Bard abilities/casts making character run at boss (Question)

[Stamaskas]

(This applies to other jobs as well, but specifically asking about Bard in this case)

So yesterday I was doing BA, and while running towards the button/portal for blackhole on Ozma, I decided to use one of my usual abilities (straight shot for example) and my character ran straight at Ozma and off the platform.

This happens often but I never really felt bothered by it before but after a punishing perma-death, I decided to question it. My friend who has a lv70 Bard said he has never noticed something like that, but as a Bard main, I have encountered it many times, and on other classes (WAR running towards enemy when using tomahawk, ignoring current movement path).

I am just wondering if this is intended, and making sure my game is not doing anything weird. A more precise explanation of what is happening just in case it is confusing:

Lets say a boss is North and uses an AOE. I decide to run East to avoid it, facing my camera towards East and using W to run forward in the direction. I also use an ability, and my character runs straight North towards the boss, even though I have my camera facing East, and thus get hit. My character will continue to run North if I continue to hold W, even if I am using my mouse right click which should force my character to face my camera direction (legacy camera option setting I believe).

Thank you for your time and clarification, much appreciated.

[Raldo]

The question I have for your hypothetical is... why not just push D and run east? Why are you turning your camera (and your character) and running forward? That sounds like a one-way trip to vomit town any time you need to dodge various things.

Performing an action on a target turns your character toward that target. I suspect that may have something to do with the problem you're seeing, but I use legacy controls (note: you mentioned "legacy camera", but idk what that is) and I don't have this issue. Maybe there's a separate setting for "move based on camera direction" vs "move based on character direction"?

Not currently in front of the game to check. Hopefully someone else can help better.

[Stamaskas]

I often run backwards to avoid AOEs, and since character movement is slow facing forward while running backwards, I think I have just got accustomed to facing where I want to go. I also have gotten accustomed to jumping while I use abilities so I do not have my character turn, but in higher stress content, I generally do not do that.

[Kalise]

This is simply a matter of, you have to be facing a target to use a skill on them.

Thus, what's happening is you press a skill and your character will instantly turn around to use said skill. But if you're doing something such as holding right click on PC to control the camera, often you can keep the character appearing to be facing the same direction without turning (Due to instantly turning back around after the initial instant turn around), but sometimes things won't always work and your character will be turned around to face the enemy.

You can see this more clearly if you go into the options and toggle off the "Auto face target on skill usage" where in MANY cases you will instead get the error "Target is not in range" (Which is the error that is also shown if a target is not in front of you), which while it would prevent things such as this occurring, you will quickly find out about just how limiting it would be to disable this and thus make it so you have to manually turn around for so many attacks because the lenience for using a skill on a target happens to be VERY low.

Generally, to avoid this issue, if I'm attacking a target that isn't in front of me (Say, I'm pulling a group of mobs and tossing Tomahawk's at them as I run to the next pack) I will jump before using the skill, because then it gives a bit more leeway for getting the character facing the right direction before movement is affected, because they can't start running the wrong way while they're in mid-air.

[Stamaskas]

Alright thank you. I generally jump to avoid it, I just happened to not in that situation and it cost me. Just wanted to make sure that what was happening was intended since my friend had claimed it was not the case. Thanks for the clarification.

[LeoLupinos]

I often run backwards to avoid AOEs, and since character movement is slow facing forward while running backwards, I think I have just got accustomed to facing where I want to go. I also have gotten accustomed to jumping while I use abilities so I do not have my character turn, but in higher stress content, I generally do not do that.

You can change the way the character runs in the camera settings. Choose the legacy, then when you press "S" it will face back and run to that direction as if you were facind that direction with the camera.

[Rongway]

Also, you should adjust your movement keys when you switch to Legacy movement to prevent yourself from backpedalling.

Standard "Move Left / Turn Left" >> Legacy "Point Camera to the Left"
Standard "Move Right / Turn Right" >> Legacy "Point Camera to the Right"
Standard "Strafe Left" >> Legacy "Move Left / Turn Left"
Standard "Strafe Right" >> Legacy "Move Right / Turn Right"

If you don't change these keybinds, then you'll still backpedal when you try to move back-left or back-right in Legacy, which defeats one of the primary purposes of using Legacy movement.