Guild Wars 2

In the name of all that is holy and good in the universe, please fix auto-target. This bug just killed me for the 3089230th time, and I decided to come and ask PLEASE, please… did I say please?

Fix the auto targeting. When I am holding a melee weapon, and I use a skill, it targets the farthest away mob 100% of the time. If there are two or more mobs, and all are in range except for one far-away mob, it will ALWAYS target the far away mob. It makes no sense at all, is extremely annoying and frustrating, and kills me way too often in the Orr zones.

Why in the world would a skill with a melee weapon default to targeting a mob that is out of melee range? It boggles my mind. Even with just two mobs, one close up and one far away, swinging my sword will target the far away mob 100% of the time, which I can’t hit with my sword.

Please fix this. It should default to auto-targeting the closest mob, or at least a mob in front of me and in range of the ability that I pressed.

Obviously, I can hit tab to target, and then attack, but the whole point of that auto-target is so I don’t have to tab target. If you put it in the game, at least make it work correctly. Fights in Orr come down way too often to leaping and spinning around the battlefield trying to figure out what I have targeted and trying to face the right direction so I can get my auto-attack to work. It’s no fun.

yeah got same problem , and its verry annoying died so many times because of pulling wrong mob, well its attacking not current selected mob but completly different

They need to change it so that the targeting has NOTHING to do with your field of view.

When I push the “target nearest enemy” button, regardless of where my camera is rotated, it should TARGET THE NEAREST ENEMY.

Auto targeting has been messed up from way back in beta. I am beginning to think its an intelligent botch up though cause most of the time it targets the target that is the most far away rather than anything close as in opposite from what it should be doing.

Yeah it’s rubbish.

6 angry mobs want to tear my face off, so it targets the longhorned sheep thats way off and l can’t even see.

Great stuff.

Take non-threatening targets OFF of auto target.

The bug is with targeting in general, not just auto targeting. I try to use Tab targeting , which is supposed to choose the “nearest” target, but almost always chooses the furthest.

I was having major issues with this yesterday and last night, with both melee (axe) and ranged (longbow) weapons. At one point I’d click-targeted a wasp in Gendarran Fields, fired a skill at it (longbow) and then my auto-attack decided to hit the moa that was standing a respectable distance off to one side and happily minding its own business.

Auto targeting really should have been a priority issue since launch, because it has never worked right.

Even during wvw, auto targeting will prefer to target a moa in the distance, instead of the attacker right in front of you. Auto targeting has caused so many deaths, I lost count.

It will also consistently use a ranged skill on a target that is out of range, instead of the enemy right in front of you. I have wasted quite a lot of life siphons this way.

It will target enemies behind you, rather than target enemies in front of you. Sometimes a spectral grasp is sent flying off screen, to pull an enemy towards me I couldn’t even see on my screen.

It is often impossible to select even huge enemies that cover most of the screen, by clicking on them. Try clicking on the Shadow Behemoth, or the Maw, or any of the other huge bosses. You’ll often end up selecting everything but that giant monster you are directly clicking on.

Auto targeting will often deselect a target during battle automatically. None of the settings in the option menu make a difference in this regard. It just doesn’t work right. I could have Kholer selected as my target, and be wailing on him, and suddenly he is deselected while I’m fighting him.

It is near impossible to select some static targets, such as a gate or a ram in wvw. Gates are pretty big targets, and I’m clicking directly on them. Why is it so hard for the game to select such a big target?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Auto targeting really should have been a priority issue since launch, because it has never worked right.

Even during wvw, auto targeting will prefer to target a moa in the distance, instead of the attacker right in front of you. Auto targeting has caused so many deaths, I lost count.

It will also consistently use a ranged skill on a target that is out of range, instead of the enemy right in front of you. I have wasted quite a lot of life siphons this way.

It will target enemies behind you, rather than target enemies in front of you. Sometimes a spectral grasp is sent flying off screen, to pull an enemy towards me I couldn’t even see on my screen.

It is often impossible to select even huge enemies that cover most of the screen, by clicking on them. Try clicking on the Shadow Behemoth, or the Maw, or any of the other huge bosses. You’ll often end up selecting everything but that giant monster you are directly clicking on.

Auto targeting will often deselect a target during battle automatically. None of the settings in the option menu make a difference in this regard. It just doesn’t work right. I could have Kholer selected as my target, and be wailing on him, and suddenly he is deselected while I’m fighting him.

Agree with this I do.

Amen to everything which has been stated above. In addition, please fix the game’s bad habit of sporadically letting characters which just pass by a mob (no matter if red or yellow, but it seems to happen with red ones more frequently) to suddenly attack that mob, though no attack skill has been activated (by the player). It happens every so often and it’s extremely annoying.

shogei.8015:

The bug is with targeting in general, not just auto targeting. I try to use Tab targeting , which is supposed to choose the “nearest” target, but almost always chooses the furthest.

Just to let you know, tab is set to “target next” by default, which means it will just randomly target what the game decides is the “next” mob. There is a “target nearest” option in the keybinds, but it’s not set to tab by default. I changed my tab button to “target nearest” and at least that seems to work pretty reliably.

