Dr Graves 3rd arc, attacked and killed by "helpless" character (Zephyr)

[Ridiculous Girl]

I was running through all the Dr Graves arcs on my new Mind Cotrol/Psi dom, Evil Stepmother, when I ran into something strange. On the first door mission "Survive Zephyr's Insidous Plan", i think it was called, I completed all the necessary objectives. I reached the final stage, "find and banish Zephyr", and confronted Zephyr, as an +1 EB I think. After popping some purples, yellows and reds, I mezzed him and confused him. Once confused he quickly went down, to something like 10% health, and then changed to blue, requiring that I interact with him, namely to gloat and get him on my side. He was still confused when I began questioning him, but when the confuse wore off, he attacked me, but he himself was unattackable, since he was in talk mode. He killed me since I was not prepared for it. After killing me, he fell to his feet again and was "helpless" again.

 

I am not sure this is repeatable, but I forgot that I can replay this in a flashback, so I will do so when I have the chance and I will update.

[Ridiculous Girl]

Ok, I was able to reproduce the bug. The problem is that he was confused while he switched to blue, interactive mode. He perceived me as an enemy and attacked me, while I was going through the dialogue prompts. I am pretty sure this is not how it is supposed to work out.

 

[Rudra]

Unfortunately, that is how confuse works. Friends are enemies and enemies are friends. You confused him as an enemy so he became a friend. When his health hit the trigger point, he became a friend, so you became an enemy because he was still confused. It's why using confuse on mobs that go friendly during combat is so tricky. With any mob that starts an enemy, gets confused, and then switches to friendly while confused, (s)he will resume attacking you because the confuse prompts him/her to do so. Retreating until confuse wears off or avoiding using confuse alleviates the problem. Regardless, this is not actually a bug, but how the power works.

[Ridiculous Girl]

yes, i know the mechanics of the confuse power, but that does not mean that it's working correctly in the mission story. a lvl 15 villain fighting an EB and defeats them should not have to expect that when the enemy surrenders that they will attack because they are under your power. technically yes, they are confused. but they surrender in the story, all effects from the fight should be turned off. at minimum, they surrender, they should not be attacking anyone, friend or foe. they are down.

[Rudra]

So... uhm... how would you propose disabling a power effect during the active duration? Mobs are spawned as combat (friendly/hostile) or non-combat. Without requiring a de-spawn of the target, which can shift the target to a completely different part of the map when the non-combat version spawns, how do you propose this be addressed? A power that turns off confuse when an enemy shifts from hostile to friendly can cause confuse to become useless as it keeps getting flagged to turn off because the confused target changed alignments like it should.

[Rudra]

Right, the devs are supposed to figure it out. Forget I asked. Sorry.