Axe 2 movement direction and targeting.

It would be nice if axe 2 didn't lock direction on whatever you have targeted, but rather allowed free movement in whatever direction your character is facing.

Sand through Glass works like this in reverse - doesn't matter what you have targeted, it will evade backwards according to the direction your character is facing and it's much easier to manage positioning with this. With axe 2 if you forget to detarget it can sometimes throw you off by suddenly moving towards whatever you have targeted - and I've had this cause me to fall off ledges and stuff due to forgetting to detarget first.

Otherwise it's a bit annoying having to detarget/drop target before using axe 2 to go in the direction you want - would be a whole lot smoother if you could just move in the direction of your character no matter what you have targeted.

^ This.I don't think there's any movement skill from any profession that does not go toward or away from the target though (if anything is targeted). Maybe make it directional ground targeting as we now have on warrior greatsword #3. Also, some folks have been asking Anet to add a brief evade to this skill to better reflect its vision movement. (wink wink)Or just remove the movement function and make it like warrior axe #4. The current movement provides neither evasion nor much mobility anyway.

Actually I really like axe 2's animation so would prefer it to stay as it is, but just allow the free movement in the direction of your character.

I have to seriously disagree with any form of ground targeting here - personally I would find that really awkward compared with turning the character and hitting the skill. But then again I hate ground targeting in gw2 and my motto is the fewer ground targeted abilities, the better.

Anyway I'm also getting used to hitting dodge during axe 2's animation which acts as an evade if necessary and following it up with ambush in melee range, straight into shatter. The build I'm currently using has maximised endurance regen through mirror heal + rune of the adventurer, energy sigils, perma vigour and endurance food such that I can easily use a dodge during axe 2 animation and the ambush window extends after it finishes.

Yes I used to also support adding native evade to axe 2 but now I'm coming around to the idea that it is better to provide more sources of endurance regen on mirage to encourage the use of dodge during animations that have no native evade frames, rather than simply putting evade frames on a skill. Eg would be cool if we had a native +25% endurance regen trait like ranger, or if weapon attacks that hit an enemy return a portion of your endurance, etc.

@Curunen.8729 said:I have to seriously disagree with any form of ground targeting here - personally I would find that really awkward compared with turning the character and hitting the skill. But then again I hate ground targeting in gw2 and my motto is the fewer ground targeted abilities, the better.

That is rather interesting. Would you elaborate a bit the reason why you found ground targeting awkward?

From my experience, ground targeting 'movement/attack combination' has always been superior in terms of precision of the destination, reaction time (compared to turning the camera and dropping selected target), and proneness to failure (in this case, execusion of the skill without dropping target) to object-targeting ones. For example, during the early years of WvW, 'Whirlwind Attack' was so much more reliable as a mean to disengage than, say, 'Dash', 'Bull Charge', or 'Savage Leap'. For AoE skills of the same kind, ground targeting ones are also more easy to land on multiple targets, with the path/radius of effect directly shown on the screen.

Without further infomation, I am guessing that the difference between our experience might be due to different camera setup (since this is more of a UI problem I suppose there could be difference between what we see on screen to cause this drastic inconsistance). I know quite some WvW players (including myself) would configure their camera way up and far from the character to gain better field of view and situational awareness. Doing so grants you an bird-eye view from a high angle, with better judgement on distance and AoE density/coverage, also easier and more precise ground targeting. While on the other hand, friends of mine who don't really do WvW tend to have the camera set much closer to the character's height. I suppose by viewing the ground at a much lower angle would make ground-targeting harder while camera manipulation more instinctive. Though, that's just my guess :P

@Virtuality.8351 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:I have to seriously disagree with any form of ground targeting here - personally I would find that really awkward compared with turning the character and hitting the skill. But then again I hate ground targeting in gw2 and my motto is the fewer ground targeted abilities, the better.

It's going to be a long answer with several reasons.

