Henchmen are absolutely impossible for me in PvE

Lack of features making them act counterintuitive aside, it's just insane how often my henchmen get bugged.
And yes, I do still need them, as most people don't want to go on quick skill runs/quests just for you, nor do I expect them to.



This is a little while ago, doing the Ranger's Path quest. Little Thom is in a mountain. At least HE is dead.



Same deal, except this is why I'm VERY frustrated. Orion is alive and well inside this hill, and later on, the party is killed, all except for him, and so I have to leave the area to revive.



Another mission with a human player, and we had to abort because of him. [image cap, bah, next post >.>]

Luckily, she dies through degeneration later on, but it's still bad that she got stuck in a mountain.



Alesia the Magic Mole, she's deep underground this time. You can see the tree roots far above her. Once again, had to abort because she was the only one alive.



While focusing the camera on Miss Mole, it shows up for some reason here on the map.

Usually, this issue seems to pop up after the party is annhilated then resurrected, which is pretty frequent when soloing for me, but as you see in the screenshots, even with other players, if we have hench, they tend to get stuck.

Anybody else having this problem or know of a quick fix for it?
Those screenshots are just a couple of many, as I take a screenshot each time this happens >.<

I like using henchies as cannon fodder or meatshields. Anything else and they're useless.

Especially Alesia.

For some reason, she insists on standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, despite there's a monster right there.

Yeah i dont understand it! Ive seen a henchman walk right through a mountain! But when you WANT them to walk through things and come to you when they get stuck they dont! They never used to have this problem, the henchman used to be great. I dont understand it.

I find that Thom and Stephen do exactly what I want them to. Reyna is quite intelligent and always seems to do what rangers are supposed to.

Alesia and Orion enjoy pain and always fan out to attract the attention of every single ranged mob they can find. If they can manage to stand in some poisoned water then so much the better.

The Cultist guy (can't remember the name) is fun because he casts Blood Ritual on me. Immediately afterwards he will often sprint into the action, for a touch spell I presume, and get his but whipped.

Durham is reasonably smart, and never runs into the fray. If he does get attacked, he'll use Distortion to stay alive. If he has any other useful traits, I have yet to notice them. XD

No Thom is a BASTARD..
He ruined my char flame temple quest, he decided to get stuck in a mountain while we were working on the last group of char and died. We had to start completely over..
They REALLY need a respawn timer as soon as the last human charecter dies, Even if its 5 or 10 mintues, id rather wait that have to do a several hour quest again. Or a /kill option for the henchman.

Ah yes, we lost the eye thing that judge's you in one of the missions, it got trapped in the mountains, and the mission probably took over an hour to complete because of that, most of the time being hunting down where that blasted eyeball went.

Agreed. Thom and Stephen are excellent; as long as you remember to CTRL+SPACE to get them attacking who you want; they are perfectly obedient meat-shields.

Henches aren't meat shields...one time I hired 5 out and went against the Summit and EVERY SINGLE ENEMY totally ignored the two warriors, one mage, one ranger and monk that I had hired...and all went after me! I was dead in less than 10 seconds.

Improved movement pathways, and the inclusion of adjustable A.I. scripts would definitely make using the Henchmen less of a nerve wracking experience. It's strange though, I feel like once I got to Yak's Bend it seems as if the Henchmen started "playing smarter". The warriors didn't try to pull every mob on the mini map, and the back line personnel didn't try to sidle up next to me(I'm a warrior) as often as they did earlier in the game.

Once in a while each of the issues mentioned in this thread make a return appearance, but I feel like I'm better now at choosing strategies and pathways that minimize the chances of something screwy happening. I just finished the Borlis Pass mission and I was quite please with the performance of the H-mob.

As much as I want them to be improved, their shortcomings do add an extra challenge to the game. Not to imply that I'm this great strategist or anything, but i feel that if I was playing with a party of human players, each of whom played the way I play(focused and extremely patient), then we would waltz through every quest and mission on the first try. That wouldn't be all that fun. At the same time I don't want to party up with human players who aren't locked in the way I am. So it is what it is.

Oh good, it's not just me.

I felt exactly the same way. I notice that my hench-people (that is the politically correct version of henchmen) don't act nearly as stupid as they used to.

Just to confirm, I took some henchies from Ascalon out for a spin again the other day. They don't perform anything like they do later on.

Feature? Or Bug?

Clearly, in an attempt to make the henchbots act like human players in as many ways as possible, there's a newbie subroutine in the AI.

I must say that I've been playing the GW beta events from the beginning and the Henchmen definately seem more bugged than the Beta versions did - a real pity.

Healer hench thinks shes a tank and the fighter hench thinks that joining the fight is optional... when he's even in a position to do so. Unfortunately I dont have much experience yet with the high lvl Henchmen.

