Bot herding on Legend is a nightmare. Can anyone help?

[Karl Power]

So I'm trying to collect reds, doing bot-assisted runs on legend. Usually to minimize risk I take only one grim.

But even then, the bots make it really, really hard. They struggle with bosses + horde and run aggressively into every ratling bullet coming along their path.

I do have the improved bots mod installed, and the option to let bots ingore specials are active, but they don't appear to work. So I have to make do without. Can anyone give advice how to do it?

This is what I have figured out so far what you should do when running legend with bots:

- maximize bot survivability by choosing the tankiest career and gear for them.

- prioritize quickly shooting specials and dealing heavy damage against bosses. Use a corresponding character (for me it's usually the Bounty Hunter with crossbow and rapier).

- wait for a horde to appear, and deal with it, BEFORE walking into a possible monster spawn.

Can anyone add advice? Have you maybe tried melee characters advancing extremely aggressively and leading your bots from the front? Or any specific loadout tips?

[Vror]

I suppose 2 things

1 - If you wanna play with bots you gotta play a career that can solo carry on most situations / deal huge damage, classes like GK or WHC are suggested

2 - Your bots not only gotta be good at tanking, but also have a comfortable melee in which they can do the combos correctly, and be able to buff you as well

And as a bonus thing, make sure their ranged weapons are good against specials (Handguns for example are THE perfect bot weapon for Bardin and Kruber)

[Aizagora]

There's a nice bot guide somewhere on steam (iirc he lists good weapons for bots inside), or just build them full tank (barkskin, block cost reduction, stam regen, shield or any weapon really good for their temp hp talent) and as above, give them a nice sniping weapon (handgun, crossbow, bolt staff, lift staff)

Chose where you fight, ratling, flamer, blight need to see you before they do something. Delete any special asap when you see them, those 3 are horrible for bots.

Same with elites, bots have trouble dodging/blocking an overhead targeted at someone else, the faster you kill them the better.

Monster + horde, if I can't remove the monster fast, I clear the horde first while the bots try to survive and deal with the monster

Melee only are fun, might need a brain occasionally to deal with a flamer/ratling, grail knight + slayer + warrior priest + any is so much fun (with friends, not bots)
Monster like shade are perfect, moonbow is decent for specials in legend and dual dagger deal with elite/monster really fast. Battle wizard or necro, zealot, engineer if you want godmode (there's no threat when you can solve any problem with an explosion)

Play whatever you want, ironbreaker is probably the best bot career, if you struggle leave bardin to a bot, merc can give a lot of temp hp to the team, for the third most of the time I have a sister/unchained, sometimes a witch hunter (nice dmg boost with tag, his ult is great, first bot to die most of the time)

Always give grims to bots (they don't use potions or bombs, only carry them and give them to you), don't die with an unused potion or bomb, and don't get surrounded by your enemies (nothing more annoying than being unable to dodge a hook/assassin/leech because you're blocked by a small rat)

[MrSupHermann]

Elites overheads are a threat for bots, they struggle to parry it. A patrol or too many elite ambients are devastating if you don't take care of them quickly.
Incendiary are more useful to clear space than bombs, Legend patrols and CW are melting from it.

Pinging specials help bots sniping them if they have a line of fire. They don't use charging weapons effectively (flails, staves, bows, etc...)

Bots are leaving you for globadiers or when someone is disabled, prepare to be alone in those situations. Globadiers themselves are (generally) focusing you and ignoring bots until they take damages. Packmasters are tanky, they take a while to kill it.

They are suiciding on flamers, it's your priority number one. They indefinitely dodge ratling gunners line of fire, rendering them useless for a while but not defenceless.

Blightstormers are able to focus on bots when casting their magic, and are sometimes unattainable for the player. Try to attract tornadoes if you have the occasion, as bots are often blocking themselves in a corner.

Bots don't block/dodge archers, they don't shoot them even when pinged and they don't destroy banners from beastmen.

They deal better with Rat ogres than any other monsters. They struggle to dodge Troll vomit, Spawn grab attack or launcher attacks. Staggering monsters with timing is really important for bots survivability.

Bots are not able to dodge most (if not all) bosses attacks. Skarrik and Bodvarr are simple enough to deal with, even if their AoE attacks are devastating. Staggering them will do the trick. Deathrattler is deadlier than Rasknitt, take it out quickly and your bots will likely survive the encounter.
Nurgloth/Barbeque are the bane of bots existence. Stay in a corner for BobbityBoo if you have a ranged career, they will take every single AoE/projectiles in existence.

