Squadrons are like Duty Finder noobs

So I tried Halatali as an RDM with my squadron setup as follows - Marauder, Archer, Conjurer. This is how it played out.

Squadrons are hopeless at avoiding AOE, so hopeless they don't do it at all.

Their choice of targets seems completely random and they will be fixated on targets even if they become invulnerable:-

- With Firemane the Marauder disengaged from Firemane and started chasing after the Damantus, leaving me to tank Firemane!
- With Thunderclap Guivre I had a hard time at getting my squadron to stay out of the purple area and to focus on the Lightning Sprites with me. They kept running down to fight Thunderclap Guivre whilst he was invulnerable.
- With Tangata they kept focusing on Tangata whilst he was invulnerable, sometimes with the tank splitting off to tank some of the Damantus, resulting in them exploding on the boss.

There's no means (at least none I could obviously spot) to keybind the squadron actions.

There's no way to tell them to split up so that the tank stays on one target whilst DPS go to others.

My understanding was that the AI you start with is pretty bad but you can unlock better AI later on.

I was having these exact same problems, until I started using disengage / engage on my team. I went in as PLD. I figured they would fight the first thing I would Shield lob, they didn't. But telling them to engage what I was fighting worked.

I guess I was being lazy and going into fights thinking "..hey..move." but we got to coach them. After using my disengage / engage more properly, it wasn't nearly so bad.

For that final boss I did have to eventually pull the boss to the sides so they wouldn't stand in the fire-pit. Though they seem to be very durable to those AoE's.

Anyone know anyone that has the workout emotes yet? I didn't want to do new content in the patch until I had the squat emote and I can't tell if there random drops in Squadron or a reward for beating the last one. Know it's early but reply as soon as you know

Actually the AI is good at avoiding ground targeted AoEs provided you are only pulling a single group. If you pull a group of A, B and C, any aoe that is ground marked with an orange circle they will get out of the way of. The tank will even try to spin the mob you are focused on so the group doesn't take too many hits, and the AI will even do their positionals - which is more than I can say for many DR groups. However the minute you try to pull two groups, A,B,C and group D,E the AI will only avoid the aoe from the "group" you focus them on. So if you have them focused on A, they will move out of ground AoE marks for ABC but not those from DE.

They are highly resistant if not outright immune to a lot of mechanics that would typically wipe a party of players. What they don't tend to be immune to is picking up conditions from AoE that doesn't get an orange circle indicator. So burning pool in Halatali and the poison in Brayflox. The poison is not too dangerous, the burning however is - I'd recommend taking no melee dps for that one.

All this is true on the independent setting you get right at the start. So you don't need to lvl the other tactics at all to beat all the dungeons easily with the squadron - you just have to play them different from how you would if you were in a team of four players.

Well once I'm not having to burn credits on coke for our airship projects I'll have another go at squadron missions and see if they improve.

I just love that my tanks always like to start the pull using Ultimatum....

As far as Firemane, I kind of treated my squadron like they don't know player tricks and actually tried to kill the adds myself. And as such, I didn't end up tanking the boss as a DPS.