Talk:Blood Washes Blood

Reference to the Wheel of Time? Alreajk 17:17, 27 August 2007 (CDT)

Explorer tips
Similar to Tihark Orchard, you can explore the outer area safely as there are no enemies outside the actual quest area. --Shin 12:28, 3 September 2007 (CDT)

How do you repeat it for Book of Hero's?
It says to talk with the Scrying Pool, but I can not figure out excactly what to do, anyone who can tell me? Taoh Rihze 12:47, 5 September 2007 (CDT)

Nevermind finaly figured it out, resummon the bear, lead it through the portal, and you can redo the mission. Taoh Rihze 12:59, 5 September 2007 (CDT)

Reward
The reward on the Article says: 2 500xp 500 Norn Rep points

The quest log only says 2500xp...or it that only me? Is the actualy reward dialogue different? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by Khazad Guard (contribs).


 * Norn points are never listed in the Quest Log, iirc. --[[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]] -- (s)talkpage 14:34, 2 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Reputation points are listed in the log for non-primary quests, but not for the primary quests or dungeons. You will still receive points when you complete primary quests and dungeons, though - a large amount the first time (between 500-3000) and a smaller amount if you repeat it (100-1000). &mdash;Dr Ishmael [[Image:Diablo_the_chicken.gif]] 14:43, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Hard Mode tips
To get the Bear Spirit in Jaga Moraine, there will be a huge number of Spectral Vaettirs near the shrine. They pull fairly easily, but sometimes you hit one and get two groups; so, be prepared to run away, because if you engage two groups it will almost certainly be a team wipe, and is otherwise very nasty.

Once you get to Bjora Marches, the very beginning is difficult because many patrol converge in the pathway that curls around counterclockwise. Avoid them, and head south a bit, taking out the Mandragors that are just south, and swing around the lower pass. From there it is easier to move to areas with smaller numbers of patrols that are easily enough pulled. Work your way northwest to find yourself to the northwest of the shrine so you come to the shrine from on high (in the path behind the one shown on the map in the article page). From on high, the seekers shooting up at you do less massive damage and any rangers you have do more damage shooting down. Then keeping to the north, head over to most northerly barrier and come in there. Clear out area just around the fortress.

Once you make it to the end fortress, knock down both barriers going in, and pull each of the Charr groups (except the one containing the boss) out of the fortress through the closest exit, or to a clear area. They pull easily. While in Ursan form, you move fast enough to make pulling easy and safer. Put your monks and other spell casters behind barriers (other side of fortress wall can work well--out of range of melee) when you can.

Note the last monk boss, Elmohr Snowmender, does not have a resurrect ability--take out the Charr Dominator which is the only one with resurrect. This battle may involve some attrition. Save the boss for last. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by Susan (contribs).

