BEWARE, LONG POST WITH A LOT OF IMAGE LINKS
First of all I want to say that I’m an Engineer player, I didn’t not play other classes with projectile skills that much, so I’m not too sure if they had felt the issue too (although I did have done some testing with other classes later in this post).
Ok, on topic:
The projectile skills in this game, whenever used without targeting an enemy, has this issue of shooting the projectile in a downward angle. (like this picture, where I used left click to show the side, but I’m actually facing the golem in a short distance)
This has caused quite an headache for me sometimes, for example, the enemy may just be right in front of me, but when I press my skill, it’s not hitting at all. (see this? I’m so close to him, but I’m hitting nothing…)
This issue wasn’t that noticeable until I switched from Pistol to Rifle. After some thought, I realized that the reason Pistol has less problem was because that:
1) The character holds pistol at a higher position compare to using a rifle (Hip Shot, well, shoot from the character’s hip), so even though pistol’s bullet still flies downward, it can hit “further” despite the fact it has shorter range than rifle’s (Rifle vs Pistol)
2) Pistol has explosion at the end of its range, so more possibly to hit the mob
And after further testing, I found out that in order to make projectile skills hit the target WITHOUT targeting, you can’t play the game with bird’s-eye view, you literally have to move your camera to actually aim your target...
And what I said above aren’t only applied to the Engineer, but other classes as well (excuse me for only showing 3 other classes, my 5 slots were full already)
Ranger:
hitting the floor
adjusting view angle for hit
hitting the floor 2
adjusting view angle for hit 2
Necro:
hitting the floor
adjusting view angle for hit
Mesmer (using Magic Bullet):
hitting the floor
adjusting view angle for hit
Now, having read here, some of you might want to question me that: “Why not just use auto-targeting then? That way you will never miss.”
True, auto-targeting has its pros, but there’s also cons to it, for examples:
1) In this picture, imagine we’re in PvE, that torch light in front of me is an incoming Risen which I wanted to target, and the golem on my right is an innocent cute yellow-name moa. I fire my rifle, and because moa is actually more close to me, the game has decided to target it instead, so now I gotta fight both the Risen and the moa…-_-
2) When not using auto-targeting, certain skills can be better used, like Engineer’s Flamethrower (again, excuse me, but I’m not too familiar with other classes). Check this picture and this picture, do you see the difference? The 1st one is with the auto-targeting option, the 2nd one is without; if there were actually more enemies like 10 of them, I can hit way more enemies with the auto-targeting option off.
So, after typing all that, what I wished for is that maybe Anet could change projectile’s behavior to be always horizontal to the ground? Or simply make it being another option like auto-targeting, so that if some players actually like how projectile works now, they can still choose to turn the horizontal option off
(edited by Blizt.3086)