How Solo-able is it?

After keeping up with all the Guild Wars 2 news and reading both books, I've seriously been considering buying this trilogy off of Steam. However, I'm more interested in the RPG factor than the MMO factor for GW (not that I hate being social in MMOs, I'd just rather not spam LFGs when all I want is to experience the story).

Anyway, my question to you is how easy is it to solo in the campaigns? Is it still enjoyable? Are there important parts in the campaign that I can't do without fellow players, and are these moments frequent?



PS - I'm not really interested in the PvP aspect (at the moment, anyway). My main priority right now is diving into GW lore without spending all day on a wiki.

Very easy. Although, if you like the Lore you will probably want to start in Prophesies, but if you do, get to Nightfall as fast as you can and unlock heroes. They make doing it on your own a whole lot more enjoyable/easy.

When you got all four parts (the trilogy and the expansion) it's really easy if you don't mind opening different storylines early.

The easiest way imo is to do the following:
1: start in factions (2th part)
2: when you reach the mainland travel to Kaineng city and unlock all the other campaigns and get all the hero's you get at the start.
3: don't run 7 heroes yet, but continue playing till you can change 2th proffession and take a few of them to lvl up with you
4: start doing prophecy's for getting skills free and getting money while playing the game. It's relative easy. concentrate on your own skills first and then on your hero's skills
5: when they all are skilled up start saving money for armor upgrades
6: enjoy the game, you prolly can roll it now.

But... No matter in what campaign you start, having all campagins and eotn means you can unlock the most important things really soon.

If you're just starting out, henchmen will do you better than heroes. Yeah, heroes are customizable, but you'll have no skills for them, so it's really not worth it.

The game is designed to be playable on your own, that's what AI henchmen and heroes are for ^^

Heroes are not necessary to complete Prophecy.

Best advice i can give you is to do all quest you get in the differents areas you are in. it will give you gold and experience.
And if you start in Proph, you ll get lots of skills from quests.

I'm a pretty new player - started a few months back now. Completing the campaigns solo with heroes & henchmen is not a problem. I'm working on doing everything in hard mode now (I'm about 2/3 of the way to completing that). The difficulty level is actually great, I found, it ramps up nicely as your familiarity with the game ramps up. And building and controlling a team of heroes is great fun.

I've actually never grouped in GW so I have no idea what that's like, but for mine, it's one of the best single-player multiplayer games around. :-)

for the new player, prophecies (the first chapter), has a great learning curve--so you will learn and gain skills at about the same time. It is recommended to start with this chapter ...it has a beautiful tutorial (pre-searing) area and gives you time to learn the ropes.

GW is very solo-able using heroes & henchmen.

I'd say that starting your first character in Prophecies is the way to go. Not only does it have the gentlest learning curve (may be a little bit on the slow side), but you can unlock a lot of skills in the early portion of the chapter doing side quests while leveling up. The henchmen available there are good enough to see you through to Lion's Arch, where you can get quests to take your characters to the other chapters & Eye of the North.

The old lone wolf here. Yes, the game can be soloed in the sense that it is just you and the heroes and/or henchmen. IMHO, one of the best RPGs around.

I recommend start with Nightfall. The chapters and Eye of the North are so different from each other in terms of story that knowing the global secret does not detract from the individual stories but rather strengthens them. If you start Nightfall and finish it, you will have a full set of heroes that will make Prophecies and Factions a cakewalk. Alternatively, start with Prophecies for the vintage, classic experience of the game.

http://www.guildwiki.org/Main_Page will give you full info and walkthrus for missions. Also much other useful information.

Welcome to Guild Wars. A gigantic, vast, and complex game that you learn one bit at a time like everyone else did. Take your time and look around. There is lots to see and do.

Thanks for the help everyone, I've now purchased the game but I do still have a question or two. I'm new to this whole "campaigns, not expansion" thing. For those suggesting I start in Nightfall or Factions, would this in any way spoil the story for Prophecies? Or is each campaign stand alone? And am I able to be midway through one campaign and switch to another with the same character?

