No Exhaustion in Hard Mode? Or...?

Not a complain or a gripe, just an observation. I was doing Gates of Kryta mission earlier today in Hard Mode and took on some Lightning Drakes. As you can see from the shot below, between the 2 of them, they cast Mind Shock on me nearly 40 times, in rapid succession (4 seconds recharge for each Drake, so I was practically knock-locked).



Note that they were also spamming Lightning Orb as it recharged. Now if Exhaustion reduces max energy by 10, then does it not stand to reason that these guys had around 200 energy apiece? (Shock was knocking me down every time they cast it, so they had more energy than I.. I had about 40 max) Or, are monsters in Hard Mode fully or partially immune to exhaustion? They were not using any type of energy management skills, only Shock and Orb.

Anyone else seen any evidence leaning one way or the other on exhaustion in Hard Mode?

I think monsters cheat with energy.

EDIT: They may also have a lot of energy storage (19+whatever for the levels)

Um Yeah, the AI cheats... It's been cheating for over 2 years now? Just in Hard mode it's been cheating harder, faster, stronger, better; as the song goes lol

Working as intended, sadly.

And again I must ask the question... if the AI doesn't play by the rules, then why should we?

ppl have said they have level 20 attributes... so...

30base , plus 60, plus say 20 from a staff u cant even get in propocies

110 max

energy load, 19x 5e = 95e, 9x 15 = 135e! total, 230 energy

exhaustion 19x 10 = 190

exhaustion recedes at 1 pip per 3 seconds (equivilent to 1 energy regen)

so they might have 250 -300 energy or something, or they probably have unlimited...

I wouldn't be surprised if mobs are unaffected by exhaustion.

That’s funny, evil A.I. indeed. Hey at least we know their health is not infinite.

Look at all the plant/shadow creatures that use "holy wrath" (lose 5 energy every time your hit). Monsters have long been known to cheat with energy, even in normal mode. Just try a E-denial mesmer in PvE and it becomes very apparent.

More then likely, the monsters have like 1000 energy at all times or something, rather then never suffering from exhuastion (since that explination also explains the other 2 examples I brought up).

Haha, nice observation. It's so sad it's funny.
[edit] And monsters have been proven to have limited energy, it's just very high and very fast recharging, but they do take damage from, for instance, famine and Ancestor's Visage.

Actually I've been able to trigger Mind Blast off of a Pain Titan once when I just captured the skill. But that was in normal mode.

Azure Shadows do run out of energy with Holy Wrath. If they cast it on themselves and procede to cast on another ally, and you interrupt them constantly with something like Choking Gas or Daze, they will stop trying to cast it after ~2-3 tries because they ran out of energy.

Reminds me of Willa the Unpleasant.....*shudder*.....talk about unlimited energy. First time through it took my team a good 15 mins to take it down.

No need to worry about Exhaustion if you have huge amounts of energy. I think those Life Pods have 700 energy or something, so Hard Mode monsters would have a lot.

would be interesting to see how long it would take to drain them using SV/AV

From playing with mind blast, it appears that monsters just have insanely high amounts of energy regen.

The max energy of most casters is around 40-50, from casting mind blast on them at the start of a battle. However, they sit at that total for the entire battle, unless they really get spam happy. The only casters I've seen below that are the vamp touch spammers, or anything maintaining holy wrath.

They can maintain large numbers of enchantments and not have energy problems (Dolyak riders, with 45ish max energy can spam heal other like crazy while maintaining 4 enchants).

I've never had more energy than any elementalist, even when switching up to a +30/-2 regen set, so it appears that all eles have 16+ in energy storage and foci of which I can only dream. Since they must have well over 100 energy, exhaustion really isn't going to be an issue.

I think it could be that in Hard Mode they get double energy regen (8 pips) and suffer exhaustion for halve as long (maybe even only get half exhaustion). Since there has never been any official statement as to the full effects of Hard Mode of creatures, it's not impossible.

I'm not sure about exhaustion, but Visage and Spirit Shackles do work against some healers I have farmed in Hard Mode (one cast of each and they are done healing), so they do at least have a finite and not outrageous energy level. What regen level they have I have no idea.

Yeah e-denial works in HM I know for sure. Sounds interesting that the drakes can spam so much... I'd like to see what e-denial does to them but they're a pain in the butt to deal with at all.

I'd like to have 8 edenial mesmers and throw a mind wrack on one of those drakes and see when they finally run out of energy

Mobs don't cheat on energy. They just have such small skillbars and gimped AI that they can't use all their energy reserves. This makes e-denial often not great, but its still noticeable. Try maintaining spirit shackles on glint sometime and see what happens.