Duty Support AI is very out of loop.

Sorry for the English.
I've loved duty support from the beginning. Always used them. Always will continue use them for MSQ immersion.... however, Dawntrail ruined my experience a lot.
Krile who is a pictomancer, Grada'Tia who is either a Black Mage or a White Mage.... it doesn't matter. As a melee player, it is I who has to be on the range to avoid boss mechanics, unable to touch the boss. Specially the later bosses, there is no way in hell I can go and avoid any boss mechanics without being disengaged for a long while. This has a lot to do also by not knowing where they are going. They don't move until last minute, and for someone with 280 ping, that's unplayable on a new level.

I have never been so frustrated with Duty Support than ever before.
The system doesn't allow room for melee players as much because the casters are literally stacking on top of you with spread marks, unless you wipe 2-3 times and understand not only the gimmick of the boss fight, but also where the duty support will be standing, is how you can see some "uptime". In the latest level 99 however is impossible. They all grab the safe spots, and I keep wiping and wiping because as a melee there is NO WAY I can dodge anything without knowing their stances. Skill issue is absolutely part of it, for sure. I am a slow learner, but I have never been so frustrated with it before. I was looking forward about the difficulty changes of the bosses, not the extra difficulties your own companions are giving on top of that. This truly need to be revisited. The rangers/casters really need to be programmed AWAY from melee range. Having the two rangers right at the boss and all the way where melee cannot even hit by the melee-range point is the safe place. As someone who does not DEPEND on the NPC's movement to determine gimmick/safespots, the frustration is that they literally are causing me panic by being on top of me, me moving out but then being unable to move out properly because all safe spots are taken as they ever so gracefully begin to spread in their magically perfect safespot after delivering the most heartfelt heartattack. They move last moment, and sometimes on top of me while it was safe there all the time.

I never complained about this before, always huge supporter of NPC duty, but Dawntrail has truly been frustrating for me. (The dungeons themselves, are EXTREMELY awesome though~!!!) Also, this is no way to discourage TRUST system. Ever since Shadowbringer I have loved the system so much, but I feel like something is not right with Dawntrail.

Many abandon the idea of TRUST because it is more troublesome than it's worth with players.... For all the work that is put into the TRUST sustem, I wish they could make it a bit more faster/enjoyable. It's not something people would always choose over roulettes. I do not think the impact would be bad. This time, the AI of the TRUST seems to be very off. I think maybe it could be me and my skill issues, but I do not know. What is your experience? As Tank, it's super easy though. But not so much other classes. Please be kind in comments.

I also had big problems with some boss fights.
It's true that the trusts react more slowly and are annoying.
For the first time since Trusts were iplemented I had to get help from outside and play the last dungeon without trusts.
But that's not the point of the system. The fact that you can't be revived is also a stupid combat system.

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Originally Posted by Akamadoshi

Please be kind in comments.

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It's sad that one has to ask for kindness. But this is what our Forum has become after all these years.

I done every story dungeon in Dawntrail with trusts and never found any issues with them as a healer. Wuk Lamat is practically invincible, Alisaie and whoever the other dps rarely ever stepped in bad so I scarcely needed to heal them.

One thing I’d say though is, especially if you're with trusts, it’s always better to prioritise survival over dps. After all, increased uptime can’t be leveraged if you’re already dead. And since there’s no enrage/dps check in any of the dungeons I can think of besides the final boss of Alexandria, even taking extended periods of downtime is completely fine while you’re learning. I kept dying to the first boss of Origenics with the poison spread mechanic when I done it first time; turns out I was greeding Broil casts too hard and trying to slide cast when I didn’t actually have enough time.

Eventually I decided to stop everything I was doing until I was sure the mechanic was resolved safely, then suddenly I stopped dying and had time to actually think about positioning for more uptime (on the same ability 10000 times lol)

I don’t have much experience playing with trusts as a dps in Dawntrail though, so I can’t say if Urianger/Alphinaud/G’raha are much use as healers / in general

yeah had to repeat some bosses, and i was not melee , for mechanics like the one that kill u ,being melee or range in this cases is usually meaningless tbh so thats why ranged Npcs do mechanics as "melee" they do it for healing too being cloase helps for aoe heals

the npcs usually let u do mechanics on the back so i keep that in mind

but it was your first time on this bosses , take it as like REAL party , with ppl that dont know mechs and is first timer too and kill u because of it.

