Guild Wars 2

I believe anet designed some traits with the idea that certain traits could not be buffed because of how deadly they would be if more than one Mesmer ran it at a time in a single group. I feel like Power Block (Skills go on 10s CD rather than 5 when interrupted) is a prime example of one of those traits.

Now this idea runs into plenty of hiccups: “What kind of team would take two Domination-lockdown Mesmer?” comes to mind specifically.. but let’s just ignore all that for now and consider the possibilities here.

Power Block isn’t particularly fantastic on it’s own. You can’t really tell how effective it is and there aren’t many skills that are actually worth trying to put on a 10 second cooldown considering that heals are hard to stuff in a team fight, channeled skills go on full cooldown anyway, and skills like auto-attacks and Thief abilities can’t be put on CD anyways. But what if you’ve got more than one Mesmer running the trait in a group? I feel like Power Block may be one of those abilities that become significantly more dangerous in team fights when you’ve got two or more Mesmers casting interrupts. Especially since skills like Temporal Curtain(Focus 4), Chaos Storm(Staff 5), Illusionary Wave (GS 5) and MoDistraction hit in an AoE.

What do you think? Could it be that Power Block may need more testing before being regarded as worthless (Sorta like poor Furious Interruption, which still deserves a deeper look)? If anyone would like to run some tests with me on this, maybe we could get some people together in the [OMFG] arena to see if Power Block could possibly be stronger than originally perceived.

I think PB really depends on what you’re fighting against more so than it needs more mesmers using it.

I think if you break down the most popular builds on other classes you’d get a lot more incite into whats going on.

Lets look at the Ele D/D Cele and a lot of its key skills.

How many of them are instant and how many are less than 3/4s (.5s is often enough to defy reaction times and rng when coupled with any sort of lag these would require more luck than skill to interrupt)

Lets for now, ignore anything that is a channeled skill since a regular interrupt is just as effective, and anything that is under 1/2s

Fire attument – Fire Grab 3/4s casting time the big hitter in this attunement and it is predictable when it comes. kitten recharge time.

It’s almost better to just let this one miss than it is to let them spin their wheels for another 10s inflicting burns.

Water – Cleasing Wave – 3/4s casting time and the pain in the kitten heal/condition clear skill. 40s Recharge time

Best to interrupt this one but this is the attunment that keeps ele’s afloat that you really want them to get out of asap.

Air- Lighting Touch – 3/4s casting time. Inflicts weakness and does damage. Completely negligible and probably not worth the interrupt? lets see the recharge…

10s recharge at base. is it really worth interrupting this to put it on its normal CD?

Earth –
Impale – 3/4s Casting time – auto attack – worthless to interrupt
Ring of Eath – 3/4s – blocks projectiles and deals some damage – 6s recharge (this is worth putting on a 10s recharge?)
Earthquake – 3/4s – causes KD – recharge of kitten . Better to interrupt or let them burn it and have to wait a minute to try again?

To my knowledge all utilities used are instant cast cantrips which have 0 chance of being interrupted.

While interrupting the key skills used is always a plus in a team fight or a 1v1, how much is really gained by bringing PB against a D/D ele vs something like CI?

I think PB is also mostly written off due to its non-effect against thieves, which negate this trait entirely. if it were allowed to re assume its ability to put their attacks on a CD i think it would hold its ground in the “viable” builds territory purely by forcing thieves to stop spamming things for 10s or even swap weapons (god forbid they ever do that).

Speaking theoretically because you might just be right, If you have two interrupt Mesmers I’d argue that power block would become unnecessary. A single interrupt Mesmer can shut someone down long enough to down them. With a team mate wailing on that same target it’s pretty much guaranteed. So two mesmers focusing a target, both of them with standard interrupts going on, are going to call it a day. Therefor taking power block becomes an unnecessary overkill.

I had another point but I’ve forgotten it. :/

Chaos Archangel.5071:

But what if you’ve got more than one Mesmer running the trait in a group? I feel like Power Block may be one of those abilities that become significantly more dangerous in team fights when you’ve got two or more Mesmers casting interrupts.

As you said yourself: It’s insufficient on one Mesmer alone. Because there are few skills which would matter being shut down ([Edit]: and are actually actively interruptable) and because the likelihood of shutting down those specific skills is too low.

Having two Mesmers run Power Block help the ‘likelihood’ part. But even if you were able to squeeze two Mesmers into one team I’ve got to ask: Should there be a Grandmaster trait which only becomes viable when run in tandem?

Running an all Mesmer team with Power Block might be entertaining but I doubt that occasionally locking your opponents out of their skills would compensate for the downfalls of such a sort of team composition.

