A funny way to look at things.

This is just an interesting little tidbit I noticed the other day. I was going from droks to camp rankor on my monk with henchmen (god help me). Well I got up until that windy path when the group of 30 avicara kill me (two ardents > henchmen damage). Well.. then I respawn... right next to them.. begin dying repeatedly. Well ok what I'm getting at it turned into a spawn and run and I noticed something funny. When your alone, the azure shadows actually coordinate their knockdowns. Meaning 1 uses sig judgement, next one etc. Now point two.

When you do nahpui quarter, if you take both the healer henchmen they will heal IDENTICALLY until their skillset causes for an offset. So here are two henchmen both using jameis gaze on somebody at 75% health at the exact same time. They will continue to do so for a long time unless they get into a heal chain where the other is recharging before they run out of energy double healing.


Now... why would Anet go through the trouble to make the azure shadow coordinate their knockdowns but not go through the trouble to make the henchmen coordinate heals. Simple, challenge over luxury. There is a reason the henchmen suck and some enemies are built like your average team arena player (not exactly great but definately better than hench).

Can I have The Skill Eater boss as my healer hench please!

interesting point, and I can understand why, if they made the henchies uber than this game wouldn't need to be an MMO, I am glad they habve the henchies tho because then this one would be closer and closer to yer average MMO in having to rely on other players and jerks to survive. well thats just my two cents.

same old question, hench are supposed to be bad.

.........

What the hell are you talking about?

Real players are supposed to be preferable to henchmen to encourage cooperation between real people. Of course, this is arguably not the case, because real people have a tendency to do their own types of stupid things.

I would agree except for a handful of points: You can't always get a team - if you have an unpopular build, play at odd times of day, or otherwise can't find a team; You can't always find human equivalents of the henchmen thus are forced to use them. Being forced to use henchmen not even on par with the monsters because of some thing like "people wouldn't play with other people" is crap. You can't always play with other people. Half of the time when I read some of the reasons Arena net gives for things I can only come to the conclusion that whoever is in charge of decision making has never played the game.

There's simple logic behind the "double heal" - if a party member is taking enough damage to trigger the heal, chances are the same party member will keep taking that same damage repeatedly and thus require more healing later. "Later" could be as soon as "when the healing spell finishes casting" if, say, a caster is getting pummeled by a warrior or it could be much later - against the next mob - but the one thing henchies don't have is the human ability to estimate outcomes. Frankly, I am glad henchies "double heal" because in those rare cases when there is a sudden, coordinated damage spike (like 4 enemy elementalists all using Obsidian Flame because the mage in your party is below half HP and triggered their code) henchies don't wait to estimate the approximate outcome of the party actions and can keep someone alive in the face of a continuous barrage of damage where a single heal hench wouldn't be enough.

It's the same thing that causes Orion and Cynn to unleash Firestorm on corpses. Firestorm is low on the priority list of elementalist henchies who use it, so it gets used far down the line. The problem is that the henchies have no way of recognizing when the enemy is about to fall, so we see Firestorms that might have been used better rain down on corpses. (Part of the effect is that we're too focused on a fight to notice appropriately-timed Firestorms unless the enemy is tough and won't fall to the rest, but that's a different point). Asking for henchies to effectively have a human-like awareness of the environment is like asking for Super-Friends to carry you through the game

In short, the Avicara mobs cooperate because they comprise one unit. The healing henchies don't cooperate because each hench is a separate unit.

I hench 95% of the time. Arenanet grossly underestimated the Internet and human stupidity. Henchies are like the old jalopy in your driveway - they'll break down sooner or later, but until then, they're dependable and will get you where you're going.

Dumb henchies is how you make a game challenging these days.

Hah amen to that, if henchies were good the game would be too easy. If they make the game more difficult newb pugs wouldn't exist because they would always fail.

i think you forgot the /sarcasm, people might think you really mean it.

But they do have the computer ability to instantly detect HP percentage.

Well Sir, what challenge would it be if you could just tell that whatever's-her-name healing henchie not to use Healing Touch as her main healing skill ? Or perhaps tell your henchies to stay back while you try to lure one of the ten conveniently placed mobs away from the herd ?

actually the henches are alot better than they were when factions came out.. game is too easy now you can hench just about anything.. noticed in raisu they all get the dragon spell now too- when I first went through it was just me who got the spell.. things are just plain easy- check out harvest temple.. you can clean out the whole area to either side of waking waters with just henchmen.. you could barely get out the door before all the improvements- I guess falling asleep comes to about as close as a challenge nowdays

QFT. No matter how dumb you make the henchmen, they'll never be as dumb as the average human player. Even if the human player isn't dumb, he's probably a jerk or a guy who tries to scam you. That's why we love henchies better. They don't insult you, ragequit, spam, scam or call you a n00b and they always listen to target calling.

Henchmen > GW players

And you can go afk for 12 hours or more!

EXACTLY!

What would happen if the main attraction for chapter 3 was "Customize your own group of henchmen including skills, items, and strategy!" And the double heal 99% of the time is a half a heal plus 1 and a half heals of overheal.

nice thread.... just to add ..... i'm so glad that the henchmen actual attack the target you call vs the PUG you find and have to explain why attack that target first, because.... etc....

well, you see, if a player is alone, he/she is most likely a runner. And, as we have learned from Logan's Run, runners are bad. Thus, the azure shadows coordinate their attacks to f-up the runner. At least that's my theory.

*Last Dawn, Capricorn*

OH NOS!

No matter how bad Alesia is (She can't even heal herself properly), I still rather travel with them.
With hench I can stalk a mob for hours, and attack whenever I want. I can sacrifice them, so I can run through a portal. I can tell them to attack and than decide to run rhe other way. They will happily continue the fight, though their fearless leader is running the opposite way