Mephisto's mood

[Archon_Wing]

So one day my friend decides to bug me to help him rush. Yes, I don't really appreciate cheese too much, but that's not the point of the thread.

Anyhow, his level 1 character wandered down to durance 3. Me, being really bored, decides to slowly kill Meph with the valkyrie. The valk and Mephisto duel for a very long time. Meanwhile, my friend and i just stand there. Then suddenly Mephisto just turns around and lobs his infamous ice orb at him. Ok, it was kinda funny for a momment, but then I realized what a waste of time it had been (it was hc)

So I bring up this question.Why did Meph suddenly aim at him? His character was at a decent distance away from Mephisto. There was a decoy near Mephisto and I was standing pretty close too. Above that, he was actively engaging my valkyrie. Usually most enemies don't change focus on a target unless the target moves away. I've never seen them switch focus like that before. Mood swings perhaps? Or maybe some kind of anti-rushing measure? B)

[shavenlunatic]

I've never seen that before. Every time I've been versing an EOLB they have allways either Targetted the stronger player OR Attacked whichever player was attacking him/her. Maybe he moved his mouse pointer over him and he saw that as a threat? :D

[Kartoffelsalat]

Nominate Truffles

[Baajikiil]

Mood swings perhaps?

Actually, I've seen a few odd AI activities from Meph as well. I have run him maybe 30-40 times with my mf warcry barb, and I've seen strange behavior:

Meph will about 80% of the time focus on the barb, not my barb merc *if* I am in melee range of him.
Sometimes I can't get meph to target me at all, and have to leave(town refresh) before he kills the merc.
The odd behavior is that while he his focusing his melee attacks on my barb, any ranged attacks he does(and he does them rarely when he's in melee) will be targeted at my merc.

I'll be sitting there swinging my staff or yelling at meph, and he'll turn for a sec, launch some charged bolts at my merc, and just as fast turn back to melee with my barb. To me, this looks like he has a different targeting routine with his ranged attacks than he does with his melee attacks.

This may not help you much, but I figured I should mention that I've seen similiar things as well.

BTW The reason I want to keep my merc alive is that he has ~175 mf on, and I let him get the kill.

[eppie]

I see a similar thing when I (amazon, single player) fight mephisto with my Valkyrie and act2 merc. I let them fight him while standing at a distance shooting freezing arrows at him. Once in a while he shoots that ice-orb to me, (and also that lightning , and lightning bolts).
Diablo (NM) on the other hand prefers to attack me and lets the merc and valkyrie just hit him, and the same seems to go for Baal.
I always thought they attacked the one that does them most damage, but now I'm not sure anymore.

[bigeyedbug]

Not totally on-topic, and possibly old news:

Two nights ago I made the nearly fatal mistake of activating Hell Meph in HC and putting the wall of the right room between us. He spammed his Blizzard through the wall at me until I was a screen away. This took a looooong tiiiiiiiiiiiiimmmme because of the chill effect. I went through all sixteen potions, including 4 blues--PANIC PANIC PANIC PANIC!

Pretty smart on his part, but bad for my heart. :ph34r: