Guild Wars 2

Hey,

For the grenaders out there, wondering what your thoughts are on turning fast casting on targeted spells, so that it casts where your mouse is.

Is this actually a good thing to do?

Yes. A million times. Your fingers will thank you. You just have to get used to it.

yes..its not too bad if you are steady player. For me when the action gets heavy, i loose track where my mouse cursor is and you dont want to be throwing your nades to the corner of the screen at nothing.

yeah id turn it on.. once you get use to it i think its more efficient.. its also good to get use to if you play other classes which use ground targeting..

I have turned it on months ago and used it ever since.
As others said, it’s just a matter of getting used to it.

in fact, trying to go BACK to manual targetting is just weird.

almost as weird as trying to go from inverted look to that backwards kitten kids use these days because good flight sims don’t exist any more.

As a guy who’s played nades for over 3k+ games in tourneys, I would definitely NOT recommend fast cast ground targeting.

First of all, grenades spread the farther they are thrown. More grenades hit when the target is closer to the center of the green reticule. You don’t get the radius with fast cast.

Secondly, placing grenades on locales higher than you becomes drastically more difficult with fast cast. As the plane in which you can actually move your cursor to throw nades decreases in size, so does the efficacy of fast cast. Again, the reticule gives you an idea of where it’s going to land.

Thirdly, you can cancel grenades that you KNOW are going to miss with the weapon-swap key. kitten happens. But when you know that you just made a terrible throw it’s better to cancel it than waste a long cooldown grenade that hit absolutely nothing.

Finally, fast cast makes it more difficult to “queue” grenades in an efficient manner. While waiting for one to finish casting I get a better visual idea of where the next one needs to land if I don’t use fast cast. With fast cast I will immediately queue the next one in a manner that usually means it will miss.

In PVP landing your nades is literally THE most important thing to learn. I cannot emphasize the difference between landing one nade and whiffing it.

Fast cast is the way to go. You soon learn where it’s going to land without needing the targeting reticule.

Go to the mist and try out how much difference it makes for your grenade barrage if your target is exactly in the centre of the radius or not.

Its better to learn without the area circle. Its also harder ofc.
I turned it off since start. I dont want to double click spam my mouse button.
Once you get a hang of it, you get used to it.

Don’t use fast cast. Greetings from a 1000+ hours engineer player.

I guess it depends on personal preference. I use it and after spending a few hours getting used to it, i wouldn’t go back anymore, it makes casting so much faster.
After a while you just turn into sort of an engineering jedi and use the force to determine whether you are in range or not.

First it depends on what your doing, for pve it doesn’t really matter so sure, but as Ostricheggs said if your plan on being a really good engineer pvper who uses grenades, then use the targeting, it shows you where its going and actually gives you the ability to lob the grenades accuratley. Take his advice seriously as he’s probably one of the engineering communities most knowlegable pvpers where alot of the people giving you advice are most likeley not even close to his skill level.

It all depends on whichever you feel more comfortable with. If your accuracy with Fast Cast is the same as it is without then by all means you should use Fast Cast. Accuracy on the other hand is a huge, huge issue with grenades. Not having Fast Cast on will vastly improve accuracy if your accuracy issues involve you not targeting where you thought you were. Just make sure you aren’t slowing down the rate in which you are throwing the grenades by that much, but above all don’t miss.

Since I tend to use my Grenades at least in the opening of a fight in melee, Fast Cast works great for me. I’ve also played with them since nearly the release of the game and if I miss it’s not because of the lack of a targeting circle. It’s because they, my targets, did something I didn’t expect. So in my situation, I love Fast Cast.

@Ostricheggs.

You are right about the cancel grenade thing.

But about the rest, I don’t feel I have any issue with fast cast grenade. After a while, you get used to it, and you don’t need the target anymore. You’ll know where they land, even if you are aiming at weird place.

And I feel much more faster since I switched to fast cast. You lose what? .2 or .3 sec a cast without it? I’m pretty sure it can make a huge difference.

The only time I don’t like fast cast is when I am trying to hit someone on a higher level, because sometimes it fails. I’ve mostly used fast cast since I started playing engi, and personally I prefer it because its one less button to spam click when using grenades. With practice, at least on even ground or throwing below, accuracy shouldn’t be an issue.

On the upside, with fast cast you halve the “grenade 1”-induced strain on your fingers. On the downside, it is hard to keep track of the pointer in fights as it disappears when you press the right mouse button to turn.

one other thing you can’t do with fast cast is you can’t:

a.) run away
b.) turn your camera
c.) throw grenades at opponent

all at the same time.

