Guild Wars 2

This is a bug I started noticing a few days ago.

Whenever I swap from a different attunement into Air Attunement, my character will auto target the nearest mob, neutral or hostile, and use the 1-skill of the previous attunement, followed by the 1-skill of Air Attunement.

I have tested this with all combinations of weapons + off hands, as well as the staff and trident (underwater). This happens with every set.

This also isn’t due to the Electric Discharge minor trait in the Air trait line. I tested with no trait points spent.

When you turn off auto target in the general options and make sure you have no target locked, the problem goes away. However, if you do acquire a target (manually), you character will start attacking once again.

This does not happen while attuning to the other three attunements.

To reproduce:

1. choose any weapon set
2. stand within 1-skill range of a mob for that set
3. have auto-target checked in general options OR manually target the mob
4. change from Fire/Water/Earth Attunement —> Air Attunement
5. observe

I noticed this happens to me also.

I thought I was accidentally hitting 1 when switching.

I hope they fix it soon.

Having the same issue as well.

Ok, that explains it. Like others here I thought I was accidently hitting the wrong key or something.

you guys probably have skill 1 on auto with strg+ right click …..

noticed same issue

Having the exact same issue.
If I change from Fire attunement to Air and there happens to be an enemy around then my character decides it’s time to send a fire bolt and then start auto attacking air…
Happens regardlless of whether or not you’re touching any other buttons or moving etc.

Riyu.2103:

you guys probably have skill 1 on auto with strg+ right click …..

No, this isn’t the case. I can just stand by a mob, not use the mouse at all, switch to air attunement and my character will just auto attack it.

I have noticed this on the 1st day of Early Access and reported it already twice.

It is not only when attune to Air (which is usually what we do to gain speed access) , but also happen on other attunement. And it does not always happen even there is a target in front and in range. That’s probably why it takes so long for them to fix it because of the difficulty of reproducing it.

I am guessing it might be caused by some sort of buffs associated with the traits or the passives of utility skills. I am trying to figure out how to reproduce it and report in-game if I succeed.

Hologramx.6402:

I have noticed this on the 1st day of Early Access and reported it already twice.

It is not only when attune to Air (which is usually what we do to gain speed access) , but also happen on other attunement. And it does not always happen even there is a target in front and in range. That’s probably why it takes so long for them to fix it because of the difficulty of reproducing it.

I am guessing it might be caused by some sort of buffs associated with the traits or the passives of utility skills. I am trying to figure out how to reproduce it and report in-game if I succeed.

Does it really happen with other attunements? I’ve only ever had it happen while switching to Air.

I’ve also tested this with no trait points assigned, so I don’t think it has anything to do with traits. As for passives on utilities, I’m using Mist Form, Cleansing Flame and Signet of Earth, none of which have offensive passives, so I don’t think that’s the case either.

Can you try reproducing using the steps I’ve listed in the first post? I can reliably reproduce this effect every time, but only if I switch to Air Attunement.

Tested in the mist with the target golems and found something interesting. I reset all my traits (no point spent) to assure it is not caused by traits. Still not 100% but happens quite frequently when switching from fire to air. Target nothing and not in combat. Simply stand like 600m near the golem. The interesting part is, when switching to air, my character would first shoot a fireball, then switch to air, start hitting with Chain Lightning. Hope the devs can reproduce this and check out the bug. BTW my utility skills were Arcane Wave, Arcane Power, Signet of Fire. Don’t think that matters.

Signed….

I feel like I’m signing a lot of threads today….

I did some more testing in the mists with 0 trait points.

Here’s a summary of what I’ve observed:

• This bug doesn’t occur if your character doesn’t have a target (through manual targeting) OR cannot acquire a target through auto-targeting (I’ll come back to auto-targeting in a bit).
• Throughout all of my testing, this bug only occurs when switching from a different attunement INTO air attunement (I’ll come back to this in a bit also).
• This bug happens with every weapon set, including underwater.
• I can reproduce this 100% of the time if both these conditions are met
  • Acquire a target, either manually or by having auto-target checked
  • Switch TO air attunement

Now getting back to auto-targeting. Auto-targeting won’t pick up a target if you’re camera is facing in a different direction, even if you’re in range:

• Auto-target will pick up this golem.
• Auto-target will NOT pick up this golem. (it’s the same golem. Didn’t move my character, just rotated the camera to face sideways.)

