Patch 0.8.2 brought much needed and very appreciated improvements to player minion AI.
However, some annoyances remain and though they may already be slated for being looked over, I was unable to find anything recent about it so I apologise if I didn’t search thoroughly enough.
o well, here’s what I’ve got so far:
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Acolyte
- Melee minions sometimes struggle to push their way through a backline of Skeleton Archers and Skeleton Mages if you have a mix of ranged and melee minions.
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Possible solution
Force melee minions to always move/stay at the front of the minion pack and closest to the player when paired with ranged minions.
Right now they all just haphazardly clump up and even fight to get a spot if you have a lot of minions lmao.
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Possible solution
- Melee minions sometimes struggle to push their way through a backline of Skeleton Archers and Skeleton Mages if you have a mix of ranged and melee minions.
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Acolyte & Primalist
- Individual minions sometimes still run off to go beat up enemies off-screen.
- Not quite sure under which circumstances this happens, going to try and pay more attention to it.
- Minions have an awkwardly low attack + aggro range compared to the player.
- Not really a problem as a Primalist due to melee combat.
- Not really a problem as a melee-focused Acolyte for same reason as above.
- Definitely is a problem as a range-focused Acolyte.
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Possible solutions
Increase the aggro range of melee and ranged minions by default.
Increase the attack range of ranged minions.
or
Minions always engage enemies damaged by the player or other minions belonging to the player regardless of range (or at least a large enough range to cover the screen).
This does not devalue the minion priority nodes of Harvest and Rip Blood as both skills come with ways to buff minions in tandem.
And the above change would result in minions attacking different targets, which is better than being idle in my opinion.
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Possible solutions
- Playing a Necromancer minion build without a minion priority skill has definitely introduced me to some funky AI where sometimes half my group of minions go to attack while the other stays back even though everything is happening on screen.
- I think regardless of what changes do or don’t happen, ranged minions, notably Skeleton Archers & Mages, would benefit from an attack range increase between 20-50% even should their aggro range remain the same.
- Individual minions sometimes still run off to go beat up enemies off-screen.
Minion Formations
Some way to either customise or change how minions position themselves would be great.
Feels a little odd to run around as a possibly squishy Acolyte/Necromancer in front of a whole army of skeletons and dead things who are already dead and thus capable of withstanding lots of punishment but nah you choose to take those arrows to the face yourself.
Being able to tell my melee minions to move into a frontline formation while I tell my ranged minions to fall into a backline formation where they and myself would be protected by the meatshields would be awesome, not just from a gameplay perspective but seeing my whole skeletal army in a proper formation instead of a blob of silhouettes would be dope aesthetically.