Aggro is dumb

OOooh that gives me an idea... wonder what would happen if the tank did /taunt in combat?

Granted, probably not a damn thing, but it sure would look funny....

lol me and my boyfriend are both rangers, with identical armour. Now I have mes as secondary, he has monk. guess who always gets beaten on? Yep. the boyfriend.

Yes, warriors should have a tactics skill "Taunt" or something where it attracted either the target enemy to attack him or all nearby enemies. But if it happens not to be balanced, then it could be changed to only last for a certain amount of seconds.

Warriors don't need taunt, they only need to be smart. Working as a party instead of a bunch of random idiots you can start and keep aggro on the warriors. The group I play with does it all the time.

Send warriors out front. They should be a significant distance ahead of the casters and healers. They aggro and start taking a beating and then the casters and healers come in. Plus it makes AoE spells much better. Simple tactics.

No Alesia is just plain stupid. There is no reason she should be riding you butt as you charge.

well one very sensical and easy adjustment could be to include some calculations that change aggro when someone is doing more damage to you.

It also makes more sense from a realism standpoint...if a target is killing my monk, she's not attacking back...just healing herself...and i have 2 tanks slaughtering the mob...i would think the mob would turn and defend itself against the party members that are killing it instead of using it's last sliver of health the keep attacking a foe that isn't even fighting back.

another easy adjustment would be proximity...it doesn't matter that i have 2 tanks in a mob's face, and have my healers and casters like 50 feet back, they will ignore my tanks, run all the way around and focus fire on my healer...then my mage.

so they could lower threat when a party member is further away.

I'm not asking them to remove aggro from casters. not at all. I think it's perfectly reasonable that a SENTIENT being would use tactics similar to real players, and that means attacking the opposition's monk...my whole point is that it's currently too one sided.

make the code a little more complex

dood thats way out of line... do you have any concept of what kind of work goes into developing any sort of program much less a game like this?

Just because you are running around with henchmen the whole time doesn't mean aggro is broken as has been stated before yes the healer henchmen is dumb, but I'd like to see you try to code AI. As most of the people who have posted have stated aggro is not "broken" and is not "if its a monk attack it otherwise find the monk" Please get some skill and play with real people using tactics

That would only make sense if the creatures have no intelligence. What does your group do when faced with 2 grawl and a shaman. Do you beat on the grawl while the shaman heals because they are hitting you or do you take out the shaman who keeps healing the grawl?

i already adressed that on numerous occasions previously in this thread if you would have read it that is. monks should get attacked more, but is your party going to fight a monk up to and including a complete party wipe???...i'm not going to repeat myself a billion times...read the thread.

Now just to make sure i wasn't completely imagining this "if player = monk then attack, else look for monk" code...i just made my first run from elona's to seekers...if you'd like to see this code in action just make that run with all henchmen.

i must have encountered probably 50 devourers...some of them just single devourers. Here's how it went EVERY SINGLE TIME i attacked induvidual ones:

I would attack, which caused my 2 tanks to attack...the whole party would have full health the entire fight.
The devourer was blocked about 20 feet in front of me by my 2 tanks.
I was attacking the devourer.
my healer, mage, and archer were all behind me far enough to be off the screen (another 20 feet?)

The single devourer completely ignored the 2 tanks whacking it, ignored me also whacking it, ignored the archer, and mage.

and exclusively hit the healer.

now that is completely stupid code/aggro/ai whatever you want to call it.

All i did EVERY SINGLE TIME i encountered devourers was immediately stick a health regen buff on my healer.

boring, predictable, stupid aggro.

I find it funny that this thread has gone on so long with this title.

That being said its time for my two cents. The monsters do this because that is what good players to in PvP. Also I am happy that alot of the time monster seem to FF.

I would rather have an A.I. that knows to atack monks and FF, than one that just stands there picking its nose.


EDIT: to the above poster, Any good player knows that you need to do 2 things protect your monk, and kill thiers. The monsters "know" that as long as the healer is there they can do no real harm to anyone else. This is how it should be.

Of course we would unless we were just going to run away. What would the point be in going after a non-healer if we can't even kill the healer?

Most of the time if something is hitting me too hard I just run in a circle around the party and most creatures will break off and attack something else...

As a monk I'm ok with the agro code. If I were being attacked by my group I'd kill me first too since my group's not gonna die until I do. It just forces me to keep my ac high so I can last until the assist train takes a few of them out.

My only AI complaint is that every NPC mob in the area knows the instant I cast an enchantment like a heal-over-time or reverse damage shield and removes it with 3 seconds even if there are no spell effects associated with the spell. (unless my system just doesn't show spell effects) I don't see how an opponent could know exactly which PCs have enchantments running and how many to instantly dispell them when we engage so it seems unrealistic for NPCs to do that.

while we are disin' on the code, have you healer monks noticed that the code for item drops must be something like this;

if (player == healer monk)
dont assign any items.

or maybe perhaps it like this

if (damage == 0 or less than warrior)
dont assign any items.

