It is era accurate for casting mobs to not target you with spells until you have attacked them first. Mobs casting spells on you before you attacked wasn't implemented until Age of Shadows.
You are correct. Personally I think the mob AI here rocks, and is much more enjoyable than the default.
Monster AI here is good imo ... with the exception of the True Harrower teleporting your toon through walls
Super champ, aye I didn't even see the thing on screen and it tele'd me/insta-killed Thought it was cool until I figured out what happened heh
Just to be clear, this is not an era-accurate shard, but an era-perfected shard. The updated monster AI is a pain in the ass, but I welcome the change wholeheartedly. I did bitch and moan a bunch back in Beta about a lich teleporting after me, ghealing and res-killing the shit out of me. Live and learn, now I just see it as a good fight, even on my Naturalist char. I do not feel like the Harrower should be able to see/teleport you without LoS.
A slightly decreased chance of casting Gheal at low health would be nice, but overall I like the "improved" caster AI here.
The ability for a monster to recognize its in danger of death & "flee" will most likely be removed, which will address the situation where creatures using the mage_ai will often spam greater-heal. As it stands currently, a magical creature only has a 10% chance to cast any healing spells (heal, greater heal). However when they enter their flee state their priority shifts entirely to defense & will limit their magical abilities to healing & cure spells only, until they have restored enough hit points to no longer be in danger of dying.
Have you ever seen a monster with 400+ hp gheal themselves back up to 80% health in roughly a minute? If you let up off a powerful spell-caster for any amount of time at all, you have to kill it twice.
I understand the annoyance but I enjoy the challange. How do you think PKs feel about you healing up like that?
Apples and oranges. People are allowed to make themselves unkillable. Free will and all. Monsters in this game are meant to be killed. And while some of them are supposed to be challenging, there's a certain threshold of acceptable challenge that the gheal spam surpasses. For the same reason that monsters teleporting after players like pro PvPers was taken out, monsters ghealing themselves faster than a mage can do damage to them should be taken out.
This is generally my opinion on the topic directly, & while I do also agree with the statement & concept that monsters should be able to heal themselves & provide a challenge to defeat, (which is why the smart mage_ai is still in effect, even if that challenge is minimal for some players compared to others) the way the current "flee state" functions is simply not an effective means of accomplishing this, nor is it logical in regards to how this affects different classes & templates in a pvm setting. To provide an example, these are the current values for intelligence in which a lich & lich lord can spawn with to a min/max. Lich :: SetInt( 276, 305 ); SetSkill( SkillName.Magery, 70.1, 80.0 ); SetSkill( SkillName.Meditation, 85.1, 95.0 ); Lich Lord :: SetInt( 566, 655 ); SetSkill( SkillName.Magery, 90.1, 100.0 ); The problem with the current system is not so much the logic of their ability to heal, (it certainly makes sense that they should be able to do so) but more-so the fact that the speed & amount in which they can restore large portions of lost hit-points is simply too extreme for a bulk of the available & commonly used pvm templates. Realistically, once a highly skilled spell-caster begins to cast greater heal, the rate which they cast it (and spam it) effectively doubles the amount of time spent fighting it until it is actually killed. This in turn just adds further imbalance to the overall setup of how pvm templates are classed, mostly just adding another tally to the almighty animal-tamer class (which I do not want to continue tilting the scale towards being the all-around #1 class in all instances). Additionally, how this functions now makes it very difficult for a player to make use of any melee class template in pvm, even with a decent slayer weapon, you would be hard pressed to tackle a lich-lord without a moderate - high level of difficulty &/or time investment. I don't necessarily want to take away from monster survivability & make things simple & easily farmed or killed, however the mechanics in place now I cannot honestly say are accomplishing that task in a reasonable manner. I don't believe we've made any modifications to the ability for the mage_ai to cast the teleport spell, though it has been quite some time since we've specifically done any direct work on the mage_ai or any aspects of the AI in general, so I could simply be mistaken. Any spell-casting creature still has the potential to utilize the teleport spell, though the chances that they will do so are highly scaled towards if the conditions that match the criteria for when they would need to teleport, are met. Given the proper circumstances, any spell-caster can & will draw the teleport spell as its next spell & use it as a means of closing distance between its aggressor, as well as surpassing obstacles in it's way, or as a means to reach an otherwise unreachable location. It's possible you may be confusing this (somebody correct me if i'm wrong, I haven't had a chance yet to back-log patch notes & verify any teleport modifications towards the AI) with the changes made some time ago which reduced the intervals & speed at which the mage_ai can cast spells. The default values for this were incredibly high, and before the reduction anything which could use magic would cast spells at about double the speed that they do now. This (along with the greater heal spam) are default settings which are geared towards the AoS game-play settings.
