Curse

Winterclaw · Oct 21, 2009, 09:56 PM // 21:56

I've played with Zenmai a few times. Last time, I was in the sep and I give her a DB/MS build (mantra of frost helps her a bunch there). I kept her bar open so I could see if the AI was using it and it was working.

One important thing I noticed was that on the final boss, she was able to use a DB/MS build and use MS after DB. But there is one problem with hero AI that I noticed and why sassis don't work very well with normal foes... it takes them 1-3 seconds to activate the next skill in the dagger chain. For many mobs, particularly in NM, 6 seconds is enough time for your party to kill a normal foe.

Usually when I'm playing my sassi character, if I have the energy I go through the attack chain as fast as I can. I think that getting rid of that waiting period would help sassi heroes be a little less useless.

Artinnia · Oct 21, 2009, 10:05 PM // 22:05

Only one problem with that.... they set up the AI so that it pauses for 1 second between using skills so it can re-evaluate the situation and use the most appropriate skill AND to keep them from being too over powered compared to a human.

Sadly without changing that there's no real use for a Dagger Sin hero... I use my Zenmai as a Crit Scythe and that works alright, she's still really squishy though.

Anyway, /signed if you can figure out a way to make dagger sins work without making the heroes overpowered.

FoxBat · Oct 21, 2009, 10:31 PM // 22:31

I think it's more like 1/2 second, but once they commit to auto-attacking, they will often stick to that before hitting the next skill.

The real problem here is 99% of the time, human sassies don't take any time to roll into the next part of the chain. They queue the next skill immediately, so skill #2 is lined up ready to go before skill #1 even finishes. A few "good" sins don't waste attacks like that, but it requires better than 1/2 second decision making. (IE evaluating next attack after you hit, but before the second half of attack animation finishes.) If you try adrenal spikes with a warrior there's a similar issue, but those are rarely relevant in pve.

So what the AI would do would be to queue say an off-hand while the lead is still executing, probably before it even hits. This is programmable in theory but it's probably not trivial because the existing AI has no such awareness, relying entirely on existing conditions. (For example, they will often initiate "must be KD'd" skills like crushing blow when someone has almost stood up, so they land too late.)

Reverend Dr · Oct 22, 2009, 01:26 AM // 01:26

This isn't just a problem with assassin heroes, it is a problem with any melee heroes and why melee heroes are just never really worth bringing.

awry · Oct 22, 2009, 03:17 AM // 03:17

notice similar problems on my dagger r/a, she uses expert's dexterity for basically permanent 33% ias and has the 1/2 activation dagger skills, but wastes the potential of this quick chain by the pauses.

edit: strength of honor can alleviate this problem a lot by boosting dagger hero's dmg based on speed of attack, ie ias or locust's fury.

Nechrond · Oct 22, 2009, 11:46 AM // 11:46

I'm 99% sure that heroes don't just make decisions every x amount of time, but also make decisions based on certain triggers. They could just add more triggers for "hit an opponent with lead/off/dual" that would force the decision to immediately pick an available dagger skill that HAS to follow lead/off/dual (if available) and that should pretty much solve the entire issue.