It pisses me off that #1 if a player on a team dies its the monks fault, #2 the monk is by far one of the hardest classes to play #3 a teams success in most missions is strictly dependent on the skill of the monk; and yet because we do the least ammount of dmg to the enemies becuase we are always healing our teammates but yet we don't get near the ammout of item drops. Its bloody irritating.

I notice most of my enhancements "go away" when they are being attacked which would make sense when you target a creature you can see if they are hexed or not...

I read something about the drops not being good for monks but I've never noticed it, in fact last night I got by far the best drops of the entire group. I do see alot more good weapons than good staff/wands but I'm ok with that since I don't spend alot of time attacking anyway...

I couldn't help but notice everyone is ignoring the posts made by veteran players and it made me upset enough to post this. I myself hold a set of old armor on my character for kiting (Ranger). They don't go for the monk they look at the weakest armor rating. Listen to the veterans, the reason they go for the monk when using henchies is because she has the weakest armor rating out of all of them. That simple, and it's made to be that way... to keep the monk from being too good as their one of the easiest classes to play (sorry I have a monk and I know). You have to focus on one thing only, spam healing (unless you're a smiting monk). BUT, you have the most responsibility in the game and unfortunately are the bane of every group. I always thank my healer and offer words of encouragement, they have the "toughest job" not the most difficult and definitely not the most complex. I'm sick of monk whiners,sorry if I offended you. But it isn't difficult to play a monk, heal, spam heal, heal some more and don't forget to heal. Watch your energy level, heal some more.... the difficult part is timing but you have timing in every profession so nothing new here. Just have more responsibility, there is no class that is "harder" than another to play, if I'd have to choose one I'd say anti-caster Mesmer because of the sheer timing requirements. Definitely not my cup of tea.

I'm admittingly not reading all the posts here, so forgive me if I'm repeating what's already been said. However...

The reason the coding for aggro is dead on, is when you're in PvP, who's the first person that your opponents go for? The weakest or the Monk, yes?

I happen to do some medevial style fighting, and when we can break through the opposing sides sheild wall, we go for the archers because they're typically far easier targets (and annoying as hell when you're paying attention to the guy with the sword in front of you and you get hit in the helm from the archer behind him).

I play an Elementalist/Monk, and I must piss off the monsters in the worst way. They will run right past 2 warriors and a ranger just so they can beat the crap outta me.

Amelia

Mobs kill Claude far more often than they kill Alesia when I'm out with henchmen. They really do NOT players that feed energy to other players.

My character is a R/Mo19 right now. I've found the best PvE balance so far for me with henchmen is to load up on smiting prayers and then be the tank. I get in the center of the mobs and drop balthazar's aura on myself. This does (for my skill level) 17 damage per second to all mobs around me for 10 seconds. Right after I cast it, I cast reversal of fortune on myself, at which point good ole Claude notices I'm completely zapped of all energy and gives me an energy regen buff. Within 10 seconds or so, I generally have enough energy to cast balthazar's aura on myself again and poof. All mobs dead.

It's even better when I encounter undead, since balthazar's aura does double damage to undead (it being smiting prayers and all.) Skeletal archers? Yeah I run right up into the middle of those buggers and put up balthazars and they all drop dead. Black Curtain? No problem on those patrols. I run up into the middle of them and put up Balthazar's.

Sometimes I'll let Stefan do the tanking and put Balthazar's on him. This works out when he gets enough of a head start that the mobs don't notice Alesia and Claude.

To keep both Alesia and Claude alive when the mobs decide they look tasty, I always have a heal and reversal of fortune up. If I see Alesia tanking, she gets a good dose of reversal. Since reversal is so cheap and has such a fast refresh time, 99% of the time everything goes just fine. The only exception being those bloody Tengu, which appear to be superhuman in the world in which they live in.

Final note: A lot of imps will shred your henchmen. Henchmen just do not handle elemental damage well at all.

Another good way to get the aggro (as a warrior, anyhow) is to use the skill "Frenzy".

Seriously....I know it makes one take double damage, but the enemy was even switching from Alesia to my warrior when I had that stance up.

That trick *really* saved my bacon at thirsty river!

I've also noticed that Hexing opponents with things like shadow of fear, mark of pain etc doesn't get so much aggro, but I can get a little more (or so it seems) when I'm able to inflict conditions such as weakness with spells like "Enfeebling Blood"

They do that. As a warrior, I can usually get a monster who've run past me and attacked a caster to turn and attack me, simply by doing serious damage to the monster. Also, once I'm in melee with the monster it'll usually not run after the caster if the caster has the good sense to get the hell out of dodge (not all casters do - ie, alesia).
But when there's 6-7 monsters beating on Alesia, it's a lost cause. She wont run, and I can't draw the aggro of all.

Just Give Em More Armor... Yah...... Rabble Rabble Rabble