Whats up with Claude?

I hope this is the right forum for this

But does anyone know why Claude (the necromancer henchie) has the craziest priority que for Blood Ritual?

His priority list seems to go Stefen -> Thom -> Alesia -> Player.

I never really noticed it much when playing my W/Mo.. but I'm noticing his stupidness a lot with my E/Mo... he hardly every helps me out.. but he's constently running into melee range to BR Stefen and/or Thom... Really makes me wonder just whats going on here.. here I'm burning energy fast casting spells.. but hardly ever get any help from Claude with a BR.. he's too busy BR'ing Stefen or Thom..

Is it just me or is Claude's priority list complete wacked and stupid? It seems stupid that he focuses so much time making sure Stefen & Thom have energy.. when I'm sitting there on 5-15 energy casting spells and getting no help at all..

Try Control-clicking your energy bar.

I've found that if you do that when you're running low he will often run over and give it to you. It's not 100% but still fairly reliable.

Makes him much more useful, but I still wish he'd do it more

Hmm, you know i never even thought to try cntrl-clicking my energy. Heh. I know you can target-call with henchies.. but never tried seeing if they would respond to ctrl-clicking my energy when I'm low.

Time to log on as my E/Mo and burn some energy and see if it will actually get him to BR me.. heh maybe Stefen & Thom are getting the attention because they are spamming their energy level's at Claude? LOL!!!

Stefan and Thom max energy = 20.

Both are using a lot of energy based attacks, and therefor, get under 10 energy quickly. Clause seems to use Blood rituel on the party members who's energy is under 10, that's why he uses it more on Stefan and Thom than on you.

Syno Nym - problem with that theory is the number of times I've been sitting on 4-9 energy and seen Claude go BR Stefen or Thom is beyond count. Yes, my own energy management isn't that crash hot... but I have been low on energy many times and had to attack with wand or not attack (spirit Shackles.. grrr!) waiting for energy to re-cast spells and seen Claude run off to the frontline to BR them and ignore me..

I think I'm gonna try spamming my low energy and out spam Stefen & Thom!

Yeah, sorry Kamatsu -- I should have nentioned that even if you spam low-energy, he really only responds if you're below 10, so I'll bet Syno Nym is onto something there..

One of the reasons I like the Henchie healers is that they're very efficient; they'll really only heal you when they're going to get pretty much full return on the spell, and since they're just a script waiting for your health to hit that magical percentage, they do it RIGHT AWAY when it does.

Wouldn't be surprised if Claude's script is pretty much the same, and unless you out-cast Stefan or Thom, they'll hit their thresholds quicker and due to lower re-gen, keep their pool below 10 more often. You'd think ANet would have given them a few more Adrenal skills, but then maybe that would result in the player having an overabundance of energy via Claude.. I dunno..

Still, it's nice that you can actually prompt him for some energy at times. Closest thing to a bot command I can think of, actually!

Now I'm wondering if spamming your health-levels would do anything...


EDIT - one extra piece of info about this: He gets easily distracted in his task.

What this means is that if you have say 3 of 36 energy and spam that to bring him over, while meanwhile your idiot buddy thinks it's funny to point out that he has 76 of 80 energy (despite being a nuking Ele at the end of a long, tough battle ), two things will happen: (1) Claude will most likely NOT give you your energy - even if he's already on his way over when your buddy makes his hilarious announcement. (2) Your buddy will charge off and aggro something because he's an idiot and can't seem to remember that not everyone gets to spam ER and Flare all night long .

Best to make some kind of rule about when it's ok to spam energy levels if you're going to try to take advantage of the buff..

Whenever I play as my ranger if I try to use a skill without enough energy he will use BR on me, so you could try just doing that, although it means you have to have pretty much no energy.

corax5 - lol I pretty much have little to no energy clsoe to the end of a fight anyways.. LOL Which is why I really do notice when I get BR'ed or not. Because getting BR really does make the difference for me if things are getting hectic and I'm trying to deal mucho damage to multiple targets (gotta love fireball and glyph of lesser energy combined with firestorm or meteor shower.. hehehe).

One thing I've noticed.. and I've actually noticed it with all my characters.. and it applies to both Alesia and Claude. I've found if I ignore them when they are getting hit.. they tend to avoid helping me out. Strangely both Claude and alesia will look after me better if I switch targets to whats attacking them and kill them off fast..

Don't know if it's just me, but that seems fairly funky I've noticed a few fights recently where everything was going for Claude.. I switched to them and started mass-killing them.. my energy never dipped below 10 thanx to Claude BR'ing me time after time.. That fight was a lot harder and bigger than I wanted.. had accidently aggroed a few groups... but we pulled through.. and that was the most BR's I've seen cast on me in the 1 fight.. LOL

Same with Alesia.. i've noticed if I try and stop things killing her and I get hit, she's more likely to actually heal me. On the other hand when I let her die (she dies too often.. LOL).. I get healed less often if at all.. pfft!

i guess the dev's put in a bit of "human" programming in them.

If Player = ignoring NPC
Then NPC = ignore Player
Else NPC = heal Player