User:Auron/Gimmicks/Hero AI in general

I'll make this as friendly and easy-to-read as possible, because I think this change is rather likely if people show enough support for it.

Heroes need to be removed from Guild Battles and Heroes' Ascent entirely, and as soon as possible.

Remember why heroes were put in the game? ArenaNet knew their game was dying. People had already started leaving. With the introduction of the incredibly flawed automated tournament system, the first snag people saw was this - if the tournament starts at ____ o'clock, what do I do if people can't play? ANet's answer was "take a hero."

If your monk can't log on for an inconvenient tournament time, take Dunkoro to run the WoH bar instead. If your midline can't log on, take Norgu or Morgahn to fill the role. Basically, their message was "use the hero to run the same bar the person would have."

That had two major flaws, the second of which didn't surface until months later. Primarily, heroes suck at real bars. You can't give dunkoro a bar with WoH, patient spirit, infuse, guardian, dismiss, veil, glyph lesser, and aegis, and expect him to do it at all well. He'll use glyph for stupid things like patient and guardian, he can't weaponswap to get a fastcast aegis, he infuses targets at random, and uses WoH on targets with more than 50% HP. Basically, he's a terrible monk. Same story with morgan or norgu. You can give them diversion, shame and shatter enchantment but they'll never be used correctly. Shatter won't be used on spikes, diversion will often be cast on warriors and rangers and will never be timed (good mesmers can diversion RC reliably, hero mesmers won't do it at all), and shame won't be used at the right moment. Paragon heroes are actually okay, since paragons were poorly designed to begin with; the hero can just spam skills on recharge and he'll do alright. However, for the vast majority of bars, you can't just sub a hero in for a person and be okay. You're just going to lose.

That alone was enough to dissuade most people from running heroes for months. After the initial fad of running 5 fire ele heroes wore off, they dropped from use in all arenas. Guild Wars PvP was actually PvP for a while before people figured something out - hero AI could be abused.

When Nightfall came out, it used to be a sign of skill if you could micro Jagged Bones and Death Nova on minions by hand. Then people realized Master of Whispers did it flawlessly every time. He would never cast it on the same one if it was still active, and he could target them without wasting time trying to click on them individually. He could go between raising minions, enchanting them, and throwing putrid bile/deathly swarm around without being ineffective at any of them. Humans simply could not compare.

So people thought... what else could heroes do? Well... hexes. Heroes spam hexes on recharge, never waste hexes (i.e., use it on the same target if it hasn't worn off), and they spread the hexes very well across many targets. They also use skills like Discord flawlessly (and instantly) - as soon as the conditionals are met, they spam away. Humans have to wait until a target is hexed and conditioned, and then they start spamming it, and if they don't have the right target selected, they'll rarely use discord at all. Humans also react more slowly - if a target's hex is removed, humans might still activate discord, while a hero never would. That kind of stuff makes heroes bad for the game.

Lastly, and most recently, smiting got buffed. A number of elites were changed, and EotN brought smite condition, which meant a full support smite monk could easily remove conditions, hexes and mitigate damage, all while doing very high, area of effect, armor ignoring damage with surprisingly short skill recharges. What ele skill does 80 armor ignoring AoE damage for 5 energy? The closest they have is stuff like flare, which does 62 armor-affected single-target damage and it lacks all utility whatsoever (i.e., it just damages while smite hex removes a hex). Seriously, wtb balance.

Anyway, hero smite monks became the meta very quick, and haven't left for 8 months. What's not to like about running 2 layers of defense on top of your 2 standard monks? They basically queue smite condi so well that the instant you land a dismember or evis, the DW disappears. If you've ever tried to snare a runner in tombs, you'd know it's hard enough to get snares off past the team's mes or ranger - but when your hex or condi disappears less than a second after it was applied, you know something is wrong. And then people got the idea that running interrupts on heroes would be a good idea, too - not only would it mindlessly interrupt key damage skills like sav heat or rodgorts, it would nail stuff like eruption and unsteady ground as well. Unfortunately, heroes are so amazing at interrupts, they nail quick casting skills like glyph lesser and bull's strike.

Somehow, heroes have been allowed to plague PvP for upwards of two years, when they haven't been used for their original purpose for well over a year now. When the vast majority of teams have heroes, it's time to wake up and fix the problem, ANet. - Auron 08:00, 12 January 2009 (UTC)