Guild Wars 2

Hey I’m a flamethrower Engineer on my main toon and I noticed in recent builds that the flamethrower won’t track your targeted enemy (or even rotate to that enemy after kit swapping/reinitializing attack) if the enemy is beyond 30 degrees from your toon’s forward position. So all i get lately is “miss miss miss miss miss” even if I’m well within range of the target, though FT2 and FT3 seem to work fine.

Most other kits or weapons tracks well though. Elixir gun, pistol, rifle and static discharge (with targetable skills of course) all seem to hit the targets specified It’s been like that for the last couple major patches at least. I have another issue with ground targeting but I’ll start another topic on that.

This happens most often when you’re tossing turrets or other skills. It’s easy to restore tracking by hitting 1 again. Make sure it’s after the cycle ends (even if you have to manually end it by hitting ESC). It should pick up tracking after that until you toss more turrets. Coincidentally, this also restores turret tracking, too.

Yes, this is only a workaround, and isn’t a fix. ANet needs to get on this, as there are a lot of us Flamegineers out there. It’s very annoying.

Drakkon.4782:

This happens most often when you’re tossing turrets or other skills. It’s easy to restore tracking by hitting 1 again. Make sure it’s after the cycle ends (even if you have to manually end it by hitting ESC). It should pick up tracking after that until you toss more turrets. Coincidentally, this also restores turret tracking, too.

Yes, this is only a workaround, and isn’t a fix. ANet needs to get on this, as there are a lot of us Flamegineers out there. It’s very annoying.

Thanks Drakkon, I noticed it lost some tracking, or maybe the hitbox got reduced. Can’t figure it out. Anyway, I turned off auto-attack on FT skill 1 and took your other advice. It helps a little but I find it weird since FT seemed to work fine horizontally a couple patches ago.

This hasn’t been lately this has been going on since the patch where they claimed it’s been fixed. With Charr it’s highly noticeable has been all along. They point at the ground constantly and the range on this weapon is laughable but we’ll get some people replying to your post claiming everything’s fine and we aren’t seeing what we are really seeing all the time, just wait.

It is your FT and your camera that matter. You must have both pointed at your target. Disabling autoattack assist or whatever it is called is also helpful.

The patch was not specific to the FT, it was an adjustment to conical hit detection which actually did improve targeting.

tigirius.9014:

This hasn’t been lately this has been going on since the patch where they claimed it’s been fixed. With Charr it’s highly noticeable has been all along. They point at the ground constantly and the range on this weapon is laughable but we’ll get some people replying to your post claiming everything’s fine and we aren’t seeing what we are really seeing all the time, just wait.

Lol yeah tigirius, it’s just so inconsistent that I feel like someone left out some critical math.

nakoda.4213:

It is your FT and your camera that matter. You must have both pointed at your target. Disabling autoattack assist or whatever it is called is also helpful.

The patch was not specific to the FT, it was an adjustment to conical hit detection which actually did improve targeting.

I hear you nakoda it just seems weird to me that the conical hit detection would now require both camera management and making sure my toon is facing his enemies completely flush forward, when no other skills require such management (except maybe EG skill 3). I’ll try it without auto-attack assist and see if that helps and maybe I’ll make a followup post here. Until then I think the attached picture is a pretty accurate showing of what’s happening now, only imagine many many more “miss” messages as the flamejet tries to burn something. Anything.

im always blunt, so people think me a kitten, fair enough

but i truly have never once — even before the hit detection fix — seen misses like that from the FT except on stationary objects. when I see misses, especially lots of them like that (keep in mind this is now from a pvp perspective) it is because the foe is mobile and strafing on the opposite side of my arc vector, and therefore it is me who is being caught unable to catch up.

in those situations, just like in an FPS, you actually have to reverse your vector and stop follow-chasing and more “cutting off at the pass” chasing to get back on target.

the issue, by and large, is the way that flame jet is posted to the combat arrays.

