Guild Wars 2

Hello!

I played GW1 for 6 years and I’m playing GW2 since 2BWE.
Mesmer is my main character. After changes in Sky Pirates of Tyria, I was so excited because of more powerful interrupt. Why? Because my second character in GW1, after Dervish, was Mesmer.

I’ve read on Wikipedia this: "Interrupts as they existed in Guild Wars are not as prevalent in Guild Wars 2 because of their dependence on low network latency to be used effectively. " I don’t know what low network latency you’re talking about. Maybe it was a problem 6 years ago but not now. That’s no matter now.

I’ll never see my Dervish in GW2 and you’ve completely changed Mesmer – OK, that’s fine but if you add interrupt to Mesmer, please, make it better.

After WvWvW, PvE and PvP, I know – interrupt sucks.
It has small damage and long cooldown. Some of monsters are immune to daze, stun or knockdown and I can’t interrupt if foe have “Stability” and you have to watch animation because there’s no cast-bar in GW2. It’s easy to watch animation if you’re 1vs1, but with bigger group it’s impossible because you don’t see anything and you have to jump and dodge from right to left. And sorry little Asura, but you’re too small, to see your animation nyerk.

I’m not a game designer, so I don’t have good solution, but I’m a player and I think it should be something like that:

1. Interrupt after daze, knockdown and stun? OK, that’s good for Thief, Warrior or Elementalist not for Mesmer. Interrupt for Mesmer should be a skill, not an effect of skill. Something like that (it’s just an example):

“Meditate, charging a spell that will interrupt your target.”

Instead of

“Meditate, charging a spell that will daze your target.”

And with that, we can interrupt mobs which are immune for daze, stun, kd etc. and players with Stability.

2. More skills for interrupt
Ok. New skills may be too big for now. And if you’ll add something for Mesmers, everyone will want something new too. But in the future, if you’ll add new skills, don’t forget about interrupt Mesmers. It could be even 1 AoE interrupt skill, something like that:

“Ground target. Create a field of energy that interrupts skills of foes and damage nearby foes.”

3. Add cast-bar.
Even with new skills and better interrupt mechanic, it’s still sucks without cast-bar, because you have to watch foes animation (if you can see that foes) and you can’t fight. And in my opinion PvP would be more dynamic.

That’s my solution for better interrupt. Comment, discuss. If you don’t like my solution, say it, but please, say it nicely. It’s better to read and comment if discuss is healthy.
And sorry for my language. English isn’t my native language and I’m still learning.

Regards,
Chris

I’ve been messing around with a mesmer interrupt build, and the potential seems to be there for it to be decent. The combination of Halting Strike and Chaotic Interruption is excellent in giving a feeling of the profession having some cc and some connection to the original mesmer as a class that punishes enemies, instead of the GW2 phantasm spawn node.

The issue I’ve found, however, is that we lack access to interrupts to actually make the build play out, and with what interrupts we do have, it’s hard to have them land, and even when they do, it’s basically rolling dice as to whether you’ll actually interrupt a cast. Mantra of Distraction is in a broad sense the only really useful interrupt: after charged it is an instant daze with a very short cooldown until all charges are used. Our other dazes are exceptionally more difficult to utilize as interrupts – Pistol 5 has a 1/2 second cast time, Focus 4 has the 1 second cooldown before it can pull, Greatsword 5 has a 1/2 second cast, Chaos Storm has to proc a daze, Sword 4 can chain to a daze with a 3/4 second cast time, after casting the first skill… and then there’s the F3 shatter which requires illusions to run to their target and actually manage to hit. Notice these are all offhand/4 or 5 slot skills except the Mantra and the F3 shatter.

And then there’s the fact that you can blow the cooldown on any of those by the enemy dodging, blocking, popping stability…

We can compare that to Warrior which has a daze with no cast time on main hand mace (15 second cooldown), or Thief’s Headshot which dazes with no cast time and can be spammed, or Ranger’s Concussion Shot, which while a fifth slot skill, only has a 1/4 second cast time.

If mesmers are supposed to interrupt, why do we not have access to convenient interrupts outside of one utility skill? Why do most have cast times longer than most casts in the game, requiring preemptive casts to interrupt anything? Why do we not have a main-hand interrupt, and one with a reasonable cooldown? I think these are the questions that need to be answered before messing with anything else. I don’t think cast bars are necessary, so long as we can see a skill being cast and interrupt it, instead of now, where you basically have to hope an enemy keeps spamming attacks long enough for you to cast a daze, and pray it doesn’t hit them between skills.

Interrupts should be used with skill. The fact that professions being able to interrupt at range, while kiting other players should be avoided in this game because that will give even more advantage over other classes.
One exemple: If mesmers could create any sort of field that could interrupt any enemys inside for 3-4 seconds that will be OP and the mesmers will not need any skill to use it properly because the field will interrupt while the mesmers kiten around.
While warriors have one instacast interrupt, they must be at melee range and they must choose when to use the skill, because the skill dont triger by itself when the enemy is preparing to use some skill. The other warrior interrupts are easely seen and could be avoided by players. And thats how all interrupts should be, they should give high reward (dont let the player do damage is quite good as reward) but people should have high risks for using them. Warrior is one good exemple of it because if he wants to interrupt he must go to the spot and hit, he doesn’t do that at distance and with cheap skills.