[Demon1Ce]

Bots are really good at defending at long as you give them proper weapon and setup (60% Block Cost Reduction, 30% Stamina Recovery) and they're VERY good at special sniping (Handgun for Kruber/Bardin, Crossbow for Victor, Longbow/Staff for Kerillian), the problem is that, bots are inevitably vulnerable to all Monster, due to AI's nature to always block, while every Monster in this game has at least 1 move that can bypass block (or break entire guard vs shield weapon), so it is important that a player should at least play a career with good Monster damage.

Bounty Hunter is good one, but also risky one due to lack of THP you cannot make too many mistake compare to most other careers, if you don't mind about career choice, Shade work best for solo run with bot imo (Monster/Chaos Warrior Killer, decent special sniping, can get out of rough spot/situation with ult).

You are right about not rushing into potentially Monster/Patrol spawn point when there's horde going on, however, if Monster did spawned, after you killed it, rush as fast as you can until you walk past next spawn point, every Level has 3 spawn point and once something spawned, it is guarantee that the same thing won't spawn again in the next spawn point (exclude event/objective spawn).

. . .

as a bonus, here's my bots setup I used for solo Cata run, ordered by priority.

1) Sister of the Thorn (Sword and Dagger, Deepword Staff, Talents 1-2-1-3-2-3)
Global healing increase is amazing, both for player and other bots, she's also a pseudo-tank herself by gaining THP from ally (most tank bot have good THP generate). Deepwood Staff may sometime lift up slave rat but still come in handy when needed, and the most surprising part is. she has good Monster damage in form of Damage Over Time, thanks to SnD's fast attack speed paired with Atharti's Delight talent (on top of 12% damage increases from her Poison)

2) Footknight (Shielded Weapon, Handgun, Talent 1-1-1/3-1-1-1/2)
Used to stick with Mercenary bot, until I find Footknight's Damage/Block Cost Reduction aura more valuable than THP later on (Merc still work fine on Legend tho, also SotT kinda make up for it).

3) Warrior Priest if I want more safety, Witch Hunter if want more damage.
4) Ironbreaker, tankier than Footknight but in term of utility IB loses to all career mentioned above so I put him to last (Taunt is rarely needed when all 3 bots stick to you like a glue, can come in handy against unexpected Patrol encounter though)

[Karl Power]

Thanks everyone!

[Lucien Lachance]

Originally posted by Vror:

I suppose 2 things

1 - If you wanna play with bots you gotta play a career that can solo carry on most situations / deal huge damage, classes like GK or WHC are suggested

2 - Your bots not only gotta be good at tanking, but also have a comfortable melee in which they can do the combos correctly, and be able to buff you as well

And as a bonus thing, make sure their ranged weapons are good against specials (Handguns for example are THE perfect bot weapon for Bardin and Kruber)

I respectfully disagree (with GK). The best way I keep my bots alive is playing WS and just killing everything before it can even come over. Prioritize specials and elites. S&D have good enough damage if you know the inputs. Bots are quite literally gigantic dingalings that will prioritize walking towards you instead of shooting the hookrat that is tailing them and about to snatch. Sometimes they instant kill them, but in horde they suck at special prioritization.

[Evilsod]

Originally posted by Lucien Lachance:

I respectfully disagree (with GK). The best way I keep my bots alive is playing WS and just killing everything before it can even come over. Prioritize specials and elites. S&D have good enough damage if you know the inputs. Bots are quite literally gigantic dingalings that will prioritize walking towards you instead of shooting the hookrat that is tailing them and about to snatch. Sometimes they instant kill them, but in horde they suck at special prioritization.

This is my experience too.
Specials are the highest priority, which generally means a class with a strong ranged option. Playing GK you're just asking to wipe the instant a Blightstormer spawns. What you gonna do? Yell at it and hope the bots react?
Monsters are a real oddity, since sometimes it seems like the bots do an excellent job of both dpsing and avoiding damage, then others they're absolutely retarded. Stormfiends are the worst for it. The easiest, least threatening monster with players, but bots have an annoying habit of sitting in the flames.

[JagdPanzer IV]

wasnt bot mod removed from sanctioned list?

[Karl Power]

So far I did two legend runs of "Into the Nest" playing Grail Knight (Bret. long sword, mace & shield) with Bardinbot (Ironbreaker, axe&shield, crossbow); Siennabot (Unchained, sceptre, bolt staff) and Elfbot (Sister of the Thorn, spear, longbow).

I skilled the Knight to do maximum single target damage. Whenever a ratling or flamer appeared, I equipped the shield and ran idiotically towards it, just like my stupid bots, to smash it. This proved a valid solution. The ratling would shoot its entire magazine into my shield, I could even position myself so that the gunner would kill many of his llittle friends, while my bots remained behind me and unhurt by the ratling - every time.

