Guild Wars 2

Power Block is currently bugged. It affects skill auto-attacks and can put thief skills on cooldown. Additionally, it punches through Defiant and puts boss skills on cooldown.

Right now, this trait is awesome and actually grandmaster-worthy. But in order to really build around it, you have to sacrifice 30-50 trait points (sorry, “old-school”) to really make it effective. This trait isn’t nearly as “exceptionally broken” as people feared it would be, even with the bug.

PVP
Right now Mesmer are struggling to find a place in the meta. We’re often outclassed in roles by other classes and are no one’s first choice for a dedicated tpvp team. Power Block, in it’s current state has some potential to change that, especially now that it can counter thieves.
Lockdown Mesmer are officially a thing. The 20/20/30 build has swelled in popularity and some say it’s the most viable Mesmer build currently (As supcutie says “most viable” doesn’t mean “currently viable”). If you really want to keep the flavor of GW1 lockdown Mesmer, you should keep the trait the way it is and at least explore the effects and really watch if it’s that “broken.” Power Block’s original incarnation is simply inferior to Chaotic Interruption and Confounding Suggestions.

PVE
Right now Mesmer are the only class that can interrupt a boss through Defiant. Seeing as how Mesmers are currently butchered lackluster in PvE (iWarden is bugged worse than before and doesn’t properly reflect // Mantra traits got switched for no apparent reason and badly damaged Mesmer dungeon specs) this opens up a potentially new build that may actually be extremely effective.

INSTEAD OF NERFING HOW ABOUT…
If Power Block must be changed, I think the best thing to do right now is add an ICD of around 5 seconds rather than reverting its functionality. 10 seconds or more would make the trait useless again, but 5 would be a nice “shave” (like how warriors got) to explore how the trait evolves.

TL:DR – If you revert Power Lock to it’s original incarnation it’ll be useless. Instead, hotfix it locking out rezzes and stomps and see what happens, MAYBE add an 5 second ICD if it’s necessary and see how it plays out till next patch, or simply fix it stopping rezz/stomps. This is an awesome opportunity to explore a potentially awesome grandmaster rather than neutering it into uselessness.

Where did you read this as a bug? Me and a guildie tested it and think it might be intentional. It puts everything else on a regular cooldown unless it is less then 10 seconds so auto attacks go on the 10 sec cooldown. Seems ok to me.

If you as a class create a build that it’s largely centred around auto-attacks, then another class should be able to punish you for it. That’s where powerlock comes into play.

I don’t see anything wrong with it. A skill that requires timing, understanding your enemy and tactical play punishes builds that let their ‘1’ key do the work. How it should be.

I’d like to this trait impact combat functionalities different.

The functionality categories would be:

• combat functionalities with a recharge time, i.e. skills/profession mechanics, etc.
• combat functionalities with an instant recharge, i.e. stomps, rezing, auto attacks, initiative skills, etc.

The cooldown inflicted should be different between these two, but a cool down should still exist. The cooldown on functionalities with a recharge time could still be 10 seconds. The cooldown on functionalities with an instant recharge could still exist but not be overly punishing, something like 3-4 seconds.

I play thief, and I would prefer this type of ability stay in the game for the mesmer, because it adds depth to the combat. There’s a player with more of a control ROLE, than just being damage or bunker, even though they will still be just as much a bunker, dps, or balanced.

lupercaleb.6041:

auto attacks have always been able to be interrupted

But they never went on a 5 seconds interrupt cooldown, wereas other, non channeling, non AA, skills do get.

PVE:

Powerblock needs either anticipating or just reacting a skill
This is per se the most skilled gameplay possible but its even more balanced.

Evasion has no cast time, while most skills have from 0,5 to 1,5 cast time making the reaction window way smaller.

This is the exact sort of gameplay that would push PvE to an actually active style.

Its a great start to review PvE mechanics and adapt many of them to this system rather than the old mindless stacking.

Remember it lowers dps to have a mesmer ready to interrupt stuff.
Its better under every point of view…

Just gives similar stuff to other professions and add few seconds of immunity to bosses after each interrupt (5 seconds for example).

