Hireling Feedback

[Tolero]

Changes have been made to improve hireling behavior (especially to help with things like overly battle-cleric hirelings). Let us know about your experiences with the improved hirelings! In particular

• Include the name of the hireling
• Was it a gold seal hireling?
• Did you notice better (or worse) behavior?
• If you experienced any abnormal hireling behavior please indicate what the behavior was and what quest you were in! (If possible, what area of the quest you were in can be helpful)

[Dylos_Moon]

Tolero, do any wizard hirelings now possess the Pale Master PrE?

[Sarr]

Korthos Island's hireling cleric, Dryad Willowisp, seems to have difficulties with defending herself in the default, defensive mode.
She heals nicely to me, but sometimes insists on healing the wounds she takes rather than fighting back not to get more .

[Horrorscope]

Used clerics Marissa and Samuel and Wizard KZurth.

The biggest thing you will notice is they are much more offensive with spells. I believe the clerics were using Wands of Searing Light and they were raking up some kills doing so. Typically if I play a quest with a hench out of 50 kills I could get 45 and they'd have 5. Tonight it would be like 30-35 to 20-15. That is quite a bit more punch, there are out doing something. Felt really good and put a smile to my face.

KZurth's offense went up by a noticeable bit as well.

Before:
KZurth
Fireball
Haste
Enervation
Phant Killer

Now:
Haste
Wall of Fire
Enervation
Frost Lance


1. I can now hotkey and use Passive, I cannot do this on live.

2. A player who clicks a henchies powers still isn't as precise as I would like. I would say it was hard to notice a difference. I really think it needs to be a near top priority for henchies, you click it, they do it.

3. The Defend/Agressive seemed to work better, the clerics wouldn't use their weapons on Defend.

4. Pathing might have been a little better.



Still would like to see a Halt and Teleport for tricky parts.


So far looking pretty good.

[Horrorscope]

Some more basic testing. The hirelings are pathing better, how much? All quests? That is really hard to say, but they are pathing better and are not getting stuck behind nearly as much. Certain places I play on live they get stuck every time and in test they almost never do at those places. And if they are really stuck they seem to react quicker to do something different to get to you or just flat out teleport, great. I still just rather see clicking the feet means a true teleport to me, but it does seem better on test. I still have to test traps and lava, etc.

The most intriguing part and it's not really test as this happens on both servers and I believe this has been a very common Hireling complaint. It's their special powers 7-10. If you want them to do that power on demand they are very unresponsive, you click the power and nothing happens. Frustrating.

What I think I have found is that firing off a spell and then targeting again right after (select nearest) trips something in the code to tell them to "get on it and do it". To make mention, I do have a baddie targeted prior to firing off a spell of theirs, its not because nothing is targeted. But simply re-targeting after I press a spell it hugely increases the chance that they will fire off the spell as you ask them to1.

Attack/Defense and Passive doesn't matter much, the later two are more successful in general as it keeps them out of being attacked by enemies more. One thing that will still stop them from carrying out your orders is if they are being beaten on and that makes sense. Currently I feel the best all around setting is Defend and with the addition of offensive wands to say Clerics on Test, you are getting some nice secondary damage support from them, even in defend. This isn't a one mode fits all, I still switch up some between their stances.

I have made a macro that I will list, which I believe takes it from 30% success to near 90%. I feel simply pressing Power 7 on offensive powers has a very low chance of actually firing off, I can't get all the way to 100% fire and forget, which I would really love to see. But this is the best I can come up with right now to make them really work for you, my guess is many would be happy to see 90% on one command.

(My hope is that a dev can see this and make it so a macro isn't needed)

The macro I use that really makes this much more reliable:
1. Nearest Target
2. Skill Power (7 for ex using Firewall)
3. Next Target
4. Nearest Target
5. Skill Power (7 for ex again Firewall)

Steps 2-4 are the meat and potatoes and takes what I say is 33% success up to 80% success. Steps 1 and 5, just seem to reiterate to the hireling, I'm serious and I want what I say to fire. That helps around another 10%, so we are at 90%. The other 10% is why it would be nice to really program this as a fire and forget.

