If you have Mercenary, IB and WHC bots all in the same party each bot has an AoE shout ultimate that knocks enemies back with various added effects. However they all seem to have the same AI “trigger” that causes them to use the ult. I think it has something to do with the number of nearby enemies. The problem occurs when all 3 bots are located close together (such as if you run the improved AI mod and they stick close to the player. If you get into a situation that instantly triggers the AI like a bunch of rats climbing out of a spawn point, all 3 bots will pop their ults in the same nanosecond. This effectively wastes 2/3 ults because the enemies are already knocked down and further shouts will have no effect. I would consider this to be a bug because it’s definitely not desired behaviour and while human players might waste multiple ults by accident they wouldn’t deliberately do so.
In order to fix this you need to add a few “intensity” levels to the ult trigger. If one of the bots uses a shout the others should hold off for about 5-10 seconds unless the situation gets worse. If 1-2 ults are used then the threshold for using further ults should rise accordingly so that the third only comes in if it is actually needed.
This also applies to the ranger, battle wizard and unchained ults as those ults also apply AoE knockback. However the conditions that trigger the AI to use them seem to be different and they don’t have the same “hive mind” effect as the aforementioned trio that causes them to ult at the same time.
The programming for the bots’ use of their Career Skills is simple, and only adjusted slightly by type and specific Skill. They use their Skills at the start of a horde, and then soon after they get it back (if the horde lasts that long). They also use them, if possible, just as they start to revive someone. The latter one can backfire on IB, though, as they tend to turn very defensive after that, often up to ignoring anything else but blocking. Also they’ll try to use their skills to release players from disablers. They don’t consider positioning much, and cannot take effective advantage of invisibility.
Especially the “use at horde start” leads to ineffective use, and with multiple bots is very likely to cause for several Skills to go off at once. The disabler release also causes a lot of this.
I’m not personally quite certain that a change is needed. It would be nice, but the bots are what they are pretty much on purpose afaik, and making them too good (like individualizing their Skill use further) would pretty easily let them surpass even good human players, making bots the more useful option. That, in turn, would reduce the social aspect of the game by a lot. I also find the bots’ behavior still very much predictable and thus able to be manipulated (or at least arranged so that they play to their strengths).
IB ulting before a revive is an issue yeah. They tend to just stand there and not actually revive even if their 100% BCR would stop anything from interrupting them.