Henchmen Mini-guide

You can just cast windbourne or whatever before shooting the arrow

Great guide though, thanks.

For the monk healer, I disagree about not bringing anything but heals and en management. I bring protective spirit every time on my monk and it is incredibly useful; the energy I save simply by not having to heal as much with prot spirit on is just as effective as mes en management in PvE (which I've never used and never had problems with btw). Even if you take a protection henchie, they sometimes still don't use PS on the right person anyway and whoever is being spiked ends up dying while the necro that just sac'd a little HP gets the PS. Henchies.

Id just like to add that ive been following some of these guidlines, and found them to be working a treat, so again, thanks for the insight, its help me aproach henching in a new light

hmmm not my style of playing with henchman but nice guide.

i ALWAYS bring the following henchies: kurzick side 2 warrior 1 assassin 1 domination 1 spirit 2 monks

luxon side: 2 warriors 1 assassin 1earth 1 spirit 2 monks

in tyria 2 warriors 2 monks if possible and just as much damage as possible. (ussually all of them but not the ranger)

You say NEVER bring an assassin but they do great.
A man (or woman) can also use just outside agro of a enemy group shift+ctrl+spacebar to send in the henchies first to your target and then go in yourself. on this way the henchies get all hexes and conditions on them the casters stay back and the melee henchies are fighting there .... off.
Hell this way the henchies can even solo. but it is probably a matter of personal preference wich henchies you take with you.

like i said nice guide if you are new to henchman

I never noticed till recently...

Illusion Hench = Cast Distortion, repeat, repeat, repeat...

2 elites.

good guide, i love henchies, they dont write on the map, leave or talk rubbish and with a bit of practice they dont leroy on you, you have highlighted all the points that took most people a few months to crack...very useful.

nicely done. couple things...

i avoid fire hench like the plague because firestorm will agro unwanted...um...agro

if you're a "healing class" player, go towards the damage end (smiting or communing/channeling)

prot and illusion hench always run up half way and bridge agro to the back.

rit hench will always put weapon of warding on the character that has not nor will ever be hit. their ai needs work and they behave like...well...idiots. i only use them on unwaking waters for the occassionally well-timed shelter.

you can use ctrl+shift+spacebar to not run forward (calls the target but doesn't make you attack) before backing up to ensure agro not bridging.

lastly, when i play a melee, i generally set up for ranged. squishies tend to run up next to the player and if the monks go down, so will the rest of the hench. i've beaten unwaking waters with a w/mo running smiting. a/w or w/a would be less effective using ranged though.

thanks for putting together a guide. so many people are complete idiots with hench. and i'm 100% behind the ues of sin hench. i know panaku does something that dazes and that's great.

and for the kurzicks henching unwaking:
bring the necro pigs and cynn. i always prefer an all-hench kurzick team to players unless they bring those 3 (and aidan for that matter). cynn kills the spores and scales and the pigs just seem to do a pretty good job.

nice guide for beginners, but quite inflexible and close-minded in some ways. although I have also cleared all but a handful of bonus maps with just henchies as well, i disagree on a few pts.


1. you don't really always need warrior henchies. In times Kai Ying (wards) is available I find myself going much faster with an all-caster + rangers teams rather than having a tank at all.

2. i prefer taking just one tank henchie (if the warder is unavailable that is). if your aggroing skills are good enough; one meatshield is all you need, and one less frontliner your monks/rits have to worry about.

3. the illusion hench is not useless.

4. mesmers are generally weak in pve.
what can i say?
my mes can solo the tahnnakai mish with just the story-required npcs; solo perdition rock
magho hyras / jades; drakes, minos & hydras of the desert; many of the canthan bosses
with just pure mes builds. and i'm not even stating what she can do with secondaries like
spirit bonds or 55's.

Well, the original poster forgot to add one of the mechanics I find most useful for hench control, which is CTRL+SHIFT+double click (or space), which allows you to call targets without trying to attack it (briefly mentioned by another poster in this page). That way you can coordinate attacks without losing your position (CTRL+clicking and then running back usually makes the henchs run back, too), AND it allows to pull with henchies. I used it A LOT when henching thru cantha with my ritualist. Drop a couple spirits, crtl+shift+dclick, drop another spirit while the henchs run, and when they hit the enemy aggro bubble, run back. the enemies will go right into your spirit trap, at which point you order the henchs to attack again, and the enemies will be soup.

lure -> if you're a spellcaster, cast a dmg spell on nearby foe. this won't trigger henchies AI, but will aggro mobs.

IMO, this is an excellent beginners guide for newbies. I'd like to see this on guildwiki; I point a lot of newbies to that site....

I second that. He also has Power Drain.


Also, I dont know why it is suggested to kill Warriors first. I have henched nearly every mission (and nearly every bonus feasable with hench) and NEVER kill warriors first. NPC Warrior damage can be easily absorbed and out-healed, whereas casters tend to provide more damage and support for the enemy and drop far more quickly.

Rangers as second priority? Bah. Far less damage than warriors and enemy ranger NPCs RARELY take skills that disrupt your combat effort (oh noes! throw dirt!!!!111oneoneone).