What I’m referring to in the original post is the functionality of being able to hit a mob with a skill when nothing is targeted. The game is supposed to automatically select an appropriate target when I use a skill, and promote that mob to full target. It involves two separate settings in the options menu…

Auto-target – which is supposed to automatically select an appropriate target when I use a skill. This does not appear to work correctly. It always chooses pretty much the most inappropriate mob and targets that one.

Promote skill target – which is supposed to take whatever I hit with a skill and promote it to full target. This also doesn’t seem to work correctly. If I uncheck auto-targeting, I can swing my sword all day long hitting mobs and it will never promote anything to full target.

I don’t see how ArenaNet can’t be aware of these issues. I’m pretty sure they’ve played the game. Please fix this.

I’ve read many posts around the web about the faulty targeting system and most have problem with the auto-targeting feature. My biggest problems are with my ranged classes, the random targeting of out-of-screen yellow veterans when fighting a champion and its minions or retargeting of some far off red mob not in fight when I have gathered a bunch of enemies for my fireballs or lined up for my piercing ranger. There are some irritating behaviors with the targeting system that need some clean up but sadly, it seems, the developers neglected.

Here’s what I would like the targeting system should do.

The do nots:
• Don’t retarget when skill misses, is blocked, is obstructed or has no effect (unless out-of-range maybe).
• Don’t target non-fighting mobs if there are mobs in range attacking you or an ally.
• Don’t target mobs out-of-range if there are mobs in range.
• Don’t target yellow mobs if there red mobs in range.
• Don’t target white mobs if there yellow or red mobs in range.
• Don’t attack a random mob if not explicitly told so (remove queued skill attacks if no target selected and let us choose if right click should target and attack).
• Don’t attack a random mob when elementalist attune to air.

That’s a great list. Most of it applies to melee skills, as well. I can’t see any reason why a melee skill should ever promote a target which is out of melee range.

as annoying as it is it’s kinda funny how auto targeting is supposed to “automatically select an appropriate target for you” yet seems to do the exact opposite
and I hate to resort to tab targeting since that also has a tendency to select inappropriate targets

auto-targeting is horrible, I’ve had it select an enemy on a different level (somewhere below me) rather than an enemy right in front of me, who is trying to kill me. also had it target distant (out of range) random things like moas. in my opinion it should have closest red enemy as a priority, but as it is, it doesn’t and will choose the most random things over the closest enemy :/

+1 signed

I don’t know if is just me or this problem is getting worst but it’s really annoying (being fighting a group boss and suddenly being surrounded by a swarm of mobs who were not supposed to be there is not funny).

PLEASE ANET, FIX THIS ASAP! (I’m willing to spare all the necro bugs if you fix this one).

Target closest is certainly broken. After playing GW1 (where it worked), I bound the c key to it, and try to use it all the time. But a fairly large portion of the time, it does not target the closest – rather, it seems to prefer whatever is most directly in front of the character, even if a ways away.

This is somewhat annoying all the time, when there may be something a bit to the side I was trying to target, more so with ranged, where I aggro a creature I did not want to. But with melee weapons, this is really annoying where instead of attacking the creature right next to you, it targets something further away, and you move in that direction because the weapon skill includes movement.

The main problem that I have is that the targeting system appears to place yellow NPC’s at the top of the targeting priority list instead of the bottom. This is new to whatever the latest “fix” was when the new checkboxes appeared in the configuration menu.

+1, especially the inclusion of yellow NPCs in auto-targeting. Stop that please! I’m tired of having deer and sheep joining a mob. If reds are actively engaged, disable responses from yellows.

I don’t know if something changed lately, but i’m having alot of problems on my Necro, seems ok on ele. Even when there are mobs in range, i target nothing for some reason.

Yes—it is much worse lately. It has even caused me to jump at a target that is down a cliff instead of the closest target in range, it’s a mess. My Guardian jumps all over the place instead of the closest one evn when targeted.

Plus one on the importance of this fix to my enjoyment of the game.

I’d like to add one more wish in this general area: I understand most of you don’t die as often as I, but, while downed, with an attacker right next to me with whom I was previously martially engaged with target, auto target tends to loose the target and not allow a new target, even an NPC. The only way I can pick up a close target is to try to face it while downed and somehow click on it successfully (good luck).

So many harmless Yellow and White mobs were needlessly hurt by target-nearest (which I bound to C like many other players). Please fix targeting. If the targeting coders are also working on WvW culling, fix culling first. Thanks.

And the funniest part is that if the target farthest away is located behind you you’ll end up swinging your melee weapon at it while the nearest mob which is now behind you pounds you in the back. Lol at auto targeting. “dead, good!”

It seems like auto target promotion with a melee weapon uses a perfectly straight line in front of your character, in the direction they are facing when the skill is used. That’s bad enough (it should really be an arc in front of the character, always prioritizing the closest aggro mob), but it also seems to prioritize the farther away mob every time. So, if there are two mobs directly, perfectly in front of your character, one right in your face and one far away out of melee range, it promotes the far-away mob every time. This makes zero sense…I can’t think of any reason why this would be done.

I have noticed that quite often when engaging a mob right in my face, my character won’t be facing the mob perfectly and this causes something farther away (which is in direct straight line of sight) to be promoted to full target. So, there are several layers of issues with targeting. The problems with “target nearest” are separate, and also need to be fixed.