Sabra Marie, Confusion, and AI

[Adul]

I'm playing through PoE for the first time, and I'm really enjoying it. I've first played it years ago, but never quite got to the end of the game. This time I have a 6 ranger custom party. Right now I'm doing the White March expansion, and so far it's been great.

 

I've recently found the unique bow "Sabra Marie", which is a very nice weapon, so I stuck an elemental lash enchantment on it and gave it to one of my rangers. But since I did that, I've been experiencing some very irritating behaviors during combat.

 

Here's the thing: Sabra Marie has an enchantment that confuses enemies on a critical hit. So during combat, enemies attacked by the character who wields it have a tendency to randomly become confused. That much is expected. However, I've noticed that when that happens, the confused enemy's selection circle sometimes changes to green, and since I'm using AI to direct most of the combat, my characters and pets stop attacking the confused enemy and go for someone else.

 

This often results in all sorts of unfortunate situations. For example, this just happened to me: all of my characters were attacking a large troll. My pets surrounded it, and my rangers attacked it with bows from afar. Suddenly, the troll becomes confused, and my characters stop attacking it. The pets run past the troll to start attacking the ranged xaurips in the back, and my rangers also move forward to attack the other enemies. But then the confusion wears off, and the troll is now in the middle of my ranger group, and starts wreaking havoc on my poor defenseless back line. And that's no good.

 

I'm not sure why the AI is programmed to stop attacking confused enemies. It's not like confused enemies are no longer a threat. They're just somewhat less of a threat, temporarily, until the confusion wears off, at which point they become a full threat once again.

 

I've looked through the in-game options to see if there's anything I could do to change this behavior, but I couldn't find anything. But maybe I missed it? Please let me know if I did.

 

The way it is, using Sabra Marie is more of a detriment to me than a benefit. If there's no other solution, I'm thinking of downloading a save game editor and try to remove the pesky enchantment that causes me all this grief, if that's indeed possible to do.

[Boeroer]

The only thing that you can do about it is hit pause once a target gets confused, mark all party members and force an attack on the confused enemy.

 

This is the reason why I seldomly use Sabra Marie and also the soulbound scepter (chance to dominate): the randomness can be more of a chore than a benefit.

[Torm51]

Get another bow there are other superior War Bows, check out the bounties from Cad Nua for one or look up Cloud Piercer it’s exceptional quality and really good, you can make it superior or like Boer said just deal with the Micro and have everyone re-attack the confused target.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Torm51

[Adul]

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, I'm using a bunch of other bows, including Cloudpiercer, on my various characters. My whole party is using bows in order for everyone to benefit from Twinned Arrows, so I'll take all the nice ones I can get my hands on. I might stick with Sabra Marie, as sometimes the confusion is actually somewhat helpful. We'll see.

 

How this game handles confusion just kind of annoys me. Wish it was like in BG, where confused enemies stayed hostile, and just started acting erratically. I think the game changing up their allegiance is messy and weird. That's my feedback for the devs, I guess, in case any of them is listening.

 

As I said, otherwise I'm really enjoying the game, and I think I'm starting to love it like some of those old Infinity games.

Edited February 27, 2018 by Adul

[Torm51]

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, I'm using a bunch of other bows, including Cloudpiercer, on my various characters. My whole party is using bows in order for everyone to benefit from Twinned Arrows, so I'll take all the nice ones I can get my hands on. I might stick with Sabra Marie, as sometimes the confusion is actually somewhat helpful. We'll see.

 

How this game handles confusion just kind of annoys me. Wish it was like in BG, where confused enemies stayed hostile, and just started acting erratically. I think the game changing up their allegiance is messy and weird. That's my feedback for the devs, I guess, in case any of them is listening.

 

As I said, otherwise I'm really enjoying the game, and I think I'm starting to love it like some of those old Infinity games.

Agree 100%

[Hulk'O'Saurus]

To be honest with OP, that sort of behaviour is good. If you want to benefit, though, you need to micromanage more, but it's not a bad situation. Perhaps you just didn't read the entry on confusion in the cyclopedia(not that I know there is one). If you use wizard's confusion, you'd get the same results but across more enemies. Can be quite devastating for them--them fighting each other and you doing damage on them. 

Edited February 28, 2018 by Hulk'O'Saurus

[Adul]

To make sure my point is clear, I don't actually have a problem with confusion itself, confused combatants should indeed do random actions and/or wander around aimlessly until their condition wears off. What I have a problem with is my party's AI, which just ignores confused enemies. Of course, there's a good argument to be made for AI treating confused targets as less of a threat than non-confused targets, but in my opinion it should definitely not treat them like they were neutral or friendly creatures, which currently seems to be the case.

[Mangamina]

I turn off my party's AI, so I don't ever have a problem with it, I end up changing what they were going to do anyway.  I do a lot of "luring" of the enemy into tight spaces and choke-points on the battlefield.  I hate it when they run off to attack before I want them to and the only way they know when to attack is to turn the AI off on each of them.  I do a lot of buffing before the actual fighting begins so the waiting for the enemies' arrival is not wasted (for example:  trashcan the wizard's Mesmerize spell and use the priest's 3rd level spell Dire Blessings (+20% criticals to all friendly AoE)  while everyone is tightly packed together awaiting the arrival of the enemies; etc.).  You have to learn to master the battlefield layout like real generals do to win the tough battles and what buffs/debuffs will work for you.