Guild Wars 2

I think we’ve all seen this a lot of times.

You’ll be fighting one of the popular minion-spam builds, typically a Necromancer or a Ranger.

You will be in stealth, trying to position yourself for a Backstab. You are right behind the Ranger/Necro and have him targeted.

You execute your Backstab….only to hit one of his bloody minions next to him.

WTF?!

Why do I even bother targeting things if the game override my decision. It does this even when I am “aiming” the camera perfectly at my target of choice. BAM it will turn around and hit something else.

This is really annoying and one of those things that make minion builds more resilient than they should be. Because it happens constantly.

Dee Jay.2460:

I think we’ve all seen this a lot of times.

You’ll be fighting one of the popular minion-spam builds, typically a Necromancer or a Ranger.

You will be in stealth, trying to position yourself for a Backstab. You are right behind the Ranger/Necro and have him targeted.

You execute your Backstab….only to hit one of his bloody minions next to him.

WTF?!

Why do I even bother targeting things if the game override my decision. It does this even when I am “aiming” the camera perfectly at my target of choice. BAM it will turn around and hit something else.

This is really annoying and one of those things that make minion builds more resilient than they should be. Because it happens constantly.

Most issues i have with this when fighting mesmers. Or necros with 100 minions, but those are rare. I already renamed my “backstab” into “cloneseeker”. The sad part is most good mesmers are very aware of this. Most of times 1×1 fights vs fairly glassy mesmers extend up to 10 min or more.

kitten this is so true man. Once the minion wasnt even infront of me, it was behind me and i backstabbed it instead of the necro rofl

they only need to have the minions/spirits/clones spread out more. it would make sense.

they should write this into code:

“all summons/pets/minions/clones etc must stay atleast 350 range away from owner unless a skill/target makes them do otherwise”

what ya think?

rarely had this problem
just target more carefully

its kinda more useful to me to have 3-4 more target so i can cnd more freely

It happens now and then to move and as someone said about mesmers I get alot on their dodge clones. Sometimes its best to just wait and let stealth run out only to cnd again. If your 25+ in sa there’s some more might for your trouble.

Yeah, the casual no brain builds win wars and are most difficult to outplay.

It’s their survival mechanism, the minions sponge up AoE damage and have a large area to get hit by single target attacks, they are also tanky enough to survive high AoE damage making them quite overpowered, though in a long team fight they have no sustain, as soon as the minions go down, so does the necromancer. Having 1 on the enemy team isn’t too bad, but when you have 2, 3 or more minionmancers on the enemy team it can be quite hopeless to win the match. 1v1 your best chance is to play a really glassy build like 10/30/0/0/30, stealth for the necromancer and mobs to lose target,
create a distance, gap close in quickly, dodge runes using Dodge/FS/PW + Steal/inf signet, and do all you can to control the necromancer. When the minions return, stealth and repeat, if the minions are unable to attack you, the necromancer doesn’t have any sustain and goes down slow and steady.

Against mesmers, stealth spam is still the best way to counter npcs and to destroy the most damaging phantasms, Berserker and Duelist in most cases, to save your dodge for other important things. Most mportant thing is to avoid any shatter combos, if you take a magic bullet in your face, be prepared to gtfo using a stunbreak or shadowstep.

Rangers have good sustain from what I’ve seen, so the best way is to frequently use the stolen ability to clean any condition dmg and stay close and damage them hard, and never turn your back on them. Since most rangers are bad, they don’t move a meter and stand on the same spot and turning, use that to your advantage.

I have not once had a backstab that didn’t land on my targeted foe when I was at the right distance and the target did not evade or block. Well some rare cases there are, but they are probably only because of lag: I wasn’t truly close enough to land the backstab.
If you keep hitting clones or other pets with your backstab, it is only because you are spamming it like no tomorrow.

Also, turn off auto targeting if you haven’t already.

Well, look at bright side – without minions MM necro can’t do s’hit to you.

You know we could really use a crosshair, couldn’t we?

Did you ever consider they are trying to body block you on purpose and you failed to work around it, and that its not just random bad luck?

Cufufalating.8479:

Did you ever consider they are trying to body block you on purpose and you failed to work around it, and that its not just random bad luck?

Well when it comes to mesmers and their clone generator, yeah, good ones really try to body block you, but single target attack mechanics is what makes it very easy to pull off. As the person above said, we might aswell have a crosshair targeting like in TERA for example, cause target locking has little to no use in meele with current mechanics.
And speaking of backstabs hitting targets that should be completely out of the way but apparently they arent – happens all the time, at least when fighting mesmers. Never had much trouble with necromancers and their zombie army soaking up backstabs, but didnt see many necros running around with minions in www.

Karolis.4261:

Cufufalating.8479:

Did you ever consider they are trying to body block you on purpose and you failed to work around it, and that its not just random bad luck?

Well when it comes to mesmers and their clone generator, yeah, good ones really try to body block you, but single target attack mechanics is what makes it very easy to pull off. As the person above said, we might aswell have a crosshair targeting like in TERA for example, cause target locking has little to no use in meele with current mechanics.
And speaking of backstabs hitting targets that should be completely out of the way but apparently they arent – happens all the time, at least when fighting mesmers. Never had much trouble with necromancers and their zombie army soaking up backstabs, but didnt see many necros running around with minions in www.

I have done countless mesmer vs. thief duels, playing both as the thief and as the mesmer, as those are my main characters. The targeting mechanism is fine in this aspect. If you have the mesmer targeted, you are close enough and the mesmer does not use an ability that makes him avoid the backstab, the backstab will land on the mesmer no matter how many clones he has nearby. If he does avoid the backstab, then the backstab lands on a nearby clone should one be nearby, and this is fine. You should receive some sort of a penalty from being a scrub enough to attempt a backstab through an evasion skill.