragon Slash, Jora focuses on single targets, and spends more time killing and less time running.

My ranger runs one of two builds:

"I am the Strongest"
Volley or Crossfire
Enraged Lunge
Predator's Pounce
Otyugh's Cry
Comfort Animal
Pain Inverter
Death Pact Signet

Or she runs:

"I am the Strongest"
Punishing Shot
Sloth Hunter's Shot
Predator's Pounce
Otyugh's Cry
Comfort Animal
Pain Inverter
Death Pact Signet

When I don't want to argue with people, I run a no-pet build:

"I am the Strongest"
Splinter Weapon
Barrage
Lightning Reflexes
Distracting Shot
Pain Inverter
Zojun's Haste
Flesh of my Flesh

Splinter is too situational for my taste. It is a waste of a skill slot if enemies don't clump.

I have a half-dozen other builds for various purposes, but those two are my primary set-ups. I run a Hearty Dune Lizard named Fluffy, which I've had for five years, since level 17.

I don't carry an interrupt with my Enraged Lunge build because Ranger interrupts suck -- too slow in Hard Mode (flight time, even with a recurve bow) and little damage. A Mesmer is vastly better for interrupting.

As for synergies: Jora and Hayda plus an Orders necro can be exceptionally effective. I often run Hayda because she can provide so many different synergies.

SoS on a hero is effective, but ugly, because the hero AI does not effectively maintain their spirits, nor can they move them with Summon Spirits (it being a human-only skill). The SoS Spirits are like minions, firing randomly. Hero spirits makes for good pressure, but suck at spiking. Sure, I can micro the Spam Rit, but I don't want to. I bring heroes to support my character.

Jora, running the build above, is very effective, particularly in situations where casters are useless. She cuts down enemy squishies quite fast, and listens to my target commands.

I generally don't use healer heroes, though I do have ZB and WoH healers suited up when required. Kihm in Nightfall and Lina in GW:EN are quite good. I have a N/Rt, but don't use it often. I usually don't take any Necro heroes; I'm not a big fan of MMs. Minions slow a group down, tend to aggro on their own, and generally don't add much in hard mode other than damage absorption.

It's a GAME. A very complex one at that, too. And there are many effective and fun ways to "win" that don't require mindless parroting of PvX Wiki.