what did you do to hirelings??

[kmoustakas]

I have played DDO for more than a decade and I often grab a couple utility hirelings (the permanent rogues at appropriate level ranges to pop locks and get traps, a healer or two, and sometimes a low level tank if I'm starting out on a squishy build and don't want to have to be good at DDO) and I've never heard of this tip. Sounds great- not having to juggle a bunch of "don't run into death" buttons will make some quests faster. Sure, it saves like 5 seconds a run but it's neat to know this for when it is relevant.

Old artificers learned this fast to control the puppy with the hireling.

 

[jglabare]

As of the recent patch that included changes to hires, you made them (mostly) unusable. They are slower than they were prior to the update and end up standing in place even though you are ahead of them fighting a group of monsters. They don't seem to want to get involved and just stand back (yes, make hire active is clicked). Eventually they will zone to you provided there are no monsters and you are far enough away from them. The best method is see is to just move through the dungeon until you encounter a fight, then call them to you if you need/want their help. I've said this before but a pulldown or selection section to choose the distance a hire stays from you. for instance...select one: 5ft, 15ft or 30ft back from you.
Please go back and look at the changes you made to hirelings and bring them back into useful service!

I had a hireling stand there and get killed while I was standing there mashing the Heal command for him. Just did nothing. The command was acknowledged on the toolbar, but the hire never cast the spell and died.

 

[FaceDancer]

I've noticed that sometimes hirelings will not cast spells (totally non-responsive). You need to "call hireling" to you and that usually snaps them out of it.

 

[jglabare]

I've noticed that sometimes hirelings will not cast spells (totally non-responsive). You need to "call hireling" to you and that usually snaps them out of it.

Same here, although sometimes it seems to be a situation where you have to hit the button in a specific spot, like the corner as opposed to the middle.

 

[KingKozma]

As someone who still uses a full group of perma hires to solo r10s at endgame, I can atest they have been less responsive lately. I don't have reason to think it's something they did specifically to hires, tough - it seems more a consequence of the overall state of lag and pathfinding changes, as mobs seem to often have the same issue and it also varies from quest to quest. In some quests they're fine, and in others they're pretty bad, and it's usually the ones with more overall lag otherwise as well.

Also, that may not have affected me as much because I already never did wait for hires to catch up and always teleported them to me at the beginning of every fight while being invisible myself, so they can grab the mobs' aggro first. They often still do take a few seconds to get going even after that some times - but as I also start every fight with a couple of CC layers it doesn't affect me much - by the time the mobs are back into play the hires usually have started to work as well.

I can't be sure, but I assume the OP uses multiple perma hires as well as he seemed to talk about them in the plural - if that's the case, one hint I can give, if one doesn't know, is that "crtl" is your friend - if you click any command on any hireling bar while pressing "crtl" it will broadcast to all hires at once. That makes it easier to command them on the fly - so at least you don't have to wait for them all to catch up while their AIs get going, just hit "crtl + port button" and they'll all jump to you. I recommend people do that at the start of every fight they want the hires to be involved in. It's still a pain while the overall lag issue doesn't get fixed, but waiting for a couple of secs beats never having them even get to the fight at all.

Cheers from a fellow hirelings enthusiast,
NH

Nah, I don't use multiple hirelings when questing. This alt only has <10lives and WAS a FVS with end game wisdom gear doing Sorc and Wiz lives for the Spell pen and DC's. I tend to solo alot but soloing on this toon is not the easiest. I brought an alt because she had a hard time killing most mobs. I normally leave the hire at the front door and call her to me when needed. I will let her follow me when I know I am coming to a group or groups of monsters but I normally park her until needed. This time I needed her more (as an undead wiz killing undeads takes time and spell points). That is when I noticed they are almost useless because they do not follow.

 

[NightHiker]

Nah, I don't use multiple hirelings when questing. This alt only has <10lives and WAS a FVS with end game wisdom gear doing Sorc and Wiz lives for the Spell pen and DC's. I tend to solo alot but soloing on this toon is not the easiest. I brought an alt because she had a hard time killing most mobs. I normally leave the hire at the front door and call her to me when needed. I will let her follow me when I know I am coming to a group or groups of monsters but I normally park her until needed. This time I needed her more (as an undead wiz killing undeads takes time and spell points). That is when I noticed they are almost useless because they do not follow.

