My paragon's buddies

Question: What's the best class as the SY! other than Paragon? Warrior with Dragon Slash, For Great Justice and other stuff.

More HP, More Sac, faster death =o Yet the hero is shown with a minor blood and not superior. The AI generally preys on the target with the least amount of health, a character that performs by saccing health should not be that target. If a monk is being hit it's no big deal since the monk is still able to perform its role in the party. A physical can still attack and build adrenaline, an elementalist can continue to throw off spells. When the order bot comes under fire there is a greater risk of death given the nature of its duty. A higher health will tell the AI to focus their assault on someone else instead, allowing the sacrificing of health to become less of an issue.

Do you find this should work relatively universally with just proper player tactics (been awhile since I did PvE), or is it more specific with bad mob matchups to be avoided? Has this worked well for anyone with a melee character who takes longer to change targets than a paragon when avoiding block skills? I've done the same and played with it on both warrior and paragon. From what I remember everything felt significantly more difficult as a player warrior than player paragon. Despite both builds using "Save Yourselves!" the lack of "There's Nothing To Fear!" on a warrior definitely shows that constant +100 AL is by no means an easy victory. The party heal and damage reduction from armor ignoring sources over 10 seconds is fairly significant.

Calling targets helps somewhat if a flag is set. The AI tries to stay within a certain radius of a human player; henchmen to the party leader, heroes to whoever owns them. As any melee profession that radius can change quite frequently over the course of combat resulting in AI that moves more frequently instead of taking action. This becomes even more of an issue for henchmen and their lack of proper equipment/runes. With less health they're targeted more often, forcing them to kite and stay within the player's range. Setting a flag creates an anchor and their positioning becomes less focused on where you stand. Call a target to make sure they move with you when you do engage, and to ensure focus fire when moving.

One issue that you can't really avoid is the whole melee weapon/ranged weapon behavior. If you are the only party member using a melee weapon enjoy all of the physical hate. At the very least in areas with a lot of blind bring a second melee physical (if you don't already) and switch to a wand/spear (wand is more effective) so you can still maintain the defense. Sitting on that sword set means no DPS or +100 AL, may as well eliminate one of those penalties. Especially on hard mode; anything that blinds will do so frequently. Remove the condition and it's back just like that. Another option is calling a target and letting the AI run ahead so the paragons absorb the hate. Granted this tactic can backfire if they're hard hitting and wipe out something before you can build "Save Yourselves!". I would limit such a strategy against enemies with long recharging physical hate skills for the aforementioned reasons.

I haven't played since the AI was updated last so I can't comment on anything that may have influenced the effectiveness of these strategies.

If I am playing with h/h - they are all my bitches. This is a slightly valid point. but the monk still doesnt have the time/energy to waste on players hurting themselves.

Edited by Celestial Beaver: Please keep hostile comments out of this discussion.