Guild Wars 2

Anyone else getting rather annoyed by the targeting in this game? I find it extremely annoying when facing rangers with pets, mm necros, and any sorta of mesmer. It’s as if the game wants me to lose because it’s always switching targets to the pets instead of the person I want. I’m hardly ever fooled by illusions, but that doesn’t keep the game from wanting to target them and make me waste important and timed skills.

If anyone has some tips to help me out it would be great, but atm I don’t think there’s anything to make it better. Ride the lighting is always hitting the wrong target taking me in a whole new direction, and having an asura thief in pvp may be nice since the small size, but the camera is focused lower to the ground than on other races making targeting and seeing the target a pain.

Anet needs to put in an aiming cursor or point and click lock on because with the game being so visually hectic it’s rather important to be able to use ur skills on the intended target instead of where the game thinks the attack should be directed.

There is an option under the general options tab that enables, in effect, sticky targeting. It won’t drop your target until you click on someone else. It’s a god send in WvW.

I’ll have to go through the setting again and see if there’s any of those targeting ones I missed. Thanks for the heads up

Aeonblade.8709:

There is an option under the general options tab that enables, in effect, sticky targeting. It won’t drop your target until you click on someone else. It’s a god send in WvW.

I think the point is that the game often registers things that aren’t clicks, as clicks. Like when you move the camera quickly, or sometimes even just while standing near something.

Curo.2483:

Aeonblade.8709:

There is an option under the general options tab that enables, in effect, sticky targeting. It won’t drop your target until you click on someone else. It’s a god send in WvW.

I think the point is that the game often registers things that aren’t clicks, as clicks. Like when you move the camera quickly, or sometimes even just while standing near something.

Now that it does do, and I don’t know a fix for it. The stick targeting helps, but doesn’t eliminate the problem.

Or how about a targeting rule that prioritizes red targets over yellow ones. I get so tired of targeting random yellows that are wandering around in the midst of red targets. Or the Southsun events where there is one red target in a bunch of yellow settlers. For some reason I wasn’t able to click on the red target and was tabbing through a horde of yellow ones. Standing there, tab, tab, tabbing through all them was annoying.

I think the much bigger issue is that you can left click target friendlies (in a game where there is zero reason to ever directly target a friendly in combat) and corpses among other things. When there’s lots of targets around and the “target nearest” type functions simply aren’t feasible, the direct target is atrocious. Especially since in this game you can use abilities with improper targets and they simply fail and go on cooldown. They really need to have an option like “Left click only targets living hostiles while in combat”.

I like it when I want to target the guy in front of me and when I use Infiltrator Strike that I fall 3 yards short of the guy in the back and end up having to reposition myself to gain any advantage in combat.

It’s really obnoxious and I don’t know why they think it’s ok or even thought it was. It’s extremely hard to click on the right target, your trying to simultaneously rotate the camera to keep focus, you have to make sure your hand placement is right for hot keys, and you have to decipher what the hell is going on on the screen. Like I am hardly ever able to play reactive in this game because 1) It’s a pain to target with multiple enemies, especially pets, minions, clones, etc. 2) I can’t tell what skills the enemy is using until it’s too late 3) I have to think about so much else that by the time I’m able to time a skill perfectly, I lose the target and waste a skill.

Targeting really needs to be looked at. Such an important aspect as using the right skills on the right target shouldn’t be left in such a kittenty state. Single target ranged weapons are almost useless, and it’s one of the reasons I enjoy melee and staff aoe’s more than things that need targeting because it’s ridiculous.

Many times I have no clue what this game thinks I’m targeting. Even if I go up against one enemy with my pet and have that enemy targeted it’ll randomly switch target to my pet without me clicking anything. I can take my hand off the mouse and just tap the 1 key to start autoattacking and then watch it hop targets for no reason.

