Guild Wars Nightfall: Heroes explained in a screenshot

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O posted this in the general forum right after the preview event:


At the end of the month Guild Wars is eraleasing its third campaign, Nightfall.  One of the major features of Nightfall is the new Hero system.  As those of you who have played guild wars know, there is a henchmen system.  Basically henchmen are standardized computer controlled character taht you can add to your party.  They are essentially the same as having an actual player in your party.  They take loot and xp shares etc.  In previous campaigns henchmen, while having quite good skill use AI, were quite stupid and uncontrollable.  Often your healer would sit there rezzing someone for 6 seconds while you were retreating etc.  Or the healer hench would shoot a mob with its wand and ruin your pull.

This has all changed.  Enter the Hero system.  Heroes wrok within the henchman framework but add many more features.  Eeach Hero is bascially a the same as a player character.  They advance in levels with you.  They have a praimary and secondary profession(you can swithc their secondary profession at anytime).  They have access to all skills you have unlocked.  At any time you may respec them to any build you desire as if they were a player character.

Below in a screenshot of the interface additions:





You can now set a rallying point for each indivudal hero and 1 rallying point for all henchmen/heros as a group.  The individual hero rally point override the general rally point.  This allow for strategic placement of your guys.  You can set up DPS and have a hero pull.  You can set a retreat point or just tell the dummies to get out of an aoe.

In addition, Heroes now have a behavior mode very similar to that seen in WoW or EQ2 for pets you can set agressive, defensive, and passive.

As you can see each Hero has a moveable/hidepanle you can access that shows health/energy/buffs and its skill bar.  You may setup each heroes skill set however you like.  Each skill is clickable.  When clicked the hero will use that skill if they can or give it top prioirity next time it can use that (you see a green check in that case).

I didn't take a screenshot but you can also equip your heroes with weapons/shield and enhance their armor with runes.  The skill and inventory screen now have "tabs" for each hero in your party.  They share the same inventory and clicking on a tab changes to the appropriate paper doll (or in the case of skill appropriate skill bar).

At the point I took this screenshot, near the end of the preview event campaign, I had obtained 5 heroes.  You are forced to choose between 2 at one point so the event technically had 6 avilable heroes.  You may only use 3 heroes at any time but you may advance and have avaialbe as many as you have.  So far I know of 12 heroes that are avaialbe and you can probably get a set of at least  8 or more.

It is a pretty amazing addition you could easily run a 4 man trap team with your hcaracter and three heroes with ranger secodnaries (or the one ranger primary).  Using rallyying points you can easily precisely place traps and with the skill interface you have complete control over their trapping and spirit placement.  You can use the behavior and and rally point mechanics to place them while you pull and they will not follow you to mess anything up.

All in all its a great system, I was quite impressed.  You are no longer just one character.  You are the military commander of a platoon of elites.  You control and advance an entire party just like in a game like baldur's gate.  All items and all skills are now of interest to just about anyone.  The possibilities are pretty amazing.

JelloB2000

It was said on one of the big gamesites recently that once you complete the (Nightfall) story you can recruit all/remaining heroes.

jopy

GW has good concepts but the pve end game is terrible.

And the reduced loot when grouping henchmen makes it even worse.

But that doesn't really matter, cause the pve end game sucks.

The PvP is alright, but it gets old fast

Unknown

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Originally posted by jopy
GW has good concepts but the pve end game is terrible. And the reduced loot when grouping henchmen makes it even worse. But that doesn't really matter, cause the pve end game sucks. The PvP is alright, but it gets old fast

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Um ok thanks for your opinion.  This thread is mostly for reference I would prefer if it stayed on topic and not degenerate into some sort of flame war.  Thank you.