Guild Wars 2

Hello All: I have become VERY frustrated with the coding and logic behind the Auto Target function. I primarily use a Warrior with Bow. I have tried having my party members target the monster, but my Warrior still gets distracted (see below). Now I may be doing a lot of things wrong but ….
1) Why do I switch targets in the middle of an attack? Often when this happens it is either to a less dangerous target, a target farther away, or a target that would not be aggroed otherwise.
2) Why sometimes does my initial attack hit the nearer target other times one farther away?
3) Why do I not shift to the monster that is adjacent to me and doing lots of damage, but continue to attack that other monster over there?
4) Why when I am attacking a Champ or Boss and some little nothing of a monster walks with in range, do I switch to the little nothing?
5) If a monster surprises me or runs up and attacks me, often my first shot goes off into la la land or Aggros some other monster.
I am looking for help here, please.
What can I do to improve my targeting?
What is the Auto Target priority of monsters?
Clicking on a Target to attack only that one …
a) doesn’t always work, see above
b) Isn’t always possible (Have you seen the crowds MegaServer has caused), I can’t even see the monster or his name bar sometimes).
c) Has actually caused me to have to select the next target after the first dies, so now it is no longer automatic.

This happens mostly with Bow, but I have had it happen while in melee (the Warrior fights Sword / Axe).

Don’t EVER use autotargeting. I don’t think many people understand how complex a feature like that is and how excruciatingly difficult it would be to have autotargeting that never does something wrong.

Turn it off, and learn to play without it. It’s well worth it. What I suggest is that you bind something close to WASD (or your movement keys) for “target nearest enemy.” I personally use C for it and it functions similarly to the way autotarget would, but I have control over it instead of it just randomly shooting other things.

I just used the Tab button. I believe it’s preset to target the nearest enemy.

Arzo.8671:

I just used the Tab button. I believe it’s preset to target the nearest enemy.

Yes, but the nearest line of sight enemy, if one is off to your side or behind it will not be targeted. I use it as well but you need to be aware of where things are.

I’m using autotargeting and it’s fine for me. It all depends on the camera rotation, targets in the middle if your screen will have higher priority. It doesn’t choose the closest target, it’s just like you had a crosshair in the middle of your screen and everything that’s under the crosshair will be your target (or the closest target to the middle of the screen). If you learn it, it’s really predictible.

Some suggestions:
- There is an action in settings that you can bind some key to, called “Lock Autotarget”. Hold it to keep selected target, release to untarget.
- Target enemy with the highest priority (like champion etc) with CTRL + T. Press Lock Autotarget once to return to free-target mode, when the target is not locked so you can target everything around. Press T to lock your target on the selected enemy.

Most games I generally don’t use auto targetting, but GW I do. Don’t know why, guess I was just too lazy to turn it off. Either way I think Anet did a pretty good job as far as MMO targeting scripts go.

I have experienced none of the above mentioned problems OP said, and as yuyuuu said it is all about camera positioning, it targets the closest center of your camera. Use this and tab, you will be fine. Else just turn it off

Yeah, I’ve disabled auto-target as well.

But the thing that bugs me the most is when I have locked into a target and then “lose” the target because it went slightly out of range. Then I have to re-target it, but there are closer mobs making “closest target” useless and forcing me to either click the enemy (often fails) or cycle through all of them with “next target”.

In the fight with Tequatl, for example, this is just HORRIBLE! Every single time he does his leaning-back-attack-animation, the cannons on the east post lose targeting, then you see yourself shooting at nothing or a random mob.

Problems with having auto targetting on:

-When running from mobs, you can’t use movement skills (leaps, rushes, etc.) without crashing into them and getting in combat.
-It messes up positioning and makes it much harder to cleave a group of 3 mobs because your attacks will always be aimed towards only one of them.
-And most importantly… YOU CAN’T USE FGS #4 WITH IT!

So yeah, it’s better to have it turned off. Just have a handy key you can press for easy targetting when needed and you’ll be fine.

Targeting period in GW2 is absolutely ABYSMAL.

What would be wrong with a button that can simply “Target highest threat”?! In that case, it would choose the closest mob if not in combat or the mob which represents the highest threat if you are in combat or the one that’s shooting you from behind even – couple that with a “auto-face your target” option and things would work pretty well. The mobs AI use this kind of targeting to determine which player to attack so why can’t we (as players) have something similar to target the NPC which represents the highest threat to us?!

Never had issues with Auto Target, apart from the awkward moment when you are attacked, so you dodge and start shooting, and the first thing auto target aims for is an NPC on your left. -,-
…seriously?