Henchman AI tweaks

I think it could safely be said that the henchmen need some loving when it comes to brains. Perhaps helping out with good suggestions for tweaks will help ANet out.

For the record - "Henchmn sucks azz" is not a helpful suggestion, nor is "make them smarter".

Suggestions:
Claude and Eve both seem to be triggered to use Blood Ritual on a teammate who drops below ~ 1/4 of maximum energy; this can frequently be the wrong choice. Suggested: check class of target - if it is a warrior or ranger, or a player wielding a melee weapon and attacking in melee combat (particularly a */W) refrain from using blood ritual - it requires moving into combat range and is probably not helping the target as much as giving that energy to the casters does. Make the threshold for energy slightly higher for a monk player - around 1/3 instead of 1/4, as it gets dangerous for the monk to be running out.

Henchmen don't seem to take resurrections into account very well. While generally henchmen will wait if there is a player in the group with a hard rez (or at least, they'll wait for Lina/Alesia/Mhenlo to use them) they don't seem to recognise Unyielding Aura as a hard rez, and thus burn resurection signets unecessarily. Perhaps some time limit should be used - if the player is down for > X seconds treat the monk as not rezzing - that way a player can force a hard res. by letting unyielding expire, or by waiting, but can still use the skill to bring people up in combat (or to maintain them).

Make Henchmen respond to calls to some extent - they will switch to a called target, but they should take advantage of wells and wards for example, particularly if called. Calling out a well of power should bring those casters not kiting and able to do so into the well for example, as should calling a ward. (Possibly clicking "I have Well of Power on me!" as a way of swapping them from one place to another.)

Please make them seek paths in PvE areas with poison water and so on - it's very upsetting to have Mhenlo take up a position in the lava because of where one stops - I know that they have formations to adopt, but really they should be able to path around these obstacles.

Especially true come the final missions when you're affected by the Mursaat Towers that drain your energy fairly quickly. Nothing worse than having Eve rush in to give your warriors a Blood Ritual and drawing the attention of the enemy onto her.

The Ressurections in general always gets me nervous. There have been occasions where the henchmen fight it out until the enemy is dead before using Restore Life. Other times the battle is going well, Mhenlo or whoever starts to use Restore Life and shortly thereafter the whole party drops due to lack of heals. And naturally, Restore Life isn't used until the entire party is nearly dead. Forcing the hard res would be a much better solution, given that in situations that you're using henchmen you'll encounter numerous bosses that can recharge the Ressurection Signet. No point in letting it go the waste. I would also suggest something along the lines of if half the party is dead, use the signet.

The only problem I would see is multiple human players with henchmen. Would the most recent call take priority? How would it take affect with the AoE "update" should a Meteor Shower be occupying the ward? For that matter will they have the Ai to walk around an AoE to make it to said called ward? There would probably be some tinkering with some of the little things to avoid making the henchmen stupid in some situations.

It would be a very nice improvement.

I don't really know how, but give Lina a brain! Out of all the henchies she is by far the most clueless. Countless times I have been with just a friend, myself, and a full team of henchies, or just myself and henchies, and we have all died except for Lina. The group has died in two seperate locations, in two big clumps, so Lina runs back and forth between the two clumps of death confused which to resurrect. I actually sat and had a full 20 minute conversation with my friend and Lina finally aggro'd some centaurs (crystal desert) and died.

Ofcourse I'm sure it's much easier said than done, but Lina needs to have priorities, as it seems she has none and therefore gets very easily confused.

Give Lina some judgement! :P

I just want the infusion at iron mines to work right. Stephan still doesn't get infused. Without lina's pro spirit he would die every single time.

/signed on both of those. Far too many times I have seen Claude use BR, then seen the enchantment pop up on Stefan or Little Thom or even myself on my warrior.

Possibly you could tell henchies to stand on a certain spot with a map ping? I know that when I am playing as a ranger, I usually try to pull *one* of the groups of about 4 or so enemies to our group so that our superior numbers allow for their easy disposal. However, when I attack the enemy with one bowshot to make them aggro, Stefan and Little Thom rush off to go fight the enemy, and usually end up aggroing the entire group and leading to our demise. I realize that this is realistic behavior for a warrior, but it is not helpful.

I agree with pretty much everything that's been listed already.

I would also like to see commands that make henchies stay at their current positions, and follow you (party leader maybe?), regardless of close-by enemies. Something similar to how some quest NPCs work would probably be enough. "I'm following so-and-so" and "I'll wait here". But I'd love a hotkey that could toggle follow and stay.

Henchmen are supposed to be tools that players can use if they prefer to play alone. Problem is, when using henchies you usually have to completely change the way you play to suit their "quirks", or you don't get too far. It feels like a different game altogether at times. I think a wait/follow command would help to bridge this gap.

The infusion on the henchies needs to be improve. I tried doing a solo skills capping with henchies at Iron Mines but they just simply die too quickly from the Mursaat. Also, Alesia and Lina need to stay put back for support healing and protection. The other day I was farming for frosted griffon wings and took Alesia along for her healing, every single time she would either run ahead or along side me. In doing so, she ended up dying. Same thing for Lina.

in my opinion, the very first thing that needs to be fixed with GW is the healer henchmen AI. i often party with the henchmen and find that not only are the healers the first to die (most of the time), but they don't heal enough. not even themselves! too many times do i see a party member's low health stay low while alesia or mehnlo run around tanking or doing nothing.

i would beg anet to work on the healers before anything else. healers need to heal!

PLease give the rangers decent builds practiced stance is not a good elite for them, if they were say interupt rangers they might be a little more useful.

LOL, and please remove Fire Storm from Orion and Cynn. The nuker henchmen don't really seem to cause much damage and instead induce chaos among the henchies and mobs. I seldom take Cynn or Orion because I like keeping the henchies tight and as focused on taking out single targets as possible. As soon as they cast Fire Sorm, everyone's running everywhere, the henchies stop focusing on a single enemy (so nothing gets killed), other mobs/patrols get aggroed...and that little button "Return to Outpost" pops-up shortly thereafter.

Replace it with something a bit more effective...

I can see Orion keeping Firestorm, as that is an early level spell and Asc Orion shouldn't have Meteor Shower.

But Cynn should definately get an upgrade.

The most annoying thing about hench healers is when they get confused while everyone else is dead.

Sometimes they just run back and forth like stupid chickens, not making up their minds. Usually it stems from trying to come in to res, but hitting the enemy agro, so they back out, then "oh someone needs res'd, I'll go get them." "Oh enemies, I'll go back", rinse and repeat for hours on end.

Few things I'd like to add.

We need a command window for henches. Their AI is obviously not advanced enough to handle a battle system that can change in 1-2 seconds. I don't think the technology has come that far. We need a window so we can be the henches AI.

Another thing we need is a formation preset. Give me the basic formations like triangle, row formation, layered formation, and ect....

The casters should never be in the front but some how they always seem to manage to get there. If we had a formation preset then we could keep them in a position that is best.