Each campaign is standalone, but they take place after one another. I recommend starting in Nightfall because of the heroes and because of the medium-sized length of the tutorial area (Prophecies = too long, Factions = too short). It would not spoil your experience with the other campaigns, since each story is distinct. A few things only become clear after you play the other campaigns as well, but this is not relevant to the main story line.

And yes, you are able to travel freely between the campaigns, once you reach a port outpost and did the corresponding quests to travel to other campaigns.

You can see the 3 campaigns as 3 big maps, and each big map has its own story line.

If you start in Nightfall, you get to the port outpost immediately but are able to do the travel quests after the tutorial when you are about level 18.
If you start in Factions, you get to the port outpost and are able to do the travel quests after the tutorial when you are about level 18.
If you start in Prophecies, you get to the port outpost and are able to do the travel quests after about 1/3 of the story line when you are about level 13-15.

Prohecies, Factions and Nightfall are stand-alone campaigns that can be played independant from each other. Eye of the North is an expension that requires you to own any of the campaigns.
You can take your characters to other campaigns (and eye of the north) and pick up the story there (not from the very start... but you will be introduced into the story in a natural manner as a foreign hero comming to aid a different continent in trouble).
I suggest you play prophecies first. It has a great learning curve. It is long and slow pased, but the story is kickass^^
Many people will disagree, but I like Factions alot as well. Its learning curve is much steeper, so I don't suggest starting there. The story is short and fast pased, but story is just right for the length of this campaign. The different sceneries are also very nice.
Nightfall I find the least appealing. It's personal preference, but the story is not well written enough for the length of the game, and the sceneries are all kinda monotonous for me (I don't really like desert settings, I guess ><).
Eye of the North is fun new content if you play through it once, but other than that I hope it's not a taste of what's to come in GW2. It's only an expension, so I'll cut anet some slack.
I value things like scenery/story/atmosphere in games, and Guild Wars hasn't dissapointed me. I have played through all campaigns multiple times and still enjoy them. So you are in for a good time, wherever you decide to start your adventure.
Have fun^^

Edit: And yeah, it's very solo-able with heroes or henchmen (It's what I usually do, though I do seek company from a guildie from time to time). As has been said, heroes are only good after you get some skills unlocked (prophesies has quite alot of skill quests that give you free skills ), so it's best to start with henchmen.

Step 1:
Create one of every character in Nightfall...continue on them until lvl 5 (complete the quest where talk to all the skill trainers) this unlocks some skills for you and your heroes

Step 2: Create a real character in Factions (u can to lvl 20 fast) play up until U get to the big (main island) get a run to Kaineng City (or just walk there its do north)

Step 3: Get a run to Nightfall (called a Ferry to NF). Complete the whole thing. This unlocks skills for your heroes, lvls your heroes. ( make sure to get masters in every mission you do, saves you allot of time later redoing them)Don't forget to pick up PVE skills from skill trainer

Step 4:After Nightfall map back to Kaineng City, continue the story until you reach Shiro ( have a alliance member run it for you) Don't forget PVE skills( make sure to get masters in every mission you do, saves you allot of time later redoing them)

Step 5: Go back to Kaineng City.. do the quest to go Prophecies... Once in LA get a run to TOA.....after that leave and back to Kaineng City.

Step 6: Go to EOTN ( tip: bring running skills). Once there, do main quest (ignore the dungeons) only stopping to do sub quest when they offer PVE skills as a reward. (you will want them all)

Step 7: complete EOTN, by this time you should have lots of money to upgrade your heroes, start working on titles, ect.., ect...

Step 8: Go to LA.. get a run to Droks..Continue Prophecies story line until you complete it...(make sure to finish Bonus objectives) Now you have Hard Mode unlocked on every continent.

Step 9: Go to TOA.. joing a pug for FoWsc .. start making money and mats..

Step 10: Bored of doing FOWSC? you will be shortly.. Go do every thing over in Hard Mode, work on titles, get more money. Once you have enough.. worry about better looking armor(stats are the same) better looking weapons,. ect..ect..

