Guild Wars 2

I just reached level 20 with 10 points in Death Magic and was excited to try out the Greater Marks trait for staff. Unfortunately, I’m finding that only Chillblains displays the increased size and the tooltip information correctly. The other marks appear unchanged in size and the tooltip shows an unchanged radius. Although the wiki indicates this as a bug that “sometimes” happens, my experience thus far has been “always.” Am I correct in understanding that this is a long-standing bug and, if so, how do you properly place your marks to avoid aggroing unintended targets? Thanks.

You learn the new size and how to aim them properly. I’d suggest not using marks to pull targets until you are familiar with the new size.

Well, for now I am using the Chillblains skill to target the area (not casting it but just looking at what area the larger mark will cover) before I cast any of the other marks.

Just curious, is this a recent staff bug or has this been around for a while?

Always been like that.

But as Bhawb will soon reply, it’s must be an hyper complex bug that require many months to be debugged. We should not make any remark about the devs, as they could be offended.

This is prolly a core issue with the engine, and cannot be solved.

Not like it’s the same bug as the engineer med pack, a bug that got repaired in 5 min by a dev when he read about it on the Pvp forum.

Please Bhawb explain it to him

Wow… u must be liek… Bhawb’s biggest fan!

To try and keep user politics/trollinz to a minimum though, as mentioned earlier the Bug has been around for awhile. It showed up when Anet fixed a previous bug where Chillblains wasn’t properly effected by Greater Marks (it laid down a larger mark, but enemies weren’t effected by it on the outer edges because the effect itself was still localized in the small center).

My assumption would be, due to how the previous fix I mentioned effected the ground targeting, is that they made a change in the code specific to Chillblains when you have Greater Marks. Likely what they did was increase Chillblains default radius which had the double benefit of increasing the radius of the ground targeting graphic at the same time. But because the code they used to do this was rather specific in its implementation for Chillblains (probably made more complicated by the Particle Effect needing to expand as well), they probably couldn’t blanket this change for the entirety of the Staff Skill Bar without making the effected area of each Mark greater than the ground targeted area to begin with.

Long story short, they simply compounded the bug by making the fix so specific to Chillblains, it’s likely gotten more convoluted to fix then they originally intended. But hey, who am I to give Coders the benefit of the doubt? I’m no Bhawb!

Bummer, since my build (such as it is at level 20) is based around staff and dagger. I guess I’ll just have to live with it until a fix arrives. Thanks for the information guys.

Ok, no this is how traiting these skills work.

The original skill gets swapped by the new skill that has the traited behavior.
Chillblains has a 1/2 second shorter casting time and the bigger target because the skill that gets put in place of the original has those characteristics.
When the devs made the greater skills to substitute the untraited ones they forgot to change the targeting circles on them and never bothered to revisit this.

Fixing the drawn circles should be as simple as finding the traited skills classes and changing the drawn target radius value from the present number to a correct one, anything more complicated than that means that the code is badly written.

That’s all there is to it and the same can be applied to focused wells, well of suffering when traited had the wrong icon for MONTHS because the ranged version of the skill had the wrong portrait.

@Ratphink

Kiriakulos is right.

untraited chillbain and traited chillbain act as two different skill.

They do this for every traited skill in the game.

Just like when they changed the turret for the engineer. They buffed them. Yet, when you took the trait to be able to deploy turret by targetting, you would receive the old unbuffed version. Because they forgot to change both version of the turret.

Same thing with the med pack. When you traited targetting medpack, you were using an old version of the medpack prolly from data, that would heal for more on a lower CD.

And particle effect causing Chillbain to be different? I don’t see how it could effect the skill itself, it’s only a particle effect, not a different mecanism.

P.S : I just like to take some shot at Bhawb, because each time I do, he seems to be less insulting, and more thinkful. I still respect is knownledge and experience, but not the way he posts about it.

Kardiamond.6952:

P.S : I just like to take some shot at Bhawb, because each time I do, he seems to be less insulting, and more thinkful. I still respect is knownledge and experience, but not the way he posts about it.

I come off a lot more insulting on the forums than I am trying to be.

Btw, if I’m reading this right, the traited skill is essentially the same but with the wrong display when using ground targetting right? (I always use fast-cast).

@Dark, I’d just get used to it. Honestly I never use ground target anyway, you get used to it eventually (just like skill shots in any other game).