I don’t know if this is a factor to you not being able to reproduce the bug every time, but it may be.

Continued in next post…

Continuing from previous post.

Now about this happening while switching to attunements other than air. I observed this while testing with daggers. The 1-skills on daggers have 3 different ranges. The fire skill has 400 range, the water skill has 600 range and the air/earth skills have 300 range.

• If you stand at 600 range in water attunement (in range for water, out of range for air and earth) and switch to air attunement, your character will fire off one water based auto-attack (consistent with the bug) but will stop after because you are out of range for air. The auto-attack icon will be flashing though (the square arrow border around your auto-attack skill). If you then switch back to water attunement, you’re character will continue to auto-attack using water.
• If you stand at 400 range in fire attunement (in range for fire and water, but out of range for air and earth) and switch to air attunement, your character will fire off one fire base auto-attack (also consistent with the bug) then stop (as you’re out of range for air). The auto-attack icon will also keep flashing here. Now you can try a few things from here:
  • Switching back to fire attunement, you’re character will begin to attack with fire auto-attacks.
  • Switching to water attunement will cause your character to attack using water auto-attacks.
  • Switching to earth attunement will seemingly do nothing (because you’re not in range – earth is 300 range as well). But the auto-attack icon will still be flashing, and if you then switch to either fire or water, you’re character will begin to auto attack again.
  • The previous 3 sub-points where you’re character starts to auto-attack can very easily be confused to be additional bugs while switching to different (non-air) attunements. This is not the case. These are due to the fact that your character is still “in combat”.
• Taking this idea of being out of range further, I tried doing attunement switching while I was out of range of all of my 1-skills.
  • For daggers, this is greater than 600 range. I start in water attunement, out of range of the 1-skill (and therefore out of ranger of all other 1-skills) and switch to air. The auto-attack on my air 1-skill immediately starts to flash. This indicates that my character is trying to attack with it, but is out of range. Now I tried 2 things:
    • I walked into range for my fire 1-skill (400 range) while still attuned to air. Obviously nothing happens, still being out of range for my current auto-attack (air-based). Now, in 400 range, I switch to fire and my character begins auto-attacking immediately. Again, this is not because of attunement switching, this is simply because my character was trying to attack, but was out of range (air) but is now in range because I switched attunements.
    • I walked into range for my air skill (300) and my character started attacking.
  • This can also be applied to staves and other weapons. A target must be manually selected for staves and tridents because the effective range for auto-targeting seems to be ~1200 (the range of all 1-skills for staves and tridents is 1200).
  • Being out of range will cause the very first part of this bug to NOT HAPPEN. Meaning, if you are far out of range, when switching from fire/water/earth to air, you will not get a fire/water/earth auto-attack followed by an air auto-attack. If you walk back into range after the switch, only your air skill will fire off.

The different behaviour when your character is out of range may be why you think you’re observing this while attuning to different elements. Of course it could be a different bug altogether as these are my observations.

And continued in next post…

And continuing.

From my testing and observations, I can draw these conclusions:

• Having a target selected – no matter what range your character is to said target – and switching TO air attunement will cause your air 1-skill to try to auto-attack (the border will start flashing). This image clearly shows I’m well outside of 1200 range with a staff, but switching to air while standing here will cause my auto-attack to start flashing. It won’t fire because I’m out of range, but if I run into range, it will start firing.
• Having the Auto-target general option checked and being within it’s effective range (~1200) will fulfil the requirement in the previous point about having a target selected. Switching to air-attunement will cause your 1-skill to try to fire at the target auto-targeting picks out for you (it may not actually pick one due to camera angle or other unknown factors). If you are currently out of range of the target chosen, your skill will fire off when you get into range.

End of my wall of text… lol. Hopefully this helps someone figure out this bug.

I have also been having this problem. Very annoying! Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

I’ve noticed a little something you seem to have missed though.

It’s not only switching into air attunement that triggers the auto-attack, the air attunement button itself triggers it even if you’re already in the air attunement.

Air attunement -> Air attunement will also trigger an auto-attack.

