Hero behavior
From Guild Wars Wiki
| Note: See also Unexpected NPC behavior |
[edit] Influencing hero behaviour
- See also: Call#Target calling, Hero flag
[edit] Combat modes
Pets belonging to heroes will use the same combat mode as their heroes.
[edit] 
Fight
Heroes will aggressively confront enemies:
- They will attack (in priority order) called targets, selected targets within spirit range of the hero, non-selected enemies actively engaged with the party, and non-selected enemies within the hero's aggro range.
- They will separate from the party, as necessary.
[edit] 
Guard
Heroes will guard the area near a flag or the controlling player (whichever is closer and within earshot), refraining from combat until actively engaged.
- They will not attack enemies unless forced to use a skill, the selected target is called, the selected enemy actively engages the party, or the non-selected enemy enters the party's aggro circle.
- They will not move beyond the guarded area unless forced to use a skill and the target is out-of-range.
- They will return to the guarded area after using a forced skill or the enemy moves far beyond the area.
- They will often go out of their way to attack a spirit, despite being in "Guard Mode".
[edit] 
Avoid Combat
Heroes never attack and will attempt to avoid enemies when attacked, kiting as needed. They will not attack selected or called targets unless forced to use a skill.
- They generally will not use skills that directly target foes or cause point blank area of effect damage.
- They will use skills that indirectly affect the enemy:
- Damaging skills that target allies, such as Smite Hex, Balthazar's Aura, or weapon spells.
- Ward and well spells that inflict detrimental effects on foes.
- Trap skills.
- Summoning skills that bring forth minions or spirits.
- Item spells, that require activating urns and dropping them.
[edit] Forced skill use
- Heroes can be ordered to execute skills by clicking on the appropriate skill on the hero skill bar.
- When a hero is ordered to execute a skill during the activation of another skill, the hero will cancel the activation of that skill and proceed with the ordered skill.
- The hero will not use any other skills until it successfully activated the ordered skill.
- Locking a target
[edit] Other
- Heroes can be ordered to drop their current bundle by clicking on their monitor.
[edit] AI capabilities and limitations
[edit] AI knowledge
- Heroes can "read" health bars, and can detect the presence of hexes, conditions and enchantments.
- Heroes know about all active effects. They will not try to apply an enchantment, hex, condition or weapon spell on someone who is already affected by the same enchantment, hex, condition or weapon spell.
- Heroes can detect party members' energy, as they will not use skills such as Blood Ritual on characters with full energy pools.
- Heroes can detect enemy skill activation, and will only use interrupts which are appropriate to the skill type. They have no reaction time; their interrupts are never late.
[edit] Coordination
Heroes do not coordinate their actions with each other. This may result in redundant skill usage. For example:
- Multiple heroes with resurrection skills may attempt to resurrect the same fallen party member; the fastest one will succeed (unless interrupted), which means the others will have wasted energy and time.
- Multiple heroes may try to heal the same ally, even if it's almost at full health, or damage the same foe, even if it's almost dead.
- They may try to remove the same hex, condition, or enchantment. They may try to interrupt the same skill.
[edit] Prioritization
- Heroes have no concept of the danger of hexes and condition, or the usefulness of enchantments. They will remove these seemingly at random.
- Heroes have no concept of the strength of a skill. They will not prioritize any skills for interruption.
- For example, they may interrupt Flare while allowing Meteor Shower to cast. They will not prioritize the interruption of resurrection skills.
[edit] Resurrection
- All heroes with resurrection skills will attempt to resurrect fallen party members; the fastest one will succeed (unless interrupted), which means the others will have wasted energy and time.
- Healers often attempt to resurrect in mid-combat. Players that want their healers to focus on healing should give resurrection skills to non-healers, or manually disable the healer's resurrection skills to reserve them for the player's discretion.
[edit] Formation
- Heroes will not always line up ranged characters at the rear, with melee characters in front, as you might expect.
- Heroes will change formation when the player changes from a melee weapon to a ranged or a ranged weapon to a melee.
- Heroes holding bundle item will stand in the front with melee characters.
[edit] Default skill usage
The AI sometimes behaves unexpectedly. This section identifies specific types of skills with unexpected uses that are beneficial/neutral or harmful to the player. Please assist the community in keeping the advice current and accurate.
[edit] Binding rituals
- Except for Life, NPCs do not use passive spirits outside of combat, e.g. they will not cast Union unless they are within aggro distance of a threat.
- They will place spirits where ever they happen to be; they will not make use of spirits to build a wall or to distract foes from other targets.
