Guild Wars 2

Since the patch magnet goes on interrupt recharge when you cast it with your back turned to your enemy or when you turn your back to your victim while casting magnet. Is this a bug or an intended change that didn’t get included in the patch notes?

And if it was an intended change, why?
The cast time and animation warrants enough of a warning to potential victims.
With everyone moving around so much it’s very frustrating to see it go on interrupt recharge because they dodged to your backside as you are casting it.
Magnet is hard enough to land against players who are familiar with the skill as is.

And as a side note, to be sure, I tried it out in hotjoin on the (magnificent) skyhammer map. It seemed to just interrupt and drop enemies at their position a lot, rather than dragging them to me. Magnet has always been wonky when there is a height difference in play, but it seems to have been worsened now.
Might be a perception thing because of the change, but that’s what it feels like.

What gives? Did anyone really considered magnet to strong?
I’m not saying it’s useless now, but it was a powerful tool that has lost (to) much of it power as it stands now.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

This was an intentional change. The previous behavior where the pull succeeded regardless of facing, was inconsistent with other pull skills like Scorpion Wire and Spectral Grasp, as well as most other ranged targeted attacks. It’s still a useful skill. Yes it has a longer cast time than other pull skills, but it’s unblockable and brings all of the other tool kit skills along with it.

It’s unblockable? Man you guys need put that in the tooltip. This whole time i thought it wasn’t, so I would wait for people to not be blocking to cast it! Has it been like this since release?

Yeah, not only is it unblockable but it interrupts your block skill. It’s incredibly annoying. With the Guardian pull skill atleast you can avoid the sword anchor that pulls.

QQ

Geff.1930:

Yeah, not only is it unblockable but it interrupts your block skill. It’s incredibly annoying. With the Guardian pull skill atleast you can avoid the sword anchor that pulls.

QQ

Eh, it’s a very very easy animation to spot, on top of seeing a line going towards you. I can understand in WvW, but then again there is so much going on in there it is hard to ready any of that stuff. You can dodge it, it is not undodgeable.

Deified.7520:

Eh, it’s a very very easy animation to spot, on top of seeing a line going towards you. I can understand in WvW, but then again there is so much going on in there it is hard to ready any of that stuff. You can dodge it, it is not undodgeable.

Got to quote this.
Obvious animation and relatively long cast time for a skill that has the sole effect of pulling an enemy – unlike the other skills mentioned.
And while we do have the other skills in the kit, they don’t come cheap – we’ve got a single weapon slot and main weapon damage is nerfed in account of our versatility, according to the class balance philosophies in the 14 december patch.

And by the way, grenades are also inconsistent (in that they have no proper autoattack). I assume those will be fixed as well soon, then.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

This was an intentional change. The previous behavior where the pull succeeded regardless of facing, was inconsistent with other pull skills like Scorpion Wire and Spectral Grasp, as well as most other ranged targeted attacks. It’s still a useful skill. Yes it has a longer cast time than other pull skills, but it’s unblockable and brings all of the other tool kit skills along with it.

Thank you for clarifying. Shame it didn’t get a footnote in the patch notes, that’s all.
And sure, it’s still useful, especially considering the other tool kit skills. I was kinda bummed about the undocumented change because magnet is one of my favourite engineer skills but I’ll get used to it. Catching thieves who love teleporting around just got a lot harder.

Just one more thing, is there anything being done about it’s wonky behaviour?
Pulling people using gapclosers to escape from you just knocks them down in place (or is this intended?) and if there is any height difference in play, it has the same effect (knocking people down in place) or they fly up into the air when they reach you (which is rather amusing, I’ll give it that). In the worst case scenario, I’ll get “obstructed” while my enemy is in plain sight.
I think these are issues with all pull skills, if I’m not mistaken.

Siofra Crumble.2098:

Since the patch magnet goes on interrupt recharge when you cast it with your back turned to your enemy or when you turn your back to your victim while casting magnet. Is this a bug or an intended change that didn’t get included in the patch notes?

And if it was an intended change, why?
The cast time and animation warrants enough of a warning to potential victims.
With everyone moving around so much it’s very frustrating to see it go on interrupt recharge because they dodged to your backside as you are casting it.
Magnet is hard enough to land against players who are familiar with the skill as is.

And as a side note, to be sure, I tried it out in hotjoin on the (magnificent) skyhammer map. It seemed to just interrupt and drop enemies at their position a lot, rather than dragging them to me. Magnet has always been wonky when there is a height difference in play, but it seems to have been worsened now.
Might be a perception thing because of the change, but that’s what it feels like.

What gives? Did anyone really considered magnet to strong?
I’m not saying it’s useless now, but it was a powerful tool that has lost (to) much of it power as it stands now.

Any news on using Magnet drop enemy on their position rather than to me? It is happening a lot to me and it is very frustrating. Also, if the terrain is uneven, it will be either out of sight or drop enemy at their position. It makes things harder to do the combo.Bug or working as intended?

