HERO builds and the AI how did it respond?

heh, yea, if you make the dervish a D/Mo and give her mending she casts it on everyone before doing anything else! Personally I'd make her a D/N and give her Vampiric Touch and Mark of Pain...have her cast Mark of Pain before her and Koss lay the smack-down.

probably depends which stance (or whatever it's called...aggressive/defensive/passive) you use on him. i kept my bonder/boon prot (still amazes me that worked...with the 8-man group's healer hench and melloni doing smite/heal it was like a hospital up in there)) on passive. it's probably for that reason he didn't use leech sig when i tried it (didn't try him on defenseive to see if that would work)

Have you tried forcing them to cast?

I didn't get a chance to play NF this last weekend. I can't wait to try out the new HEROs. I didn't see any ranger builds posted. How did a standard Barrage/Interupt work?

I gave Dunk Expel Hexes, and it worked a charm

did not get a ranger yet.

LOL... the AI definately does lack inteligence...

keep that in mind when picking your skills...

I ran Koss with...

Barbarous Slice
gash
Silverwing
Galrath
Final Blow
Live Vicariousely
Bathazar
Heal Sig

All you have to do is cast Vic and Bath for him... boom bam done...

he will on his own use his adren skills as they become available...

dont try to get all fancy with the AI.... Smart heros rely on smart players to manage their skills correctly for them to understand them

I noticed the AI does not use Elites well at all and not as often as they could be used.... tried giving Koss Battle Rage and he hardly ver used it...

Am i seriously the only person who gave Koss a hammer???


Anyways, I originally gave him Dwarven Battle Stance, but I think he kept cancelling it early by using other skills... maybe its just my imagination, as Im used to having a 13 in str as opposed to the 5 or 6 I was able to give Koss before the event closed down.


Anyways, my Koss build was a W/A with a hammer and shadow arts. It was glorious. Especially after I noticed his inability to deal with DBS, and threw on some Primal Rage (worked much better(

Koss will never not be my hammer buddy.

Yup, if they have 0 regen then you get a green tick on the skill, but no action.

I don't know if it was coincidence, but I noticed my heroes did not spawn Shield of Judgement and Protective Spirit until I manually started to cast it for them (did any of you try the battle setup where your own chr. is tanking and you put your heroes apart (passive) with their skill bars open so you can cast spells on yourself from there?).

That's not entirely true in my case...although I've never played a warrior I'm not sure if warrior elites work differently to elementalist ones. I made my Koss a W/E and gave him Glyph of Lesser Energy and Shockwave {E} - he always used Glyph of Lesser Energy before Shockwave and it worked beautifully!

I do understand when people say that the heroes work better with the simpler builds...Sometimes my Dunkoro forgot to use Ritual Lord before spamming his spirits, and sometimes Dunkoro would neglect to cast Painful Bond on the enemies, and would just spam mend body and soul instead.

I like the idea of giving one of them Expel Hexes. I did notice a lot of hexes used in Nightfall. I started as a Mo/P...found Paragon to be a pretty poor secondary for monk, so I think I'll start as Mo/Me for the extra energy management and the extra hex removals.

I wasn't really that impressed with the henchmen AI.

Koss was more ... above average, and even so he's still like a black version of Stefan.

The "Holy Henchmen" is particularly a problem. In the plains, she proceeded to literally... run off in the opposite direction of the group, aggroing about 3 or 4 groups of plant things as she ran back to me.

bottom line, the AI is still dumb as a post... but to be honest, I'm not that suprised at this. Heroes sort of compensate, but at the end of the day, a REAL player will always be better imho.

this, or at least the never use this skill especially, is covered in Sardelac in this thread
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10050632

I actually found that Koss was awesome with Grenths Balance. I gave him the following build:

Sever Artery
Gash
Final Thrust
Watch Yourself
Plague Touch
Grenth's Balance
Heal Signet
Rez sig

The only time he ever came in danger was when he was targeting a foe with low health and was being attacked by others.

I ran my ele hench as wards with Unsteady Ground, and it worked pretty well. Also, as long as the monks were on passive they never used an inspired hex.