Monsters and Spinemangler fell quickly to my ultimate strike. Both runs went surprisingly well.

Bardinbot took least damage, as can be expected. The others did ok. Thornsister-bot used her ultimates very well; I activated the skill which lets her hedge push away and poison enemies. She regularly used it to interrupt ratlings, flamers, and packmasters.

I guess in other maps, distant wind magicians would be a severe pain in the rear end without the means to shoot them. But on rat-only maps with mostly short distances, Kruberknight is a good bot-herder.

[靐]

idk if anything was changed the last time I played, but I used bell map and "meta" bots (there is a guide in steam). Ironbreaker, mercenary and elf last carrier (can't remember the name). My pick battlewizzard to snipe stuff and kill bosses. Bots kinda okay at tanking stuff (can even take less dmg than you sometimes) but they die to globs and gunners. Tactic? Just run n gun as fast as you can, just don't trigger patrol cuz why. All books.

I remember good old times when we had bot improvement mod and bots were actually better than some players and had 999% aim and ping stuff.

[Lucien Lachance]

Originally posted by JagdPanzer IV:

wasnt bot mod removed from sanctioned list?

Yes, because FS had claimed to fix the bots, and instead made them worse and disallowed anyone from running the mod that actually did their job for them. Must be an easy paycheck to collect.

[The Hermit Gamer]

I play on Legend all the time with no mods and only bots and they do just fine. Plenty of guides on here about how to build to optimise bots and they're worth a look. Mainly though you just need to learn how they operate and adjust your play-style. Slow down a little bit and take fights in good positions where you aren't going to be bullied by ratlings or blightstormers raining hell on you from cover at long distance rather than holding W for the entire map.

Bots usually die when they're overwhelmed and out of space while trying to prioritise something else. For example attempting to close with a special while a dense, mixed horde is blocking their path, or trying to fight a monster while surrounded by rats.

As long as you know when to let go of the W key you can win games on Legend quite comfortably with bots by just focusing on horde clearing in order to give them space to work.

[Acaios]

Picking an easy map also helps. I used to run with bots "Against the grain", for the guaranteed 1 monster/run, plus I had memorised the art locations, so I was running it to do the daily/weekly quests. Taking it slow and safe (me as Shade, Iron breaker and Zealot as grim carriers, Mercenary for temp hp and speed buff). But that took me about 35-40 minutes per run. Nowadays, I just search for lobbies for specific maps that are easy or normal difficulty with no areas that are known for party wipes (convocation of decay end fight, etc), and join them (Against the grain, hunger in the dark, halescourge, rightous stand - in that order). Some of them are even in the middle of the run, so it'll take me even less than the standard ~20 minutes per run. Every now and then, there will be a grim lost, or even a party wipe, champion players that don't know yet that curse resistance reduces hp penalty from grims, or the most annoying to me, when the host dies and quits the mission coz the other players didn't play as bots (bodyguards). All these can happen, but in most of the cases, the runs are smooth, and a lot quicker than soloing it with bots, babysitting them.

[Karl Power]

So I found what worked best was me playing the Bounty Hunter with Crossbow and Flail. When bot-herding, the player needs to remove specials and elites ASAP, because the bots won't do it, therefore the crossbow. Also, bots struggle with, well, everything, but especially with shielded stormvermin, thus the flail.

The Bounty Hunter's special shot is an excellent way to remove monsters and bosses, especially coupled with strength and concentration potions.

Running with Ironbreak-bot, Zealot-Bot and Unchained-bot goes smoothly usually, and I can take one grim (Bardin carries) and three tomes reasonably well. That results in a soldier's vault or, on Into the Nest with Monster and boss, occasionally in a general's or even emperor's vault.

However things go awry now and then. Bots slow you down immensely, they get stuck or packmastered, they are simply suicidal whenever a ratling, a flamer or a monster appears, and sometimes they do not react when the player needs help. It's quite infuriating how the bots act in manners which are actively detrimental to all your efforts, and I wish Fatshark would allow the bot mod once more in the normal realm.

[Mysterious Sir Knight]

My best advice:

- Stop farming reds. The difference between a 300 power orange with a decent reroll and a red is effectively nonexistent.

- Play with real players, bots aren't just bad and need to be given special attention to their builds, they're just boring af. They don't make mistakes, they don't do any DPS, they just stand there, absorb a little aggro, and die when it's time to die.

- If you MUST play with bots, play something high DPS that you can hard carry with, because they sure won't do the damage.