[ all this can be done solo with heroes and hench]

Just wanted to add: If you play Nightfall before the other 2 games, you will spoil their endings. The best way to play is in the campaigns chronological order; Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall, Eye of the North.

In Nightfall, you can get "heroes" which are like the henchmen you pick up at outposts, only specifically yours, and you can give them weapons, armor, builds, etc. It's like having other people with you, only ones you can control - which is why people are saying start here, so you can get these powerful allies.

It IS possible to get through proph/factions with henchmen though, (generic npcs everyone can add to their parties before you go exploring/start missions,) and story-wise, it'd be best if you DID go down this road - and if you got stuck, you could always ask for some help with missions from guru - GW players really are the friendliest, more helpful community I've ever come across.

as already stated you could pretty much start off any campaign and not miss out on storylines, i recommend like cosyfiep said to at least start a character in prophecies to get the original guild wars experience, have fun with it and try not to take shortcuts the first time around

It is right that finishing nightfall first would spoil the other games. But the main spoiler is at the end, after you get most of the hero's (4 hero's you get after the spoiler, but 3 of them can also be obtained earlier, where you have to pick one over the other).

There is a smaller spoiler earlier on in Nightfall, but it's well hidden and if you didn't do the spoiled part, you wouldn't know it was a spoiler.

Yep, Prophecies is the best campaign to start with to learn the game and unlock skills using skill quests. Don't worry about heroes just yet, the game is playable without them. Besides they're worse than henchmen until you unlocked enough skills for them.

Pretty much this. Prophecies is vast and sometimes you'll be finding yourself confuzzled and wondering where the hell to go in which case I recommend checking the wiki which you can access ingame by pressing F10 and typing whatever you want to search in the search bar.

Guild Wars these days is basically a solo rpg with the option of playing with other people. Heroes don't make the mistakes humans do which is what a lot of people prefer, for me it ruins the mmo experience I can't play without at least 1 other social person in my party but it's up to whatever you like best. The lore is rich and imo Prophecies has BY FAR the best story to it.

Prepare yourself for some really terrible voice acting at times though lol.

People keep giving you the "fastest" or so-called "best" way to play the game. These are people who play GW as if it's a console shooter and the object is to beat the game as fast as possible.
If, on the other hand you are interested in the RPG/PvE aspect of the game and the story/lore, the best way to play the game is to start from Prophecies. It then doesn't really matter, lore-wise, whether you do Factions, Nightfall, or Eye of the North next. Factions & Nightfall have their own separate storylines, which eventually blend into the main storyline, and EotN builds on the central story.

In Normal Mode you can easily do the whole game with just Henchmen (and/or Heroes), which is not truly "solo", but for a practical purposes it's the same.

If you are mainly focused on the RPG elements, one nice thing are the Mercenary Heroes. You can make the mercenary heroes from your own alts and end up with a complete party of just you and your other characters.

If you're playing GW for the storyline, you should play it in this order:

Prophecies and Factions (Doesn't matter which one you do first)
Nightfall (because it continues the storyline of the two other storylines)
Eye of the North

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I started in Prophecies and followed the chronological order (phoph -> factions -> nightfall -> EotN) I just gave 1 step in the EotN when I reached Lion's Arch to get some heroes.
Resuming I "soloed" the whole game w/o problem (in my 1st char and no one helped me with gold).

Thanks again for all the help! I wish I could just hop into game right now, but I made the mistake of upgrading my trial account from last year with my code, not knowing I needed my character's name (who I'll probably just delete anyway). Support is taking pretty long to reply though

EDIT: And as I say that, I get six emails from NCsoft XD

Now I am a noob and a half, but I started in Prophecies and managed to get hold of an elite-skill for each profession I was intending to use, and then slotted these into my Heroes.
After upgrading some of their armours in the 1st challenge mission in Nightfall I could easily complete Prophecies and make a few missions in Factions and Nightfall.
However, I am not very good at this game, so I got terminally stuck after that and ran out of time. However, getting a good elite-skill each for the heroes really does help immensely. The Wiki will tell you where to go get the ones you want.

Just so you know, that doesn't actually do anything other than change the appearance. It has no statistical benefit whatsoever.

