Guild Wars 2

Built a Sinister MM to play in Silverwastes. I had not played MM in a couple of months and they went out of their way to embarrass me with their huge AI lag, the crudeness of their decision making, and the pathing issues inherent in the… not so smooth terrain.

Anyone else been having fun and enjoying watching them die? I could almost swear they were smarter before the September patch from hell.

Haha sadly im HAPPY there not working properly. If they actually became decent again wed get the turret treatment and be annihilated.

On a more serious note. I play my necro quite regularly as a DS/MM build (20606 cav/valk) and I have a decent amount of success. Nothing amazing obviously. But its still something atleast. But your right about the AI issues.

I just hope they don’t fix it until AFTER HOT distracts the witch hunt going on in the pvp forums atm.

The minion AI is weird. For example the other day I was playing with bone fiend and it worked flawlessly- it attacked what I did without delay. The same goes for bone minions for most of the time. On the other hand, flash golem just stood still and took ages before deciding to run the opposite direction. What the hell?

Minions Movement is sluggish and behaves a lot like the shadow step and teleport skills. If the Minion cant find a spot within its attack reach near the target it will bug out, especially since it seems to respect models, you will never see a minion walk into the model of an enemy player. Ranged minions dont seem to have this kinda problem.

This is especially a issue in the silverwastes, due to all of the stairs and kinda narrow entrances with high monster density. The “check for a new path” mechanism seems to bug out, or it doenst refresh smoothly, resulting in very delayed movement or no movement at all.

I personally would be a huge fan of ranged only minions, Shadow Fiend could create a dark rift with 300 – 450 range in front of him, dealing damage in a line while getting a activate that teleports him on the backside of its target, with a delayed rift behind him that grants lifeforce on hit, additionally the Shadow Fiend taunts the enemy briefly. Bone Minions could puke or spit on range, the activation skill turns them into rocket like projectiles, a big ark, a slight delay, but with increased damage, getting benefit from the necromancers precision and ferocity stats. Flesh Golem would get a greenish goo around its claws, getting increased range and cone attacks, the activation should be the same but the golem does a big attack at the max range, causing big damage and applying a root. It should be a matter of decision, use it against a close target for the cc, or a far away target for the root, providing some play.

Red Jay.2516:

On the other hand, flash golem just stood still and took ages before deciding to run the opposite direction. What the hell?

He carefully evaluated the situation and then decided it would be best to bail out, that´s next level AI dude!!

…

No seriously, the godkitten minion AI really needs some improvement. Otherwise MM builds wont ever be a reasonable build choice.

The only change I’d make to the minion AAs is to have a slight range increase, and allow them to attack and move at the same time. It is completely nonsensical that in a game where players can move and cast player summoned-AI has to stand still.

The problem is their pathing, in many cases ANet’s god awful terrain mapping, and the apparent ability to get stuck on the smallest pebble and be unable to move. There isn’t any real reason the pathing should be an issue now when it wasn’t an issue at launch (they ballsed it up when trying to reduce minion over-aggression). And increasing their ability to move over Z-axis differences would remove the pebble problems.

Bhawb.7408:

The only change I’d make to the minion AAs is to have a slight range increase, and allow them to attack and move at the same time. It is completely nonsensical that in a game where players can move and cast player summoned-AI has to stand still.

The problem is their pathing, in many cases ANet’s god awful terrain mapping, and the apparent ability to get stuck on the smallest pebble and be unable to move. There isn’t any real reason the pathing should be an issue now when it wasn’t an issue at launch (they ballsed it up when trying to reduce minion over-aggression). And increasing their ability to move over Z-axis differences would remove the pebble problems.

Yeah, exactly my thought. They must have a Z-Axis tolerance of 0 or something, it’s completely hilarious. And since the maps are designed to keep jumping players in bounds, increasing the z-axis tolerance shouldn’t lead to stupid stuff like minions climbing walls.

Minion AI definitely felt more reliable shortly after release. But sadly, with a lot of fixes, also came a lot of new problems.

