Cleave Question

[BelchyMcFartFace.1240]

I Noticed that some attacks can hit targets through walls and I’d assumed it was a bug. Today I ran across this under “Cleave” on the GW2 wiki.

“...Cleave attacks can be exploited to hit targets through obstacles including walls but enemies will become invulnerable if they can't pathfind to their attacker's location to attack in melee, or hit them with ranged attacks.”

The last half about enemies becoming invuln if they can’t pathfind left me confused. Can anyone explain this a bit better

[Dawdler.8521]

Just ignore it and realize that most attacks are AoE. There's no such thing as "melee" - it's just a point blank AoE. There are lots of things that go through obstacles. Only projectiles will fail to go through objects (with some minor exceptions that has AoE on impact).

[Valelutra.9128]

It’s probably talking about npcs. When you kite an enemy outside of their range they run back to where they are tied to and regen health or go invuln all the way back. So might be something similar if there is no way for that enemy to get to you due to pathing.

[rng.1024]

First off this only applies to npc's.

Pathfind just means whether they can walk to you or not without jumping, swimming or going to far from their original location.

The invuln is there to prevent exploits where you can hit your target with cleave (doesn't care about pathing since it's AoE which goes up and sometimes through walls depending on it's texture) and they can't hit you.

This ensures you can't just kill tons of mobs with aggro from a safe place where they can't reach you, they'll just invuln your attacks instead. If you've ever tried to solo a dungeon you can see how that would be rewarding.

[BelchyMcFartFace.1240]

Thank you Dawdler, Valelutra and rng. Very helpful.

[KrHome.1920]

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Just ignore it and realize that most attacks are AoE. There's no such thing as "melee" - it's just a point blank AoE. There are lots of things that go through obstacles. Only projectiles will fail to go through objects (with some minor exceptions that has AoE on impact).Everything that needs line of sight will fail at objects - for example the necro axe will fail too, even though it is not coded as a projectile.

Every skill that has technically a AOE pattern like a circle or a cone (most weapon attacks that don't require a target) will go through objects, because these patterns can not be "cut off" by the game engine and will always clip through structures.