Gotcha. Though I still don't think this issue is specifically hireling related - I just tried to run TOEE Fire Node on r10 solo for my video series and neither the hires NOR the mobs were doing anything - for the most part they just sat there while I nuked away. So I ended up recalling out because that's hardly a challenge worth recording for posterity. On the other hand, in Ettercap Incursion they were working fine. There are quite a few quests where that's happening, though, and it seems to be related to them somehow demanding more resources than usual from an already lagged server - some times it's just the mobs's AI that glitches, others just the hires', often both.

I hope they find a fix for it soon.

Cheers!

 

[Tekdrake]

No offense, but if we use hirelings and rely on them, expect to go slow and wait patiently for hotbar reset timers. Grab a bard hire with Haste , if you dont cast it

its cool, many of us learned DDO with our hires close by, and maybe a goldseal or two.

thank Ullr I am past relying on hires.... Though, I still use 'em for free heals n' maybe a rez if caught off guard. Fre death wards and even some good aoe attacks. Hires still a good tool, just sometimes the handle breaks

Heaven forbid someone wants to play a normal, fresh character on a weaker class and not a 6,000 times True Reincarnated gigadunk blastmaster character.

Once again, DDO is mis-designed because devs think TR players are humans (they are actually crustaceans).

 

[Blunt Hackett]

Yup, they're ruined. I'm especially mad because most of the reason I paid for the higher tier expansions was for the hirelings. I haven't un-installed yet, but I probably will be once we get the last Year of the Dragon reward if they aren't fixed by then. I have quit playing.

 

[Col Kurtz]

Heaven forbid someone wants to play a normal, fresh character on a weaker class and not a 6,000 times True Reincarnated gigadunk blastmaster character.

Once again, DDO is mis-designed because devs think TR players are humans (they are actually crustaceans).

its more of an adapt an overcome scenario- i wish they fix hires too, but let's get real with ddo and fixing stuff. I dont wannna bash the team though too much. *It Happens

the COOL thing was I found moderately unorthodox styles of combat for my various class TR's ...
- like inquisitive Bard dual shooter, that was interesting having a ranged toon doing the buffs and heals and worked pretty well with self-heals the entire leveling process.
-Or a melee Arti single weapon style. Did a Gnome for the small hit box (and they are pretty cool) having a runearm and melee weapon with vistani tree focus... that was one dangerous little Gnome

but yea, forget the hires. Now is your Time to Shine !

 

[l_remmie]

The baseline of hirelings is a portable healing pillar for after combat. Anything above that has always been above expectations.
In that regard nothing changed...

Anyways SSG is never going to fix hirelings or pets.

 

[Col Kurtz]

The baseline of hirelings is a portable healing pillar for after combat. Anything above that has always been above expectations.
In that regard nothing changed...

Anyways SSG is never going to fix hirelings or pets.

yea, but there's quite a few fav soul hires that roll right through r1's with me in heroics

and Solo at cap , you can bump up a skull or two with shield guardian and one of those lame 30-32 healers

 

[Ryiah]

Heaven forbid someone wants to play a normal, fresh character on a weaker class and not a 6,000 times True Reincarnated gigadunk blastmaster character.

Once again, DDO is mis-designed because devs think TR players are humans (they are actually crustaceans).

DDO is fine. We've had so much power creep over the years that people shouldn't have any trouble running the content on Hard or Elite. It's the people who are just starting that have some kind of expectation that they too should be running Reaper and the veterans pushing a similar agenda that are the real problem here. You don't need hirelings as much as you need reasonable expectations.

A significant percentage of the early Heroic game content was created before enhancements were a thing, and a significant number of early Epic content was similarly created before Epic Destinies. I recently hit level 30 on Cormyr with an Iconic Bard. I basically put almost no effect into getting geared up for the process and ran all the way to that level with the Iconic gear. I ran Elite in Heroics, dropped to Hard for Epics, and then Normal for Legendary.

Again the game is fine but the expectation that you should be running a high difficulty when you have no experience with the game is not.

 

[NightHiker]

I think both things can be true (speaking aside from the current performance issues that one hopes will be fixed soon): hirelings (and summons) do need some more love and improvements, but still are reasonably useful right now if you learn how to employ them efficiently. That's why I created my channel to begin with, to show they can be very useful under the right circumstances. Seeing hirelings and summons tanking a r10 boss while you nuke it down, for example, is pretty fun in my opinion.

