Guild Wars 2

I recently started playing an Axe/Dagger—Axe/Focus necromancer, and while it is a ton of fun to play such a twitchy solo character (didn’t go minions as is common advice on this sub-forum), it is also frustrating. The reason for this is that when killing an enemy, or TAB-selecting, the game invariably selects the furthest “out of range” target it can for the next target. With the very short range of the axe, I would have thought it would occur far less than with the ‘wrong targeting’ of the LB on my ranger, but it actually occurs much more frequently. I have learnt how to mitigate it on the ranger when it seems to prefer a target at range rather than the one chewing my face off, and I’m pretty sure it won’t even lock onto an “out of range” target. With the axe I’m not so lucky and often waste a Ghastly Claws opener because of this.

• Is this a bug or unintended feature of the class or weapon and how well known if so?
• What can I do to prevent, or at least mitigate this behaviour?

I don’t use tab targetting much at all partly for this reason. You are going to want a hot-key for nearest-target as well, which is what I generally use.

tab targeting will usually select:
legendaries>champions>lieutenants>veterans>normals
This was changed in the most recent patch.

If you need to target the closest enemy, you could just click on them.

One thing I do that really helps is to set a hot key for targeting the closest enemy. It’s not a fix all, but it definitely helps for targeting enemies that are closer in range. In my case, I use the “Enter” button on the number keypad on the side of the keyboard (I don’t have a mouse, so I’ve set up the number pad for using skills and such).

Yes, quite annoying indeed. Strange how targeting works so nicely in GW1 yet totally fails in GW2.

Click the screen, or have someone else ‘target’ the mob for you and press [T].

Yeh, frustrating…

tab targeting will usually select:
non hostile creatures which can be agro’d>enviromental objects>any enemy out of range>normals>veterans>lieutenants>champions

(yes, sarcasm, but that’s what it feels like usually)

Thanks all. I’ll see if I can use the hot-key idea. My necromancer is new, so I might only have been experiencing the “new” targeting mechanics, and therefore my frustration.

Shulkor.3670:

Yes, quite annoying indeed. Strange how targeting works so nicely in GW1 yet totally fails in GW2.

Yeah, I miss how crisp and instant it was! This was because it cycled through all targets in range, not just those onscreen, and you had a high and wide fov so you could see things outside your direct line of sight too!