I find the most consistent trust companions are Thancred, Urianger, and Estinien. I typically like duties with my fellow players first so we can all suffer together, but with the queues tipping into the 20+ min range this expansion I decided to do trusts for a couple of the duties. I can say that Alphinaud is by far the worst healer and actually died in one duty from effect. Luckily the boss was almost dead and I was able to dodge well enough on BLM to finish him off.

I kind of understand why they don't allow rez on trust. They don't want people to go AFK and then just get a rez from an NPC. They could allow just one rez though per duty with an item you get with GC seals or poetics. More than one rez could again cause the AFK issue.

I remember Urianger dying a lot on ShB.

As someone who plays with high ping (around 200) I've noticed that the trust NPCs react much slower, and move at the last possible second.
So if you follow them as your only way to evade mechanics then you WILL get hit.

The solution then is... uh... to actually learn the fight.

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Originally Posted by Akamadoshi

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I want to echo that sentiment. They don't adjust to the player position at all- which they did in some capacity in EW.
Worst, like you said, they have some sort of pre-determined spot but sometimes move last minute (and in awkward ways), so you think you're safe and BAM, here comes random npc barrelling your way when there's no time to adjust.
Some bosses were incredibly frustrating because of this- I'm not even talking about uptime anymore, it's like they wanted me dead no matter what.

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Originally Posted by Akamadoshi

They don't move until last minute, and for someone with 280 ping, that's unplayable on a new level.

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That's probably by design, the problem is that this only works if you live in the city the data center is in. Japan/Korea tend to have MMORPG's with tight mechanics because they don't have to deal with cross-country and trans-atlantic/pacific ping time.

Two of DT's fights I could not rely on the NPC's moving because by the time they moved, if I wasn't ahead of them, the AOE would hit. But I also find even with human players, I tend to get clipped a lot by AOE's. I live on the canadian pacific coast, which is pretty far from where the actual north america data centers are.

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Originally Posted by Connor

I done every story dungeon in Dawntrail with trusts and never found any issues with them as a healer. Wuk Lamat is practically invincible, Alisaie and whoever the other dps rarely ever stepped in bad so I scarcely needed to heal them.

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I've found the opposite. Wuk Lamat is super squishy on trash mobs. The trusts almost never step in AOE's, but they do tend to stand in inappropriate places when meteor stack markers appear, to which I just have to remember to run in the illogical direction when I see that marker because Krile will end up standing where I wanted to go. This happened multiple times in multiple fights.

When you play healer though, you are also at a disadvantage because the getting any vulnerability stacks usually means you're going to be redoing the fight, because you won't survive being hit by unavoidable damage without pushing all the oGCD heals at once if the next is a stack marker.

But I also found this happening with human players more than a few times, where it seems like I'm "two seconds" too late to move out of the way and I'm like "I'm on fiber, this should not be happening."

Based on traceroute, right now, I'm seeing "seattle -> san jose -> Sacramento" and I should only have 30ms ping. So it just seems really really odd that I'm getting clipped by AOE's, more so with the trusts.

Anyway, I think the trusts maybe need to be be less deterministic. They need to "accidently" take damage from AOE's if the WoL player is standing "where they wanted to go" and force them to move away from the WoL on meteor markers.

Those trustbots will try to kill you every time.

Once you run the fights enough though, you get the hang of their AI and can better predict where they will go.

There does seem to be something amiss this time around, I agree.

I was running the first dungeon to level my Trust members, and it happened I had a party with myself as the tank, and then Krile and Alisaie on DPS, with G'raha healing. Not ideal, but those were the ones that needed leveling.

On the second boss, all the npcs consistently would stand in the AoEs and lose half their health. On one occasion, they happily stood in a double AoE and all three died. I was able to solo the boss down from over 50% (I think I have seen a thread on this forum asking tanks not to do this, but with a Trust party it is a victimless crime ;) ) and then.. well, then I was kind of stuck with all three of them on the floor -- this was a situation I had not encountered before. I went through two more packs of dungeon trash solo, with the npcs comically teleporting into the newly loaded room only to drop to the floor dead, then ended up letting the third pack kill me because a wipe seemed the only thing I could do to make the Trust npcs get back on their feet?

It left a bit of a weird taste, like, I did all the mechanics right and I still had to take a wipe because this combination of Trust members has trouble keeping itself alive with this particular boss?

