Henchman AI Problem

I'm not sure if it was the update that caused this but today I was trying to capture the elite skill Grenth's Balance for my tank from Naphui Quarter.
I thought it would be a peace of cake, just go kill the turtle with henchies and cap. How i was WRONG.

First as soon as i get near the turtle, the henchies start acting up weird, running away from me and such. Then when I'm about to engage the turtle, this starts to happen:



Vhang, Eve and Kai Ying's little adventure continued:



Finally they made it to what seemed to be their destination, a single Star Blade underneath a bridge we passed by, after attacking him they continued on to be killed...




I've never seen the AI this sensative before. As soon as anything comes into the aggro circle they run to attack it no matter how far away it is.. Anyone else experiencing this problem?

I can't control them properly either. If I want to run away because of a bad aggro, they won't follow me like they used to. So most of them die.

I was doing some luxon quests in Silent Surf, when henchies accidently aggro the mobs they tend to stay and fight, even if I keep running and seeing them slaughtered from far away.

It seems i cant get them to retreat anymore, especially the fighter henchies just leeroy into groups and end up dead. Something is definitely wrong with them, they act more stupid than usual.

I've had the entire group of henchies just flat run away from me before. No mobs around or anything, and they just run off.
Still, my favorite thing of all is watching the henchies sit in an AoE and die while they hug each other in bewilderment... yet the mobs flee from zero damage AoEs. Long standing bug, so I don't ever see it being fixed; though I agree, they are worse these days.

I noticed this in the update notes:

• Updated the artificial intelligence of all henchmen

Hmm... How many times have we seen that before? Has the AI ever become any better?

play with humans thats the upgrade

Updated AI my ASS. The only 'update' that's worth it was the dancing... WTF has it done to the normal AI?

Heheh it may well be that they're making henchies dumber so you'll have to play with humans more.

I actually thought they did recieve a notable upgrade when henchies learned to rez with sigs mid battle instead of leaving the monks to both start casting Ressurect in the middle of a big battle, resulting in complete slaughter.

As a side note, I do remember my favorite situation with bizarre henchie AI. I was standing outside a zone once somewhere in the Maguuma area with no enemies nearby, when a pig started attacking us seemingly randomly, until I noticed that it was Dunham who had aggroed the pig by casting Empathy on him. Ever since then Distortion Man has been my favorite hench.

Sounds like a downgrade to me.

update...not upgrade or improvement XD

Well this isn't the only hench problem even tho mine kept running a good distance away well before being attacked to stand in lava yesterday.....

Mine is more along the lines of henchies getting STUCK! I was capping on Perdition when both my tanks got stuck and wouldn't come out of their rock.... However this taught me that you don't need tank henchies and are actually quite better off without them >_> (Nearly cleared the place with 6/8 no tanks and fewer deaths!)
But when the guild theif gets stuck at the gate release of your OWN gate... well then that can cause some issues in gvg.... >_<

Why are the henchies running around like chickens with their heads cut off?

in fact it not a problem with the ai, its theyr way of act, and it wasnt placed on the update, henchman suck each time more, everytime they change or nerf something the hench got worse, cuz the ai dont get any better, i had the same problem in several other places, since i cant stand people i hench everything, if you try to reach temple from senji there is a corner they all go nuts and run in the middle of a crowd as big as lakers fans, theyre plain uselless thats the point here lol

Ditto

Ok I thought the dancing update was great, but it doesn't make up for this... fiasco. Please Anet don't make me play with humans for all of Nightfall on all of my characters!

Lots of problems here, they just seem unable to retreat, I can walk a whole compass away and they become out of sight and still stay and fight, not receiving helaing in battle, no good ressing, worse then the first days of prophecies imo.....

For once I have to agree. The henches are completely uncontrollable
now.

Last night I was happily capping the remainder of the Factions elites
with them and doing fine. This morning I went to pick up where I left
off, and it's like they went insane.

I'll begin to approach a group with my finger over the "x" button so I
can reverse direction and pull them back a little. Before my aggro
bubble even touches them the henches will all break into a headlong
run. Not just the warriors any more... all of them. If I go ahead and hit
x and run back to try and break off the attack, the henches totally
ignore me now. I can be so far away that they're off my radar screen
and they still won't disengage. I have no idea what the casters are
rushing in like that for. The only thing I can think is maybe they're
going to poke the enemy warriors in the eye with they're wands to try
and blind them.

I don't know if I should put off capping until the "event" is over or just
start learning to adapt to another of Anets bungled attempts to "fix"
something.

Alas, the henchies are indeed broken. I just tested them out in Mourning Veil Falls. Pulling of any kind no longer works. Backing up doesn't work. Longbow doesn't work. In either case, the henchies immediately attack, and if further aggro threatens you have to run very far away before they will follow you, like two or three aggro circle diameters.

The henchies are broken. This is sad. I hope they can fix this, but there is a possibility that A.Net cannot; worst case scenario. This may be how the hench work in Nightfall, which may work there; but will leave Factions and Prophecies unplayable.

Well, in Nightfall they say you can give commands to your Heroes (henchman too maybe?) so perhaps in this update, they gave us the "new AI" without actually giving us the controls to command them :P