Guild Wars 2

I’ve never bothered to use the “About Face” keybinding until now, but I want to start using it for things like leaping forward on my Mesmer and Engineer.

So, I bound it to a key this morning and I’m trying to use it, but I’m getting extremely inconsistent results. I expirmented for 15-20 minutes but I wasn’t able to nail down a patter for what makes it work or not.

If I’m moving forward, and holding down either mouse button (right button to change direction, left button to move the camera) the About Face button does nothing. Sometimes if I go straight forward without touching the camera it will work, other times it wont. Other times I will push it, it will turn me around, and then it won’t let me do it again.

Is there a trick to this or am I doing something wrong?

I can see how that might not work.
Since holding either mouse button is also controlling the camera if you try to use the about face it might be trying to give conflicting camera controls and the mouse controls take priority.

Piloting your character with left and right mouse buttons held down, as well as pressing Move Forwards keybind will override About Face.

If your character is on auto run but the camera angle (altered by left mouse) is changed, About Face also won’t work.

While it looks instant, there is still a small turning animation to About Face. This means that rapidly tapping About Face, or mis-timing your movement skill, will result in your character turning less than 180 degrees.

How I use About Face for movement skills:
Autorun (fingers off left and right mouse)
About Face
Skill

I agree with the OP that I have never been able to make it work reliably, so I simply don’t use it. I can turn 180 just fine with the mouse buttons only. If you are trying to turn with the keyboard….well, I think I found the root of your movement problem.