+1, I've noticed it a lot more after the update as in a lot more unreserected skeletons. There were a few before but now it seems its close to 50% or less. Great, yet another so called tweak it improve the WD, wtf is going on over there at Midoki.
are we playing the same game? who then is getting the splash damage? The brute that the WD is also trying to protect?
Please fix the wd Midoki. I surely hope you are not forcing us to use two or more wd per a fight to win a battle in the high ranks where grog is lacking. These wd die too easily. It's not that I can't win becuase I clearly can. But this is very frustrating to watch my most expensive pirate sit on top of my jugg who is taking mortar fire so it dies really fast. Or because my wd is on the front line with the jugg and gun tower takes it out fast. It's standing so close I have even seen a cannon focus on the wd first after my first jugg died even though there was a second jugg right there. This can't be right. Can you give us a training for the wd called "give me some damn room" that will let the wd sit slightly behind the troops? Or just change the ai back to how it was. I like to have control over the Pirates. After all they don't have a brain and you should not pretend they do.
Cast your vote here --> http://forum.plunderpirates.com/index.php?threads/witch-doctor-fix-cast-your-vote.6829/ oh, and +1 to your post.
I just dropped my WD with 20 gunners, it went to a random jugg in the corner, when that jugg died before he WD got to it and it went to a SKY RAIDER - really?
After juggs and brutes, sky raiders are #3 on the lost of troops it favors. I've had a WD leave a group of 20 skellies because I dropped 8 raiders too close.
*shakes head* What in the world is going on over at Midoki, did they let some new guy play with the programing??
^^ lol, oh boy, someone should be getting their resume ready. In all honesty I think they must have rushed it and not tested it because the WD is a colossal mess right now.
Between the unreliability of Bombers not attacking walls that are the closest target, and WD's suicidally charging to their doom, I no longer enjoy playing to be honest. At a bare minimum, the WD should be staying back at max range and not sitting atop the unit it is protecting
The brute should be far enough away that the WD doesn't try to protect him, because the group of juggs he's trying to protect has much more HP. The brute is getting 100% of the splash damage at one area. The juggs are far away, at another area, soaking up bunkers and gun towers with the WD. Which is the only thing the WD is very effective at stopping anyways. WD barely reduces mortar or gp damage and wouldn't have been useful protecting troops targetted by them anyways. Like I said. brute to distract mortars away, and then drop a big hunk of juggs at one place with a WD, let it protect all of them, and then if you are terrible at using your juggs to absorb bullets, because now all the juggs are under a bubble, drop your big mass of gunners with a second WD and it will prioritize them. The WD with the juggs won't take splash, because the brute far away from them is distracting mortars. The WD with the juggs will stay with the juggs because their HP pool is massive. As long as you have a big enough mass of gunners or HG, your second WD will stay with them. Go look at the unit spreadsheet to figure out how many gunners you're going to need to out-hp your far away brute. I'm not sure if tg is factored in here, but if it is, it cuts it approx in half. And yes I agree there should be a distance penalty so he's not running across the base. But if you're leading your gunners with juggs, he's going to get more use and keep the gunners alive longer by protecting the juggs as long as you keep mortars distracted, like you should be doing to begin with. Lets do some rough math. We're going to estimate things with easy numbers, but its going to be close enough it doesn't really matter. Lets assume you don't suck at attacking, and the juggs do their job and distract all the cannons/bunkers/GT that would be in range of attacking the gunners. Lets assume juggs, without WD, would last 30 seconds in a scenario, and gunners, without WD, get attacked starting 30 seconds in when the juggs die, lasting another 30 seconds without the WD. While the juggs are alive, the gunners average 100% DPS, as all of them stay alive. During the period of time the after the juggs die, they average 50% dps, because throughout that 30 seconds, they die off, and at the end none are alive, so during the average of that duration of the fight, half are alive. So we've got 30 seconds of 100% dps, and 30 seconds of 50% dps, for 45 seconds equivalent of 100% dps. With the WD on the juggs, the juggs last 60 seconds, during which the gunners do 100% dps, and then the gunners last 30 seconds, during which they average 50% dps, for 75 seconds equivalent of 100% dps. With the WD on the gunners, the juggs last 30 seconds, during which time the gunners do 100% dps, and then the gunners last for 60 seconds, during which time they average 50% dps, for 60 seconds equivalent of 100% dps. The gunners last longer during the phase they're being attacked, but the huge differential before they are attacked at all adds 15 seconds to their overall dps. Both battles have equal durations, but protecting the juggs kept the gunners on average alive much longer, which was their job. Why would you bring juggs at all if not to absorb damage? And if you're counting on the gunners having to absorb damage, what the hell were your juggs doing? Now lets say the