Guild Wars 2

Ok. Let me set up the scene here –
The other day in WvW, I was trying out the “Dirty Dirty 505” build jubskie wrote up. I’m in EB defending Anvil Rock keep and I’m on the north end on the right side (closest to Veloka). I stationed myself on the higher outcropping of rocks looking to snipe SBI as they advanced. I had “Eagle Eyes” selected.

Now, I always keep an eye in the red bar under the skills showing if a target is within range. One unlucky char gets in range and I drop him. Another SBI moves in to rez but he is out of range according to the red bar under the skill icon. On a whim I shoot anyway – it hits him and he pulls back. I’m pleasantly surprised so I try it again on another target that is just out of range. It works again. I kept doing this through the entire time we were on defense. After testing how it works I figured if I’m elevated and the target is not to far beyond my max range I could still hit them. I even turned off Piercing Arrows to see if that was the reason why but it still happened independent of Piercing Arrows.

Has this always been the case? Is this on purpose or a bug? I’ve mostly leveled in WvW as a BM Bunker so I’ve never noticed this before.

What ever it is, being able to hit farther than 1500 is sweet especially when the poor target thinks they are safe.

Yes, this has always been the case. The game takes your elevation into account for calculating distance. Its a nice feature. It gives the game more depth than two dimensional physics.

Taran Redleaf.7912:

Yes, this has always been the case. The game takes your elevation into account for calculating distance. Its a nice feature. It gives the game more depth than two dimensional physics.

Well that is some good news. Now I want to know how far I can push it!
Appreciate the response.

With manual targeting I think you can possibly go even further. Actually being able to hit something by manual targeting is another story though…

as for now my only experience with elevated groud is that game measures range IN STRAIT LINE – that means that in fact means that higher You are lower your range is.
but longbow can hit in just a little more than it’s range (target isn’t in the range fully, but some part of it is on the range “border” and it hits

I read somewhere that range along the Z axis (assuming X and Y and the ground you walk on and Z is up and down) is 10000 with every ranged weapon (may be only arrows). So theoretically, as long as you can target somebody and they are within the listed range of the weapon in terms of the X and Y axis, you will hit them.

However, on testing, I found it extremely hard to hit targets above you while firing downwards proved fairly effective and even possibly increased the speed of the arrow projectile and completely removed any drop resulting in guaranteed hits as long as your target stood still. I was able to fairly easily hit targets from inner garrison that were outside of SW entrance.

Note: It may have been fixed, but the red bar that shows whether a skill witih hit or miss isn’t affected by the eagle eye trait and remains locked at 1200 units. Therefore it should be somewhat ignored if you trait eagle eye.