Curse

ducktape · Aug 21, 2006, 11:02 PM // 23:02

I like bringing the Protector henchmen because they have Aegis and Life Sheath and Mend Ailment and so on, but I am becoming rather annoyed by their poor use of Draw Conditions.

Why? They use it for EVERY condition, even Disease. Disease spreads to all nearby party members. So if the warriors get Disease that's ok because they're usually farther away than the backline party members and then only one or two team members have Disease. Then the Protector hench uses Draw Conditions to remove Disease from the warriros and the Protector hench now has Disease instead. Good idea, except for the part where Disease spreads.

Now the Protector Hench, the Healer Hench, the Archer Hench, and the Mesmer Hench, the Spirit Hench, and the Player (if non-warrior) have Disease too, because they are standing in the backline and happen to be near the Protector Hench when they drew in Disease off of the warriors. Doh!!! So instead of a couple diseased party members like we started off with, now nearly every party member has disease, all because the Protector Hench used Draw Conditions for a transmissible condition. You can't usually get away either because the support henchmen like to follow you close enough to set off a chain reaction of Disease amongst the party.

Oh, it gets better. After infecting the majority of the party, the Protector hench sees there are now several party members with disease, and starts spamming Draw Conditions and/or Mend Ailment, which do no good because the party member that is cured with each spell will be re-infected with Disease by all of the diseased party members nearby. So instead of putting up Life Sheath or Aegis to help with the enemies attacking everyone, the Protector hench wastes all of their energy spamming condition removal trying to clean up the Disease that they managed to unnecessarily spread to everyone in the first place. Run away? You wish, there's cripple and slow on people and the monsters can easily follow, and while you try to flee the monks stop healing. If you hold your ground and fight, the Healer and Spirit hench quickly get overwhelmed trying to negate physical damage and all of the Disease degen affecting most party members, and then people start getting killed.

So basically, one misused stupid spell from the Protector Hench usually ends up getting people unnecessarily killed. If the Protector Hench is reprogrammed to use Draw Conditions on anything EXCEPT Disease it would make a lot more sense. It's stupid to have dumb bot AI consistently get people killed needlessly with little to no recourse.

Please, for the love of god, fix the AI to not draw Disease off of others.

Shrouded Waffle · Aug 21, 2006, 11:11 PM // 23:11

A problem I see is that if the ally has cripple, bleed, poison, AND disease...then those conditions won't be drawed because of the prot henchman not drawing because of disease.

And I wonder really how they could program that into the hench AI.

ducktape · Aug 21, 2006, 11:39 PM // 23:39

Well, wouldn't not using Draw Conditions be better than getting 3/4 of the team Diseased if that was the case? It's a lot easier to heal one severely injured person than one severely injured person (Protector Hench after drawing all of those conditions in) and several degen-ing people (support henches and players next to Diseased Protector Hench) and healing physical damage without monks running low on or out of energy in mid-fight.

Plus, as I said, if the Protector Hench does Draw Conditions and brings Disease to a bunch of people, all he/she does is sit there and spam Draw Conditions and Mend Ailment all over the place trying to get rid of Disease when it just re-infects everyone 1 second later. So whenever the Protector Hench infects themselves and everyone nearby with Disease, they pretty much shut themselves down by going on a disease-cleansing spree. It's like a train wreck

So...would it work out much better for them to never have done Draw Conditions on that poor crippled/bleeding/poisoned/diseased ally? I think it would cause less problems for the team to not do Draw Conditions since the Diseased is present, but I might be missing something.

CHUIU · Aug 22, 2006, 01:24 AM // 01:24

If you had a real player with you uisng draw conditions he or she would be doing the same thing, because unless they are paying close attention to the enemies and the skills they are using they won't really know whether thats poison or not. Either way draw conditions transfers all conditions, they might be using it anyway to make sure you dont have deep wound or something else on you (blind, weakness, dazed).

Curse You · Aug 22, 2006, 05:16 AM // 05:16

Last time I checked, the Protection Hench has Mend Ailment, so maybe if they just got rid of Draw Condtitions, and replaced it with Mend Condition, they would work better.

EDIT: oh poo, Mend Condition is a Prophecies skill. But really, I don't see Eve, Aidan, or Cynn getting in trouble for their skill sets...

ducktape · Aug 22, 2006, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHUIU

If you had a real player with you uisng draw conditions he or she would be doing the same thing, because unless they are paying close attention to the enemies and the skills they are using they won't really know whether thats poison or not. Either way draw conditions transfers all conditions, they might be using it anyway to make sure you dont have deep wound or something else on you (blind, weakness, dazed).

If you had a real, stupid player, or someone who is unfamiliar with Disease, that's what they would do. I'm sure after a real player accidentally gave everyone Disease from Draw Conditions they'd not make the same mistake again anytime soon. The problem is the henches have no learning ability, they just get everyone diseased over and over and over again.

You don't need to pay attention to what skills the monsters are using, all you have to do is look at the auras around an ally and it's very easy to tell when someone has disease.

From Guildwiki:

Poisoned characters are easily spotted by the green skull that orbits above their head, trailing a green mist.
Visually, a diseased character is easily recognised via the swirling green gases and flies surrounding the character.

I also believe poison is a different shade of green in the party window, Poison being bright green and Disease being dark green. So it's really obvious when someone has Disease and therefore the hench monks don't have any reason to go on that train wreck of using Draw Conditions on someone who is diseased.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curse You

Last time I checked, the Protection Hench has Mend Ailment, so maybe if they just got rid of Draw Condtitions, and replaced it with Mend Condition, they would work better.

EDIT: oh poo, Mend Condition is a Prophecies skill. But really, I don't see Eve, Aidan, or Cynn getting in trouble for their skill sets...

They could swap it out for Purge Conditions, since that is a core skill, also has 5 energy, but has 20 sec recharge instead of 2 sec recharge. Or they could just make the AI not use Draw Conditions on someone with Disease since it's such a disaster when they do that. When henches were getting the party or themselves killed too easily (Alesia using Healing Touch too much, Factions Healer Henches using Sig of Devotion too much) the AI was tweaked, so it makes sense to make this small change to the AI as well.