Mobs that Turtle

[Gibson.4036]

Hey all.

I've been running across some foes here and there that have periods where they turtle down and block all attacks for a time. These are ordinary open world or story instance mobs, not champions or elites. I remember some flying knight thing in some of the later personal story instances in Orr, and I've run across others in the open world in some of the expansion zones. You'll be fighting, and they'll hunker down and block everything for several seconds.

It's not a huge deal, since while they're doing it they aren't doing damage either, but it's kind of annoying to stand and wait for them to be done in order to finish them off. SIs there someway to disrupt this turtle behavior? I tried looking up blocks on the wiki, but it's written from the point of view of player skills that block, not skills that break a mobs blocking.

I mostly play a Condi Mirage and a Staff Deadeye. But if anyone has info on a type of skill that disrupts this kind of thing, that will at least point me in the direction of finding out which skills are available on which professions.

Thanks.

[voltaicbore.8012]

Unblockable skills will say "unblockable" near the bottom of the skill tooltip.

Instead of looking up blockable attacks on the wiki, look up _un_blockable. That should give you a huge list of skills across all professions

Just beware that in PvE, sometimes blocks and invulnerability can be scripted - it's not really part of an ability per se, but an unavoidable part of the encounter as designed by ANet. I haven't seen any blocks used in this scripted manner, but invulnerabilities do this all the time. Just a heads up that there might be some blocks that do that too.

[Gibson.4036]

Thanks! I knew I just needed a direction to try and search. Much appreciated.

[Khisanth.2948]

@"voltaicbore.8012" said:Unblockable skills will say "unblockable" near the bottom of the skill tooltip.

Instead of looking up blockable attacks on the wiki, look up _un_blockable. That should give you a huge list of skills across all professions

Just beware that in PvE, sometimes blocks and invulnerability can be scripted - it's not really part of an ability per se, but an unavoidable part of the encounter as designed by ANet. I haven't seen any blocks used in this scripted manner, but invulnerabilities do this all the time. Just a heads up that there might be some blocks that do that too.

It should also be noted that you should NOT try to skip/bypass/etc. through the scripted ones since that has a high risk of breaking whatever content they are part of

[T G.7496]

Yeah.They're just 'padding'.And are designed to make a fool you when you blow all your skills without noticing their status.Works too. In both cases.I feel your frustration.

[Taril.8619]

From the top of my head in regards to blocking enemies...

There's the Crabs, that get regen and block, which can be broken by hitting them a few times.

Ghosts with shields usually start blocking shortly after starting combat (If they're Ascalonian ghosts it's also "Burning Block" which inflicts Burning on you if you hit them while they're blocking)

Risen Knights like to start blocking randomly in the middle of a fight. This is probably the most annoying one since it can happen whenever and lasts a whole 5 seconds...

Also in a similar vein, there are Inquest enemies who are Elementalists with Focus offhand and so will use Obsidian Flesh to become invulnerable for 3 seconds, which isn't blocking but has a similar effect. They typically use this at the start of combat.

As far as dealing with these, with exception of Crabs, whom can be dealt with by just slapping them a bit, the only recourse is "Unblockable" skills, ideally ones that provide CC to interrupt their channelling of the effect. Though, these won't work against the Inquest and their Obsidian Flesh since as mentioned, that's Invulnerability instead of Blocking.

[DaFishBob.6518]

You really need to include at least 1 more enemy to your list: the Branded Griffons in Elona with their 10 seconds of flapping around evasion!

[Dawdler.8521]

Try to pick a fight with half a dozen T3 dbl Tengu guards at once and enjoy either being blocked or being permanently on your back.