Revert the fleeing AI.

[Delvonshi]

I rarely post. I agree with most changes to this game. But the new AI is awful. Not in a "I can't seem to adapt so lets get mad way" but in a "lets cause lots of bugs with bosses and make tedium the new normal".

Case in point, I'm salty. I lost a writhing one to the final bosses because multiple engagement options aren't stronger than spamming teleport. Should my damage have been higher? Maybe. The point was I could survive and kill both of them if I could stick to them longer than 5 turns. Problem is they are immune to most of those options and phase door/teleport ignore the rest. Regardless thats more of a git gud situation than anything, I'll know to get lots of burst for the new fight.

Here is a different example that happened directly after losing the writhing one. Godfeaster bugged to hell and back. Wraithform on brain combined with fleeing AI means he dives into the wall. That is all fine and dandy until he doesn't come back. I go hunting for him and find him one tile inside the wall. Not sure if he is stuck or not but after fighting him for thousands of turns (osmosis shield + wall tile making the herald of oblivion ignore him) I just suicided and gave up.

Please just change the fleeing AI somehow. It is NOT fun. It is tedious and leads to situations like these. If you just WILL not change it then you are going to have to give us someway to shut down phase door and teleport. And then it will just be the spellhunt remnants all over again. Find this counter and hold onto it until you win. (I like the spellhunt swap change that was compensated the new rune and manaclash buff.)

Take it as a rant or take it a another person asking for the change. Thanks.

[anonymous000]

I agree. The escape AI is supposed to (1) make the fight more challenging (2) make the fight more fun. Unfortunately it fails on both objectives.

Enemy who are fleeing are actually losing, and that's why they flee. Even if they make a come back, they are still in a losing position. So fleeing does not alter the winning or losing chance, it only lengthens the battle and making the fight less fun.

However, having the enemy tactically position itself is another story

[ZyZ]

Enemy who are fleeing are actually losing, and that's why they flee. Even if they make a come back, they are still in a losing position. So fleeing does not alter the winning or losing chance, it only lengthens the battle and making the fight less fun.

That is true only when you fight one strong mob, When there are multiple rare+ mobs you can't really chase your main target and often they make a successful comeback.

It's better to have "smarter" mobs than cheating mobs (more life, more damage, bigger talent multiplier etc)

[Stormfox]

I have to agree with the OP. The fleeing AI has been obnoxious with Master and other Liches and Banshees before, but it has become worse instead of better, and it only frustrates, prolongs and annoys. There is almost no counterplay to mobs that have (often multiple or permanent) teleport and/or wallwalking options as well as some kind of healing power. You have to try again and again until you get a lucky crit or two in a row, and almost all the time, this does not raise difficulty, just tedium (and most of the bosses in question are already relatively powerful anyways).

[Delvonshi]

Another character lost to this madness at the last boss. A sun paladin capable of two shotting stair bosses was kited to death despite having blink, light walk, and hunts. Soon as I got one to half they teleport away and I'm locked inside earth walls until they heal. Just give us an item to tether at this point. This is ridiculous. I brought the burst this time but apparently I also need over three ways (two on 12cd or less) to engage these bosses on nightmare. I refuse to play your botched idea of melee until you figure this out. You can check and see that up until this point I've done just fine in nightmare.

Fun Fact: You can make a game harder without making it annoying. Remember, mechanics that have no true counterplay are poor game design.

[darkgod]

Fleeing should be disabled on randbosses; but it seems there is a bug that sometimes make it not so, should be fixed for 1.6.2

[Qetuth]

Still on my first 1.6 char, getting back into the game on normal difficulty after a hiatus, and I love many of the changes. But I've noticed even on normal there are some bosses which the new AI is fine for, and others for which it just makes the game needlessly frustrating.

I don't think the intended use of "track" is to know which direction to dig 8 squares for a ghost boss which fled to a corner of the map on a sliver of life and doesn't seem to be coming back, but I'm glad having it on my light source saved me needing to dig out an entire map.

It is also rather disheartening to have prepared what seems to be the perfect counter to a repeat fugitive's escape tactic only for them to ignore the game rules as I understand them - if players could do the things some zone bosses have been doing no-one would ever die.

I want more light radius and detect invis than ever not because unseen enemies are the slightest danger to me, but to save me the time wondering if they're dead or hiding again when they disappear but no death line appears in the chat log.

The problem (at least on normal) is with a minority of bosses. Examples I've encountered this run are the Mummy or Telos, and of course bosses of sand levels. And I'm not looking forward to the final fight. For less exotic bosses the AI seems to be working as intended and can make things more interesting/challenging.

[Delvonshi]

Thank you Darkgod. That should help tremendously. I will point out both my issues happened with Fixedbosses and not randbosses. First being the Godfeaster brain and the second being extremely low cooldown teleport spam in the duo endboss fight combined with the archmage earth wall. With all the immunities they have we are forced to get ridiculous amount of mobility when the entire rest of the game doesn't require it. Requiring mobility is good but if I'm blowing 3+ skills just to keep up with spammable teleport there is an issue. Specifically, I don't have problems with them having mobility, it is fun to try to counterplay but the cooldown on it is the issue. I'm not sure if you matched it to the phase door/teleport rune or ability but it is simply too short and punishes melee more than they already are. The only melee it didn't matter on was the poison rogue and thats because when he teleported he already had too many dots stacked he was doomed from the get go. Ranged don't suffer from the issue because you just position in the center and it doesn't matter where they go they are still in range.

What I'm saying is to take a look at the teleport spam. I want the final fight be difficult and not always winnable but at the moment it just feels like "If I had chosen ranged this would be a cakewalk." At the current time I feel like we have three options. Increase the cooldown on their strong mobility by a fair bit. Reduce their ability to heal (because when they teleport away it doesn't matter if you are countering their healing, they will get enough turns to shrug it off.) Or give us a tool that works to prevent them from teleporting. I really don't want the last one because, as previously posted, its just spellhunts with a different name.

Thanks for all you do. I still enjoy the game... and maybe it is just a skill issue on my part and I need to get over it but I never ran into these issues on melee in 1.5.

[darkgod]

1.6.3 will apply a global reducing of the want to flee for any tactical npc; until a better way can be devised

[Delvonshi]

That sounds great. To be fair, teleporting/phase door is fine. You just need to fine tune how often they can do it. Not sure how hard it would be to make monster's versions have a significantly higher cooldown. This way an enemy would teleport away once, maybe twice unless you rest before pursuing it. This creates an option of whether or not you want to track said monster down depending on how many resources you've used. This also stops the teleport spam in the final fight. It is perfectly ok for them to teleport away when damaged to recouperate... just not every 10-15 turns. This would also significantly reduce the tedium that comes with Vor Pride and fire/ice orc mages.

Worst case scenario would be to take the cooldowns away and give them charges. This allows you to fine tune fixedbosses to be squirmy in smaller areas. Player builds that are able to fight teleporting mobs easily won't notice a difference and melee will have the option to exhaust that defensive option.

Thats my two cents on fixing the issue. Best of luck figuring it out!