Bug?
I've beaten the game once, and now I'm going through it again with a second copy of my Hero's Handbook, so I can craft Norn Armor... Anyway, "Blood Washes Blood" is different the second time around, and I don't understand why. My quest log says: "Light the sacred altar. Lead the beat spirit into Bjora Marches to cleanse Jora's homestead.". My quest marker points to the actual Altar, but the Arctic Nightmares don't spawn, and hence the Sacred Flame isn't lit. I have unlocked Ursan Blessing, and tried the quest with it Equipped and un-equipped, and nothing happens! What am I doing wrong? --MagickElf666 22:15, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, it seems I had the MINI MAP (U) Opened, and didn't see the flame's Progression. The only different thing the second time around is that you can go straight to the Sacred Flame Altar, and the Arctic Nightmares don't spawn, so you stand in the middle for about 45 seconds and then you may continue. --MagickElf666 20:53, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Back Door Route Shortcut
Providing everyone in your party has access to Longeye's Ledge, this quest is quicker to do if you start off from that location. The path shown in the accompanied screenshot is mostly avoidable of all mobs and can easily be run in less then 7 minutes. --DaveBaggins, 13:20, 26 January 2008 (CST)
 * From my personal experience, the back way to this in Hard Mode is quite easier then facing the wall of Spectral Vaettirs then going from Bjora Marches. When I did this, I only faced two groups Spectral Vaettirs when getting the shrine. It saved a ton of Death Penalty on me and my Hero and Henchie group. -- Mrxaero 00:23, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
 * You can run the route on the map in about 1.5 minutes with no fights at all save for a rare wurm pop. Be prepared for the Vaettir on the other side, they usually rip through most groups not equipped to specifically deal with them.  Pulling them apart towards the res shrine is the best option until you clear the area around the altar, then go cap it.  For first timers, pull and kill some of the vaettirs as well before you start fighting the nearly harmless spawns of the nightmares.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 18:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Nice little thing
Ran to marshes from sifhalla with war then just zoned back and went instead of fighting much--71.227.142.108 23:01, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Place to return after completion
Anom IP's do keep changing it to Gunnar's_Hold. Don't want to start a revert war. IMHO, it should be Shifhalla and you will only return go Gunnar's hold if you already did it. Any thoughts ? -- -- ( talk ) 08:00, 24 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Are you saying that the first time ever completing it will send you to Shifhalla, but second time onward will send you to Gunnar's Hold? Anyways, my mesmer who completed it in Normal mode once before just did this quest today in Hard Mode and got sent to Gunner's. -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 08:40, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Support Please
This quest (particularly in Hard Mode) was obviously designed for a team of Ursans. During the 16 months from the time Ursan Blessing was released untill the time A-net finally made time to nerf it, better players left the game due to the lack of integrity Ursan brought to the titles tracks, which killed any joy one might recieve from what had been intended to be the post game extended play, and lesser players finished all of the content that was intended to take months to complete in days and in some cases hours. So now the people who actually want to play the game are pretty rare and hard to find. It takes hours in EoTN to find a group of people to do anything now. Even spamming to find a group results in 5-50 whispers from people asking if I am running or how much I am charging. I understand that the concept of team-play died when Ursan Blessing was released, but now we are all past that. Some of us still want to play. Can you please fix this quest so that it is at least marginally fun in Hard Mode with heros and Henchies? Maybe change the H/H ai so that they do not stand in AOE and die every single time? At the very very very very least could you put a rez shrine on top of Elmohr Snowmender? I understand that you guys have neither the time nor the inclination to work on any of the problems in EoTN because anyone playing it has already paid for it and as Regina stated more than once during the mass-instant archiving era when Ursan was the only skill anyone used, that you are so busy working on Guild Wars 2....... But some of us don't care about GW2, or your big paydays, we paid for EoTN, can you please make it playable and /or at least a little bit fun? I understand that the big appeal of Guild Wars these days is thatthere is no monthly fee........... But are you guys really happy with that? I am sure regina will archive this pretty damn quick, or, as she usually does, will whine and get pissy and cite instances of things that have nothing to do with anything in order to confuse the issue and take attention away from it, because she doesn't like what the post contains. But could someone with influence at least go play thru this quest with heros and henchies and then make an assessment ? Please? I loved Prophecies and Nightfall and I would like my characters to max out some title tracks, it is unfair that skipping this quest takes such a huge portion of the Reputation Reward away. PLEASE fix this, I am so sick of grinding thru this with candy canes in HM. Everytime I do it I want to puke. I KNOW other must feel this way. PLEASE A-net, i know you have abandoned GW1, but can't you PLEASE send someone out to review this quest in HM. Please. I have been playing since the game was released and you have never done one thing that has made me happy. PLEASE at least look at this quest in Hard Mode and assess it. Please.
 * Wrong wiki dude, also plz sign with four tildes (~) Arnout aka The Emperors Angel 19:07, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, ArenaNet officials don't come to this wiki. We are better people, though. I've never had any trouble H/Hing this in HM for Hero Handbook grind. What heroes and builds do you take? [[Image:Felix_Omni_Signature.png]] 19:12, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

