Guild Wars 2

Sup guys.

Remember early last year when extremely few people were running lockdown builds, interrupt traits were considered a waste due to the “unreliable” nature of interrupts, and there were almost 0 threads on lockdown Mesmer?

… How far we’ve come since then.

I get a lot of messages of people calling me the “lockdown master” and other stuff, and flattering as it is I didn’t introduce lockdown Mesmer, I simply lit the spark with Mind Crush. The fuel was already there. Excellent theorycrafters like skcamow, expert pvpers like Warlord of Chaos, and everyone in the Lockdown thread (and a bit of publicity from the Confounding Suggestions bug) has pushed the Mesmer lockdown style into everyday conversations and even gained dev attention. (J.Sharp had considered “Mantra Mesmer” to be a more main Mesmer style than lockdown just 4 months ago and the team had more attention on mantras.. supposedly)

So now, with the approach of two new lockdown traits and a number of rune/sigil improvements (hoping for some love to Runes of the Mesmer) lockdown has nowhere to go but up. I wanted to extend a request to all current lockdown Mesmer, those pf us who represented the style no matter what anyone else said, to help form a comprehensive guide to Lockdown Mesmer, dubbed:

THE BLACKOUT BOOK

This may be my last major guide as school will be starting for me soon and all my time & energy will be going into learning to become a game developer myself. I wanted to give this last big gift to the Mes forums that’ve become such an awesome community. Im looking to fill the book with…

• List of all skills sorted by class and easy/medium/hard interrupt difficulty.
• Psychology of a lockdown player
• Video guides
• Building your own lockdown Mesmer

If anyone is willing to help, sound off i the comments. Thank again! (sorry for typos dat cellphone)

Ofcourse I’ll help :D

Edit: Oh, and I hope you didn’t forget about my invitation on steam :P. It’s a really easy way to communicate, whenever your computer is turned on :P

hammer warriors r easy to interrupt in general, u can always see their hammer swing clearly even if they r asuras

as for necro, signet of spite needs longer caast time, the signet above his head comes up after its like 50% ccasted leaves ous 0.25 seconds to dodge <.< anyway, when necro in shroud watch him, most necros use the green line skill wich inst interruptable, but after that they use an absorb skill, its a rly long cast and easy interruptable
miniomancers minions r rly easy interruptable , they r gonna get their hands down and rise em slowly into the air

ether renewal of eles is in my opinion the easiest skill to interrupt(its their condi removing healskill)

ranger on longbow: when they start using rapid shot i think, not sure about name (they r firing arrows in a real high speed with a high fire rate ) but that may change with the oncoming new gm trait that they r gonna get

for enemy mes, when they using gs they mostly open w the zerker, interrupt when they raise their gs, mantras r easy to interrupt (but barely some r running w mantras), scepter 3 is easy to interrupt(the laser beam from scepter)

guardian, their gs 2 and 3 r fairly easy to interrupt ( 2 is when they r whirling around throwing projectiles, 3 is their leap), their hammer 4(the knockback skill)
or their elite tome massive heal

sry that it looks so messy:p

Well, if you have the time for it I think it would be great to dedicate special attention to each type of active heal in the game, how to recognize it and how to best interrupt it. And how to deal with builds that rely more on passive healing/regen.
The ability to deny an enemy direct healing is one of the main strengths of an interrupt build to me.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

• List of all skills sorted by class and easy/medium/hard interrupt difficulty.

This one alone would be an absolute gold mine.

If I have some time I may compile a list of prominent skills to watch for interrupts. Not sure when I’ll get to it as I’m working on putting together a team for the upcoming tourney (in which I’d like to run a lockdown build)

calavel.6249:

Well, if you have the time for it I think it would be great to dedicate special attention to each type of active heal in the game, how to recognize it and how to best interrupt it. And how to deal with builds that rely more on passive healing/regen.
The ability to deny an enemy direct healing is one of the main strengths of an interrupt build to me.

A problem is that, at least in the current pvp meta, most of the popular builds are running heals that you can’t interrupt.

Guardian (shelter) and warrior (healing signet) can’t be interrupted. The first includes a block and the second is never actually used. Both of these classes are very common.

Engineer depends, but healing turret is very popular and requires brilliant reflexes to catch a 1/2s cast time when you consider latency and animation clutter.

Thief is uninterruptable if they run withdraw, and the good ones cover HiS with blinds and other stealth.

Elementalist (though rare) tend to know to cover ether renewal if they are worth anything at all. The upcoming meta may see more revert to signet heal, which also cannot be interrupted.