Might be a few days late to have any impact on your decision, but here's my 2 cents:

I'm like you, a new player that has become interested in the lore due to interest in GW 2. I decided to buy the trilogy and have been having great fun with it so far.

I started in Prophecies and intend to play the whole series in order without any of the jumping around for heroes and skills. I finished Prophecies without any issues and while there were a few challenging spots I never felt gimped. I'm probably half-way through Factions now and still trucking along just fine.

I will point out that I picked up M.O.X. as a hero just because you stumble on him as you're playing through, and he did make a significant difference in my party's power, but I'm sure I would have done just fine without him.

Its very easy to solo with the 7-Heroes update.

I'm so glad I stumbled on this thread (even though it's a couple months old now) and registered with the forum after reading it. I'm not a new player to the game but a returning one after initially playing it for a while when it first came out and after reading all the news about GW2, wanting to get back into it.

I still have the first character I created (Warrior/Elementalist, Level 13) in the Prophecies campaign (thankfully I still have my original login details to hand) and I'm considering whether to continue with that character or start afresh with a new one (seeing as I can't remember much of the storyline).

Anyway, I have bought all of the other campaigns except EoTN (may get this at a later date) and wondered whether I should start again from the beginning. I too like the OP will be playing alone as I only have one other friend I play games with and he didn't like the original game as it was very easy to get lost due to the quite bad wayfinding. I find it difficult to play with other people online as often we're in different timezones and I never seem to be able to get regular playing sessions. Plus I prefer to just go it alone at my own pace and get into the story a bit more.

I mainly stopped playing the first campaign because I got stuck at level 13 and my henchmen were a few levels below and I just couldn't seem to get any further because of this (I would constantly get killed due to my rubbish henchmen).

However, after reading this thread I can see that it is possible to complete all the GW campaign's/expansion on your own (with henchmen/heroes) so I'd really like to give it another whirl. I prefer the warrior class as I like hacking/slashing so if I were to make another character it would probably be with that.

What do you guy's think I should do? Carry on with my old character or start afresh with a new one and do you have any tips about using henchmen? Mine never seemed to level up the same as me and were generally quite rubbish (unless I had the wrong mixture of henchmen?).

Thanks for your help.

EDIT: I've just gone back into the game with my old character and checked my quests log and have these quests active:

Primary Quest: The Way Is Blocked
Northern Shiverpass Quests: Helping The Dwarves
Securing The Vale
Shiverpeak Stragglers
The Road To Borlis Pass

I've no idea how far into the game I am from there but do you think it's worth continuing or starting anew?

It is up to you if you want to start a fresh character or move on with the one you got. You are not real far into the game. One thing: If your character is several years old you should have received birthday gifts which contain miniature pets. They don't do anything except for walk around with you, but people are collecting them and some of them are worth a considerable sum. Check the minipet and tonics thread over in the Price check forum here on Guru.
And yes the henchmen are not that great but they can do well enough for a start. Once you reach Lions Arch you might want to detour to NF and EOTN quickly to gain heroes.
As for quests: Delete some of these quests, do them one at a time and then re-take the ones you deleted. Just these quests outside Yaks bend tend to make extra enemies spawn on top of each others so you end up facing a horde that is too strong for you at this level.

Continue! If you delete your current character to start over, I suspect you'll end up regretting it. You're only a small way into the storyline, having presumably done only four missions out of 25. You haven't even really started the main part of the storyline yet, which doesn't begin until you get to Kryta and learn about the threat there.

If you want to refresh yourself on the earlier part of the story and the general gameplay, just use another character slot to create a temporary character and play him for a while. Things will probably come back to you quickly and you won't bother playing the new character very long before going back to the old one.

My first bit of advice would be to abandon all of the quests you listed except the Primary. (Don't worry, you can pick up the others again later.) When you pick up all of those quests at the same time, you end up filling Traveler's Vale with tons of foes that aren't normally there, so you may get trashed every time you set foot outside Yak's Bend. Do the primary quest to get to the next mission outpost, then return to Yak's Bend to do the others.

