Healing AI changed? ayone else noticing this?

my comuter crased a few weeks ago so i took advantage of this to upgrade...needless to say, i have't played while waiting for newegg to send me my crap...they did and i started playing again.

since i'm out of practice playing, i've been lazy and joined mostly player groups (i've generally had better results with hench and since nf...hero/hench groups than the usual idiots you get in a pug...after playing for a few days with people, i stand by that assertion whole-heartedly).

i was in a group lately with several people however still had to resort to bringing dunkoro. that sob is lazier than crap these days. i'm standing there and watching dunkoro pick his virtual nose while one of the multitude of melee players in the group (pugs ftl) was plugging away at about 2/3 health.

did anet change healing ai? they seem to be kinda taking it easy these days.

do i need to change my "all-5e-toolbars" with inspiration magic for additional e-management to something more meaty and e-intensive?

i also had an awesome tank build on koss (he used "none shall pass" like an area taunt...however rarely uses it now)

i don't recall reading about ai changes while i was in "exile"...did it creep in? did i jst miss it?

I have always noticed that Dumkaro lets your health get a little too low before starting to heal. Talkora does a way better job at healing IMO.

Talkora's always healed better for me too. Lets bump wrist's frodo7

Well, Something in the healing AI has changed since the last update, today i was playing on my sin and the hench monks wouldn't heal me, only alittle prot now and then, Id go in, do a combo and teliport back out, but no heals, monsters chased me and finished me off. Then on my warrior the same, i'd go in and attack stuff and do what warriors do, but no healing when necessary, they'd just sit and watch me die the whole time, i got really angry at this and yeah, Just take hero monks and force them to heal for now till it's fixed.

Yea I noticed this as well. But its with Danika and that Kurzick prot monk hench dude. Often times I noticed that my health (I'm a war btw) would get dangerously low before they start healing me. Sometimes I'd just die and it'd be one of those 'wtf' moments where that shouldn't have happened. I check my monks and lo' and behold they didn't even spend their energy.

This is something that has been bugging me for a very long time now:
Are the caster hench, especially monks - sent on "engage"?
Because this is my normal way of fighting:

The warriors stand behind while the monks RUN IN!
If I call a target the monks or other caster hench are always the FIRST to engage - where as the warriors waits around for a few secs and the runs in!
And on the above picture i flagged all my hench but Lina and Menhy decided on their own free will that they MUST wand the Lich!

The monks went mad it seems - or maybe its all the hench - just the monks make it more evident because when they go mad - the heals stop coming!

I have not seen anything new... I use Razah mostly as a Restoration Rit and he does just fine, great on the weapon spells. Talkahora is my Prot, and she reacts just fine as well little to no energy management problems. Ive changed my thinking on healing builds lately and use Dunkaro with 15 Div and 13 Heal, I did notice he blows through energy faster then he needs to. Boon Signet helps him regain energy fast enough between fights.

Well i noticed some general lazyness on the hench and heroes when enemies are in the aggro buble. They often won't attack unless I clearly call a target. I didnt pay too much attention to the possible healing issue, but will start watching it for a bit.

The hench will use some skilsl better than others. This is a known fact. Dunkoro is actually very good with glimmer of light btw...

Always remember, AI tends to start healing only when a party member's health gets below 50%. As such, Word of Healing is a very good choice of elite for healing.

i'm talking about all the healing ai, this isn't another "dunkoro heals differently than talkora" bs post. that's just silly. the ai never waited until 50% health, they used to heal too early.

and yeah, ranged ai agro farther away. i keep my koss on aggro, ranged heroes on defensive and monks on passive. i tried changing him to defensive too but that didn't affect how he healed. i also tend to send koss in first alone on the most "dangerous" melee target. he still does that but he used to be awesome with "none shall pass". he'd hit it as the other melee ran past him and when they got up, 9 times out of 10 they'd turn aggro on koss.

i'm wondering if this is a response to people who complain that heroes take "all there little friends" away.

