H/H and pets AI attack improvement

For Heroes and Pets, and Henchman prolly to, they should attack anyone u attack (for Heroes and Pets in Fight and Guard mode ofcourse).
I am pretty sure that means Attack.
As a spellcaster i usually start casting spells, and on occasion my H/H team is picking their noses untill one of us gets targeted by a foe's skill/spell/Attack.

Improvement suggestion: That your H/H (and pets) also start attacking when u start using skills/spells on foes.

Enlighten me if there r downsides to my suggestion.

This isn't quite as sweeping a change as the title implies, but it's very reasonable and welcome. Switching between physical and caster characters, I do find having to ctrl-call the start of every fight gets annoying.

I experienced this recently with my new Necro. I'd run through pretty much my whole caller chain on an enemy before my heroes even started to flinch. Would be nice to have fixed.

I agree, it would be a nice change.

My personal favourite is when you're going hammer and tongs at a mob, pinging your guts out with every attack, and your pet set to attack is just casually ignoring the battle all round it, and sauntering back over to you as if there was nothing at all going on.

/signed

Hammer and tongs?! If thats attacking with a hammer, that is an Attack and should start your H/H and pet(s) to attack.

One issue with my suggestion may be.
There r spells/skills that dont affect foes, or not immediatly.
As soon as a spell/skill affects a foe, then it should count as an attack.
(or was i stating the obvious )

Hammer and Tongs is an expression, means going hardcore at something... And yes, whilst your pet should be attacking, it isn't. As I said, it's casually wandering out of the battle back to you as if nothing was happening.

Perhpas some sort of veteran's fatigue, maybe it's time for retirement.

Are you certain it wasn't set on 'heel'? If you tick 'attack' (with a target) while it's set on 'heel' it will return to this mode when it's attack-target dies.
When on guard mode it will attack when an attack from you hits, it will take longer for the pet to switch from hanging around to fighting when it's 'at ease'.

Nah, I rarely group, so my pet is always set to "Guard"..DW, I'm thick, just not quite that thick..

If I understand the suggestion correctly, you want spell casting to count the same as attacking for hero/pet AI. So if I were to use a long casting spell but not attack the monsters, the heroes/pets would start attacking? I would not agree with that. There are times when I am using hero+hench and do not want them to start attacking until after I finish casting. If I want them to attack during my cast, I simply use the Ctrl+Shift+Attack call which does not make me attack, but will make the hero+hench (pets are a different matter). For pets, it takes a little more work, as you would need to open the pet control window and manually set their target and aggression level to attack.

In short, the ability to use the heroes and pets to attack already exists, you just don't know it or use it. Changing it would make it worse for some people (myself included). Thus....

/unsigned