Guild Wars 2

Over the past few days I have seen the number of invis players on the top of ridiculously high cliffs spaming staff 1 increase by a ton.. At first I didn’ t think much of it but its rather annoying now as most wvw matches I go into seem to be plagued with it.
Is there a mechanic that allows for extended range from elevated positions? And by extended I mean when I grab my staff my 1200 range aoe skill ret only stays green for 2/3 the distance I am getting hit from..

It has to do with the way projectiles are coded into the game. The ranges all have variances on them that can + or – depending on a few things.

You can’t think of it like other MMOs because all spells in other MMOs are just basically direct damage spells. (IE You have a target, use a spell, and if that target is in range it takes damage)

GW2 abilities are coded very differently then just the basic DD spells. A lot of projectile skills have travel time, fall off, and collision detection coded into them.

This means that if you are running at your target while using one of these abilities, it’s effective range can change. This also is why the range indicators are not 100% accurate and never will be.

Things that you will see effected by this:
If someone moves in front of your target before it gets there they will effectively block the damage from hitting what you wanted it to.

If someone moves out of the way before a projectile gets to them a lot of times they can avoid damage simply by moving. (without dodging) Note: this is not true with all of them because they have tracing coded into them making it harder to avoid the damage if you stay in range.

If someone is on higher ground they get can increase the range on projectile abilities by a noticeable number simply because the fall off is effected by the elevation. The projectile will not travel very far from the cliff edge, but it will continue to fall to the ground until the effect of the projectile ends. (Again this is not the case with all projectile spells but some have a very long fall time before the projectile actually disappears.)

To the exploit part of your post: Skilled players have understood this mechanic for a long time, and now not so skilled players are starting to pick up on it so you will see it more and more.

I don’t know which category you fall into. Since you had to come to the forums and ask if a game mechanic that was one of the key features, talked about by devs and game review websites, was an exploit I’m going to say somewhere under the not so skilled players.

@Teulux a lot of good info there thanks for that but a lot of it I did know. As per what I was trying to explain I may not have done a good job of it.. A video might have done a better job but since I don’t have the need to video myself I never got a recorder, maybe I should. The attacker is range hitting horizontally further than any attack of mine while being higher than any attack of mine (1200) while also being invisible.. I can clearly see the point that the fireballs(staff1) are coming from just no character.. If this isn’t an exploit fine , I have no problems with it , I only came here to see if it is one before I go bug reporting wasting the time of devs. As for the final part of your reply , no I don’t read every dev dispatch or scan game review websites if you do that’s your prerogative. I play a game , I see something off , I come to that games forums and ask about it.. If that makes me less skilled , I am fine with that.