AI Changes for monster/henchmen 10/31..for the worse?

In that case, lol, the AI has a long way to go. It's still nowhere near what I have ever experienced in PvP to this day. The mobs are so exploitable it's not funny, their builds suck, they will "kite" out of their support range, they are able to be lured to waste their interrupts on non-crucial skills.
The AI doesn't even learn. All in all, if Anet's goal is that PvE should prepare you to PvP, then, a player who never played any PvP, but only PvE, could expect the following:

* If you attack a caster, they will run away and away and die alone, and aggro possibly another group
* Interrupt everything
* Only equip at most four skills
* If you are not sure you want to use a skill at a given time, activate it, but cancel it right away, then do it all again, find that clickey rhythm!
* When hit by AOE, hit with attack, run away, come back, run away, come back, run away, come back, run away
* If bodyblocked, stay there and do nothing, maybe spinning around in place
* Blind the monks
* If you are a beast master ranger, make sure your pet is not attacking
* Frenzy and Healsig, ok, kinda below the waist here
* Just Frenzy
* Use Healing touch on everything
* Use up your energy healing NPCs and minions
* Cast through Backfire
* Ignore such Hexes as Diversion, Spirit of Failure, Spirit shackles, Empathy etc
* Ignore such conditions such as Blinded, Dazed, Poisoned
* Spam Exhaustion spells
* If any of your party members moves, immediately break combat
* If any of your party members starts to fall back, adamantly stay and fight
* Use Glyph of Energy on Flare
* Spike within 2 seconds or more
* When not being able to hit a target due to Enchantments, Stances, spam your skills and do not change target
* If a party member dies, begin resurrection immediately, or, don't and just stand there
* Trigger all traps you saw being set up a moment ago
* If severely injured, stand your ground, your monk is running around somewhere out of range anyway
* If your team consists of a Minion master, be sure to grab all the bodies with Wells
* Sacrifice yourself to death if anyone has less than 80% energy
* Attack through Ineptitude, every time
* When constantly being interrupted by a ranger, do not attempt to gain no LOS

These are just the few tips I have gathered along my 18 month game play experience in GW PvE. I feel I am ready to challenge the top heights of PvP.
Tremble ye, o tremble!

ROFLMAO....can't....stop....laughing!
Anyways...PvE will NEVER be the same as PvP, trying to half integrate PvP mechanics into PvE will just frustrate players more than anything else.

PvE IS PvP now, or at least that's what anet is trying to do.
But think about this, if the creatures are THAT intelligent, then each battle will take a mindlessly long time, and think of this ANET, you have 100 mobs on a map. How much fun is it when each battle takes as long as a RA battle, or a HA battle. and you have to look forward to another one 5 seconds down the map.

This new update basically took the fun of watching the monster drop and heading off to take another one off, now you take forever to kill the group, if they don't get you first, and hope the next won't, leading you to spend in escess of 3 hours on 1 map to get to the next area. Not very bright on ANET's side if you ask me.

BTW anet, people do not play pve so the monsters are super intelligent, we know they're ai, and not supposed to be super good, they do have a challenge even if they arn't super smart, it still takes skills. But with this new update there is no way in hell anyone can play their role as it's meant to be.

If this is how you mean the game, then ele's are no longer a spellcasting class, they are officially a rag doll meant to be thrown around while the warriors do the damage since they will not be getting hit. Spellcasters had it hard enough before this with long cast times, Ele's most of all. Now, how are you supposed to cast these fire spells while mobs are spiking you, and then head for your monks after you are dead?

I did about 100 battles today against some of the same and some different creatures, every single time, the first creature to go down, was me. Even if i sent my hero's off into battle and i stayed back a little bit, the monsters bypassed every single one of them, and spike'd me for too much damage to be healed by the monks.
-After that, they spiked a monk
-Then another monk
-Until the last 2 standing, were the DERV and the FIGHTER...

my point proven in that last statement.



