Why are MM pets still so stupid?!?

It's been several years now. So why are MM pets (particularly) Bots still running with such poor A.I.? My Protection Bots keep running into melee range and they don't even have melee attacks!!! Is this happening with other pets too? The Bruiser used to just stand around and rock throw, but instead of just removing Rock Throw from his rotation his A.I. got rewritten. Is there really no check box somewhere to tell the pet that its either Melee or Ranged? Is there no way to add one? Am I the only one to see that this is needed. And now a new set is being released. I've seen in the previews that the demons seem to be ranged attackers mostly. Will this pathetic flaw find their way into their A.I.'s also?

Devs while we appreciate the new content, this MM pet stupidity has been around for quite awhile now. Please do something about it soon. It's a QOL issue and you guys upgrade that all the time. Please fix soon.

Castle was too busy making Demon Summoning AI perfect, neglecting the other pet sets for all eternity. :3 ... I mean :<

At least you can order your pets about. It's fairly trivial to order a Bruiser or Grave Knights into melee using the Goto command.



Have a thought for Plant Controllers and their idiotic pea-brained pet. It's a total moron and there's nothing you can do about it.

True, I've never understood how a class called "Controllers" missed out on ...... Controls...

I mean think about it, if you have a minion that goes into battle with you then just wanders off and gets into crap and keeps doing things other than what you tell it, why would you keep bringing it into battle with you?

Now im not saying all pets should get full MM control suites or bodyguard mode, but Attack my Target, Goto, Stay, and Follow would be perfectly fine for pets to come with. It wouldn't break the class and has been an sought after feature for quite awhile now.

Of course if our pets were smarter would anything be remotely difficult? Right now I only die if I get too involved in something else instead of the game.

and a comedy answer: If they were smarter, they would be the mastermind.

I know its another game but its a perfect example of what I mean

In Warcraft, your pets have their own pet bar with abilities. You can either click the ability when you want the pet to use it, or simply put the ability on auto-pilot, like MM henchmen powers are right now

Example: Grave Knight's Gloom or Bruiser's Hurl Boulder
You generally would want to keep these abilites on manual use only for purposes like pulling or attacking fliers, etc. You would likely keep their melee abilities on auto-pilot like they are currently. With the ranged abilties on manual only, the henchmen will always know to run into melee range by default, vs you having to tell them to GOTO each and everytime

I just think it would add a lot of depth and sense of needed control for MM henchmen. Not to mention would be much more fun overall

And in WoW pet classes rarely have more then one pet out at any given time. My warlock for example can only have... one pet. My death knight can have... one pet. My hunter can have... one pet. Each pet has six or so abilities, and are usually on 'auto use' for abilities that matter. Other then clicking the spell/attack to use, all you can do is order them to attack, follow, or put them on one of 2 stances (aggressive or passive). The UI is cumbersome to use too other then mouse clicking.

My mastermind has... six pets. Each pet might have between six to eight abilities. I can tell them where to move to as a group or individually. I can set each pet to eitehr attack everything they see, only what attacks first, or never attack unless ordered. I can specifiy who each pet should attack separately. I can tell them to wait in one spot, or I can have them follow me around. I can focus their fire on one target, have them each take out someone seperate, or let them chose their own targets. And the UI to do all this is easy to use. In fact it's customizable. I can create binds to have as much or little control over my six pets as I want.

And you want to have to specify which attack each henchman uses too? I'm already busy with controlling my pets.

We already have a lot of control over our pets. We IMO don't really need control over which powers they used. _Castle_ is always working on pet AI I think. Either way, having hotbars for every single pet separately would be... a huge screen clutter.

I certainly don't want to have to control what attacks my pets use and when they use them. I would love the ability to tell my pets "don't get out of Supremacy range no matter what!" and/or "go there and attack from there, hold position, don't chase runners." Basically I wish that defensive posture meant no buggering off.

