Non-compliable Henchmen?

I'm currently trying to vanquish Joko's Domain and it's becoming very frustrating, mostly in part due to my Henchmen/Heroes taking some time to stop and look at the scenery. There are several patrols near worm spoors, large patrols, and it's almost guaranteed that I'd be wiped if I tried to kill off the group, and as such I'm going for the spoors when the patrols are out of range. The problem? Heroes and Henchmen are randomly deciding that while following me it'd be nice to stop and enjoy each other's company. 3 times now I have I missed and almost gotten sent back to the resurrection shrine because the Heroes/Henchmen just stop moving while following me, and it takes them a good 4 or 5 seconds to get moving again at which point the patrol is back and I've missed the opportunity to get to the spoor.

I'm not sure if this is lag, or just henchmen doing what they do best, failing to be able to comply with orders that even a PUG could follow. Is this happening to anyone else?

I presume they stop just out of range of a spirit that the patrol put down?

If so, then yes, it's a somewhat recent AI change, where AI will refuse to move past a spirit.

Either kill the spirit (agros the patrol), or let it expire.

It always happens to me, specially if I have a hero MM (Olias) and he and his Minion Union (I call it the MUGW => Minion Union of Guild Wars) decide that they do not want to fight and instead just sit back and enjoy some coffee and talk about the latest GvG fight they saw on GWTV. GIMME A BREAK!!!

Got an MM and someone with death nova? Cos they will constantly keep it up on minions. This has also happened to me and i just zoned but since you are vanquishing.... Just try and cope or try again.

I don't have to kill the spirit, they'll still walk past it, it's just like they don't want to. You said it's an AI change, so is this purposeful or an unintended side effect that Heroes and Henchmen cower in fear before the terrible might of...Quicksand?

I have seen this a few times recently, and not just with spirits.

It seams the AI is trying to avoid agro by not following my into agro range. This is great when I use my war, not so great on any of my casters.......

On the topic of aggro, are we ever going to get AI that avoids engaging non-engaged enemies? i.e. moving out of the damn way when there's a patrol coming.

Ugh, There's no way I'm going to be able to vanquish this. There's too many Acolytes/Cavaliers so it's impossible to get them down before one gets resurrected back up, the necromancers use vocal minority, so my healing skills become completely unavailable due to one single non-elite skill, and if I try to lure them to the edge of the sand where my henchmen are waiting in Junundu, they just leave the Junundu when they see me. Failed AI.

I was having this problem. Coupled with the problem that sometimes, clicking the Flag Button fails, I have bound the Flag All key to F5. If I have any problem, I hit F5 and force the hench to run ahead.

its happens to me some times, hench and heros stop behind and stay, no move no spells... its weird... sometimes they run and help fight sometimes they let me die...

before someone say... no flags... no defend set... normal play...

i use flags to pull them to close and help in fight...

i think its a bug... not a major bug...

I have noticed the henchmen and hero AI behavior degrading in the last 2 weeks since they all started to sound like Assassins.I have noticed a few other things as well.

I noticed this alot more when EOTN first came back (not seen it so much now though). It was as if a chest was blocking them in a narrow area.. except it was thin air in an open snowy field..

I've notice this with Olias recently, he hangs back using spells on his minions rather than moving forward into battle. Several times I've aggroed expecting the undead cavalry to swamp the enemy when Olias and his chums are at least an aggro circle behind me and my squishy caster h/hs. However I put this down to my recently changing his build rather than Anet changing his AI.

Regarding the problem you mention, I feel this can be solved by close attention to the mini-map and dragging the lazy ****s to where you want them by flagging. Even if u get four of them into wurms, this should be enough to take out the undead.

However, having read your post there is another problem you are likely to run into; it sounds like you are relying heavily on wurms to vanquish the undead in NF. This isn't always possible, for instance in at least one place in the Alkali Pan and all of Poisoned Outcrops. Minor changes like changing your targeting priority (cavaliers > acolytes) or adding some rituals like EoE or Frozen Soil might help, but you might have to change your builds in a bigger way.