AI programming is literally the hardest type in the world. In GW1 the AI was terrible, but at least you had a horde of minions to give you numerical advantage to make up for their plain stupidity. GW2 needs to either increase the number of total minions we can lug around, add in different types of minions for specific encounters, or at the very least integrate the AI teammate control mechanics from GW1 so the player can give general orders…. As it is, small groups of really stupid and weak minions is just a joke

A game like GW2 should not need very complicated AI for minions and pets. All it needs is a reliable engage/disengage (and not standing around refusing to attack), and reliable pathfinding. The unreliable nature of minions attacking seems like sloppy programming to me. But good pathfinding is simply a difficult thing to code.

I presume that GW2’s terrain uses a nav-mesh, but the terrain is of course a lot more complex to navigate than that of GW1. There’s lot of bumps and obstacles that enemies could get stuck on, and they do. They need to get this sorted out. We can’t have our Flesh Golem getting stuck on a doorstep mid-charge.

I simply do not get why they didn’t simply C&P the pathfinding and “AI” of the normal aggro mobs, and added a button to toggle “aggro on/aggro off”. There, fixed. Was it THAT hard? I mean, random agressive mobs don’t get stuck on pebbles etc., and they do not fail to attack. They even chase you around corners relatively reliably, and they do have a certain range at which they simply return to their location. Make this location the Necro for minions, and you shouldn’t have problems… Like, seriously.

That is a good point Shiki. It would seem that our minions and pets simply do not use the same pathfinding as normal mobs. Very odd and inconsistent.

Agree.

Shadow fiend almost always does not attack or move to the target. Sometimes via command its attacking properly sometimes it does not do anything

If you really watch, minions take a lot of time just deciding to attack even without pathing issues. The only time they are quick enough about it is when they are spawned in combat but then I have a problem with cast time being slow.

I wish they’d have some sort of mechanic for handling long detour paths. Let’s call it “determination”. In many games when a pet gets out of range of the master or enemy they actually move faster than standard players (or in WoW, always… Go figure Hunter pets are useful…). But let’s assume they don’t want minions to outpace players, they should really have some sort of calculation for distance and z-axis that triggers a determination buff, greatly increasing speed until it overcomes the obstacle.

Examples being: Ramps, terrain dips and gaps, platforms and long walls:

Aaaaaaand the ability to jump down a freaking ledge after an enemy….

City of Heroes had AI that could jump all over the place and do anything it wanted, there’s really no reason AI has to be ‘this’ bad… It’s held back because it’s super standard and does nothing to correct its shortcomings.

I do like the idea of AI speeding up. Also, we do not need attack/don’t attack buttons, there really is no point for an MM except to be able to call them out of AoE, and realistically speaking it wouldn’t even work very well with that because of how slowly they run.

@ Ron

Honestly, I do not think detour path is a real thingie.
Minions are pass -fail.

Anchoku.8142:

@ Ron

Honestly, I do not think detour path is a real thingie.
Minions are pass -fail.

Here, yes. I’m talking about how other games have handled AI by giving them compensation mechanics. (ie flat speed bonuses or more complex mechanisms) I definitely think pets need to “learn” to chase an enemy over a ledge. It’s so ancient feeling to see your pets take the long ways down ramps when people dropped 5 feet down. It almost single handedly kills the usefulness of pets in any mode with terrain (see: all) if the enemy is smart.

@Bhawb, I disagree that it’s meaningless. Hell, if a guy can control 1 we should get SOMETHING for our 6… It means a lot because sometimes it is INCREDIBLY important to stomp your pets from chasing an enemy. The most important example would be if your pets latch onto a fleeing enemy but a thief is stealthing various times and your pets rather than waiting to assist you with the thief try to run for someone irrelevant which leaves you completely defenseless. There’s just no reason for it. Frankly, we don’t need 2 controls. A toggle passive/aggressive would probably be good enough, but is not a trivial thing.