Henchmen do not level up, but higher-level versions are found as you enter outposts further into the game. They are generally a bit lower in level than the foes in the area until you reach the level 20 areas. In your case, the henchies will be level 8 while the foes will mostly be 9/10 and bosses will be level 12. However, henchie skill bars and AI have improved a bit over the last couple of years, and you may find they work better than you remember. Keep in mind that the party size limit goes up to six when you reach Yak's Bend, so you will be able to take five henchies instead of three now.

Thanks for the advice, I'll stick with the old character I had and see if I can progress further. I didn't know that stacking quests populated an area with additional foes for each quest. Is it a good idea in general to just do one quest at a time? I'll try your tips about abandoning (temporarily anyway) my current side-quests and just get on with the primary quest.

As for the birthday gifts, I had received 6 but then I also remembered a little while after I had created another character for playing with a friend who had received the game for his birthday (that character is only level 2 as he ended up not liking the game so I abandoned the character), anyway that character had received 3 miniatures so I have a total of 9 now.

For some reason though, my main character who has 6 gifts (one for each birthday) doesn't have the first years, just years 2-7 so I'm not sure what happened there. I'll have to look through the trading section to find out what to do as I've never traded any game items before (presumably it's a case of hooking up with someone in game and creating a trade?).

I'm sure I'll get back into the swing of things soon. I'm looking to get back into RPG games now seeing as I've just pre-ordered Skyrim (hope that's not a dirty word here?) so I'll be splitting my time between that and GW.

For those that seem to "keep dying with rubbish henchmen"...there are some basic, basic game mechanics that all new players should learn pretty quickly. Among the most important are:

1. Pulling -there are parts in every campaign where it is extremely difficult for new players to beat if you do not pull (mobs of enemies that belong to separate groups) . Learn to pull (use a flatbow...doesn't have to be max damage or anything fancy...it's not to do damage but to pull mobs apart). One of the most common ways new players get stuck because they can't get past a part where there are large mobs (they'd wade right into it and get slaughtered).

2. Flagging - a lot of enemies have AoE (area of effect) attacks that can wipe out parties that cluster together (which is what your hero/hench party will do around you by default). Use your party flags to spread your party out so they don't all get blasted at the same time. You'll also find that enemies are less likely to cast heavy AoE spells if your party is spread out. This is the other most common reason for persistent wipe out (along with not pulling).

3. Moving - this is commonly called 'kiting'...you're a lot easier to hit (and die) if you are standing still. This is especially true if you're under pressure from opposing spell casters or ranged attack. Keep moving to avoid being caught in a landslide of damage. Inexperienced and "experienced" players alike tend to stand still while spells like sandstorm or ray of judgment, or firestorm and the like are pelting away at them. Simply moving makes it that much harder for enemies to kill you or even hit you.

4. Do all side quests - do not skip over side quests as they provide several key components to help you get through GW more easily (experience, gold, skills, potential for item drops, etc). Have seen too many people try to zip through the main story arch of each campaign without going out, finding (some are not obvious) and doing the side quests. I would recommend wiki for this part of it if you do nothing else. Money and experience are important for obvious reasons even if you don't have to be a money grubber to do well in GW.

5. Know your skills - I've played with players (that were all decked up in the fanciest armors and wielding the fanciest looking weapons) and, honestly, I don't think they ever used the skills on their skillbar. Get to know the skills that are available for your class and try to figure out how best to utilize them. Not every skill synchs well with every other skill. Nor do you really need an "elementalist that can blow things away" in your party (I rarely ever use an ele in a all hero party). You don't need 2 "warrior types", 2 "monk types", a "ranger type", etc. Use skills that are best suited for your class (an ele should not be wielding an axe and charging into battle no matter how cool an axe skill might look...and I can't tell you how many times I've helped new warriors that use staves or eles that use axes and charge) and stick with it.

6. On the skill discussion...while it is nice if you earn and learn the skills as you go, I would recommend that you just buy the 3 (or is that 4?) skill packs from NC store. It costs money but at least you won't have to worry about finding skills for your heroes. You'll still need to learn/earn/cap skills for yourself but at least the heroes are set. It just gets too tedious from complete scratch.

