Guild Wars 2

Has anyone found a way to stop attacking an enemy. In GW1 if you moved, it interrupted your attack which was sometimes a life saver when you realized you didn’t want to aggro a certain foe. That’s happened in GW2 a couple of times. You can turn away, of course, but then when you turn back you automatically continue attacking. I’ve tried switching weapon sets but that didn’t stop the auto attack. The only other thing is running out of range if possible. I was just trying to figure out if there’s an effective way to drop aggro.

Click on empty space.

Sounds crazy but if you deselect your target, you stop attacking… so simply left clicking on the ground or open space will do the trick.

Yeah that makes total sense .. thanks for your reply. =)

Ctrl+Right click on your 1 skill.

They’re set to auto-attack by default.

Ctrl+right click on ability 1 (or any of them) will also turn off your auto attack

Oh that’s true .. didn’t think about that option. Thanks for the help! =)

Or just press escape to cancel your auto-attack.

I’ve found that my autoattack will still go off on my current target even if i click on something.

Another option if you need to cancel a cast and it is about to go off, is to turn away from the target. Your autoattack will still be on, so if you turn back towards the target you will start attacking again. But for those rare cases where you see a mob put up a reflect aura/shield turning away may be faster since you already have your hands on the WASD and your mouse.

All the suggestions in this thread work, you can just use the one that is best for your situation.

I know I’m replying to an old thread, but I’m adding new info. In GW1, you could press a key for ‘Cancel action’ which would make you stop attacking, stop moving, or using a skill. It was pretty useful in PvP and gave players an advantage over those who don’t use it.
The ESCAPE KEY does exactly this, but now I’m confused I can’t find it in keybinds.

An alternative is under Miscellaneous>>> Stow / Draw Weapons.

It will immediately stop skill activation as well as attacking, but you will keep moving if you were doing so.

I didn’t know about clicking the ground to stop attacking, thanks for that.

Summary of what I got out of thread:

Clicking the ground= wait for your current skill to end, then stops attacking, does not affect movement
Escape Key=stops current skill, stops attacking, stops movement
Stow Weapons=stops current skill, stops attacking, does not affect movement

There’s an option to stop autoattacking on target change. Select that and if you change targets or stop targeting the enemy by clicking empty, it will stop.

Nkuvu.2570:

Or just press escape to cancel your auto-attack.

That’s how you do it, I do it all the time. Escape is next to function one. Comes in handy on dailies when you have dodge and just want to get it done.

I just Dont use auto-attk…. -__-