This is the problem with minion bomber build, and reason why I dislike death nova. Depending on the rate with which your minions die/spawn, he may be way too busy putting death nova on them, and won't follow.

You are of course, correct, he moved from Golem/BotM --> Jagged bones/death nova/BotM and it has raised (pardon the pun) merry hell. Those enemy mobs do die more quickly though. At least when the minions can be arsed to turn up.........

I noticed this last night in Melandru's Watch. The shrine priest (who you can get to follow you around) would stop at the spirit the rit hench drops and not go past til it disappeared.

Your saying you want an Ai that can intelligently avoid further aggro when already engaged? Lazy much? Honestly, multiplayer in GW is so optional, doing something so advanced to teh Ai like that would utterly destroy Multiplayer PvE... seriously.

Be more aware of surroundings yourself, flagging works wonders. Hardmode pretty much requires it if you H/H alot. MrSlayer has it right, if you have issues with mouseclicking the flags, keybindings ftw...

To the OP, take taht advice also. Flag flag flag flag... It will solve about 75% of your problems. For example, when approaching an area with a several patrol mobs, just be smart about aggro. Flag your whole H/H party way back along the route you KNOW is safe, and use a bow to pull 1 group at a time. The flagged team should be far enough back so that as the aggro is pulled if they run around they wont be around any other patrols.

In essence, play smarter, not harder It will be way less fustrating in the end. GL!

cheers

Slightly off topic, but in the same mission the worms would simply NOT take my olias on board...it kinda sucked.

I've had Stefan run off the radar map. While flagged. Margrid will go out of the way to engage pretty much anything a couple aggro circles away sometimes. Death Nova on a MM hero will sometimes pause the entire lot of them an aggro circle behind and they wont come join in the fight. There's countless things like that.

As relates to worms, sometimes heroes and/or henchmen are slightly out of range and wont get into a worm, which is annoying when you dont notice and they die out in the sand. I've also had an instance where one of my heroes would not get into a worm (like pamelf) so I simply let him die and left him (forgot who it was).

Fun times with AI. All things considered, have been pretty much able to do most everything with them anyway.

Slighly on and off topic, jokos is a pain, but I can offer small advice.

Do the area in three chunks

East side Junundu
Middle on foot
West side Junundu

use a powerstone after one of the Junundu areas since heroes accumulate lotsa dp in those things.


Dont take an MM, they fail, your better off with a well of darkness hexer.
If your playing any type of physical other than a ranger, take expel hexes on your mesmer. (btw a mesmer is a good idea, helps a lot vs the ele boss you have to face out of the worms)

Paragon with Save Yourselves = win

It's happened since the very beginning. Sometimes they just don't feel like moving, sometimes they don't feel like attacking, and sometimes they feel they like to pick a different target than the one have called. I've had Stefan stand next to whatever I have called and never attack through an entire mission before.

They will consistently do it with certain builds - as mentioned minion bombers or a MM with Jagged Bones are especially bad about doing that. Basically they kinda get hung up trying to keep one or two spells up at all times, the monks can also get kinda stranded trying to keep minions alive, standing around spamming Orision. There is nothing like a hench monk getting stuck one or two steps from exiting lava and standing there trying to out heal it instead of moving those extra two steps (you can at least flag a hero to force it).

I learned a long time ago to just watch for it and not fight it. I've been in several places where they do *not* want to attack a healer no matter what I do (the heroes even ignoring a "lock on" call from their control window) - so just call one of the targets they find acceptable and out damage the healer. I can't tell you how many times my Dervish has died because I called a target, ran to engage it, and the hench ran to attack a different group that is significantly further away(then, once they get there and engage/aggro them they decide to follow my called target and I get *both* groups - yay!).

In the case you describe I just flag them into the middle of the mob, either that or wait (sometimes for quite some time) before they decide their federally mandated 15 minute break is over. Of course, that is assuming I notice it before I am running into the group assuming that my H/H are with me.

