Movement & Positioning

The short version

• A profile you already have keeps working the way it did, with one change: human-like stashing is now on.
• A new profile starts with Smart Positioning, Medium reactions and human-like looting on, using the Mapping settings.
• The settings are in FollowApp, per profile: Edit Profile → Advanced. The Overview page shows the four presets at the top and marks the one in use. One click applies a preset; you can still change any single setting afterwards.
• Dodge and retreat only work with Smart Positioning on. Far travel works either way.
• A controller always uses the old cursor, so the cursor and reaction settings do nothing in controller mode.

What your profiles start with

This is what a follower does if you change nothing. A setting you have changed yourself always stays as you set it. Each name is the one you see in FollowApp.

Distances are in the game’s own distance units. Auto-Input and pathfinding are on for a new profile, as before.

The four presets

Pick the one that matches what the follower is doing. If you are not sure, pick Mapping.

• Off

  Turns the three off. Smart Positioning and placement stay as they are.

  Dodge off · Retreat off · Far travel off

• Campaign (weak bot)

  A fresh or fragile character that has to stay alive.

  Dodge everything (rolls on PoE2) · Retreat early · May leave your aura range to survive · Far travel on · Medium reactions · Human-like looting, fast

• Mapping

  A geared character clearing maps — a little calmer.

  Dodge lethal + major, 300 ms apart · Retreat when hurt, 10 s apart · Far travel on · Medium reactions · Human-like looting, fast

• Bossing

  Boss fights: out of the big hits, close enough to stay in range.

  Dodge everything (rolls on PoE2) · Retreat when hurt, back 2 - 4 s · Far travel on · Medium reactions · Human-like looting, fast

“The three” are dodge, retreat and far travel. Every preset except Off also switches Smart Positioning to Live, because dodge and retreat need it, sets Human reactions to Medium and turns human-like looting on at Fast speed. Off leaves reactions and looting alone. The rolls are Path of Exile 2 only; a Path of Exile 1 profile walks every dodge. A preset does not touch where the follower stands: the zone settings stay as you set them.

Campaign (weak bot) lets the follower leave your aura range to survive. It turns Never leave aura range off, for every role. A fragile character may then step outside the aura range to escape a hit that would kill it, and walks back afterwards. Retreats still stay well inside your range.

For an aurabot, pick Mapping or Bossing. Both leave Never leave aura range as it is, so an aurabot never steps out of the carry’s aura range.

The cursor and walking

Every profile uses the human motion cursor unless you switch it off. You do not need to set anything. What it does:

• It glides. The cursor travels to its target on a smooth, curved path at a hand’s speed, then clicks. It does not snap from point to point.
• It holds a direction while walking. While the follower walks after you, the cursor stays still as long as the direction is about right. It corrects only when the direction drifts a little off, at uneven moments, never on a beat. When the route turns, the cursor turns at the speed of a hand instead of jumping to the new direction.
• It stops where it lands. When the follower reaches its spot, it lets go of the move key and stops right there. The cursor does not wander about while the follower is walking.
• It rests near the character. After a stop the cursor comes to rest close to the follower, in a different direction each time.
• It stays off the panels. A click on a panel or a piece of the HUD does nothing in game, so the cursor does not aim there. It also keeps away from the edges of the window.
• Its aim is a little loose on purpose. With human reactions on, the point it walks toward is slightly off, the way a person’s is. A higher reaction level means a looser aim. Items, portals and objects are still clicked on the object itself.

Walk style. There are three ways to hold the cursor while walking: steady rests it ahead and corrects only when the direction drifts off, drift rests it the same way but lets it wander slowly and re-grip now and then, and origin moves the cursor along the path all the time.

If the cursor misbehaves, tick Legacy cursor in Settings, or set Cursor engine to Legacy under Cursor & input. Both go back to the old cursor for that profile.

Reaction time

A person does not change direction the instant the player in front of them turns. With Human reactions on, a follower waits a short, human-like moment before it reacts to a sudden turn or burst of speed from you. Each follower picks its own typical delay inside its level’s range when the session starts, so the party does not all react at the same moment.

The setting is Human reactions under Cursor & input. It needs the human motion cursor.

Smart Positioning

Without Smart Positioning, a follower stays inside the follow box from Settings. With it set to Live, each follower has a zone around you that suits its job, and it settles in that zone like a player would.

Roles

The bot reads the follower’s skill bar and works out its role on its own: an aurabot stands behind you inside its aura range, a warcry or banner support at your shoulder, a damage dealer beside you. Set Role by hand only for what the skill bar cannot show: a culler, a tank, and Path of Exile 2 presence or curse supports.

The zone

The zone controls are on the Placement page, beside a live map of the party that shows every change at once.