It's true that most of the boosts and abilities that make them useful on high reapers, even up to r10s, only come about near or at the cap/endgame, but they're still useful at up to r1 throughout all the level up process, even if just as heal bots and for some occasional utility - and there's really no point in running anything over r1 while solo leveling up anyways.

But there is a learning curve and it takes some effort to learn how to use them, like with any kind of playstyle, really. I just wish there was more support for it on other Destiny trees aside from Primal and Magus, so more types of builds could benefit from using them. Like, for example, giving them a to hit bonus on the melee oriented trees, or even some melee power, like Primal gives them your spellpower when using its mantle. It would be good for SSG financially too, since it would increase the desirability of the perma hires and entice more people to buy the most expensive packs, while still benefiting even people who just use the regular ones.

Cheers!
NH

 

[Col Kurtz]

just tested a few runs

>1 thing maybe not mentioned, is the old swap orders : from defend>attack / attack>defend

worked good last 2 runs when the cleric wouldn't heal or attack

the response is to slow for anything past r1... should be ok for casuals n newbies

...not great but ok, if you know all your hire management skills

 

[NightHiker]

the response is to slow for anything past r1... should be ok for casuals n newbies

It depends on the content - what were you running? I've been at cap for a while, so I can't talk about lower level content, but for most quests at cap they are more or less the same they've always been - seem to be performing alright on MD quests, I just got a pretty cluch heal in a split second from both Albereth and Rana after being incapacitated on a r10 Voices of the Dead solo run. I ended up messing up and dying afterwards, but that was my fault and not the hires'...

On the TOEE quests, on the other hand, they were pretty bad.

Cheers,
NH

 

[SquireZed]

Old artificers learned this fast to control the puppy with the hireling.

I must be stupid because I've played artificers/druids off and on for a decade and never learned it. Which, actually, explains a lot now that I think about it.

 

[Lacci]

I believe that the hirelings suffer from the same problems that broke mob AI.
Something is really wrong there. I ran "The Bark and the Blade" yesterday, and in the optional room with the warforged, everytime one of the groups was activated, the game froze for like 10-15 seconds.
I think the pathing is really messed up, mobs (and hirelings) often seem to not find a route to the player and instead just stand around doing nothing.

 

[kmoustakas]

I believe that the hirelings suffer from the same problems that broke mob AI.
Something is really wrong there. I ran "The Bark and the Blade" yesterday, and in the optional room with the warforged, everytime one of the groups was activated, the game froze for like 10-15 seconds.
I think the pathing is really messed up, mobs (and hirelings) often seem to not find a route to the player and instead just stand around doing nothing.

Tolero did an interview on youtube before Mabar and said they tried to fix some 'infinite loop' that was going on with mabar mobs trying to coordinate with other mabar mobs. It's obvious the fix was bad and then they lobotomized to try and save it but lobotomized the wrong part.

 

[Drunken.dx]

I believe that the hirelings suffer from the same problems that broke mob AI.
Something is really wrong there. I ran "The Bark and the Blade" yesterday, and in the optional room with the warforged, everytime one of the groups was activated, the game froze for like 10-15 seconds.
I think the pathing is really messed up, mobs (and hirelings) often seem to not find a route to the player and instead just stand around doing nothing.

my observation also.

number of times mobs need time to start moving after being triggered.

and hires tend to forget they can move after you summon them to you

also both mobs and hires regularly go full derp with pathfinding.

all of which I counted only started happening recently, it seems whatever SSG did in attempt to fix something introduced more issues than fixes...

 

[Jeronimo]

I believe that the hirelings suffer from the same problems that broke mob AI.
Something is really wrong there. I ran "The Bark and the Blade" yesterday, and in the optional room with the warforged, everytime one of the groups was activated, the game froze for like 10-15 seconds.
I think the pathing is really messed up, mobs (and hirelings) often seem to not find a route to the player and instead just stand around doing nothing.

So true! It's been very noticeable... both types of AI degeneration happened at the same time, coinciding with the patch that introduced the new MD raid. This was also when the big lag period started. The devs broke the game and have no clue on how to revert it.