WD dies off protecting the juggs halfway thru the fight because you didn't know how to distract them. Since both mortars together do about half the WD's hp with TG, it won't die until at least the second shell of the second mortar hits, and only if both mortars hit the WD directly all 4 times, otherwise it will survive till at least the third round of mortar hits. So lets say on average the WD lasts about half the time. Now it adds 15 seconds to the juggs survival instead of 30, and you didn't bring a second WD in case it died. So we have 45 seconds where the juggs are alive, during which time the gunns do 100% dps. and then 30 seconds where they do 50% dps on average. This is equal to the 60 seconds if you had let the juggs die faster and had the WD protect the gunns. So as long as the WD lasts at least half as long as the juggs are alive, its doing equivalent benefit by protecting them instead of the gunners. And do you know how many gunners you'd need to survive 30 seconds? A lot. Enough that if you dropped a second WD, it would protect them over that jugg (or pair of brutes) you're supposed to be distracting mortars with. Even if some of your gunners do get stray bullets and die off, say 10%, while the juggs are being attacked - because you have more gunners alive on average longer, your average dps is higher, and at that critical point point where the juggs finish dying off and your gunners start taking damage from the rest of the defenses, a sizable extra portion of those defenses will be dead. Anyways, if you can follow the math, you should see that there are scenarios where, even tho the gunners aren't under the bubble, they get more protection. In an untalented attackers hands, yes I agree that there are scenarios where the gunners would be better off with the WD protecting them. And I agree that it shouldn't walk extremely long distances to protect a lone troop, and that the number of troops under the bubble should be a major factor as well, you have to see that in at least some scenarios the gunners are better off with the juggs under the bubble as well. If you equate the game to any standard MMO fight though, your juggs are your tanking class, and everyone knows the main job of the healer (WD) is to keep the tank alive longer, so your dps (gunners) can do more damage before being attacked. Maybe you should consider modelling your attacks after this tried and true method, letting each troop play its respective class, and try to attack in a way that makes it model this situation most effectively. I attack bases like I'm attacking a raid boss. Send in the tanks to soak up his damage, send in my healer behind to keep them alive, and then send in my dps to pick it off. I think a more worthwhile argument isn't what troops it prioritizes, but how much it should penalize the wd in terms of distance traveled, how much it should be incentivized per extra troop in the bubble, and ways to let it mathematically figure out where the most optimal space to stand is. If one more jugg gets under the bubble, but it has to stand 2 tiles closer, is that worth it? If it only covers half the juggs, but it stands 2 tiles further away, is that worth it? Optimally you'd be smart enough to keep your juggs in one singular ball, but that can be hard. "I'd rather my WD protect my 5 gunners than my 3 juggs in this scenario" isn't helpful if you can't figure out how to mathematically make him prioritize them. How much priority do you give numerically to balance things out in the most scenarios, and which scenarios are most likely to happen? What does Midoki intend an end-game attack to look like in sort of gameplay? Because I know a lot of game designers would be intending troops to be used in my class-role scenario in most situations, and consider fringe tactical missions to be anomolous and less-priority in terms of handling. And finding the right weights to prioritize each value with, which might be vastly different in different situations, is really hard, which makes trying to encourage this simple class based model of attacks good in terms of development costs.
I'm sorry but I admit I skipped most of that because it is way over my head, but surely a simpler solution to all those calculations would be, as others have suggested, tap what troops I want him to protect. Then we all win, if we want him with our gunners, tap them, if you want him with your jugs, tap them etc. He costs a fortune, he should go wherever we want him to, not where some developer thinks he should go.
I appreciate your thoughtful and helpful post. My two cents worth, coming from a release date player who can battle above average, my experience is that the brute distraction is valuable but the brute only lasts for a short time when getting pummeled. So, it helps gain me access to the interior of the base, but by the time my main troops are in the thick of battle, the brute is dead. Then guess where that heat focuses? That's right, my tanks with the WD moronically riding right on top. So poof. If he trailed behind, maybe he wouldn't die so fast. But he gets shoulder to shoulder with the tanks on the frontline like he is a war photographer trying to get close in for the money shot. I also disagree about wanting to guard my juggs. They tend to last most of the battle on their own so don't need the protection so much. Plus, they are so slow at attacking, that I'd prefer to guard my troops that inflict the higher damage, which are more vulnerable, such as gunners and hgs. But I get it . . . Different attack styles. So user customization may not be such a bad thing.