[edit] Chants
[edit] Condition removal
- NPCs will try to cleanse allies of conditions, even if those conditions are about to wear off. This both wastes energy and delays party movement.
- They are better at detecting conditions than humans, who need to watch health bars or wait for other players to ping their effects (or mention them via chat).
- They will remove conditions on allies even when the other NPC wold benefit from the condition, e.g. Melandru's Resilience, or when unavoidable e.g. Cultist's Fervor.
[edit] Echoes
- Heroes seem to open the combat with an echo, after that they will use a random skill depending on their situation, having no thought of what skill will be echoed.
[edit] Enchantments
- Battery skills
- They only use Blood Ritual/Blood is Power on martial professions if they are holding a bundle or a caster weapon; even then, they wait until energy drops to 20 or less before casting.
- They will use these skills on caster allies regardless of their weapon type, but wait to cast until the target's energy drops to ~30 energy or less.
- Doublecast enchantments
- AI will wait to cast until foes are in range of both the caster and target ally. Unless foes are in its range it causes the bearer to close in by breaking formation.
- AI activates them based on their weapon’s current damage type, but ignore active effects that change the damage (e.g. Winter or Staggering Force).
- Enchantment removal
- NPCs will use use maintained enchantments during combat, but dismiss them afterward in order to regenerate energy. To force heroes to maintain such effects, you have to micromanage their usage: disable the skill (via
shift + click) and then manually cast (by clicking on the skill). To force the hero to use a skill on a specific ally, first select the ally in the party panel, then micro the skill as above.
[edit] Glyphs
- AI prioritizes skills optimized to the specified glyph when activated only. (e.g. Glyph of Lesser Energy; as it was designed to save huge amounts of energy, AI will often ignore 5 energy spells.)
[edit] Healing and protection
- AI cannot tell when the battle will start and won't pre-protect.
- AI use party-wide healing skills when multiple members need healing (e.g. Heal Party).
- AI use multi-target healing skills as single target skills (e.g. Healing Ribbon and Healing Burst).
- AI targets the ally with lowest health.
- AI with Protection Prayers skill will attempt to defend allies from health degeneration hexes even in the absence of direct damage which results in no benefit but loss (e.g. Protective Spirit, Shielding Hands, Shield of Absorption and Spirit Bond).
- AI does not prioritize hexes by danger level when using hex removal skills.
- AI prioritizes use of resurrection skills on dead allies that also posses resurrection skills.
- AI cannot prioritize healing of critical NPCs (e.g. King Khimar and Leah Stone).
- AI may sometimes prefer the use of Death Nova over a healing skill.
[edit] Hex removal
- AI attempts to clean out allies. This sometimes causes them to activate skills on hexes that are about to wear off soon, often delaying the team's movement.
- AI removes hexes on members that benefit from them instead e.g. Resilient Weapon.
[edit] Interrupts
- AI cannot prioritize threat levels. Wasting interruption on low threats e.g. Flare over high threats e.g. Rodgort's Invocation.
[edit] Item spells
[edit] Nature rituals
[edit] Preparations
- NPCs maintain preparations outside of combat, even if no combat is imminent.
- They do not spread conditions. Instead, they wait until forced to switch targets for other reasons, such as their master calling a new target.
- Worse, NPCs will cease attacking poisoned foes if Apply Poison is active.
[edit] Shadow steps
- AI will use to close in even if the second effect isn’t needed e.g.Death's Charge.
- With that said, a hero will use Death's Charge on a foe already in melee range to heal themselves.
- Interestingly, an assassin hero with daggers will approach both the Masters of Healing and of Enchantment on the Isle of the Nameless with Death's Charge, but against the Master of Lightning they will always run in on foot, and then reserve the Death's Charge as a self-heal.
[edit] Shouts
[edit] Spells
- AI use AoE spells even versus single targets, e.g. Earthquake.
- AI use PBAoE direct damage spells by runing into combat, when these skills are meant to wear off body-block, e.g. Whirlwind.
[edit] Stances
[edit] Touch skills
- Melee characters use them efficiently since they are already face to face e.g. Plague Touch.
- Mid and backliners break formation, move frontline and risk themselves e.g. monks with Healing Touch.
[edit] Wards
[edit] Weapon spells
- AI casts offensive weapon spells with priority to attacking allies with enhanced DPS e.g. Splinter Weapon.
- AI casts defensive weapon spells to overwrite offensive ones on allies at critical health levels e.g. Weapon of Warding.
