Complaint about the 'Squadron Dungeons' - The Wanderer's Palace

[Rhindas]

Flash and Overpower seem to have particularly potent enmity modifiers on them, but my GLD seems to prefer spamming Ultimatum, which is borderline worthless since the AI (or the coder who gave it to them) doesn't know how Provoke works, and my Marauder can't aim Overpower to save our lives.

A particularly glaring problem is that they are blatantly obviously using the same action cooldown instructions that mobs use. You know, where they do an action, and then freeze in place for 2.5 seconds before moving or chasing? When the CNJ or ARC pulls before the tank gets there, the tank moves to where the mob WAS before moving back to deal with it. And if the mob moved again before the tank gets there (and it will), we have an escalating problem. Similarly, when the tank runs around like a hamster chasing pellets, melee AI becomes almost worthless because they start and stop, trying to do an action that the tank won't let them do.

[BigRed5392]

Yea I was kind of uncertain what would happen if they all stood in the water with the thunder and sprites but I healed through it. The only way to get them out of the water is by disengage and pulling the ads to me but I decided to heal through it.

they don't get damsaged the dbuff never was on them, the main issue is they ignore the adds when the boss is immune.

[Niwashi]

Also, target mechanics always hit you, regardless of your role. Even the ones that never hit the tank. The lizard boss in BF always puts the bubble around me, I can't target it so I can't order my squad to attack it, and they just let it sit there.

You can target the bubble (easiest way is to select it in the enmity list). My squad did well enough at destroying it once I told them to attack it. It was just a bit cumbersome, but it worked ok.

My biggest problem in Brayflox was in the final fight, where the AI tank wouldn't move Aiatar out of the poison pools. I had to keep periodically disengaging in hopes the tank would move towards me as I showed him a clear spot to tank the boss. But then, since I was always the target when the boss spit out more of the poison, I had to move away from that clear spot to where I wanted the next poison to land, trying to time the disengage/reengage so that the tank wouldn't follow me there instead. And of course, neither of these was putting me where I wanted to be myself to attack the boss as a melee damage dealer. (I was playing NIN.) Between the squad (all of them, of course, and not just the tank) periodically disengaging from the fight in order to (hopefully) move the tank where he should be, and me being out of attacking position so much of the time, that fight was far harder than it should have been.

Parts that did work: The tank held aggro pretty well throughout the run, and the lancer was doing decent damage.

[Hasrat]

For Halatali adds, is everyone making sure to order squad to engage the adds?

It seems a little unrealistic to have expected the AI to just get better over time or with better commands or something. Seemed far more likely that the different levels/traits are just there for the modifiers, and this is just how the squad is coded. Tank is designed to pick up everything on the aggro list, telling them to engage/disengage doesn't help here. Engage tells everyone what to focus down, but tank is still trying to do its job of keeping everything on them.
From the sound of it, healers don't get a rez, so can't be expecting them to fix anything if you/squad start dying. GC sells stackable Phoenix down-type items for you to keep your squad up.
Nobody is coded to dodge AoEs, it might even be tricky to get the code to recognize they're standing in bad spots in the first place.
I don't have a THM to watch, and wasn't able to pay very close attention to rotations at all yet, but would agree that some of their rotations probably are not organized very well. On the plus side, seems they're coded to have abilities at-level, regardless of level sync?

There's only so much you can expect from AI, and experiences with certain FATEs and solo duties should give you all the warning you need.
Personally, while I understand the appeal to running as DPS (instant queue, bit of control over how things go), it just doesn't seem like a good idea here. You're still at the mercy of a sloppy party. Heal it, so everything goes smoothly (and you rarely need to heal very much, in my experience), or tank it (and probably pray that the healer AI can keep up).

Idk. Personal opinions I guess. It's not very polished yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing improvements. My only real gripe is knowing you have to be 50 and clear ARR to unlock, so it's still going to force new players through MSQ hell (Castrum/Prae) even if those ever get added to the list. I hope to see something added to the DF eventually that maybe turns squads into for-hire groups, so players might have the option of running with a random squad set if they prefer.

[Lozza]

The tonberry adds are not a "don't kill the adds" mechanic they are an opt in on what is essentially a soft healer check. The king will purge the stacks regularly for some dmg meaning you don't want him to have too many at the time he purges. Of course the way four players run this is to not touch them at all and just single target the king down, but a couple of months back I pulled this in 50/60 roulette where the dps chose to ignore them right up till there were a tonne of them and then started AoEing. Naturally it ended badly. Halatali has other bosses with op in mechanics - that is you can choose to kill the lights avoiding a healer check, or your healer can heal through them.

I've found the best way to handle the squadron is to not micro manage at bosses, just let them do their thing while you make sure you do the mechanics. The squadron is immune to many boss mechanics so stopping to micro manage them puts you at risk of not doing whatever mechanic it is that needs to be done. SV first boss? They don't get hit too hard by not running behind him. Final boss, ice sheet aoe the boss does when she takes to the air doesn't hit them that hard - but it will hurt you.

The squadron AI is weird because we are used to playing with humans that do certain mechanics certain ways, and skip some completely due to high dps, opt outs, etc however many mechanics that will wipe a player party that isn't paying attn will not wipe the squadron.

[-BlueGreen-]

I watched my wife run her squadron through Halatali. I had a good laugh when in the second boss they all stood in the electrocuted water look newbies, but then had a 'huh?' moment when I noticed that the AI didn't get the electrocution debuff and so were basically fine standing in it to fight the adds. My wife, however, would get the debuff, so she had to stand aside and kill from range (she was on BLM, so no big deal to her). I didn't pay close enough attention to the final boss, but I wouldn't be surprised if the tank was immune to the circle of flames during the invulnerability stages. I suspect that squadron members basically have the immunities/damage resistances of SMN/SCH pets which would explain why they didn't suffer certain debuffs and didn't take the same damage from certain AOEs as my wife.

Tank NPC aggro is pretty garbage, though. I had a good laugh at the archer NPC constantly pulling mobs off of the gladiator NPC.

[Rufalus]

Only tried squadron mission 1 time so far, chose W-Palace and I was the tank. Was a bit surprised at how they weak the squad members are; too used to playing everything at max gear level with real players. Didn't have any problems until the end apart from being slow. Wiped 1 time to Tonberry King boss when I tried to focus it down and became overwhelmed by adds. 2nd try I just defeated the adds and won. Funny to be in a party that is slow enough to actually need mechanics for the first time in years. I don't know if the rewards for doing this are good enough to make it worth taking much longer than running the normal way. Maybe I will discover what it is useful for later.

[Lozza]

Tank NPC aggro is pretty garbage, though. I had a good laugh at the archer NPC constantly pulling mobs off of the gladiator NPC.

If you hit engage every enemy the tank will hold aggro. Think of it like marking enemies for parties. Some parties will manage to attack the same thing without marks, others just do whatever they feel like - the AI is the 2nd type, so you need to mark.

[razzgrizz3]

cant believe how dumb ppl are. "training them up" wont magicaly change the ai. its just different stat boosts lol

[Dualblade]

My lancer Mi'qote actually did her positionals for attacks, so thats already better compared to some players. I was honestly expecting them to be much worse, just being HP sponges standing in one place like most of the FATE NPCs. Yes it isn't perfect but they clearly have made them better then what the usual friendly AI was. The latest MSQ battle also has some improved AI since they actually do dodge AoEs there, though no positionals are used. While they take less damage from the AoEs it wouldn't surprise me if they eventually do get updated to be able to dodge them on their own volition.