Hench AI worse than ever.

*chuckles* What's wrong? Almost resorting to namecalling, tsk tsk. The problem with being ironic and sarcastic and whatever else, is that this all text as in reading material. Tone of voice has alot to do with being ironic or sarcastic.

I never noticed it in the first place, but people have been complaining about it now and then since way before the latest update, so I doubt it's a new thing.

Not yet, at least not since last night. The henchies are still ressing mid battle, so if you are playing with henchies and die, get ready to run at any time, as you might be ressed unexpectedly.

Coming in a bit late because nobody bothered to ask a mod, here's the post in question, which hasn't been deleted but is buried in the other thread, so finding it's a bit tricky:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...747#post670747

Thanks Savio. So did everyone else get that I was being sarcastic?

Torment: I don't often get told that I'm subtle. Much less too subtle. So thanks for pointing out this problem to me. I will strive to be more obvious in my sarcasm in the future.

And no, the ressing problem isn't fixed. I was questing in Grenths yesterday, and died several times due Mhenlos idiotic battlefield ressing. My favorite was when Mhenlo first got me killed then got Lina to max dp in one battle by repeatedly raising her when she was caught in the middle of a bunch of mobs.

This is so wrong. Henchies used to attack anything inside their aggro circle. They automatically follow you everywhere. I've never given henchies a command to follow me, or even targeted myself.

The problem is now, sometimes the henchies won't do anything, even if they're in the henchies' aggro circle AND you target them repeatedly.

THAT'S not a dead giveaway his original post was sarcastic? Taking things out of context ftl.

Last night I made an observation. I went out twice farming in SF alone with 5 henchies. First party: my Mesmer + 2W + 2Mo + N. Second party: my Ranger + 2W + 2Mo + Me. And I can say that the henchy AI was completely different with both parties.

In both cases my playing style was the same: lure mobs or parts of mobs back and then fight them away from other enemies. In both cases the human player was not up front tanking, but rather in the background.

The basic difference was this: With the Mesmer, the 2 Warriors would fall back and retreat, in fact even disengage from any enemy they were fighting, if I retreated. The 2 Warriors would not rush in to an enemy group unless I targetted, and they would stop their charge immediately if I took a few steps backwards. With the Ranger, however, both Warriors became rushers. They would rush in and attack as soon as they were within aggro of an enemy, and no matter what I did, they would not retreat or disengage.

This happened each and every battle. With the ranger, the result was that the two Warriors would rush in to a large mob that I was trying to lure back, and then would die. The real result is that with myself as Ranger, I could not lure the enemy. I had to either go for it or sacrifice my warriors.

Why this difference, Anet? The henchy AI with myself as Mesmer is perfect! Very easy to control the henchies and pull the enemies back. The henchy AI with myself as Ranger is totally useless.

I think this definitely needs some tweaking. I can't see why there would be such a major difference in the warrior henchy AI for these two cases.

OMG I've seen this! I was out with a guildie a couple of days ago, and every time I tried to pull, the wars would charge and refuse to disengage. We were joking about how Thom was as insane as Rurik, and in the end I just stopped trying to pull.
I never connected it to me now playing a ranger.

Chapter 2 will have very advanced AI, or so I've heard...

YOU KNOW WHAT REALLY PISSES ME OFF?

-People calling it hench AI!!!!!!! its not a real AI!!!!!!! They dont have intelligence!!!!! We have not invented AI yet.

Mogoth: An artificial leg isn't really a leg, is it?

What we haven't invented is _self aware_ AI.

But Henchies almost seem weak compared to actual players because the players either know how to play their skills or not

Call it what you will, henchy AI or just merely Guild Wars NPC scripting. Whatever.

The real issue is, why do the henchy warriors perform so differently depending on whether the human player is a ranger or a mesmer, when in both cases the human player is staying back and not tanking? The difference in Warrior henchy control between my two times out in SF was not subtle, it was significant! I don't see any logical reason for Anet to have done this purposely.

Besides the healer henchies being a little off lately, what pisses me off the most is seeing orion cast fire storm. Mob starts running in all directions, including to the casters. If a caster dies the healer will start ressing him causing others to die. So after a while u end up with all u'r henchies having a nice amount of dp.

Henchmen are quite stupid indeed. The worst I've ever had was: I was dead, and 3 Henchmen were in the water, and Alesia was healing them for 30 minutes (I was eating during this), without ressing me..

Alesia doesnt even heal me anymore....

99% Of Fire Eles play this way, so I truly believe that Anet have based Henchie AI on their human counterparts.

Firestorm is virtually useless. I just wish that Orion would learn what most every human ele has learned. Now .... meteor shower .... hard to run out of an AoE when you are on your butt.

Yesterday I was fighting north of the Hot Springs. I didn't get healed once by Alesia, and ended up being the first dead. Once I died, Alesia ran in circles, healing herself with touch. All the other henches died. Then she died. It was funny, but I was too pissed off to laugh. Henches are great, but they seem to be getting stupider recently.