The only ones you can reliably count on to interrupt are other mesmers, necromancers without blood fiend, and rangers. They all have prominent heal animations with a significant cast time for easy interrupt.

I’d be happy to help! It would be fun to catalog skills based on their difficulty to interrupt. Unfortunately I may not be able to do vid guides because I play on a potato In-game mesmer name is Talwain

Incadia.2384:

I’d be happy to help! It would be fun to catalog skills based on their difficulty to interrupt. Unfortunately I may not be able to do vid guides because I play on a potato In-game mesmer name is Talwain

I think everyone is beautiful in their own way, even potatoes.

http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/aAYObgL_700b_v2.jpg

Alissah.9281:

Incadia.2384:

I’d be happy to help! It would be fun to catalog skills based on their difficulty to interrupt. Unfortunately I may not be able to do vid guides because I play on a potato In-game mesmer name is Talwain

I think everyone is beautiful in their own way, even potatoes.

http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/aAYObgL_700b_v2.jpg

kawai potatoe, desu nee~

Welcome to the world of interrupting – where, as D/P trickery thief, interrupts play a critical role in nailing a kill. These are my experiences while playing a D/P Trickery thief that I ALWAYS try to look out for to interrupt:

Nettle.9025:

Guardian (shelter) and warrior (healing signet) can’t be interrupted. The first includes a block and the second is never actually used. Both of these classes are very common.

The main skill you want to interrupt on a guardian support is their empowering might. It’s what gives 2.5k healing to the team, and 12 might stacks. If linked with their healing virtue, it can heal everyone in the area for about 5k health and can cleanse 3 conditions. If it’s paired with their vengeance virtue, it will give everyone a 5 second unblockable burn and 15 stacks of might instead of 12. Might empower is also what gives the guardian the most sustain in a fight. Their bubble sanctuary is also fair game for an interrupt and is also used for more sustain and body blocking.

With a warrior, aim to interrupt their combustive shot. I know that Mesmers don’t have any access to poison – which can severely cripple a warrior who can’t cleanse that poison with combustive shot – but other classes do so interrupt that combustive shot. Other than that, their warrior attack skills are very easy to interrupt if they don’t have stability on them. Another critical skill to interrupt is their signet elite skill which procs their lyssa runes and another mass condition cleanse.

Nettle.9025:

Engineer depends, but healing turret is very popular and requires brilliant reflexes to catch a 1/2s cast time when you consider latency and animation clutter.

It is virtually impossible to interrupt an engineer – quite possibly the hardest class to interrupt anything worth interrupting. Definitely the hardest class my d/p trickery thief has to go up against. I will usually die to a good engie if I try to stay and fight it. The only shot I have is to stay in shortbow. One thing you can do though: If you get pulled, you can daze the crowbar. 99% of engies always use crowbar after trying to pull(ironically even if the target dodges the pull).

Nettle.9025:

Thief is uninterruptable if they run withdraw, and the good ones cover HiS with blinds and other stealth.

One of the best attack skills you can interrupt on a thief is their heartseeker through blackpowder. Coming personally from many 1v1 duels with thieves, heartseeker is THE skill to interrupt to help secure the kill as long as you can quickly follow-up with a burst. For example, casting beserker phantasm right when you see the blackpowder, then interrupting the heartseeker after. The other BIG, BIG, BIG one is the hide in shadows which comes after a shadowstep. Usually what happens is a thief gets bursted down with bassi venom. This scares the thief (rightly so) into porting away with shadowstep (this gives the thief distance to get the 1 second cast on hide in shadows off). Thieves against thieves instinct-fully hit headshot the moment they see the thief port away after a spike – as it has a good chance at interrupting the hide in shadows. With other thief specs, it helps to interrupt their three skill, then immediately follow-up with a burst. This is the best example of this I have seen so far. He doesn’t actually interrupt something, but buffers his spike with a daze. Regarding Mesmers, interrupting their (usual) point-blank clusterbomb is also a huge one in order to get your heal off.

Nettle.9025:

Elementalist (though rare) tend to know to cover ether renewal if they are worth anything at all. The upcoming meta may see more revert to signet heal, which also cannot be interrupted.

Elementalists might cover their heal with stab or arcane shield, but other skills are very easily interruptable. Also, with the exception of stab on earth swap, they don’t have many options on consistently covering their heal. Remember: with the change to burning speed, you can’t counter interrupt the burning speed after getting knocked down anymore since it’s getting evade frames.

Nettle.9025:

The only ones you can reliably count on to interrupt are other mesmers, necromancers without blood fiend, and rangers. They all have prominent heal animations with a significant cast time for easy interrupt.