First, I use Combat Mode (no not the underfeatured action camera, the old autohotkey combat mode script) but customised in order to allow more effective targeting mechanics and character control. I have been playing like this for the last 4 years (during the first year of release I used a simple right click toggle script) and it has become second nature. I use it because I absolutely HATE and detest and seriously would never play GW2 with the ridiculously stupid hold right click to rotate your character... I come from a background of tps, fps and action rpgs and cannot fathom this ridiculous character control method in a pseudo-tps action game, even after 5 years.

I have two buttons to toggle it on/off - F and one of my thumb mouse buttons (I usually bind duplicate keys to certain actions for the sake of comfort and reducing any repetitive strain - for example on mirage I have two keybinds for dodge in order to spread out the work between finger and thumb - I actually have one dodge keybind on R as it is similar to "reload" which I am used to hitting frequently). It allows me to use left click for auto attack and right click for skill 2 among other things. My mouse cursor/crosshair always resides in the centre of my screen - with the exact position and camera height settings determined through extensive iteration of what is best for the need to cast ground targeted skills close to my character, or long range as well as being able to pan the camera.

In order to target an enemy, I have nearest enemy and next/previous enemy bound on the keyboard (and I also have a dedicated key for droptarget/detarget), and am adept at toggling off the crosshair to quickly left click a target if necessary then toggling it back on again. This is also how I use blink and other long range ground targeting skills. I hit F, move my mouse cursor from the centre of the screen (it's always in the same place so no need to find it) to location, hit blink key (other thumb mouse button) and hit F again to toggle crosshair back on - I can do this very smoothly in any situation. Similarly I put things like chaos storm on shift+thumbmousebutton1 in order to execute in a smooth manner if using at range. Likewise I have very specific keybinds positioned for my fingers in order to facilitate the ease of using ground targeted skills with this method - such as temporal curtain, jaunt and so on. The duplicate keybinding of toggle off/on crosshair between thumbmousebutton2 and F allows me to perform this even more smoothly depending on the relative keybind of the ground targeted skill or similar.

And for certain ground targeted skills that are short range - such as Jaunt - I don't even need to toggle off the crosshair if wanting to cast at max range - I simply pan the camera up (so the crosshair position is high enough on the terrain, and again this has been determined through extensive iteration in order to minimise camera movement and maintain as large a field of view as possible) and Jaunt in the direction I want (I use the option in menu to cast max range if out of range).

For the record I use maximum field of view and am zoomed out as far as possible in any kind of pvp or instanced pve. This control method is a kind of hybrid between mmo tab targeting mechanics and tps crosshair/action game mechanics.

This is also the reason I can't stand playing necro or anything with excessive ground targeting - because I would hate to play without a hold right click toggle.

I would find it extremely easy to pan the camera to cast axe 2 in any given direction, because all I have to do is move my mouse and hit right click.

I'd be happy if it didn't take 3-4 seconds after pressing the skill for it to actually fire. I think I'd easily waive all other improvements if they'd fix that. :disappointed:

That reminds me how difficult it was for me, also coming from shooter background, to get into this game for the first time. Also the painful default keybinding, with A and D set to turning left and right instead of strafing as in shooter games. That combat mode add-on does seem neat. Thanks for writing in depth on this!

@Carighan.6758 said:I'd be happy if it didn't take 3-4 seconds after pressing the skill for it to actually fire. I think I'd easily waive all other improvements if they'd fix that. :disappointed:

Strangely despite the issues I'm reading on here with axe 2, I find it pretty smooth to use and not noticing as significant a delay as is being mentioned on this forum.

@Virtuality.8351 said:That reminds me how difficult it was for me, also coming from shooter background, to get into this game for the first time. Also the painful default keybinding, with A and D set to turning left and right instead of strafing as in shooter games. That combat mode add-on does seem neat. Thanks for writing in depth on this!

It is a very weird control scheme, but I have played with it successfully in pvp vs good players and all game modes tbh. Honestly I have been thinking about stripping down most of the features of that combat mode script to just the basic autohotkey script I need, but I'm lazy when it comes to this and cba to do it.

My preference would simply be to have it cast in the direction the Mesmer is facing.

@Llethander.3972 said:My preference would simply be to have it cast in the direction the Mesmer is facing.

Yeah I agree.