Interrupt Traits

[trooper.2650]

I was wondering if you all agree that Interrupt traits are not worth taking (only exception power block and maybe, just maybe delayed reactions)(pvp mode mainly)

I mean, wouldn't Chaotic Interruption need an update? It used to be the king of these traits. Comparing it now to Bountiful Disillusionment, to me is very weak considering how difficult is interrupting someone nowadays. If I decide to go chaos, I would pick the latter any time.Is there anyone who is actually using it seriously?

[atlashugged.7642]

I do think they need some reworking.

Ineptitude used to be amazing, when it was mistrust and an area of effect. You could interrupt clones and pets with your AOE cc and generate massive stacks of confusion for anyone on the point (or in the zerg, which is probably why it was changed). I think this functionality should be brought back now that confusion has changed. Right now it's pretty lackluster. Even specced for pure condition damage with sinister amulet, it only deals 381 damage on skill use. In order to deal as much damage as a power block proc, the enemy player would have to be spamming skills nearly constantly in the three to four second period (if you go viper instead). Power Block also has a more useful disabling effect than mistrust. The argument for ineptitude now is that it does have synergy with your other trait that causes blind on shatter. That's okay, but not as fun as the old mistrust.

Chaotic Interruption is good I think. A competent mirage can spam interrupts one after the other thanks to infinite horizon and mirage thrust, against certain targets. I think this mostly suffers from being in the chaos line, which doesn't offer a lot to an interrupt build other than this. Domination offers you converting dazes to stuns, boon stripping, vulnerability on daze, and power block. Dueling offers you either deceptive evasion or better crits on controlled targets, as well as blind on shatter and a pretty awesome pistol/interrupt cd trait (seriously, playing mirage now with sw/p, I feel like I always have my pistol skills off cd). Then you have the elite slot for mirage (superior to chrono for this style of play IMO), or chrono, both of which offer so much. In order to fix Chaotic Interruption, I think the chaos line itself would have to be tweaked to make it more attractive to an interrupt build.

Thinking about it, making mistrust a good interrupt confusion applying trait would help chaos, because then a condi-damage focused intterupt build would start having some potential. Changing the staff to be more viable would similarly help. Right now I would only use the staff for a meme build with warlocks or for the fantastic teleport skill. People gush about chaos storm, but it's super weak compared to almost any other area of effect skill. Make it so the other staff skills are worthwhile, and the weapon is worthwhile, and you've got a great backbone for a condi build there, focused on bleeding and confusion damage from the dueling tree, with chaotic interruption providing decent control and cover conditions (along with the staff). One key to remember is that these should be buffs to condition interrupt builds, not power. Power interrupt is already strong enough.

[trooper.2650]

@atlashugged.7642 said:Power interrupt is already strong enough.

But no one uses Chaotic Interruption anymore.If you go chaos, you take Bountiful Disillusionment. Full stop. There is no question about that. (even Pu has fallen off the radars but that is just for the better and the game as a whole can only benefits from it)

But it used to be a great talent and I would like to see it back because I used to have a lot of fun in the old days. Can you think of a build that can compete with current both power or condi builds in high pvp settings? If yes please, let me know

[AliamRationem.5172]

I use Chaotic Interruption in PvE. I'm not sure if it's strictly "better" than the other options, but stealth seems too limited to be worthwhile for boon generation and damage shatters are just awful for condi mirage at the moment leaving only the longer cooldown utility shatters to benefit from BD.

Having said that, I would love to see better options in this tier. I feel like some of the changes to mesmer have reduced synergy with these traits for some builds.

[atlashugged.7642]

@trooper.2650 said:

@atlashugged.7642 said:Power interrupt is already strong enough.But no one uses Chaotic Interruption anymore.If you go chaos, you take Bountiful Disillusionment. Full stop. There is no question about that. (even Pu has fallen off the radars but that is just for the better and the game as a whole can only benefits from it)

But it used to be a great talent and I would like to see it back because I used to have a lot of fun in the old days. Can you think of a build that can compete with current both power or condi builds in high pvp settings? If yes please, let me know

The current meta power build is an interrupt build, though not too focused on it. If you want to keep it competitive but focus on interrupts, take infinite horizon instead of EM. I've been doing that, and it's worked very well.

