ArenaNet:Skill feedback/Miscellaneous/AI: Interrupts

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Hero (and Monster) Interrupts: No Reaction Times

Issue

Because Heroes (and Monsters) don't have bodies involving nerves sending signals from eyes to brain which then have to be processed before signals can be sent to the hands to click, they can interrupt much better than real humans. This has lead to many PvP teams taking Heroes with interrupting skills for superior interrupting power. Generally, this isn't too much of a problem, but the new Tease heroes are too overpowered.

Suggestion

Build in a small degree of deliberate "faliure" into the AI as far as interrupting is concerned - that is to say, make it so that when they decide to interrupt a skill, they have a slight random delay before actually doing so. Then, if before the delay expires the opponent finishes their skill (generally this would only happen with very short-activation ones), they will either change their minds and not interrupt (personally I would program it, if possible, so that this happens if most of the delay is yet to expire - i.e. they still have time to change their minds) or continue anyway and "miss". This would make things fairer since even really good human (and asuran) interrupters still miss occasionally.

If this change was implemented (which it should be!), it could only be implemented in Normal Mode and PvP AI, so that Hard Mode monsters still have super interrupting powers (it's meant to be Hard, after all).

Hero (and Monster) Interrupts: Prioritising

Issue

The game's AI does not prioritise interrupts. If interrupts were intentially weakened as is suggested above, improving their prioritising would help to redress the balance, meaning that Heroes were more like humans in interrupting, but still viable.

Suggestion

Programming really intelligent prioritising would probably be too much effort for too little gain. In fact, it's probably too much effort even to do a bit, but some relatively simple improvements could be made.

It would be too hard to make the AI know what skills are really important in any given situation (e.g. Aegis and Ward Against Melee in attacker-heavy teams but not caster-heavy teams). However, they know what the skill is and as such know its type, cost, duration (where applicable) and recharge. I would make them calculate a "priority value" when they see a skill being used. A higher cost, duration and recharge would increase this, whereas the opposite would decrease it. Ideally, elites would have a higher value and enchantments would have a lower value since they can be removed if not interrupted, whereas weapon spells and chants would have a higher one. Then, if this value is below a certain threshold, the hero or monster wouldn't bother to try and interrupt.

Obviously, this is fairly basic and some other minor improvements could still be made, such as:

• Heroes with more interrupts available would interrupt with a lower threshold, but if they had only one long-recharge one, for example, they would be more reluctant to use it.
• If heroes see only low priority skills for a long time, they could decrease their threshold so that their interrupts aren't wasted.
• Heroes who see a very high priority interrupt (with the suggested calculation method, Meteor Shower or Deep Freeze would fall into this category) might be prepared to use a skill like Leech Signet even if the secondary bonus isn't met (e.g. "Interrupt action. If that skill was a spell..." type of interrupts on non-spells).

To my mind, even a basic form of this extra AI would be very useful to heroes in PvP and a great addition to Hard Mode AI if not Normal Mode (to me, Hard Mode should be more strategically challenging rather than just tougher in terms of raw strength).