Guild Wars 2

Ever since i started playing an elementalist with staff, throwing my fire/lightning/stone/waterbolt projectiles everywhere i noticed often enough that my projectiles simply miss because my target evaded by turning away from my thrown projectile’s intercourse with the target. We probably all know that pretty much every direct-hit projectile (pistol/bow/rifle as example) have projectile tracking, means even if they miss visually, they still hit the target (and they even turn around in the middle of the air and connect visually when reaching the previous target’s position), so my question here is do fire, stone and waterbolts as example behave differently, since they are not fired directly at your target and more in a small arc (which makes me think that these must behave differently)

A friend is pretty sure that all these mentioned projectiles behave exactly the same because he tested it in a nearly exactly the same situation over and over, with frame by frame comparison etc.

I’m however sure that you cannot make any tests like that that could be 100% trustworthy since theres ALWAYS something changing the conditions of these tests, may it be lag (or your ping itself), different movements or just luck. I say these projectiles MUST behave differently, they behave different visually (flying in an arc) which is a clue to this guess if you ask me, i’m sure the devs wouldn’t have gave them this arc if they just behaved the same as the lightning bolt and all other direct-hit projectiles do.

I would really like to see an official response and explanation how projectiles work or atleast a clarification if these projectiles behave differently, since the devs must know because they developed them, this would be the best way to get reliable information.

Discussion, opinions, maybe personal tests and/or official responses i might have missed are welcome.

I’m reasonably confident that with lobbing style projectiles (fire, water) the animation will try to lead the target so it’ll appear to connect. Whereas straight shooting projectiles (rifle, earth bullets, etc) just fly straight and will connect regardless.

There’s no difference in their chances to hit though. If the target dodge rolls or is out of range then it’ll miss, but it’ll still do it’s best to land as close to them as it can reach.

TL;DR – They’re just animations. The “to-hit” chance is exactly the same.

Pretty sure these are NOT just animations, these are actual real projectiles and GW2 uses halfway proper projectile physics.

Example:
Snowblind fractal boss room, when the boss ports up becoming “invincible” he actually isnt invincible, you know why i know that? you can throw your fire bolt and if you jump at the right time, you will throw your fireball very closely OVER the edge and hit him, you cant do that with direct shots like rifle or lightning bolts, since they do fly straight at your target, whereas these special projectiles like fireball, waterbolt and stones dont. They fly in a real arc making you able to hit even enemies which are visually obscured as long as they are not out of your range, i tested that on that golem in the picture, i hit him while he was nearly completely covered up by that stone wall, just his tip of his head was visible and i hit him with an earth projectile exactly there, it counted as hit.

How do they work?

Miracles.

Half of the Elemental staff skills and some of the scepter skills are skillets. They are useless without motion impediment skills. It must be by design and there isn’t even an official quantity to quantify how many seconds a Dragon Tooth hangs before impact. It takes at least 3 seconds and a chilled foe can walk out the impact radius with no damage at all.
For the above reason, people tried to use daggers.

There’s different type of projectiles and ways for them to act, but for combo and reflect purpose, they all act the same.

Necro staff auto attack fires in the direction of the target, in a straight line, but does not track at all and you can just strafe to make it miss, while Lifeblast, Deathshroud autoattack projectile, can curve 90 degree or more to hit and you can only dodge it. Spectral grasp is a lobbed projectile that doesn’t home on his target, and Dark path is a straight projectile that can 180 in some case to follow his target.

Ranger’s bow are the same, you can evade them just by strafing.

Engi/warrior’s bullets seems to be homing at all time.

Mesmer’s staff projectile is homing, as is scepter auto.

Ele seems to act like a targeted AoE at the target feet at the time it was cast, mostly like necro. The farther you are from your target, the easier it is for them to strafe away.

So it’s a different behavior, not just a different animation. Some skills are even hidden projectiles, like Corrupt boon, that will be obstructed if something like a small bump is in the way of the cast, even if you have full line of sight of your target for others attack to hit.

Yes, like stated above projectiles do act semi realistically for some weapons. A way to see this is aggro a ranged mob that uses a bow and then quickly strafe side to side. You’ll see that you actually dodge the projectiles as they go to the location you would be and land to either side of you.

Which is exactly what i’m saying. These elementalist projectiles seem like targeted AOE projectiles, they are always aimed at where your target is calculated to be if it continues to walk or stand for the time it takes to travel the distance between you and your target, simply turning around at the right time makes them miss, so i’m definetly not alone with that.

I guess these should pretty reliably show that projectiles can easily be dodged by just walking left/right, just lag sometimes prevents it from sucessfully working.

Projectiles in GW2 can also be manually aimed without a target, while it is difficult to do you can bring your camera down to ground level and aim your shots. This is useful in some small instances such as shooting the head of archers defending walls without being vulnerable to being shot back.