Saltmarsh Explorer Zone Enemy Activation

[Baahb3]

I have seen this in some quests, Old Tomb New Tenants in Three Barrel Cove comes to mind, where you have to basically walk up and slap the enemy before they are targetable (tab target).

But this new explorer zone is terrible for this. Besides the read names you nearly have to run over an enemy before it wakes up and you can tab target to it.

I mean if this is the way explorer zones are going to be, just stop making them. Save your time and money. Seriously, what is the point of ranged attacks if you have to run up and shake the enemy's hand before you can commence in battle?

[Phoenicis]

This has not been my experience in Saltmarsh.

With few exceptions I can place my cursor on a mob, fire off a ranged attack and have everything in the immediate area come try to eat my face.

More fun is run in a straight line until my wife laughs and says behind you, I stop, wait and fire off an AoE and wipe out a easy dozen mobs.

Not saying you don't have the problem, I just don't seem to have the same experience.

[DownClan]

This behavior happens in lots of quests, it's certainly not localized to Saltmarsh. I see it reliably happen in various specific spots, for example one another Keep on the Borderlands quest with goblins near the entrance, the goblins always start non-targetable, and then if you stealth up to them when they start rolling their Spot checks they become active and targetable.

If you are a ranged toon, you can line up and shoot at non-selectable opponents and they will typically get hit and wake up.

I kind of suspect it is a performance optimization where MOB's are flagged as being in a less-active state to reduce processing overhead.

[Aelonwy]

This bothers me as well. Ranged players are always told, well you have the best defense being so far away from the enemy. That's completely negated so frequently by enemies such as this that are invulnerable until you almost physically touch them.

On the other hand, my theory is this is some sort of lag prevention technique by having the enemies making no rolls until activated. And I'm really enjoying less lag.