Castle, explain THIS running mob. Nosferatu is a wuss.

Nosferatu has always had a running problem. A few years back I was trying to solo him on my Rad/Traps Corruptor in the Mender Lazarus arc. The moment he got hit by my Acid Mortar he took off and ran all the way across the map.

Impromptu half-marathons by mobs has been steadily annoying me more and more over recent issues. There's been a definite change over the years I've been playing, but I couldn't say for certain when and where it occurred.

If we're on the subject of mob AI, then there was a change an issue or so ago which made certain groups significantly easier to deal with.

Mainly, Carnies and Council/5th Column/Council Empire.

Is used to be that Carnie Attendants and Jugglers would stand at range and throw things at you and Marksmem/Riflemen would stay at range and shoot, forever. To deal with these mobs as a melee toon, you had to either move to them all individually, or find a piece of geometry to use to break LoS and force them to close on you.

Now, if I take my Stone/Fire scranker into a Carnie mission, I can lumber into a spawn, Taunt the one next door, and then just stand there and burn things, and as the number of mobs around me is reduced, the ones still at range start to run into melee. The same works with Council marksmen, but not Nemesis snipers.

Yes, I've reported this. I also keep reporting my own bet bugbear.

Mastermind pet AI. Specifically the Robotics pet AI, which INSISTS on running into melee range to fire a ranged attack, thus annoying the living wossname out of me, since I'm Bots/Traps/Mace and fully capable of keeping things at range through the application of Webs and caltrops.

Bots used to have an AI that was slightly screwy, but on the most part they'd stay at range and shoot. Not any more, and not for several issues now. It doesn't matter what orders I've got them on. They run into melee, and the only reliable way I've got to get them out of melee is Follow/Passive, any other order set leads to the pets going all over the place.

Apologies, I seem to have diverged from the point of the thread somewhat.

No offense to Leandro, but I like watching it like this.

http://bennyhillifier.com/?id=BkNjnVF8lCs

There is clearly some weird glitch in the running AI that wasn't there before.

Since GR I've had mobs that ran so far that:

They completely unaggroed
Their targeting reticles cancelled
They ran, then came sort of close, then ran again

Sometimes there were mobs that were required objectives, leading to huge map searches only to go back to a place I'd checked before and find that deaggroed mob.

They do it much more often and with greater distance.

But the thing that proved to me it was not WAI was when they did this to my defender with attacks not even slotted, solo, not using debuff anchors. The situation did not fit any of the criteria Castle posted. It was more like the polar opposite.

Level 2x Storm Elec
2 lightning blasts (unslotted)
Ball Lightning (1 recharge/acc/endurance IO)
Hurricane (which did not even hit the mob that ran)
Snow Storm not used, not sure if that mob took Freezing Rain

The spawn was either 1 lt 1 minion or 3 minions, and one of them went into a LONG run mode.

I wondered if it was leashing that had mucked something up.

Also: leashing is still a bad idea in CoH/V.

A friend and I were leveling two MM's together a while back. Robot/Storm (me) and Robot/Pain. We made Scrapyard run from us. That's right, a Giant Monster. He ran all over the place only a few seconds after we engaged. We eventually gave up. We didn't have the damage output at level 30 (that's right, 30) to kill him, and he didn't seem to want to stand still and let us try anyway.

I agree with Leandro, there is something seriously wrong with the run away code.

Mobs often run around wildly if you are on a different height level to them. In this case, could it be that Nos was trying to reach his buddy The Centre, but due to the unique composition of the map locking The Centre out of harm's way Nos went crazy as commands to find how to get into the enclosed space drove him haywire?

Mobs often run to higher ground, a corner or some vaguely useful piece of terrain from which they can counter-attack. Maybe Nos really badly wanted to find a way to his boss.

Alternatively, maybe some fleeing waypoint exists on the map that no longer connects with the actual map geometry, causing him to dart about trying to find a way physically out of the map.

The AI has always been a bit buggy, a sprinting Romulus Augustus in practically a free range map is highly annoying. I know going in, looking at the code to pinpoint wtf is exactly wrong would make me go "jesus ****..."

Castle, is it possible that debuffs may be generating too much morale loss? Perhaps someone moved the decimal (would not be the first time somehting like this happened, after all). Debuffs, especially -res and -regen debuffs seem to cause highly disproportionate running in mobs, even if the debuff values are minimal (such as a widow's/fort's dart attacks).

Geez, you guys. If you'd just seen some dude take out Burkholder, Maestro and Vandal, you'd run away, too!

I clicked the link ... heard the voice over.... and.... what were we talking about again ?

**Damien**

Enemies NEVER run from me.

I feel decidedly less awesome. I'm gonna go cry now =(