Guild Wars 2

Actually this is a basic feature. When ArenaNet decides to make some abilities more ranged than others (or ranged at all), there has to be an indicator whether you’re in range or not. A small text displaying the distance to your target would be a trivial solution to that problem.

Some might argue that GW2’s combat style is more focused on paying attention to the combat itself rather than reading the UI, but most players will often have a look at the enemy health/status bar anyway because they’re planning their combat strategy in advance (deciding whether to burst/finish the enemy using skills with high cooldown, renew conditions, delaying skills when the opponent has defensive buffs, etc.).

A distance indicator would definitely help with initiating attacks (e.g. pulling or pushing enemies) or in general recognizing situations where you just seem to be in range for a certain skill and waste it since you could not see the exact distance.

If you don’t want to bother casual players with a crowded UI (showing a small number alongside with the target’s health bar wouldn’t make it look crowded), you may give others some more advanced options, which is alway a good idea in my opinion.

But there is one…when you’re out of range there’s a small red bar under the skill icon…it’s not much but it’s there

Oops… I didn’t see that one. I guess I’m just too used to conventional indicators either showing a numerical value or greying out the affected skills. Thanks for pointing this out.