Hard mode hero ai.... bug or intentional?

First of all let me say I for one am loveing hard mode!! It's a fun reason to replay missions I havent had a reason to play in almost 2 years now and personaly I think the enemys new skill sets and behavior is a nice refreshing challange. Certainly not what I expected hard mode to be... I honestly expected to see tripple mob sizes with higher levels. I am very happy that is not how it turned out.


I like to play with hero's and henchies quite a bit. It's not that I'm not a social person it's more that I have the time to play more than most of my guildies and alliancemates so with some characters I enjoy the challange of comeing up with hero and hench teams that work well in any and every mission.

I have done some testing with hero and hench teams since hard mode went live and I have noticed something that I am not quite sure if was intentional or is some sort of new bug that just happend.

In normal mode my heros and henchies kite follow targets and generaly behave better than many pug groups I have played with sad to say lol. But in hard mode it is a different story.

In hard mode once any hero or hench is attacked by being wanded shot with an arrow have spell cast on them ect.. They simply cease moveing untill eather they die or the enemy dies. They wont kite at all I have even noticed hero's set to avoid combat rushing into the battle only to stand still and die. It's like a deer in the headlights omygod I got shot... FREEZE lol....

I have posted about this in the bug forums but to be honest I am not certain this is indeed a bug.

My question is, was this new ai change for hard mode intentional? Was this change made to encourage us to form more human teams rather than just trying to hero/hench our way through hard mode missions. If it was intentional I totaly get it and understand... Although it is sometimes difficult to find a monk or whatever to fill that last slot on your team. I personaly liked the option of adding a hero monk or whatever rather than standing around begging for someone to join your team.

Please please understand this thread isnt intended to be a complaint... Basicaly I simply want to know is this a bug that will be fixed or should I stop useing hero's in hard mode play. Thanks for your time and keep up the good work....

oops sorry guess I posted this in the wrong forum my bad


Is anyone else seeing this as well? Come on folks if this is indeed a bug I would realy like to know.

yeah I posted something in the one above yours. I think it could be a bug however only time will tell. more then likely it was intended to make sure people do not blast though it like that have on every other updated area they have added to the game.

if you recall back when they added the green items, it did not take long for someone to make a farming build or a group build to floor their way though.

When they changed Hall of Heros from a pvp zone to a pve zone, mind clouders and such flooded in a few days later.

Cutting out your heros AI for a few weeks for hard mode to live up to its name for a day would make then at least some what happy. I don't know about you but its helping me build my solo build killing charr in hard mode.

well anet did forget to include updated armor and weapon dmg on hench, im saying its a bug and i hope it is because my monk hero goes down so easily when im clearing areas.

Yeah I'm tired of my melee monks.....kinda hard to tank when they are doing it for me Though I have found if you use the flag to move them and then cancel it, it "resets" them until they decide to go melee again, or whatever is causing them to freeze up in the combat.

Monster AI is adjusted for hard mode, its likely the NPC AI is being unintentionally adjusted as well.

Agreed. My heroes are running into mobs way too much in hard Mode.

I would like my Olias to start using Blood Ritual on my monks again. He'll use it on Zhed, but not Dunkoro or Tahikora. Very annoying.

I felt that it was not a bug because after trying hard mode a while I also stopped trying to kite from melee monsters that moved so much faster than me that attempting to kite was just giving them a free critical every time they attacked, I assumed the hench and heros were taking the enemy movement into consideration and had come to the same conclusion.

Actually, I thought it was better, if that is actually what they're doing.

Anyone want to test if they'll kite if they have comparable movement speed to the monsters, like if they have Dash on or something?

I have a theory concerning the lack of kiting from hero/hench AI recently.

If you've ever done any type of running, you'll notice that the enemy will sometimes give up chasing you very quickly if you have a speed buff. Maybe something of the opposite is true here, for our heroes. Dunkoro, for example, may not even attempt to kite at all, because he knows that nasty charr warrior wailing at his face has a huge speed buff. So, he doesn't even try to kite.

Dunno.