Questions for 2 players and 3 henchmen.

Howdy,

My brother and I are interested in Guild Wars after seeing the positive reviews in CGW and PC Gamer. We currently have played though WOW to L 60 and did some of the end game content. We had a blast together as we used voice over internet and could just explore and quest together undisturbed.

A few question concerning Guild Wars.

1. My brother and I would like to adventure together without having to rely on getting in groups all the time. I see with the henchmen one can do this. So if my brother and I group together with 3 henchmen, can we do most of the 1-20 content? What about after L 20 - would we still be a viable party with the henchmen and be able to do post L 20 content? (Not interested in PVP)

2. What combo should my brother and I pick to be the most lethal and effective in this game? In Wow, we did the paladin/mage combo which worked just amazing.

3. Can we get epic or at least great gear with the above mentioned 2 players and 3 henchmen setup in the end game content? The reason I ask is in WOW, you would need a group of 5 players and LOTS of time to get all your class specific armor. I would like to feel or look at least somewhat "cool" at the high end levels with having to devout enourmous amounts of time into the game.

4. Lastly, do you think Guild Wars is for us if we like to play like this? I just don't want to buy 2 copies of the game and find out it's not.

Thanks for your help! Much appreciated.

1. Yes, you can play with just yourselves. It is much harder, though. But a lot of times henchmen are a lot better than crappy parties.

2. The combo I would suggest is both of you become healers. This way you can make sure the henchmen get the proper medical care (as the healer henchmen have retarded AI) and you can pick up additional healer henchmen if you don't have enough healing power.

3 Yes, it is easy to get good equipment in this game. Even horrible equipment is close to the best equipment of the same type.

4 Guild Wars may not be your game, since it seems for your entire GW lives you will only interact with each other. GW pretty much requires some kind of human interaction. And the PvE will get stale if you don't join a guild or PvP at least a little bit.

Although if you have some school friends or coworkers that can play with you, that's great. You two might even find a really great guild with good members, so GW could potentially be a great game for you two. However, if you insist on only playing with each other...it's possible.

Thanks for the detailed reply Zaku.

Sure, I have nothing against joining with others, its just I don't want to become reliant on it for too much of the game.

Anyone else?

Why not? 2 players with henchmen might do, though just a bit harder.
I suggest at least 1 of you has to be a monk, the other can be whathever he wants, as long as you don't use the henchman healer that sucks.

You can get all the gear anyone else might get by just exploring and purchasing stuff.

Your decision now. As Zaku said there's more to GW that you haven't experienced in other MMOGs and I don't know if you'll like it. Eventually if you guys decide to join a guild together you might like it, and if you don't you can still quit the guild and play by yourself, but as I'm not Lvl20 myself I can't tell you if the game at that point is still appealing for simple exploration and hunting.

Well if you're really sticking to PvE only, it IS quite fun to explore every area, reach every town, do every quest and mission. However, once you do all that on just one character, your next character is pretty boring. Good thing the expansion packs are coming out, even if it's going to take months.

While my brother and a few friends do play Guild Wars, most of the time it has been my wife and myself with just henchmen and we have made it to the Level 20+ part of the game. We have a great time playing this way. You and your brother should have a blast playing Guild Wars with just the two of you.

My wife plays a Monk/Elementalist and I play a Warrior/Necromancer. This seems to work well for us but your style of play will determine what works best for you.

I almost forgot to mention that so far we have stuck to strictly PVE and have not explored the PVP part of the game since we are not really that interested in it (at least for now). We enjoy exploring the world and have both started second characters to try out other classes.

My wife and I played through the entire game and beat it with henchmen. My wife played a Monk/Mesmer and I played a Warrior/Elementalist. We did group, however it was mostly going back to help out our guild members with missions and stuff (We are IMP leaders).

Not to say it wasn't tough but who wants to play a game where you can beat everything the first try ? Some missions were really challenging and it took some actual strategy and know how (controlling henchmen is key) to beat them.

Thank you all for the insightful replies to my questions. This has help me a lot! Seems like a healer and damage dealer/tank is the combo to go with.

Desslok and Lord Malikai: Thanks for the info on your combo experiences. Good stuff.

not to mention the obvious but you will need 2 copies of the game to set up 2 accounts to play together

at the higher levels you can have more henchies than 3 if they are needed as well

Loviatar: Didn't know about the more then 3 henchmen at higher levels. That's good to hear.

Well, I think I'll pick up 2 copies of the game tonight and we'll give it a go!

Thanks everyone.

there was a thread some time ago which listed a few husband/wife teams that were looking for other similar teams to play with to avoid some of the teen monster wild child people

ive used as many as 5 henchies personally and i think you can fill a party of 8 if needed

I am not sure but from reading your first post you mention after L 20 content. You do realize that currently GW is capped at 20? You still get experience but once you hit the next so to speak level you get an additional skill point but you don't go to L 21 at the current time. Could be in future expansions it does.

Its not really level that determines the party size but rather how far you are in the game. At Yak's bend you can start getting a party of 6. Up to yak's bend its a party of 4 max. I can't remember since for my char I have ascended and gone on I usually only either solo for some farming or play with a couple friends but eventually you get up to a party size of 8.

That would be cool to find that thread, as my wife and I play!!! It would be nice to find simular groups to get past some of the rougher areas.

As you progress through the game your parties are like this

2 per party
4 per party
6 per party
8 per party

You will have enough henchies to choose from to fill your party. I have done every mission so far with just henchies using one of my chars. I have grouped with players but like to use henchies since I seem to have no problems controlling them. You two should have no problem going through the game with just henchies if you use a little strategy and take it slow. As for your classes, it’s not all that important for one of you to be a healer. None of my chars are healers and the henchie healer was plenty as long as you give her time to recharge between battles. A good choice would be for one of you to be a Elemental/Monk. This way you can heal if really needed but the rest of the time you can put out some real damage. The other character can be anything. Doesn’t matter if he is a tank or not, I do suggest that one of you have a monk secondary to rez the henchies when you have them cover your retreat. My E/Me had this problem so I recently changed his secondary to Monk to alleviate this.