24 hours with full hero parties... how's it going?

I'm curious to know how others are enjoying (or not LOL) the game play using the full hero parties?

Have you tried any team builds you have found particularly useful?

Do you feel like you'll continue using the full hero parties instead of H/H even after the novelty has worn off?

Have you discovered any interesting combinations you wouldn't have previously considered?

What sort of places have you tried out the full hero party - and were those attempts successful or failures of epic proportions?

What are you enjoying most about having 7 heroes?

Least?

And most importantly... have you gone broke trying to outfit them yet?

5 years nerfing gw and now this? the game is ridicolously easy now

Friend of mine successfully completed the cave in Gloom on HM earlier today :>

Personally, I'm enjoying it... especially the opportunity to really experiment with builds and change things up frequently.

I haven't tried any specific team builds, but I've been doing a lot of combos of the standard bars I generally run on my heroes to see what seems to function well together.

I usually only play solo or with my husband, best friend and my friend Missy who I met via Guru. I'd imagine I'll continue to do a combination of that. Right now I am still kind of obsessed with trying out ways of combining my heroes into functional parties, so I'm doing more solo than I would on an average day... but I doubt that will last much past the weekend since I do enjoy playing with my husband & friends.

I don't know that I've so much discovered any "new" combinations, since I seem to still be taking along the same professions I usually do between H/H, but that may change as I get adventurous and try seeing if I can do something amazing with a paragon, dervish or 'sin in the mix. But right now I've got a necro MM, a rit MM bomber, a spirt rit, a smiting monk, a healing monk, an interrupt mesmer & either an earth ele or an earth shaker warrior - and I'm playing with variations on those familiar themes.

I've done both ZVs so far, plus some random ducking out into nastier areas to see how we fare. It's gone well so far, but I haven't tried anything like FoW or ToPK yet.

I think what I like most is that I feel like I have a little more freedom to explore things I'd otherwise wait for one of my cohorts to be able to do with me. Our schedules don't always mesh, so it's nice to be able to consider doing some challenging things on my own and not have to wait for one of them to be free as well.

I'm not sure there's anything I really "dislike" about it... but I may find there are consequences or ramifications I've not yet encountered. The jury is still out on that, I guess.

Fortunately, I haven't gone broke outfitting them... I've been pretty good about outfitting heroes as they were acquired. I'm also kind of a packrat, so we had a lot of runes on a couple of storage toons for those who weren't quite up to snuff.

I'm curious to know how others are enjoying (or not LOL) the game play using the full hero parties?

I'm enjoying it very much. It feels so much better than using henchies and I'm finding it incredibly difficult dying atm doing hard mode stuff.

Have you tried any team builds you have found particularly useful?
I'm running a fairly balanced team build and I'm finding it useful for most 8 party areas. Tried incorporating discordway but found that my speed using balanced was similar but offered slightly more protection.

Do you feel like you'll continue using the full hero parties instead of H/H even after the novelty has worn off?
Well, considering all my heroes are better equipped than the henchies, yes.

Have you discovered any interesting combinations you wouldn't have previously considered?
Nope.

What sort of places have you tried out the full hero party - and were those attempts successful or failures of epic proportions?
Though I already have legendary guardian, I tried to test out how efficient my heroes were at tahnakai temple and other hm areas. I found it was hard to die. Also tried to make a team setup that would allow me to solo glints. After many attempts and reworking team builds, I managed to solo it once. The other team needed dire help at times though, but managed it just.

What are you enjoying most about having 7 heroes?
It allows me to use heroes I normally wouldn't have due to some heroes having priorities over the limited 3 slots.

Least?
Nothing

And most importantly... have you gone broke trying to outfit them yet?
Nope, already outfitted and runed all my heroes way before the update.

I loaded up a 3 necro 2 mes 2 rit hero team to see how bad they would roll fow today.
The outcome was about what I expected, worring about aggro control is a thing of the past, I took 7 groups in burning forest, a skale got off a grenths balance once {slacker Norgus fault I'm sure}
That was the only time anyones hp got down to 50% and I never saw any flaming rocks fall from the sky.

