Minions movements

It looks like this got missed from the patch notes, but we did change minion following behaviour in this patch.

Previously, minion's aggro radius was centred on you, unless you were currently preforming an action, in which case it was centred on your targeted location. While this gave people a way of controlling minions by using skills repeatedly targeting areas, it was sub-par because stopping doing things, moving, or applying a self-buff or similar stopped your targeting, and made the minions give up and rush back to you, getting attacked in the process.

Now, minion's aggro radius is "sticky". While you're doing an action, they'll target your targeted location as before, but now when you stop, they'll remember where you were targeting. Doing another action sets a new target location, and they'll remember that instead. Additionally, movement actions will not reset this unless/until you begin moving to a location that's a noticeable distance from their remembered location. When you do this it "unsticks", meaning they'll continue immediately following where you're walking to without "sticking" to another location until you do some non-movement action.
This allows you to use skills to put your minions where you want them, but still be able to reposition yourself without them immediately running back to you as used to happen.

From your feedback, it sounds like the distance you need to move away from their location to get them to drop it is proving too high for you, we can adjust this number based on feedback, so let us know how this goes as you get used to the new system.

We didn't change anything about how close a ranged minion will get to something it's trying to attack - only which monsters they try to (those around the remembered location), and potentially where they at the time combat starts (near the remembered location, rather than near you). During the time that you're attacking yourself, it is identical to the old system.

If you're having specific problems with specific minions, detailed reports of which situations this comes up in will hopefully help us come up with a more refined system for next iteration.

I've committed a 25% reduction in the distance (to 60 units) that movement actions will unstick the minions. I'll discuss with others and look into options for having them unstick automatically if there's nothing there, or otherwise default back to you.
Thanks for the feedback so far.

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777isHARDCORE wrote:

How does this new behavior work with a multi-proj skill like Freezing Pulse?

Specifically, to have the projectiles bunch closely together in front of you, you must keep your cursor far away from you, at the edge of the screen, likely far past your actual intended target(s).

Do the minions then rush to that far-off, likely empty and unimportant location? How can you control your projectiles and your minions?

Impossible?

They'll go to the target location - exactly as they already would have. The only change is they'll remember that location longer now.

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ephetat wrote:

Slightly off-topic question related to your last post, Mark, just curious -- was the upcoming system for applying server-side hotfixes and minor patches implemented with 1.0.6?

Not something I have any idea about, sorry.

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Obright wrote:

Alright, I'm confused now. When one says "minion", that can be anything from an animated weapon to a spectral devourer...and they all have (had) different inherent movement/follow AI.

They have not all had different behaviours - there are precisely two types - those which care at all about anything you do and those that do not. Skeletons (and now Raging Spirits) are the first - they have no following or directing behaviour at all. None of this thread is applicable to them either before or after the patch. We changed the way minions followed you and were directed at your targets, which had no effect on the minions which completely avoid those behaviours.

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Obright wrote:

When you say "as they already would have", what do you mean, exactly? What they already would have done, is to go after the nearest target, not 20 feet behind the enemies where you clicked to attack with your bow or wand...that's what happens now. There was really no way to direct your minions to a specific location, other than summoning skeletons to a specific location, unless I was missing something.

Prior to 1.0.6, all minions other than skeletons drew aggro from where you were currently targeting. The only difference between then and now is that now they won't loose that information as soon as your action finishes, which resulted in them moving halfway to places and then changing direction when you needed to reposition and coming back.
There's no difference with skeletons, because they don't have any following behaviour.

From what I'm gathering, it would be better if some skills completely ignored this behaviour, allowing the minions to continue on the previously set targets.
The most obvious set to exclude is self-target skills, which would handle auras and a few other things like ice nova, where you're not actually targeting anything beyond yourself. It sounds like there isn't a full consensus on what should be included here, so perhaps some discussion on that would be useful. The two offering skills have been mentioned a lot, as well.