I think the reason why the first attack is from the previous attument is simply because the auto-attack is triggered even before the attunement switch…

Though interestingly, the F3 button doesn’t trigger an auto-attack on a newly created elementalist that don’t have the air attument unlocked yet…

^ That is very interesting. I will have to test it out tomorrow. Thanks for pointing that out.

Awesome post.

Similar threads on this topic:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Passive-traits-that-disadvantage-you/first#post67651

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Switching-attunements-should-not-auto-attack-the-closest-mob/first#post97286

There is also a red bar that show up below the air attunement icon when you’re out of range. The “range” seem to be at 900.

Yes.
Does this when switching to air.
Just switch to air when you have something targeted nearby.

Jikap.6547:

I’ve noticed a little something you seem to have missed though.

It’s not only switching into air attunement that triggers the auto-attack, the air attunement button itself triggers it even if you’re already in the air attunement.

Air attunement -> Air attunement will also trigger an auto-attack.

I think the reason why the first attack is from the previous attument is simply because the auto-attack is triggered even before the attunement switch…

Though interestingly, the F3 button doesn’t trigger an auto-attack on a newly created elementalist that don’t have the air attument unlocked yet…

So I tested this out yesterday. It seems you are correct. Pressing the air attunement button while already in air will trigger the auto attack.

This leads me to modify my conclusion.

The trigger for this bug is in fact the air attunement button itself. Pressing it will lead your character trying to attack his/her target. The default for this is F3, but it works for the remapped key as well (I have it set to C).

I’ll have to roll a new elementalist to try out this with air attunement locked. Will check back later when I have time.

Jikap.6547:

There is also a red bar that show up below the air attunement icon when you’re out of range. The “range” seem to be at 900.

I noticed this as well. It’s the only attunement which shows this behavior. This possibly has something to do with air attunement being the only one that triggers this behavior.

Also being “out of range” of the attunement will still trigger the bug (your one skill will attempt to fire).

Clicking the air attunement button with the mouse works as well…

If it wasn’t for the first auto-attack being from the previous attunement, I’d say the game simply treated the air attunement button as some sort of attack skill. with 900 range & a switch to air attunement, but no attack animation, casting time or damage of any sort. Which would then trigger the auto-attack afterwards…

This would be further confirmed with the fact that using any attack skill, whether it’s in range or not, will trigger the auto-attack, or make the auto-attack border thing flash if the auto-attack is out of range.

But having the first auto-attack be from the previous attunement kind of suggests that the auto-attack triggers before the switch somehow, thus it doesn’t quite fit. >_<;

This needs to be fixed, still tries to do it even if I have auto attack turned off.

Signed. Is annoying.

I have everything in “auto target/attack” turned off and it still occurs. It’s pretty annoying. Though it seems to do it considerably less since I got discharge/higher level. Not sure what is up with that.

And thank you to the people who have put a lot of effort into figuring out this bug. It has driven me bonkers since the beginning.

Jikap.6547:

Clicking the air attunement button with the mouse works as well…

I can confirm this. If you acquire a target, then click your air attunement button with your mouse, your auto-attack icon will start flashing.

Jikap.6547:

This would be further confirmed with the fact that using any attack skill, whether it’s in range or not, will trigger the auto-attack, or make the auto-attack border thing flash if the auto-attack is out of range.

I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say. I’m thinking you’re saying: If you press any of your other attack spells (e.g Staff Fire-3: Flame Burst), regardless if you are in range for it or not, your auto-attack will start flashing.

I believe this is actually working as intended. This is because if you press an attack button, you are confirming your intent to attack your target. If you are out of range, your attack will miss. Walking into range will commence your auto attack. I think this is working as intended and not part of the bug.

I tested this will all of the weapon spells and observed the following:

• all targeted spells^ will cause your auto-attack to start flashing (if auto-attack acquires a target or you manually select one), regardless of whether you are in range for it.
• all ground targeted AOE spells will not trigger your auto attack, even if you are within range and have manually locked a target.
• all defensive spells will not trigger your auto-attack^^.

^ Targeted spells are spells that will be directed towards your target at the time of casting: Flame Burst, Shockwave, Gust, Gale, etc.
^^ One spell currently doesn’t conform to this behaviour and triggers the auto-attack. I’ll make a new thread about it, then link it in Major’s elementalist bug compilation thread.

