Guild Wars 2

Furious Interruption always seemed like a mediocre PvE trait, because interrupting isn’t all that useful against mobs. Certainly it never seemed like something I’d want to trait for. But when I actually thought about the numbers, I realised that it could very well be one of our strongest traits.

If Quickness is a DPS boost of 100%, then the 20% uptime provided by FI is a 20% DPS boost (in ideal circumstances). And unlike other damage multipliers which modify base damage, Quickness acts upon final damage, making it a multiplicative modifier! Not to mention the utility uses of Quickness e.g. rezzing, casting mantras / phantasms etc.

With all the power and utility it provides, FI just seems like a far stronger choice than other candidates for the Grandmaster slot (e.g. Duelist’s Discipline). Amirite?

1. Quickness is only 1.5x action speed. How do you get a 100% damage boost
2. After-casts can eat up some time
3. If FI procs, you must be in a position to cast skills to utilize it. Having to dodge roll, getting stunned, etc. all mean the trait goes to waste.
4. Subsequent FI procs are much harder to take advantage of, as it’s pretty much impossible to ensure that when an interrupt goes off after the 15s icd you will even have skills up on your bar besides aa to cast.

Having said that, the trait is certainly fantastic in best case scenarios. Free quickness is very strong if you are in a position to cast multiple skills with high power coefficients.

From experience, FI works best in a build that is set up to open a fight with strong burst that can be executed from any distance (i.e a magic bullet into greatsword 2 + 3 + 4) because you can at least use the opening proc of the interrupt.

PvE it’s pretty subpar because burst < dps. PvP it’s fine when built around.

Uh, all damage modifiers are multiplicative. And 20% is only assuming you can even land an interrupt every 15 seconds, which isn’t really likely given the interrupt options mesmers have and also the fact that bosses have Defiant.

EDIT: Plus it’s only 3s every 15s, so it’s only 10%.

1. You can interupt bosses that have defiant. It wont interupt the skill, but interupt traits will proc.
2. 3s every 15s is 20% uptime.

@EricTheThief
You’re correct, I was thinking of pre-nerf Quickness. My mistake. I don’t get your point about being able to capitalise on the proc though. Interruption is an active action; you would only do it if you intend to burst.

@GK
My understanding is that normal damage modifiers are additive e.g. 25 stacks of vulnerability = 25% increased damage. If vulnerability was multiplicative, 25 stacks would be 1.01^25 = 28.2% increased damage.
Also I don’t know what you mean about limited interrupt options. We’re only talking once every 15 seconds, on mobs with hugely telegraphed attacks. Counter Blade is on a 12s cooldown (traited) and that’s a single skill. Diversion, MoD, Chaos Storm, all easy to proc an interrupt.

So, FI is (ideally) a multiplicative 10% damage increase. Compared to, say, Close to Death, which is 10% additive (but passive) buff, I’d say it’s on par. Factor in the utility Quickness provides and I’d still say it’s quite strong.

@process execution: Your math is 12 types of faulty.

Vulnerability is multiplicative because you take the stats and multiply it by the damage to get the final damage. If you took the vuln modifier and raised it to the number of stacks, you’d suddenly get an exponential modifier.

Ok, so there’s several problems with FI for mesmers.

Firstly, mesmer benefit from quickness far less than other classes. Quickness increases action speed, but it doesn’t affect recharges at all. This means that you’ll just burn through your skills really fast and be left with autoattacks. However, mesmer autoattacks do really low damage compared to most classes, so a 50% boost to the action speed of your autoattacks really is a tiny boost.

Secondly, you can’t always rely on being in a position that you can utilize attacks when you interrupt something. If you’re stacking and dpsing a boss, then maybe you’ll be able to do it. Additionally, you absolutely can’t rely on a boss using an interruptable attack once every 15 seconds. You might be able to rely on proccing the quickness once every 25 seconds or so, but absolutely not once every 15.

So what this all adds up to is that you will maybe be getting a 50% action speed increase for 3 seconds out of every 20 (generously). This 50% action speed increase will have a negligible effect on your overall damage due to mesmer autoattacks being low damage and most of your damage coming from phantasms. Overall, a horrible horrible choice.

With all due respect Pyroatheist, the math is correct. x^2 is multiplicative. 2^x is exponential.

I’m referring to how most damage multipliers affect one another i.e. they don’t. If you do 1000 DPS base, and you have two 10% damage traits, you do 1000(1 + 0.1 + 0.1) = 1200 DPS. Additive.

Multiplicative stacking would be 1000(1 * 1.1 * 1.1) = 1210. And this is how Quickness works.

All that aside though, I accept what you’re saying about the usefulness of Quickness for mesmers. On the surface it seemed stronger than 4 secs off Duelist cooldown and a few more projectile finisher procs every now and then.

Well, those are MMO terms, so I doubt they are normed. I agree with both posts (@process and @pyro) because one use the keyword and one not.

Vulnerability is a multiplicator effect, therefore multiplies your damage. But it stacks additively. On the later the word “stacking” is important.
Same for toughness and almost every other effects.

Yet, a x^2 is exponential. Ragnarok had such a formula in damage output accordin to strength (before they renewed the whole game). Doubling strength equals damage times four.
Fortunately there’re no such formulas in GW2.