Duty Support AI is very out of loop.

[Akamadoshi]

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.

[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.

Please be kind in comments.

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

[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.

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

[Warlyx]

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.

[Gortys]

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.

[Cach]

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.

[Galvuu]

snip.

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.

[KisaiTenshi]

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

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.

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.

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.

[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.

[Eyrilona]

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?