When you play a caster, you usualy lure monster using a spell. You select the monster without attacking it. The henchmen will only run ahead if you physicaly attack them with your weapon as you do with a ranger.

When luring with spells the henchmen will wait untill you attack or untill the monster hit someone.

[Skipped entire thread to express my point lol]

Only thing wrong with henchies is the lack of control we have over 'em (I cringe when I see Devona's name in party window). And that Aidan and Renya (sp?) have no intterupts or traps, but other then that they work pretty well with me.

I just beat Ring Of Fire and capped Incendiery Arrows with henchies no longer then 5 minutes ago (that's why this thread caught my attention).

I think having basic "stand ground" and "follow" command for npc would make it 80% better... if not more.

Exactly.

It would be cool if we could control henchmen as much as we could in Baldur's Gate, but that would take alot of work... and it probably could not work because there is no pause feature.

I enjoy the henchmen more and more everyday it seems. Hell I don't know about you, maybe you're one of the warriors that charges in thinking he's king of the world and requires all possible heals to stay alive, but for me it's no big deal. I play a caster (sometimes a SUICIDAL caster, sometime's even I'll act like the tank with henchies), but I still don't need very many heals. If you're so dependant on heals during battle, me thinks it's your own fault. Personally, being a caster I die sometimes, but I'm glad when I get rezzed pretty quickly, because I'm what's holding the henchies together. If they left me dead on the ground, the team would die a miserable death, since henchies have hardly any organization on their own. You should be able to hold off on your own a fair bit, if you can't support your character so that's he's SO dependant on the henchmen's heals that he can't stand for 5 seconds on his own, and you lose...

Tough?

Henchies are wicked.

Yes it would be nice if we could control henchmen eg say /Stefan then you control him in this game I don't thingk it is possible.I would like to see Devona get her sword back as she dies to often with that hammer my Warrior and Monk can out live her more than often.

well im glad to see that i was not the only one to suffer from henchmen stupidity!
I thought becuase im a ranger i was being ignored, which as we all now is what happens to a ranger in battle, we are ignored! last one to be attacked which is cool cuase usually we can clean up the mess that was made when everyone died with a rez of course(never leave home without), but after reading this forum i feel alot better, its just stupid henchman, ive died standing right next to a healer.menhlo,aleisa and lina as my health drops waiting for a heal nothing ewver comes just atand there and die, not even a rez after the battle!! Why are rangers so mis-understood? We can dominate a round like no one else!!

They are too busy nerfing everything instead of adding a stupid "stay" command.

I'm a big henchmen-fan (done every single mission with henchs, and almost every bonus), but sometimes they are a pain, expecially while using a war character.

The commands could be an icon next to their name in party windows. Like when someone call targets. The icon could change to green for follow and red for stand ground when you click them. I'm sure they could code that in less than 5 hours.

We could give Anet a challenge. Code that for next update and win happy players!

Yeah, they still have a lot of work to do on the henchies, which is all I use when not running with the team. Took my other r/mo and n/me through Elona last week with henchies. Who did I NOT take to complete the mission? Orion and the two tanks. They were killing me.

Okay, here is a list of my complaints about henchmen. A.Net I hope you are paying attention to these forums because the players have voices and demand to be heard.

1.) I'm sick and tired of henchmen taking 5 steps, pause, rinse and repeat. I hate trying to walk somewhere that doesnt have a fight and having to stop and wait on the henchmen (and all other npc's that follow) to catch up.

2.) Healers need to put PCs first. Example: I had a full group of henchies with just me, i walked from droks to beacons perch, i made it with 60 dp, but never once did the entire party die. the henchmen made the journey for me, and cleaned up the mob groups.

3.) Orions gotta change. All he seems to cast is fire attunement, glyph of lesser energy and firestorm. You would think that since the brain trust at Anet thought about making mobs run out of AoE like any smart player would, that they would update the hench to know when the best time to use AoE would be. I never take orion with me anymore

4.) Healers cant seem to decide what to do. I sat there alive or dead it doesnt matter, and watched the healers run back an forth between 2 dead bodies for up to 2 minutes before deciding that one of them should rez. Id like to see this: dead person A is being rez'd by healer A, Healer B detects this, and decides to rez dead person B. Not healers A&B decide to move to dead person A and begin the rez script sequence, Healers A&B detect rez script sequence in progress and move to dead person B, repeat untill one of the healers lags behind a 1/2 second

Here's why player control isnt in the game. A-who gets to control if there more than 1 pc? B-whoever does control them will be spending too much time barking hench orders than working on the tasks at hand. Everyone in the game has a roll and if they arent performing that roll the party suffers. AI is needed, but more attention to detail should be given, not just debugging to see if the scripts conflict or if a bug is present. Just cause a car can run 1 cylinder short, doesn't mean it runs efficiently.

I play pretty much exclusivly with the henchies (or solo a few places - namely Kryta).

My first characters were all "support" based - monks, eles, rangers, and necros. That is, they stayed away from the melee as much as possible - the henchies worked great for the most part. I only had two complaints - couldn't pull (need a "stay" command) and they wouldn't rez me (they might rez each other, but never me). Fix those two things and they would be great - no big complaints.