WHOA! My fault guys, this is the wiki I come to for info and stuff because it is way better than the official wiki lol. I have a shortcut to it in my favorites and I guess i just wasn't paying attention. Feel free to delete the post if it is deemed necessary. I will go paste it into the official wiki. Sorry!72.221.118.93 19:20, 6 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Don't bother, Anet won't pay attention to it. Take sabway - give one of them Blood Ritual, Earth and Fire hench, Heal and Prot hench (for a total of 3 healers, 2 hench and one sab hero), Pain inverter or Backfire if you don't have PI, and put res on everyone you can, no death pact though.  I can usually H/H this in HM with very few deaths on the way and no wipes.  Kill Dominators first.  You can take Scourge Healing or Lingering Curse if you want for the final monk boss if you have trouble with him, but I never did.  Pull wisely out of the way of other patrols and you will breeze through it.  I usually drop ursan as soon as I break the last gate, and use my normal skill bar.  Don't forget to activate the res shrines just before the first 3 bosses and at the final gate to the homestead.  RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 17:56, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Walkthrough changes (July 2009)
I moved the repeat notes into the walkthrough section, as the details aren't obvious unless you just happened to have completed the mission recently. I also moved/removed some of the editorial comparisons of Aura/Blessing, as they don't really apply to this mission. Finally, I moved the note about gameplay mechanics into Notes and, instead, provided some details about what you actually see during this quest. (The mechanics comparison only makes sense if you are familiar with Sebelkeh or PvP altars.)

No doubt the repeat section could be further compacted, however please discuss here before returning it to Notes. (I spoke with several other players who use this wiki, but were relatively new to BWB. They did not notice the repeat note and, when I pointed it out to them, they were not sure how to apply its advice.)  &mdash; Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 00:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The mechanics of capturing the sacred altar should be explained. Giving a link to another article was perhaps lazy, but deleting it entirely is worse.
 * That Ursan Aura is now a lot stronger than Ursan Blessing is salient information. Ursan Aura was not nerfed when Ursan Blessing was.  Telling people to use Ursan Blessing instead of Ursan Aura is telling them to use a weaker skill rather than a stronger one.  In some cases, it will also be telling people to use a skill they don't have instead of one they can readily pick up in the mission.  As you've worded it, it says that you must use Blessing and cannot use Aura, which is completely wrong.
 * You've also said that if repeating the mission, you only have to clear one group of Charr. If that's true, that's quite a severe bug and should be labeled as such.  I had to clear the normal five groups at the end when I repeated it earlier today.  Would I have only had to do one group (and the easiest group, at that) if I did them in a different order?
 * Saying that you can avoid most of the non-Charr mobs if you take the alternate route is not particularly meaningful information, as you do the same on the normal route. If you take the route on the map, there's only two non-Charr groups (one of which is only two elementals) that you fight.  I haven't tried sneaking past mobs on the alternate route, but there are enough groups that wander far enough and fast enough that it strikes me as suicide, as getting caught is a guaranteed wipe when another two or three groups show up.  Quizzical 01:31, 12 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Also, out of 69 missions in ths game, why should this one be the only one to get a separate section in the walkthrough for repeating it? Article format standardization is usually a good thing, unless the details of the mission compel a different format.  It doesn't feature particularly unusual game mechanics that need an extended explanation like the two party missions or spectral agony.  Also, a section that consists mostly of bullet points is fine for a list of notes that are unrelated to each other, but not so good for something that should flow coherently.  Quizzical 01:37, 12 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Please take another look at the older vs newer edits. I'm having trouble reconciling your comments with what is in the article now (that could mean that I need to take a another look at the article and your comments; let me know):
 * Previously, there was no explanation at all of the altar mechanics (it pointed to another article without context); the recent edit has an explanation. It might be a bad explanation; I'm happy to see someone else take a stab at it. (And, for what it's worth, I've retained the comparison in Notes.)
 * I don't know why you think I've mandated Blessing &mdash; the main text clearly states, "the temporary skill Ursan Aura, ...is required (by at least one player)".


