Healing hirelings are borked

[thandros]

When set on Defensive they no long will cast remove curse on you or themselves and will not heal you unless manually told to. What they will Do is run half way across the map to melee any monster that is agroed on you. Even if you call them back they will run back. Only way to avoid this is to Set them on passive. Also when cursed now they will drain there mans trying to casts heals that won't land. Basically Cleric and Favored souls hireling now seem to prioritize Melee combat over Everything else. I liked it better when cleric Actuary healed you and Used wands on ememys rather then charging them like barbarians and dying fast.

[somenewnoob]

We need a "heal only" mode for cleric and fvs hirelings. Plain and simple. That would solve 99% of the problems.

I don't have much faith that they will ever get hireling AI right. With every "improvement" it seems to get a little bit worse.

[thwart]

When set on Defensive they no long will cast remove curse on you or themselves and will not heal you unless manually told to. What they will Do is run half way across the map to melee any monster that is agroed on you. Even if you call them back they will run back. Only way to avoid this is to Set them on passive. Also when cursed now they will drain there mans trying to casts heals that won't land. Basically Cleric and Favored souls hireling now seem to prioritize Melee combat over Everything else. I liked it better when cleric Actuary healed you and Used wands on ememys rather then charging them like barbarians and dying fast.

This is a real problem, especially for solo players. I had a cleric hireling insist on attacking monsters that he could only reach by running through a fire trap. I would call him back and he would immediately run back through the fire trap. Oi vey!

[PestWulf]

I love Major Mal. I really do. But I simply do not understand how this hireling patch passed even the simplest of tests.

They heal on offense, not defense.

Defense will cause them to attack mobs that you have never seen or aggro'd. You can ZONE IN, not move and just start buffing your party and as soon as you summon the hireling he comes in on defensive and runs off down hallways, around corners and into rooms to go shoot something.

You put them on stay, they will charge forward into a fight if they see a mob and then they won't reset, instead, they re-execute their stay command within a few feet of you.

They will now really help you in combat against undead. They will chain cast heal until they are out of mana....

There is now a really groovie queue ability, that puts a flashing border around the hireling button you pressed, but as long as they have other things to heal...dogs, npcs, a clump of dirt....they will chain heal that and ignore any "queued" command. When they are done with the dogs, they have already forgotten the command. The only way to stop this and get a team mate or yourself a heal is to switch them to completely passive and manually do it.

They now follow us MORE CLOSELY!!! How did this even require an IMPROVEMENT??? The hirelings only had two real issues previously. They didn't need to "melee more" or "stick closer". Melee hirelings may have needed hp and damage upgrades, but no behavior modifications that I've ever seen, and I do use them. Healing hirelings are the ones with issues, The problems they had was that when you told them to do something, they would not queue it. They would interrupt what they were doing, and try to do your command at the same time causing nothing to happen. You would try it again but there was a chance it would try to do something and they'd cancel out again.

The second problem they had and is no concentration. Seriously...it's like Negative or something. A single point from a glancing blow is enough to stop their ability to heal.

So attempting to fix one of these issues and failing, and then not even bothering to fix their concentration issue...it was decided that they needed to be closer to the combat??

I just don't get it. Major, can you please explain what happened? Surely this isn't the code and behavior you tested. This is like an accident right? Someone loaded the wrong code on patch day?

I just don't understand any of this could have been missed with even the simplest of tests...like just trying to use one.

I know you have a rough job and I like your renewed efforts to communicate in the face of constant angst posts, and I feel bad about pulling out the anger card here. But this is seriously screwed up to the point that I just plain don't understand how it could happen.

EDIT: Actually, it's not even anger. It's mystified, confused depression.

Thanks.

[LOOON375]

Put them on passive and park them away from the fight. Then run back and tell them to heal you when necessary.

Some are worse than others for sure.

[madmaxhunter]

Put them on passive and park them away from the fight. Then run back and tell them to heal you when necessary.

Some are worse than others for sure.

If the fight is over, you might as well just use pots. If you're at 25 percent health and high-tailing it, you are being chased by trash that the healer will decide is more important to play with than tending to you.

[GoRinNoSho]

IMO roll back to 2 updates ago before 1. their overall behavior changed and 2. their tether doubled in size. That way if you can consistently measure how far they need to be from combat, and if you get in trouble you can run back and they will autoheal you.

[Zraeyl]

I love Major Mal. I really do. But I simply do not understand how this hireling patch passed even the simplest of tests.

< snip: Very well worded statement of the problem with recent "improvements" to hirelings>

I just don't get it. Major, can you please explain what happened? Surely this isn't the code and behavior you tested. This is like an accident right? Someone loaded the wrong code on patch day?

I just don't understand any of this could have been missed with even the simplest of tests...like just trying to use one.

I know you have a rough job and I like your renewed efforts to communicate in the face of constant angst posts, and I feel bad about pulling out the anger card here. But this is seriously screwed up to the point that I just plain don't understand how it could happen.

EDIT: Actually, it's not even anger. It's mystified, confused depression.

Thanks.

Having a healer hireling in your group is now very much like being in a bad-pug simulator.... zone in, gather for buffs, watch healer zone in then immediately run off around the corner and start pounding on mobs (while standing in a trap/fire/blades/fog), thus getting themselves killed... zone out, heave a heavy sigh.

Please un-"improve" the hirelings. As stated above, I also don't understand how this update passed QA. While hirelings may have needed a little tweaking prior to recent updates, at least they were useful and mostly fun to have around. Currently, they range from really annoying to basically useless.

Thanks in advance.

[Fensen]

My healing hireling wishlist:
1. Never ever attack.
2. Never ever attack.
3. Heal me without needing a command to do so.
4. Passive means passive (see numbers 1 and 2).
5. When told to stand still, don't move.
6. Respond to commands when given.
7. Never ever attack.

Oh, and how do they see around corners to know the mobs are there? That is a nice trick. (I'm looking at you, Tempys Lorben.)