After testing the above and observing the behaviour of direct target spells in particular, it would imply that the game currently sees the air attunement “button” and some sort of direct-target spell. It’s behaviour corresponds to that of the other spells in this category.

I had something else I wanted to post about, but I forgot lol.

Jikap.6547:

There is also a red bar that show up below the air attunement icon when you’re out of range. The “range” seem to be at 900.

If any one is confused by what we mean when we say air attunement has a “range”, please see this image. Air attunement has a range indicator.

second.4635:

This needs to be fixed, still tries to do it even if I have auto attack turned off.

Katreyn.4218:

I have everything in “auto target/attack” turned off and it still occurs. It’s pretty annoying.

Even if you have auto-targeting off, this will still happen if you have manually selected a target. This can happen accidentally, like if you hit tab (default next-target button) or inadvertently click on a passing mob.

I remembered what else I wanted to mention. It might be a bit redundant now, but I’ll post it anyway, to rule out a possible cause.

I tested out the keybinds with a secondary set of bindings (by secondary, I mean in the second column of the keybinds section). Bug still happens with air attunement using either my primary binds, or the new secondary ones.

As far as possible causes go, I consider the minor trait Electric Discharge a very likely suspect. Even if it’s only unlocked by putting 15 points into the Air Magic line, it is a targeted spell trait, which also got a range of 900.

I don’t know why the air trait button is still considered an attack without any trait points spent, nor why pressing the air attunement button still triggers an auto-attack when we don’t get another lightning bolt from it even with the trait unlocked, but the range and targeted nature of the trait makes me suspect the trait as a possible suspect.

This bug has been in the game since the first time I tried Ele in the first beta. I have reported it in every beta and stress test, written multiple threads on beta forums and also in here.

It doesnt have anything to do with Electric Discharge or anything else. Simply by standing still, having neutral mob targeted, switch to fire attunement, nothing happens. Water attunement and Earth attunement, nothing happens. Switch to air attunement and nr1 skill (auto attack) starts firing off.

It is very annoying especially when you are running away from some mobs, jump in air attunement to give yourself swiftness but instead you start attacking mob and it throws in you combat, thus slows you down.

We need more ppl reporting this very annoying bug. The more ppl, the better…the sooner it gets finally fixed.

I have tried it with and with out Electric Discharge. With it, it happens a lot more then without. If I actually click on air instead of hitting F1 I haven’t had the problem unless I have Electric Discharge then it hits something if it is range every time. Really I think its a problem with the mechanics of Electric Discharge. With or with out it you still auto target and cast because of how it works, weather or not it actually fires depends on if you have the trait or not. Need to just scrap Electric Discharge and put something else in there, would bet money it would solve the problem.

Adding my voice to this thread, with another plea that something either be done to fix the bug, or an explanation of why it might not be a bug. I switch to air for a speed boost, but wind up with half the map chasing me, and my boost reduced to a crawl as a consequence of attacks/attackers.

Or, switching to air in a group event to land some vulnerability on a boss, only to inadvertently attract neutral targets to my location by the droves. It’s a bit embarrassing dying by rabbits (1) in a group event.

(1) may be hyperbole

I used to have this issue. But since I changed my options, it hasn’t happened again. There’s an option that’s checked by default, when you cast a spell, it’ll target something automatically for you. Turn that off, and it solved the issue for me.

Still an issue. Really hope this gets fixed soon. The main point of Air Attunement, from what I can see, is mobility. Having switching to the attunement slow you down by automatically putting you in combat is clearly hindering that.
Also, really sucks in WvW when you’re trying to meet up with your group after long queue times only to target and attack a zerg of defenders when trying to sneak past undetected.

From my observations, I think this is just caused by the way in which Electric Discharge is implemented.

Currently, the game will treat any attempt to switch to air attunement (by using the keybinds or clicking the UI icon) as the trigger to fire off Electric Discharge at your target. The trigger will happen even if you don’t have the minor trait unlocked. This is treated as an attack and your character will continue with auto-attacks afterwards.

There’s no need to scrap the trait, which works fine in and of itself. Just modify the implementation to only trigger Electric Discharge when you are already in combat (like how Evasive Arcana currently works) and that should alleviate the issues.

Disclaimer: All of the previous statements only apply if the implementation of Electric Discharge is indeed the cause. I could simply be dead wrong .

