Hench AI worse than ever.

Just because you haven't seen them do something before doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Everything anyone describes as "things that started happening recently" I have seen henchmen do before... a few months ago.

Actually I think there is a bug.... the healer henchmen in sorrows furnace will attempt a resurect even if Frozen soil is down.

Or would they not be aware of that?

ditto.

Actually, funny that you mention this occurence. Myself and two of my guildies went down to sorrows 3 days ago with Mhenlo, Lina, Cynn, and Little Thom.

We worked diligently trying to keep enemies out of our aggro circle until we were ready to pull one group. It worked ok for awhile, but then, while we were a reasonable distance away from another aggro group, Little Thom would yell charge! and rush into another aggro needlessly. And if he went, so did Cynn. It was funny the first time, but became frustrating after the 5-6th time...

And yes, Mhenlo and Lina DID drop everything and rez while we were still fighting. We all came to the conclusion that GW updated henchies recently. Suffice it to say, we are very hesitant on bring henchies with us to sorrows again.

With my Ranger the Hench Healer spends most of her time keeping the Cat alive while I die.

Happened 3 times to me where Im getting my arrs handed to me and my pet is at about 60% and the healer will just keep spamming the pet with heals and let me die.

THen the healer henchie is doing a 100% better job than most human monks, considering they actually looked after your pet. Admitedly, a human monk woulda kept you alive instead of the pet.

Henchman are admittedly worse knowledge wise than humans - They just follow your directions. They dont run off and leave the group, logout, or curse at you.

I could go on and on about cases where the henchman's AI made me barf - and I could do the same for Humans.

The only Henchmen I have real problems with sometimes are Healers. They bring very little variety of skills and dont use the right skills at the right time. After battle once, I was down to like 50 hp, and poisoned. Alesia Orison of Healing'ed everyone else in the party (who were almost full hp) while I watched myself die...while in another mission the whole team died except for the monk (human), and he was smart enough to go protection long enough to get another guy up (who then started chain of rez sigs) and we went on to finish the mission perfectly.

I can swith that around and tell you when Alesia saved my life, and when a human monk sit there and refused to even pay attention to peoples health until it was under 25% (smited til then) - of course we lasted through maybe 3-4 groups of enemies with that strategy..

I think the AI considers the following when rezzing:

1. Do you have a rez spell or signet. If so you will be rezzed first or early on. If not you will be rezzed later.

2. The non-monk henchies will rez you with signet if you are far away from Lina or Mhenlo, else they will rez Lina or Mhenlo first.

3. Lina or Mhenlo like to rez each other before anyone else. This isn't always the case, but 90% there. Often they will rez me before they rez the other healer, but they will rarely or never rez any other henchie until they can rez the other healer.

4. The henchie group will often kill the mop pack first. The monk hechie will likely only rez you if the rest of the groups health is good, their energy is up, and the AI decides you are important to kill the mop pack.

5. Rezzing also depends on the AI's determination of who is important to completing the mission/task at hand. I believe this is also a factor in choice of healing. Obviously a player is going to factor higher just because they are human and are given a higher priority as opposed to all other henchies. This isn't always true if the group is facing a tough mop pack or there are multiple humans in a group with henchie healers.

There are also other factors I'm sure that I'm missing. I just think there are a lot of factors that could make the AI seem incosistant that could be from slight build changes, group dynamics, and the area you're hunting.

Huh? Hench never ever rez me in a fight unless all the other hench are at full life. They'll even blow 10 energy to heal for 10 health instead of rezzing me. How do you get the ones that rez in the fight and I don't?

maybe they have been made intentionally more stupid.. to encourage you to take peeps instead.

That's how it USED to work, not how it works now. Again, just take a full henchie team, go out in to sorrows furnace. Find an enemy group with rangers, they're perfect as they do tons of damage & interrupt a lot. Within seconds of the first henchie going down you'll see Mhenlo start to rez. Regardless of how many enemies are still pounding everyone.
Most of the time he'll get interrupted, but get right back to rezzing again. The rest of the team will continue to take damage and not get healed OR protected, as Lina will spend all her energy protecting Mhenlo while he rezzes.

