Guild Wars 2

Before I begin, please don’t hijack this post and turn it into a keyboard/mouse vs. controller discussion…….

Loving the game!

I have noticed a number of others asking about my issue below for varying reasons.

I have early stage arthritis/RSI and due to this I have to use a controller to play games. I have mapped all necessary functionality to my gamepad using Xpadder and I can tell you it works excellently. I use a special driver to type with the chatpad for xbox. I can dodge, kite and use all 10 skill slots as fast as any keyboard using player.

The only problem is I am limited to playing classes which do not have ‘ground targeted AOE’ as it is almost impossible to map this correctly to a gamepad using modifiers. I would LOVE to be able to play some of the other classes like the Elementalist.

This issue could be fixed very easily by adding one simple thing: Allow Ground Targeted AOE at your ‘current ’target’. This would completely resolve the issue for many of us who cannot rely on cursor fast targeting.

Keep up the fantastic work and I really hope you can find the time to either include my fix above or if i’m very lucky….add full controller/gamepad support. If Tera can do it…i am certain ANet can!!!

I support this, and I play on a keyboard lol.

It would be so much more useful to have AoE go off at our target. The reason is some of the ground targeting is fast and intuitive, but other things are just messy and cumbersome.

The Necro staff skills are insanely small of a radius, and good luck getting them to trigger properly in the world with random people pulling the target away from the Necro marks. The Engineer’s Grenade kit is much improved with the 2 tosses in 1, but it still is so slow, since we need to wait for the throw to connect. It is basically micromanaging our skills, since we need to have the cursor lined up, and have the delay factored in with how close or far we are, and manage our own movement and dodging.

I find it straightforward with 1 ground target in a weapon set. But once you add a whole weapon set of nothing but micromanaged skills, it loses much of it’s value. Having it go off at our target location (which I’m already doing 80% of the time) would be very helpful, as the few times I wish to place it elsewhere, it is almost certainly wasted by the actions of my own teammates.

I would like this as well. I was kitten off when after playing with the mesmer greatsword in the 3rd beta event the greatsword skill with aoe activated at the target only to see at launch they changed it to be ground targeted and now that skill is horribly useless

Not going to happen. It’s different mechanics and it’s called PBAoE.
That’s why two types of aoe exist. ground targeted and PB.

iniside.4736:

Not going to happen. It’s different mechanics and it’s called PBAoE.
That’s why two types of aoe exist. ground targeted and PB.

Thanks for your input. I know what PBAoE is….that is completely separate to what I am proposing/asking. I am not asking about ‘point blank’ aoe which is centered around the caster. I am asking for an alternative option for fast casting of ranged GTAoE.

jovanotti.9781:

iniside.4736:

Not going to happen. It’s different mechanics and it’s called PBAoE.
That’s why two types of aoe exist. ground targeted and PB.

Thanks for your input. I know what PBAoE is….that is completely separate to what I am proposing/asking. I am not asking about ‘point blank’ aoe which is centered around the caster. I am asking for an alternative option for fast casting of ranged GTAoE.

You are asking for aoe casted around your current target. Which is completely different mechanics. In this case you are predicting where your target will stay. In ground targeted aoe you predicting where your target will go.
In any case there are two separate things are not going to merge.
Elementalists have at least one such fire spell on staff.

iniside.4736:

jovanotti.9781:

iniside.4736:

Not going to happen. It’s different mechanics and it’s called PBAoE.
That’s why two types of aoe exist. ground targeted and PB.

Thanks for your input. I know what PBAoE is….that is completely separate to what I am proposing/asking. I am not asking about ‘point blank’ aoe which is centered around the caster. I am asking for an alternative option for fast casting of ranged GTAoE.

You are asking for aoe casted around your current target. Which is completely different mechanics. In this case you are predicting where your target will stay. In ground targeted aoe you predicting where your target will go.
In any case there are two separate things are not going to merge.
Elementalists have at least one such fire spell on staff.

I understand what you are saying. You are talking about a gameplay strategy….I am talking about a feature I would like added. I would be quite happy to cast GTAoE at my current target instead of ‘leading’ the target – where one places their GT Reticule is ones own decision. For me, please remember that this is due to the fact I cannot play with a mouse and keyboard.

