Hero flagging

Ok, hope this isn't a Q&A topic, but here it is, move if needed.

When doing Cathedral of Flames as a 600/Smite, I use Ogden. Anyone who has done this knows that you are flagging the hero repeatedly throughout the dungeon. I have no problems placing my flag and having him move to it correctly. However, when I remove the flag, he does not always move towards me. Even if there is a clear path between us (no obstacles to avoid) he will often run the OPPOSITE direction. If I pay attention, I can reset the flag to a spot near me for him to run to. However, if I am distracted by something, he will wander away too far, and the bonds will drop.

Now, this may be worse for a hero with maintained enchantments, but it can be bad at other times as well. Say you are working with a full team and flag the heroes to pull a group. Once pulled, you remove the flag so the heroes will engage/kite/etc. normally. If they run in the opposite direction, you may not have healing, offense, defense, etc. from them.

What causes the heroes to run AWAY from you when a flag is removed, are there ways to prevent this from happening, and are there other issues I have not noticed yet? I am aware of the teleporting trick.

You have to walk them back with the flag bit by bit. It's an ancient problem, not sure why it happens, but you see it a lot when there's higher terrain they need to cross to get to you. Hills seem to confuse the hell out of them.

Spirits anywhere in compass range reduce a Hero's IQ to about -7. It's a feature.

It happens in room with no elevation, and in rooms with elevation. It happens when spirits are in range, and when no spirits are in range.

Level 3 of CoF, the room near the beginning with loads of Enchanteds for example. I flag my hero at the entrance to the room, then clear the room. The room is flat, and no monster in that room use spirits. After the room is clear, I unflag the hero, and he runs back towards the start. I have since learned to reflag him, but removing a flag should cause them to move towards you, not away from you.

Hero flaggin is bugged to heck. The recently supposedly fixed a bug with hero flagging but now its impossible to make a hero stand on a spot because they still want to dance around in formation to you (try placing EoE in Urgoz with a hero!)

Heroes, as you noted, often wat to run off in an opposite direction when you unflag them, and if they are off radar when you do, they leave their pets behind!

I don't think ANet did much testing on the flag system.

Yes, but it doesn't, and hasn't for awhile. Unfortunately, AI pathing is terrible in Guild Wars, always has been, and probably will continue to be until the game goes dark.

I don't know if there ever was a consensus reached on what was the likely cause of the backwards running problem. I think it's just a matter of the AI picking a bad path back to you at first. The only solution I'm aware of is just manually walking them back with the flag.

It's because he's so short :P.
Either way, this problem has been around for almost a year now I think =/. Not really much you can do about it.

Hero AI is bugged, always has been. It has become worse recently, as Ogden and Zhed have been going gun-ho randomly, especially Zhed, that guy is NUTS. He will run ahead of my party 1-2 aggro bubbles to randomly target a mob that I didn't want to attack. I hate hero battles a lot, but you cannot bring Zhed into them even if you wanted to... he will charge the opposing player without any order whatsoever to do so. I R CONFUZ3D?

This only happens to me when my heroes are nearly out of radar range. If they are closer, they are able to walk right up to me. Still annoying though.

I may be mistaken, but I had read a long time ago that your hero "forgets" where you are if you are too far off, so he will retrace his steps and follow your trail.

This happened to me just last week when I did the part of the GOLEM quest where you have to protect the two sides at the same time. I flagged my sabway hero necros to one side and took henchies with me on the other. I then crossed over the bridge on my side, cleared the stuff in the middle, and made it to the other side of the bridge from my heroes. I thought "well if I cancel the flag, they'll just cross the bridge to me". NOPE. They went alllll they way around, the exact same way I went before.

-Alastair

Interesting. That may be the case, as I don't let him go too far before reflagging him, but he seems to head along a route I had taken. This could be fixed I would think, as they could make the hero take a direct line to you. The only reason I can think of that this might be a problem is if you are out of range (heroes names are grayed out in party menu). However, I am never that far away from my Hero, as I would lose my enchants if I was.

Anyone else notice a tracing pattern from heroes when flags are removed?

Yeah, I was farming outside Matuu Keep the other day and I had flagged some H/H near the portal. Ended up dying and unflagged them to come res me. While they were moving, I had my mini map up and noticed they were folowing the exact same path until I flagged them through a more direct route.

I have EXACTLY the same problem. Not in CoF though since I tend to flag Ogden pretty close to my position but a good example it feather farming around Nebo Terrace. That's a huge flat area and I flag Ogden at one point to run around and aggro everything there is repeatedly getting out of his radar. One I unflag him then he will run away from me so the "tracing back" Alastair mentioned sounds pretty logical to me.

I'll try that later to confirm.

With multiple people saying the exact same thing, sounds pretty confirmed to me.

Between pathing issues, buggy skill usage and many other issues, it almost seems like they are on strike!

But [rebirth]ing within the aggro circle (not at the edge) is the worst sin of all.