The Bone Field, heal-minion, Jagged Horrors from the Death Nova trait and sometimes the small duo-minions work ok if you don’t auto attack outside of near melee range to initiate combat, but the Shadow Fiend and the Golem don’t do anything 90% of the time. Even after using their active skills. Using the Flesh Golem’s charge can be pretty kitten funny to see, watching it come out of nowhere and charge through all the enemies and then just stand and carry on doing nothing.

For the love of anyone please don’t let the Necromancer’s elite specialization have anything to do with minions. Broken since launch and WAI.

In all seriousness I would be willing to bet that it wont be minion focused. Judging from the mesmer spec. What im hoping is that it will be minion COMPATIBLE. In example I hope that the class mechanic doesn’t kill every active minion when its used. Or that ALL of the decent traits bar you from using minions.

From what ive seen of the mesmers though the chronomancer caters to multiple mesmer fighting styles (clone/phantasm/shatter) which im very happy to see. Im hoping we get something similar. Where we don’t have to give up a preffered play style ENTIRELY (im 100% okay with it requiring a radically different appraoch though).

GS/DD DM New Trait SM minion mancer sounds like fun.

What they should do, is implement something similar to the way zombies navigate in Left 4 Dead. You basically have a nav mesh, where enemies are allowed to jump up and down from ledges (by connecting multiple unconnected nav tiles). This allows enemies to climb over height differences, jump down from a height, and step over small obstacles.

Having them speed up if they distance themselves too far from their master, is also a good idea. But for that to work, they first need to stop getting stuck. And for that you need more clever navigation.

See the picture below on how Valve solves this sort of navigation.

This is a nav mesh. Only ai characters can see these tiles, and use them to reach their objective. They check the shortest distance, and then determine a path across the tiles where they don’t get stuck on obstacles. Tiles that are at an angle are marked a different color, and indicate that a climbing or jumping animation is required.

Notice how a connection has been made between the floor and the table. This allows characters to step onto the object. In Source, the creation of nav meshes is automated. Which means the game engine can examine a map, and create a basic nav mesh on its own. The level designer can then manually step in, and correct the nav mesh to fix problem areas. For GW2 the nav mesh would be huge for each explorable area, so that would still be a lot of work. But I can’t imagine any other solution.

Would likely be too much work for Anet to care, but if they did it anywhere, spvp first would be great!

And in improve general responsiveness.

Its something that only really matters on the sPvP maps. Mobs in PvE aren’t moving like that so there isn’t a big deal, and WvW has relatively few areas where minions are both usable and people will be jumping around.

I think you may be mistaken there. Even the tiniest obstacle, like a boulder, doorstep, a plateau, or in this case a table, requires minions to “step up”. Both in pvp, wvw and pve necromancers notice on a regular basis how minions get stuck on even the most basic of objects. It would be great if minions could simply climb onto such objects, instead of trying to path a way around them.

So if a player jumps down a plateau in WvW, instead of trying to find a way down (and probably getting stuck in the process), the minions would simply jump down the plateau in pursuit of the player.

Honestly. I wish they would replace our ground moving minions with something like ghosts or ghouls or whatever theme that fits the Guild Wars lore but allows our minions to float and move through objects. I think this would solve a lot of the AI pathing issues.

xgalaxy.7402:

Honestly. I wish they would replace our ground moving minions with something like ghosts or ghouls or whatever theme that fits the Guild Wars lore but allows our minions to float and move through objects. I think this would solve a lot of the AI pathing issues.

Spiriiiitttsssss.

I still have my hopes for ritualist.

That doesn’t actually solve anything, it still forces them to rework the minion AI, it just allows them to potentially ignore these issues when they do that.

Bhawb.7408:

That doesn’t actually solve anything, it still forces them to rework the minion AI, it just allows them to potentially ignore these issues when they do that.

I’ve lost a lot of faith in them handling AI in a proper way (beyond even just how it functions and bugs out). At least spirits could be strategically placed. It’s a trust thing at this point. I don’t see AI for necromancers being a high priority for them anytime soon.

