Guild Wars 2

It has occurred to me that loading up with daze’s on your bar and blasting away with 750 base damage interrupts could be amazing if it scales well with power.

Has anyone tested this and figured out where the damage goes with that trait? I like the idea of running a GW2 Mesmer with GW1 capabilities. I think it could be kind of like having Power Spike (from GW1) in a spammable form if it scales well enough.

If no one has fiddled with this yet, then I request assistance in testing. Please post here. I am primarily interested in finding out if this can be made to work in tPvP.

From what I’ve read about other peoples experince (I have not tried myself) halting strike, like power spike of gw1, only procs if you actually interrupt an attack. Also, apparently auto attacks don’t count? I’m less certain about the last part. I was not capable of critting in the past and I don’t know if this has changed.

For PvE and F3, you can actually “interrupt” a boss even if they have defiant stacks. This would theoretically mean you can proc it 4 times on a boss with F3 even though you didn’t actually stop the attack. If they have 1 or no defiant stacks though, this will only proc once or twice but actually stop some bosses.
In PvP, try to stagger your clones so that they don’t hit within 1 second of each other.

I tried it again and was getting some nice crits (2.5kish iirc) with a standard shatter build. Problem is that it’s not reliable. As Boom mentioned the damage only procs on actual interrupt, not just when you daze/stun. That said, with imbued diversion it can put out some big aoe damage. Could be fun in pvp, but I’m not too interested in playing a shatter build.

kodesh.2851:

I tried it again and was getting some nice crits (2.5kish iirc) with a standard shatter build. Problem is that it’s not reliable. As Boom mentioned the damage only procs on actual interrupt, not just when you daze/stun. That said, with imbued diversion it can put out some big aoe damage. Could be fun in pvp, but I’m not too interested in playing a shatter build.

I also have tried it and have reached the same conclusion. Some professions have little-no cast time on their attacks (thief), rendering it a fairly useless talent. Combined with races whose animations are difficult to see (asura), it isn’t really reliable.

It’s not bad in PVE, though.

Its a trait you take to compliment you goal. Not something to base a build on. All interrupt traits fall into this category.

For this purpose its a very solid trait if big crits is your thing.

Thedenofsin.7340:

I also have tried it and have reached the same conclusion. Some professions have little-no cast time on their attacks (thief), rendering it a fairly useless talent. Combined with races whose animations are difficult to see (asura), it isn’t really reliable.

This, plus most Mesmer interupt skills have cast times. Only Diversion + Mantra of Distraction/Power Lock are instant. Hard to interrupt most enemies’ short-cast spells with cast-time interrupts.

ANet keeps buffing Mesmer interrupt traits every patch, but until they remove cast times from most our interrupts, those traits and that meta will go unused and unplayed. Too bad too, would be a really fun playstyle.

djtool.8372:

Its a trait you take to compliment you goal. Not something to base a build on. All interrupt traits fall into this category.

For this purpose its a very solid trait if big crits is your thing.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. The interrupt traits seem to be extra fluff to throw into a build, not something upon which a build is based. Halting Strikes can be a good option if you have a lot of power/crit and can interrupt fairly regularly. Bountiful Interruption can be good if you can proc a bunch of Might with Chaos Storm and then share it with your party via SoI. These traits are far from bad and certainly have their uses. However, I wouldn’t recommend trying to grab interrupt traits solely for the purpose of making a build around them.

once you get used to it in wvw, it can be very powerful. there are many predictable moves for every profession (can’t count how often i interrupt a thief using shadowrefuge to heal with my GS#5).

with my build, interrupts are really nice. thanks ANet for buffing it up!

Palu.3405:

djtool.8372:

Its a trait you take to compliment you goal. Not something to base a build on. All interrupt traits fall into this category.

For this purpose its a very solid trait if big crits is your thing.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. The interrupt traits seem to be extra fluff to throw into a build, not something upon which a build is based. Halting Strikes can be a good option if you have a lot of power/crit and can interrupt fairly regularly. Bountiful Interruption can be good if you can proc a bunch of Might with Chaos Storm and then share it with your party via SoI. These traits are far from bad and certainly have their uses. However, I wouldn’t recommend trying to grab interrupt traits solely for the purpose of making a build around them.

