Question - MQ2Nav and Pulling in areas with drop-offs

[Sum1]

Hey all.

Last night I made my first MQ2Nav mesh. I played with the settings quite a bit, and I think I figured it out. I did a quick /nav target to see if my dude would move, and sure enough, it worked.

I'm setting up a camp in an area that's kind of on a wall. If I fall off that wall getting back on is a gigantic pain in the ass, and if it happens when I'm AFK or semi-AFK it'll be an issue.

1. With the navigation meshes, the toon will attempt to stay up on the same level/wall while pulling and not cut corners or otherwise attempt to move back to camp without using the walls, right?

2. I'm camped in one area (safe spot) and want to pull mobs along the way to a neighboring room. If I make the pull radius large enough to reach into the back of the neighboring room it opens up a lot of other areas with other mobs that I don't really want/need to pull. If I remove the tiles in the mesh of the areas I don't want to pull from would it be sufficient to ensure my puller stays in the areas I want him be in?

3. In the above case, if he has LOS of a mob that's standing inside the area I've edited out, will the puller still tag a mob inside the edited area from distance using bellow or SK terror or other spell?

I was using a macro that had a recorded advpath, but that shit was infuriating with how fickle it was. The pull path would tag a freakin mob and then continue running down the full path or most of the path before coming back to camp. Meanwhile, the tank was running off and trying to tag that crap, and (more infuriatingly) sometimes my other toons would be, as well. lol good times!

I'm hoping switching to Nav from Advpath will fix my issues.

 

[ctaylor22]

Sum1, The problem you were having with AdvPath not turning around and running back to camp like you expected, has more to do with the macro and not AdvPath. They most likely were using a /play Pause, to stop and tag the mob then using /play reverse unpause to start running back to camp. The problem with that is /play pause and /play unpause will finish moving to the current waypoint before going into reverse.

The solution to that problem is to change out the /play pause for /play off and swap the /play reverse unpause with /play smart reverse PathName. I will mention this, but you won't be able to do this just yet, there was a command added to advpath that better handles the reverse. We added the /play flee command. Now keep in mind this command is not in the current release of advpath, but will be shortly.

Let me try and explain how pulling works in KA 8.5.5.

In Priority of what is checked for pulling:

LOS is checked first. If Mob is LOS the use the /Moveto command

Nav/Mesh is checked next. If the mesh is loaded for the zone and the mob is NOT LOS, then use /nav command.

Kiss does not check if the mob is in an area you masked out of the mesh. If the mod is NOT LOS KISS will use /nav to try and get into LOS of the mob, then switch over to /moveto, the only good masking out sections in the map will be usefull for, will be to redirect a path and keep you from getting stuck on things along a path you want to run. I am not sure if there is a way to test if a location is masked out or not using MQ2Nav. If there is a command for testing, then this could be used same as LOS testing to exclude mobs from selection.

So basically if a mob is in pull range and is in LOS then kiss will pull it.

 

[Sum1]

My impression of MQ2Nav and why removing blocks from the mesh around objects works is because the toon won't travel through areas not defined by the blocks. So, in the case of my wall issue, I can adjust the mesh X, Y, and Z settings so that the top of the wall areas are only defined and navigable (at least that's what I'm thinking).

This makes it difficult if I wanted to run from zone in to my camp using MQ2Nav, but I don't and am only interested in the area around my camp.

I hope I'm explaining my thoughts in a coherent manner.

 

[ctaylor22]

I understand what you are saying, but you have to consider that MQ2Nav's purpose is to find you a path from point A to point B and then run that path. If you target a mob, in a spot you Masked out, and then issue the command /nav target. NAV will try and find a path to that mob. Now MQ2Nav may stop right at the edge of the area you Masked out. You should be able to setup a mesh that keeps you on the wall, but if a mob comes into LOS and the mob is out of your pull range. /Moveto will take over and Moveto knows that the shortage distance between 2 points is a straight line, and it will prove it to you. I think that for what you are trying to accomplish, you would be better off using AdvPath, you can control your pathing regardless of LOS.

I know this doesn't help you much at this moment, but it will soon. KA 9.0 uses advpathing and will do what you are wanting to do much better than the other options.

 

[Sum1]

I understand what you are saying, but you have to consider that MQ2Nav's purpose is to find you a path from point A to point B and then run that path. If you target a mob, in a spot you Masked out, and then issue the command /nav target. NAV will try and find a path to that mob. Now MQ2Nav may stop right at the edge of the area you Masked out. You should be able to setup a mesh that keeps you on the wall, but if a mob comes into LOS and the mob is out of your pull range. /Moveto will take over and Moveto knows that the shortage distance between 2 points is a straight line, and it will prove it to you. I think that for what you are trying to accomplish, you would be better off using AdvPath, you can control your pathing regardless of LOS.

I know this doesn't help you much at this moment, but it will soon. KA 9.0 uses advpathing and will do what you are wanting to do much better than the other options.

Ahhhh... shoot, I think I know what you're saying now. MQ2Nav isn't going to screw me, but the /moveto command might. I may have to play around a bit with group placement to see if I can get around that issue. When returning back to camp with a mob does KA use the /moveto command for that, as well (perhaps only if it has LOS or something like that?)?

 

[ctaylor22]

Ahhhh... shoot, I think I know what you're saying now. MQ2Nav isn't going to screw me, but the /moveto command might. I may have to play around a bit with group placement to see if I can get around that issue. When returning back to camp with a mob does KA use the /moveto command for that, as well (perhaps only if it has LOS or something like that?)?

Nope, If you have Nav loaded with a Mesh, it will use /Nav to return to camp.

 

[Sum1]

Nope, If you have Nav loaded with a Mesh, it will use /Nav to return to camp.

I think I'll be good, then. I'll do some testing to see.

Now if I can just get freaking advanced looting to work properly. It's insane that there isn't a global command or setting for you to greed roll on literally everything that drops, regardless of whether or not it's previously dropped and you've checked the box. It would really make my life easier if that was the freakin case.