Since the collision issue was somewhat fixed awhile ago with the Bots constantly getting stuck behind those Battle Drones, I really don't have too much of an issue with these guys. The majority of the time I will keep them on "Defensive Follow". This allows me and them to share some of the damage proportionately. I rarely use the "Aggressive Attack" mode unless I want to clear an area that I don't want to be in.

With that being said, yes, I do find that sometimes my Bots will run off on their own and start aggroing other groups. This sucks when you're going +1/+8 on solo, then you're getting double the dose on your behind! This only really is a problem when some groups are close together and you have no choice but to fight your way through them. I kind of look at it like owning dogs. Let's say you have five dogs. You decide to bring them to the park and throw a Frisbee around. When you get to the park you read a sign that says "keep all dogs on a leash". So, that's what you do, you put all of them on "Defensive Follow" and hope that none of them try to run off...hehee.

I'd love to be able to tell my Mercs when to use their AOE mezzes and the LRM, and thats about it. The big cooldowns.

I wish they would take brawl out of their available attacks, nothing worse than seeing one of my henchmen running in just to throw a punch

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn Hazy is right

I could be wrong, but I think they tried that with mercs. As I understand it, mercs still ran into melee range.

Obi-Wan Kenobi once said, "If droids could think there'd be none of us left, would there?"

I do agree with the issue concerning Protector Bots and their tendency to run into melee range, it makes no sense at all.

It's simple. Mastermind pets are kinda stupid because if they were smart, we'd be even more overpowered than we already are. We'd be unstoppable...

You know what? Go ahead devs, listen to this guy, make us the strongest class imaginable! bwahahahahahahahahahaha...

uh...

I did that out loud didn't I?

*shrug*

Bruiser - have his control separate for GoTo
Grave Knights - same thing as Bruiser
Mercs - stupid Medic get back here!

Fix Mercs . . [Serum] . . .QQ

Most of it is fixed by using appropriate binds, I find. I've been gone a long time, and I'm just happy my mercs aren't sitting there redrawing and shooting at burn patches and Crystals of Pain until I direct them with GOTO. MM's that don't use binds IMO are only gimping themselves. A keystroke vs right click, *choose option,* is no contest and to hell with adding those buttons to my already filled hotbars. Though it would be nice to have better AI, thematically as MM's were "supposed" to direct our henchmen. If you're wondering why a system hasn't been put in game sans keybinds...that would accomplish the same thing as the usual numpad keybinds, why make one? Extremely redundant and a waste of time and resources.
For the most part even when I played bots, it was about proximity to the mob/target. If your bots just cycled through their main ranged attacks and the mob is closing in, it seems like the AI is programmed like this: *use ranged power x* *ranged power x not available* *melee power available* *use melee power* and then out comes the shoryus.
Not to sound snobbish or holier than thou...but if you pay more attention to how your pets perform, the tendencies of suicide can be prevented using micromanagement and adapting to the situation.
We all know that as much we want it, the AI will never be perfect. That's where you, the MM steps in.
This wasn't in response to anybody in particular. I'm just blanket addressing the concerns I see most prevalent regarding the topic and I'm in no way referring to the melee pets.

I fully agree on the protector bot issue. It has no melee attack, and yet continuously I find myself hammering a Goto command on it to keep it from being obliterated. That's if I can get the command in on time in between healing myself/teammates/minons and any buffing that needs to be done.
The protector bot is a rogue that has no place in a strictly disciplined and regimented squad of (supposedly) mindless automatons. If it weren't for the loss of firepower I'd only summon it to bubble up the squad and summarily dismiss it between every third spawn. Even then, the contribution of extra firepower is usually eclipsed by it's relentless need to be constantly micromanaged against suicidal and detrimental tactics.
I would as well like to see this fixed, and though I have no idea how difficult it is to code the AI, however it would seem to me that a 'do not engage in melee' flag would not be that hard to implement. Here's hoping I guess.