They’ll have to fix it eventually. The ai of ranger pets also relies on it.

Minion AI (currently) isn’t separated from mob AI, which is part of why they haven’t fixed it yet. So considering there is a very good chance mob AI will get a look-over for HoT (since a lot of their new AI is good), there is a good chance that minion AI will come with it. Its not like they are going to specifically fix minion AI, but more fix the issues that plague all AI which will also fix minions.

Bhawb.7408:

Minion AI (currently) isn’t separated from mob AI, which is part of why they haven’t fixed it yet. So considering there is a very good chance mob AI will get a look-over for HoT (since a lot of their new AI is good), there is a good chance that minion AI will come with it. Its not like they are going to specifically fix minion AI, but more fix the issues that plague all AI which will also fix minions.

I know they say that, but I still have a hard time believing it. I’ve never ever had mobs just stand around and not attack me. There is additional information related to commanding player spawned AI through actions that locks them up. The issues we have with them are not standard issues.

Ronpierce has a point. This weird disengaging, running away, and just standing around doing nothing, is something necromancer specific. I’ve never seen enemy mobs do that.

Long ago (in MMO terms) I remember asking for their leash to be tightened because they were too curious and tended to go after anything in range.

Now, I think the collar is too tight and it is giving them brain damage. Their decision making lags badly and I suspect code bloat.

Maybe this is unrelated but targeting as a player has been more troublesome since September, too.

Mobs have weird issues too, but generally speaking minions run into issues for fairly limited reasons that mobs don’t have to worry about:
Code bloat/piled up changes – we’ve seen a few fairly big changes to minion AI, the first was a massive leash reduction (currently 1950 IIRC, used to be like, half a map) and overall aggression reduction on Golem/Shadow which bugged their aggro acquisition, then we had minions no longer attack unless the MM was already in combat and a fix of the aggro issues, but also in the process the “failsafes” the old system had were removed. Effectively our minions have had so much brain surgery I think someone might have forgotten to put it all back.

Mobs also don’t have a non-static leash point. The minions’ reset point is the Necromancer, whereas mobs just return to their little area. There are also ways to break mob aggro that leaves them never attacking you, however in the mob’s case this usually triggers the massive HP regeneration and invulnerability, whereas in the minion’s case they just screw around.

And the bigger issue, mobs have their own aggro that isn’t tied to a player. When a mob has pathing issues or hits the end of its leash, its aggro hits a “reset”. Minions don’t seem to have this because they have secondary aggro that is tied to the Necromancer, and this causes extra issues by not allowing them to get a hard-reset.

Basically, when a mob screws up it just resets, and frankly no one cares (or they abuse it). However, when you are running around with your minions out, you are capable of manually breaking their AI by causing aggro when they can’t find a valid path, and then unlike mobs they can’t just reset because of you and we get the minions standing around. So to us, the minions are stupid, but to the minions we’re just really kittenty masters.

Awesome detail, Bhawb, thank you!

Bhawb.7408:

Mobs have weird issues too, but generally speaking minions run into issues for fairly limited reasons that mobs don’t have to worry about:
Code bloat/piled up changes – we’ve seen a few fairly big changes to minion AI, the first was a massive leash reduction (currently 1950 IIRC, used to be like, half a map) and overall aggression reduction on Golem/Shadow which bugged their aggro acquisition, then we had minions no longer attack unless the MM was already in combat and a fix of the aggro issues, but also in the process the “failsafes” the old system had were removed. Effectively our minions have had so much brain surgery I think someone might have forgotten to put it all back.

Mobs also don’t have a non-static leash point. The minions’ reset point is the Necromancer, whereas mobs just return to their little area. There are also ways to break mob aggro that leaves them never attacking you, however in the mob’s case this usually triggers the massive HP regeneration and invulnerability, whereas in the minion’s case they just screw around.

And the bigger issue, mobs have their own aggro that isn’t tied to a player. When a mob has pathing issues or hits the end of its leash, its aggro hits a “reset”. Minions don’t seem to have this because they have secondary aggro that is tied to the Necromancer, and this causes extra issues by not allowing them to get a hard-reset.

