I think it is generally accepted that goodie conjurers are going to be a lot more defensive then evil ones. How come then the transplendant archons(or any other archons) don't sanc you until you enter combat, then? Seems completely illogical to me that the ice devils will barrier you before combat, and the archons won't sanc you. It makes a goodie conjurer either summon a smoke mephit to get the aura, or rush in without it and wait for archon to sanc. Either are far inferior to having sanc up before battle.

What are the chances this could get changed. Its already bad enough when you a/b/s because archon healing logic is 'off' due to them not being able to correctly calculate their healing not going off at full due to "The power of your protections interfere with a XXXX archons healing". Could archons pre-sanc before battle, and if not could they heal through the a/b/s limitations? Aura is already partially imcompatible with sanctuary, how about some lovin :)

Devils don't heal. The pre-combat barrier is probably just a way of throwing them a bone.

A/B/S doesn't really hose an archons healing logic. From what I can tell, they heal based on how wounded you are. "How wounded you are" doesn't change if you have preps up. The "power of your protections interfere" thing only keeps the rate of healing constant. The protections them selves make it as if you had more hp than you really do.

So, if you have 1000 hp and put up some protection that grants 20% damage reduction, it's as if you had 1250hp and the archon was still healing you at the same rate. If someone/something is damaging you faster than the archon would normally be able to heal, then it's still going to be damaging you (through your protections) faster than the archon can heal. Except, with the protections, you'll last a little longer before going down.

I admit it would certainly be more convenient if archons sanc'd pre-battle. I just figured it was a balance issue.

>I admit it would certainly be more convenient if
>archons sanc'd pre-battle. I just figured it was a balance
>issue.

It mostly is.

I'd settle for them being (even) smarter.

Did you get to finish everything you wanted to during the last revamp to devil/archon AI?

I'll postpone judgement until I've seen neo-archons in action, but back in the day, it seemed like they were prone to heal in situations where it didn't make sense to heal. The only time an archon should chose heal over sanc is when the conjurer has less than 200hp. And that's for archons with rejuvenate; for the others it should be 100hp.

Sometimes they'd also commune stuff like fly, protective shield, detect evil, etc. when healing (or sanc/protection) would have been "obviously" more beneficial.

I'm happy with the way they are at the moment.

They don't always make the smartest choice, but neither do devils or anything else. An archon already plays healer better than a sadly high percentage of PC healers; I'd rather not push that number too much closer to 100%.

I've often considered making it so archons don't have infinite mana to cast spells with; if I ever did that I'd probably make archons a little smarter at the same time.

I'd say they definately are much smarter than they use to be about 2 years ago... maybe more.. heh. I think they are quite capable right now.

Yeah. I wasn't suggesting you code up a slew of complicated code to take into account every possible scenario. But something as simple as choosing between heal/sanc seems reasonable (imho). Especially since the AI amounts to "if (hp > 200) ..."

Oh well. Thanks for working on it in the first place.

It's not that it would be hard to do; it's that it makes archons better than they are, especially relative to PC healers, paladins, druids, etc., and I'm not convinced that's an upgrade that's needed right now.

Hell, I'm not either.

I've had recent experience with blind archons healing conjurers like there's no tomorrow. Either they're real smart about what to do when blind, or they have some other advantages.

From what I observed it is actually that when they fight you they won't heal. Blinding them typically aggros them so they stop healing. If however, the conjurer flees the archon will stop fighting you, follow the conjurer, and be more than happy to heal. When you reengage the conjurer since the archon can't see you, it won't aggro on you, and therefore continue healing.

If you keep the archon fighting you, no matter how you do it, it won't heal.

I could be entirely wrong, but the above explains what I've seen and experienced much better than saying a blind archon doesn't heal.

It stops healing the conjurer. Sure they can flee and come back, but archons act funny then. Constantly moving to and from the room 'Checking the ground for tracks'.