I would still rather play with people but the heroes never DC or complain if I leave for awhile and forget to come back!!!

seems the closer we get to gw2 the easier it becomes

I have been enjoying it. Mainly experimenting with a couple slots with the heroes I always wished I could take.

It isn't the facerolling ezmode the jaded denizens here would characterize it, but then again, I haven't vanquished Jokos domain with a Rinblade, Frenzy and mending solo as some of these folks did back when GW wuz tuff.

Mistakes still hurt, strategy still matters, heroes are still dumb.

I do like the added utility of having healers I can set skills on while maintaining my core damage heroes. I vanquished Elona parts of EoTN with hench monk.

I've always liked Hayda in group.. but sacrificing Xan, Liv or Gwen to take her was iffy, now, it is not.

Still using my own noob builds.. no "way" gimmicks. Mostly running my alts through WIK missions, did Vanq Grothmar before I noticed it was NOT double points.

Not broke.. I have always been goofy about gearing them up.

I got nothing to test it out on. I thought I would be more interested, but I've already done everything and I got bored within a few hours again.

Now, understand, there are a lot of gaming skills the rest of you have picked up that I have not as I'm far more of a casual player however; I am nothing short of excited about the 7 hero teams.

I think that the biggest bonus is obviously the customization of what they use. To this day I can barely tell what skills the Henchies have. Having the ability to choose the skills has been great.

I apparently don't have the skill of some as I've still died plenty of times but it has not taken away from the fun. One thing I'm finding challenging for now is that having all these new possibilities has left me a little distracted in building a solid team but I can clearly see the potential.

My follow up question on this is what is everyone thinking of the Merc Heroes? I'd really like to know if they're worth it before spending the extra. My alt has elite armor, does that carry over?

I hope it doesn't get worse than this... I mean... the game is already completely broken

Heroes? What are those? I can't hear you over the sound of everything my Fire Imp is blowing up in pre-Searing.

Gosh, I bet you are fun at parades and birthday parties.

your forgot "he puts the fun in funerals"

Impy FTW!!! I swear I was close to tears when I made that first roll over from 19 to 20 with my toon. My hubby has a monk he'd been playing in pre the last few months, working towards LDoA (got to lvl11 before the change). Every so often he'd look over at me, pull out his headphone plug and smirk as his Impy was doing his little shriek - ebil man, teasing me like that.

I think Impy would have made a much better god than Kormir. *nod nod*

It's going rather well, actually.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e9p7if7j8Y

Always had a lot of trouble with the Shiro fight until now.

It's also prompted me to finally get off my duff and finish some dungeons.

Heheh. Presearing got a burst of new people.

----------------------------------------------------
7 Heroes are great, but I'm only using 5 of them though since I needed to VQ in Tyria.

I normally get bored after 2 zones, but I got around to doing 5 today in the same amount of time. The difference is I was able to bring my paragon hero for fallback and my dervish hero for minion heals (avatar of dwayna) so I didn't waste as much time looking for patrols and mobs.

When you register the char you want copied it takes a "snapshot" as they are at that time.. including the armor and or costumes/hats equipped. I know people have set up Furrocious Eared mercs. Apparently the effect costumes do not, like the Flaming head.

Whether they are worth it is up to you. I've spent 40 on makeover packs, so, I am willing to spend to tweak appearance. And, that is all I considered.. I want to adventure with my varied chars in a group.. never considered any other aspect. I do think the people spending bucks for some imagined game advantage re number of professions will be disappointed. I'll buy it for the cosmetic appearance.. and won't be disappointed.

PVP was usually nerfed. From what I remember, PVE has always been getting buffed, especially since the PVP / PVE skill split.

Dont forget about consets too.

Yeah, they should never allow 8 human parties, they make the game too easy.
"Ridicolously" easy even.

Thats not that big a deal, Ellys solo shiro with a single hero

(The hero doesnt do anything important but run around, your still pretty much killing shiro entirely on your own)

Glorious vindication.

Buy a new account

True, but it's a big deal to me. Before Normal Mode Shiro meant that I'd have to zerg him into oblivion four or five times until I finally got lucky and took him down.

Now I can get him on the first try in Hard Mode.

That being said, I'm not the most skilled player you'll ever find. But hey, it works!