 * Regarding the repeatability:
 * Unlike other mish, it's possible to do the repeat differently (using a different team/skill sets): you don't need to defend while lighting the initial altar, you get to skip the Bear Shrine (and its defenders), you can skip much of the homestead.
 * Outside of EotN, repeats are identical; even in EotN, only the effort in starting the quest changes (the route and mechanics are generally unchanged).
 * So, I think it calls for something outside the typical mish article. I think, in this case, the repeat differences parallel Hard Mode differences and, therefore, belong in the main section.


 * Regarding the repeat details:
 * I was able to ignore most of the charr groups. (It's possible that 1-2 others wondered into the middle of battle; I would have to check next time I repeat.) I was also able to skip the Bear Shrine (since I didn't need to grab Aura.) If the first is a bug, isn't the second also? (Since the overview says you must visit the Bear Shrine.) I don't see a problem adding bug/anomaly notes.
 * I was able to easily avoid the non-charr foes without combat, even while trailing a minion conga line.
 * I have no problem if you want to put the repeat in paragraph form instead of bullets. Personally, after trying it both ways, I find it easier to compare a bulleted repeat to the 1st-time walkthrough.


 * Regarding Aura vs. Blessing:
 * 50% of the repeat's time savings comes from skipping the Bear Shrine, which requires Blessing. Repeaters have access to Blessing (and the relevant acquisition quest is noted). On the other hand, if the party doesn't need the time savings, it can follow the standard walkthrough (which already points them to Aura).
 * What I moved out of the article was the reference to the nerfing of Blessing and the comparison of Aura to the old Blessing. The comparison belongs in the skill articles; the editorializing (e.g. nerfing) belongs on a talk page.
 * The current mish notes highlight Aura's advantages. Which is ultimately better depends on other factors. For example, for Me or El, Blessing boosts health (> 700) and armor (to 100) beyond that available in standard builds and beyond that of Aura's boost (health +180 to <700, AR + 20 to around 80). And short Ursan bursts might be all that's needed.


 * I think there's an interesting philosophical discussion we can have about when standards need to be broken, when they need to evolve organically, and when they need to be pushed. We can have that discussion on our talk pages.  &mdash; Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 08:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * my 2cents: What's an edifice? I mean I got what you meant through the context, but I think the word pplatform or something is far more clear. Second: The walkthrough it self is ok, although I'm not sure if the note about Totem of men belongs there. The section about repeating the mission should be in the Notes section imo. Something like: If you are repeating this mission, Consider bringing the skill Ursan Blessing. With it you can go straight for Jora's homestead, clear the Charr and finish the mission, without having to go to the Shrine of Bear. Or something like that. Also, do I have to kill 1 group of Charr at the end? or 5? The way I read it now I only have to kill 1 of the 5 groups. but the walkthrough says 5. Oh noes I'm confused. Lastly, the note with the Sebelkeh Portals is not needed at all. Its made pretty clear how igniting that flame works in game. Lยкץ๒๏ץ  talk  09:14, 12 July 2009 (UTC)