Can we please get some sort of input on this from a dev? This bug has been around since forever, and it is VERY annoying since most of the time elementalists switch to air element (at least all the ones I know anyway) are for the speed boosts, but the end result is a speed loss due to entering combat.

Patch released today yesterday, and this is still not fixed… I’m starting to regret choosing Elementalist to start out.

STILL NOT FIXED….. this is getting out of hand. How hard could it possibly be??? No other attunements have this problem.

So frustrated right now.

Why is no one listening to this? It’s a basic part of the class that is behaving stupidly. You don’t accidentally attack things. It’s definitely not sensible.

At least change it so it only affects red(hostile) enemies, or those you have targetted.

Another patch and no mention of a fix for this. This cant be that hard to fix! So annoying! =(

BillFreist.1527:

Interesting. It looks like the Trait “Electric Discharge” is the cause of this. It causes you to attack your target when attuning to Air if you have it slotted. It still fires off the Auto-Attack functionality because Air Attunement is still being considered as a skill that attacks a target (regardless of actually attacking or not).

I’ll take a look at this tomorrow and see what I can come up with. Sorry that nobody has responded to this bug sooner!

-Bill

He tested with 0 trait points though, so without Electric Discharge.

As an elementalist players since the first day of pre-launch, I can confirm that this bug has been present since (at least) then.

It has nothing to do with traits. My elementalist has never put a single trait point in Air, and this bug keeps occurring for me.

Somehow, the coding for the “Enter Air Attunement” command (F3) works differently than the other three attunements. What I notice is that this is the only one of the four attunement icons to have a small red bar underneath it, which also only appears under skills that are targeted attacks.

Here is what I think is the case:
“Enter Air Attunement” has been erroneously coded to be a targeted attack skill with infinite range, meaning that activating it will cause the game to search for the nearest possible target and autoselect it. While entering Air Attunement does not actually do anything to the target directly, the UI will register that an attack was made on a target, and will thus automatically follow up with the auto-attack skill.

And I want to emphasize that none of the other attunements do this, because they are apparently NOT considered to be targeted attacks.

Therefore, my suggestion is to fix Air Attunement to be like the other three attunements, by not having it be a targeted attack.

DeXyre.6025:

He tested with 0 trait points though, so without Electric Discharge.

What he’s saying is that the air attunement skill is psuedocoded something like this:

Put player into combat mode (this is probably an intrinsic property of the skill and handled outside of the skill’s flow of logic)
—set target
—set auto-attack on
If player has Electric Discharge Trait, do the electric discharge thing
—deal damage
—animation
Switch player to air attunement
—remove old attunement (if lingering attunements, pulse it one last time with a duration of 5s)
—put on new attunement
—change skill bar
—if elemental attunement, apply swiftness in an area
—etc, etc.

The skill that puts us into air attunement is always a range 900 offensive skill, just the actual dealing of damage is conditional on us having that trait.

BillFreist.1527:

Interesting. It looks like the Trait “Electric Discharge” is the cause of this. It causes you to attack your target when attuning to Air if you have it slotted. It still fires off the Auto-Attack functionality because Air Attunement is still being considered as a skill that attacks a target (regardless of actually attacking or not).

I’ll take a look at this tomorrow and see what I can come up with. Sorry that nobody has responded to this bug sooner!

-Bill

edited:

I think I have a better understanding of the bug thanks to the person above me. Comments withdrawn.

BillFreist.1527:

Interesting. It looks like the Trait “Electric Discharge” is the cause of this. It causes you to attack your target when attuning to Air if you have it slotted. It still fires off the Auto-Attack functionality because Air Attunement is still being considered as a skill that attacks a target (regardless of actually attacking or not).

I’ll take a look at this tomorrow and see what I can come up with. Sorry that nobody has responded to this bug sooner!

-Bill

I look forward to this bug fix and the twelve other bugs that the fix causes.

BillFreist.1527:

Interesting. It looks like the Trait “Electric Discharge” is the cause of this.

It happens without any traits as well. I have bugged it in game months ago, and it is the very first on the stickied bug list in the Elementalist forums:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/NEW-Elementalist-bugs-and-glitches-thread/290693

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Elementalist-Swapping-into-Air-attunement-causes-character-to-auto-attack-nearest-mob/33435