Henchmen Useful or Not???

I am curious if anyone else has encountered problems with henchmen and there usefulness. But my biggest question is has something been changed in the game so that henchmen are not as useful to have as members of your party as they had been in the past and during the betas. As of late even traveling in the normal areas where a level 6 or level 8 henchmen are found with myself and just henchmen I am finding that even in small encounters of 3 or 4 enemies the hencmen are getting owned. It is making having them in the party no more useful than a meat shield for a few seconds. Combine that with the fact that drops significantly decrease as the number of henchmen are in your party and its difficult to understand why they are even in the game. They can't help with most enemies you run into when you travel with only them and drops are extremely poor. Is the game moving more in a direction that you have to travel with actual other people to get anything or anywhere. And if so then just remove the henchmen all together as they provide no real benefit.

I have had pretty good experiences with henchmen, except this one time in Mineral Springs. A Frost Wurm killed all the group but Claude, and he was sitting there running to and fro. But I had to map back to rankor (I was DEEP into mineral springs; I had accidently stumbled upon a bug that let's you bypass a bunch of Avacari by dying in the right spot. You go to a rezz altar much later in the EA).

Hencheman are in many ways better than humans eg: they dont complain and they dont leave.
In some missions they are so much better, that I wish they would be nerfed.
That would help teamplay

However they fail in making the simpleest decitions, so you have to do them all.

I love henchmen! I go around the southern shiverpeaks with my lvl 12 w/mo. Just to give you an idea of what I have been able to do, I went from Droknars to Copperhammer Mines to Granite Citadel with my lvl 12 w/mo with Lions Arch armor with the henchmen. It was intense and I know love alisia and lena.

Henchmen are good because the current grouping system sucks.

To find a group you would need to traverse all districts of an area in some places.

Now, missions have a steady supply of player readily available, because if you're there, then it's for either th emission or the bonus. Few people go to missions to dawdle around. (though one would think they do from the way some people act)


But missions in cities, where one is likely to take henchmen, is totally different.

The district you're in could be empty, or just no one willing to go on the mission with you. So you move to another district. Well no luck there. Go to another, ok found a person...but it's not enough for a full group.

So ya'll gotta traverse several districts to get a full group and go.

Meanwhile I've grabbed the henchmen and am half-way done with the quest by that point in time.


To me, henchmen are the best thing ever. Because they're always there, you don't have to put up with their whining (only their poorly programmed AI/pathfinding) and their agenda always suits yours.

So yay to henchmen, boo to the LFG system.

They get really useful around the time when Mrs protection monk comes along.

I didn't finish the game yet (storyline) but I think the usefulness of henchmen depends on the quest or mission. Persoanlly I've only doe 1 mission (i'm at Ring of Fire now) with only henchies. After failing like 5-6 times the Ice cave of Sorrow Mission with humans, guild members told me to use henchmen. I tried, and I discovered that they actually LISTEN to you, unlike humans who don't listen. Most important they won't attack jsut about anything that is a red dot on the radar... Mursaats??

As for a bad experiene with henchies was during the Warrior's Path quest. So I jsut took the teleporter and arrived in front of a bunch of archer centaurs (forgot the exact name). The melee henchies we stuck behind the switches!! Well.... i can only watch as we all got slaughtered one after another.

Henchmen are proof that God wants us to be happy with what we do.

As is beer.

Up until Droknar's Forge, with the exception of: Riverside, Aurora Glade, and Thirsty River, I wouldn't use anything else. To tell you the truth, henchmen are (or were, depending on if they have been recently nerfed) more competant than any human group I've ever had, sadly.

I had a lot of problems with the hench today. I made a Necro and was strolling around doing skill quests. When I targeted an enemy and started attacking it the fighter hench would charge at a totally different enemy. Sometimes the other hench would attack with the fighter and sometimes split. We hardly ever fought the same mob. It made it real pain to fight mobs with healers.

For some reason, hencies are more stupid (stupider?) at the beginning of the game, and will play Rambo from time to time.

My only beef, and this one got me pretty POed today, is that if you die and the healers are alive, they will heal themselves, and let their healing take priority over your revival.

It's pretty sad to be the first one to die but know your pt is done for anyway :/

If henchmen got buffed, alot of people would cry about henchmen being picked over players.

Isn't this the case allready?

Their skill choice is somewhat weird(Echanter/Mesmer type hench has no anti-caster spell except drain enchantment - or maybe it was shatter?), but they're still highly useful. They don't complain, bitch, wander of on their own, agro everything and leave in middle of mission. They focus fire when needed and stay close to you. Better than *many* players.

Sorry, but I did Riverside with henchies.
And Aurora Glade is indeed possible with henchies.
Iron Mines (infusion) is hard with them though.

_Zexion

"Iron Mines (infusion) is hard with them though."

Did it - only thing is that they appearently don't get infused, Spectral Agony sucks their life insanely fast. If I weren't Monk primary, I'd probably fail.

Personally, I love the henchmen. No crying or whining, no dropping in the middle of a mission, and if by odd chance I have to leave suddenly they don't get mad about it.

Only one minor complaint springs to mind-Ms healer simply will not stay back out of AoE range; and heavens forbid she gets attacked by something. She spends the next 2 minutes (or rest of her hp) running around like a headless chicken aggroing everything in sight. -.-;

No, because:

1. General playerbase cannot beat the game with henchies alone.

2. Holy Buddha has not won HoH with a pure henchie team dispite the rumours.

It is often a bad idea to resurrect someone in the middle of a PvE battle, they will start with low health and often be killed right away, accumulating death penalty. Making sure those of your teammates are alive stay alive are usually a priority for a monk.

I have several times been killed as the first with a henchmen party, and then seen the henchmen get control over the situation, and then revive me.

henchmen are already smarter than most people anyway (even without the ressing and running off and floating)


Orion ran off in the third mission with me and floated back to were we were fighting...he was half way there (still floating...) when we all died. i chased him down with the other henchmen but i lost him over a mountain.