Hmm.. my Dunkoro seems fine, but he's on a standard RC Prot build which he handles pretty well. I have Tahlkora set up as WoH healer but rarely use her, opting to take Mhenlo or Sister Tai / Jamei.


/off-topic

Olias, on the other hand doesn't seem to be able to handle the SV or SS build I used on him in the past. Now he just stands around scratching his arse and casting Awaken the Blood a lot. Back to MM for him, he's damn near Godly at that.

Just the other day, I watched Tahlkora degen to death because she refused to cast Remove Hex on herself. This was after all the enemies were dead btw, we were just standing there and she had plenty of E to cast the spell; she just stood there until she keeled over. Was actually kind of funny.

I too have noticed that my heroes havn't been healing very well. For whatever reason Dunkoro just doen't heal very often now.

im having a problem too,my monk's builds(dunk heal+tahlk prot) used to work REALLY well without BR/BiP,but even tho i brought it on my nec's for extra energy the monks still seem to get E-denial with all of the main healing skills at 5 energy cept res+prot spirit on my tahlk(and yes ive canceled the res on them)

Now that I think about it, Dunkoro does seem a bit lazy these days. At first I thought it was just my imagination or something. I've gotten in the habbit of checking the energy for my monks during combat. Talkora seems to do well at trying to keep the party going, but when I look at Dunk's energy it's usualy full until somebody's health is to low for comfort. Lazy bastard.

A hero is only as good as the build you give him and the builds/ability of the rest of the party.

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i think the issue is that the ai was healing fine a month ago but there's definitely been a change and i'm not really thinking that i like it. haven't really checked out alesia lately but i was a little disappointed with her just this morning. was using lina too and i didn't reall notice a difference with the prot skills.

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It’s half & half though. I have noticed over several months and not just recently that the hero monk AI is a bit off. It’s funny, because sometimes they will use their build correctly and other times they just don’t heal (even when they are stock full of energy). It’s pretty daunting, since occasionally I do have to do a manual override of how they heal. It’s a good thing that my first character was a monk; otherwise this is quite a bit of micromanaging. Even the henchmen work better then the hero’s at times.

As for it being the build: I think not. I have had my hero monks use a variety of build some simple and others complicated. All of them succeed with the same build in certain places and others they just loose it.

I was noticing this too. I just recently redid some relatively easy missions with dunkoro using the same healing build that I always had him bring in those areas. And for some reason, there were a lot more deaths. Someone's health would drop to about 20%, then hang there a few seconds, then they would die. At the beginning of a fight. There was no reason dunkoro couldn't have healed that person before they died. The areas didn't have any interrupts.

I still think he's better than some of the healer henchies though, particularly in hard mode.

One thing I've seen recently is that the heroes and henchies will not follow me if I try to run by an enemy spirit. I keep thinking I must be lagging because I'm moving but they're not. I have to attack the enemy spirit to get them to follow, which is an annoying waste of time (and their energy).

yep notice this a lot.
Dunky wont rez either---even if he is the last one standing I will have to manually click on rez to get him to do it. On the other hand most of my heroes are either /mo or /rit with rezzing abilities. Sosuke will rez almost immediately upon being rezzed, as will Nogru and Zhed (I like using nogru as a rezzer as me/rt with a good fast casting he can have the group up and running before dunky has rezzed 1 person!).
Now other things I have noticed, Takhorror is a great mm, and olias does pretty well as a monk to boot. Dunky and Sosuke seem to like to attack even when they are on passive , but dunky makes a great puller since all the enemy want to kill him off pretty fast!
So I will be trying to find another profession for dunky and leave the healing to olias and nogru! (maybe tank----------)

yeah, just payed attention to alesia healing. healing ai has changed and it now sucks. i wan't sure if maybe not playing for a few weeks kinda weakened my use of hench but that's not it. healing ai now sucks. can we have this reverted please?

I was the only one in my team slowly dying to degen out of heroes and hench. I was at 20 health and slowly going down. I looked at Tahlkora. She stood there. Full energy, within my range, all skills fully charged and perfectly fine. I had to MANUALLY use Word of Healing to heal myself.

