ability to turn off skills on henchmen

Due to the number of times I've seen a henchman use a long cast-time skill at the wrong time, I'd like for the party leader be able to be able to "turn off" skills on a henchs skillbar.

If the skill is turned off the hench won't use it. If it gets turned off while its being cast, the hench will abort the cast.

Naturally, the leader would be able to turn skills back on at any time during battle as things change.

Example: Player notices that certian monk henchs has a habbit of running near enemies to use restore life, then not aborting it even if the dead person is ressed by anything else before hand or is in a situation where the monk should stay healing and ignore them during the battle. So the Henchs res spell is disabled to prevent this happening. However, should the player die, he turns the res back on so he can be revived, then turns it off again to prevent problems.

I am limiting this to the party leader in order to reduce griefers causing trouble.

I would suggest that a chat message is dispalyed whenever the leader does this, so that if he is griefing the other players will see it and can decide to leave or not.

I'm intending this to be the same as saying to someone "dont use skill x till I tell you to" and that person actually listening.

Just think about how much better Mehnlo was during the faction campaign when, as he wasn't a party member, he couldn't res anyone.

You know what would be cool? If you could set up the skill bar for your henchies.

You could implement a downside to this, like having to re-buy skills for henchies or something - but they should learn to buy their own! ^^ And the skills available are changed only by the leader of the group, but viewable to all. This will introduce things like "Group/leader with SoR healer henchie LF more"... dunno if that's a good thing... eh.

Well we would all like to see what Dunham would do if we turned off Distortion. He'd probably cry

Do you know how powerful that would then make the mesmer henchmen ?

Think how powerful the domination henchman is now, then give him more interupts. Which he will use correctly, so his name would probably have to be changed to "Thou Shalt Not Cast Henchman"

The other henchs AI's could cause problems with some builds, but interupts are easy for the AI to use well.

/signed
Doesnt have to be as described by OP, but some sort of limited skillbar control would be nice.

I'd love to turn off stone daggers on earth henchman and firestorm on Cynn.

Haha yes he most likely would.

I'd like to see something like this. I'd love to put Orison of Healing on the skill bar of Sister Tai or whatever her name is.

All the more reason to go Kurzick, that henchman rules

if they made it so u cud choose skillz fo teh henchies, "team" missions wud be toast. tho, id wud be nice instead of sitting around for ever saying "glf monk fo m/b"

I know you all hate human contact, but instead of complaining about henchies, why don't you just get a group pof more skilled real life people. There are other people in the world!!!

A compelling arguement. I agree wholeheartedly based soley on your reasoning.

...

...

Seriously though, "skilled real life people" - good GOD show me where!? So back to henchmen...I think it would be nice if you could customize your henchmen within a set of skills, thus avoiding the "Thou Shalt Not Cast" henchies. If you could choose between a set of say...20-25 skills for each henchie, that would be pretty decent. First thing to go? That idiot healer's Signet of Devotion. As for Dunham...I guess we can just take away his distortion and watch him /ragequit.

-Jessyi

(oh. ps: I was being sarcastic on that first line)

I would love to turn off Signet of Devotion.

/signed
especially on the new healer hench, even after update she still sux!

QFT. I HATE how they think that heals you effectively. 2 second cast time ftl.

/signed

cynn has good moves but firestorm isnt 1 of them. when she uses it then monsters run away and fighter hench sometimes follows and attracts more groups.

Actually, thats an excellent idea. If you could decide your henchies skill bar it would be a little easier to work with henchmen. It would be fair if Anet only allowed you a certain list of skills you can give a henchman. It wouldn't be fair if you could give henchies an skill in the game but if there were certain ones...

being able to disable certain henchmen skills. /signed

Being able to set up henchies skill bar. /signed

I go with real people alot. But sometimes its better to use henchmen. Henchmen don't always make mistakes certain people makeing. I once had a warrior that aggroed 3 groups instead of 1. Thats not good! If we could set up henchmens skill bar we could give them stratagy's that would work with builds we use!

2 seconds to cast. And sence it recharges in 5 seconds henchmen use it to much. Therefor the pend way to much time useing this signet rather than actually healing us!

Brother Gilburt

I would rather see the 'Execute' button implimented first, or some other subtle but basic control installed.

Setting up Hench skillbars would be cool, but I am guessing that will be kept back for a few more expansions yet

Yes, I do prefer human contact even when the human players are a bit worse than the henchs but when I'm the only one who wants to do that quest/mission (and guildies are busy elsewhere) its simply not possible to find a group. Still, the henchmen are quite useable for me now (I can even get devona to hold aggro most of the time, but not the kurzick warrior hench when I do the exact same thing ) so I wont care too much if this isn't implemented.

But I would like it implemented