Guild Wars 2

Because Merciful Intervention is ground-targeted, it becomes practically unusable underwater. The ground targeting immediately rests on solid surfaces- likely fathoms distant- thus away from allies usually swimming far above. It’s almost impossible to “target” an ally in the water with it.

I know that the skill became ground-targeted so that players could choose an ally to shadowstep to as opposed to its original version of simply teleporting to the ally of lowest health nearby. Automatically selecting the lowest health friendly near you limited whatever planned, tactical use you may have for it.

I’d like to suggest the following change to it that would, as much as possible, try to
a) allow its practical use in aquatic situations, and
b) allow players to select which ally they teleport to.
I’m keeping in mind ANet’s design philosophy of you only needing to target hostiles and never friendlies for your skills.

Merciful Intervention
Shadowstep to your target [enemy] and heal around them. If there are no allies near the target, this ability will not shadowstep.
Healing: 1,960 (0.6)?
Number of Targets: 5
Radius: 240
Range: 1,200
(Based on text and figures listed in the GW2 Wiki.)

I understand that the ally you wish to heal may not necessarily be in the presence of a hostile but, from experience, that’s rarely the case. A friendly player or NPC in trouble is almost always in the presence of the enemy player or mob that’s killing them. Since your intention is to save them- likely not just by healing but by interposing yourself between them and their attacker- targeting their assailant is in line with the concept and mechanics of the skill.

The current radius of the skill is 180 (according to the Wiki). To make it easier to use and more likely to help an ally despite targeting a hostile, I’ve increased the radius to 240. Besides targeting a hostile and this radius change, other stats and mechanical features remain the same.

Despite its mechanical problems, I really like the idea behind Merciful Intervention and hope to see it properly working and used once more, hopefully in the near future. Thank you.