[apharma.3741]

I think most interrupt traits are alright currently the only outlier is Chaotic interruption (CI). In terms of boons bountiful disillusionment gives better boon access while being much easier than CI, the immob and either blind, chill or cripple is a nice effect except everyone has so many cleanses now that it rarely feels impactful anymore and the duration of the conditions is quite low.

The other problem I have with CI is its placement, it’s a nice trait but competes against 2 much better traits either for boons or defence, then there’s the chaos line in general. Chaos is defensive but generally has weird traits, the master level trait choice is really bad for a power build without staff especially now mirror of anguish will be 90s CD. It would be nice on a condition build except you’d want to go duelling and illusions for that which means you have to choose between chaos and elite spec which is a no contest.

In my opinion it would be nice if CI was in another trait line but I just don’t know where you’d place it as it’s a sure fire pick vs a lot of traits and there’s not many traits I would likewise say could compete with bountiful disillusionment and PU.

[atlashugged.7642]

They could make it so CI was an offensive trait, which is better than trying to keep up with the utility or defense of the other two traits. A unique debuff instead of immobilize, somewhat like the Domination grandmaster, or a unique buff.

"On interrupt, reduce the CD of all your skills by X seconds" or maybe just refresh a random skill category like thief does."On interrupt opponent turns into a moa for X fraction of a second, with a short ICD"

Obviously both of those have the ability to be extremely broken, but they could possibly be tuned so that they work, and they would be more interesting than what we currently have for CI, and certainly more tempting.

This is something I've always assumed, but never known: Does turning someone into a moa stop them from benefiting from their passive traits?

[Curunen.8729]

Chaos GM majors all feel like they're still balanced for pre HoT. Sure that could be a good thing if the state of the game is brought back in line, but otherwise they don't stand out much anymore.

Yes I'm happy that PU isn't commonly used anymore because I prefer Anet push the detargeting playstyle with small amount of stealth over a stealth heavy mesmer playstyle, but BD is kind of so-so (and they're nerfing it) and CI has fallen behind the times especially given builds that make use of interrupts typically don't have room to trait Chaos over other lines.

The boon aspect of all these three traits makes sense - Chaos is the rng boon line - but maybe they could have some of the boons looked at to be more consistent, and CI could have the conditions looked at.

[trooper.2650]

@apharma.3741@Curunen.8729I agree with what you both say and this is why I opened this 3D. The trait could be ok, but the game has moved forward while it stayed with a vanilla flavour which makes it not worth picking. As already stated, in the end only BD is worth using.

I do not wvw lately and from what I understand Chaos is a common tree in that game mode, and that is probably the reason why it is going to get the nerf bat... not in one, but two traits. RIP?

In Pvp, the tree was already borderline and now it will not be even looked at, which makes me sad because I used to like the interrupt play style a lot, but I think we can forget about it now. This is defenitely a RIP

@atlashugged.7642 said:The current meta power build is an interrupt build, though not too focused on it.

This summons it up quite nicely

[apharma.3741]

@trooper.2650 said:@apharma.3741@Curunen.8729I agree with what you both say and this is why I opened this 3D. The trait could be ok, but the game has moved forward while it stayed with a vanilla flavour which makes it not worth picking. As already stated, in the end only BD is worth using.

I do not wvw lately and from what I understand Chaos is a common tree in that game mode, and that is probably the reason why it is going to get the nerf bat... not in one, but two traits. RIP?

In Pvp, the tree was already borderline and now it will not be even looked at, which makes me sad because I used to like the interrupt play style a lot, but I think we can forget about it now. This is defenitely a RIP

@atlashugged.7642 said:The current meta power build is an interrupt build, though not too focused on it.