ever notice that when you initiate a flame jet, then swap kits, the flame jet stays there for a moment to finish it’s cycle (sans damage) and then disappears?

well, when you start your flame jet, that is the direction the jet is pointing. from that point on, the cone damage follows your camera regardless of where your avatar is facing, because it uses your camera for tracking.

if there is a bug, that would be it, but it seems to me that this is not a bug but rather a mechanic for pulsing cone attacks (as opposed to burst cones, like a traditional “cone of cold” type spell).

despite the game being 3D, everything is still on a grid, by and large, and our cone attacks, at the smallest level, are still aliased stairs and not a true vector. the same holds true for our movement. so, when you and your opponent are turning, in order for the game to properly calculate where the vectors intersect and trigger the application of damage, the cone of the flame jet must be tied to the movement of the camera, or there would be an even bigger outcry of poor targeting.

if you stand still, and hold down right mouse with flame jet activated, you can sweep it around without moving. now if you add in the A and D strafe controls (not turning) … hrmm? could this be it? is your A and D bound to strafing or to turning? mine is strafing … while holding down the right mouse button, you have precision control of your flame jet while always walking sideways.

with target assist enabled, your avatar is forced to face in directions other than your camera, even when holding down right mouse button. this causes some very funky things to happen, like your flame jet is a fire hose without someone holding the nozzle, your jet twitching all over the place (exacerbated when you have that melee assist turned on/off which allows you to run through enemies or not — for the love of kitten turn this off).

disabling auto assist and utilizing strafe+RMB for me has, since i picked up the flamethrower in january and not put it down, allowed me to play without any of the issues that everyone else keeps talking about.

this is also not the first time i have shared this information.

nakoda.4213:

im always blunt, so people think me a kitten, fair enough

but i truly have never once — even before the hit detection fix — seen misses like that from the FT except on stationary objects. when I see misses, especially lots of them like that (keep in mind this is now from a pvp perspective) it is because the foe is mobile and strafing on the opposite side of my arc vector, and therefore it is me who is being caught unable to catch up.

in those situations, just like in an FPS, you actually have to reverse your vector and stop follow-chasing and more “cutting off at the pass” chasing to get back on target.

the issue, by and large, is the way that flame jet is posted to the combat arrays…

Okay sounds good. I don’t fight with melee assist, but I do have “auto-target when skill is used” active. I’ve tried it with that option and without to be sure. It’s really wonky since it sometimes ignores red-bar enemies that are closest to you in favor of a random enemy target, but I usually shift-skill to get the closest one. If I have to manage the flamejet as your saying with strafe keys and slight camera rotation (and yes I have seen the cone linger when I switch kits), it’ll have to do until Arenanet has another look at it’s performance. But the image I attached to my last response is of a mossheart that was standing still the whole time while attacking me. To that end, I stood my ground, unselected the target with escape key, I purposely rotated the camera off direction, right-clicked the stationary mossheart, and then reinitialized FT skill 1 to see if it would track with the current targeting options I have. I tried it with auto-attack on FT1 and without and results are the same.

I’m starting to think that all those misses are because of a hitbox/hitcone blindspot that wasn’t accounted for. I’ve been a FT engineer from the start so of course I’ll manage, but even after the first major patch to flamethrower I wasn’t getting misses like this. The enemy isn’t on higher ground or trying to corral or strafe me like all other monsters and enemy adds tend to do. It’s just off center of the camera due to how I rotated the field of view. My feet were in the direction the camera is pointing, and when I targeted the mossheart, my character rotated it’s body and aim towards the mossheart, but the flamethrower continued to miss. This doesn’t happen with any other weapon in the engineer’s arsenal except maybe EG skill 3.

And no for the record, you, Phineas and other actually resourceful, non-whiny engineers are the reason I come to this forum so don’t worry about being abrasive. I’ll still listen and try what you advise. I’m glad the engineers on this forum don’t take bullkitten from anyone.