I don't know, I've often wondered if it is some level of idiocy built in to encourage grouping. We know Anet will not let them use somethings (such as PvE only skills) in an attempt to do so, I don't know if they have ever stated one way or another on the above issues. They have had bugs in the past and fix them so it is hard to say.

*shrug* the sad thing is that I have had WAY more success with them than with PUGs and I still much prefer them.

Ugh yeah, the heroes' AI is horrible. They refuse to attack a certain target (usually the ones you WANT to get rid of right away - healer monks or high damage dealers), run past your team to aggro one random foe 2 aggro bubbles away...

I have a funny story concerning this one, our alliance still has a good laugh outta it: we were doing Justiciar Thommis with 5/8 humans, and we had brought Zhed with us. We wiped at the huge mob Thommis has with him and repsawned at the shrine near him. So we stay back from the boss, trying to plan our next strategy... when we notice Zhed is at the other end of the map, hard-casting Meteor Shower on Thommis who was still in the middle of his 20-man mob. I don't think I've EVER laughed that much on GW. Zhed was NOT flagged and was NOT locked on the foe - neither was he on aggressive or Thommis had been targeted.

My bane is the MM that won't move - I came to manually flag Olias (my MM) when I don't feel like MMing myself, which gets me annoyed to no end since MM should be within the first ones when you're aggroing a mob...

Kinda off-topic, but Mhenlo and Togo get stuck -everytime- trying to heal minions in Vizunah Square. Cost us Masters reward several times, as sometimes they refuse to move even if the MMs are far from them.

This seems to have been happening ever since Eye of the North was released...The heroes/hench follow you...then when they get near a spirit...they stop. Flagging them past the spirit works, but you shouldn't need to do it. I guess they really are scared of spirits.

Yeh, according to match.com, Devona isn't compatible with me... What did I miss?

But really, the hero/hench AI is...well.... more like AS (auto scripting) in which case Script A works, Script B fails, and thus, Script C is, ignored. GO GO programming.

i noticed the H/H stopping and not following me when EotN came out and now that you mention it, i just realized that there was always a spirit there when it happened.

i didn't notice Olias not following until i loaded the Minion bomber build (or whatever Saab recommended) then i noticed he started lagging behind and i i do beleive it is because of Death Nova. Other than that i haven't see much of a change in the way h/h work.

This is absolutely not my case. I would beg for this to be the case. I have watched my healers, set to avoid, actually run into another group of mobs trying to avoid the current ones we are engaged with.

The level of complexity we are asking AI to emulate is probably beyond the expertise of the Anet staff. No disrespect meant. We are talking extremely complex chains of coding based on a huge quantity of variables. Someone could probably make a huge killing just writing complex AI code for games that could be integrated into a gaming engine.

Not bringing an MM is bad advice for Joko's and Poisoned Outcrops. I vanquished Elona with h/h, and in my experience the best way to deal with large numbers of undead is to body block with minion bombs, and rip them to shreds with holy damage. Hexing is a bad idea because the Dune Carvers will be untargetable, and the Thought Leeches have Hex Eater Vortex which they will use to quickly penetrate your minion wall.

A Splinter Weapon barrager with someone (a hero, preferably a mesmer signet build) to cast Judge's Insight works wonders. You'll lose the occasional corpse to the Defilers, but you should be killing too fast for them. Other tips are: never fight in open areas, pull mobs to Junundu where possible (but beware of Gale locking Effigies), and refresh minions after every battle.

My heroes never do anything that I don't specifically allow them to do.

Learn to use flags.

If you are in an area that works well with an mm, I've found this works best for me:

I use two necro/mesmers and one monk as my heroes. One necro is the mm, the other is the mm assistant. The assistant has death nova and jagged bones as well as other assistant skills. The monk hero in the group will focus on the 2 necros. I make it a point to not need the monk for my own healing. I haven't had a problem with them lagging behind using that team setup.