Basically, when a mob screws up it just resets, and frankly no one cares (or they abuse it). However, when you are running around with your minions out, you are capable of manually breaking their AI by causing aggro when they can’t find a valid path, and then unlike mobs they can’t just reset because of you and we get the minions standing around. So to us, the minions are stupid, but to the minions we’re just really kittenty masters.

Then, while working on a kitten solution, they should just kittening revert all changes , and give the necro an “aggro on/off” switch for Minions on F2 until they fixed the godkitten thing. Like, seriously. Much less of a hassle, less problems over all, and we could go and abuse the hell out of the new Necromantic Corruption once it comes out.

A way to get rid off all those problems would actually be to have minions always attack whatever enemy you appoint as “focus target”, if there is any. That should be easy enough, if they didn’t make their code complete bullcrap. True, it might pose problems if playing in a party, but they could make the F2 “aggro on/on+react to focus/off”. The focus target has to be shared with your party members so it should be easy to “listen” to the command to share with minions. Then again, they could also simply give us a freaking “minion, attack this!” button. I mean Necros control the kitten golem-thingies, its not like they have a will on their own in the first place – unlike a hunters pet would have. And even that can listen to kittening commands.

Awesome analysis Bhawb!

Shiki.7148:

Then, while working on a kitten solution, they should just kittening revert all changes , and give the necro an “aggro on/off” switch for Minions on F2 until they fixed the godkitten thing. Like, seriously. Much less of a hassle, less problems over all, and we could go and abuse the hell out of the new Necromantic Corruption once it comes out.

Reverting all changes probably isn’t at all very easy, as these changes aren’t necessarily only to minions, and they have built on each other. Without actually seeing the code base it is really hard to know if it would be possible to revert the changes, if they even have the original code to revert it to, and if there have been changes since then that reverting would break (for example if the new code is referenced somewhere else). It is actually pretty likely it isn’t a trivial change to make, and they did make the changes for a reason in the first place: overaggressive minions made them awful to use in PvE/WvW because you were 100% in combat all the time the second you entered a map, and then the iteration that had “failsafes” was so complicated it took me probably 20 hours of testing to get it all figured out, your average player had worse issues than they have right now.

Shiki.7148:

A way to get rid off all those problems would actually be to have minions always attack whatever enemy you appoint as “focus target”, if there is any. That should be easy enough, if they didn’t make their code complete bullcrap. True, it might pose problems if playing in a party, but they could make the F2 “aggro on/on+react to focus/off”. The focus target has to be shared with your party members so it should be easy to “listen” to the command to share with minions. Then again, they could also simply give us a freaking “minion, attack this!” button. I mean Necros control the kitten golem-thingies, its not like they have a will on their own in the first place – unlike a hunters pet would have. And even that can listen to kittening commands.

Strictly speaking you do have a focus target, it is every single ability you cast. The way minions currently work is the first targeted ability you cast, first instance of damage you deal, and if any enemy attacks you they will all respond and acquire aggro. They also individually respond to enemies attacking them, but they won’t collectively respond.

The problem isn’t that the minions don’t know who they are supposed to attack, in fact that part of the system has gotten way better (it used to require you to cast two abilities on the targeted, you had to hit one of them, and then they would attack, things like staff marks didn’t work, and if you were outside range with say dagger then you were SoL). The problem is that you tell them who to attack, they try to find a path, can’t, and can’t, at which point they bug out just like normal mobs would. The problem is there is nothing they can do at that point, they need a way to “reset” their aggro, and there isn’t a simple way to do that.

Bhawb.7408:

Shiki.7148:

Then, while working on a kitten solution, they should just kittening revert all changes , and give the necro an “aggro on/off” switch for Minions on F2 until they fixed the godkitten thing. Like, seriously. Much less of a hassle, less problems over all, and we could go and abuse the hell out of the new Necromantic Corruption once it comes out.