This macro works as good live as it does on test server.

The biggest issue is to quickly refresh target after the skill is selected. Just pressing power 7 without asking for a refresh on the target, just doesn't excite the hirelings to react.

I can't tell you how much it adds to the player/hireling experience when you can actually press a key and it actually fires off their skill. I play a cleric and with this working and say playing a Wizard, I feel like a Cleric/Arcane caster, amazingly fun. I have the heals, the axe, and firewall and haste etc at my disposal. Pretty neato.

[Babumbalaboo]

I've heard higher level hirelings aren't quite as generous with their SP potion usage as they used to be. Is that true? Do the changes to their offensive casting make this even more poignant? For example, if I pick up a cleric hireling on the live servers who has Heal, Cure Serious Wounds Mass, and Cometfall, he will pretty much just run around meleeing mobs, casting the Heal spell on me whenever I take more than a few dozen points of damage. He will never use cometfall, and his usage of mass cure is seemingly random. He has unlimited spell points because he keeps drinking potions whenever he casts a few heals.

I wouldn't necessarily be displeased if they decided to stop giving the hirelings so many potions, but that was their saving grace. Since they were so stupid, they kind of needed unlimited spell points in order to offset the damage they could have prevented if their AI was better. If the intelligence of hirelings was really improved to the point of them actually being a help rather than a hindrance with a deep wallet, I'll say bravo on that. If all they did was make my precious pocket clerics blow their mana on offensive spells and suddenly become stingy with their potions, I would think twice about being happy with the change.

On another note, why does it matter whether it's a gold seal hireling or not? I certainly hope the intelligence criteria isn't different, 'cause leaving the non-gold-seal ones stupid for the sake of leaving them stupid would be quite the greedy (albeit business-savvy) move.

[dogpig00]

do hirelings now have >0 concentration skill? currently if they are hit with melf's acid arrow, all their spells will be interrupted while the acid effect is active, even the acid does like 1 dmg.

[Horrorscope]

do hirelings now have >0 concentration skill? currently if they are hit with melf's acid arrow, all their spells will be interrupted while the acid effect is active, even the acid does like 1 dmg.

I think it's the same, I can test. Yes it's pretty bad, because you put any heat on them and they can't respond to you, other then perhaps move. The did tame potions, so perhaps they are a bit more responsive to direct orders not sucking on them non-stop sometimes.

[Horrorscope]

I ran the Fire Caves and Flare the Hireling, he would run through the lava but almost always stop on a rock. Better.

Pathing is a bit better.

When they get caught usually a click on the FEET and they come to you in a bout 2 seconds, this is responding much quicker then before it seems.

Off to Proof is in the Poison.

Whopping total of 6 people on test. We need more testers!

[yohoia]

How do you make macros in DDO. I would love to learn that since I have tremendous trouble getting the henchies to do what I tell them to do.

I have made a macro that I will list, which I believe takes it from 30% success to near 90%. I feel simply pressing Power 7 on offensive powers has a very low chance of actually firing off, I can't get all the way to 100% fire and forget, which I would really love to see. But this is the best I can come up with right now to make them really work for you, my guess is many would be happy to see 90% on one command.

(My hope is that a dev can see this and make it so a macro isn't needed)

The macro I use that really makes this much more reliable:
1. Nearest Target
2. Skill Power (7 for ex using Firewall)
3. Next Target
4. Nearest Target
5. Skill Power (7 for ex again Firewall)

.

[Horrorscope]

How do you make macros in DDO. I would love to learn that since I have tremendous trouble getting the henchies to do what I tell them to do.

I use a Nostromo. But there are Macro Keyboards as well, like a Logitech G19.

[TechNoFear]

Good job on the new cleric AI!

Using Ironhorse (18 clr) I could tell him to stay in a safe spot and he would heal and cast Searing Light (without running into combat anymore). Just what I wanted him to do. Makes hireling clerics SO much better.

Had a small issue with the new Kobolds quest. Ironhorse was too scared to follow me thru the barrier at the end until I ran all the way across to the other side (he seemed sure there was another way round..).