Yeah, it seems like the healing AI has been a little wonky as of late. My Dunkoro is far less willing to use GoH =/.

I have to agree with most of the comments reguarding the Monk healing issue..


Even the Hench/Monks as said previously refuse to heal until you are running low .

As I tried vaious areas and it seems they have again reduced/AI and not said ... on Heros/Monks they need a little more manual tweaking than previous.

This is also the same with Olias have you noticed how far back he goes now..to follow so that if you dont look back as you are going along he tends to catch the others who catch his agro circle..

Again this in effect means you just have to pay a little more attension now..Get used to it as all they are doing is like any nerf is to make you now adjust your model and keep the game appealing to most people...
Off Topic a little

If any build gets published thats great.What in effect your doing is helping to nerf it yourselves ..They dont have to sit and wonder what to adjust ..by publishing you are doing there job for them..

So in reality nomatter what you say they will do what (They) think, will keep people interested in the game

As most will be on GW.EN and not notice the little things they will slip in until you come back and find them like this healing issue/AI

Dave

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Dunk let me die from poison today. Sister Tai was more attentive than him. *lol* Tahlkora really is better. Dunk has never given me any trouble rezzing. He's prompt so long as he's close enough. Sosuke is a bit more daring and will run right into a mob to rez. >_<

reminds me of a certain something.....


http://thegeartrick.tripod.com/archi...fact-2?i=1&s=1

letting players die out of combat while standing there doing nothing and maintaining a full e-bar really isn't a "build issue". it's a flaw. i would really rather believe that anet over-did a tweak to keep the ai from wasting energy than believe that anet is debilitating heroes and hench to make them unusable.

I was doing THK last night with Heroes and henchies. After a battle, Lina let her health slowly degen all the way down to zero and died. Mhenlo was with me as well. He just stood there, "pondering" as Lina went on to a better place.

I think Dunkoro and the rest are the same, it is the situation that has changed. Every time ANet gives us tougher areas, with more level 28s and half cast time bull$&!^, they are simply giving up higher numbers to deal with, not better opponents. (or AI) Dunk, Talk, they were not designed with this new situation in mind, so their flaws show through more evidently.

Just my 2 copper.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Heroes and henchmen have ALWAYS been terrible at dealing with degen. Always. This is not something new at all--they'll freely Prot Spirit you when you're hit with Conjure Phantasm and not think twice about it.

This is a flaw, certainly, but it's not recent.

Well I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed this. I've been dying a hell of alot more lately, usually in areas that I would never die at before. 9 times out of 10, I find myself thinking "FFS, can I get a heal here??" Something is certainly out of whack.. one thing I also see, however it's been going on as long as I can remember, is that at a certain point (usually around 100 hp for me), my hero healers seem to leave me for dead.. absolutely will not heal me automatically at that point with a fight going on. Not an out of combat issue as far as that goes. In fact, once combat is over, they'll almost instantly heal me. I'd like to see that fixed.

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All seems to be working fine...
For example yesterday I was clearing the Icedome with my warrior and henchmen (no heros). Basicly I would flag them back, then run in to the mob and put up my defenses. Then I would move the flag closer to me and the prot monk woul use shield of regen and the healer would heal.. in most of the fights they wouldn't even get attacked. The nuker would also start casting without running in.

Bascily you have to be careful with how you flag them. If you don't flag them properly or you don't flag them at all they will into battle and get killed.

Healers are broken, HM is painful with Dunkaro. I dont mind micro managing but this is ridiculous. If I don't control his every action, he either runs into melee and gets pwned or he stands there admiring Koss's fighting abilities...

Frustration mounts...

Please look into this Anet

I was about to give up using hench and heroes for a while and try real groups. The PUG I got was EXACTLY THE SAME in behaviour, except their spelling was worse.

Then you were lucky. Most pugs think that rangers with mending can be competent healers...