This summons it up quite nicely

Was running IH interrupt mirage today and I started out chaos, duelling and mirage, grabbed some interrupts for some nice CI procs but they didn’t seem to do much, my shatters weren’t hitting too hard either and outside of the immobilise it didn’t feel very impactful. It was nice having 15+ might all the time in fights as well as a variety of boons but I already had permanent vigor and fury almost from duelling and mirage, likewise high regent uptime from mirage trait line and chaos minors so the boons weren’t that amazing.

It felt like CI is being shut down by 2 boons, stability preventing the interrupt but then when you do get the interrupt someone gets resistance and it’s effect is completely nullified. It doesn’t help that everything in fights tends to have chill and or cripple anyway, thanks Scourge.

So I switched to dom, duelling, mirage picking confounding suggestions, shattered concentration and powerblock, combined with deceptive evasion it meant I could make use of clone mirage thrusts and strip boons with these flying mind wrack missiles. Instantly I saw a difference, enemies getting 20 vuln was normal for a powered up shatter and for allies to kill easy, interrupted players stood there looking puzzled as they couldn’t heal or cast the skills I had just interrupted. The damage from draining and power block weren’t amazing but was getting 2.8-3k combined which isn’t to be sniffed at but the weakness was really nice for reducing damage and making sure once those 2 dodges were done they weren’t dodging for a while.

Put simply power lock leads to dead players faster, while CI at best annoys enemies and at worst does very little for you, yes 2s immob is nice but doesn’t feel anywhere near as impactful as other options, even slow on interrupt you notice far more.

Thanks to DL and Gandara for the testing btw.

Edit: forgot to mention duellists discipline, wow, seriously amazing trait, magic bullet, summon phantasm and then use mantra of distraction to get 4 interrupts on 4 brain dead scourges. Repeat because all pistol skills are ready again, seriously one of the most under appreciated interrupt traits.

[Carighan.6758]

@Curunen.8729 said:Chaos GM majors all feel like they're still balanced for pre HoT. Sure that could be a good thing if the state of the game is brought back in line, but otherwise they don't stand out much anymore.

If only. I feel like a good 75% or more of the current classes' design is entirely rubbish simply because post-HoT, the power baseline shifted so incredibly much. And now everything has to be touched up, core combat-concepts fall apart, and the devs keep doing damage control. When, in the end, it'd be much easier to just reign everything back in.

[OriOri.8724]

@Carighan.6758 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:Chaos GM majors all feel like they're still balanced for pre HoT. Sure that could be a good thing if the state of the game is brought back in line, but otherwise they don't stand out much anymore.

If only. I feel like a good 75% or more of the current classes' design is entirely rubbish simply because post-HoT, the power baseline shifted so incredibly much. And now everything has to be touched up, core combat-concepts fall apart, and the devs keep doing damage control. When, in the end, it'd be much easier to just reign everything back in.

I agree for the most part, but I don't think its class design (for me, class design is centered around the actual mechanic itself) so much as individual skill and trait design, though I guess one could argue these are one and the same. Stuff like full counter is a ridiculous design to begin with, as it ignores core gameplay mechanics, not to mention an unblockable AoE daze is stupidly strong on any class. What is worse design is then being able to trait that one skill to the extreme like you can in the SB line. EM is no different. An absolutely disgusting idea for a trait, and I'm still not sure hwo it was ever seriously considered.

Then you have crap like sand savant, in a competitive mode that is 100% designed around holding nodes. Because you just know that being able to pull out a massive AoE that covers the node and then some is a good mechanic.

[Jace al Thor.6745]

@OriOri.8724 said:

@Carighan.6758 said:

@Curunen.8729 said:Chaos GM majors all feel like they're still balanced for pre HoT. Sure that could be a good thing if the state of the game is brought back in line, but otherwise they don't stand out much anymore.

