How are we supposed to equip our heroes?

Honestly I think it is time this issue got some attention. How does Anet even half way expect us to be able to pay for equipping heroes? Between my paragon and my dervish I've dumped all 250k and they have crap. The amount of gold needed to fully enjoy the game is just absolutely obscene.

1. Insignias are completely stupid. They cost a nut and a half just to equip your armor with them. Take into account even equipping 3 heroes that you use, let alone all of them.

2. Weapons, are you kidding me, I use nothing but spellcasters for heroes because weapons are just unbelievably expensive. To buy the raw max damage weapon clean it is about 7k (5k + materials). Then to buy the 15^50 inscription that is another 10k.. To buy even decent mods that is another 15k. Are you kidding thats 32k per person per weapon.

3. Runes are completely out of the question. If they are not sold out, every rune people want is absolutely obscenely priced. Sure people are gonna say it will go down but the fact is it won't. They upped the demand by 4x and the supply stayed the same.

To fully enjoy the game you want max runes and well equipped heroes. Three well equipped heroes at the very least and the rest of them for full flexibility. It costs damn near 50k to well equip a single hero or yourself. If I went through 250k to equip my guys and they have absolute crap, how do you expect new players to even remotely stand a chance?

Do something about this crap.

1. You don't necessarily have to add Insignias to heroes. They just improve the armor, but are not required.

2. It is not necessary to have perfect weapons. Just use items you find that have ok stats on them. Or, you can get Collector's Items that have 15^50 on them. The mods you can find by yourself. Comes out to...1k > per weapon.

3. Runes are not necessary either. They are there to improve, but not necessary. Also, you can find Runes and salvage them out for personal use.


Heroes are not meant to be perfect players. They are there as a customizable henchman that you can control for better effect. If you wanted to you don't even need to equip a single hero. Just use the henchmen. Stop whining.

My monk's Heroes used collector's weapons with no mods. They have no insignias or runes in their armor. My monk beat the game using them. It's not necessary to twink out your Heroes to make them effective. Complain about something that needs complaining about. Don't whine that this game is too hard when really it's just that you want EVERYTHING and really need none of it for your Heroes. If your Heroes aren't effective, maybe you should look at their builds and not their equipment.

What Phoenix said.

Runes are not going to be overpriced because heros armor can never be destroyed. If you are that obsessed with making perfect heroes here is a way to be cheap. Buy one set of runes for one characters heroes. Every time you switch characters, salvage out all the runes off and switch them to your other characters. If you are too lazy to do that, then it is not important enough for them to have runes in the first place.

I wish hero equipment was account based. Nobody seems to care that they have access to every skill your account has unlocked, giving level 3 Koss with his endgame build using an elite skill. So I don't see why not let them have whatever equipment too, you can easily have something in storage for them from another character.

So yeah, account based please. Otherwise I think I am only completing NF with 1 character, the whole campaign is a grind.

There is no right or wrong way to play this game. You dont need to max out your Heros to perform or play the game. Heros skills builds are infact more important towards their effectiveness than what you put in their hands. Unless of course you plan to use your PvE toons/Heros to PvP then its a different story and you should have used a PvP toon instead... Otherwise you got to suck it up and come up with the Gold to make them competitive like the rest of the rich PvPers crowd.

Personally i have never gave my Heros any Runes/insignia so far and i am up to Gate of maddness playing only 1-2 hours on weekdays and more on weekends and should finish the game tonight with my main without ever having to PuG. Infact my Heros are gonna be recycling the items they use when i play another toon for the same few Heros that i always have in my party.

Needs and Wants are completely different things.

Agreed. Lets rename post. HEROES SHOUL BE ACCOUNT BASED, not charracter based. Or else it's realy stuped. Can't find another word.

/signed

Pfffft next we shall be complaining that the average henchmen don't have sup vigor and 15^50 weapons

I'm pretty sure Stefan isn't running around with a starter sword like my Koss.

/signed for account based heroes

Even a badly equipped hero is still superior to a henchman. You can get very cheap, near perfect stuff from collectors. Equipping them with l33t stuff is nice to have, but by no means required. It's the skill bar that makes all the difference, not the armor and weapon equipment!

yes - lets have lvl 20 Koss in starter island. great idea.
yes - lets have lvl 20 koss with max dmg +15^50 +30HP +mod wepaonry in start island.

wonderful idea.

why?

because its just tooooo hard to use collector/crafter items! zomg MUST have G0ldz!

AFAIK you can't put insignias on hero armor. Did that change?

don't agree completely, as people have said before it is possible to complete the game with heroes still using starter equip and blank armor and get master reward in missions.

but think somehow the heroes should automatically get equipped with the drops that they're stealing off us >.> or have an option saying "hero X got this drop, equip it on him?" and if we disagree it, the drop disappears and if we agree we can't touch that drop anyway because it's the hero's <.<

remember, it can take time to farm for the items needed for the collector and having to do it several times for other chars and hoping the henchies/heroes aren't stealing it >.> or you have empty storage so you can constantly transfer weapon sets between chars...

Heroes should have access to the pvp equipment builder.

I agree with u

the 1st character in nightfall was my paragon and believe me i spent 100k on heroes only just for runes

for weapons i give them collector items or any item would be better than theirs

don't waste ur money on heroes untill u have millions

I beat the game with one character and I'm 70% done with other one, I didn't even bother buying insignias or runes for my heroes (Koss is the only one to have a rune, my monks are without single rune), I gave them greens that I had I found or collector weapons and had no trouble beating the game.

So I definately didn't need to fully equip them to beat and enjoy the game.

As for #2 - you can get max dmg 15^50 weapons without paying tons for it, just use collectors from old chapters or from Elona (I found couple of guys that give 15^50 max dmg items throughout the game). I played whole game with 15^50 collectors hammer without any other mod on it.

Koss doesn't need bling-bling to fight well.

Honestly, runes and insignias are not all that expensive. I'll bet you're trying to deck out all your heros with the Radiant insignia, the most expensive one. I beat the campaign without adding any insignias and only a Superior Axe Mastery on Koss. Now I'm slowly improving them, but only a little bit at a time.

If you seriously think you need to give your heros the equivalent of an Escalade with pure platinum spinners, I feel bad.

*edit* Collectors are your friend.

However, I will sign because I think Heros should've been account based anyway.

This is a great point.

But... playing with just heroes... it feels like I'm getting a LOT of drops. Are we certain that any drops that would be assigned to heroes aren't being assigned to the player instead?

Henchmen, yes. It's obvious they are. I see my drop rate fall if I have henchmen, but it seems like when I'm running around with 3 heroes, that monsters are dropping something for me around 75% of the time.

I have 10 PvE characters and equipping every hero in every PvE character will be very hard even if you put collector items on them. Most armor insignias and runes must be bought.

Heroes gear should be account-based but their levels would become equal with highest level hero of same type among your PvE characters once Nightfall's mainland has been reached.

/signed for account based heros