Two brutes (one normal one gs for separate bring-it-on cooldowns) played right will last you at least 30 seconds (much more if they're only taking the mortars, but they're probably taking a couple cannons too) which in my scenario mirrors how long the juggs would have lasted without a WD. They have to draw fire off for a worst case of 15 seconds to make it more beneficial for him to protect juggs than the gunners. They will last at least 15 seconds combined in any scenario, even with every cannon and GT hitting them at the same time as well. I do definitely agree he shouldn't stand so close to the juggs though, but balancing how far he should stand away vs how many get protected is really hard to do in many situations, especially with defenses firing from multiple directions, so I completely understand why the developers went for "protect as many as possible" as its extremely easy to quickly compute. But he should weight a closer position as worse than a further position, given an aggregate of every defensive tower vector within range, and having to walk to protect extra troops should be further decentivised. How much is a very difficult thing to figure out tho. Do you want him to protect more troops if he has to get closer to fire? How should he mathematically determine that? Its a very hard thing to do, and the people working on it I promise are trying very hard to get him to perform the best possible in as many situations as possible. You can't please everyone. But a good player will learn how he behaves and changes in behavior, and learn how to maximize his usefulness at any level. There are situations where protecting gunners is possibly more wise, especially if your juggs would have survived long enough anyways, but how do you tell him to do that? Protect as many troops as possible? Now when he is deployed with juggs, hes going to be walking closer to them to make sure all get covered, which gives you the vulnerability to splash that was being complained about. If he always protects gunners, then he's doing worse off than he would have in my scenario where he protects tanks. Even if we can select which troops he does and doesn't try to defend, you still run into scenarios with how close does he get, when does he decide to walk closer to protect an extra troop, what happens when the troops start walking in two different directions, etc, and all of that needs to be told to him by giving him numerical weights on things like distance traveled, how many extra troops he has to protect, defensive vectors, etc, to figure out how he should act, and it has to calculate all of that in 30 ms on a very underpowered device while still giving enough resources to pathfinding for other units.
I had no problem with the prior ai. He trailed behind just fine and stayed with the troops I deployed him with until they died. How did developer get him to trail behind in prior ai? I'm not highly analytical about the game, I just enjoy playing it. But my position is if it ain't broke don't fix it. 99% of the comments on this forum on this issue seem to agree.
My very short reply to Skye's posts is that (1) not every base design permits two Brutes to reliably tank both mortars far from the WD and Jugs (and such designs will now be one much more popular at competitive ratings), (2) two brutes may not survive long enough against maxed bases, and (3) regardless of who WD's follow they should do so at their maximum range and not right atop the protected units.
1) Again, even with both mortars not distracted, the WD will likely provide more benefit unless all 4 shells from the first two rounds hit him dead on. But in the event they do, sure. There are situations like I said where it might be more beneficial, but it shouldn't be ruled down to a "never protect juggs always protect gunners" solution. 2) I already broke down that two brutes last long enough in my scenario, even with every gun tower and cannon on the island attacking them in addition to the mortars. I can show my math if needed, but just look at my unit spreadsheet, add up the dps for all the defenses, multiply by .6 for bring it on, and see how long it takes to destroy two brutes. I calculated it with all defenses and units maxed. 3) They should do it at a near maximum range, but absolute maximum range might mean only one unit gets protected where it just barely tangentially crosses the bubble, where walking half a tile closer protects three instead, and walking one tile closer protects ten... Do you want just one unit very tangentially under the bubble? Should it walk half a tile closer, one tile closer, to protect significantly many more? What if the defenses are firing from the far side of the bubble, and the WD is actually closer to them than the units? Its hard to figure out the right balance between units and distance away. How many units, or how much hp, is one tile closer to the defense worth? What happens when the defenses are firing from multiple directions? What happens when the group bifurcates and starts heading in two forking directions - do you trail the bigger group, walk halfway between them, follow the one in range of more defenses, etc?
Skye, The WD worked perfectly well before the update. Now it doesn't. We have about 150 members spread across three guilds. We have reached world number one rank several times. We have players who have been ranked in the top 10 in the world (in our Chinese subguild and its affiliates). Many of our members have had ratings over 900. And I know no one in any of our guilds or affiliates who likes the WD AI change.
I applaud your attention to detail in trying to show us the perfect battle plan but in reality when using brutes or juggs the WD will always favor them no matter how many gunners you have because the difference in hit points is just too much to offset. Just now I had a huge pack of gunners, 3 brutes, 3 juggs, some bombers and 2 WD's. The bombers took out the walls, I did as you said, deploy the brutes to pull mortar fire and juggs to distract the towers. I dumped the gunners off with the WD and the WD went straight for the juggs getting killed in second by a cannon that decided to change its mind from firing on the jugg to taking out the WD. The second WD also ignored the gunners and went for the brutes who were taking splash damage....yep you guessed it, that WD died as well. Then the brutes died as did the juggs which left the gunners to take all the fire...ya this is great AI for sure. With the old AI my gunners would have lasted much longer plus I would have had more skeletons to resurrect as well!!