If only. I feel like a good 75% or more of the current classes' design is entirely rubbish simply because post-HoT, the power baseline shifted so incredibly much. And now everything has to be touched up, core combat-concepts fall apart, and the devs keep doing damage control. When, in the end, it'd be much easier to just reign everything back in.

I agree for the most part, but I don't think its class design (for me, class design is centered around the actual mechanic itself) so much as individual skill and trait design, though I guess one could argue these are one and the same. Stuff like full counter is a ridiculous design to begin with, as it ignores core gameplay mechanics, not to mention an unblockable AoE daze is stupidly strong on any class. What is worse design is then being able to trait that one skill to the extreme like you can in the SB line. EM is no different. An absolutely disgusting idea for a trait, and I'm still not sure hwo it was ever seriously considered.

Then you have crap like sand savant, in a competitive mode that is 100% designed around holding nodes. Because you just know that being able to pull out a massive AoE that covers the node and then some is a good mechanic.

They probably thought that since Staff ele has massive AoE damage then it would be fine to have scrounge do the same.

[OriOri.8724]

I'm not trying to go off on too big of a tangent, but Scourge having large, pulsing AoEs really pisses me off since it was sold as a support spec. Sometimes, it really feels like Anet doesn't seem to understand the difference between support and DPS oriented specs. In a similar vein, when they do actually understand support, we end up with something beyond ridiculous like the druid spec on release or original firebrand.

[Carighan.6758]

@"OriOri.8724" said:Then you have crap like sand savant, in a competitive mode that is 100% designed around holding nodes. Because you just know that being able to pull out a massive AoE that covers the node and then some is a good mechanic.

Ugh, don't get me started on "support necro".

And the worst of that one is, pre-release it sounded interesting. A Necromancer giving up their - ridiculous - personal defense in exchange for strong but immobile ally support? Damn, neat idea! Unlike many HoT specs it also brings in a clear downside to picking the spec, making for an actual choice. Cool! Bodes well for PoF specs being more cleverly balanced than the simple power-upgrades virtually all HoT specs were. Also wow, shield-based support. Flashbacks to the glory days of Disc Priests in WoW! :open_mouth:

Then came release, and Shade was just an entirely ridiculous condi pew pew spec. :disappointed:

And this issue permeates all of the PoF specs: It's as if somewhere far away someone had an actually interesting idea. Then came implementation time, and some manager gave the team ~50% of the time they'd realistically need, and also told them that they're not allowed to do any bigger changes to how the characters play, mechanically.

And that's how we ended up with Scourge, Spellbreaker, Soulbeast or the non-spec that is Mirage.

[Jace al Thor.6745]

@Carighan.6758 said:

@"OriOri.8724" said:Then you have crap like sand savant, in a competitive mode that is 100% designed around holding nodes. Because you just know that being able to pull out a massive AoE that covers the node and then some is a good mechanic.

Ugh, don't get me started on "support necro".

And the worst of that one is, pre-release it sounded interesting. A Necromancer giving up their - ridiculous - personal defense in exchange for strong but immobile ally support? kitten, neat idea! Unlike many HoT specs it also brings in a clear downside to picking the spec, making for an

actual choice

. Cool! Bodes well for PoF specs being more cleverly balanced than the simple power-upgrades virtually all HoT specs were. Also wow, shield-based support. Flashbacks to the glory days of Disc Priests in WoW! :open_mouth:

Then came release, and Shade was just an entirely ridiculous condi pew pew spec. :disappointed:

And this issue permeates all of the PoF specs: It's as if somewhere far away someone had an actually

interesting

idea. Then came implementation time, and some manager gave the team ~50% of the time they'd realistically need, and also told them that they're not allowed to do any bigger changes to how the characters play, mechanically.

And that's how we ended up with Scourge, Spellbreaker, Soulbeast or the non-spec that is Mirage.

This and all the people crying for Mesmer nerfs(and how they’ve always been SS tier, Anet loves them, etc) is why I’ve started back playing GW1. At least there I don’t have to worry about fucking idiots demanding 90% nerfs to all Mesmer skills, traits, and utility.

