ANET, please fix HM hero AI

I can hardly function with heroes in HM because my monk hero is continually dead. No matter how I set her agressiveness or no matter how far back from the battle I pin her, she will just stand there and take a beating without moving. In normal mode she will run away from agressive enemies. Please, pretty please.

Last night I set Dunkoro to avoid combat.

He stayed put when attacked by the devourers.
He stayed put when attacked by the elementals.
He stayed put when attacked by the stupid grawl monks!!!

I'm not used to having to constantly flag my heroes so that was pretty annoying.

When I did Great Northern Wall with 2 guild mates and Dunkoro, I had him set to Passive, and what did he do when the first Grawl mob kited back to the boss? He followed them back. The rest of the mission I had to move him via flags so that he would stay alive.

I feel your pain, however... there've been several threads on this topic, most of them have been closed, and Anet still has not addressed the issue which leads me to believe that the new stupid hero AI was intended for hard mode, maybe to try and promote grouping with real people.

I've sent in support help and I was just told that they knew nothing of other complaints and I should post on a fan forum.

Over on GWO, there's been a heated discussion about a number of major Hero bugs in HM...

* Heroes ignoring flags
* Heroes ignoring their defensive/offenee setting
* Tanking monks and timid warriors
* Lack of kiting unless given speed-up skills
* Broken skill usage (some will only spam a single low-cost spell)
* Magic user (esp. monks) prefer to wand over using their skills (EDIT)

There are more I've probably forgotten.

ANet has not ackowledged or even responded to the issues. People such as myself have offered to provide video and specific builds, but unlike the Soul Reaping issue, ANet has shown no interest in this topic.

Which has lead some to believe that ANet deliberately dumbed-down the hero AI in HM to force more PuGging, in response to the numerous complaints about how heroes "ruined" the game.

A response from ANet would be nice. At the moment, these problems make is impossible to use heroes and henchmen to obtain the vanquisher titles. And finding human player to kill 25,000 monsters in 151 explorable areas is unlikely and unrealistic...

/me awaits Gailes response which will be something like this "Hard mode is harder"

Yup. If you want to do hard mode, you need to play with humans, which likely means joining one of those faction-farming guilds that get all of ANet's love.

Of course, if this were a bug in mini-pets, you know Gaile would be there in a second, seeking a fix.

Actually the biggest guilds in the game are faction-farming guilds, but they have no interest in doing PVE other than faction-farming 24/7. Therefore finding a guild with enough people to do hard mode with on a regular basis is like finding a needle in a haystick, if they even exist at all.

I notice that when I give Dunkoro a LOD & Heal Party build with those skills at the most left of his bar, he will almost never cast them. I always have to micro all his LOD & Heal Party casts, which gets very tiresome. Would be real nice if they made Dunkoro able to use those skills decently on his own.

Finished Guardian of Elona a couple days ago. Did it mostly with heroes, or with one other player.

Best suggestion I can give with heroes is you have to flag them up. I flag my monks around the back edge of the aggro circle, other casters at the middle, and the rest do whatever. Otherwise, casters wand instead of do what they are suppose to do, and healers tank instead of heal others.

It's a definite pain in the ass to setup, but it does work. What can else can you do, not like theres a ton of PvE guilds advertising for HM.

I'm mostly speaking about the Vanquisher titles, which is a tad more difficult than guardian.

As for Guardian, I'm most of the way there on all three continents, PLAYING WITH HUMANS. Yup, PuGs. Finding PuGs for 50+ relatively easy missions is not that difficult.

Finding humans who want to clear 151 areas with more than 25,000 monsters -- that's where the problem comes in.

I've pretty much stopped playing at this point. I've done everything in "normal" mode, and going for the Vanquisher titles is about all that interests me at this point. I'm just sticking around in the forums to see if ANet ever has *any* response to this issue.

Again, if it involved mini-pets, Gaile would be on it like my lizard is on crickets.

ROFL. So true... *goes back to expecting this to take months to be fixed while the community debates how badly we need a hairdresser*

I've been having the exact same problems with my hero monks. Made some HM areas completely impossible, because even with 2 - tanking - monks, they kept dying.
They seem to completely ignore the offensive/defensive/passive stances.
That is why I had to start playing with humans again and - for me at least - it has been a delightful experience!

If anybodys having a problem with olias as a MM standing at the back while with is minions while monsters swarm yours weak casters its because he needs an attack skill like deathly swarm equipped.

This bug made vanquishing alot of areas harder for me

I've had those problems for a while now. Like casters running up to enemies to fight instead of casting long distance like they used to.

On a semi-related note. I was vanquishing an area and noticed that when the bad guy was getting close to death, he'd run away - no surprise there. Imagine my surprise when the minions that were attacking the near dead bad guy began to run from it. They would keep this up for a while too. Get the target near death, target retreats, they retreat from retreating target.

I know i don't run away from things that run away from me. We were all still in the same aggro bubble. I just don't get it.

I really wish ANet told us whether it was intentional or not... I see no reason for them to remain silent, actually.

*really hopes Gaile read this before it will for some mysterious reasons be moved somewhere else*

Ive also had a problem with my heroes stop attacking when I kite even when they are set to aggressive. I have to retarget the enemy most everytime i kite an enemy.

It could be they want you to PuG more to the likings of PvP when the mob AI was changed to non scatter most didn't like that.I find in HM the mob AI is smarter than the Hero/Hench AI.I did Witmans Folly in both modes and the mob AI was more smarter so I gether it is to group up more or just have more real ppl in your party say a ratio of 5.8s.

Well..It's hard to PuG when you've got no one in your desired district to actually pug with.

Agree hero AI needs fixing in HM. Not everyone plays the game at the same time or with the same goals.

It is getting more difficult to find groups for missions now I've noticed, and if you are short ppl then heroes top up the group.

If Anet intended the dumb down so we would play with ppl I believe they err'd - can't see many hanging out at camp rankor spamming lfg to vanguish Snake Dance - Lornars Pass , last stop Beacons Perch.
Was looking forward to HM and like most of it, however if I can not realistically get things done.........

And maybe they will read threads about this and address the problem, one way or the other.

BTW - Gaile, after several of us mentioned the AI , did say they read the forums - did not answer the questions directly though.