Boonprot worked great. I put inspired and revealed hex on for energy management, as well as energy drain (MoR works fine too).

I gave my second monk Draw Conditions and it used that effectively. I'd also tried (instead of having Draw Conditions around) giving Koss plague touch and he uses that appropriately also.

Koss did not use Dragon Slash that effectively. I found he did better with axe builds, I gave him triple chop, cyclone axe, and distracting blow. All worked great.

A lot of this is going to be figuring out which skills the AI knows how to use effectively.

Admittedly I gave the AI some complex builds to begin with and failed miserably. I then begin using builds any noob could use and moved up from there. Defense was a big issue to start with that was why I changed one skill to Vipers Defense. That skill alone solved almost all defense issues the Monk AI's had. In essence they could not tank or stay toe to toe with a dervish or warrior because they would be auto teleported away from danger. Also by limiting what enchants I gave and avoiding enchants with heavy costs, I limited any failing that could occur.

For example when I gave zealots fire to Durk he consistently kept it up. The AI could see its an enchant for the AI only so it must be for the AI to use. Thus the AI kept it up when combat started. This could only benefit anyone in the party he healed of course. When I gave Balthazars Aura to Durk he would cast it on anyone making it useless. The AI could not understand that Balthazars Aura was only ment for the fighter or for defense from enemy warriors or dervishes. I then began to see how the simple AI thinks and adjusted my builds accordingly. The AI can only respond to situations not make proactive decisions that require advance casting.

For example here is what I noticed the AI would do in combat. I then set my builds according to how and what the AI would respond to.

1 Cast zealots fire enchants when entering combat because it is for me; recast when it is down.
2 When someone is injured cast Orison of Healing.
3 When someone is injured and is running an enchant or is Hexed cast Dwanas Kiss
4 When someone is below 50% health and in need of Healing cast Word of Healing.
5 Cast Scourge healing on enemy AI when attacking because it’s a Hex I can cast on him.
6 When someone is hexed cast Anti Hex spell (Smite Hex was the anti hex)
7 When someone is dead cast Res Signet if not healing.
8 Use Stance when entering combat: (Vipers Defense was the only stance I used for them)

Anything else that required any type of thought was simply be misunderstood by the AI; Because of this you should only pick spells & skills that require no thought whatsoever. Simple to understand builds with limited options. If you don't want you AI useing Healing Touch in combat don't give it to them. Its that simple.

I had a lot of fun with Koss. AI interuppts and removes conditions/hexes like a deity, right? Stick Empathatic Removal + Distracting Blow on Koss and the word 'wammo' becomes more associated with terror and destruction than noobiness. He also did great with a build I borrowed from Stone Summit - "For Great Justice!", Cleave, Exec Strike, Pen Blow and he kills just as fast as I did.

Dunkaro was an alright boon prot, but an even better Blessed Light monk, though he never touched his energy management skills except Channeling and occasional Inspired Hex. Drain Enchantment (and later as I got desperate Energy Tap) were never used.

I tried to make the ranger one into an Enraged Lunge ranger, but there was a problem that the pet would only remain in one instance. Whenever you zoned she needed to cap a new one. I hope Anet can fix this, and Dunkaro's refusal to use his mesmer skills.

One thing i noted, that i don't see mentioned here, is heros don't get the degen from vamp as i managed to find a 4/1 gold vamp hammer . When i got Koss to use the thing he still got health every hit (could tell due to the glimmer effect on hit) but suffered no degen.

From this I wonder about afew things> Do they suffer from the -1 energy degen from zealous and what about the -1 from 15% always -1 energy/health weapons? Maybe this could be reason for people to actually keep those type of mods.

I set one monk up as boon prot, she was good at it too, though she seemed to have this disturbing habbit of not healing herself. It was actually quite strange. Had nothing to do with recharge, I checked that let me assure you.

Set the ele up as a renewal nuker. He only used glyph before meteor shower about 50-60% of the time :S

The other monk I had on pure heal, that worked just fine, though I did find that he tried to res in the middle of the battle, which was annoying...