It’s also helpful to know if the range at which you’re aiming at is within your range of not (coz of the red circle thing). With fastcast, you can’t know if the nades will reach or will fail, you can’t know if it’ll hit esp if the target is far away at a funky angle, and you can’t snipe your grenades. A well-placed slow grenade is better than a fast yet inaccurate one.

no, you learn to lead your shots. it’s no secret that max range nades are slow. you use the cc of the chills and other skills to control your foe, and toss your nades on them. up close, fast cast trumps point and click because you actually can strafe while throwing nades just fine. this is like the keybind vs click activation debate.

As long as your camera isn’t automatically self-righting itself, you can throw grenades behind yourself pretty easily with Fast Cast on. Unless I’m getting confused as to what issue you are getting at penatbater.

smartcasting does reduce the finger strain a bit but it just isnt worth it. you lose too much not having the ground target. cant find the edge of your range, in wvw — VERY important. i want an option for my cursor to have a 1500 range ground target attached permanently. because then i might fastcast.

1700+ hour engi. im glad the spvp’er agrees too. i wvw and pve, so i dont have (or want..) a reputation for “being a pro engi”. but ive played it a hell of a lot.

@kardiamond
you dont really lose time beyond the first throw, it queues up the next throw while youre still in the cast time for the current throw

How much experience you have as engineer is nothing, and how much experience you have with smartcast (on any class even) is everything.

It feels scary at first because you can’t see aoe or range. It’s almost like you are aiming blind. In the end though, you are massively improving you action/reaction times because you are halving the number of required actions. And with experience, you get completely used to it, and you can intuitively know what you used to need green circles to know.

Be prepared to be uncomfortable for a while as you get used to it though.

I use both, on a good day when i’m warmed up i prefer fast cast.. However i have those days where i have very bad mouse control and must go with normal

@insanemaniac

You are right, but you aren’t always queuing your grenade/aoe. Sometime you dodge, wait, block ect.

And for the guy that said we can’t throw grenade from behind, it’s not true. I do it all the time with grenade and glue shot. It actually really easy.

Like luckywaldo said, what ever time you got on engi, just get some hours with fast cast. Once you are used to it, you dont need the target anymore.

It’s like playing a grenade launcher in a fps. You don’t need an AoE target.

1300+ hours engi and ever since i started i got used to it and kept it .

Forestnator.6298:

Don’t use fast cast. Greetings from a 1000+ hours engineer player.

The amount of hours you’ve played doesn’t dictate whether or not it’s better to use Fast Cast. I’ll be honest, I don’t use Fast cast for grenades. But i will admit it makes playing MUCH easier for some people. It’s all dependent on play style and the individual I guess.

I’ve played over 1600 hours on my engi. Doesn’t mean I’m any good though lulz

luckywaldo.6089:

How much experience you have as engineer is nothing, and how much experience you have with smartcast (on any class even) is everything.

It feels scary at first because you can’t see aoe or range. It’s almost like you are aiming blind. In the end though, you are massively improving you action/reaction times because you are halving the number of required actions. And with experience, you get completely used to it, and you can intuitively know what you used to need green circles to know.

Be prepared to be uncomfortable for a while as you get used to it though.

i HAVE done both though. ive gotten used to both. and ive gone back to not smartcast. the shifting perspective that grows/shrinks the target circle at various ranges changes it enough that you cant do better than just “have a feel” for where things will get hit.

often in wvw, siege is placed such that you have 1 spot where you can stand to bombard it, and you wont find that spot quick enough without a green circle. youll just constantly see “out of range” or “no line of sight”, get frustrated, and stop trying. but when you see a flash of a green circle by moving your mouse 1 pixel, then back to red as you move it too far, youll know you can kill the siege. its so valuable because the aoe is small template; all you have is +300 range as an advantage over being an ele or thief.

Ok, I suppose I have a different conclusion then.

The ability to adapt to perspective will vary from person to person. Perhaps by innate ability, perhaps by effort put forth into adapting, a combination of both, or something else altogether.

Give it as much of a try as you desire. Trying is always recommended, but in the end you need to decide for yourself what you like best.

Here’s an idea. Have Anet put a “always on” option for the Grenade Kit, where a range circle appears around your character. That way you always know where the 1200 range is (1500 if traited), especially given terrain elevations. And you can fastcast anywhere in the circle without fear of getting the out of range messages.

I will say that I have always been a bit surprised that the first four grenade skills aren’t all blast finishers, you’d think explosives would qualify as a “blast.” I’d probably change the first grenade attack to a 20% chance blast finisher, the second and third to always be blast finishers, and the fourth to lay down an Ice Combo Field akin to the Elementalist’s Frozen Ground skill.

when it comes to nading siege always slightly infront of it nades do AoE damage so you dont have to aim ontop of them.