Disengagement Attacks....dont always trigger?

[Torm51]

Hey guys.  I noticed that in my last run sometimes I would be engaging an enemy and he would break off to fight my wizard or priest and my character would start chasing him but get ZERO disengagement attacks.  Has this happened to anyone?  My character did at times get disengagement attacks but he doesn't always.  This was during 2.2 and before.  Have not done a play through on 2.3 yet.

[mosspit]

Not particularly. The character will automatically stop engaging enemies when they are prepping for a skill or in the activation animation. Although sometimes I notice that this happens momentarily even through just normal attacking, which can prompt enemies to move away from your characters without triggering disengagement attacks. Tbh, the engagement system has a certain unpredictability aspect to it.

[Torm51]

Ya maybe I was hitting Flames of Devotion or something?  So If I activate a MELEE ability I will lose engagement?

[mosspit]

I believe so. If you activate skills like Knockdown, I think you should see that the engagement line will momentarily disappear during the activation animation. No engagement lines means no disengagement attacks most likely.

[Achilles]

Many status effects (stun, paralyze, etc) will break engagement. Also, some classes (and enemy types) have abilities that allow them to ignore engagement. Lastly, a disengagement attack isn't a guaranteed hit. If the enemy successfully rolled the defense the floating text might not show.

 

i hope this helps.

[Torm51]

Many status effects (stun, paralyze, etc) will break engagement. Also, some classes (and enemy types) have abilities that allow them to ignore engagement. Lastly, a disengagement attack isn't a guaranteed hit. If the enemy successfully rolled the defense the floating text might not show.

 

i hope this helps.

I appreciate the help guys.  I hope I am not sounding ****y/smug when saying I understand status effects and abilities that negate disengagement attacks.   ive put about 700 hours into the game according to steam. The disengagement attack while this guy is actively running away from me is not firing off.  I am not CCed at all my guy is literally chasing the dude and stutter stepping because hes trying to melee but the guy is running away and no disengagement attacks are firing off.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Torm51

[Torm51]

I believe so. If you activate skills like Knockdown, I think you should see that the engagement line will momentarily disappear during the activation animation. No engagement lines means no disengagement attacks most likely.

Maybe it was this but afterwards I stopped tyring to FoD and still was not getting any disengagement attacks while chasing.

[Achilles]

Possible that the guy is a barbarian or a rogue? If so, see second sentence in my previous post.

[mosspit]

 

I believe so. If you activate skills like Knockdown, I think you should see that the engagement line will momentarily disappear during the activation animation. No engagement lines means no disengagement attacks most likely.

Maybe it was this but afterwards I stopped tyring to FoD and still was not getting any disengagement attacks while chasing.

 

How about this? If you notice after the momentary disappearance of the engagement line or whatnot, you have to land a melee hit to get the engagement line to appear again. That might be the reason why it is difficult to get disengagement attacks while chasing.

 

For recent playthroughs, I play with melee heavy or all-melee parties and this observation becomes even more obvious for me. The converse is true as well. Sometimes I can get a melee character to run circles around another melee enemy (who is obviously focused on the character who is running around) and you won't trigger disengagement attacks. Btw the running circles isn't intentional... blame it on bad pathing

 

Edit: Btw for the converse scenario, take the "sometimes" very literally and with a grain of salt. Enemies on the whole are quite decent at shutting down characters they are chasing. And enemies, especially teleporting ones, can break the enagagement screnario in which they need to land a hit first. Shadows, for example, can insta engage with your character immediately after teleporting and cause disengagement attacks. I might even say that disengagement system is asymmetrically applied between the character party and AI.

Edited December 2, 2015 by mosspit

[Torm51]

 

 

I believe so. If you activate skills like Knockdown, I think you should see that the engagement line will momentarily disappear during the activation animation. No engagement lines means no disengagement attacks most likely.

Maybe it was this but afterwards I stopped tyring to FoD and still was not getting any disengagement attacks while chasing.

 

How about this? If you notice after the momentary disappearance of the engagement line or whatnot, you have to land a melee hit to get the engagement line to appear again. That might be the reason why it is difficult to get disengagement attacks while chasing.

 

For recent playthroughs, I play with melee heavy or all-melee parties and this observation becomes even more obvious for me. The converse is true as well. Sometimes I can get a melee character to run circles around another melee enemy (who is obviously focused on the character who is running around) and you won't trigger disengagement attacks. Btw the running circles isn't intentional... blame it on bad pathing

 

Edit: Btw for the converse scenario, take the "sometimes" very literally and with a grain of salt. Enemies on the whole are quite decent at shutting down characters they are chasing. And enemies, especially teleporting ones, can break the enagagement screnario in which they need to land a hit first. Shadows, for example, can insta engage with your character immediately after teleporting and cause disengagement attacks. I might even say that disengagement system is asymmetrically applied between the character party and AI.

 

I think we have found the reason lol

[Boeroer]

Are you sure about hitting? I think you don't have to land a hit to trigger engangement. For example: a fighter with 5 engangement slots (1 + 2 Defender + 1 guarding weapons + 1 Hold the Line) will engange the enemy that he directly targets first and then the other 4 arrows will appear automatically - enganging nearby enemies. You don't have to hit them all to engange them.

 

If you can't engage while constantly stepping onto the heels of a fleeing enemy then I'd say that's a bug and not intended behaviour. I also didn't experience that a lot. But I have to admit I didn't pay a lot of attention to my own disengagement attacks lately. Maybe I will do a test today with a fighter, a reach weapon and 4 or 5 engangement slots and see if the system is totally screwed up.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Boeroer

[mosspit]

No I am not completely sure. That's why I replied conservatively with probability terms. But I did do some 1-on-1 testing before I posted the fact. What I didn't test was the case of multiple engagement slots.

 

There is definitely some flakiness in the engagement system. That's why Torm's question interested me as I experienced something similar to what was described. The flakiness of the engagement system and limitation of user end observation makes describing the situation kinda difficult and it is also not easy to reproduce the same engagement situations.

[Boeroer]

That's absolutely right. And you'll never know what the game is doing "under the hood" while you test that things. Some console command to trigger some debug output would be nice.