Keep in mind, Bountiful Interruption only grants 5s of Might per interrupt. It does, however, stack a lot of boons in a Chaos Storm (but it’s really unreliable and it’s not worth going that far just for one skill).

Tried it, but overall it still feels like interrupt doesn’t really fit in the game.
Cast times are very short, and as some of you mentioned already, there is no real indicator (like a cast bar) except for some animations that can hardly be recognized, especially on small characters like Asuras.

It’s something that was really cool in GW1, but doesn’t really work in GW2 as it did in its predecessor. Still too weak, too unreliable, no reason to take it instead of some other, more useful traits. Those traits probably only made it into the game because interrupting was a really cool thing in GW1 (I believe Jon even mentioned something like that in the last SOTG?). In GW2, interrupting feels more like spinning a wheel of fortune. Especially when interrupting with F3.

I really hope Anet drastically changes how interrupts work to make them finally interesting. Until then, they are just some traits not worth mentioning.

At least in my opinion.

I have Halting Strikes but only because I run with GS + Pistol atm (just for high burst in dungeons). GS/Pistol 5 both interrupt and so the bonus dps is bonus dps. It’s not something that you should specifically trait for, by any means, but Halting Strikes alone is a “meh, might as well” trait, especially since there aren’t THAT many useful non-shatter Domination traits.

I use it in pve and main staff/gs on a shatter build. I would say its more useful than boon stripping (which i only take for certain situations such as the dredge fractal) or GS mastery. You have to be an illusionary Wave spammer tho, and its something i never see any1 doing, sadly. iWave/Chaos Storm/Diversion makes Halting Strike pretty decent but in my opinion not ‘great’ and they need to make it deal more damage or fuse the other trait that gives conditions per rupt together (also change those condis because what is given per rup are all crappy condis).

I have it equipped at Domination-10 when roaming the open world, where the small enemies can reasonably be killed by interrupting their first 2 attacks with MoD or a quick Sword#4.

In dungeons or group events I swap to +20% Mind Wrack damage.

3k damage Crit if ur enemy DEF Is 2,4k with my current build for Halting Strike. Good to punish anyone who want to revive/ Stomp. The main prob is only Stability. So it’s kinda tricky.

Tested the damage this morning. Tried to theoretically maximize the damage using the Mantra so it would be nice clean views on a proc. After testing a few different set ups in Zerker the damage and daze duration are so underwhelming that I found it incredibly disappointing. In PvP gear against heavy armor targets (I tested on the Warrior NPC) it takes a lucky RNG + crit to clear 2k damage as near as I can tell. It just doesn’t seem to be worth it. Oh well.

I didn’t find getting proc’s to be that challenging with the instant cast Mantras, but it just isn’t good enough.

The damage range seems very funky. In actual matches I’ve gotten as low as the 700’s to around 3500 (this is combined with bountiful interruption and the 8x vulnerability on daze/interrupt traits).

Regardless, I think the skill has a small niche now for zerker phantasm-based builds who do not use greatsword (as if you did you would just take the greatsword CD redution trait instead). I was playing around with a 30/20/20/0/0 S/P + Staff build and Mantra of Distraction feels like a very nice addition to the phantasm build. Signet of Illusions is no longer a necessity due to recent changes to Phantasm health so it frees up a utility slot there.

So when I interrupt with MoD, I have a 50% chance to stun them, get 5x might for 12s, apply 8x vulnerability, and do a nice chunk of damage. If you interrupt a heal, or hit them to setup your iDuelist attack people just wither at your feet. None of these traits appear to have a cooldown either, so multiple interrupts in a row from Pistol 5 or Stakitten can gives you crazy stacks of might. It’s also funny locking people down in a Chaos Storm if you get some lucky procs in a row.

The caveat however is that it feels as though you need Sigil of Paralyzation to make all those stuns/dazes 2s instead of 1 for it to feel effect at all, and I imagine that this is a bug and will get fixed eventually. But that shouldn’t stop you from enjoying it while you can, especially all those GW1 Mesmers who want to play that old interrupt style!

P.S. Diversion also becomes a great lock-down tool for an assist train with the stun on daze trait!