Ok the other night i was doing the ring of fire.

Now we made some bad moves, and we were abit slow to pull back and someone died.

Anyway we recoup and start moving foward again. Our warrior whos dead is behind the mursaat at the gate where the bridge is. We start range attacking to lure, and mehnlo runs straight ahead past the mursatt to try and res the warrior :/

I do not think ALL of the Henchman have Rez Sig.

I tested..Didn't bring sig..and got the whole team killed off except for me and a henchie.

I sit there right around the Dead bodies of our comrades waiting for the henchman to rez sig Alesia..and never did.

This brings me to two possible conclusions:
1) They did not have Rez Sig...
2) The AI is poorly coded and always assumes the human palyers will bring Rez Sig (so was waiting for me to use a rez sig I didn't even have).

I posted this elsewhere but I had to share. Sorry for bring up a slightly updated topic also.


Fighting minotaurs and trolls.
I got killed almost instantly, as every monster agro'd on me, and no henchie moved to heal or fight.
I was rezed right away, very minimal fighting between henchies and monsters, and killed again right away.

THEN the henchies all turn, fight, and die.

This is after the new patch, and the fix for it, last night actually, just south of ToA.

Before the patch, I've been rezed right away when dying in other locations, regardless of NPC actions, died from lack of healing, when everyone else is 90% healthy or better.

It happens quite often, you should have a few seconds after rez where you're immune to attacks or something. I can't count the number of times I've been at -60% in a single fight. Once, maybe twice I was rezzed at 60% several times before the fight was over.

the henches only have 1 brain, yours. if they did something very stupid you had something to do with it. they don't just go on auto pilot. you use the crtl +..... to give commands to them. if you don't tell them to follow you and run they won't follow you. you don't tell them to attack they don't. you don't move they don't move.

an updated guide needs to be written on hench control. i remember seeing one a long time ago but needs to be dusted off.

Henchy control has taken a definite dive since the November 10th patch. I hope the update on November 11th has improved things again. Problem that I noticed is that now the enemy runs away when Orion casts his AOE spells. They run away from the tanking warrior henchies. The problem with this now is that the warrior henchies then follow the foes that are running away, right into a larger mob where the foes were pulled from. In go the henchy warriors, into a large flock, and they die.

When this starts to happen I retreat, pulling back as fast as I can, but the henchy warriors do not respond to the retreat quickly enough. This definitely needs to be tweaked.

I imagine that updates on AI that Anet makes one day may definitely negatively affect the overall AI scripting intelligence in unforeseen negative ways. I for one hope that Anet realizes this latest problem and fixes it somehow, perhaps making the henchies smart enough not to follow one enemy into a larger mob, or at least responding to the human player's retreat much more quickly.

And for me it would be nice if the henchy monks would not rez so quickly! Being rezzed before a battle is finished or before all the other henchies are dead is good. But being rezzed when there are still too many enemy about is not so good.

So, then what do you care about the henchies for? You can get run and pretty much complete what you have to with some PuG's. What are you still doing here in PvE? I mean if your trying to get it over with.

Nice cut & paste job from an ironic post, assh... i mean Torment.

EDIT: And it's apparently been deleted because I was being ironic and mean to entropy because he was complaining about the patch even though he hated playing PvE before the patch, hates playing PvE after the patch, and want the PvE broken. So I can't link to it either.

So has anyone noticed if this ressing problem has been adjusted or not?

It was really getting on my tits the monk henchies ressing mid battle, to the point that i would only use henchies with my monk.

aww I want to see it . btw I didn't pm a mod to delete your posts or anything. Who deleted it? The pve is not fixed. the patch did not fix the problems. Go into the thread the fundamental problems with balancing and see my looong post their about it retyping is not fun