Guild Wars 2

I have been wondering about this for a while now. The grenade kit comes with an auto cast under water, making it a joy to use there. But it lacks the same on land, making it very awkward to use, with a high risk of inducing carpal tunnel syndrome if playing with that kit for prolonged periods of time. I do know about the option to switch the ground targeting so you only have to click once per cast instead of twice, but that introduces new problems – like being unable to judge if something is in range or not for a cast. So why is having an auto cast under water ok for this kit, but on land it isn’t?

Any good explanation?

There’s none, grenade/bomb kits need a toggle autoattack key on 1.

Because they would like us to get carpel tunnel when playing PVE or WvW. That’s the only thing I can think of. Plenty of other titles that have bomb and grenade style classes that do perfectly fine with these things in an autotarget capacity even in PVP so it’s not like it hasn’t been done before successfully and without issue.

As the travel time of grenades is so long auto-targeting would simply kill grenades in all forms of pvp. Moreover, versatility- or whatever funny Anet-on-Engi-tax would hit harder if it wasn´t a skill shot.

An autoattack onto the position of the mouse-cursor could be good though (if it could be toggled off).

maily because grenades are AoE plusthey would be terrible if they had auto attack as they dont have the speed to keep up with targets grenades rely on player reflexes and predicability plus being manually aimed makes it easier to attack multiple targets easily

as you probably have seen other than pve grenades with auto attack would be near useless

Rezzet.3614:

maily because grenades are AoE plusthey would be terrible if they had auto attack as they dont have the speed to keep up with targets grenades rely on player reflexes and predicability plus being manually aimed makes it easier to attack multiple targets easily

as you probably have seen other than pve grenades with auto attack would be near useless

This sounds the most likely so far, but only if you reduce your view to pvp. And it does not help with the carpal tunnel risk of using them for any length of time, especially in pve. On the other hand guardian scepter auto attack is about as slow or still slower, and does not need to be aimed either.

Would be nice to have an option to toggle auto attack on/off, to suit both worlds. And even nicer to have an official answer to this.

My thinking is that ANet could give us the ability to hold the relevant keyboard key down to have the skill repeatedly fire to wherever the AOE circle is placed.

Then we keep the skill shot aspect, and save us from wearing out body parts and hardware.

Then again, i am starting to think that ANet has made the UI of the game overly cumbersome specifically to promote “skill”. This perhaps with the thinking that if you can come out ahead while bogged down by the UI, you are more skilled than the rest…

It properly hasn’t been added because there’s hardly a sensible way to implement it.

Option 1: The grenades will hit where the target stood when the grenades where thrown; that would mean they would never hit a moving target. I think we can all agree this solution is feasible.

Option 2: The grenades will hit where the target would it would be standing at the time the grenades impact if speed and direction remain constant; this would mean they would never hit a “stationary” that just goes zigzag. Again, not feasible.

Option 3: Homing grenades. If every grenade would always hit a nerf in terms of damage would be in order. Again, I don’t think many would actually support that.

Option 4: An autoattack onto the position of the mouse-cursor could be good though (if it could be toggled off). The only solution that sounds at least feasible.

Krag.6210:

There’s none, grenade/bomb kits need a toggle autoattack key on 1.

Actually, bombs do have an autoattack, you just have to be within range (melee I think), for it to use it.

Grenades have always needed an autoattack skill (only skill #1 though).

my only fear would be that if they made it auto atatck they would nerf away 30-60% more damage

DesertRose.2031:

It properly hasn’t been added because there’s hardly a sensible way to implement it.

Option 2: The grenades will hit where the target would it would be standing at the time the grenades impact if speed and direction remain constant; this would mean they would never hit a “stationary” that just goes zigzag. Again, not feasible.

Why not? doesn’t every other ranged auto attack in the game work this way?

Staff Ele cant his zigzagers
Scepter Guardian cant hit zigzagers
Longbow Rangers cant hit zigzagers.

Still works out.

DesertRose.2031:

Option 4: An autoattack onto the position of the mouse-cursor could be good though (if it could be toggled off). The only solution that sounds at least feasible.

Yeah, i guess that is a alternative to my thinking. Tap skill once (when marked for autoattack) and it will continue to fire on recharge until tapped again.

Just hope the AOE circle stays visible while the autoattack is turned on tho, to help with the aiming.

I wonder if there will be many confused bug reports about such a feature btw…

digiowl.9620:

My thinking is that ANet could give us the ability to hold the relevant keyboard key down to have the skill repeatedly fire to wherever the AOE circle is placed.

Then we keep the skill shot aspect, and save us from wearing out body parts and hardware.

I already accomplished this using a simple script. Holding down the #1 within the gw2.exe process now results in the key being mashed repeatedly. My finger’s never felt better

I suggest you guys try and do the same, no game is worth carpal tunnel, but with this you can have your cake and eat it too!

Rezzet.3614:

my only fear would be that if they made it auto atatck they would nerf away 30-60% more damage

^this. We need the ascended buff, any AA nerf would kill grenades.

Dand.8231:

digiowl.9620:

My thinking is that ANet could give us the ability to hold the relevant keyboard key down to have the skill repeatedly fire to wherever the AOE circle is placed.

Then we keep the skill shot aspect, and save us from wearing out body parts and hardware.

I already accomplished this using a simple script. Holding down the #1 within the gw2.exe process now results in the key being mashed repeatedly. My finger’s never felt better

I suggest you guys try and do the same, no game is worth carpal tunnel, but with this you can have your cake and eat it too!

Been considering it, except i don’t feel like tempting ban hammer faith.