I decided to bite the bullet and do a frontline char - a w/mo (yea yea I know, but I do not care). The henchies - especially the support chars - suck. The support ones do not stay back - they use me as reference. I never truly understood this - I somewhat assumed they used my target in combat to position themselfs (because I did so and they obviously use me - which in this case is using my target for reference. Until I was frontline this was not apparent). I HATE Alesia aggro'ing 3 mobs, loosing them to me, then running up to just beside me, attacking, and getting them back. I find I have to rez her almost avery other battle, I can't figure out how to do better. She does good enough I can win, I can pretty much heal myself enough if the degens and interrupts are spread out enough, but it is irritating. Heck, I see the skeleton monks do better than that from time to time, at least they don't attack always. I've though an IWAY PvE build might be effective in this case

The thing is it should be a simple change. Position off of the target (frontline attack, support stay back), rez PC's when they die, and a "stay" command will take care of nearly everything. Add lava and poison areas to the AoE runs and you got it (well, I would need to playtest this - I thought the original AoE stuff sounded good until I played it, the second attempt works pretty well IMO - though I am sure this can be fixed).

I've always thought that if they used a little language for the hench AI releasing that and allowing us to tweak it would make one heck of a hench (versatile too). I dont know if they did this, if it is hard coded, or something else, but I have wished it for many games.

This is called a "race condition" - it is a well known problem in Computer Science. There are a number of common solutions the the problem. Right off the bat I can't think of the name of the algorithm to avoid this, but it's pretty well known in comp sci.

I have not seen this behavior, though I can envision as to why it happens.

My ingame experience shows a more complete reality with this theory.

The success rate of doing THK (or any other mission) with a hench only team, compared to an all player party is obsurdly in favor of the hench party.

The strength or weakness of a hench party is completely dependant on the player.

Henchies are weak = player hasn't figured out how to use them

Henchies are great = player has figured out how to use them.

PUGs = toss a coin, either their pretty good, they can do missions faster or you're left thinking "Perhaps I should of taken the henchies". The latter is much more common than the former. That's from my gameplay experience.

Agreed.. and it's really getting old now.

I also wish Stefan, Devona and Thom didn't have Healing Signets. If I decide to play my healer Monk with henchies, Word of Healing is useless because the stupid henchies will keep using their signet every time their life drops to 75%, which is very often when they use Healing Signet while getting wailed on... -40 armor... good call henchie!

Orion is now a waste of space.

I guess you misunderstand the situation. In both cases they were equivalent, the only difference was I as Mesmer or I as Ranger.

When playing a caster, it is NOT necessary to lure a monster using a spell. I never do this. I use the aggro circle. I used the aggro circle for both when playing as ranger and when playing as Mesmer.

What do I mean? I move my character forwards until my aggro circle touches one of the enemy red dots in the radar. Usually the henchies are somewhat behind me, so they have not made aggro contact yet. I then move back to lure only a few enemy back.

As an alternative to this, I don't use the aggro circle but I don't use a spell either. I target the nearest enemy with C spacebar. If my character is out of range, then the character moves in automatically. I look at the motion of the red dots on the radar and at my aggro circle AND the imaginary aggro circle of my charging warriors, and I try to retreat when the nearest red dots start to come towards us.

But the reason for posting this thread: as Ranger using the above techniques, the warrior henchies became rushers and would not retreat. What is missing here is that the warriors will not retreat or disengage when playing as ranger. This is when I have started to retreat. I have also noticed that the warriors charged and rushed as soon as their aggro circles made contact, even though my ranger was not targetting and attacking.

I don't know if this has been addressed, as I did not read all of the posts, but my biggest peave, is the fact thant Anet has made the monsters smart enough to scatter from AoE, but has not made the henchmen smart enough to get their asses out of the lava pools in the Fire Island chain. I mean, give me a break, that has got to be the most damaging AoE in the game, and they will not seek dry ground before engaging monsters, seeming to prefer being burned to death while fighting.

I actually completed the Ring of Fire mission with all hench, and cleared the whole map, as I was capping as well, and I am happy to say that I capped all three skills I needed, all with henchies. So, they are not completely useless, just not capable of taking large mobs, so it takes longer. But IMO it averages out,because with hench, I do not stand around for half an hour putting a group together, who could be worse. Let's face it we all have been in pugs as effective as only using two hench.

So Anet, I plead, make the hench at least smart enough to get out of Lava ASAP

I only read the first page of this thread so I apologize if this has been mentioned already, but the biggest problem I find with the healing henchman is that he or she would rather tank than heal.

I remember on more than one occasion the healing henchman and one other henchman battling the last monster left. instead of the healer healing, she takes the offensive and the monster ends up beating the two henchman. As I sat there and watched the battles finish, I felt like screaming at the computer as the the non-healing henchman's health went lower and lower.

Only problem I have with the henchie AI is that Claude keeps using Blood Ritual on Stefan.