AGAIN - people do not play pve for it to be pvp, we don't want to spend 3-4 hours just getting to the next TOWN. If this is not fixed, i'm afraid it is the downfall of the once glorified ANET

That's funny...isn't that what you used to do to them in PvE?

Personally, I like the changes. Yes, it changes the mechanics of the game to where certain characters are no longer highly effective in their boring, old cookie-cutter roles.

However, it also adds another dynamic and makes PvE more difficult. People may call it "more time consuming", but the simple fact that you often die when you enter into a PvE situation (when you used to sit back and nuke to your heart's content) is a GOOD thing for the game.

And this comparison that "PvE = PvP" is not accurate. It's more along the lines of "player PvE is now = monster PvE". You both have the same tactics now.

yes it's a good thing, but you have to think about the spellcasting, almost all fire spells take at least 2 seconds, which you don't have while you're the target of their dmg. To keep this change, means to lower the required casting time to a maximum of 2 seconds for even the most dangerous of spells, or the caster will never get them off.

This of course would ruin the balance of the game, throwing things into an uproar... just like now?

And most don't have 3-4 hours per map to get to a next town.

I can just see the teams as of this update.
- groups of 8 w/mo's
- advertising of "nuker" or "ss/mm" or "prot/heal" are laughed at
- anything other than 8 w/mo's get's targetted and spiked to death instantly.

Not true....we don't have lvl 24-28, with double health, insane armor, uber dmg spells, rigged dmg spells (like bosses), inhuman reflex, etc.

Every caster hero and henchmen I have used has done this since the release of Nightfall. Earth henchie, Cynn, Mhenlo, Eve, Tahlkora, Dunkoro, Zhed, etc. I find elementalist primaries do this the most though, especially with Glyphs. It's a serious problem that keeps them useless for at least 5 seconds.

My guess is that the minion AI is not registering a battle is happening. The biggest evidence of this is when I run out of aggro of the enemy. My example:

I was doing a quest and my minions aggroed a large amount of enemies because they were chasing kiting casters. So I pulled away with my Heroes and henchmen so I didn't fail the quest by dying. We all successfully pulled away so we weren't surrounded... even the minions. The minions regrouped away from the enemies. Not around me, not continued to fight, they just regrouped by themselves away from everything else. This left me and my henchmen to kill the enemies that chased me. Once the mobs were all dead, then the minions came back to me. 1 Flesh Golem, 4 Shambling Horrors, and 5 Bone Fiends all made useless for some reason.

This also explains why lots of my minions run back to me after they kill an enemy in a group. They're not going from one enemy to the next like they use to. They just don't seem to understand that a battle is still going on.

Truthfully I don't mind the idea that "tanks" may be less useful now. I rather play an offensive warrior anyways, that's why my warrior isn't my primary character anymore. It makes sense, though it is quite overdone in the current situation.

The problem I am having is that everything goes for one target at a time. I am lucky enough that my main character has now become my monk so I am pretty use to having to deal with healing spike damage, and my protection monk helps tremendously and is able to keep the group alive by herself when it's not the higher lvl mobs, but when playing my MM it is ridiculous to watch my henchmen/Hero monks go crazy and not able to do anything. It doesn't help that minion AI is clearly bugged and I can't keep them alive because I'm too targeted to safely use BotM now.

And I do agree with what someone said about the advantages of being a backline caster compared to a frontline melee with these new changes. Anyone trying to play a war, sin, dervish, etc with the new AI has it a lot worse than anything I have been dealing with so far.

I can't do Arborstone on my own becouse healer henchman dont heal Danika. Or Danika don't heal herself.

Its because the healer are too busy kiting like mad thx to the mob rushing straight to her/him. The heal keep coming too late, died so many times because of that.

Monk henchmen die in 3 hits wtf?

I don't like this new update, the monsters attack casters all the time so there's no need in wearing any armor while being warrior in the first place.

