Looting and Interacting should not be the same button!
Yeah! Absolutely true! +1
If you’re stopping to loot you are not fighting.
Wait for battle to end.
Well, sometimes a lot of loot have gone until then. ^^
Your auto attack is still going while you loot, so actually, you are still fighting. Aside from that, the fact that F tries to: Talk to npcs that walk on your loot, fighting or not, rezz someones dead pet that walked by your loot, interact with a turret gun or anything interactable that might be nearby, etc instead of looting quite frequently is irritating regardless of being in combat.
Your character might be fighting but you’re not :P
You are busy moving to and looting. It’s a distraction.
That said, I do agree that it should be a different key function.
Looting, talking, picking up, resurrecting, all on one button, is a bit much. It’s bad enough that I keep ending up resurrecting someone’s pet instead of a downed player but when I erroneously start looting instead, it’s really irritating. The same applies when I’m trying to pick up something next to an NPC or trade with a jotun standing next to some items. It’s bad too that the NPCs are often too close together, sometimes literally on top of each other, so although one is clearly targeted, it’s the other with whom I interact, which is why I ended up being a weaponsmith instead of getting my armour mended.
I kept getting knocked around in WvW trying to rez allies, only to start healing someone’s pet. See also: grabbing banners when you’re trying to rez, talking to NPCs when you’re trying to rez, and mining when you’re trying to rez.