Great post EZ! I do disagree with you on the whole melee build bit though. The way I see it, any pure template like pure dexxer shouldn't be greatly effective. It's when we use complex interactions between game play mechanics that gives players a true advantage in PvM. As for great PvM melee builds, my Peace-o-Jack pwns hard-core. I solo dragons and titans with that guy, although it takes a while. But I feel that having to invest a few minutes to take down a dragon is appropriate given that it only took me a few days to put the character together, only having macro'ed music and peace. He's still my favorite character to play. As for the heal spam that usually extends fights by maybe 30 seconds with the big guys. I just keep them peaced and they don't cast. The only time they get a heal off is when they break peace before the 10 second skill cooldown is done. With my pure mage I'm careful to get the target within kill range of a Weaken-Explosion-Flamestrike-Mindblast combo, then poison them and hit the combo. If they do get a spell off it'll be a cure. So TL;DR: Mage AI is awesome here, and melee builds are viable in PvM. Nerf tamers, allow bards to be useful in boss fights. Word.
Personally I love the challenge. My template is a poisoner/fencer/mage and I'm trying to solo high end creatures all the time. I try to do this more with melee creatures however I've given my shot with a phoenix. Result: healing 30% health from mid health to near-top health, teleportation, a melee hit, and a flame strike. All in 4 seconds. Now this will come ridiculous however, we're talking about a bloody phoenix. Same goes with a lich lord. These are vicious creatures, magically more capable then us (I would have thought a lich lord to be far more capable magically then a mere human, or a bird who's said to come back to life with magic if killed -despite this is not in game mechanics-) players and I don't see no reason why they should not be able to heal. However, I agree with Ezekiel on the fact that tamers, although yes they're controlling bloody dragons, should not be the ONLY class that can take down mobs. Bards are a different issue, since they're not ACTIVELY fighting the creatures. The way greater heal works I'm assuming is not set amount of health points, but a set amount of hp percentage, so if you have 1000 hp, a greater heal will cure between 300-400 hp. Maybe this can be looked at? by the way "qbradq" : I'm sorry to say but you're not a melee build, you're a bard who is capable of defending himself/herself with a weapon. You would be a melee build if your main means of survival were using weapons, but you primarily use an instrument, which makes you a bard. I(and probably anyone else) would assume a true melee build to be a build without taming/magery/music.
The amount of hit-points restored by the heal or greater heal spell is relative to nothing other than the users skill in magery. The problem itself lies mainly with the fact that most magical creatures, especially those which are of high-end difficulty, almost always have a large mana-pool at their disposal, easily double, triple, or even greater an amount than a single player could ever acquire. Monsters & players obey the same formulas for spells, which are as follows: 1st Circle - Heal toHeal = (int)(Caster.Skills[SkillName.Magery].Value * 0.1); toHeal += Utility.Random( 1, 5 ); So for this, the amount of hit-points which can be restored when used by a mage with 100.0 skill in magery, would be 11-15. 4th Circle - Greater Heal int toHeal = (int)(Caster.Skills[SkillName.Magery].Value * 0.4); toHeal += Utility.Random( 1, 10 ); And here, the highest potential for a mage of 100.0 skill in magery, would be 41-50. Also, it is important to keep in mind that while a players natural cap for any given skill is 100.0, with a total skill-cap of 700.0, creatures do not obey these restrictions & there are a large array of moderate to high-end creatures which naturally exceed those limitations, & can span upwards to around 175.0~ points in a single skill for certain creatures, respectively. The amount of current hit-points remaining on a creature is only relative to how much damage it can sustain before entering the "flee mode" & attempting to escape the battle & survive. Other aspects which are influenced by a creatures current total % of hits remaining, though unrelated to this topic, are features such as their current movement speed (both active & passive), as well as the damage output caused by creatures which can breath fire.
One of the points I was trying to make is that a "pure" anything isn't going to be a terribly effective build. Even a tamer is rough without magery or at least anatomy and healing. Sir Bari of Yew (my Peace-o-Jack) uses melee for offense and peace and healing for defense, and is an effective build. Now all that being said I've never tried a Pheonix or Lich Lord with him.
I love the heightened difficulty of the AI here as well. One thing I have noticed on UO:R is that pretty much all magic-casting monsters will immediately dispel summons (Blade Spirits, Energy Vortexes, Daemons). If you deplete their mana, however, they will no longer Dispel. I'm guessing this is because the AI tends to spend their mana as it regenerates, so as soon as they are able to fire off a Fireball or a Clumsy, or some other low level spell, they do. Hence, they never replenish enough mana to actually cast 5th circle Dispel. This is actually really cool behavior. As a mage/bard combo, this allows me to use EVs and Blade Spirits on occassion, but I can't lead with them. I need to tire out the magic users before I can bring in the big guns. It adds some ebb and flow to combat, some strategy. Maybe this same kind of thing can be used to address the GHeal spamming issue? Rather than change the AI, instead decrease the meditation levels of monsters so that they can't regenerate enough mana to spam GHeal. So players, if they can't burst their way through GHeal spam, can then have the option of tiring out the monster and then going in for the kill.
