Feedback:User/Konig Des Todes/Post 7-hero update: Henchmen

With 7 hero parties now possible, the use of henchmen will drop down. The only people who would use them are (1) those bad with builds who don't use PvX, (2) those without Nightfall, Eye of the North, or mercenary heroes, or (3) those who have yet to unlock at least 7 heroes (for those who don't fit #2, it's a short wait).

As such, I propose a few changes to the henchmen system which makes them more viable and more desireable. The main reason why they're not desirable, imo, is that they have set-in-stone builds. But this can be used to their advantage - take, for instance, the henchmen in Raisu Palace and Imperial Sanctum, these henchmen have set-in-stone builds but have skills heroes cannot use: Celestial skills.

How I see it, there are three non-mutually exclusive options:

Path 1: The Mastering One's Profession
This one most likely has the most coding annoyances to it. This idea would be to take the henchmen as is - NPCs in outposts that can be put in the part with set builds, weapons, runesets, etc - but to give them multiple builds. Now, this won't be like the Peacekeepers and White Mantle of the Beyond content, but on the other hand would work in a more controlled manner.

When added to the party, they would have a button next to their name much like for heroes. When you click this button, a panel shows up. Where for heroes it shows a build, target/drop button, and behavior mode, this will instead have a checklist of 3-4 options that show a skill bar, attributes, and health and energy amount (all of these are grouped together, under one option). One would be able to choose which skill bar to use.

For example, let's take Little Thom (attributes and health set for level 20) (note, I do not believe myself good at balancing, so these bars are merely placeholders):

And add in one or two other builds.

The build for every level would be the same in the outposts, but the last few skills (amount based on level) would be locked in the explorable, with the elite in the last slot and unlocked at level 20.

By showing the skill bar, there's a second benefit gained: You don't have to go to the wiki in order to find their attributes (if it's even documented!) and skill bar.

Path 2: One Above Many
The second option, and most likely the easiest for coding, would be to give them a unique skill that would act as their 8th skill, akin to the celestial skills and akin to the Ebon Falcon's special skills. Some of these may be themed with their race or faction - for instance, sunspear henchmen can be given unique versions of the Sunspear skills.

For example, I'll show the current build for Timera with this idea in mind, HM version:

Path 3: The Way of the Hero
The third option, most obvious and not universal, would be to turn a select number of henchmen into heroes. These heroes would mostly be the "expendable" henchmen and would be required a quest to be added for each group (well, not really, but let's add em anyways!). This also solves another problem as well.

Unfortunately for the Prophecies henchmen, we're now given an explanation for some of their disappearances, making that henchmen-to-hero a bit harder, requiring retcons. A better alternative at that point would be to just have new Prophecies-only heroes.

Factions would be easier, due to the incredibly large amount of henchmen, but one would have to watch for those that are within the final two missions and those who are also seen in Eye of the North (which prevents the best warrior from being a hero).

Personally, I'd be inclined against this option. An alternative to the removing-henchmen-but-keeping-the-NPC approach would be to turn some into NPCs akin to the Ebon Falcons and Shining Blade during the War in Kryta, or like Veal. I.e., randomly appearing but not always appearing NPCs that fight as allies. Of course, like above, not all would go through this.