Guild Wars 2

Since a lot of skills are being “fixed” to not fire behind the character, usually making combat worse, I figured I would report that the one skill that should never fire behind the character, yet still does.

Ride the lightning, if targetted will dash to a target. Even if the target is long behind you. Even if you have deseleted the target. Even if it’s a peaceful moa that you have never targetted. I’m afraid to use this skill half the time because I might aggro something or fly backwards a long way. If there’s no one targetted, it should run straight forward.

A related issue: the Lightning strikes etc on attunement switch shouldn’t hit non-hostiles. Targetted creatures, sure. Hostile creatures, sure. Non-hostiles that you don’t want to anger because you’re low on health and trying to get away..NOPE. I’d disable this if I could.

I turn off Auto Targeting to avoid this. Makes a huge difference.

I tried that but ended up missing tons of attacks because they require a target, and there is time between when the target is dead and when I realize I’m targetting no one. I had to turn auto-target back on.

Immersively speaking, you would never accidentally run in the opposite direction or accidentally start attacking something. There are times when I’m intentionally trying to attack something that has run behind me and I still see the animation, which looks like it works but no damage is happening. If they changed fire grab to do this, which wasn’t all that necessary, Ride the Lightning should definitely be changed.

I want to add that in addition to firing backwards and off cliffs, this skill seems to stop when it runs into the edge of a combo field.

Lots of times it will stop short for no reason and do no damage to the enemy.

The ways this and the teleport flash utility skill are supposed to move a character are totally undecipherable to me. The teleport one is garbage. Considering you are turning into lightning and dropping down from the sky, it should work anywhere you have line-of-sight. Instead it functions as a instantaneous walk-forward skill. Considering how awesome mesmer teleports are, I think something can be done about this.