Some improvements would indeed be appreciated. I’d like to see the “target closest” function actually target the closest foe, regardless of which direction I’m facing. It seems like the feature currently only targets a foe immediately in front of the player which a much closer target might be 45 degrees off dead center. Also the right-click targeting really needs to be an option we can toggle off. I use the right button to control the camera all the time, and when the right button lifts if a foe was under the cursor I’ll often start targeting that foe. I never want to use the right button to target.

yes i agree and than see video of people so good at targeting everything and rotating camera so hard that i don’t understand what’s wrong with me

ScottBroChill.3254:

I’ll have to go through the setting again and see if there’s any of those targeting ones I missed. Thanks for the heads up

In options menu there’s one for Auto Targeting. If you switch that off, it will solve your problems of for eg: RTL or other buff type skills such speeds/shields etc from randomly selecting a target around you and should take you in the direction you click on. I found that annoying as well even when using a skill on my Guardian like Retreat which is basically a speed skill it always wants to hit something unless Auto Targeting is switched off. However, this may not solve your other targeting issues and may in fact make it a bit harder/clumsier in combat but at least it should stick to your own target selection. It also helps if you enable double-click targeting that way if you double click on the target once selected, it should stick to it unless you change it.

Overall, the targeting in this game is a mess. I suggested way back in beta they have an option to lock on target and also to move you within target range like in gw1 but that was ignored and many players cried that would make the game too easy. No doubt many of those players aren’t even around any more but we’re stuck with the same old crappy targeting system that’s still here since beta, with very iffy options that rarely work as described.

It almost seems that half the skills were meant for a certain targeting system and the other half of the skills were meant for a different targeting system. Causes too much inconsistency and really makes a lot of usable builds useless.

The game is missing a ‘target nearest player’ which is a major downfall. So you are forced to click target which is absolutely horrible, ever tried clicking a bosses name or player when things are around it? You can click right on the health bar and literally nothing happens. I too have problems with the targeting in this game..

I don’t like the targeting either. I’m constantly targeting yellows and whites instead of red targets. Make the yellows and whites “friendly” so they aren’t triggered. There’s nothing like fighting an enemy and barely winning and then firing at a moa or some other random and dying

Well something needs to be done about this seeing as it has a direct effect on the gameplay. I don’t believe proper balancing can be done until you can actually see how powerful a build is when it works as intended.

As a ranger my targeting often switches to another target in mid combat and i don’t click anything, for the life of me i cannot understand why or how come it does it…

Another thing if something goes invisible my target instantly shoots to another object, it shouldn’t…i understand it should not stay on the target but as soon as it reappears it should be back on the same target…

The game is missing a ‘target nearest player’ which is a major downfall. So you are forced to click target which is absolutely horrible, ever tried clicking a bosses name or player when things are around it? You can click right on the health bar and literally nothing happens. I too have problems with the targeting in this game..

Actually in the options it has a target nearest player, sadly it just doesn’t work at all, it still targets the furthest away thing and is totally busted..

That’s target nearest enemy, not player. For example if we had the option, it would completely ignore minions and target that necro straight away. Pretty much a must in pvp, and all other MMOs I’ve played have it so I’m dumbfounded.

It’s like they want combat completely chaotic and messy.

Mathias.9657:

…
It’s like they want combat completely chaotic and messy.

Would that surprised you? lol :P

I mean if they’re is ever a 2v1, you can never focus on a target resulting in an automatic loss. Then ur just left to rely on self cast skills, because they’re the only ones that work on the intended target. Honestly think this may be why bunker builds are the fotm combined with the fact that they’re a tad overpowered. They’re also way easier to combo skills the way you want.

A totally different game, League of Legends, that shows a great example of why accidentally targeting something sucks. Iets say you’re vieger and ur about to nuke the enemies ap mid. Your last skill to finish them is the one that scales with enemy ap and you accidentally target a jungling lee sin. Well they get away and the lee sin murder you. The only difference between Lol and GW2 in this aspect is that in LoL you can make your important skills matter because you can click a target and lock on.

It’s a moba I know, but the same principles apply.