• Zone width is how far round you the zone reaches. At its widest it is a ring all the way round you, leaving out only the ground in front of you that you walk into.
• Zone fixed on screen decides how the zone turns. Off: the zone turns with the way you walk, smoothly — when you turn back, the follower’s spot sweeps round you instead of jumping across. On: the zone stays put on your screen, so “behind you on screen” stays behind you on screen whichever way you go.
• Share the zone cuts the zone into slices, one per follower, so they do not crowd the same area. You choose up to 5 slices, but slices only apply when that many followers are in the party: with fewer, each gets a bigger slice, and a follower on its own gets the whole zone. The map on the Placement page draws the slices for its preview party.

How followers settle

• They stop when you stop. The moment you stop, each follower’s spot freezes and it settles. It does not shuffle around looking for a better one.
• They stay where they land. A follower that has stopped only moves again if it is right on your toes, standing straight ahead in your path, or outside its range.
• A follower that has stopped is never pushed by one that is still walking. The walking one finds its own space.
• Each time you set off, it picks a new spot. Sometimes in its favourite area, sometimes anywhere in its zone, sometimes near where it already is — then it walks onto that spot. While you keep walking it thinks again every few seconds and drifts to the new spot rather than jumping.
• In a party they take turns. The follower furthest back takes the nearest free spot; the one in front moves deeper so the others can land. Each keeps to its own side of you.
• They keep a little room from each other. Spread is how far followers keep from each other. It is a light nudge, not a hard gap, so the party does not fan out wide.
• Supports keep up when you run. With Predict the leader’s movement on, a support that is falling behind aims a little ahead of you instead of at where its spot is right now.

The defaults suit most parties. Change the zone only if your followers stand too close, too far, or on the wrong side.

Dodge

The follower steps out of dangerous ground and big hits it can see coming, and stays inside your aura distance while it does unless a hit would kill it (an aurabot stays inside even then). How bad a hit is gets judged against this character’s life, energy shield and resistances, so a tanky follower dodges less than a fragile one. Needs Smart Positioning Live.

On Path of Exile 2, Dodge roll (PoE2) lets the follower roll out of a lethal hit that walking cannot clear in time. With dodge on, retreat and far travel also never walk through a live danger.

Retreat

The follower falls back toward the safest point still inside your range when it is in more danger than you. It holds there for a few seconds, then comes back. Needs Smart Positioning Live.

• When hurt — falls back when its life trends down and there is more threat around it than around you.
• Early — falls back as soon as monsters start to crowd it, before it takes damage. It steps back more often.
• Off — never falls back.

Far travel

Pack-aware far travel takes over only when the follower is far behind you — walking back after a death, or catching up — and hands back to the normal follow once it is close again. On the way it plans a route around packs of monsters and uses movement skills (the dodge roll on Path of Exile 2). When nothing is in the way, it simply walks straight at you. It works with or without Smart Positioning, and does nothing in town or the hideout. Start far travel beyond sets how far behind counts as far.

Separately, Follow through transitions is on for every profile: when you are somewhere the follower can only reach through a transition, such as a boss arena, it takes it.

Movement skills

A movement skill in Auto-Input fires on that slot’s own distance setting, measured from the follower to the spot it is heading for. Before the key is pressed, the cursor is already on where the dash should go, so dashes land where they are meant to.

Never leave aura range

A carry that relies on its aurabot for resistances can die to one hit without it. With Never leave aura range on, the aura distance is a hard wall: dodge, retreat and catching up all pick the best spot inside it. If the only way to survive a hit would be to step outside, the follower takes the hit instead.

An aurabot has it on unless you turn it off, and the Campaign (weak bot) preset turns it off for every role. With it off, the follower still stays in range for everything except a hit that would kill it, steps out only for as short a time as it can, and walks back. Retreats always stay well inside your range either way.

Human-like stashing

Human-like stashing (under Stash & loot) is now on for every profile. The follower deposits like a person: it holds Ctrl once and sweeps down one stash column and up the next on a steady rhythm, then tidies up what is left. Like a person, it clicks a little more than once per item. Keyboard and mouse only; a controller keeps its own deposit.

Human-like looting

With Human-like looting on (under Stash & loot), the follower loots like a person: the cursor strokes through the stack of item labels instead of making one exact click per item, and it presses your item-label key between passes to re-stack the labels. Loot speed sets how fast the hand moves, from Human to Race. It needs the human motion cursor and keyboard and mouse; with the legacy cursor or a controller, the normal looting runs.

A new profile has it on, and so do the Campaign, Mapping and Bossing presets. A profile you already have keeps its old looting until you turn this on or apply one of those presets.

Settings reference

Every setting here is in Edit Profile → Advanced, except walk style. Each row gives the name you see in FollowApp and, under it, how it is written in the profile file. What a new profile starts with is in the table at the top.

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