7. Join a good guild - there are good guilds and there are bad guilds. you want a guild where your mates (especially the officers) are willing to help teach you and work with you on improving your gaming skills. there are guilds out there were you wont' get that help and it'll be a waste of time early on. New players do not need to joing guilds that are specializing in UWSC, FOW, PVP, blah, blah, blah...new players need to find a guild with good mature people that are helpful and patient...and tbh don't talk up a storm of nonsense about lite this, noob that.

Hope this helps.

You can get some Hall of Monuments points with those birthday gifts, so if you are here because of GW2 (like me), you'll want to dedicate a few of those minipets. A rare (gold) mini + a unique (green) mini gives you three Hall of Monuments points, allowing you to get the full Heritage armor set when GW2 rolls around. Read up on the minipets and Hall of Monuments, specifically, the "Devotion" portion before trading/selling those minis off.

As JEVillen said, don't be in a hurry to sell these just yet.

But, you can't have years 2-7 because the seventh birthday doesn't begin until April 2012. Years 1-5 contain minipets, while year 6 presents contain tonics. The tonics are of no use in the HoM, so you may consider selling those if you wish.

Wow, thanks for all the advice so far, it's given me a lot to think about and read up on. I'll keep hold of my mini pets for a while until I figure out what this HoM is all about. You're right Brett, I do have 5 minipets and 1 tonic, it just confused me because each one said which birthday it was for and the earliest I have was for my 2nd birthday.

Drakor, I'll certainly keep an eye on what my henchmen are doing in future and try to keep spread out more. I think normally I just leave them to their own devices and assume that as long as they're attacking enemies, they must be helping me in some way. I'll check out what skills I have too and see what works best, I think when I created the character I just went with all the default suggestions for class etc as I couldn't be bothered wading through all the options as I just wanted to get into the game. I probably just went for an elementalist thinking it would be good to have some sort of magic power.

I'm gonna have a long session later tonight and try and get back into the swing of things. Thanks for all the help so far guys!

Leaving henchies to their own devices can work. But it may work even better to get the whole team concentrating on a priority target, like the healer(s) in the group of foes. If you take out the opposing healer(s) first, the others go down much more easily. To make the team work together, select your target, and then hit <ctrl>-<space> to announce it, or hold <ctrl> while double-clicking on your target. The henchies will all attack any target you call like this, bringing it down faster with focused fire. Eventually you will learn to recognize which foes are particularly dangerous so you can set priorities on taking them out.

For your second profession, don't worry about it now. It really isn't as important a decision for a new player as some would have you believe. When you're about halfway through Prophecies you'll be able to change it at will, after you reach Ascended status. Meanwhile, it is perfectly okay to just ignore your secondary profession and make the best build you can from only warrior skills.

Elementalist isn't really a great choice for warriors because most ele skills have a high energy cost. Warriors have very low amounts of energy compared to eles, and regenerate energy only half as fast, so they just aren't capable of doing a whole lot of magic. The main reason to go W/E is to use the elemental Conjure skills, but the skill trainers who can sell you these skills are much deeper in the game than your current location. But you might also find a good use for one of the following, which you can get for free as quest rewards at your point in the game:

Magnetic Aura (Geomancer's Test in Serentity Temple)
Whirlwind (Heart of Ice in Yak's Bend)

These are both defensive skills that affect foes in melee range to you and their energy cost is low.

Well I've been playing for a couple of hours and I can remember now why I stopped in the first place... the henchmen are just idiots!! You can't control them at all, they'll just auto-attack anything that comes within a mile of them and it's almost impossible to get them to attack specific targets. The camera is just really annoying as you're constantly having to move it around with the right-mouse-button and it's really difficult to target anything without left-clicking 10 times and seeing as every single enemy/party member's name is displayed it's even harder to click on something specific.

I've done my primary quest: The Way Is Blocked and now I'm going back through the side-quests one at a time starting with Shiverpeak Stragglers which is proving impossible to complete as my party just gets overrun by dwarves and the people I'm supposed to be escorting back to Yak's Bend inevitably end up being slaughtered.

