can heroes not equip sunspear skills like 'cry of pain'?

hi,

i used cry of pain in my own build as a mesmer, though now i'm playing my ranger, and would like to equip a hero with that skill in his build.

i have aquired the skill, if i change myself to Ranger - mesmer i can equip it myself

but for some reason i cannot find it in the list of skills equipable on my mesmer hero, nor can i load it from a template.


now i've been looking at the wiki for cry of pain, and sunspear skills, but can't find any restriction noted for heroes... can anyone shed some light on this?

Heroes cannot use the so called PvE skills. The Eotn rank skills, Luxon/kurzick and sunspear/lightbringer + signet of capture.

heroes can not equip those skills as they're pve only skills

This segment taken from wiki

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_PvE-only_skills
PvE-only skills are only accessible to roleplaying characters and only usable in PvE areas. PvE-only skills can be learned by a roleplaying character, but cannot be unlocked for the account. A character can only equip three PvE-only skills at a time, with the exception of minigames (such as Polymock) and disguises (such as Junundu). Heroes cannot equip PvE-only skills; the exceptions are Junundu skills and titles which affect all character's heroes.

Basically that's the advantage you get for playing with real players over heroes. Otherwise there wouldn't be a reason to anymore.

heroes work the same a pvp-only chars (they cant equip pve-only skills either)

* to sum it up:
- heroes cant use pve-only skills
- pvp-only chars cant use pve-only skills
- pve chars can use pve-only skills, but max 3 at the same time and never in pvp

ok thanks,

that basically sums it up then
i looked in the cry of pain article on wiki, or in the sunspear page, but that piece of info below the 'pve-only' skill section i had not found yet. thanks for pointing it out!

And who is to say the AI would use those skills well even if they could? They can't even get some regular skills right.

Then why does Pikin the Hero Skill trainer in Kamadan offer to teach you Sunspear skills? (And will take your hero skill points in exchange for them.) I thought I was crazy at first, after buying 2 skills to equip to heroes and then not finding them on any skill trees. Seems like having them available for training from the hero trainer just causes a lot of unnecessary confusion - if heroes can't use them, don't let the hero skill trainer teach them.

Always been a bit odd that you can buy skills from a hero skill trainer that your heros can't use.

Hero skill points were a way for ANet to give players skill points without also giving players a shitload of money because buying them will easily bankrupt people just starting off, as well as to space out skill acquisition.
As for why it was named as such, it's not the first time they've named something in a way which will confuse people/isn't consistent with everything else.

Who's to say players use them well? xD

I've done some comparisons between Pugs and Heroways myself a few months back. Running Zaishen dailys with multiple different pugs and then doing a run with heroes to compare. If you only consider time used to complete the missions the average pug used between 2 and 2,5 times longer then me playing with heroes and some bad ones not completing at all or spending 3-4 times longer. And that's without taking in to account the 5-15 minutes it takes to form a pug group.