Make power block work on autos and then make it like gw1, where it shuts down your entire skill bar basically for 10-13 seconds. Easy fix to power block that’s totally balanced, no need for theories

I tried a PB build recently. I theorized that if you maximized the potential interrupts and hit a single person with them that it would accumulate into them simply crashing, thus I did 6/6/0/2/0 with Harmonious Mantras and three mantras[MoR, MoP, MoD], somewhat inspired by Ross’s bold high-risk Asskicker build. While it didn’t seem great in dueling[maybe given I kept dueling a thief], I’m thinking of testing it more. I think, perhaps, a 6/4/4 might be more powerful given BI, or perhaps taking something tanker like Soldier Amulet instead, using the tankiness to survive as you accumulate interrupts on the target.

What’s holding it back the most is thieves, though. It needs to have some affects on them, or else they’re not even phased. The thief I dueled needed three matches to realize my interrupts stayed for a while, meaning all my previous interrupts were simply weapon skills. Even adding a 1-2 second delay in their initiative recovery would help.

Oh the other point was the necessity for communication. Idealy you’d need to rotate your interrupts in general, but to ensure power block landed from each you’d have to plan ahead and call it out.

In my opinion, a Lockdown Mesmer alone sacrifices quite a bit to fulfill it’s role as a Lockdown build. You have to take up a valuable utility skill. And if you want to max it’s benefits you kinda have to go 4 into domination. However that is when it gets more tricky. Unless you don’t want Deceptive Evasion, you can’t get both Power Block and Chaotic Interruption.

Chaotic Interruption arguably locks down a class more effectively than a Power Block, of course depending on certain factors. Also I feel with Power Block, it kind of hinges on luck what kind of skills you interrupt. I think it is easy to tell when classes are about to heal and alot of heals tend to have a lengthy cast-time, but other skills it’s kind of eh. It can be very difficult, in the midst of having to track several other things, to track what skill one person is doing (in a small group fight) and saving your interrupt for that skill specifically. It can be hard to tell sometimes, sometimes you may interrupt a crucial skill, sometimes a skill that doesn’t really set a person back all too much.

Also, stability is a factor and you aren’t really stopping thieves all too much. I don’t think you could justify running two Lockdown Mesmers and while in theory it sounds amazing, I predict in practicality it would fall way short. I think at that point I would run double shatter mesmers. Interrupts don’t matter when a single target is instantly bursted in 3 seconds. Lockdown Mesmers are capable of decent bursts, however I feel like their DPS isn’t very sustained and people dodging, avoiding, not using any skills punishes them alot.

You could perhaps run another Ele, for better support/AoE DPS and overall tankiness. Or another Engi who have amazing CC in their own right, probably Necro too. I think they would bring more to a fight than another Lockdown Mesmer.

However, I will give Power Block this. It is amazing when you interrupt somebody’s heal. It often puts the nail in the coffin for them. Of course, if you can get the person to that point and you aren’t taking heavy damage yourself.

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Make power block work on autos and then make it like gw1, where it shuts down your entire skill bar basically for 10-13 seconds. Easy fix to power block that’s totally balanced, no need for theories

That might be a bit too much.

But ANet should really reconsider making Power Block working on AAs. Or maybe 5s for all weapon skills of the specific weapon (10s just feels wrong). And, of course, there are Thieves. They shouldn’t be excluded.

Xaylin.1860:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Make power block work on autos and then make it like gw1, where it shuts down your entire skill bar basically for 10-13 seconds. Easy fix to power block that’s totally balanced, no need for theories

That might be a bit too much.

But ANet should really reconsider making Power Block working on AAs. Or maybe 5s for all weapon skills of the specific weapon (10s just feels wrong). And, of course, there are Thiefs. They shouldn’t be excluded.

This sounds reasonable. Ill take it. Especially the thief not being excluded part!

While I like that you’re giving PB the benefit of the doubt, I think the main problem here is that running more than 1 Mesmer in a comp in ranked play significantly lowers your chances of winning if skill levels are all equal.

I LOVE the idea of PB, and I’d be willing to test it out with you in unranked.

Sorry Chaos, but your reasoning here is completely awful and just smells like a last grasp at not wanting to believe that this lockdown trait is fully and truly awful.

Your reasoning applies to literally everything in the game. ’Wouldn’t a bunch of d/d eles spamming boons on each other be really overpowered?’ Why yes, it would be, same with a whole bunch necros all using lich form or spamming condies or a bunch of medi guards all bursting at the same time.

If you take any large group of the same build and stick it into a theoretical situation where the opponents don’t fight back at at all, it’ll seem quite overpowered. However, there’s really good reasons why teams don’t run 2 squishy lockdown mesmers, 5 medi guards, or 4 p/d thieves. There’s also really good reasons you don’t see roaming groups of lockdown mesmers in wvw. It simply isn’t effective and has many counters due to the one-dimensional nature of the attack.

