Homing, high-damage Career Skills such as Pyromancer’s Burning Skull and Waystalker’s Trueflight Barrage should likely have their targeting priority tweaked to more aggressively hunt Specials. Burning Skull in particular has a tendency to attack a bunch of trash mobs in a horde and ignore problem specials such as a Packmaster snagging an ally or a troublesome Globadier or Blightstormer. There isn’t always time or line of sight during a horde to charge and target the skill, particularly in clutch situations, so having these ults heavily prioritize specials and possibly ignore non-Special, non-Elite enemies unless there are no such targets present would improve their utility and “feel” greatly. It’s always a bad feeling to fire such an ult to try and save a disabled teammate and instead have the skill hit 10 clanrats, essentially whiffing.
I second this.
Completely disagree. Being able to just delete specials with an ult completely removes any skill requirement whatsoever and effectively makes the threat of specials obsolete. I think the auto win ults were nerfed to prevent this very behaviour many moons ago.
Agreed brother agreed.
Wheres the skill involved in auto aiming ults. Why not just put in auto aim for ranged weapons too then?
If you hold the Career Skill button for a moment (and it really isn’t a long time), you “paint” the target you’re looking for, and after that the missile will fly for that enemy. That’s the way to use those Skills as targeted abilities.
While I don’t think there needs to (or should) be tweaks to the missiles’ usual priorities, I kind of wish the “painted” target stuck a couple tenths of a second longer, to better enable targeting through a crowd and certain trick shots. I think that would also somewhat address your concern, specifically for the targeting through a crowd part.
On the other hand, it’s a career skill on a long cooldown, available only roughly 15 times during a 20-minute mission, and special spawns are much, much higher than that. As it stands, they’re not very useful, as they don’t do much of anything simply shooting a ranged weapon can do and the cast time is roughly equivalent to just pulling out said weapon and shooting them, not to mention that the behavior of these two ultimates is far, far less reliable.
Not a fan of the inflammatory nature of your comment, Dryen. It contributes nothing to the discussion and you and I both know there’s a difference between aiming a ranged weapon and using an ultimate that is intended to home.
I’m aware of how the “painting” mechanics work, but as I wrote in the OP, there isn’t always time for that in the situations where you actually want to use these ultimates, that being for taking out problem specials during hordes.
They were working fine until the last patch. Now they always go for the nearest enemy, sometimes even when I’m aiming (highlight red) the target I actually want. Yesterday I was aiming a Burning Head cast at a Berserker in front of me… highlighted red. It zigged 90 degrees left to kill a mook, zigged 90 degrees right to kill another mook (behind the original berserkers) and then zoomed off into the distance to kill a slave rat. WTF? It basically did everything it could to actively avoid hitting what I was aiming at.
Here are some situations I’ve noticed lately:
-Special in distance, no other enemies in line of sight, snap shot with no aiming. Old behavior: Went in the direction you were pointed, found and killed special. New behavior: Makes a sharp 90 degree turn to kill a slave rat off screen.
-Mixed group of foes, snap shot with no aiming. Old behavior: Seeks out high threat foes (elites) and kills as many as it can before it runs out of steam/arrows. New behavior: Finds the closest target it can, even if off screen or behind you.
-Special in horde at medium distance, hold button for aim, red highlight achieved. Old behavior: Went through horde to kill the targeted special. New behavior: Hits the first target in the horde, ignoring the special.
-Special in the far distance and out of line of sight and map bounds (aka, standard behavior for a blightstormer) such that sniping it with normal weapons is literally impossible. No other enemies are nearby. Old Behavior: Arrows go in the direction fired, and acquire and kill the blightstormer once they gain line of sight to it. New behavior: Arrows fly into the distance and do nothing.
-Special on other side of corner, with no line of sight. Red highlight achieved; player aims to the side just before firing so the arrows have a path around the corner. Old behavior: Locked target is kept, Arrows go in the direction fired, then turn around corner to the targeted special. New behavior: Target lock is lost, arrows seek the nearest target, even if off screen or behind you.
-CW in front of you, red highlight achieved. Player pivots aim upwards just prior to firing. Old behavior: Locked target is kept, ult shoots upwards and then curves down onto the CW for a headshot. New behavior: Target Lock is lost, and the ult seeks the nearest target, even if off screen or behind you.
Note that in the last two cases, an actual application of skill and strategy no longer functions. Some of the very things that the skill was used for are flat out are impossible now.
It’s really a miserable change and needs to be fixed. There’s no possible balance reason to take something that was working and make it fail even when used skillfully.
i dunno about hyperfocusing non-trash mobs, but i would definitely like it if i could throw a skull and not have it nope out and fly off to Sigmar knows where behind me, while i’m facing down a chaos warrior 2 feet in front of me and aimed at his chest. there ought to be some measure of aim/control to the darn thing.
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