Stealth.9324:

Siofra Crumble.2098:

…And as a side note, to be sure, I tried it out in hotjoin on the (magnificent) skyhammer map. It seemed to just interrupt and drop enemies at their position a lot, rather than dragging them to me. Magnet has always been wonky when there is a height difference in play, but it seems to have been worsened now.
Might be a perception thing because of the change, but that’s what it feels like.
…

Any news on using Magnet drop enemy on their position rather than to me? It is happening a lot to me and it is very frustrating. Also, if the terrain is uneven, it will be either out of sight or drop enemy at their position. It makes things harder to do the combo.Bug or working as intended?

the only issue on hight difference i faced was that the opponent was pulled to me but then suddenly catapulted up in the air – was funny to watch :P but not that annoying and didnt appeared very often.
now, with the recent changes – besides i dont get why you changed it, because it was far from op with animation and casttime – there are some issues.
i saw an enemy get knocked down, but not pulled to me. another time the enemy was pulled to a location some meters besides me.
one time i pulled, he got interrupted and knocked but not pulled – i thought not again – ran to his location and suddenly he was where i casted the pull.

the issues mainly appear at locations with slightly different height

sawy fo mah english

and

What gives? Did anyone really considered magnet to strong?
I’m not saying it’s useless now, but it was a powerful tool that has lost (too) much of it power as it stands now.

i second this

I’m glad that the devs are proactively trying to make this game more and more a skill based game. Effective circle strafing and LoSing your target requires a great deal of skill.

I’ve always wondered why skills such as heartseeker and eviscerate do not require LoS.

Manuhell.2759:

Deified.7520:

Eh, it’s a very very easy animation to spot, on top of seeing a line going towards you. I can understand in WvW, but then again there is so much going on in there it is hard to ready any of that stuff. You can dodge it, it is not undodgeable.

Got to quote this.
Obvious animation and relatively long cast time for a skill that has the sole effect of pulling an enemy – unlike the other skills mentioned.
And while we do have the other skills in the kit, they don’t come cheap – we’ve got a single weapon slot and main weapon damage is nerfed in account of our versatility, according to the class balance philosophies in the 14 december patch.

And by the way, grenades are also inconsistent (in that they have no proper autoattack). I assume those will be fixed as well soon, then.

Typical example of engineers being charged opportunity tax like 6 different times in a completely inconsistent way. We’ve already paid heavily for our kits.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

This was an intentional change. The previous behavior where the pull succeeded regardless of facing, was inconsistent with other pull skills like Scorpion Wire and Spectral Grasp, as well as most other ranged targeted attacks. It’s still a useful skill. Yes it has a longer cast time than other pull skills, but it’s unblockable and brings all of the other tool kit skills along with it.

Either magnet should get a consistent cast time, or other classes with pulls should lose the ability to weapon (& sigil) swap, or engineers should gain weapon swap. Obviously a useful cast time would make far more sense.

kito.1827:

the only issue on hight difference i faced was that the opponent was pulled to me but then suddenly catapulted up in the air – was funny to watch :P but not that annoying and didnt appeared very often.
now, with the recent changes – besides i dont get why you changed it, because it was far from op with animation and casttime – there are some issues.
i saw an enemy get knocked down, but not pulled to me. another time the enemy was pulled to a location some meters besides me.
one time i pulled, he got interrupted and knocked but not pulled – i thought not again – ran to his location and suddenly he was where i casted the pull.

the issues mainly appear at locations with slightly different height

sawy fo mah english

Interestingly enough, according to the wiki, those issues seems to be present on Scorpion Wire too.
Guess they may have simply copypasted the code…and with it, the bugs.

Kalan.9705:

Manuhell.2759:

Deified.7520:

Eh, it’s a very very easy animation to spot, on top of seeing a line going towards you. I can understand in WvW, but then again there is so much going on in there it is hard to ready any of that stuff. You can dodge it, it is not undodgeable.

Got to quote this.
Obvious animation and relatively long cast time for a skill that has the sole effect of pulling an enemy – unlike the other skills mentioned.
And while we do have the other skills in the kit, they don’t come cheap – we’ve got a single weapon slot and main weapon damage is nerfed in account of our versatility, according to the class balance philosophies in the 14 december patch.

And by the way, grenades are also inconsistent (in that they have no proper autoattack). I assume those will be fixed as well soon, then.

Typical example of engineers being charged opportunity tax like 6 different times in a completely inconsistent way. We’ve already paid heavily for our kits.

Versatility is always quoted as the reason when a change/nerf comes along but as you point out, they seem to have forgotten we are already paying a pretty high ‘versatility tax’.

It’s like they really don’t understand the penalties we were given and want to include more penalties while trying to ‘balance’ the class.

They really need to look at the class as a whole and see what ‘tax’ is already being paid for being so versatile before penalizing us even more.

agreed re: versatility tax: ft auto attack cannot even burn down minions or spirits in soldier’s gear.

Should I be expecting my guards binding blades to not target behind (or stealthed) targets as well then for the sake of consistency?

I really don’t like that this seems to be a new trend. Changes based upon consistency vs. balance. I don’t remember seeing any complaints about magnet pulling people regardless of facing. Same thing with cluster bomb’s range nerf… seemed to be more towards making all short-bow skills 900 for consistency vs. for balance (since it was thief’s only 1,200 skill)