 * On the altar mechanics, there was previously a link to another page that had an explanation. As I said, that was a lazy way to do it, but at least there was an explanation there to be found.  The mechanics may be obvious to someone who has seen them elsewhere, but not necessarily to someone who hasn't seen them before.  When I first did Dzagonur Bastion, I was quite confused as to what was going on.  The explanation right now of "The mission progress bar will change from red (enemy held) to blue (lighting the flame)." is, at best, uselessly sparse.  Maybe the progress bar will go from red to blue, or maybe it won't depending on important factors that are left unmentioned.  I'm not saying revert it, as it wasn't very good before either (whether after my edits or before them).  I am saying there should be an explanation of the game mechanics.
 * Most of the repeat section mirrors non-repeat details. Take a sentence like "Go to the bear altar in Jaga Moraine and speak with the Bear Spirit" or "Destroy the southeastern group of Charr" and ask someone whether the advice is for doing the mission the first time or second time and there's no way to tell.  Go ahead and throw in a couple sentences (you don't need to talk to Egil, and you don't need to go to the ursan shrine if someone has ursan blessing), but if half a paragraph justifies an entirely separate non-standard subsection, there can hardly be any notion of a standard format for mission pages.
 * Were you able to dodge most of the mobs for a repeat in easy mode or hard mode? It makes a huge difference, as most gain six levels for hard mode (two is the norm in most other max level missions), on top of the usual hard mode changes such as moving faster--and therefore being harder to dodge.  A lot of the details I put in the hard mode section are also true in easy mode, but safely ignored because it's so much easier.  Furthermore, how reliably do you think you would be able to dodge them?  If it's 50/50 between an easy win and a sure wipe, that's a pretty bad thing to advise.
 * Avoiding the Charr groups outside of the homestead is normal. Even on the route you take the first time, you avoid most of those Charr anyway.  For the one group versus five, those aren't the issue at hand.  There are five groups in the homestead, and the mission overview says you must kill all five of those.  Normally, upon destroying the last of the five groups (but not necessarily summoned spirits), the mission ends.  Are you saying that you only had to kill one of those five groups?
 * In hard mode, skipping the shrine is a small fraction of the time savings available, and nowhere near 50%. There are huge numbers of vaettirs by the sacred altar, and pulling and killing them would take a long, long time.  It would certainly take a lot longer than fighting your way from the start of the mission proper to the bear shrine.  It's been a long time since I've done the mission in easy mode, but there, you can plow through everything without entirely paying attention.
 * Ursan blessing changes your armor to 100 and health to perhaps 760 or 770 or so depending on Norn rank. Ursan aura depends on the armor and health of the player, but would normally boost the armor of a lightly armored caster to maybe 95-100 and health to 710 or so without wearing the Norn title.  A more durable class would be a lot tougher to kill with aura than blessing.  Regardless, which is stronger there is only so in the sense that 400 armor is better than 300; they're all high enough that mobs will mostly ignore you until the rest of the party is dead.
 * Rather, the big advantage of ursan aura is that it still has the old, unbalanced damage. Ursan aura will do nearly double the damage of ursan blessing at a typical Norn rank, which makes quite a difference when trying to spike down the Charr groups at the end, especially over the healing of the monk boss.  Having another elite and being able to switch in and out without having your energy zapped to zero helps, too, but that's less important.
 * The reason for the difference is that when ursan blessing was nerfed, ursan aura wasn't. And yes, it was a nerf.  The main touted point of the very large patch was to nerf ursanway.  When I argued at the time that it wasn't enough, I didn't catch that half of ursan strike was made armor-respecting.  As proof that it was a nerf, do you still commonly see people in-game arguing that anything and everything should be done ursanway and there's no point in ever using any other build?  Before the nerf, ursanway was vastly more commonly touted than, say, discordway is now.  Maybe that should go as a note at the bottom rather than in the walkthrough, but it does belong on the page.  Quizzical 19:06, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The entire area of Bjora Marches south and southwest of the homestead is entirely devoid of any types of enemies, so yes, you can skip more or less all fighting till those final groups in the homestead (on a repeat playthrough with someone carrying Blessing). Since you're already bringing along a cheat code, why not take two and get a perma/terra in the party - they can light the altar for you in a pretty short period of time easily (hardmode). That certainly does amount to some time savings. Entropy [[Image:Entropy Sig 2.jpg]] (C) 21:24, 12 July 2009 (UTC)