This bug honestly interested me in Mesmer for the first time over 2 years. Finally something from GW1 rather than burst, burst, burst

I would rather see the additional time of the interrupt lost than see it loose it ability in pve.. This has me happy to be a mesmer again….

As much as i HATE the idea of it. . . It seems right. If I just sit and auto attack you for days, there should be a build that actively punishes you for doing so besides condi related things. Seriously, Its better than the few options we have against spamming.

Power Block was originally stated to not affect thief skills or any skills that have no cooldown. It also puts stomps/rezzing on a 10s cooldown. Right now it’s actually pretty awesome, but very likely soon to get hotfixed. At the most, I believe the only thing that needs fixed is locking out Rezz/Stomps.

You’re right though. There IS a chance that this behavior is intended, but its highly unlikely… which is a real shame considering the trait is in an excellent place right now.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Power Block was originally stated to not affect thief skills or any skills that have no cooldown. It also puts stomps/rezzing on a 10s cooldown. Right now it’s actually pretty awesome, but very likely soon to get hotfixed. At the most, I believe the only thing that needs fixed is locking out Rezz/Stomps.

You’re right though. There IS a chance that this behavior is intended, but its highly unlikely… which is a real shame considering the trait is in an excellent place right now.

These are obvious things you’d QA. There’s no way they didn’t know that at some point the trait was doing this. The way it would be considered a bug, is if a dev put a code build in with the wrong version of the trait.

Otherwise it’s intended, or their QA was on vacation.

Shockwave.1230:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Power Block was originally stated to not affect thief skills or any skills that have no cooldown. It also puts stomps/rezzing on a 10s cooldown. Right now it’s actually pretty awesome, but very likely soon to get hotfixed. At the most, I believe the only thing that needs fixed is locking out Rezz/Stomps.

You’re right though. There IS a chance that this behavior is intended, but its highly unlikely… which is a real shame considering the trait is in an excellent place right now.

These are obvious things you’d QA. There’s no way they didn’t know that at some point the trait was doing this. The way it would be considered a bug, is if a dev put a code build in with the wrong version of the trait.

Otherwise it’s intended, or their QA was on vacation.

Aren’t you the optimist about their QA haha. Mesmers got some major bugs this patch that would have been found if they like…..tested it once.

Shockwave.1230:

Otherwise it’s intended, or their QA was on vacation.

When QA and the Mesmer meet th-
Actually no, I’m fairly sure they haven’t yet.
I would point your direction to this thread.
Because that is a thing that actually happened.

Personally i think it could use a hotfix to the extend of not halting rezzing or stomps for 10 seconds but the rest should stay as is, no ICD. The idea being that if your interrupts are spammed and you lock up half an enemies skills for 10 seconds then that is a game changer

locking 1 skill up every X seconds shouldn’t be forced on the trait, specifically this limitation punishes things such as Pistol 5 and Chaos Storm which can cause multiple interrupts in less than 1s.

In current standing if i Drop a chaos storm on a trigger happy thief or Ele and lock them up, then i dont see it as an issue beyond “Learn that mesmer can punish you for mashing keys now” and “be more careful”.

Also i’m sick to the teeth of not being sustainable if i Dont run PU…

Welp, we tried.

RIP

should have said nothing.

Swish.2463:

Personally i think it could use a hotfix to the extend of not halting rezzing or stomps for 10 seconds but the rest should stay as is, no ICD. The idea being that if your interrupts are spammed and you lock up half an enemies skills for 10 seconds then that is a game changer

locking 1 skill up every X seconds shouldn’t be forced on the trait, specifically this limitation punishes things such as Pistol 5 and Chaos Storm which can cause multiple interrupts in less than 1s.

In current standing if i Drop a chaos storm on a trigger happy thief or Ele and lock them up, then i dont see it as an issue beyond “Learn that mesmer can punish you for mashing keys now” and “be more careful”.

Also i’m sick to the teeth of not being sustainable if i Dont run PU…

Sigh, I’m going to miss mesmers actually being a threat in PvP. Had some of the best battles with interrupt mesmers before the “fix.”

