Reaper’s cone shaped pull and its problems finally made me realize how the longstanding bug with Fire Grab works and how it could show up in other places if left unfixed as development continues.
Essentially: These cone AoE skills always target in the direction of your camera and not your character.
To replicate: target something, manually aim your camera 45-90 degrees away from the target by holding down RMB, and use any other skill. Your character will face the target and the skill will hit. Then do the same thing with either of these skills. Your character will face the target but the skill will come out of their side where your camera is aimed and hit nothing.
This means you must either give up camera control over the entire cast and hope that neither you nor your target strafe at all, or manually direct them like you’re playing a first-person shooter.
Note that you’ll only be able to tell the difference when you disconnect the camera facing from the character facing, which is why it’s noticeable when you target an enemy and strafe around, as your character will face the enemy but the skill will cast where your camera is facing (potentially away from the enemy)
I suggest ANet rewrite these skills as modified melee attacks with a specifically shaped cleave hitbox (like wave of wrath) instead of as the modified ground target cones they currently are.
Shown is the fire grab bug and then an unbugged skill for comparison.
