Strategy

If you have followed my two previous articles you’ll notice, that the all of the examples I used were ranger lead (I playing the ranger).  The question arises how can other classes effectively use henchman?

Regarding other classes: you do not need a special type of build to use henchmen effectively. The biggest advantage of the Ranger is the ability to attract and pull groups from a long distance (the long bow is the king for distance). That said, one strategy would be to equip a long bow on your character as a switch weapon for the sole purpose of activating a group of foes. Once activated the strategy becomes the same: keep yourself alive, direct your henchman appropriately. You don't even need a good long bow any old long bow will work.

There are other ways to initiate a battle aside from using a long bow. 

Before the “AI” update I played though all the missions as an elementalist Nuker.  For those who play this class effectively, you know that you want the tanks, when feasible, to initiate contact with the enemy.  Thus leading with a longbow is not such a good idea.  Instead, the key here is to push the warriors into battle ahead of you, gathering argo.  The key here is calling your target.  Done correctly, you can get your warriors to charge in and while they are charging in you take a few steps back so that the enemy stays outside your argo boundary.  Once the tanks have gathered the enemy, it’s time to unleash hell.

When deciding how to engage the enemy, consider what role you want the henchman to play.  Are they tanks to gather argo?  If your playing a tank are they support to add power to you precision attacks upon the enemy forces.   Basically, If you don’t know what role the henchmen are to play then don’t be surprised when their actions and attacks seems random and disjointed.

Skill selection

When using henchmen, choose skills that play to your strength, your strength being that you are an intelligent human being and not some two bit "ai" directed player (OK, bad pun but really I could not resist). Can you interrupt your enemy? Can you slow them down? How can you keep yourself alive? Do you have a spell that either allows you to dodge attacks or increase armor or health? Can you help heal your henchmen? Can you pin down a foe? Can you knock them down? Can you blind them? Can you curse them to help counteract their ability to heal themselves? All these things, used effectively enhance your ability to wield your henchmen.

Aside from skills, pick your targets appropriately. Your computer opponent wins, not by implementing brilliant tactics but instead by sheer brute force. It uses numbers to simply steam roll over you. So take away its advantage. Once engaged in a battle, pick your targets wisely. Take out healers first. Next take out your soft targets who are usually, but not always the casters. They usually have less armor and die fast but also have the ability to do serious damage to your group. Finally take out the melee opponents and then last but not least the boss. Again, you want to take away the computer's advantage, which is its large number of foes that it throws at you. Eight level 22 summit heretics are much more worrisome to me then two level 28 bosses.

Get to know your henchman

Regarding henchmen temperament. You just have to get to know your henchmen. Take only a couple of them out at a time and see how they attack. If possible, sit back, and let the henchmen do all of the killing (you will still need to choose the foes but don't kill them, let your henchmen do that). Don't worry if they die or even if you die, you can always resurrect them or, if you die, start over. For each battle focus your attention only on one henchman. Your job is to observe what each henchman does (observe his temperament as well as the skills he uses when attacking).

While knowing your henchmen is important and equipping appropriate skills aids in battle, the most important thing is to have a plan and know your foe. There is an adage in chess, the person who plays reactionary always looses. If all you are doing is responding to your opponent then you are playing the game the way your opponent wants you to play. On the other hand, if you have a plan and stick with it, often times you will win. If you fail tweak the plan or even make a new one. But again, have a strategy. There is a huge difference between improvising a strategy to fit a given situation and throwing yourself into a pitched battle and hoping for the best.

I’ll give you an obvious example. When I was playing the Riverside Mission, for the first time, I made the mistake of going with both my fighters and no ranger, aside from myself. For the most part, this was not really too big a deal. For the ground troops the henchmen worked out great but when it came to the two guards in the tower it was ridiculous. They were really hard to hit. Only I, playing as a ranger, could hit them and not even consistently so interrupts were ineffectual. To make matters worse they could heal. I literally, after about 15 minutes, walked away from the computer for a while in the hopes that perhaps I would get lucky and come back with one of the guards dead. After coming back, I realized that luck was just not on my side so I quit the mission, and came back this time with the ranger henchman. This made all the difference in the world. See the strategy here was to take out the towers. With that strategy in mind the choice of henchmen was obvious.

Taking another idea from chess that will help. Try having a goal. In chess, we think of it as imagining a dream position. If you could place your pieces in an optimal place where would they go, regardless of where your opponent is currently. Once you have done that, formulate a plan to get them there. Looking back at the Riverside Mission, the dream position is obvious - I want place myself where I can take out the guards in the tower. So what needs to be done? Well first the surrounding foes need to be taken out. Then the foes near the tower need to be picked off. I then can place my pieces in that correct spot thus achieving my dream position.

It all comes down to strategy. If you have an effective strategy then you and your henchman will be effective otherwise well… remember the headless chicken analogy.

~red