Good mesmers will cover their heal with a daze, distance via blink, diversion, or stealth. Rangers really don’t have anything to interrupt other than spirit res (which I believe can be done with a simple greatsword 5 knockback) or their sword skills. Good necros can cover their heal with their fears or blinds – for the most part.

Nettle.9025:

A problem is that, at least in the current pvp meta, most of the popular builds are running heals that you can’t interrupt..

For the current meta sure, but that’s likely to change at some point. When heal sig gets 8% nerf, the active may see more use, who knows.
Also, this is really mostly true for PvP. in WvW, you’ll encounter a greater variety of builds (well to some extent anyway) because WvW offers different approaches to the game than PvP.

Chicago Jack.5647:

One of the best attack skills you can interrupt on a thief is their heartseeker through blackpowder. Coming personally from many 1v1 duels with thieves, heartseeker is THE skill to interrupt to help secure the kill as long as you can quickly follow-up with a burst. For example, casting beserker phantasm right when you see the blackpowder, then interrupting the heartseeker after.

You´re absolutly right about the interrupt on a Blackpowder/Heartseeker combo, but I think it´s harder for a mesmer than a thief. Most thiefs I´ve met use their Blackpowder to blind you (as d/p thief, you could sit in stealth yourself, so you can´t be blinded). Using a clone to block the projectile or a mantra cleanse helps, but I still miss a lot of interrupts due to blinds.

We’re already off to a good start, TY guys! All contributors will be of course receiving credit in the guide. It’s awesome that thieves have also pitched in to help out, I’ll share part of the guide with their subforum too (the skill list/interrupt difficulty)

Flick us a message of what you need, and I’ll help out.

Schattenlied.4873:

Most thiefs I´ve met use their Blackpowder to blind you (as d/p thief, you could sit in stealth yourself, so you can´t be blinded).

If they blind you, there is a good chance they are going to heartseeker to you. If this is the case, you can clear the blind with greatsword 1 while moving in closer to the thief. The moment you clear the blind, cast mirror blade, interrupt their heartseeker via distraction mantra (the biggest plus to the mantra is it can be activated at any time), and dodge near them then shatter to spike them down. If they don’t try and blind you – instead trying to heal themselves in stealth- then you can illusory phantasm them with an interrupt.

If you miss all of that (and didn’t blow your shatter), then you can manuver around and near your illusions waiting for the thief to pop up in melee range, then counterspike him down with a shatter when he reveals himself. If he gets cheeky and switches to shortbow to immob you (putting himself out of dangerous melee range), you can bet that he will be using clusterbomb on you or will try and move in to smack you with a steal item skill – they hurt a lot. You can ether use a counter block weapon skill, blurred frenzy, or port away via staff once you see the clusterbomb – you also might get lucky with a GS 5 wave since the clusterbomb has to be activated relatively close in order to get it under the 2 second immob mark. If you use a counter block weapon skill, note that you will take 2 out of the 3 clusterbomb hits (~3.5k dmg) in trade-off of smacking him with your counter weapon skill. He might also steal into a point-blank clusterbomb – putting him in melee range so you can try to spike the crap out of him with a shatter. If he has a tendency to kill your illusions before the shatter, you can daze him, dodge then shatter – like you would if he was heartseekering you. Here is a video demonstrating this with a shatter build. Another option is to distortion into port into heal if you need to heal.

Of course, if you’re fighting anything other than D/P or D/D, good luck because you will need it – interrupting their 3 skill helps though.

Really good tips and advices, main problem is that I often use a condition cleanse instead of MoDistraction while roaming, so the most reliable way to stop this combo is usually not available (tested a 20-10-30-10-0 build yesterday with MoD and Mender´s Purity as cleanse, it´s absolutly awesome to set up a burst vs. thiefs but still vulnerable to conditions).
I´ve met a few really cautious thiefs who covered their melee attacks with stability and aegis from Runes of Lyssa or Consume Ectoplasm, decreasing their vulnerability to interrupt-based counters (kiting around with shortbow the rest of the time).
But if you´re able to interrupt the thief at this moment, it will help both your own survivabilty and puts a lot of pressure on your enemy. I would definitly add both skills as high priority targets for fighting thiefs.

My Shutdown Mesmer; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtVJ5YSyDmQ

You can catch the tips and tricks section at 13:37 which gives tips on how cool things to do with the shutdown specc.

Just came across this while browsing.