I play a paragon, and melee monsters dont do much damage thru the passive defense I offer. TBH, the dune carvers dont do enough damage to cry about, and they die easy anyway, and they died fast anyway since SS went on a non dune carver. Plus Reckless haste is AoE.

I dont like taking MMs in pve because they are slow, clunky, and use corpses Id rather have for well of darkness/well of blood, plus the damage they offer is worthless anway since my setup is heavy degen (armor ignoring ftw) and they explode themselves pretty quick as it is. In fact the only time I recently took an MM was to relieve pressure in Gyala hatchery against the kurzick rangers, but it worked out since there were no ele bosses there to need a mesmer for.

On the topic of hex eater vortex from the thought leeches, its meh anyway, I have 10million hexes over there and they are more likely to remove a useless hex than something important.

Oh btw you will probably have a little trouble vanquishing this area if your setup is warriors, eles, and monks, because when I did it on my ele the team was forced to cornerblock and nuke, but some of the groups lose aggro quickly and also without spell breaker the tank explodes. Good think I learned since then that hexes make pve stupid easy.


edit:
Poisoned outcrops was also retardedly easy with our setup since the only worry spot is the sandstorm boss and we just put mesmer + BHA ranger on him, I just chucked spears at him (dazed ele boss with arcane conundrum ftw), gwen stayed on him, and our ranger interupted the other crags while they degened and killed themselves.

in reply to original post:
I don't think the heros/hench are enjoying each other's company and ignoring your commands. its a lag issue if they are way behind, I know its a lag because i learn the hard way, charging into a group of enemies while the hench/heros were lag behind. I thought I had left my flag behind but its wasn't then I check the little yellow/red dots i have a 50k ping.

in reply to quote above
heros / hench don't leave their Junundu if you park them further away from the edge. i do that all the time around 1 inch away and have no problem with it, only problem is when I miss calculate the distance I have to run back with the enemies, deep freeze, slash, slash lightning *dead*...

other stuffs.
always use flags together with battle mode of your choice (fight, guard or avoid)
if you see 2 groups of enemies, don't go in, pull them towards you, even human players will accidentally aggro another group of enemies if not careful, and this is AI we are talking about.

Regarding heros not responding to commands,
spacebar many time and they will do it before you get kill. if you don't what them to fight even when they have combat mode fight on, don't use spacebar and don't use ctrl+skill , if you use ctrl+skill (call target) they will definitely follow, unless, if you target a healer enemy and that healer is behind a barricade of melee enemy and the hench cannot get through, in this case \ back slash quickly to select closcest enemy and re-assign target.

I have this problem once in a while, but such is GW.

Flags.

I -wish- I could flag other players.



Every PUG I join, and I PUG all the time, anytime there is a patrol, they just stand there like a bunch of rubes eating corn on the porch...

In WoW, I've gotten used to everyone making a run for it if anyone types "PAT" into chat.

See those words, you scatter away from aggro, even if you're on an easy mob.

Type it into GW chat, nothing. Ping the radar, nothing. Draw a line, nothing. Draw an arrow, nothing. Draw the Mona Lisa, nothing.

At least heroes and henchies listen to flags. Sometimes even putting the flag down where it already is will get them to return to it if they've charged a nearby mob.

I can deal with most aspects of the hero ai, but the "stay away from the spirit" one has been driving me insane since the release of GW:EN.

Not using holy damage against undead and wasting corpses on wells is simply not using all the available tools optimally.

I just don't really use a minion bomber. I prefer to make my minions out there absorb as much damage as the possibly can - that is I use them as tanks. The enemy AI tends to target the lower level, lower HP, and lower armor targets first so the minions almost always get most of it. I then take my other two heroes (and myself) and spec more into damage than I would without the minions. I still take self healing, usually just swap one self heal out for another attack and (if I can) I prefer damage buffs that help the minions also.

The monk really doesn't pay much attention to the minions at all in this case and spreads around the heals/prots nicely (and the hench monks are MORE than up to that task since most focus is on the minions).

Seems to work well for most areas of the game, but then any halfway decent build does too