If the henchmen's AI wasn't so bad I might actually be able to do half of the quests but because they're so unmanageable it seems to be an impossible task. Maybe I'm missing something but I haven't a clue how some of you have been able to complete this game using just henchmen alone!

Different people have different preferences for keyboard/mouse, but have you tried sticking with just keyboard control? It is faster than clicking on things. I never touch my mouse unless forced to by the need to click on some dialog. I use the arrow keys to control my movement with my right hand, and my left hand to use skills, tab between targets to find the one I want, <space> to attack, etc. The camera I just leave in one position, since I rarely see any need to move it from the view behind me.

You should be able to start from Yak's Bend and pretty much clear everything along the path to the stragglers, then lead them back along that path. Then the major worry will be the groups around the stragglers themselves.

Pulling can be an important technique to master so that you can separate large mobs into smaller ones that you and your henchies can handle more easily, as Dar Drakar mentioned above. Be sure you have a longbow or flatbow in one of your weapon sets. It can be any req, any damage level, since you are only using it long enough to attract a foe and lead it away to where you can safely deal with it without attracting additional aggro.

The stragglers will fight, so it can be difficult to keep them alive. However, only one of them -- Elsa Alston -- actually needs to survive. The rest of them you can treat as cannon fodder.

Are you actually calling your targets? Henchmen will attack targets that you call. There's always a priority list of who you should target first. That priority list depends on which enemies you fight. If you don't call targets they will attack randomly and often different multiple targets at the same time.

The general goal for just about every part of GW is to focus fire on one target at a time until they die...THEN move on to the next target. The priority on who to target and kill first is based on the order of how "dangerous" they are in potentially causing your parties demise.

Examples:

Early on in Proph against Charr the Charr Firecaller/FlameWielders tend to do the most damage to your party (ESPECIALLY if you are using just henchmen...see bunching up habit) so you'd always want to call them first and make sure your henchies focus fire on them. Then the Charr Shaman's since they can heal groups of charr at once (though not particular well until you get to EOTN charr). Then the Mesmer/Necro Charrs. Then the Warrior/Ranger Charrs who pose relatively little risk compared to the others because their attacks are focused on single individuals usually.

Against the centaurs around the Borliss pass area, you usually take out the healers first as they tend to prolong the battle for the warriors to repeatedly do knock downs. In HM, these suckers actually can keep the entire groups up forever by spamming potent group healing skills since you'll usually find more than one of them in a group and they don't cluster easily.

Against the Afflicted (Factions) Monks tend to do the most damage to all henchmen teams (again see bunching) with them spamming Ray of Judgment so they usually are the first to focus your groups attacks on. They're followed in priority by the Elementalists and Ritualists. Then everyone else.

Usually, rule of thumb is you take out the healer first, then the ones that can do the most AoE damage, then spirit/minion masters, then mesmers (basically the spell casters) then worry about the physicals (warriors, rangers, dervs, sins, paragons). Not becuause the physicals can't deal damage but because they usually deal damage that can be handled by your healers more readily than AoE damage that deals damage to multiple targets over time or by spirits or minion that can form swarms. Healers usually are first targets (you'll notice even for your enemies, your healers generally will be their first targets) because they prolong battles and can keep the damage dealers alive to keep doing damage.

This isn't always the case (there will be some enemies where you might want to take out...or at least deal with...the dervs first (in HM the derv titans are nasty things) or you might need to focus on rits or paragons first (the case when dealing with Awakened Cavaliers in the Desolation in HM since they tend to spam their resurrection skills incessantly bringing back to life enemies you've killed over and over and over and over again).

As far as aggroing...be aware that warrior henchmen tend to go to great unintentional lengths to aggro mobs you don't want aggroing...by charging enemies from longer distances away then spell casting henchmen. If you are going to pull, flag your party well back (see next paragraph).

