Arcane Dampener and party AI

[mrscojangles]

Ran into a bit of an annoying situation today with the AI behavior and I'm trying to figure out if anyone else has found a way around it. The situation is as follows:

 

I have my monk set up to autocast Lightning Strikes when he doesn't have a Dexterity inspiration and to autocast Thunderous Blows when he has 2+ wounds and doesn't have a might inspiration. Ran across an area with enemies that cast arcane dampener pretty regularly and whenever my monk gets arcane dampener on him, it appears he's blowing through all of his mortification in like 2 seconds trying to cast Lightning Strikes 10 times in a row, but it doesn't stick due to the dampener - or at least thats what I think is happening as thats the only mortification ability I have on autocast and he's dropping to 0 mortification before i even see what happened.

 

The question is, is there anything within the AI options that I could set to account for Arcane Dampener or is my best option just to pray i notice it and am able to turn off the AI immediately before he dumps all mortification? I'm guessing this issue would apply to any other setup with autocast buffs that dampener is suppressing as well, but my monk is the only one I have set up with that sort of auto casting and I haven't taken the time to test with other classes as of yet. Certainly not gamebreaking but its not exactly ideal to start a fight and go from 10 mortification to 0 in the first 10 seconds. 

[Yosharian]

Ran into a bit of an annoying situation today with the AI behavior and I'm trying to figure out if anyone else has found a way around it. The situation is as follows:

 

I have my monk set up to autocast Lightning Strikes when he doesn't have a Dexterity inspiration and to autocast Thunderous Blows when he has 2+ wounds and doesn't have a might inspiration. Ran across an area with enemies that cast arcane dampener pretty regularly and whenever my monk gets arcane dampener on him, it appears he's blowing through all of his mortification in like 2 seconds trying to cast Lightning Strikes 10 times in a row, but it doesn't stick due to the dampener - or at least thats what I think is happening as thats the only mortification ability I have on autocast and he's dropping to 0 mortification before i even see what happened.

 

The question is, is there anything within the AI options that I could set to account for Arcane Dampener or is my best option just to pray i notice it and am able to turn off the AI immediately before he dumps all mortification? I'm guessing this issue would apply to any other setup with autocast buffs that dampener is suppressing as well, but my monk is the only one I have set up with that sort of auto casting and I haven't taken the time to test with other classes as of yet. Certainly not gamebreaking but its not exactly ideal to start a fight and go from 10 mortification to 0 in the first 10 seconds. 

 

That's a pretty bad flaw in the AI system.  The game should automatically take into account being under such an effect, and not execute the command.  There's no way you should have to set up an actual rule to account for being under AD.

 

Realistically speaking, I think your best bet is just to turn AI off whenever you see an enemy casting this on you.

[The Sharmat]

Just turn the AI off. Short of a conditional specific to having arcane dampener it's not surprising that would happen.

[mrscojangles]

Kind of figured that was the only option but wasn't sure if i was overlooking some conditional that could account for suppressed buffs.

[wih]

What if you set a cooldown on that ability? Will it help?

[Yosharian]

Kind of figured that was the only option but wasn't sure if i was overlooking some conditional that could account for suppressed buffs.

 

I mean, the game being programmed correctly would do it

[mrscojangles]

What if you set a cooldown on that ability? Will it help?

 

Good call, thanks. I'd imagine that should do the trick to at least prevent him from dumping all his mortification before I even notice that arcane dampener is up. Might still burn a few if I'm half assing it and not paying any attention but definitely better than nothing.

[The Sharmat]

 

Kind of figured that was the only option but wasn't sure if i was overlooking some conditional that could account for suppressed buffs.

 

I mean, the game being programmed correctly would do it

 

Even more mandatory automation on top of the existing optional automation sounds like a sure way to frustration.

[Yosharian]

 

 

Kind of figured that was the only option but wasn't sure if i was overlooking some conditional that could account for suppressed buffs.

 

I mean, the game being programmed correctly would do it

 

Even more mandatory automation on top of the existing optional automation sounds like a sure way to frustration.

 

 

I'm not sure what you mean but essentially the game counting a suppressed effect as the effect not existing is piss-poor programming

[The Sharmat]

Start adding in hidden exceptions like that to the AI scripting and it'll become a nightmare pretty rapidly. Yeah it sounds good just this once but it'd be easy to go too far.