Thank you for so eloquently urinating on my ideas Pyro! =P You’re kinda-sorta right. I don’t want to dismiss the trait just yet without looking at it from all angles. Not until this nagging feeling is satisfied.

Actually, I considered what you’re saying almost immediately as I the theory came to mind and almost dismissed the whole idea as a result. But the flaw with that logic is that not all traits are equally as effective when employed by two of the same build. Take Bountiful Disillusionment for example; Two Mesmers running it wouldn’t really be any more or less useful than one Mesmer however Power Block is a bit different because of the potential for AoE interrupts.

Now like I said, the biggest hurdle is of course the question of “Why bring two power block Mesmer in the first place when you could have ‘X’ instead?” but for now I want to look past that and consider the possibility.

My logic here is that because of abilities like iWave and TempCurtain, two Power Block Mesmers together would be more effective than two Confounding Suggestions or Chaotic Interruption Mesmer would be in the same scenario. Confounding is specific to dazes, which are mostly single-target (despite sword and MoDistraction being able to hit multiple targets). Chaotic Interruption’s immobs can be cleansed by teammates, ect. Power Block is different in that there’s pretty much nothing an opponent can do to mitigate it.

The scenario rolling around in my head involves two Power Block mesmer running Sw/Focus – GS. Temp Curtain’s Pull catches a DPS guard doing that silly spin, yet also interrupts Necro in DS, putting a skill on 10s CD. The other mesmer’s pull -though he was targetting a different target- also interrupts another of the Necro’s abilities, though he was never the original target of either of the PB Mesmers, two of his abilities are now on a 10s CD.

If that had been two Mesmer running CS or CI, the result wouldn’t be nearly as profound. I know that the theory is somewhat shallow, and could be extremely niche. But I won’t be satisfied until I atleast try to explore the possibilities.

Sure, not every mechanic in the game gets ridiculous if you stack them…just most. Your scenario is just perfect. What if one dodged? What if the thief on their team deleted one of the mesmers while you guys wasted all your control skills at the same time? What if the bunker guard popped stability and all that control fizzled?

You need a perfect scenario to make it work, and I can think of far more dangerous things in a perfect scenario than a couple random skills on cooldown. How about 2 backstab thieves that coordinate a burst together perfectly, instakilling anyone that’s not a full tank on your team?

The thing is, perfect scenarios like that rarely happen, and so nobody builds teams based on them. You don’t see 2 backstab thieves for that reason. You do see 2 cele eles because they don’t require perfect scenarios to scale tremendously with each other. Aoe heals and condition removals and boons and burns and spam all x2 is effective without requiring a bunch of conditionals to be met perfectly.

I personally love PB. In PvP it hits so hard with F3, CS, GS#5 and in PvE, hell those mobs get wreckt by some AoE Mantra Dazes wich apply tons of vuln and crit like swordsmen.

Xyonon.3987:

I personally love PB. In PvP it hits so hard with F3, CS, GS#5 and in PvE, hell those mobs get wreckt by some AoE Mantra Dazes wich apply tons of vuln and crit like swordsmen.

Uhm. I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of halting strike.

Fay.2357:

Xyonon.3987:

I personally love PB. In PvP it hits so hard with F3, CS, GS#5 and in PvE, hell those mobs get wreckt by some AoE Mantra Dazes wich apply tons of vuln and crit like swordsmen.

Uhm. I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of halting strike.

Oh … my … god … you’re so right … this … is so embarrassing. Nevermind me >.<

IMO there is one thing that cripples most PvP mesmer builds: the fact that you have to put 4 points into Dueling for Deceptive Evasion, a trait that should simply be a part of the class.

In the standard shatter build, people could move at least 2 points from dueling for things like Mender’s Purity (which removes 2 conditions when using a healing skill) mitigating the condition problem of power-based mesmers without making it OP.

In case of this build, people could pick up both PB and CI, maybe even Mender’s Purity for a heavily interruption based build.

DE’s holding back mesmers really really hard and won’t allow for PB without sacrificing something more valuable.

witcher.3197:

IMO there is one thing that cripples most PvP mesmer builds: the fact that you have to put 4 points into Dueling for Deceptive Evasion, a trait that should simply be a part of the class.

In the standard shatter build, people could move at least 2 points from dueling for things like Mender’s Purity (which removes 2 conditions when using a healing skill) mitigating the condition problem of power-based mesmers without making it OP.

In case of this build, people could pick up both PB and CI, maybe even Mender’s Purity for a heavily interruption based build.

DE’s holding back mesmers really really hard and won’t allow for PB without sacrificing something more valuable.

Well the assumption here is that the builds we have arent already powerful. The other is that DE in itself isnt powerful and thus worth the purchase price. As soon as your build has clone on dodge, your build is halfway to viability. There are very, VERY few exceptions to this and require a unique build philosophy to otherwise make it work.