The degen thing though, it's true, the AI does not understand the concept very well - the primary thing they will use against degen is direct regen, which in most cases, means Healing Breeze. If faced with conjure phantasm and presented with the option of deny hexes or healing breeze, they will pick healing breeze 90% of the time. If faced with a full health frontline hexed with empathy and given the option of Blessed Light or Remove Hex, they will pick Blessed Light every time. If presented with the dilemma of a blind, crippled, bleeding and poisoned warrior and given the option of Restful Breeze or Restore Condition... Well, you get the idea...

I have also noticed that while levelling, Dunkorro fails. Yes, he is well and truly incompetent. After doing the Jokanur diggings mission with my necro, I put my little band of heroes together and devised some interim builds for them. So, I was bloodspike+necrosis, Koss was... well, a wammo with healsig, melloni was an earth prayers aoe nuker with Mending Touch and dunky was a Empathic Removal healer, (thought I'd try something different,) with Dwaynas, SoR, Seed, Heal Other, Ether Sig, Leech Sig and Res Sig. Guess who had 60DP before 5 minutes of fighting out in Zehlon Reach despite being on passive? Guess who refused to use anything other than SoR on himself? Guess what I had to give Melonni to keep Dunk from dying all the time?

I ended up just giving up on dunkorro and leaving him in the end, because even without him, everyone else was breezing through the area.

Anyway, I find a couple of builds tend to work quite well, mostly focusing on a few cheap, semi conditional heals and half a bar of utilities. When it comes to selecting a hero healing elite, utility skills don't really cut it. You want to use something from the healing prayers line. In my opinion, the healing elites when used on heroes rank as follows:

7th: Healing Hands. Mainly because it's healing hands.
6th: Healing Burst. Falls flat because it's a touch spell and almost always 10e at that
5th: Word Of Healing. They don't get the conditional part very well...
4th: Healers Covenant. Good in theory, but it just encourages spam for too little in the way of a return
3rd: Glimmer Of Light. Good in a build where the spike heal is located elsewhere in the party.
2nd: Healing Light. THE spam heal. The condition is so easy to meet, it may as well not be there, which effectively means a 104+DF heal for 2 energy, every 5 seconds. In other words, if you cast this every 5 seconds and nothing else, your natural energy regen will make up the cost 3 times over. Thats why it's godly on heroes.
1st: Light Of Deliverance. Mainly because it's light of deliverance

And I wouldn't trust an AI monk with healers boon as far as I could spit, to be honest.

Regardless, I have found that the following build works at least reasonably on AI Healers:

[skill]Light Of Deliverance[/skill][skill]Dwayna's Kiss[/skill][skill]Signet Of Rejuvenation[/skill][skill]Healing Seed[/skill]
[skill]Vigorous Spirit[/skill][skill]Power Drain[/skill][skill]Leech Signet[/skill][skill]Resurrection Signet[/skill]

Healing Prayers: 16 / Divine Favor: 10 / Inspiration Magic: 9

EDIT: Had to post incomplete, cause the boss turned up ^^

Aaanyway, where was I? Ah yeah, I was gonna say that Vigorous Spirit might seem an odd choice. It's not bad though, but it'll likely be replaced with cure hex or one of the spotless spells in about 30 days time

Thought I'd come back and edit this a bit more. Now the above build, plainly doesnt have a spike heal unless you count Kiss. It's quite possible to turn kiss into a spike though. I nearly always run an E/Mo hero either as:

[skill]Searing Flames[/skill][skill]Glowing Gaze[/skill][skill]Liquid Flame[/skill][skill]Fire Attunement[/skill]
[skill]Glyph Of Lesser Energy[/skill][skill]Convert Hexes[/skill][skill]Aegis[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

Fire Magic: 16 / Energy Storage: 10 / Protection Prayers: 9
For where I need lots of offensive power,

OR

[skill]Sandstorm[/skill][skill]Eruption[/skill][skill]Ward Against Melee[/skill][skill]Earth Attunement[/skill]
[skill]Glyph Of Lesser Energy[/skill][skill]Convert Hexes[/skill][skill]Aegis[/skill][skill]Rebirth[/skill]

Earth Magic: 16 / Energy Storage: 10 / Protection Prayers: 9
For where I need a hybrid that can relieve backline pressure better.

Anyway, I'll leave it here for now.