Golem AI or: WTF?

While I am writing this thread my golems are trying to kill Esh in his domain. Meanwhile I already had dinner with my girlfriend and watched some netflix. He still is on about 25% life so I figured I could as well try and ask around why one would code minions with such terrible AI.

Its not like those two can do no damage to him. I have fairly well equipped golems and when they hit it can be seen on Esh's bar. But most of the time they run around like headless chicken and once they reach Esh they bounce against him like a fly against a closed window. Which is no attack animation for sure. Just some erratic moving around. If that is the way golems use to fight along with the PC you could have just made some one-cast-only buffs.

If someone wants to try out: Just die within Eshs arena as Elemantalist with "Liege of the Primordial" node and watch. Your golems can't be hurt by elemental damage that way.

And speaking of special game design. Making the PC appear right in those clustered ball lightnings when respwaning into that arena is even less fund and the reason I chose to watch the golems do it. Now I'm hooked and wonder if they can keep it under two hours.

Keep trying little fellows!

Edit: Maybe I should have made it a bug report... but I am sure "this is intended" :D

get a primoridal might :)

U dont seem to be a golem build? looking at your character tru magic. Im not sure what you expect but without a lot of investment into minion dmg, and the primordial jewels theres not much you can expect.

Wow. 1 hour 20 minutes: Esh down. Dropped even a blessing. Might be my new farming setup.

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Fhark wrote:

U dont seem to be a golem build? looking at your character tru magic. Im not sure what you expect but without a lot of investment into minion dmg, and the primordial jewels theres not much you can expect.

Nope it is not. Its a flameblast build. I did not complain about damage though. As said, WHEN they do damage they move the bar visibly, but most time they do not attack or cast at all.

Now please don't tell me I should spend 140 chaos on a jewel that grants basic game mechanics (if it works that way at all - I have my doubts). I think that AI just cant decide between attacking, running back to the caster (in this case a corpse) or doing whatever about those ball lightning clusters that constantly hit.

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King_of_Limbs wrote:

Now please don't tell me I should spend 140 chaos on a jewel that grants basic game mechanics (if it works that way at all - I have my doubts). I think that AI just cant decide between attacking, running back to the caster (in this case a corpse) or doing whatever about those ball lightning clusters that constantly hit.

the basic game mechanic of golems is to grant you passive bonusses dude... oO

they are just peaceful little hippies if you dont spend them a might.

golembuild here btw. you should see the awesomeness of (in my case 4) flamegolems with GMP wrecking whole screens constantly... :D

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Clownkrieger wrote:

they are just peaceful little hippies if you dont spend them a might.

Yeah. Well maybe not basic - come on you know what I mean.
Two months ago there was no such thing as a primordeal jewel but we could have all those minion-supports linked with golems, we had warband rings which gave especially bonuses to golems such as faster attacks or concentrated effect. That either was a total noob trap or did not work as intended until the new AI-jewel. I don't know what to make of that, hence my posting about this curious behaviour.

Or maybe you need not be dead to have them fight better. Makes them too sad probably.

Prior to these new jewels, golems were pretty much a niche build. It is that simple.

This warband stuff was indeed a noobtrap.

The idea of having damaging golems was something that would have been nice back then, but the simple fact of the matter is that GGG said "powerful golems" and we got nothing but a meatbag worth a shit, if it wasn't for those buffs.

Golems should have had a lot more of an aggressive AI to begin with, but to make sure we don't get too creative with our builds, GGG first gimped them to nigh uselessness, to later release jewels, which make these golems worth something.

And you know what? These golem jewels were nothing but a bandaid for people who are complaining about summon spectre mechanics since fucking ages.

So there you go: A1 shit design + Powercreep jewels = GGG's way of fixing things.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

The golems are acting like that because you're dead.

Being dead means you can't be targeting things to guide your minions. Thus they target things around you. Given the base golems intentionally have a low aggro radius, they can't target things that are a significant distance away from your corpse.

If you were alive and targeting the enemies, the golems would be more consistently attacking them.

Does that mean if you have no targeted skills, you can't direct your minions? Does it need a namelock or is AoE enough?

Could you please clarify what "targeted" means in this game mechanic concept?