 * My original post here asked that people discuss before moving the short-repeat details from main text. As it has been discussed, please feel free to move it to Notes. (I've already explained above why I think it belongs in main text.) Same goes for bullets vs. paragraph form; change it if you prefer.
 * Altar mechanics: please feel free to improve it. I've never had to do anything more than stand on the platform and kill the spawns and watch the progress bar change color. Outnumbering the opposition is probably easier for players new to BWB, since they are likely to take full sized parties. As opposed to Grand Court (and other similar altars), where maintaining/taking control requires careful play even with a large group.
 * Nerf/not nerf: Of course Blessing is less powerful now. However, editorialization of ANet's game balance choices made nearly a year ago belong outside the main text of a mish article.
 * Blessing vs Aura: The main walkthrough says to take Aura. The repeat time savings requires Blessing (allowing one to skip the Bear Spirit). Blessing is better at avoding deja vu than Aura; any other comparisons in the article favor Aura.
 * Repeat vs main confusion: the repeat section is clearly titled and clearly introduced as a shortcut. If the repeat describes just the differences, then players will have to compare the two sections to understand when to do something different. If the repeat walks through each step, then repeaters need only read the one section.
 * Cheats: How is taking Blessing a cheat anymore than bringing heroes to prophecies? The game offers players the choice to give up their elite skill spot; in exchange, they can skip a large portion of the mish. Skipping charr groups within the barricades? ...yeah, that sounds exploitative, so maybe that belongs in a note.
 * BTW: I make no claims about what to do in HM and therefore did not touch the HM section.  &mdash; Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 03:16, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * In hard mode, a lot more vaettirs spawn near the altar. It's not a first time/repeat thing, as I once forgot to switch to hard mode, go to the altar and was like, whoa, there are hardly any vaettirs here, and then realized that was because it was in easy mode.  Trying to stand in the middle of it is pretty much a guaranteed wipe, and even if your entire party could survive forever that way, you'd be outnumbered and losing progress on it long before it got halfway captured.
 * It's probably good to observe that a player doing a mission in hard mode is necessarily repeating it. Quizzical 04:33, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Also, Prophecies and Factions hard mode were very much designed assuming that the player would use heroes, which had been in the game for several months before hard mode was released. Or at the very least, they were not designed with the intention that they'd be doable with just one player and five henchmen.  If that one player isn't a healer, then some six character missions would have a party would have only one healer, and the henchmen would bring no other meaningful defensive skills.  If you can do the bonus of The Frost Gate as a warrior without using anything from outside Prophecies, you win at this game.  Quizzical 04:37, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

So, the current edit reads much better than the original. Since that was everyone's goal, that's a good outcome. Thanks for taking it to the next step.

