Healer Henches ... screwed forever?

How about something rlly done about those...

I dont think it is asking too much to have healer henches actually using healing or,let's do it the fancy way !! RAISE ...nah it's way more funny to stay his ass on ground watching em shooting random mobs til they die.

Everyone should have noticed that, when there is ONLY the 2 healers left, they start healing at each other, endlessly, while taking enemy attacks.

But the worst part..they dont heal NPCS, the one u HAVE TO KEEP ALIVE
So, u take care of mobs, one hex is still active on the NPC, it degens, they wont heal him ... and u ve to restart ur mission

This thread isnt obviously the first one concerning this... but i never thought it was this bad... a moment ago i was doing Thirsty River, and i ve just been watching for almost 4 minutes those lazy healers shooting at the final group, one was shooting a Champion, the other one was firing at the Unique, healing each other from time to time...until one of em died. Of course no one used a Raise ... THEN, the other one, suddenly ran, tried to raise the other healer, and of course ... died too

/awesome -_-

Don't die.

Hench healers are programmed to res players only when it is safe to do so. If they are not healing mission critical NPC's, they are out of energy.

Oh cmon, the lazy bastard was just standing next to him doing nothing..and watched him die

Henches are to be used, not relied on.
Managing henchies is a skill in itself.

Personally tho, I'd prefer if henchies weren't coded to "act like players" but instead performed rigidly defined tasks.

Eg. Alesia and Lina will always stay at max distance from the party and heal from afar. They will not attack, nor will they run around.

the Necro henchie only uses blood ritual on back line casters. He will not move close to the enemy for any reason.

etc...

No, that's not what I want. In fact your ideas are very different from what I would want my henchies doing if I was given a choice. What I want is a hench AI script. It's not *that* hard (I've designed little languages in the past). Simpler games have done so in the past and there is no reason why they couldn't here (in fact, I imagine they used a little language for this anyway).

Not only that, but just imagine how usefull the henchies would be if the community could easily write thier own henchie AI - I bet we would have *much* better AI from them. Though maybe they do no want that (discourage human interaction). Dunno, but as a person who only has a few hours at a time to play the henchies are pretty much my only option. I would like to see them use thier res signet on me from time to time instead of simply randomly attacking others and ressing the AI monks (me being a monk also that can be quite irritating).

hehe...welcome to MY world, witchblade, hun.

sometimes, this game is just cheating, it feels like...(ask my friend Lupus, he swaers the game cheets on his rager, letting criters save and dodge stuff that shouldnt miss, and not get poisoned by his arrows)

and its kinda sad to watch alesia and lina get turned into catfood when theres no cats about to clean up,and they are running between my corpse, my friends and the dead tanks....also funny, when they die at the exact same place and fall over looking like they hugged befor death....aw...-^.^-

you think alesia and lina are going girly only?.....wow, if thats true, i guess usa will lose GW altogether (obscure anime girl/girl and usa cartoon sensors reference hehe)

ctrl double click on yourself or who you want res'd. May take a few tries but 50% of the time one of them will stop and res you.

I found this to be true too. I was in SF the other day and i died on the bridge. The henchies were still fighting and the monks were still healing but i did that ^^ and one of them ressed me, against the usual "when it's safe to do so" policy.
Usually without doing that i only got ressed when one enemy is left...rendering my chances of recovering my DP...useless.

Wow, aparently I must pick them on a suicidal day, bescause at least 50% of the time they charge right into battle with me

Come now. If Claude or Eve are stuck in the back, who will cast Blood Ritual on my pet!

Those are sad times indeed.

If one plays carefull and lures -> Henches are doing well in most cases, especially if you have some support for them. Henchies do NOT do their job well, if you rush into battle and wonder why the monks cant heal well when leeched by 3 mesmers and you targeted the warriors.....

BUT a really annoying thing in Hench-AI is :
An Ice Imp cast mealstorm on the monk and he simply dies- hes trieing to heal itself until he dies. Plz make the henchies run out of AoE spells after the first (or two) hits by an AoE like meteor shower or meastorm.

Yeah I agree something needs to be done.

The game is designed to have it so you don't have to play with other people. If you're healer hench can't help you enough (and if you're not foturnate enough to be a monk) than you can't get much help from hench. Plus the fact that most 8 person groups take 3 monks (sometimes 2 but the team has to be really good) and 2 monks for 6 person groups is a must have. When the only hench monk or one of the only 2 hench monks bites than you're screwed. In addition to the AI fixes needed, they should add some other good skills like healing seed. Healing breeze, orision of healing, and restore life just don't help out that much... (Word of healing included later in the game)

Not sure if this has already been suggested but,maybe make the henchies heal NPCS that aren't in the party box that are part of the quest/mission?Like for example in Sorrow's Furnance the people like the Great Priest ext...

this is singlehandedly the most retarded jumble of words i have ever read

congrats you should get a medal

I don't know what groups youv'e been playing with, but I find that a group that brings some self heals (gasp! self-heals? what are those? I thought monks did all the healing! /sarcasm) and can coordinate itself, you'll need one less monk than your numbers. Sure, 2 vs 3 doesn't seem like it's too important, but just something I've noticed. People seem utterly subserviant to monks. To the point of insanity. Like REFUSING to even join a party that doesn't have at least 2 monks. I don't see that as in any way constructive.

Please, don't use monks to cover your ass. Eventually, someone will figure you out.

Plus, just so I don't end up not even referring to what the OP said, I don't really have a problem with the healer henchies. They seem to enjoy running around aimlessly when there's just the two of them left, but hey, its not like they'll be able to get off an 8-second rez under fire anyways.

Good point but I think for the most part groups suck really bad so you have to have a lot of monks to even hance a chance... Thats why I like to stick with guild members when it comes to parties. Self heals? sure maybe. But what about for a Me/e? aura of restoration can't be brought higher than it is and ether feast is insperation which I guess I COULD use.

The healer henchies will take care of anything in your party window including pets and allied NPCs. Unfortunately they will completely ignore any NPC you are escorting that does not appear as an ally (ghosts, SF dwarves). The one exception to this is Necro pets. Stand in one place for a little while and they'll burn up all their energy keeping those pets from degening to death. Go figure....
I completely agree that the "Gee, let's stand in the middle of Searing Heat/Maelstrom/Chaos Storm until we die!" code has to go. If Alesia is smart enough to run away from the 3 Jade Armor that are beating on her, she should be smart enough to sidestep twice to get out of Maelstrom. Heck even the monsters try to run away from AoE spells.
To the OP: I feel your pain. Usually by the time the henchies decide to raise me they are the last two party members left alive. One goes down, the other stands over my corpse in the rez animation and dies horribly. Sad but sort of funny at the same time.
On a side note I've watched the henchies using skills. Although they change up skills throughout the game, I never see them using more than 4 different skills in one area (5 after they pick up elites).