Reverting all changes probably isn’t at all very easy, as these changes aren’t necessarily only to minions, and they have built on each other. Without actually seeing the code base it is really hard to know if it would be possible to revert the changes, if they even have the original code to revert it to, and if there have been changes since then that reverting would break (for example if the new code is referenced somewhere else). It is actually pretty likely it isn’t a trivial change to make, and they did make the changes for a reason in the first place: overaggressive minions made them awful to use in PvE/WvW because you were 100% in combat all the time the second you entered a map, and then the iteration that had “failsafes” was so complicated it took me probably 20 hours of testing to get it all figured out, your average player had worse issues than they have right now.

Shiki.7148:

A way to get rid off all those problems would actually be to have minions always attack whatever enemy you appoint as “focus target”, if there is any. That should be easy enough, if they didn’t make their code complete bullcrap. True, it might pose problems if playing in a party, but they could make the F2 “aggro on/on+react to focus/off”. The focus target has to be shared with your party members so it should be easy to “listen” to the command to share with minions. Then again, they could also simply give us a freaking “minion, attack this!” button. I mean Necros control the kitten golem-thingies, its not like they have a will on their own in the first place – unlike a hunters pet would have. And even that can listen to kittening commands.

Strictly speaking you do have a focus target, it is every single ability you cast. The way minions currently work is the first targeted ability you cast, first instance of damage you deal, and if any enemy attacks you they will all respond and acquire aggro. They also individually respond to enemies attacking them, but they won’t collectively respond.

The problem isn’t that the minions don’t know who they are supposed to attack, in fact that part of the system has gotten way better (it used to require you to cast two abilities on the targeted, you had to hit one of them, and then they would attack, things like staff marks didn’t work, and if you were outside range with say dagger then you were SoL). The problem is that you tell them who to attack, they try to find a path, can’t, and can’t, at which point they bug out just like normal mobs would. The problem is there is nothing they can do at that point, they need a way to “reset” their aggro, and there isn’t a simple way to do that.

If they changed not only the minions of Necro, the other things they changed (mobs, ranger pets…) would be just as kittened up. But they aren’t. The leash changes were definitly Necro only, for example. And the other pets/summoned things have less pathing issues, too, and Mobs might have very tiny hitches, but if they want to attack you/ get to you, they usually will, no matter the terrain or you hiding behind a corner etc.

And no, they don’t work that way at all. If you click on an enemy and attack another, your minions will (at least it was that way last patch) attack the one whose HP-bar is displayed – if they attack at all, that is. I’m still baffled how one can kitten up a simple “npc please attack X” script. Also minions in every game using pets/summons as a fighhting style I’ve ever played are supposed to keep the mobs attention away from the summoner. Having no way to make your minions attack a specific target without drawing the aggro from it is bullkitten.

Shiki.7148:

I’m still baffled how one can kitten up a simple “npc please attack X” script.

Considering the fact that the entire in-combat detection in GW2 is not reliable, I’m not surprised that minions don’t have a reliable engage or disengage.

Shiki.7148:

If they changed not only the minions of Necro, the other things they changed (mobs, ranger pets…) would be just as kittened up. But they aren’t.

They did change them, to varying amounts. Minions had a slightly different AI (which is why some were insanely aggressive), but they’ve changed all player summoned AI and they all have issues. People don’t notice them because Ranger’s have “reset” buttons, Mesmer’s aren’t “proper” AI and don’t run into issues because of how they are summoned and how quickly they die, Engineer’s don’t have pathing, etc. You apparently ignored half of what I typed, because I explained why minions bug out and mobs don’t, and none of the other professions have anything comparable AI wise.

Shiki.7148:

The leash changes were definitly Necro only, for example. And the other pets/summoned things have less pathing issues, too, and Mobs might have very tiny hitches, but if they want to attack you/ get to you, they usually will, no matter the terrain or you hiding behind a corner etc.