Dont get me wrong - the henchmen concept is great - their 'ability' just needs some tweaking

I've posted this pic in another thread but Il use it again coz its a classic:

I found that if I'm out exploring or doing small missions(go here talk to this person) I take alessa, stephen thron, and orion, and that seems to work well. Orion seems to throw that aoe fire spell pretty well, alessa on the other hand ether dies first, or gets me killed by not healing in time, even thou I had less health then the guy she just healed.

Overall thou I don't think I wouldn't gotten or explored as much as i did without them. I mean it's hard to find players willing to do suicide runs.

I only take henchmen if I absolutely HAVE to. They ALWAYS get stuck on me espiacially alesia and when i neeed her the most.

The monk henchmen is dumb as a bucket of rocks. She never heals me enough/in time. She also very rarely resurrects anyone during the fight, especially me if I go down. And, most annoyingly of all, she INSISTS on being right next to me and getting owned hard almost every fight. I'm a warrior, the damned monk needs to stay in the back.

ya, the henchmen can be highly annoying, but if you play with them often enough, you figure out what they do and how to counter some of thier foolishness. I play most my time with them, because I can not count the number of times people ditch group at the first sign of trouble, or them being stupid, we call them on it and they leave instead of playing better.

I managed to beat the final mission with just henchmen and compared to the other groups i used for that mission, they were god sends.

However, it is annoying when they get caught on small object or in a mountain under the world. I've had my share of hair pulling using them. Some examples are them not porting on the teleport pads, getting stuck under the world after a rez, getting caught behind objects like barrels, chests, or open wreckage, or standing like idiots in front of a mob because it's blocking the target behind it i need to get dead (like the thirsty river mission where you kill the priests before the named).

They aren't perfect, but they don't complain or leave you and your group stranded by leaving. If you play with them enough, you will learn how to control thier positioning to an extent, but by no means perfect.

Also, I have noticed a difference in the levels of the henchmen AI. Seems the level 17 healer is poorly scripted compared to the rest. Not sure what the difference in them is, but the level 20 and 15 performed much better than the 17 level one.

You know what is the best thing about henchmen, the thing you can almost never get out of a full group of humans?

Call Target works. You pick the first target and the henches are on him. I think it is probably the only way we can get anything out of them, considering their other faults, they provide concentration of firepower.

Lots of things to remember when using henches, here are a few:

#1 If your 2nd profession isn't monk, you're in for some pain. Switch to monk for your hench stuff.

#2 Follow up for #1, put Rebirth on your bar. Teleport rez is required for the henches who like to bury themselves behind enemy lines.

#3 Before each fight, make sure all your henches are with you. I'm near the very end of Mineral Springs, have two encounters left to finish the map, including uncovering a new elite probably and then... party wipeout. Only, see, it wasn't a party wipeout, cause the mage hench is stuck on a tree about a mile back. ARGGGHHHH.

#4 When rezzing henches, rez them in this order: tanks--everybody cept healers--then the healers. If you do not rez the healers last, you can be assured that they will inadvertently pull the same mobs that killed you the first time, again, and this time your tanks won't even be up.

#5 Do not look at the (m)ap while moving. If you do so, you keep moving, the henches don't. Bad things can happen. :-) Alternatively, I've been thinking one might be able to umm, err, exploit this behaviour in certain situations, if the mobs stop like the henches do.

#6 Do not get the protector monk without the healing monk. Protecting dead people doesn't work that well.

#7 When people tell you something can't be henched, they're probably wrong(and lazy and dumb). Sure, they can't do it with henches, doesn't mean you can't. As far as I'm concerned, most of the missions are EASIER with henches than with the average group of GW players.

Henches don't give up, they don't get phone calls, they don't have parents, or homework, or class, they don't get frustrated and leave, they don't complain endlessly when you make a bad pull. They're good people. :-)

Henches rule, they'd never ditch me like...a lot of actual players always do. And I've only encountered a bug with them twice, one where Stefan got stuck in a mountain, another time when they ran in the air to the enemy that killed us, not a big deal though. I alt+tab and when I get back in the glitch is fixed strangely enough. I don't know if that'll work for everyone though.

The fighter henchmen always do what I want them to, being a mesmer I always stick back as do the healer henchmen and the rangers and what not, the fighters always go for the mob I want them to (usually the one I'm hexing), and whenever the healer gets murdered (never because she runs into trouble, because trouble always runs after HER, so we just kill off the last few baddies, then she gets a rez, she heals herself, and we move on.

Also I ALWAYS look at my map and know where the henches are at all times, and I always stop and analyze a fight before I charge in as well. I never understand people who see one bad guy so they grab their weapon, charge in and expect everyone else to do the same. People are too impatient.

Go henchmen.

I dunno, Alesia sometimes amazes me in her rezzes. There was this one time my friend and I were running to Fisherman's Haven from Temple of Ages, and he got lightning orbed by a Drake right before the portal. Lo and behold, Alesia runs up and res's him while taking damage from the Drake...and we made it XD