The only recent edits are for NM, so I'm not sure the relevance of HM differences to this discussion. And, sure, while HM means it's not the first time through a mish, I'm not sure that repeat captures the experience. Finally, let me rephrase my question about cheating: how is taking Blessing to shorten a BWB repeat considered a cheat when taking heroes to NM Prohp/Factions is not? &mdash; Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 08:50, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * One little thing: one of my characters is doing almost everything in Hard Mode, as she is mostly a mule, and I just use her for Zquests that happen to be on her way. BwB was the first thing she could not do in HM first time, as the mobs are little short of insane.  The main problem is something that was not noted in the walkthrough: the Nightmares have a skill that reduces the bar's progress by a set amount in addition to the pip degen from their presence.  That makes things much harder, as not even a perma/terra can help against that, you simply need to kill them or you're going nowhere.  I do not advise anyone to do their first run of this quest in HM... RoseOfKali [[Image:RoseOfKaliSIG.png]] 20:07, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, I forgot about consume flames. All of my characters did this mission for the first time about a year and a half ago, so it didn't show up again when I did it recently in hard mode.
 * One basic principle of write-ups is, whenever possible, to avoid assuming that players have particular skills that they could reasonably not have. The official wiki often suggests a bunch of skills to bring for particular missions, with the skills sometimes chosen seemingly at random.  If that's wholly unnecessary, then it is not good to tell players, you need such and such skills in order to do this mission, and if you don't have them, then you'd better go get them, or else you'll be unable to do the mission.  Even worse is telling players, before you can do this mission, you have to spend a bunch of hours grinding ranks in some particular title track.
 * I've called various PvE-only skills and consumables "cheats" quite a bit. They were introduced to the game to make it so that an incompetent player could still beat content by grinding levels rather than having to learn how to play.  As such, the skills are often very overpowered, and sometimes game-breakingly so.  ArenaNet implicitly acknowledges this when they disallow the use of such skills in PvP, as it's rather obvious that allowing them would wreck play-balance and make PvP degenerate into a system with far less variety than before, as everyone relies heavily on a handful of PvE-only skills, regardless of their primary class.
 * It's really the same principle behind what would be called cheat codes in a lot of other games. If you played Contra, for example, the Konami code gave you 30 lives instead of 3, which made the game vastly easier.  What was the point of that?  In part, so that people who weren't very good could complete the game.  It was also something of a marketing ploy to get people talking about the game; indeed, if not for that cheat code, I wouldn't have mentioned it here.  There are a lot of games that have cheat codes and also PvP (over a LAN or online), and disable the cheat codes when playing other players precisely because they are so unbalancing.
 * PvP-useable skills from later campaigns are of a different type altogether. If you pick a non-elite warrior skill at random from Prophecies and one at random from GWEN, either one could easily be more useful.  If properly play-balanced (which ArenaNet does try to do, though it is very hard to do it right), each will have plenty of situations where it is more useful than the other.  The goal of adding the additional PvP-useable skills was not to create systematically stronger skills than before, but merely to give players more variety.  For example, very few warriors who have all of the campaigns and use only warrior skills on a skillbar (plus perhaps a rez signet or equivalent) would fill an entire skillbar without using a single Prophecies (or core, which was released in Prophecies and defined separately later) skill.
 * As for skill recommendations, a lot of people go to a particular mission, use various PvE-only skills, and say, hey, that made the mission easy. Well, yes, it did.  But going to every single mission page to give exactly the same advice is rather redundant.  Surely you'd agree that consumables also make pretty much every mission in the game easier, but to go to every single mission page and explicitly advise the use of consumables.
 * Temporary skills that are given in a mission are a different story. The mission is designed around the assumption that players will have access to and use those particular skills.  The celestial skills of Raisu Palace may be unbalanced in a lot of places, but Raisu Palace is designed with the assumption that players will have and use those skills.  Indeed, since henchmen get and use the skills automatically, it would take a fair bit of doing to avoid the use of celestial skills.
 * Ursan blessing deserves a mention here because ursan force allows one to shorten the mission. But it doesn't deserve a strong recommendation of "you really should bring this" because the mission can be done just fine without it, and because a lot of players might reasonably not have it.
 * To address your question more directly, I'd regard taking heroes for easy mode Prophecies/Factions missions as making them unduly easy, too. That's why I generally avoided it.  I did use heroes for some foreign characters for Dunes of Despair and The Eternal Grove because those are so hard with only henchmen, and to get the master's reward in some time-limited Factions missions where time is tight, but that was about it.  Well, I guess I'm using heroes now to repeat Hell's Precipice in easy mode, but that's largely for the sake of getting Deldrimor talismans that I didn't get when I did the mission in easy mode with only henchmen because they didn't exist yet.  I've already demonstrated that I can meet the proper challenge, don't care to again, and wish that the talismans had been awarded retroactively to players who had already done the mission.
 * Even so, the reason why heroes were introduced to the game was not explicitly to make existing content easier. Heroes were meant for Nightfall and future content, as well as for hard mode.  There's a genuine gameplay purpose for them, and not merely to make things easier.  Quizzical 20:59, 13 July 2009 (UTC)