The option to cast at the location of your mouse marker took me a lot of getting used to, having to mark at the feet of the enemy and still miss half the time…so much so I turned it off!

I can certainly appreciate that on-target AoE would be useful, and would use it myself on occasion.

Hsinimod.5784:

I support this, and I play on a keyboard lol.

It would be so much more useful to have AoE go off at our target. The reason is some of the ground targeting is fast and intuitive, but other things are just messy and cumbersome.

The Necro staff skills are insanely small of a radius, and good luck getting them to trigger properly in the world with random people pulling the target away from the Necro marks. The Engineer’s Grenade kit is much improved with the 2 tosses in 1, but it still is so slow, since we need to wait for the throw to connect. It is basically micromanaging our skills, since we need to have the cursor lined up, and have the delay factored in with how close or far we are, and manage our own movement and dodging.

I find it straightforward with 1 ground target in a weapon set. But once you add a whole weapon set of nothing but micromanaged skills, it loses much of it’s value. Having it go off at our target location (which I’m already doing 80% of the time) would be very helpful, as the few times I wish to place it elsewhere, it is almost certainly wasted by the actions of my own teammates.

haha yes. I completely agree. I can handle (very awkwardly) 1 weapon skill on my bar….but any more is impossible with my setup.

I’d love to see gamepad support for GW2 officially. The downside would be that I’d have to get a sofa and a TV for my PC too…

i support this as a targetted option. with no target the current ground select target would be used.

Tom Gore.4035:

I’d love to see gamepad support for GW2 officially. The downside would be that I’d have to get a sofa and a TV for my PC too…

Here, here. Mine is already next to the PC.

The logic of it all defeats me. Why would they do Dragon’s Tooth a target aoe when you actually need it to be manually targetted because the idiot mobs run around alll the time, yet things like lava field arent…..

Please add this option.

I’d rather bump an old topic then create a new one.

I was poking around trying to map a bug related to ground targeting (put the mouse on top of any opaque UI element, hit a GT skill, watch the green circle appear right under your toons feet) and found something interesting.

If i put the mouse on to of the target data after i have a proper GT circle, it seems to kinda vanish. And if i tap the skill a second time i get a “out of range” warning even tho the target is right in front of me. Made me wonder if there is some half-finished code in there that was supposed to put the circle on your target, if you moused over the target data, but now instead put it some place into the distance (or even outside the map).

Gokki.9574:

The logic of it all defeats me. Why would they do Dragon’s Tooth a target aoe when you actually need it to be manually targetted because the idiot mobs run around alll the time, yet things like lava field arent…..

Best guess, so you can lead the target. Never mind that the game already do so, with highly variable result if the target zigzags, for targeted ranged attacks. Tho i guess that if it is a lingering DOT you can always used it to “block” chokepoints.

i still prefer to hve a choice, sometimes you just need to land your aoe even if there is no enemy targeted, maybe you just want them not to enter the area (wvwvw) or mybe there is to much action and out of range casual targets to properly use it and it would be a waste.
also when i’m against a melee enemy in pve i want him to cross all the area of effect instead of the center so they can easily walk away and melee me. that said using some AoE only in melee (so enemy wouldn’t walk away) it’s not wise at all, some of them have casting time during while you can be destroyed.

i think it’s just lazyness, when i don’t want to use the ground target it’s only because i’m lazy in that case i may switch on the option

I sympathise with your problem and why you want targeted ground casting.
The problem is that it doesn’t fit in with the semi-action oriented fighting mode of GW2. If all of your AoE spells were cast on the target then the game would be virtually the same as every other point and click MMO out there, which is not what Anet wants. The idea behind it is that players have to use their skill and planning abilities to place AoE where it will be most effective. I understand completely that this isn’t something you are able to do, but corporations will always cater to the majority rather than a minority.

Thing is that GW2 has a oddball hybrid UI. There are action/twitch elements piled on top of what is for the most part a classic MMORPG UI. Compare this to the likes of TERA or Neverwinter, where mouse is constantly used for aiming. And in Neverwinter’s case can be used to reposition ground target AOEs (TERA use a fixed arc alongside a range readout on the reticule), but it will default to centering it on whatever you have as your reticule target.