Has there been a stealth update?

I went into the Snowman dungeon today just to pick up some party points and kill some time until my guildies logged on and I noticed I wasn't recieving any XP from the level 25 snowmen. I would get a +5% morale boost though every 25 kills. I looked back in the updates through December07 and I didn't notice this change in any of the notes. I assume the boxing is the same way but I haven't checked.

I also noticed that Pain Inverter doesn't seem to affect Ilsunder or what ever his name is at the bottom of Kathandrax. He used to be a 1/2sec kill with pain inverter and now his health barely moves.

I believe the snowman kills have been that way for a couple weeks now, it was indeed a stealth update, I would have rather seen them keep the xp there and remove it from the silly punchout tourney which is almost impossible to be killed at

I'm almost positive there was a stealth update dumbing down the hero and hench AI as well.

Lately they have been acting worse than PuGers. They disobey flag commands and chase enemies while in Guard mode, they aren't targeting the proper enemies even after I target spam the entire height of my GW screen with pings, hell, they can't even seem to damage/kill the enemies efficiently when they do get the right target, and this is just in NORMAL MODE.

Totally unacceptable when up until now I was having absolutely no trouble with any of the above.

I thought I was alone, but I have this same problem. I have been caping skills in Cantha and my Heros are acting like complete crazy people. They will go out of their way to maintain lock and attack a bad guy well after I have run on. They will break agro and attack other mobs in close proximity they never did before.

Let the conspiracy theories roll...

<grabs popcorn>

I havent had any probs with my heros, most of them stay in dry dock outside of the necros, but really I have had pretty good luck vanq'n the desert with them.

/notsigned on conspiracy

I've been having this happen to me as well. I'll be moving through an area and when all of my heroes are set to defend, occasionally one will just run off and attack some random enemy.

Ilsundur got a (stealth) HP buff in November. It went from ~2000 to ~10 000. He also got half Condition/Hex Duration. So yeah, he's annoying to fight now with H/H groups...

I saw that happen yesterday, actually. I was in HotS and flagged ogden, he ran and stopped, then I flagged Vekk and Gwen and locked them on a target with Guard. They immediately abandoned the flag and ran down a hill and outside of my aggro bubble to attack the MOBs.

I've also had problems with Ogden recently. I used to have no trouble using him, but anymore he's the king of 60% DP and he seems terribly unwilling to heal me. I'll pull MOBs back and be within range of him and almost dead and he'll just be happily tossing out Protection enchants to H/Hs that aren't being attacked instead of healing me.

Admittedly, though, I haven't played with H/H for awhile, so this could have been any number of AI updates from announced patches over the last two months or so AFAIK, if it's anything at all. And the Ogden issue could be that the skills template I gave him has nerfed skills that I didn't notice.

I've been having problems with Gwen, lol. She pretty flagrantly ignores my flagging and targeting. I've never had a problem with her before and I take her most of the time. She's currently on a time out for her bad behavior, though. xD

Last night I was trying to run A Time for Heroes on HM with Pain Inverter + Interrupt Gwen and she WOULD NOT STOP disobeying ever flag I set for her! I set it 2 aggros away from the closest destroyer, she runs in and still starts her interrupt-a-thon anyways and ends up for whatever reason luring in more of my hench and heroes until we're all down to 5 energy or less the party gets wiped. It was the exact same all 4 times I tried.

I have been having issues with h/h as well. I find that MoW ignores what ever I have him set to (attack,guard,passive). Most times he can be found with talon in the front lines gaining DP like its experience.

What I find most frustrating though is the h/h ignoring locked targets. I was doing the Kodnur crossroads HM and sailed through 99% of it. Got to the last keep to finish the mission and I start targeting one of the 2 kournan priests (locking my heroes on one of them) and they just attack the warriors and pay no attention to my calls or locked targets. This ended up with a party wipe as the 2 priests were able to easliy out heal the damage of a party of 8(another VERY frustrating fact).

Of course, Anet will not even take the time to respond to this or look into it since gw2 is more important. 5 million copies sold and we are all shit out of luck for support.

/me bangs his head against the wall in frustration

using absinth makes you stelthy

the snowman dungeon has been that way since wintersday.

Heroes not obeying flags has been around since flags---vekk has never obeyed any I set for him from day 1 (I rarely use him because of that), and h/h not attacking the target I set---old news indeed, if I could get them to attack targets I might actually play my survivor a bit more.

If it was an update, it was a looooong time ago.

AI mimicking real people.

Still better than most PUGs I'd say..

Being completely upfront on my ignorance here, since yesterday was the first time I've ever attempted the Norn Tournament, but every opponent waited for me to enter the arena before doing anything other than standing still and maybe precasting. The lone exception was Norgu, who felt compelled to ambush me while I was still just chilling at the spawn point just so he could put a backfire on me.

I noticed a lot of Gwen mentions, maybe it's a similar issue with her AI? Or maybe this is how it's always been for Norgu since, like I said, I'd never been in that area before.

Ok, I try to flag my heroes to body block some guy because I was bored. I do this, and there trying to kill the archers, a floor above us while they're all in defensive mode =\

I love to quote Malice =3

There is no z-axis in Guild Wars, so targets any number of meters above or below you are valid targets for Guard NPCs. It's the same reason that you can pick up a drop that's hovering in a tower 35 feet over your head.

My point is, it is only very recently (as in, the last couple of days) that any of these problems have arisen. Whether or not they've been around since the introduction of [x] and [y], they have been completely normal (and effective) up until just recently and it happens to be a tad aggravating, especially considering I'm trying to fill in some HM books and it's pretty damn difficult to do anything in HM when your heroes and henchmen seem to operate like a generic Frenzy + Mending 2-aggro-ranges-ahead-of-the-frontline Wammo.