To be clear...the goal of pulling (with henchmen) is to shoot and then run back to your flagged party (the enemy will follow you)...not shoot and stand there waiting for the separated mob to come to you (since you create the likelihood that your henchies will end up aggroing the rest of the mob at some point before you're ready). To prevent this from happening, you'll need to keep greater distance between you and your all henchmen party when pulling. This is why a flatbow is so much more useful than a longbow...because the high arc of the flat bow will allow you some extra time to run away and back towards your party AND because flat bows tend to travel greater distances if you have a height advantage compared to where your enemies are standing so you don't have to be as close.

In quests where the goal is to keep someone or groups of someone alive, you often can clear the path to those someones BEFORE initiating the quest, leaving basically just a free jaunt to your destination (the most famous one is in factions during the Boreas Seabed mission where you have to keep little weak turtles alive from mobs of advancing enemies). So see if that works for you here as well. At the very least you can get a head start from your usually slow moving party of "victims" and try to engage enemies before the weaklings get into range. It does mean you can't likely pull and it will be stress on you to make sure that you call the right targets and thin the enemy numbers of the most deadly risks first.

Thanks again for the advice, I'll definitely try the pulling technique and equip myself with a flat bow straight away. It would be so much better if you could actually order your henchmen to adopt certain stances/formations or to be able to set rally points so you can leave your henchmen while you thin out the crowd/pull them towards you (I guess that would make the game too much like a RTS though?).

My character does run faster than my henchmen but sometimes I can be out in front and they may get attacked from the rear or an enemy moves near to them and so they auto-attack them. I just wish you could have more control over them as they start to become more of a hindrance than a help.

As for prioritizing enemies, this is quite difficult to do as it just gives the enemy name, it would be good if each enemy had a number also to indicate what level they are/how difficult they are to beat. I have been mainly focusing on taking out the healers first but because of the unpredictability of my henchmen it is difficult to get everyone to focus on one target. I think your point about just using the keyboard Brett might be the way to go so I get used to pressing the CTRL key to announce a specific target for everyone to attack and then using the TAB key to quickly switch between targets. I found my old GW quick reference sheet that has all the keyboard commands on so I'll keep that open in front of me until I get used to what all they keys do and the ones I use most often.

Perhaps I need to have the little window in the bottom left of the screen open so I can see what damage each enemy is dealing to get a better idea of who is the most dangerous. Also, the camera is really annoying at times, often my view gets blocked by scenery and it doesn't seem to stay behind me very well which is why I'm, always moving it. Add to that different terrain levels and the camera can either be too high or too low for me to see what lies ahead.

With regard to the stragglers quest, I have tried clearing the path on the way to meeting Elsa but there are usually too many dwarves/golems there or I get rid of quite a few but as soon as I start walking back with Elsa and co., we immediately get attacked by what seems like respawned dwarves and we get overrun.

Perhaps I have my strategy all wrong and need to learn the correct technique for battle but it just seems like the game penalises you for having henchmen and playing the game solo. I really enjoy RPG games (especially fantasy) and loved games like Neverwinter Nights (which I know isn't an MMO) but that got the whole party/henchmen thing right and allowed them to level up to a similar level as you and you could also give them specific commands. I know GW is an MMO and the whole point is to play with other people (where commanding party members isn't an issue because hopefully they have the common sense to know not to attack anything in sight etc) but the makers must've known some people will want to play alone and it just seems ridiculous that they have made this aspect of the game just really infuriating and almost restrictive. I hope GW 2 isn't like that!

Rant over, lol.

It takes time to learn which enemies do what and which ones you should prioritize. Take some time observing them and you can see what class skills they use. Or look them up on wiki.
Go slow and be patient. When you are getting ready to attack a group, always be prepared to abort that attack if other enemies come in from rear or sides.
Also there are stationary and patrolling enemies. Most mobs are just standing still or walking back and forth on the spot, but some are patrolling all over the map in repeated patterns. Except from a few high end areas and EOTN dungeons there are no enemies that just respawn. It is patrols moving from somewhere else to a place you have already cleared. In Travelers Vale there is a patrol mob with an ice ele boss called the Judge that has probably been there and said "Hello" to you. Almost all maps have such patrolling mobs.