[apharma.3741]

For me the funny thing is hearing people complaining about these things, I watched a delusional elitist stream and his complaint was too many dodges, when I pointed out that mirage has as many dodges as every other class a snarky you know nothing, it’s not just that but blurred frenzy and invuln on top meaning they’re spending half the time avoiding damage. Then further elaboration revealed immunity to CC via BD in chaos and elusive mind was also one of his issues.

The funny thing was he was playing holo, you know the class with a 15s half damage taken skill if used over 50% heat, with good stab uptime via corona burst, and generally really good AoE damage and pressure and rocket boots providing excellent escape. On top of that the streamer wouldn’t even recognise that an AoE 15s cool down 2s knockdown on top of low cool down high damage AoE was likewise an issue with the advise of “just dodge it”. Quite frankly most people have forgotten what skill is and haven’t realised that when attack abilities that do high damage have low cool downs you need high amounts of dodges and defences to compensate. If someone has issues with the defences then maybe they should be advocating the offence spam be reduced at the same time as defencive cool downs increased and general defence spam is reduced otherwise we end up with a one shot meta.

On topic though, I think the interrupt traits are by and large alright but they do need you to commit more to interrupts especially when not running IH and sword mainhand. Slowing down the gameplay as I said above (longer defensive cool downs and longer offensive cool downs) would really help interrupt builds as they become more impactful. Only really CI is a bad interrupt trait because it already competes with 2 excellent defensive options in a line which offers very little for power builds that don’t run staff. I had thought maybe if mirror of anguish transferred a condition to your enemy on an effect like interrupt, CC or some other effect it might help power builds be more interesting while removing a boring passive trait. It would also give condition cleanse in another trait line enabling interrupt builds to get some defence against conditions while also grabbing a nice interrupt trait without having to waste a trait line to inspiration.

[OriOri.8724]

@Carighan.6758 said:

@"OriOri.8724" said:Then you have crap like sand savant, in a competitive mode that is 100% designed around holding nodes. Because you just know that being able to pull out a massive AoE that covers the node and then some is a good mechanic.

Ugh, don't get me started on "support necro".

And the worst of that one is, pre-release it sounded interesting. A Necromancer giving up their - ridiculous - personal defense in exchange for strong but immobile ally support? kitten, neat idea! Unlike many HoT specs it also brings in a clear downside to picking the spec, making for an

actual choice

. Cool! Bodes well for PoF specs being more cleverly balanced than the simple power-upgrades virtually all HoT specs were. Also wow, shield-based support. Flashbacks to the glory days of Disc Priests in WoW! :open_mouth:

Then came release, and Shade was just an entirely ridiculous condi pew pew spec. :disappointed:

And this issue permeates all of the PoF specs: It's as if somewhere far away someone had an actually

interesting

idea. Then came implementation time, and some manager gave the team ~50% of the time they'd realistically need, and also told them that they're not allowed to do any bigger changes to how the characters play, mechanically.

And that's how we ended up with Scourge, Spellbreaker, Soulbeast or the non-spec that is Mirage.

This is the last I'll comment on this in this thread, since it is off topic. But given the state of the HoT elite specs on launch, and then again with PoF elite specs (when Anet SHOULD have learned their lesson), I wonder if the skills and balance team have enough time to fully design and implement elite specs between releases. Remember, afaik, the balance team is one and the same as the team that does the new elite specs. So on top of needing to balance 63 trait lines and who knows how many skills in the game, across 3 game modes that are wildly different and have significantly different issues with balance at any given point, they also have to come up with 9 new elite specs for every expansion, which seem to happen roughly every 2 years. 9 new traitlines, 9*6 skills before you even count weapon skills and the new profession mechanics, on top of adjusting existing skills and traits for some classes to work with the new mechanic. I think PoF specs at release really showed that even though Anet team has absolutely amazing ideas for the most part, they don't seem to have enough time to implement them to the level they deserve to be implemented.