Vanquish, yeah..you read that right....VANQUISH, UW under 2hr..including my diarrhea breaks w/ 7 heroes.

Does that count toward an area for Leg Vanq title?

Got 3 ectos and 1 ruby. Not bad for 1K entrance.

People are still -getting- the heroes and are still upgrading them and such. It would take a bit longer to see how things go.

The only char I have that had all heroes was my main. Now I'm rolling everyone else through nightfall and gwen :/

But I already got what I call Oblivion-syndrome. In Oblivion, that's a single player game, you can't have a conversation with your companion. So you get lonely and then you go to embark beach and find some noodles to help out.
Made a new friend today

Vanquished Sacnoth Valley for the first time in 1 hour 19 minutes. Two party wipes occurred, but I did so much better than usual.

So it's going great!

My heroes FAILED me. I thought that with how easy things are going for everyone, I'd try to get master's on Gate of Madness (normal mode even!). Well, things were going smoothly, I had killed the Lich and had captured 3 of the 5 Shrines. Then all of the sudden, *POOF*, the end of mission cinema is showing. My heroes killed Shiro in the time it took to walk between the various shrines, leaving me two shrines short

Go for Shiro first, and bring spirits.

The Lich gets easily distracted by the spirits. The guy loves hitting them.

Also, as I recall from doing that mission, I managed to get Shiro stuck in a corner by pulling him out far enough - he just stood there and did nothing.

Anyway, I'm having fun with the update. My main is the only one with all of the heroes, and I've done three vanquishes (Jaya Bluffs, since it was the ZV last night, Perdition Rock, and Raisu Palace...why those ones? Why not?) and cleared Stygian Veil, just because I could. I'm also setting up teams on my other characters and doing WiK on the other two that have it unlocked - I steamrolled Riverside Assassination with my Assassin.

Thats hilarious. I've seen shiro get close before just with SoS + minions trailing behind the group, but never actually die.

I highly recommend against killing him first through. Lich just dies way too quickly, 1 hero left unattended for 10s would probably off him.

For Gates of Madness, it really doesn't matter at all which you fight first if you flag your heroes ahead to cap the shrines before the Lich or Shiro turn hostile. Just stay out of earshot range from the door and flag your heroes to each shrine.

I'm loving the seven hero parties.

And being able to micro all 7 heroes pays off! I got masters by killing the Lich, then disabling all the offensive skills on 4 of the heroes. It felt just like 3 heroes / 4 henchies again

I've never been able to get the "flag your heroes ahead and let them capture the shines" thing to work, but then again, I've only tried to do so twice.

You may already know this, but just in case you don't...

I learned from doing that mission that you aren't just limited to flagging heroes on the round compass map. You can also flag them on the "U" map. You click on the flag beneath the round compass map like usual, and then just drag it over to the open "U" map and place your flags. That "U" map displays the location, and status, of each of the shrines... so you basically just move your heroes from one shrine to the next, waiting for the one you've flagged to change colors before moving the heroes on to the next shrine you want them to capture.

I played for months without knowing you could flag on the "U" map. LOL

I've been playing this game off and on for five years, and there is still stuff I don't know. Thanks

I found out that flagging your hero's directly to the shrines in GoM gets them stuck. I would suggest flagging them in the middle, count to 5, flagging them to the shrine.

I like it. So many custom options it melts my face.

Hint to Anet: Introduce a new necro hero in the near future and watch the forums explode in complaints of people who feel ripped off.

I managed to beat war in Kryta and complete my 30/30 in the hall of monuments.

It's fun testing crazy team builds with heroes.

I cleared wastes and chamber then i bailed cause i had to go to work. Tell me , how are the old friends mindblades? What do you use against them?

I was thinking of doing all quests in UW, but 4H would be nearly impossible and i would fail at Dhuum.

Beside that i did whole hm fow (vanquish and quests) and ToPK hm. Still want to do Urgoz , Slavers, Deep, and maybe frostmaw and see how's that going.

QFT.It's be best way for Anet to (try) mantain alive the game, after 6year and large part of players got everything.

It's the same reason because SF is still so powerful i guess.
Nerf it and half of player will say "We'll see again when GW2 comes around!".