As hydeaut said, the distance of grenades is the issue. Auto attack works by anticipating where the target is going to be at impact. But that would break grenades the same way gaurdians scepter is broken. because the great distance of the grenades would replicate the slow speed of the scepter.

Grenades not having an auto-cast is the intended functionality of the kit. Its meant to be manually aimed.

The reason underwater Grenades have an auto-cast is because there is no ground to click underwater. Manual aiming doesn’t work underwater. So they had to make them auto-cast.

That does raise the question of why they did that instead of just removing Grenade Kit completely underwater. Maybe they felt that since Flamethrower was already out, they needed to keep all the other kits lest they make Engineers feel too limited underwater (since kits are Engineer’s main gimmick).

Dustfinger.9510:

As hydeaut said, the distance of grenades is the issue. Auto attack works by anticipating where the target is going to be at impact.

Certainly relevant for PvP, but very often not so for PvE. This kit really needs an option to do it either way.

i’d be in favor of that option.

I find grenades too, standard. Unbefitting of an engineer. Changing it to a grenade launcher type kit would be more fitting and stop every one asking why the engineer can throw grenades farther than you can shoot a rifle.

With that change the arc can be reduced and the projectile speed can be increased. So much so that skill1 could be changed to an auto attack.

Wishful thinking?

XelNigma.6315:

With that change the arc can be reduced and the projectile speed can be increased. So much so that skill1 could be changed to an auto attack.

Wishful thinking?

Only issue I see here is that to make that auto attack be fast enough to compete at the distance that grenades operate, no one would have a chance of dodging anything at close range. They’d fly faster than bullets. remember, the only difference between the different attacks is the cool down. But they all work the same way. It’d be a close range gatling gun of aoe explosion. with periodic poison, freeze, burn and blind.

Seems we are getting some love in the middle of October. A option to have ground targeted AOEs fire on key release alongside the current ones (quick cast and double tap).

I vote Anet makes a cannon for grenades that we can “shoot”, rather than throwing grenades from our invisible grenade bag in our belly button. It would be like shooting potato guns all over again! But with grenades…. heh

PlayerX.5307:

I vote Anet makes a cannon for grenades that we can “shoot”, rather than throwing grenades from our invisible grenade bag in our belly button. It would be like shooting potato guns all over again! But with grenades…. heh

Well, if they buffed Mortar to something more Engis would take, then we’d have something close to that. I don’t think I even have Mortar trained (took Take Root first, it works a lot better in lower-level DEs).

It’s a pretty easy design decision:

If the ground targeted ability has auto cast toggled on then it will default to a non ground targeted version of the ability and automatically throw the grenade center targeted onto your currently selected target.

This:

1. Preserves the ground targeting ability for these abilities if still desired.
2. Gives people who want a small break from it a small break on their spam ability being able to auto target.

I mean after 8+ hours of Grenadier a day for a few days it was enough for me to call it quits on the Engineer which is a shame because I really, really liked it. However the hand contortion required to spam 1 (even with auto ground targeting) while kiting at the same time mashing 11111111111111111111 for 8 hours is no good.

part of the problem is the spam wars 2 I agree.

If #1 wasn’t so darned important to continue dps, ie if they truly balanced the game around the other 4 skills on any given weapon, this would be less of an issue honestly.

Why do grenades have no auto-cast? Simple really; Arena Net demands that at least half of all engineer builds be worthless, so any skills that aren’t underpowered have to be balanced out by being too hard for the average player to use effectively.

I think it would be fine if when we switched into grenade kit the template was always active instead of having to click twice, once to bring up the template and another to throw.

I think a good solution is to make grenade AA on land auto-attackable, so increase speed, but nerf damage, then buff the damage of the 2~4 skills to compensate; therefore leaving the skill shot aspect there, and just as important, while giving a break on the spamming of 1.

but since making grenade hit reliably can be quite big deal, the nerf to the AA might be to a point where if you were to attack a none moving object, even with the buff of 2-4 skills, you’r overall damage might still be a bit lower, let’s say 10%; i think it’s not a bad trade off to let the AA hit more reliably

underwater unchanged

I’d like a script than when I press 1 it start to throw grenade to my cursor position until I press 1 again, I don’t it to be a targeted skill, just throw the grenade so I don’t have to spam 112411111241111111

Atamaz.4195:

I’d like a script than when I press 1 it start to throw grenade to my cursor position until I press 1 again, I don’t it to be a targeted skill, just throw the grenade so I don’t have to spam 112411111241111111

You can do that with Razer mouses for example but imo its much better do it manualy because engineer is about reactions not rotations.

Rozbuska.5263:

Atamaz.4195:

I’d like a script than when I press 1 it start to throw grenade to my cursor position until I press 1 again, I don’t it to be a targeted skill, just throw the grenade so I don’t have to spam 112411111241111111

You can do that with Razer mouses for example but imo its much better do it manualy because engineer is about reactions not rotations.

In theory the whole game is about reaction rather than rotation. But most professions can set their #1 on auto and just keep dodging.

Grenade kit #1 can nearly match the rifle before traits. And outmatch it once traited for the extra grenade. Never mind that it is AOE and out-range just about anything once traited.

But this come at the additional workload of having to hammer the key and adjust the target location while others can sit back and let the autoattack plink away and hit the dodge key now and then.

hydeaut.1758:

As the travel time of grenades is so long auto-targeting would simply kill grenades in all forms of pvp.

Which begs the question… why does the travel time need to be so slow?

Wouldn’t want an auto atk on nades while on land. It’s easier to kite and lead your target with the “skill shot” besides, I also don’t find it efficient to just spam nades. I try to use everything my engineer has including the weapons. Run it with a net turret and rifle. Or off hand pistol for the glue shot