Any difference between heroes of the same base class?

Bit of a newb question here.. in a thread in the Heroes & AI forum (which was closed for being a "looking for build" post), I saw the advice given: "don't use Ogden; use Tahlkora and Dunkoro".

Which seemed odd to me. Is there any difference between the three of them other than appearance? Aren't they just monks, with whatever secondary class you want to give them, whatever attributes and skills you want to give them, and whatever weapons and runes you want to give them?

Ogden is a dwarf.
Tahlkora is a female.
Dunkoro is a male.

Racist/Sexist comments involved :P

Lol just joking.

Ogden is a bit more ... slow.
While others are less ''Mentally slow''.
(No offense).

For example : If your retreating, Ogden will take the time to do his Life spirit, etc.

All heroes operate under the same AI and perform the same. Just a bit of cognitive bias that some players get and tend to repeat to others until it becomes an urban legend.

Well, Jora is taller and easier to see than the other warrior heroes. My cognitive bias finds her more effective probably because she is easier to keep up with during a battle? Probably.

Officially Kunder is right. All heroes of the same base class are identical. Only the skins differ.

But cognitive bias should not be ignored! Then too I am superstitious.

Heroes of different races can't spread disease around as easily I think.

Good point, I do like that about Jora. M.O.X., on the other hand, irritated me because he was just a bit too big.

Oh that's an interesting one - so that would be advantage Ogden, surely?

This is the only difference. The non-human heroes are not subject to disease or Edge of Extinction from human party members or allies/foes. (They are subject to those things from allies/foes of their own race though.)

The AI is identical on them.

I am pretty sure your right about disease spreading and I think that having a mixed race party makes Edge of extinction much more usable.

Depends on the situation... sometimes, you do fight dwarves and centaurs, after all. But really, the differences are negligible.

I seem to have a diff experiance - usually its dunkoro i have issues with , infact issues are that strong i never use him and if a team member adds him i ask for him to be replaced.
The reason is a bit strange , at some stage whilst doing a vq with a guildie i noticed that dunkoro wasnt acting correctly and i was lucky to have a self heal as he was literally leaving me to die.We had no minions so that idea went and to make sure i was doing a valid test i asked the guildy to go off radar and we sent the remaining heros away as well.This left just me and dunkoro - i faced a small mob and dunkoro ignored me totally and when i died he still did nothing.This rather amused the guildie as it was laughable.
Next few vq`s we kept an eye on dunkoro and even switched him with guildie for his and funny enough i was ignored again.
Ive heard a few ppl say in the past dunkoro does go a bit funny at times - i remember the old livia problem but anet fixed that.

I used to wonder when they released mercs that the diff chr traits also affected how the ai was for that hero/merc.
So my choice is ditch dunkoro and stick with other 2 - or go e/mo er ele .


From what i recall from nightfall - if the centaur hero got diseased we all got it and he isnt human , hopefully some players can give feedback and im tempted to find a place with plenty of disease and test

Can't say I've noticed any difference between heroes, except for in this particular case:

When I death level new pets in the Menagerie, I bring Gwen and Norgu with "Flesh of my Flesh", and even though they both have the same stats, same equips and same skill employed, they do NOT act the same. In every single case when I do death levelling, Norgu will run back and forth ressing me all the time, while Gwen mostly just stands there and do nothing. She resses once in a while, but not often. In this case, there clearly is a difference in their AI's.

Of course, this is not enough evidence to prove that there is a difference in all the heroes, but in this particular case, there definitely is.

I've heard, and noticed to a small degree (maybe I'm just crazy), but heroes play their starting attributes more dominantly than others. Like Olias would play a better Death Magic necromancer than the other two, Livia would be Blood, and Master of Whispers would be Curses. Whether this is true, and if it is, to a degree of affecting play, I don't know. I've noticed when I call for a spike with my eles, all using the same build, Sousuke generally uses his Searing Flames first, followed by the other two slightly later. Now, before people tell me that isn't uncommon, take a look at this: they are all within range at all times, energy was plentiful and recharge was up, nothing to reduce casting time or anything, this sort of thing has happened numerous times for me. Maybe its a fluke, I don't know, but when I switch them to Air, Vekk takes lead and the others are slightly behind, it's only noticeable if you are actively trying to find it. Like I said, maybe I'm crazy, maybe it doesn't actually happen that way, if anything I feel that way because of the mindset I've already had.

tl:dr version, I've noticed a difference, but mine could be flukes .

Not necessarily. There could be other factors, like distance (between both you and the hero and perhaps the hero and the pet). You could also have missed something like whether the hero is set to guard/avoid combat. It's easy to miss little things. One persons experience is not enough to definitively say there is a difference. Besides, why would there be, and why would Anet not tell us about it? If they put in the effort to tweak certain heroes to act in certain ways it makes sense that they'd explain it.

@OP, another thing that is somewhat related is that it's possible to change Razah's primary profession. As far as gameplay goes this doesn't change anything, but it may be convenient to set up certain heroes in certain ways for convenience if you switch Razah around a lot.

One major part of an RPG is discovery. Maybe if these things are implemented the way people have theorized, they're that way so we can discover them for ourselves. If Anet hands us everything we could ever want, would we really enjoy the game?

I recall an update that made all heroes treated as the same race as the player for the purpose of things like disease spreading and EoE. This may have been a PvP only change, though, before heroes were removed from PvP entirely.

One reason someone would suggest those two is that they are required for the Nightfall storyline, and thus should be leveled up. Same goes for the other Heroes *needed* for the NF storyline - better to level and use Koss, Melonni, etc., than to use the EotN Heroes of the same class.