Guild Wars 2

I wanted to start the topic about auto-facing the target on key press (execution of some skill).
I think this is a very bad feature to have in pvp aspect of the game. Movement/positioning should be large part of the game (skill required), good movement/positioning should be rewarded, bad movement/positioning punished.
Obviously there is an intent to have this since there are traits/skills that reward us for ‘flanking’ or being ‘behind’ the enemy (extra dmg, crit, stun instead of daze etc…).

Now, please notice that when you execute majority of skills, the character auto-faces the target. This has two bad consequences:
1. It removes the need for player to become better and track his target (use movement skills to face the target (to keep it in certain viewing angle)).
2. It nullifies the reward to the player who did circle his target (all that movement is simply negated by auto-face that automatically executes on simple autoattack skill).

I will note that not even WoW had this dumbed down movement: In wow if you faced away from the target your skill would not auto-face you and you could not damage the target.

WoW had another aspect that was dumb but (mostly) fixed in GW2 (thankfully): one could spam the skill even when target is out of range, and skill would not execute and go to cooldown (or cost some energy/mana etc) until target moved into the range as to be hit by the skill. It is good that GW2 removed this bad feature and that skills execute whether the target is in the range or not.

In my opinion autofacing, should be removed as well in the long term. If Anet is afraid that this will cause huge outcry (some ppl may whine that they have to manually face the target after being used to autoturning, it can be a huge step change), they can do it gradually (implement it on subsets of skills over time). If the feature could be in WoW, it should not be dumbed down in GW2.

have you even tried it? its sometimes not good enough to use in PvE, especialy if skills have any cast time… if you are owned by someone standing and using autoface against you in PvP, you are probably very bad…

Yes, i have tried it. Have you?

It is good enough to (for example) cast elementalist who clicks on ‘ride the lightning’ straight into target even if elementalist is facing completely opposite direction.
It is also good enough for thief to hartseeker and hit the target behind him. That should not be the case. He should face the target before doing heartseeker, not just press single key and autoface/execute the skill and hit the target even though he was facing completely opposite direction.
In general what should you do when person suddenly moves behind your back: You should turn quickly (manually) and when person is in proper viewing angle, execute the skill.
What should not happen (and it does) is that you just stop in place and hit the skill key and you sudenly auto-face the target. It is such a dumb down mechanic.

So it is not useless.

And no, i did not get ‘owned’ by anyone. I am commenting on a bad mechanic. One of the reasons I did not play gw1 was that the movement seemed completely dumbed down. Once you selected the target, you would essentially autostick on the target and there was no need to control your movement much, you would just sit there executing your skills.

yeah to be honest heartseeker as it is, people will complain even if it wasnt op which i dont think it is. the actually problem like you say it that it is homing and requires no skill to spam, i think this actually annoys people more than the damage, i almost got killed by a hs spammer earlier got hit once, when shadowrefuge because i was around 3 people, got hit by 2 more hs while invisible they continued to hook on me for a while, i think it needs just to go what ever direction your facing, infact in many ways that would be better, i used to hate it on ele when i try to escape with rtl and it points me back towards the enemy lol

RTL is a bad example since you can use “look behind” key as an excuse for hitting something behind you, I bait that way all the time, and yes you can use it “blind” I’ll admit but it does pitiful damage and only creates or removes space, can be easily dodged and is one of the easiest skills to spot out of all the classes.

Heartseeker on the other hand has a ton going for it, heavy damage, leap finisher, gap closer (or creator), essentially pure blind (not needing LOS) with low initiative cost, spammable based on initiative and sped up by haste.

I personally think the auto-facing is terrible in this game however I feel that character facing using only the keys is even worse. Using your right mouse button should actually turn your character instead of simply turning the camera.

It impossible without cast spell in jump.

have you noticed that ranged classes dnt even worry about being in range of melee classes? it is because you can simply pass through melee targets while they use their skills. even autotargeting doesnt help with this. id say people need to start abusing this into forcing anet to do something about it.

Many ranged attacks get interrupted if you no longer face your target enough, it does when i use unload, and i can make it happen against rangers or rifle warriors for exemple.

It should be like that with every skill.

No autoface is for games with no lag/culling issues.

“I will note that not even WoW had this dumbed down movement”.
What do you mean not even WoW? WoW pvp sytem is ten times better than GW2 is.Yes you can spam skill and it wont go on CD until it executes but that only means you are able to watch your opponent not UI to see if you are in range which far better imho.

I do not think wow system was better than gw2 (the core mechanics), but who cares.
I am writing about what I think needs to be improved in gw2 mechanics.

Without autofacing, you’ll have people ghosting and bunny hopping all over in PvP, which is not only annoying but it looks stupid. Also, most channelled abilities in WoW autoface, like Arcane Missiles.