It is extremely easy to bug out the mob AI, just stand somewhere where they can’t hit you and they do nothing. The difference is, like I explained, mobs aren’t tied to some idiot running around kittening up their pathing constantly, they just sit there until someone attacks them that they can reach, and until then they have things like invuln/regen.

Shiki.7148:

And no, they don’t work that way at all. If you click on an enemy and attack another, your minions will (at least it was that way last patch) attack the one whose HP-bar is displayed – if they attack at all, that is.

Its a priority system. Your target > things you’ve dealt damage to > things that have attacked you > things that have attacked the individual minion. This is the way it has worked since launch.

Shiki.7148:

I’m still baffled how one can kitten up a simple “npc please attack X” script. Also minions in every game using pets/summons as a fighhting style I’ve ever played are supposed to keep the mobs attention away from the summoner. Having no way to make your minions attack a specific target without drawing the aggro from it is bullkitten.

Because, like I’ve explained at least twice, acquiring aggro isn’t the problem, pathing is. The minions know who they are supposed to attack, they just can’t figure out how to get there to do it, and when that happens their AI bugs out. Could ANet put something in to fix this? Potentially, but it isn’t that simple because every change they could make opens up the possibility for other issues.

As for drawing aggro from the summoner, tanking doesn’t exist in this game, but it is pretty easy to have your minions attack first and gain priority in the aggro table for you. Just use an AA that is out of range, or cast a targeted ability and then cancel it before it casts. Its not remotely hard.

Bhawb.7408:

Shiki.7148:

If they changed not only the minions of Necro, the other things they changed (mobs, ranger pets…) would be just as kittened up. But they aren’t.

They did change them, to varying amounts. Minions had a slightly different AI (which is why some were insanely aggressive), but they’ve changed all player summoned AI and they all have issues. People don’t notice them because Ranger’s have “reset” buttons, Mesmer’s aren’t “proper” AI and don’t run into issues because of how they are summoned and how quickly they die, Engineer’s don’t have pathing, etc. You apparently ignored half of what I typed, because I explained why minions bug out and mobs don’t, and none of the other professions have anything comparable AI wise.

Shiki.7148:

The leash changes were definitly Necro only, for example. And the other pets/summoned things have less pathing issues, too, and Mobs might have very tiny hitches, but if they want to attack you/ get to you, they usually will, no matter the terrain or you hiding behind a corner etc.

It is extremely easy to bug out the mob AI, just stand somewhere where they can’t hit you and they do nothing. The difference is, like I explained, mobs aren’t tied to some idiot running around kittening up their pathing constantly, they just sit there until someone attacks them that they can reach, and until then they have things like invuln/regen.

Shiki.7148:

And no, they don’t work that way at all. If you click on an enemy and attack another, your minions will (at least it was that way last patch) attack the one whose HP-bar is displayed – if they attack at all, that is.

Its a priority system. Your target > things you’ve dealt damage to > things that have attacked you > things that have attacked the individual minion. This is the way it has worked since launch.

Shiki.7148:

I’m still baffled how one can kitten up a simple “npc please attack X” script. Also minions in every game using pets/summons as a fighhting style I’ve ever played are supposed to keep the mobs attention away from the summoner. Having no way to make your minions attack a specific target without drawing the aggro from it is bullkitten.

Because, like I’ve explained at least twice, acquiring aggro isn’t the problem, pathing is. The minions know who they are supposed to attack, they just can’t figure out how to get there to do it, and when that happens their AI bugs out. Could ANet put something in to fix this? Potentially, but it isn’t that simple because every change they could make opens up the possibility for other issues.

As for drawing aggro from the summoner, tanking doesn’t exist in this game, but it is pretty easy to have your minions attack first and gain priority in the aggro table for you. Just use an AA that is out of range, or cast a targeted ability and then cancel it before it casts. Its not remotely hard.

Aquiring aggro IS a problem. Because I’ve had my minions attack random things other than what i wanted them to attack numerous times. Asweel as the golem running from one mob to another and back cause it couldn’t figure out which it wanted to attack.