Minion AI Aggresive as a baseline instead of "passive"

Hi GGG,

I think it is time to consider making the minion AI aggresive by default because the "passive" state they are in by default now is not in a very good state.
Sometimes your minions just stand around when enemies are quite close to you.

The very fact that you needed to add a mode to actually make minions more offensive just says that the minion AI was rather lacking to begin with.

Also finding aggresive on wand is rare and to actually get other good minion mods with it you need to fracture it and then fossil craft it.
This basically means you need to spend dozens or hundreds of divs to have a good aggresive wand.
This is not something most minion players will do.


To compensate items such as Primordial might / delve aggresive mod / Maw of Mischief
You could change the aggresive mod to Golems have onslaught / Minions have onslaught instead.

This would make the delve mod very useful for a lot of minion builds as well.

Lets be real ravenous horde "minions have a chance to gain onslaught on kill" is a bad mod for 90% of all minion builds since only a single minion would get the buff.
So changing that to something else or it being a less attractive passive is kinda what ever...

Also meat shield "minions are defensive" should take the higher priority now if the AI was changed.

To clear things up. "Aggressive" and "defensive" only change minions aggro radius. When minions get aggressive, their minimum aggro radius becomes 8 meters. When minions get defensive, their maximum aggro radius becomes 3 meters. That's it, no changes to how actively they move, use attacks or spells, nothing to do with AI.

Each minion/monster has its own aggro range, which is fine. And most of them have aggro radius exceeding 8 metres by default. Making them aggressive on top won't change anything (however certain minions have extra benefits from being aggressive, like skeleton warriors). By design, golems are buffer-companions, and zombies serve as a meat shield. So their aggro radius is small.

upd.

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When minions get defensive, their maximum aggro radius becomes 3 meters.

Wiki states 3 metres but I found 3.5 metres proof from Rory link

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MonaHuna wrote:

To clear things up. "Aggressive" and "defensive" only change minions aggro radius. When minions get aggressive, their minimum aggro radius becomes 8 meters. When minions get defensive, their maximum aggro radius becomes 3 meters. That's it, no changes to how actively they move, use attacks or spells, nothing to do with AI.

Each minion/monster has its own aggro range, which is fine. And most of them have aggro radius exceeding 8 metres by default. Making them aggressive on top won't change anything (however certain minions have extra benefits from being aggressive, like skeleton warriors). By design, golems are buffer-companions, and zombies serve as a meat shield. So their aggro radius is small.

While true.....thats a very simplified explanation and doesn't tell the whole story. Defensive ALSO makes minions not follow skill casts, while Aggressive WILL follow the direction of your skill casts, unless they already aggro'd. Additionally, in the case of skeletons in particular, certain skills get adjusted or changed based on Aggressive/Defensive behavior. In a way, defensive causes minions to aggro YOU so they stick by you and not your cursor.

"most of them have aggro radius exceeding 8 metres by default": also very much untrue. The vast majority of minions have an aggro range far less than 8 metres. It's actually very FEW minions with greater than 8 metre range by default.

Yes...minions should be aggressive by default. The only time you would ever want a non-aggressive minion is when you likely have them wearing Meat Shield anyway. Even just to act as meat shields, having them be aggressive is far more effective than being defensive or, god forbid, passive (hi you dumb zombies).

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jsuslak313 wrote:

Defensive ALSO makes minions not follow skill casts

You're right, defensive minons ignore your "orders" even within thier aggro radius. I didn't know that.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

"most of them have aggro radius exceeding 8 metres by default": also very much untrue. The vast majority of minions have an aggro range far less than 8 metres. It's actually very FEW minions with greater than 8 metre range by default.

Some examples? Besides golems and zombies.