Tab targeting needs some love

[Yrch.5491]

Let me start off by saying, I love this game. So it is with that love that I say, tab targeting stinks. I use tab targeting as a way to target mobs and switch between mobs. It should simply target the closest mob in any direction and/or the way you are facing, but I have noticed that frequently it will target mobs much further away. Mobs that are not in the group that I am fighting and often times mobs that aren't even in range of me or are behind obstructions and I can't even see them.

 

An example is, I can be running down a path and there is a mob in front of me. Just before I reach range for that mob, I hit tab. Sometimes, it will target that mob. Other times it targets mobs behind that mob that are far out of range and will not be involved in this immediate fight. In a frantic fight, I frequently click my left mouse button on something other than a mob and I lose target, I have not checked but there may be a sticky targeting that I have to enable, but I am not sure I want sticky targeting, so I can live with this feature. What kills me though is that when I accidentally un-click (un-target) a mob, trying to retarget that mob with tab is often difficult and I often aggro mobs not involved in the fight because of this.

 

I don't like to compare MMO's to each other, but in this case there is another MMO which handles tab targeting perfectly and perhaps it has spoiled me, but it just seems like this would be something easy to improve on.

[Cjam.8634]

I agree with this to the max. Just today during swampland fractal I found it annoying where tab was targeting for me. I was on the phase where you have to survive the spirit onslaught so bloomhunger was in the middle invulnerable to damage and I have swarms of enemies running directly at me and I click tab expecting to get one of the 10 enemies in front of me but I get bloomhunger nearly 9/10 times...that leads me to believe that tabbing in gw2 may select the biggest threat?

[michelada.2947]

i'd like to use a combination of tab target and click target but the hitboxes in this game are so ridiculous large

[Remus Darkblight.1673]

I believe you can bind a key to target closest enemy in the options menu.

[Digital Dragon.2697]

I agree, the tab targeting needs some improvement. I have it set to target nearest enemy, but sometimes it doesn't.

[LucianDK.8615]

tab targetting is terrible and will increasingly go to distant targets.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

I always find these threads quite confusing, because I don't experience the same thing.

 

I think there must be some underlying mechanism like a "focus cone" that the tab targetting follows, and it matches what some players (eg: me) expect, but not others. So, quite legitimately, a bunch of people just can't get it to work as they expect, because it just doesn't work that way.

 

My only possible complaint would be that I have not bound a "reset to the closest target and cycle through from there" key, so sometimes I want to tab back to something I missed, and it would take too many keypresses to get through all valid targets.

 

That doesn't make y'all comments or experiences invalid. It just means that you maybe want to focus on "doesn't work as I expect" rather than "fundamentally broken", or you risk that people will look at it, think "works for me", and dismiss your valid and legitimate issue.

[Trinnitty.8256]

If you have like 2 champs and bunch on none champs the targeting switch between the 2 champs and ignores other mobs. I don't know if its a settings thing. I always have to use my key bind to target nearest enemy.

[notebene.3190]

If they change it drastically, they either need an 'old/new' setting, or if they do something interesting like adjusting the cone priority, a slider.

 

Tab targetting doesn't always pick the closest enemy, at least it doesn't in most games I've played. It's usually some weighted priority based on where you are facing, allowing tab to pick a target that is more directly in front of you (and in range), even though it's not closer.