Keeping your pets close to you

Is there any way to get pets to actually stay next to you, even while attacking? Im running mercenaries and although they have guns they have this habit of running up to anything they're attacking and punching it.

Im using the "petcom_all stay aggressive" meaning that they will stay put while attacking anything within range, yet they still tend to wonder off. Ive looked at several guides, and have yet to find anything that can give me the degree of control Im looking for. I want my pets to stay by my side while attacking, I want them rooted to the ground like a turret.

I was just wondering if maybe there is some secret keybind of macro that I dont know about that wont let my pets go more than 10 feet from me or something, if anyone has any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

Afraid not.

There is still some debate on whether this is a feature thats WAI or is rather a bug in the AI.

The basic rundown is that it comes down to recharge. Your pets will try to use whatever attack is avail. first. For the ranged pets it's usually a ranged attack. However, while they await a power to recharge they will close to melee to use brawl.

To most of us, this feels like a bug. But it's never been acknowledged as such by the Dev's which leads some to believe it's a balance measure put in place to keep us from being OP'd.

Alas, aside from rocking the passive/attack macros there isn't a known workaround.

Really makes playing my Bots/Storm a pain...


As an aside. It seemed that this 'bug' got flipped around the time Demon's came out. Before then it was the melee pets that would get stuck cycling their one and only weak ranged attack. Making my Grave Knights stay at range and pew pew instead of pulling the sword. Was very aggravating.
Since GR though, it's the other way around. Go figure.

Well, that cleared things up a bit, guess Ill have to keep using the macros for the time being, but thanks for explaining it.

I bind the ` key to "Petcomall pass" making it easy for me to recall my pets. I find that locationally directing my pets, rather than telling them specifically who to attack tends to keep them better organized, and less likely to charge.

And with mercenaries you will notice that it's normally the "medic" that runs in and get himself killed, very annoying.

I'm guessing some of his powers have long recharges and is also why I named my medic Suicidal Sam.

I'll point out that the 'AI' seemingly took a turn for the worse a couple issues back..

When I first started my Bot MM I had no real issues with them closing in for melee, unless the mobs came into melee range first..

But now they run into melee range all the freaking time, its quite annoying.

I pretty much use BG mode all of the time due to my aggressive nature in how I play my Bots/traps, but I was just thinking making individual defensive mode binds for each pet might be a quick and dirty fix for this. It's by no means perfect since the pet would stop attacking and start running back to you versus just attacking from a distance, but at least it would alter it's current AI path.

Use goto often, but still allow time for them resume attack. There is a delay when switching stances ie: agg, def, pas. They also don't respond to goto right away a lot of times. They are most responsive to passive. I usually like the bodyguard mod when I need goto, so I recommend def mode.

I like: bind mbutton "petcomall goto def"
(limited mouse buttons)