Guild Wars 2

If you don’t know, Power Block is a mesmer trait that gives skills interrupted by the mesmer a 10 second CD instead of the normal 5 second CD. Now, the issue many, including myself, see a problem with is that the thief’s initiative pool completely bypasses the way this trait works due to the lack of a time-based cool down. So here’s my suggestion: If a thief skill that uses initiative is Power Block interrupted, the interruption removes either the cost of the skill. For instance, a thief might use a skill that costs 3 initiative to activate, thus paying that 3. Then, the skill is interrupted and 3 more is removed. Also, this would punish the interruption of higher cost skills. If not, the removal of a set amount of initiative might also work, such as a 3-4 initiative removal.

I think a better implementation would be to give the trait +5s interrupt block.
In other words, Thieves go to 5 seconds, up from 0 seconds. Everyone else goes to 10 seconds, up from 5.

This also allows to give other classes (or Mesmers) a trait or effect which would give -1s or so on interrupt, or add a runeset for it, and it’s still stack completely linearly to 9s.

Doubt they’ll do anything, as they deliberately patched power block to not effect initiative skills.
I’m gathering it’s because unlike any other class in the game, when you interrupt a Thieves’ weapon skill, they lose the maximum cost they can, and it affects all their other skills.

Initiative is hard to compare to cooldowns, so I’m guessing they went of a percent loss when making this decision. The Thieves’ lose from an interrupt is always 100% loss when it’s a weapon skill. An interrupted cooldown skill’s loss becomes lesser, the longer the skill’s cooldown. ie. an power block interrupt vs a 30 sec cooldown skill is 33% loss.

At least I think this may be anet’s logic on the matter. That and swapping weapons to a fresh set of cooldowns is a foreign concept to thieves, which only adds to the percent loss that interrupts afflict thieves with.

But what is the advance to interrupting a thief if they can just reuse that skill. They I believe already bypass the increase recharge time for skills due to chill (weapons skill only) but interrupts are also reduce in effect to a thief compared to the same effects on other professions.

I’ll agree not sure how to apply the chill increase recharge time to thief’s weapons skills but I believe if you are able to interrupt a skill it should have a recharge time applied.

I agree interrupts shouldn’t effect initiative as that is too high a cost due to the mechanic. So for a thief getting interrupted adds a cooldown to the interrupted skill. In this way I feel it’s true to what an interrupt is denial of that skill, interrupting & disabling a skill or combo for a time.

Bezagron.7352:

But what is the advance to interrupting a thief if they can just reuse that skill. They I believe already bypass the increase recharge time for skills due to chill (weapons skill only) but interrupts are also reduce in effect to a thief compared to the same effects on other professions.

I’ll agree not sure how to apply the chill increase recharge time to thief’s weapons skills but I believe if you are able to interrupt a skill it should have a recharge time applied.

I agree interrupts shouldn’t effect initiative as that is too high a cost due to the mechanic. So for a thief getting interrupted adds a cooldown to the interrupted skill. In this way I feel it’s true to what an interrupt is denial of that skill, interrupting & disabling a skill or combo for a time.

The advance is that they’ve wasted their universal resource, however I admit that’s probably not what most people are looking for in interrupt, and the exact effect can be replicated with blind, aegis, and evading. It’s rather touchy really, once they burn all their initiative, not even weapon swapping can save thieves (unless you take 6 in acrobatics), but at the same time skilled thieves are good at avoiding this.

The fact that you can’t interrupt Thieves and give them that cooldown is just as unfair as allowing Rangers to evade while immobilized.

My brain just can’t process the reasoning.

Maybe if blocking skills in general causes thieves to temporarily be unable to generate the amount of initiative the skill interrupted cost?
And Chill would just slow regeneration of those points, so if you have 12 points, use a 3-skill, the last 3 points get shaded blue and regenerate slower, while the lower 9 points regenerate as normal (and with an interrupt they’d have a ticking CD number on them).