@Bhawb

Yeah, the result is the same, but If I remember correctly most of them still have the small reticule.

I also use fast cast so I didn’t even remember it was still bugged.

Solution: go and turn your ground target reticule off in options.

Then you just have the same size mouse pointer for all marks XD

Seriously you want to learn this anyway because it lets you get a crucial mark like a fear out one click faster. You’ll learn the ranges pretty fast with the reticule off completely.

Welp, glad I can at the very least continue proving that age old adage about assumptions right. Much obliged for the explanation on the bug Kiriakulos!

Dark Epiphany.8304:

I’m finding that only Chillblains displays the increased size and the tooltip information correctly. The other marks appear unchanged in size and the tooltip shows an unchanged radius.

Cause they need more tooltips-bugs for next-month patch notes

I still prefer to have ground-targeting active, just because having to land a crucial long cooldown mark and it’s wasted on a bump in the road because of strange LoS or my mouse just freaking out when I mouse turn is frustrating.

On my engineer I turn it off for Grenade auto-attack as it does make you attack faster (and make you click a lot less), but I rarely have problem landing my marks quickly with ground targeting.

You’ll get used to the real size soon anyway.

Dont most people have 2 hands? 1 for keyboard and 1 for mouse, with fingers that can move independently and simultaneously?

It’s an old as hell known bug. Honestly, it’s completely irrelevant as any serious player should be turning off ground targeting anyways. More than doubles your reaction time, and it’s not like the sizes/ranges are hard to remember.

GankSinatra.2653:

Dont most people have 2 hands? 1 for keyboard and 1 for mouse, with fingers that can move independently and simultaneously?

Unless you click your abilities :P.

A lot of people simply don’t want to rebind their skills to something they can actually reach on the keyboard.

ProxyDamage.9826:

It’s an old as hell known bug. Honestly, it’s completely irrelevant as any serious player should be turning off ground targeting anyways. More than doubles your reaction time, and it’s not like the sizes/ranges are hard to remember.

Really doesnt slow you down that much. You can double tap the mark to basically smart cast it without enabling it in the options. Means you have the option to be more precise when you need to and still cast quickly.

Also, hitting the # + clicking with the mouse at the same time is instant cast. I just like a quick confirmation that my skill lands where I want it. I don’t agree that Fast ground targeting is needed for any serious players, IMO wasting your Reaper’s Mark on a bush instead of taking the 0,05 sec needed to make sure it lands where you need it is better play.

We’re not comparing keyboard turner or clickers here, now those are wasting lot’s of time!

spoj.9672:

ProxyDamage.9826:

It’s an old as hell known bug. Honestly, it’s completely irrelevant as any serious player should be turning off ground targeting anyways. More than doubles your reaction time, and it’s not like the sizes/ranges are hard to remember.

Really doesnt slow you down that much. You can double tap the mark to basically smart cast it without enabling it in the options. Means you have the option to be more precise when you need to and still cast quickly.

You’re adding an extra click. That’s double the moves, double the time wasted, even if you don’t account for the natural latency of even the highest end computer naturally has, simply the extra reaction make a difference in a close fight.

And I don’t need the smart cast to know my range.

ProxyDamage.9826:

spoj.9672:

ProxyDamage.9826:

It’s an old as hell known bug. Honestly, it’s completely irrelevant as any serious player should be turning off ground targeting anyways. More than doubles your reaction time, and it’s not like the sizes/ranges are hard to remember.

Really doesnt slow you down that much. You can double tap the mark to basically smart cast it without enabling it in the options. Means you have the option to be more precise when you need to and still cast quickly.

You’re adding an extra click. That’s double the moves, double the time wasted, even if you don’t account for the natural latency of even the highest end computer naturally has, simply the extra reaction make a difference in a close fight.

And I don’t need the smart cast to know my range.

I can probably double tap a number key faster than most people react in this game so I really doubt im at a disadvantage. Bringing in natural latency is completely pointless as you would never physically be able to tell the difference lmao.

Pandabro.8743:

Unless you click your abilities :P.

A lot of people simply don’t want to rebind their skills to something they can actually reach on the keyboard.

Clicking your abilities is a big no-no for any kind of play where you want to maximize efficiency (aka, anything higher level). Its better to bind them around your movement keys, or if you have the mouse for it, binding some to the mouse is fine as well.