Marsares.2053:

If you as a class create a build that it’s largely centred around auto-attacks, then another class should be able to punish you for it. That’s where powerlock comes into play.

I don’t see anything wrong with it. A skill that requires timing, understanding your enemy and tactical play punishes builds that let their ‘1’ key do the work. How it should be.

Ofcourse interupting a build that relies on chain-casting the same ability is childsplay aswell.

Not that i am complaining, far to much reliance on auto-attacks in this game.

Well as the trait aparently is ’’OP’’ in the eyes of Anet, why not just tone it down a little bit instead of making it worthless.
Rework it so any skill that gets interrupted gets its own cooldown + 5 seconds. That would mean AA would have only 5 seconds cooldown and so do thief skills. Take away the stomping/ ressing part and it seems a pretty fair trait to me.
Also, the #25 domination trait should really be reworked.

My rework would be something like the VII Air trait of ele, arcane lightning:
Gain more power for a short time when interrupting an enemy.
Duration: 5 seconds
Power increase: 200 (or 150. 100 would be too low for a 25 minor trait unless the duration would be increased to 10 seconds. Though as you will probably interrupt someone more than just once every 10 seconds a 5 seconds buff would be much better)

Yeay! Shaving!
Lets reduce the CD, powerblock sets skills about 8%!

BlackDevil.9268:

Well as the trait aparently is ’’OP’’ in the eyes of Anet, why not just tone it down a little bit instead of making it worthless.
Rework it so any skill that gets interrupted gets its own cooldown + 5 seconds. That would mean AA would have only 5 seconds cooldown and so do thief skills. Take away the stomping/ ressing part and it seems a pretty fair trait to me.
Also, the #25 domination trait should really be reworked.

5 seconds is still fairly weak and not worth the trade (30 points into a glassy line, dedicated weapons and utilities to put a skill on a five-second cooldown). To compare, GW1’s Arcane Thievery or Larceny would cripple a skill for over half a minute, and even Distracting Shot was 20 seconds.

I don’t think putting resses/stomps on a 10s CD should be a thing, and maybe not auto-attacks (I’m not sure), but I DO think that thief skills shouldn’t be immune, esp. given the problems mesmers have with thieves.

If you are an interrupt mesmer, what skill is worth interrupting now? Instant-cast withdraw? Instant-cast shadow-step? 1/4s cast shadow refuge (essentially instant)? Instant-cast Inf. Signet? Those are the only skills you could put on CD, and they are all immune to it. All weapon skills are now immune to it, and with the exception of black-powder and heartseeker, the thief won’t even lose any initiative if you interrupt.

I don’t think thieves should be immune to so many game mechanics (chill and interrupts come mostly to mind).

While mes. is certainly not my main, I do feel for you and know how oppressive thieves can be when they break so many of the foundations of gw2 combat.

If Thief is the problem then NERF Thief and not the other way around by making Mesmer stupidly broken.

Trickery line has always been the main source that make D/P Thief completely broken. And “Preparedness” is also one of the biggest problem that simply making Thief’s skills spammable. This trait need to go or 90% of Thief’s weapon skills will never get any attention from the Devs. Most of those skills are weak or a waste of initiative to use but since we can spam them so it become usable.

@ Siva Mira.3547
Please tell us how this trait, in its old form, was ‘’stupidly broken’’ as no one was complaining about it thus far?

I don’t think D/P is what is annoying for a mesmer as you can fairly win the fight by interruping his heartseeker. Just the general skill spam of thief shouldnt be possible and should get a nerf.

I agree there are more possibilities for thief to be nerfed, especially of a mesmer PoV. This is due that 90% of the thief skills don’t lose initive points on loss and don’t get affected by the condition ’’chill’’. As one of these might hurt thief too much I find the trait a much better option.

@ shimmerless.4560
Yes and no.
5 seconds on AA
10 seconds on non channeling skills
full cooldown ( maybe +5 sec) cooldown on channeling skills
Doesn’t matter what you interrupt, it will always reward you.

