Since this is the fourth time it’s happened to me, I figure I might as well post it. What happens is when you down the enemy, you will see them fall down, however when you attempt to melee attack them, the attacks will all whiff. The reality is that the downed enemy is a little bit away, but client-side the enemy appears right next to you. This has happened a few months ago in sPvP against a warrior, and most recently today against an WvW elementalist.
The ele was upscaled, so he went down in a single thief combo. I was able to hit him for two more regular melee attacks before he mistformed and ran up the steps in the back side of red’s eb keep. He was able to reach the top of the stairs before he fell back down and I laid a shadow refuge over him and prepared to stomp finish him off. I was standing on the steps about three steps down when the stomp finished and he was still alive. I had enough time to try it again in case I was the one that cancelled it early, but no dice. I performed a heartseeker and was surprised that while I had him targeted, the heartseeker jumped past him about one whole body length and hit him, so he was around two body lengths from where he was client-side. Of course by heartseekering, I revealed myself to the scouts, archers, and guards and eventually died to another enemy.
So what does this point out? Client-side, the downed enemy appears in one spot but is in another spot. The player can find the enemies’ true position at least by using a melee homing skill such as heartseeker or judge’s intervention. I don’t believe this is limited by a single class skill or by the downed state, but that’s only speculation. Given that it’s a rare bug and hard to test, I doubt it will get fixed soon, but the weird part is the fact that a homing skill will move directly to them despite their character model on the screen. Oh well, good luck!
