I’m playing a necro so far this season so I’ve not had a chance to test any traversal skills.
Having said that, did Blizzard backtrack on what they had originally planned for console changes? I saw the following around March 28th
“Traversal skills—such as Leap and Teleport—can now have their distance determined by how far the analog stick on the controller is deflected. This will enable players on controller to have better control on the range for these abilities, improving parity with Mouse and Keyboard play.”
This doesn’t seem to be in the patch notes any longer yielding to
" Traversal skills such as Leap and Teleport can now easily travel the distance to go to the edge of the screen. This will improve parity with Mouse and Keyboard players."
Was the planned right analog stick functionality scrapped? If so, that’s a real shame 
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@PezRadar
@filthierich
I play arc lash sorcerer on the Steam/PC version using a controller on both my desktop and steam deck, and I can say that the change to traversal skill functionality is a significant downgrade to how it previously functioned. For classes/builds that want to target an enemy to teleport to, this is near impossible to accomplish now. It used to be that you could teleport to an enemy that was targeted, but now you just overshoot and end up half a screen length behind the target. This is a major handicap for arc lash sorcerer, since your gameplay involves fighting enemies in melee range and activating teleport to move to them while triggering your barrier and refreshing the 30% damage reduction from teleport. The only workaround now is to walk to the enemy, then leave the left analog stick in neutral and teleport in place to trigger your bonuses. This is quite ridiculous and breaks the flow of gameplay, rendering this and other such builds not fun to play anymore with a controller (this was not the case before the patch changes).
The way that teleport should work is as follows:
- Teleport should target the enemy that you have targeted or locked-on.
- If the right analog stick is also pushed in a direction, teleport in that direction instead. Bonus if they can implement the change which changes the distance that you teleport based on how far the right analog stick is deflected from neutral position, but if not, just let us teleport for the max distance of the skill in the direction the right stick is being pushed.
I recognize that some classes may prefer to always move the maximum traversal distance. In this case, make a setting that allows us to toggle between targeted traversal and max-distance traversal, or allow us to use the right analog stick as a temporary “push-in-a-direction” to toggle:
For example I have teleport bound to my right trigger. I push the left stick towards an enemy and pull RT, and it teleports to the enemy. I push left stick towards the enemy and right stick towards enemy, and pull RT — I teleport through the enemy for the max traversal range. I push left stick towards the enemy but push right stick away from the enemy, then pull RT, I walk towards the enemy, but then teleport the max traversal range away from the enemy.
" Traversal skills such as Leap and Teleport can now easily travel the distance to go to the edge of the screen. This will improve parity with Mouse and Keyboard players.”
The current state of traversal skills is broken for builds that rely on them to initiate melee combat or need to use them during melee combat to sustain buffs. This is NOT “parity with mouse and keyboard players.” Please fix, it or allow us to toggle between the legacy functionality and new functionality.
Thanks!
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The way that teleport should work is as follows:
- Teleport should target the enemy that you have targeted or locked-on.
- If the right analog stick is also pushed in a direction, teleport in that direction instead. Bonus if they can implement the change which changes the distance that you teleport based on how far the right analog stick is deflected from neutral position, but if not, just let us teleport for the max distance of the skill in the direction the right stick is being pushed.
Yeah, that’s how I read the original wording, I wonder why it was changed.
Maybe the devs had problems getting it to work correctly. I hope they don’t scrap plans for it completely though – or at least give us the option of choosing to revert to the old traversal skill behavior.
I’m guessing that other players who play on console or PC using a controller and are also bothered by the fact that we cannot target an enemy using traversal abilities. Hopefully others will voice their opinions so that we can get this changed.
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I play on Xbox, and haven’t bothered with using teleport at all, because (for me, at least) it was so hard to control direction and distance that I often put myself in a worse position than where I started. I would really like to see them improve the controls.
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Unless I’m mistaken, I believe you cannot control the distance of teleport at all using a controller. I haven’t been able to reliable teleport on top of an enemy since the patch, even when the enemy was target locked using the click RS function. I was eager to try the “distance based on analog stick deflection” feature after the patch, until I realized it did not work, then I did a forum search and found this thread. I really hope they improve this functionality.
Keep this topic going. Trample also suffers from the “mobility skills suck on controller” issue.
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Just chiming in to keep this topic going. Mobility skill targeting is still broken and feels much worse than it ever did before season 4 patch. Blizzard, you made a change, it’s completely broken - fix it or revert it but whatever you do just do something.
I’ve been sucking it up and pushing through because I really enjoy the game and had hopes this issue would be addressed fairly soon, but multiple fixes have come out and, to my knowledge, not even a word has been said about this. Come on, man.
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This still sucks and no fix coming in season 5
I’m not sure. I think there’s a difference after the patch. Before, my barb would always leap out of the screen when using the ability but now is way more controlled. I think they did something.
Do you mean in season 5 PTR?
Because as of right now in season 4, traversal skills are still all around bad.
Leap either goes the full distance, or 0 distance if you don’t use the stick at all.
No, I meant after patch 1.4.4 on live. It does feel a bit different to me compared to before. I think they added a “close range” radius to the skill now. As long as a mob is outside of the player “close range” radius, the skill will track it. If it’s inside of the radius, the skill will go fullscreen.
It’s hard to explain. Search for “close range radius in D4” to see how big is exactly, and then go to the practice dummy in Kyovasad to test it.
It’s still problematic though. They should definitely add a feature were the skill goes as far as you extend the analog stick. Or, they should make the minimum radius smaller so the player has more control over the skill.
EDIT: Upon continuing playing around, the radius for leap to start tracking mobs feels extremely large. Meaning, the character needs to be very far away for leap to start tracking mobs and as a result it feels as if the player severely lacks control over the skill.
TL;DR It feels bad using the skill. It’s bad, plz fix.
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It doesn’t feel great for sure…
There are plenty of ways to fix it IMO.
It is really limiting. I only play rogue, because it’s the class that is least efffected.
Dash always go full distance, OK.
Here are some ways to fix it:
- Hold the button, and release when you want to stop. For example, if I hold the trample button as a druid, I stop when I let go. Same for leap, teleport. Teleport would be tricky here since it’s so fast, but I think you could get used to it.
- Have a targeter. This has been done in other games. When I hold the leap button, I see a circle on the ground which is the size of the impact. I can move the circle with the right thumb stick, and when I let go of leap, I leap to the center of the circle. This could solve a lot of problems, including aiming necormancer curses.
- Or do like the patch notes originally said before they removed it, and make the distance based on how far the left stick is engaged.
There are so many ways to improve this.
And if people don’t like them, they could be made optional.
Overall, playing this game on controller is extremely limiting.
Obviously targeting with a controller won’t ever be quite as good as with a mouse, but it could be a lot better.
It needs to be a lot better, because right now it is really bad.
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This maks snese. As a hemorrhage / blood surge necro I can see the disparity in controller distancing.
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I can no longer hit critters and world objects
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if i do not release the controller curses land off screen
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AoE casts and skills do NOT HIT under X, Y, Z conditions
There really should be SOME controller improvement every season considering the number of people that play with them.
For me Druid is unplayable because of how bad trample is on controller.
Almost every druid build uses it.