However, I do agree this shouldnt even be discussed. The trait was, without the stomping and ressing bugs, really well placed in the game. It had use in PvP, PvE and WvW but wasn’t that strong due the lack of interrupts of a mesmer. I think the Devs are looking too much at the trait itself than at the whole picture of the game where it belongs in.
‘’Oh it causes thief skills to go on cooldown? And AA too? That’s super strong, must fix that ASAP!‘’
But then they forgot to see how few worthy interrupt we got. There’s only 1 skill that has an instant cast ’’interrupt’’ which isn’t even outworked good.

If we compare ’’lockdown’’ to GW1, we can see a huge difference:
GW1 lockdown: based on fast, short duration momentum interrupts.
GW2 lockdown: based on as many and long dazes, stuns and immobilizes you can imagine to spam.

What mesmer lacks are those fast, short duration interrupts. Not these minimum 1 second long CC’s with a casting time that does nothing unless heaviliy traited.

clipnotdone.9634:

Welp, we tried.

RIP

(Nerf bat hits you for 999,999 damge)

We did good , did we? (cough blood)

Posting here to raise awareness. There was no denial, no anger from any classes. We just plead for a bit of relevancy. The devs … they … they at least noticed us, right? (cough more blood)

Tell me, was this mesmer life worth anything? Are we fools?

I don’t play a mesmer but I think the trait should be how it was before the fix. It seemed so interesting that I considered raising a mesmer myself because I liked the playstyle in gw1 the trait would offer. There has to be more skill based, controlled shutdown and less brainless-hammerspam-like shutdown.
ANET while you are at it give the ranger the possibility to act as an interrupter as well (dshot, magebane shot kind of playstyle). It would cater to the more skill oriented players which the game lacks content for imo.

It doesn’t take a genius to interrupt an AA and please don’t make it sound like something amazing.

For your record, I am not a Shortbow Ranger AA but putting someone’s AA on 10sec CD is like saying using Healing Signet takes skill.

What could have done with this Trait is that it should also increase daze duration by a little.

Siva Mira.3546:

It doesn’t take a genius to interrupt an AA and please don’t make it sound like something amazing.

For your record, I am not a Shortbow Ranger AA but putting someone’s AA on 10sec CD is like saying using Healing Signet takes skill.

What could have done with this Trait is that it should also increase daze duration by a little.

Thats a great idea-no wait, we already have a GM trait in the SAME TRAIT LINE that does EXACTLY THAT….

please at least look up a classes traits before you attempt to make suggestions on them :\

Regardless, the trait says “add’s 5 seconds to cool down” So instead of a 10s CD on AA’s why not just make it 5s since they have no inherited CD.

Just because your Shortbow AA is locked up for 5 seconds or even 10 seconds, it doesn’t mean your other weapons is locked up as well, learn to swap a weapon more often than just going through a rotation and this might not seem as OP as it looks.

Just because I didn’t mention it that doesn’t mean I didn’t know it. And both Traits don’t exactly work the same way even if you add daze duration to it. One give Stun while the other increase CD.

It is very similar to Guardians traits, both make your condition do more damage but one do more condition damage while the new one do only more burning damage but alot of more.

As someone whom has a bunch of Mesmers, it’s funny we’d be complaining about using auto-attacks. GS #1 ring a bell to anyone????

Siva Mira.3546:

It doesn’t take a genius to interrupt an AA and please don’t make it sound like something amazing.

For your record, I am not a Shortbow Ranger AA but putting someone’s AA on 10sec CD is like saying using Healing Signet takes skill.

What could have done with this Trait is that it should also increase daze duration by a little.

point is how many cc skills mesmer has and if you are not shortbow ranger how could it hurt so hard to other classes?
A 30s cd interrupt with 6 trait points (general mesmer cc skills cd)to punish a cheap spammy weapon set sounds fair enough to me.

Also It doesn’t take a genius to use healing skill when low hp. easy to use skill itself doesnt mean op or stupid . You still have to pick up target and have awareness also consider effectiveness and trade off for that trait .In this case , lets be honest ,how hard powerblock could hurt to ele and engi’s AA?