Ice Strike moves you when it shouldn't + Ground Targeting please

I love melee in this game, and i enable "Always Attack Without Moving" on all melee skills, because i hate games that make me force-gap close. it takes a lot of gameplay depth away by not requiring you to position yourself correctly and instead have it done for you at the press of a button.
clarification: i'm not talking about a specific "dash to enemy" skill that is designed to do precisely that, that's fine although i much rather would have ground target >>> target enemy. like 10times much rather..it feels restrictive to not be able to aim it yourself.
anyway: 'Ice Strike' does not have a "dash" in it's tooltip. and since it already is a freezing skill, and quite potent at that, there really should not be any reason to have a dash in it, ESPECIALLY since we already have a freezing dash gap-closer 'Shattering Palm'. this likely is a bug somewhere where the skill doesn't respect the tick-mark with "Always Attack Without Moving". because if you just click the air, it does not move you with it enabled, unlike when you have it disabled. yet if you click on an enemy (while having the tick enabled) it still moves you. why? this is so freaking annoying. i do wanna position myself especially with the 3rd strike to hit as many people as possible with this huge arc+range i have. Having the skill close me in for literally no reason not only makes me more likely to take a hit by being closer than i need be, it also often makes me miss those on the far left/right side of the swing because suddenly i moved a few inches forward and they're out of reach now when they weren't, SOLELY because the skill moves me and there is no way for me to prevent the movement since i already have that enabled and it clearly doesn't work. please fix this ASAP this is so freaking annoying.

generally speaking the aiming system in this game needs a complete overhaul. quite often i'd rather shoot a projectile ahead of the enemy then missing the enemy because the game doesn't allow me to "predict my shots" on my own. again another noob helper that makes this game more unpleasent than it has to be honestly. just give us ground targeting and problem solved please? ground targeting ftw! and please make ground targeting ignore enemy targeting system. let us aim ourselfs without having it snap to the closest enemy.


Edit: And it just killed me. seriously why is there so many "let me move for you so you don't have to do it yourself" in this game, this is horrible.
There was a boss, i was ice striking the boss, dashing around him to avoid his attack, clicked on the boss, the targeting system decided to aim at the small guy half-way hidden behind the boss, making me dash towards the small dude right into the bosses attack where i just dodged out of. please remove the dash from ice strike entirely, at least when you have "Always Attack Without Moving" enabled! that's the whole point of it, isn't it? TO NOT MOVE! and again, the skill itself does not have a "dash" in it's tooltip. and please do not just add it to the tooltip, just remove it. again it's not even needed anyway since we have "Shattering Palm".

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generally speaking the aiming system in this game needs a complete overhaul.

Agreed. Attack without moving command should override any inherent skill movement such as ice strike's dash, Tempest Flurry movement, Molten Blast movement, etc.

There are other critical issues like namelocking and LMB targetting mechanics.

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Climet#7103 wrote:

Agreed. Attack without moving command should override any inherent skill movement such as ice strike's dash, Tempest Flurry movement, Molten Blast movement, etc.

almost yeah but not quite to that extreme end as in "any".
i.e.: Rolling Strike does do respect the "Always Attack Without Moving" and it actually does change it's behaviour, just that the skill in itself is made to move you forward.
let me explain:
without the tick-mark the skill's range does vary. if your target is far away, the character will make some moving steps before his first slam, while if the target is very close he won't do any extra steps. --> enabling the tick-mark (and thus preventing the movement part) actually does precisely that. the skill no longer takes distance into consideration and just does the exact same animation 10/10 times no matter what. that's great! now if you don't like the fact so the skill moves you at all, well then the skill doesn't suit you. i actually like that, for as long as it's always the identical same animation so that i can get used to it and make it work ON MY OWN, without freaking algorithm screwing my timing and distancing over


what i am talking about however, are skills that do not have any inherent movement, as can be seen very clearly by using i.e. Ice Strike with tick-mark enabled. that skill most definetly does not have any movement bound into it, yet if you use it out of range the character dashes towards the enemy anyway. this is very bad, for multiple reasons actually. i'm sure this is convenient for casual gamers that just wanna relax in their evening hours. but that's really it.

melee in this combat is freaking awesome! and such "convenient crap" makes it annoying af.
another example: i like to use my basic attack "too early" so that i hit the enemy right at the moment when they walk into my strike. no need to waste time to first go hug them before starting your swing right? well that's precisely what happens with forced movement. i literally can not start swinging early when the game decides "you need help, let me move you" ! NO I DO NOT AND NO I DO NOT WANT TO BE MOVED !


poe2 in a nutshell: difficult game both in mechanics and theorycrafting (while leveling you gotta know what you pick), yet at the same time OVERLY NOOB-FRIENDLY. honestly this game starts to feel like a blizzard game. in theory great potential, but the company screws it up by implementing accessibility-crap no experienced gamer wants.

Another example:
3 enemies approach you, your melee attack has a very wide arc. solution? aim for the middle guy hit all 3, right? well if the middle guy is just everso slightly further back then the other 2, you literally can not do that with any skill (like Ice Strike) that makes you gap-close. as a result the guy on the left and right side will be out of reach for your WIDE ARC SWING. <-- you can't come up with such crap.

there are hundreds of such small instances, that all stem from the same origin. and while one might think they don't matter much, if you constantly and consistently get annoyed and sometimes actually screwed over by freaking accessibility-crap that you disabled yet can't actually disable it properly..well it's needlessly frustrating.

no joke this game could have such amazing melee combat, but such crap makes it un-enjoyable. honestly, would you like to constantly have to play around mechanics intended to help noobs that keep denying you to play the game the way you want? like where is the "build your character the way you want" when such noob-helper mechanics actually highly limit you by forcing you to "not swing early as one should" and "not use dash for repositioning because it may priorize a target somewhere else you haven't targeted" (because it may have a cull mark on it while your actual target does not). this limits the gameplay that much for no reason other than being accessible. <-- horrible design choice

it's the equivalence of driving on a racing track with automatic speed-limitation set to 30kmh (20mph). what's the point.
edit: actually it is worse than this. the speed-limiter at least wouldn't make you turn to the left when you steer to the right, unlike this game does to you.

I have already made posts regarding combat overall:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3723616

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3737560

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3722487

There are no better solution other than putting out feedback and bug report posts like these. I partly think the issues are related to how controller, WASD are newly introduced and it's conflicting heavily with traditional M&K. Majority of the issues weren't in PoE1, and new in PoE2. Some skills also need specific tuning like you mentioned, and also need to be pointed out.