It really needs to be a matter of:
Enemy Damage Output/Mitigation vs Your Damage Output/Mitigation

Here is the killing order I suggest:
*Eles - Most damage output - can be killed through intense healing
*Monks - Most Mitigation - often interchangable with Eles for primary target
*Mesmers - Balanced Output/Mitigation (via Interruption) - they are annoying and start to tax defence mid battle
*Necros - 99% are "By the way you are dead now" kills, also stops corpse exploitation which is mildly irritating
*Warriors - Moderatly High Output (usually only to a single target) and Reasonable Damage-to-Self Mitigation (through heavy armor)
*Rangers - So-So Damage and Paltry Mitigation (wow whirling defence)

If you take into accout Factions chars:
*Rits - More Mitigation than Mesmers, less than Monks, paltry damage output, though they will rez - usually 1st due to crappy self-preservation skills and high team defense ablilty.
*Assn - Where? Whoops I accidentally killed it and didnt see it there.


You can also PvE with an A/Mo if you use Dagger/Crit/Heal/Prot with 8 in Heal (Vigorous spirit and mending) and sometimes 8 in Prot depending on the mission (Prot Bond or Spirit). Vigorous + Mending + Flashing Blades = Sin Survival guide.

uhh at least in nahpui quarter ranger mobs>warrior mobs dmg by far, not sure abt other places tho @_@

2 Elites?

Very good guide. The most important word here is GUIDE. its a tool you give us a clearer cleaner look at how to use henchies. This isnt set in stone, you can take what you want, and leave the rest. Personallly I would liek to see a followup to thisguide namely one that shows how to take as few henchies as possible, and still complete the quests/missions. This will generate more xp , drops and gold.

A very good guide in general, *if* you're a monk-type. It does seem to be written from a monk/caster perspective.

As a warrior or assassin, it's preferable to take all ranged characters, tank all of the incoming melee yourself, and focus-fire enemies in the order the guide suggests. Much easier to pull this way (ctrl-shift-space, as people have noted), and focus fire works faster.

I find rangers to be extremely good, as the guide suggests: they are very durable and deal good damage. Also, the assassin henchies are awful, due to moving/teleporting away from mobs a lot, which can trigger adds, and lowers their damage output.

Some interesting ideas, but I have to disagree with the "Always bring both warrior henchies" and "mesmers are generally fairly weak in PvE" opinions.

A mesmer character of mine was able to beat the Tyrian Tomb of the Primeval Kings underworld zone using a party of all henchmen, with no warriors. In this zone, I found the warrior henchmen were a liability; they would run in and get killed, then the monks would run in, try to resurrect the warriors, and also get killed. The warrior-free group (of only 7) didn't have this problem. I used mesmer anti-melee skills such as clumsiness and ineptitude to compensate for the lack of warriors, and, when needed, was able to do a little bit of tanking myself using distortion.

I'm not trying to flame, but I find that a highly offensive statement. Due to the exact build I had, I did resort to using Pugs during the high end missions(and therefore switching to healing. But before I got there I did all exploration, and most missions, with nothing but henchies. If I had been a bit more stubborn I could have done every mission with them, but I felt it was easier to get together with some humans.

Only because a REAL(/sarcasm) group doesn't like bringing smiters, though I do agree this stance would work, the henchman can also end up getting themselves killed if you don't toss in a certain amount of damage to help them kill quicker.

I find this works better for me. Theres two ways to play a monk with henchies. Heal their damage or prevent it. You can prevent it with protections prayers, or by simply destroy the source of said damage.

Lo Sha the Canthan illusion henchman has interrupts go check it yourself - he interrupts better than most random human mesmers (not talking about expert human mesmers). The only problem is he often runs forward to remove hexes from warriors, and with 60AL and no sense of self preservation (doesn't seem to run back and away immediately after removing hexes), he sometimes gets in trouble (he's often not the first to die though).

Dunham the Tyrian/Ascalon illusion henchman on the other hand is just "filler" material.

As for the henchmen warriors, if you want to complete some Factions missions quickly with just henchmen you should leave the warriors out if you are not a melee based character yourself.

Why? Because melee attackers tend to aggro tons of enemies at a time - it should be obvious that in order for them to hit something, their target has to be near the middle of their aggro circle and guess what happens next.

So for say the Sunjiang, Tahnnakai or Nahpui mission I just took two healers (if available otherwise one healer and one ritualist), an archer or two, Earth and Shock henchman and Lo Sha. And what you do is just pull the closest bunch first and kill them a few but rapidly at a time (think spike).

Cynn/Orion isn't too bad - people complain that the firestorm comes late, who cares, often if you are still fighting by the time the firestorm arrives, you'll be thankful for that firestorm - think of it as backup plan. And the fire eles do about the most DPS of the henchies as far as I know. When the enemies start running from the fire storm towards unaggroed enemies, retarget a closer enemy so the hench group doesn't rush forward and aggro them.

When you have a ranged attacks only group, in some situations like the Tahnnakai mission you can surgically target and kill some of the bosses without aggroing everything and thus proceed to the next objective rapidly.

And in Nahpui with ranged attacks, the well of weariness tends to appear in places you can avoid (where possible pull and kill the star guardians first).

It can be done. I have got masters/expert with henchies on some of these missions. For example, after getting sick of stupid humans (e.g. rangers/assassins who think they are tanks and run forward holding the urn, or warriors who insist on killing _everything_ including themselves and the rest of the party), I switched my w/mo to a w/ranger, went interrupt-bow-only and completed the Sunjiang mission with a _Masters_. No melee needed - just judicious targetting and only killing what is necessary.

Of course, warriors are good in other cases - like going around in bukdek - vs the jade knights and so on. But for many PVE missions/quests tanks/warriors are unnecessary or even counterproductive.

Of course in Tyria you don't really have much choice, the hench non-warriors are crap - low dps, mediocre skill sets.