The uber GW Faction dmg seems to be back again as well... (- 600 dmg thnx to Meteor, monks dying in 3 hits, unlimited energy etc)

Why is A-net making PvE like PvP? I'm playing PvE cause I hate PvP... And this new (again) sucky update makes things so friggin hard, caster henchies are kinda useless now since they get killed before even having the time to cast -_-

i guess it's fortunate my main character I play is a monk. Much easier for me to keep my heroes/henchies alive than it is for my monk AI to keep me or themselves alive - although it seems a vast improvement over previous chapters.

While I haven't played pve since the oct 31 miniupdate (busy farming candy corn potions lol), I can't believe that the basic routines or thought process behind "Monster AI" is so ridiculous.

First it's "go for the highest armor" player, and now from the stories here it seems to go for the lowest armored human player? I mean, there's "focus firing" and then there's doing your job by spreading the damage and interrupts. Does the AI no longer take into account the aggro bubble, closest target, and other factors that the old pre-NF AI used to consider? It's hard to believe that anet would reduce the AI to such crude simplistic instructions as "every single mob target the highest armor player" or "everyone mob the lowest armor human player". Combine that with "monks stay alive at all costs, with running being your first option" and it's a recipe for disaster.

I play monk 90% of the time, and it's a balancing of priorities between keeping myself alive and keeping the party alive. An "intelligent" monk knows that without her party and damage dealers, she might as well sit down and die ( or run away). But where's the "team" when your stupid AI monk (enemy or hero) goes sprinting off into the distance completely ditching their team? That's only what seriously inexperienced monks do in pvp. Self preservation is important, but not at the expense of the party.

It seems anet has pushed the monk AI way too far into the solo self-preservation corner.

Elruid has made a nice summary of some of the advantages we still have over AI in PvE, so I think that a few "buffs" on their end aren't as dramatic as our advantages...

I strongly suggest that people send an email to Anet. I sent a report through their customer support on their site with a link to this thread and mentioning the tons of posts made on gwonline. This AI "update" is making the game unplayable on a game I bought less than a week ago and I am pissed...

Seriously, email Anet. How many times have you seen AI updates get reverted back? Never. They never reverted any updates. Granted, none of the AI changes were this bad, but somehow, I seriously doubt Anet will revert back to the working AI. Unless you guys start making your voices be heard (and not by just posting here), I just don't see Anet reverting back.

I want my money back if this is the garbage I have to put up with...

what? how does improved AI lessen the server load? and how does server load make less spending?

How long does it usually take for them to post the changes they made in the update on their website?

Normally instant.
But around a game release they don't seem to bother updating it. It's been this way with factions, prophecies and with Nightfall. Probably would be too much updating in the first few days to keep up with anyways.

I liked the AI change when Nightfall launched - sure it broke some farming builds, but it was a step in the right direction and all played well and made GW a joy to play again. Last night's update totally undid all that as far as i can tell making every single encounter a tedious game of tag.

I'm all for improvment tweeks - but the Halloween update was a huge leap backwards. It needs to be rolled back and they can try again on improvements.

Ughhhhh.... The AI has gone from one extreme to another. After the NF release the AI was boringly easy as it would only target the warriors (or highest AL in the group). Now it only targets the lowest AL in the group but the hench/hero AI isn't equipped to deal with that kind of attention. Running around not using any skills is going to end ugly.

The whole AI is a mess now. I understand what Anet was trying to do but so far its a miserable failure. This needs to be rolled back to the AI prior to the NF release until they can properly test any further AI changes they make. I hate it when they use their live game world as a beta test for major changes such as this.

Darn it! Nightfall seems to be such a great game but the AI is sucking the fun right out of it.

Trust me, the "target highest AL" is almost needed at end game areas. Hench casters just can't deal with the rigged dmg aoe attack that the mob has. That is a fundamental difference between PvE and Pvp.

And... why the hell do warriors have high armor? It's because they're melee users, they are up front of a group and they are supposed to take the hits.

It's just common sense, you also wear a shield in front of you, instead is on your back, when you know that the damage is coming from the front.

Right now, it seems as if they should give monks 100 armor and the ability to wield a shield with req 8 healing prayers