Guild Wars 2

Hello folks ! Here’s a little tale.

Once upon a time, there was this Norn druid whose name was forgotten. She was nice yet ferocious, and she wandered the world to gather riches, winterberries and fame, and build her legend and complete maps.

Her travels led her once in Bitterfrost Frontier. This was a harsh and bitter place, and cold. And the name fit well. There dwelled lots of icebrood foes, ferocious and cold. Many once friendly allies had been turned into monsters.

Now, the fair and lightly dressed (though wearing a medium armor) druid faced a veteran icebrood kodan. The fight was tough and our Norn-girl almost messed her hairdo in the process. Then the infamous kodan raised his sword in an attempt to summon a terrific veteran corrupted storm !

Whatever her name was, she couldn’t let this happen, as it’d finish ruin her hair, so she decided to take action. Here’s how the fight went :
" Me want to summon storm !
- Norn-girl uses Glyph of equality ; Kodan is interrupted
- Me summon storm !
- Norn-girl uses Point blank shot ; Kodan is interrupted
- Me summon storm !
- Norn-girl uses Hilt bash ; Kodan is interrupted
- Me want to summon storm !
- Norn-girl uses Lunar impact ; Kodan is interrupted
- Puny nornette can interrupt Kodan no more. Me summon storm !"

And so the storm went. Abandoning herself to anger and frustration, the Norn-girl killed the obnoxious and monomanic icebrood kodan along with the terrific and cold storm, then realized how everything she did in life was pointless. Why did she have to fight ? Why bother interrupt enemies when they just want to live and summon veteran corrupted storms ? How can a storm actually be veteran ? Maybe there’s a juvenile storm somewhere waiting to be tamed ?

Realizing that all her quest was in vain, because mobs didn’t have CD on their skills, instead of hers, she eventually decided to go back to Zelechor hot springs and open a kebab.

Winterberries flavoured.

(Edit : removed awkward polysemous substantive)

Woah dude, that’s a pretty trippy story ya got over there.

“Heroin, also known as diamorphine among other names, is an opiate typically used as a recreational drug for its euphoric effects.” -Wikipedia

The interrupts work the same for players. Or it should. Granted, 5 seconds of downtime is fairly meaningless when the enemies since HoT are humongous meat sponges.

It does highlight a grander point, though. It seems like enemies don’t follow the same rules as the players. Take the Mordrem Stalkers who pez triple Death Blossoms on a minimal cooldown while still using shadowports in their rotation. Nevermind that it’s utterly irritating to have a completely invulnerable enemy for roughly 3 seconds at a time, but they also churn out high damage along with their HoT meatspongeness. When they scale to higher than Veteran and gain even more absurd damage/meat, I go back to questioning design decisions again.

I hear your frustration, and for sure can relate to it.

In GW1, things were much different, and often for the better, where an interrupt could actually turn the tide of the fight. Miss it, and it could wipe your party.

Now, mobs just cheat.

Who, besides maybe thieves, uses interrupts in PvE? You use it once, it gets a long cooldown and the mob resets and uses the skill again a few seconds later. Waste of time and effort. Auto attack kills just as fast.

I presume, since this is written text, that your polysemous word was probably homographic.

I’m guessing you lost some non trivial percent of the readership with that word, and I might have just sent them down a dark tunnel of their own making.

I would attribute that to an attribute of their guesswork.<g>

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Who, besides maybe thieves, uses interrupts in PvE? You use it once, it gets a long cooldown and the mob resets and uses the skill again a few seconds later. Waste of time and effort. Auto attack kills just as fast.

There are traits from various classes that allow even PVE players to use interrupts for extra damage. Moment of Clarity and Power Block as an example. But yeah, why should PVE players do that when all they do is auto attack. :^)

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Who, besides maybe thieves, uses interrupts in PvE? You use it once, it gets a long cooldown and the mob resets and uses the skill again a few seconds later. Waste of time and effort. Auto attack kills just as fast.

And this is why berserker gear is the most used. No point in having points in any other traits when all that means life or death is just how fast you can burn the foe down before it does the same for you.

Put points in toughness? Nope, because the damage it will mitigate is horrible compared to how much of a dps loss it will be, and because enemies just spam high damage attacks regardless of interrupts, it just means they will burn you down faster.

Healing power to overcome that damage? Nope, horrible scaling because we don’t want to have the holy trinity in this game.

Vitality? Nope, that little bit of health you get at the loss of dps is not going to be enough to soak up the extra damage of the enemies spammed attacks.

Berserker or Vipers only. Maybe knights if your job is to tank, but other wise stick with those two.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Who, besides maybe thieves, uses interrupts in PvE? You use it once, it gets a long cooldown and the mob resets and uses the skill again a few seconds later. Waste of time and effort. Auto attack kills just as fast.

There are traits from various classes that allow even PVE players to use interrupts for extra damage. Moment of Clarity and Power Block as an example. But yeah, why should PVE players do that when all they do is auto attack. :^)

I’ve tried interrupts in PvE. Pointless. You block one attack and the mob uses the same skill again way before your skill resets. So, you’re left using autoattack, basically, and dodge. Or spam skills in cooldown since it doesn’t matter.

I’m always using interrupts, and I have plenty of skills to kill the mob while it is recovering. Of course, I play Engie, and my interrupts are also pushes or launches.

Rauderi.8706:

Take the Mordrem Stalkers who pez triple Death Blossoms on a minimal cooldown while still using shadowports in their rotation. Nevermind that it’s utterly irritating to have a completely invulnerable enemy for roughly 3 seconds at a time, but they also churn out high damage along with their HoT meatspongeness. When they scale to higher than Veteran and gain even more absurd damage/meat, I go back to questioning design decisions again.

Smokescales are even worse. They are invulneranle like 90% of the time. Their smoke cloud gives them evasion while it exists (while ranger’s smokescale just blindes one time enemies with it) and they keep rotating their smokescreen and assault (which also has like 3-4 second evade).

Ider.1276:

Smokescales are even worse. They are invulneranle like 90% of the time. Their smoke cloud gives them evasion while it exists (while ranger’s smokescale just blindes one time enemies with it) and they keep rotating their smokescreen and assault (which also has like 3-4 second evade).

1. Don’t fight smokescales within their smoke cloud (which is called ‘spray mist’ when it comes to the mob smokescale)

2. The juvenile smokescale (as in the ranger pet) works pretty much the same – they create a smoke cloud, and while in it, they evade incoming attacks and are immune to conditions. They don’t blind enemies with their cloud, the ranger however can blind enemies by firing projectiles through the smoke field.
This makes smokescales one of the best when it comes to survival out of all pets.

OGDeadHead.8326:

1. Don’t fight smokescales within their smoke cloud (which is called ‘spray mist’ when it comes to the mob smokescale)

That is a large part of the mechanic, yes.

Side note, anything with spawnable help (turret engis, mesmers, necro minions, ranger) might make smokescales harder than they need to be.

I generally like smokescales as enemy designs, I just wish their evade cloud wasn’t useable every ~10 seconds, nor that veterans can (near-)murder even if the player dodges. At their core though, not bad mobs.