Question on the use of heroes

I'm currently doing what a lot of people are. I actually bought the complete edition over a year ago and played for a month (didn't really get anywhere) before Rift came out and stopped playing. After getting excited about GW2 I decided to dust off my GW1 account and start getting as many HoM points as possible before GW2 releases.


I started a Necromancer in the Prophecies campaign and currently on mission 22. I have MOX, Vexx and Ogden for Hero's. Due to reasons I don't want to get into, I will typically be playing only with an all hero team.

My question is this. After reading a number of HoM guides they typically say to play nightfall or factions first as you get a bunch of hero's and upgrades much faster and easier. Should I just tough it out the last 3 missions and finish Prophecies with my current setup, or go do nightfall or factions first and come back?

Related to this, whats the best way for a new player to get elite skills for all hero teams? Also looking at the build wiki I see hero teams that have primary/secondary classes. I can't figure out how to get secondary classes for my heros. What am I missing?

Thanks in advance.

If you are having problems with your setup- Go grab heroes in NF, but if you feel like you can handle them (they are hard-ish) go for it.

I would atleast try them to see.

Good luck!

As far as Elites go, you'd need to capture them first (Sig of Capture when 1ry or 2ry profession same as boss) they'll then be available to your Hero's.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Elite_skill

2ry classes for heroes: change that much as you would your own - Skills & Attributes Panel drop-down
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hero

I assume you mean an all "Heroes and Henchmen" team, as a team of only four would make things difficult.

Heroes - If you were going to get a few more heroes before going back to Prophecies, I'd suggest you go to EotN rather than Nightfall. The Heroes you would get from EotN start off as level 20 (if I recall) and are generally better outfitted. In any case, be sure to fully outfit the Heroes (as well as possible, given your gold situation).
If your current heroes are properly prepped, you should have no problem finishing Prophecies with them. Lots of us finished Prophecies before there were any Heroes.

Elites - as the poster above said, you'll need to capture the Elites yourself. The general procedure is to change your secondary profession to the class of Elite you want to capture. When doing this, make yourself a build that relies solely on your primary so that you don't have to worry about secondary skills or attribute points, just to cap skills.

Awesome, thank you everyone.

As far as capturing elites, I didn't have access to some of the areas where the elites I wanted for my heroes were. Instead of playing through Factions and Nightfall for quite a while to gain access to those areas, I just got hero elites through Balthazar faction points earned from Zaishen challenge. You can earn 2,000 faction a day this way, and it costs 3,000 faction per elite. Some of my heroes use the same elite, so I only needed to capture four. It took about 15 to 20 minutes a day for six days.

All of prophecies (and factions for that matter) can be done with nothing but henchmen if you so choose. You may have to play smarter rather than going with some of the meta OP teams, but that's not really a bad thing... it'll help you learn the game better anyway. In fact, depending on what you've been doing, the henchmen may even be better than your heroes. Heroes are better in the long run, but only after you've given them good equipment and spent a good deal of time getting them skills from across the game. Though, Heroes are always infused against "Spectral Agony" whereas henchmen on get this after Thunderhead Keep, so that may be somewhat relevant.

Any heroes you pick up in Nightfall (as a Tyrian or Canthan character) will start off at level 15, which makes them useable, but not great for a while. If you really need more heroes, grabbing some like Olias, Livia and Gwen may be helpful. See the wiki for info on how best to do this.

As far as elites go, you can either go cap the ones you need (which is a chore for some) or unlock them with balthazar faction (which requires you to do some PVP). Any skill unlocked for PvP is usable by your heroes and can be obtained by you by using a skill tome. Good hunting!

There's really no need to "do" Nightfall or North just to get a few more heroes. If you do the quest to go to Nightfall (a bit easier if you go from Prophecies to Factions and then Factions to Nightfall, since you get a party of 8 there and the henchmen are better), you'll get several heroes just for showing up: 2 monks, a dervish, a warrior, and an easy quest to pick a ranger or an elementalist. You can also get a ferry from another player to the Consulate Docks (ask around Kamadan) and do a quick quest to get a necromancer. You can skip the quest to get the assassin, since it's a little involved and they're not overly useful heroes.

Map back to Boreal Station and head north a bit to the Eye of the North outpost and you can grab the mesmer hero from inside the Hall of Monuments. You could also go a bit further north from there to Gunnar's Hold and do the Norn Fighting Tournament to get a ritualist hero (and another dervish, if you want him), but that's probably more than you need to get through the rest of Prophecies.

Once you've done that, you can run around Kaineng city area and do the quests (get Seek Out Brother Tosai in your log and keep it to limit the aggressive spawns) to level up your heroes and get some money. You can then buy a good number of useful skills right from the skill trainer in Kaineng Center.

That would take less than a day of play to get quite a number of heroes without hardly touching the storylines of either campaign/expansion.

Personally, I like to finish old things before starting new ones. And, the OP said they only have 3 missions left. I would say finish prophecies first. I remember doing those with a team of henchmen back in the day. It wasn't too difficult.

OP, if you want any help finishing off Prophecies so you can cleanly move to the next campaign, let me know. I'm working on my HoM too, and try to log a couple hours a night.

The reason why players play factions and nightfall is probably because thos campaigns because its the fastest way to ascend (its named diffrently in those campaign but the effect is the same). It allows you you to buy extra 2nd professions which you need to capture elite skills and buy regular skills from skillstrainers for those professions. You need this to make you heroes better/more effective.

You also can unlock skills by trading balthazar factions (heroes can use any unlocked skills for their 1st or 2nd prof), but to gain balthazar faction you have to play some pvp (or competitive missions, etc) as well.

Playing the first part of nightfall also help getting some extra heroes very fast...

With all the advice I decided to just spent an hour or two getting more skills for my current three hero's and just finish out prophecies since I'm so close to the end. Thanks all!