The only thing I tend to get annoyed with when it comes to the trust AI is stack mechanics and spread AoEs because they have specific and often less-then-ideal for your uptime positions they try to resolve the mechanics at.

I agree something is off, and I've noticed the same things. I usually like to do the dungeons (and trials where permitted) with NPCs first simply for the story immersion, seeing their little comments on events etc (and in some cases because of the bad queues), and I'm normally okay, even though I also have bad ping. And since I'm a slow learner with mechanics, it can really help to have Urianger or Y'shtola go to the right spot and then seeing "Ohh that's why you're going there, I get it now."
This time, the first ones were okay, though there were some needlessly frustrating moments, but ca. around the later half, it got so irritating I interrupted a dungeon attempt and decided, "This is no fun like this, I'm going back in with some humans."

I haven't really noticed a difference, they feel about the same for me, at least with Thancred, Urianger and Y'shtola in the 93 and 95 dungeons. Granted that's probably because I'm not dpsing at all.

Though it is pretty annoying at the 95 last boss, after the knockback Uri and Y'Sh barely move with the spreads. Also there's absolutely no dialogue, wtf?

Duty support NPCs absolutely do take the 'melee' safe spots and you lose uptime. I got myself killed once in dungeon 3 because of this, but going forward from there I always adjusted out to further spots. Losing uptime isn't a huge deal, the NPCs don't care. If you're struggling, I'm sorry to say, it's a skill issue. Practice more, and you'll get it. There's nothing wrong with failing a few times while you get there so long as you learn from the mistakes you made and adjust going forward.

Every time I take Urianger into the level 93 dungeon there's a pull where he does nothing but spam aspected helios and the tank will always die at that pull (I think it's the one just before the second boss?). Then after the tank is dead he starts healing me (cause I have aggro) and using his cards like normal. I appreciate that he doesn't drop everything to slowcast res the tank, but good lord you'd think they'd let him swiftcast res it instead of having to bloodbath /arms length to survive.

This'd be fine if it happened once but it seriously happens every time I take specifically Urianger into that dungeon. Same spot. Every time.

Also I will say the fact that the healers literally do nothing while mechanics are going on is wild. Krile has eaten it so much during bosses because she's just gotten bad RNG and the healer won't top her off before the next mechanic comes out. It's really dumb.

Well this might be a good sign that they are at least tweaking the formula. I love the trusts, but long disliked that they had this programming that if you as the player play better, they play worse. I always thought that was the absolute wrong attitude.

I'd keep an eye on the patches. They might be improving the AI and it had to get worse before it gets better. Definitely disheartening to hear though. I'll have to power through some more story tonight and see if I can get into some of them.

I did story twice with trusts but I heal mostly and they were fine.

I wanted to add, the level 100 glams for the trustbots are WELL worth the effort.

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Originally Posted by Glenfiddich

I also had big problems with some boss fights.
It's true that the trusts react more slowly and are annoying.
For the first time since Trusts were iplemented I had to get help from outside and play the last dungeon without trusts.
But that's not the point of the system. The fact that you can't be revived is also a stupid combat system.

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I totally agree that the WoL dying = insta wipe is a bit annoying.
Yeah trusts have the occasional skill issue but that is by design, else people would get used to perfection and expect it from other players.

I had not a single trustee die on me though. Perhaps that is because I was the healer and could compensate for fails, dunno.

I did not recall having any problem with the trusts in Dawntrail.

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Originally Posted by AmorfaVex

Those trustbots will try to kill you every time.

Once you run the fights enough though, you get the hang of their AI and can better predict where they will go.

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Alisaie is notorious for finishing her casts in a dead zone and trying to flip out of them but not making it in time, and if you're parked over top of her, you get to eat the aoe too. I found G'raha is easier to shadow, and I've only seen him screw up once, but he will wait until the last possible second to move, so you're probably going to eat it anyway unless you remember where he runs to and start moving before he does

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Originally Posted by dullneedles

Alisaie is notorious for finishing her casts in a dead zone and trying to flip out of them but not making it in time, and if you're parked over top of her, you get to eat the aoe too.

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As an occasional Red Mage I find this is hilariously accurate to the RDM experience lol. We are all Alisaie on the inside. Honestly I kind of enjoy the silly things like that about the trust system; it gives them some personality beyond just standing around and giving exposition lol.