Guild Wars 2

Hi! I’m looking into creating a lockdown/interrupt mesmer build (very new to making builds, but I enjoy it), and I was wondering why power block wasn’t really used? It seems really good in theory.
+Is there a reason that Power Block and Chaotic Interruption wouldn’t work well together? Wouldn’t that make an interrupt build more effective?
+My main goal was to emulate the mesmer playstyle in the original GW, but I realize that there are just way too many differences in the gameplay.

If anyone has a good build they’d be willing to share, please do :-)

There’s quite a few solid interrupt builds that are available on this forum if you look around. I feel fairly confident that you’ll get about 15 links to them within the hour, so I won’t do that myself. I will, however, address your questions about power block.

The problem with PB is that it’s a really awful trait. It was good for about 24 hours, then the devs hotfixed it to be awful. Here’s the deal:

Power block does not work on autoattacks. This means that even if someone is spamming a long animation autoattack nonstop, you don’t get to punish them for it at all.

Power block does not work on thief skills. At all. This has pretty obvious conclusions, particularly since thieves are the direct counter to mesmers in PvP currently.

Power block does not work on any channeled skills. These skills already go on full cooldown when interrupted, and power block doesn’t add anything to that cooldown.

So basically you’re left with an interrupt trait that doesn’t actually do anything against the vast majority of easily interruptable skills and doesn’t do anything against our direct counter-class. This is a worthless trait that nobody has used seriously starting at 24 hours after it was introduced.

Essentially, on release of the trait everyone was excited about the possible return of the GW1 lockdown mesmer. It seemed like it could actually be the case; the lockdown was strong and got pretty nasty. Unfortunately, the devs decided that the GW1 lockdown mesmer is not a set of mechanics they want to see in this game and removed it posthaste.

Eh, I’ll do an in brief crack at this.

Any build (with few, possibly no exceptions) without DE (4 in dueling) is weaker for not having it. So 6 in Dom and 6 in Chaos means only 2 in Dueling. This is bad.

Power Block has zero effect against thieves. <- Major issue, don’t need to say any more but I will. Power block has an ICD of 10s. For one you don’t really get to pick and choose which skills you interrupt since you don’t get to choose which skills the enemy will use. You can also interrupt autos but they don’t go on a 10s CD. Power Block is not only weak because of this, it’s terribly flawed due to the Thief immunity issue (initiative system negates 10s cd’s from power block).

Standard CI interrupt build is the better option hands down. Alternative the CS phantrupt build in my sig is a solid alternative, though the two bring different roles/strengths to the table.

Sorry Ross, but you’re quite a bit off in your statements here.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Power block has an ICD of 10s.

This is incorrect. There’s no ICD on power block, it’s just not useful for other reasons.

Power block is entirely useless vs thieves, also, generally in a mesmer build you are going to want to have 4 points in dueling for deceptive evasion. (I have been experimenting with not going that far into dueling with random levels of success, usually depending on the team matchups) I usually run somewhere like 4/4/6/0/0 running with rupt traits and the gs trait. I have also been known to run a bunker build of 0/4/6/4/0 which when combined with reflects and glamour fields I found to be obscenely effective if you forget to retreat.

Anyway, with the current high numbers of thieves in the ques you will find powerblock to be a subpar GM trait, and confounding suggestions is in those cases always better. An extra 2-3s of dazing can mean the difference between a dead thief or a dead mesmer, especially when combined with mesmer runes.

Fay.2357:

Sorry Ross, but you’re quite a bit off in your statements here.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Power block has an ICD of 10s.

This is incorrect. There’s no ICD on power block, it’s just not useful for other reasons.

Well, shows you how invested I was in it :p

I see now, I’d always glanced at the tooltip but never read it properly.

Power Block was like the answer to a million mesmer prayers, when it was ripped away, I know completely flipped out… Perhaps it shows how passive I was to them, but my response to that nerf was the cause of my till date only infraction

Huzzah!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Lockdown-Mesmer-Tactics-Techniques

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Lockdown

Henrik.7560:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Lockdown

Thanks for reminding me. I need to finish that page. x_x