[Sanctuary]

 

Ran into a bit of an annoying situation today with the AI behavior and I'm trying to figure out if anyone else has found a way around it. The situation is as follows:

 

I have my monk set up to autocast Lightning Strikes when he doesn't have a Dexterity inspiration and to autocast Thunderous Blows when he has 2+ wounds and doesn't have a might inspiration. Ran across an area with enemies that cast arcane dampener pretty regularly and whenever my monk gets arcane dampener on him, it appears he's blowing through all of his mortification in like 2 seconds trying to cast Lightning Strikes 10 times in a row, but it doesn't stick due to the dampener - or at least thats what I think is happening as thats the only mortification ability I have on autocast and he's dropping to 0 mortification before i even see what happened.

 

The question is, is there anything within the AI options that I could set to account for Arcane Dampener or is my best option just to pray i notice it and am able to turn off the AI immediately before he dumps all mortification? I'm guessing this issue would apply to any other setup with autocast buffs that dampener is suppressing as well, but my monk is the only one I have set up with that sort of auto casting and I haven't taken the time to test with other classes as of yet. Certainly not gamebreaking but its not exactly ideal to start a fight and go from 10 mortification to 0 in the first 10 seconds. 

 

That's a pretty bad flaw in the AI system.  The game should automatically take into account being under such an effect, and not execute the command.  There's no way you should have to set up an actual rule to account for being under AD.

 

Realistically speaking, I think your best bet is just to turn AI off whenever you see an enemy casting this on you.

 

 

The game should also have a routine that checks if you have ANY current buff up and not recast the same one ad nauseum until out of resources too, without having to mess with "If I have an inspiration" stuff...  It's such a basic feature, yet not yet implemented.  Similarly with attacking targets at specified health levels.  Why are the only commands you can give purely skills?

 

I haven't run into the issue yet with enemies casting AD, yet it was something I definitely was not looking forward to.  Right now, many of the buffs I'm using I've had to actually just set a cooldown timer for so that those that do not have the inspiration check are not spam cast into oblivion.  That works well enough as long as the buffs are not dispelled.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Sanctuary

[wih]

 

I'm not sure what you mean but essentially the game counting a suppressed effect as the effect not existing is piss-poor programming

 

So, the game says that the monk doesn't have a Dexterity Inspiration when in fact he does have this buff, only suppressed? That definitely sounds like an oversight.

 

On the other hand, I am curious if there are cases when we would want to know whether the monk is benefitting from Dexterity Inspiration? For such a question the answer should be YES if it is active and NO if it is suppressed.

Edited May 15, 2018 by wih

[Flucas]

It's especially lame because arcane dampener is OP as shate. All my chars have automatic buffing AI so i would have to control them all for like 30 seconds...

 

Arcane d should be area-limited.

[Erik Dirk]

 

I'm not sure what you mean but essentially the game counting a suppressed effect as the effect not existing is piss-poor programming

 

So, the game says that the monk doesn't have a Dexterity Inspiration when in fact he does have this buff, only suppressed? That definitely sounds like an oversight.

 

On the other hand, I am curious if there are cases when we would want to know whether the monk is benefitting from Dexterity Inspiration? For such a question the answer should be YES if it is active and NO if it is suppressed.

Fixing this could also fix the nalzpaca drug crash bug

[AeonsLegend]

I think the entire problem starts with calling it an AI. It is not. It is also working exactly as intended.

[mishona]

Start adding in hidden exceptions like that to the AI scripting and it'll become a nightmare pretty rapidly. Yeah it sounds good just this once but it'd be easy to go too far.

Actually, what you're asking for is the exception. You should still be flagged as having the buff even if it's suppressed. If you don't then they've gone and applied spaghetti magic to implement suppression. Easiest solution should be 'buff=true/false' and 'suppressed=true/false'. If not, then they've got some jenk stuff where suppresion actually removes the buff completely and reapplies it maybe at the end.

 

But right now it sounds as If it's set up to check "is the buff active?" rather than "does the buff exist?".

[the streaker]

That's why they have cooldowns on scripts. What simpler way is there that will work for all kinds of different quirky situations?

[Boeroer]

It's not properly done. If Arcane Dampener wouldn't suppress new cast buffs then fine. But it supresses everything while active. It's not really a bug that the AI tries to refresh the buffs, but it surely is annoying as hell. Game mechanics that are there to smoothen your game experience shouldn't turn out to be annoying as hell. It's neither in the interest of the developer nor in the customer's.

 

So either make the AI a tad smarter so that it can check if a buff would be supressed immediately or nerf Arcane Dampener so that newly cast buffs don't get suppressed.

Edited July 3, 2018 by Boeroer

[Zelse]

 make the AI a tad smarter so that it can check if a buff would be supressed immediately

i would very much prefer this solution