problem with getting Heroes to use 2nd skills

Is it just me, or has anyone else had problems getting their Heroes to use skills from their 2nd profs?

My W/Mo and R/Mo refuse to use Vigorous Spirit, for example. (Ditto for Healing Beeze.)

I've tried putting it in the 1st slot, following the left to right precedent, but they ignore it.

The only way I can get them to use it is to keep their bar open and manually click on it. Even then, this seems to only work if I click it before we actually engage the enemy. Once in combat, I click it, the green check mark blinks for a few seconds, then they proceed to use another skill instead (despite having more than enough energy to cast it).

Admittedly, when I was starting out, it took me a while before I realized that "target ally" could include oneself - have the heroes not realized this yet, either, and are waiting for me to select a tartget ally for them to cast it on?

Ah, wait, is that the answer? I need to click on them 1st, then click on the skill on their bar, and they will target themselves? I'll try that, but what a PITA if that's how it works.

Any advice/pointers on this is appreciated.

Having the same problem with Koss not using healing breeze to save himself or team members, especially in the case of dying from degen when there are no mobs around.

No prob here
I only give conjure frost to koss and leech signet+power drain to all caster heroes. They all use the skills probably.

My heroes have no problem using Healing Signet/Lion's Comfort or Troll Unguent.
I suggest you use those.

The heroes will not use either Vigorous Spirit or Healing Breeze unless you target them in the party bar, and then click the skill on their control panel. They probably know better.

Maybe they realized how weak breeze and refuse to use it ...

why would anyone use HB on ranger (troll) or warrior (heal sig) is beyond me.

Heroes usually only use regen skills if they're being degened.

I think heros use most of the skill equipped fine -- in fact, better and faster than human players at times! A friend has Well of Blood on Koss and Koss can be fighting, pull up the Well and go back to fighting before Olias even notices there's a corpse to pull a minion from!

i have an issue like this also. but mine is with monk enchantments that need to be maintained. my hero monks will not hold any bonds at all. i can force them to cast it but immedieatly its dropped. heck they wont even keep mending on :/ maybe this is so that we dont keep our tank bonded and walk through everything i guess

Your problems have nothing to do with that they happen to be secondary skills. Some skills heroes are just hopeless at using. Vigorous spirit is one such skill though healing breeze I've somehow never actually tried but if old doppel AI is anything to go by it will only be used to 'counter' degen. There are many skills to avoid, most recently I've been irritated to find AI for finale of restoration treats it like orison of healing rather than tainted flesh. Get used to microing your heroes or give up and give them something they can use.

Above poster, disable maintained enchantments such as bonds and cast them manually to stop them dropping them.

Yeah, heros also have a problem with not using troll ugent (regen heals are only used to counter degen for the ai. Fighting against the doppleganger is a good test of ai intellegence.

Vigorous Spirit is counted as a healing skill, and thus, counts as a 5 energy (whatever) health heal. Which is generally, weaker than Orison, so they won't cast it.

Healing Breeze will only be used if they are suffering from degeneration.

Maintained enchantments count as doing nothing outside of battle, so they will drop it. Exceptions are Healer's Boon, Blessed Aura, Divine Boon and Mending. There are probably others, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

It's been that way for a long long time.

Degen is countered by Regen for the AI.

According to them, Regen has no other use.

Thanks for all the replies.

I had given up putting VS on my Kosses months ago when I first encountered this problem, but had decided to try again on a couple of the rangers.

I put HB on the R hero for the same reason I use it on my R toon: we're both Barrage, with no WS skills, so no points in WS. HB has a 1 sec cast vs. an easily interrupted 3 sec cast on TU. I do use TU on the non-Barrage R hero, btw.

In the same way, it would be nice if the W and R heroes would use VS, for a little continuous self-healing, the way my W and R toons do, let's the healers in the group concentrate their efforts elsewhere.

I discovered early on that you could not simply replicate your own skill bars on the heroes and have them to work the same way - thanks for explaining why this is so. Guess I'll put that 9 in Healing on the Barrage R into WS instead.

That's funny... I can't get Koss to stop casting vigorous spirit on every ally in sight...

My Dunkoro has serious problems using Heal Party. Most of the time he'll never ever use it automatically even if the party is being masscred en masse, even with mess degen on everyone, and yet Dunkoro has full energy.

I'm not sure that it's a problem "getting Hereoes to use skills from their 2nd profession" so much as it is getting Heroes to use certain specific skills that they simply don't use, regardless of profession.

Yeah, Heroes can be awesome with some skills and total crap with others.

Simple example, give them leech signet and they're the most amazing interrupter, give them Blessed Signet and they dont use it worth a damn.

Heroes are quite good IF you play them within their limitations and you're aware they have limitations.

Also, sometimes the hero wants a specific number of points in the attribute line. In my experience, MoW (MM) never uses BiP unless he has 8 points in blood (+5 regen breakpoint).

So, in short... what are the attribute settings on your hero? If you only have 3 in healing, perhaps thats the problem.

Slightly OT question - Has anyone else noticed that if you give heroes res sigs, that they don't seem to recharge on a morale boost anymore?

They aren't even good at using their primary, I'm not surprised about the 2nde. Heroes Need some fixes imo.

no problems at all there