Wiki – Channeled Skills

While not all channeled skills are interruptable (e.g. Pistol Whip) most of them are. Those skills might not necessarily be your primary objective when interrupting but they make it extremly easy to trigger interrupt traits.

What is qualified as ‘’easy, medium and hard to interrupt’‘? I suppose this is based on the casting time or if it’s a channeling skill, though how long would the casting time be if it’s qualified as easy, medium or hard?.

BlackDevil.9268:

What is qualified as ‘’easy, medium and hard to interrupt’‘? I suppose this is based on the casting time or if it’s a channeling skill, though how long would the casting time be if it’s qualified as easy, medium or hard?.

I’m actually a bit torn on how I’ma divide it. At first I was thinking

1/4s – 1/2s Difficult
3/4s -1s Medium
>1s – Easy

But there’s also a bit of a pattern to weapon categories and how easy they are to interrupt. For example, in general Greatsword (Guardian, Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer) and Hammer (Guardian, Warrior) abilities tend to be easier to interrupt. I’m not sure if I want to do something like a general overview of the class and their abilities or go into the specific tactics versus the weapon.. Or both. Something like this

GREATSWORD

• Mesmer
  - Mesmer’s greatsword auto-attack is essentially a free interrupt. If you’re running BI/CI, this means an easy opportunity to gain boons and immobilize the opponent.
  The most important skill to interrupt on the greatsword is it’s Phantasm summon, iZerker, which many GS mesmer like to lead with. It is absolutely worth spending a Mantra charge to interrupt the Phantasm, and important to keep in mind that since the skill is on a relatively short cooldown the Mesmer can usually summon a new phantasm each time they switch back to the GS.

• Guardian
  - Guardian’s greatsword is extremely predictable and it’s skills are relatively easy to interrupt. You can essentially tell what the Guardian’s going to do depending on your range. Out of melee range, they’ll use Leap of Faith or Binding Blade and when up-close and intimate they will almost always spin to win. While interrupting Leap of Faith (the epic leap) is both hilarious and useful, the main skill you want to stop is Whirling Wrath (the epic spin) for two reasons. The obvious reason is that it’s the most damaging skill on the Guardian’s GS, but you also want to interrupt it because you want the Guardian to try to use whirling wrath as much as possible. Whirling wrath is similar to Mesmer’s GS autoattack in that it’s essentially a free interrupt; easy to notice and plenty of time to stop. It’s usually used after Binding Blade which has a somewhat similar start-up animation.

I’m thinking maybe I should categorize it by class rather than weapon. It’ll be longer, but maybe it’ll work as an easier read.. Something like this:

GUARDIAN
/Greatsword
- Whirling Wrath – Easy **
- Leap of Faith – Medium
- Symbol of Wrath – Hard
- Binding Blade – Medium *

(** = Important skill to interrupt.)

Guardian’s greatsword is extremely predictable and it’s skills are relatively easy to interrupt. You can essentially tell what the Guardian’s going to do depending on your range. Out of melee range, they’ll use Leap of Faith or Binding Blade and when up-close and intimate they will almost always spin to win.

• While interrupting Leap of Faith (the epic leap) is both hilarious and useful, the main skill you want to stop is Whirling Wrath (the epic spin) for two reasons. The obvious reason is that it’s the most damaging skill on the Guardian’s GS, but you also want to interrupt it because you want the Guardian to try to use whirling wrath as much as possible. Whirling wrath is similar to Mesmer’s GS autoattack in that it’s essentially a free interrupt; easy to notice and plenty of time to stop. It’s usually used after Binding Blade which has a somewhat similar start-up animation.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

BlackDevil.9268:

What is qualified as ‘’easy, medium and hard to interrupt’‘? I suppose this is based on the casting time or if it’s a channeling skill, though how long would the casting time be if it’s qualified as easy, medium or hard?.

I’m actually a bit torn on how I’ma divide it. At first I was thinking

1/4s – 1/2s Difficult
3/4s -1s Medium
>1s – Easy

But there’s also a bit of a pattern to weapon categories and how easy they are to interrupt. For example, in general Greatsword (Guardian, Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer) and Hammer (Guardian, Warrior) abilities tend to be easier to interrupt. I’m not sure if I want to do something like a general overview of the class and their abilities or go into the specific tactics versus the weapon.. Or both. Something like this

I would classify skills by purpose and not be difficulty.

• What should I interrupt? (tactical rupt, probably mainly heals, bursts and CC)
• What can I interrupt to easily benefit from traits? (trigger rupt, e.g. channels)

The issue with ‘easy’ to ‘hard’ is that it really depends on your builds/skill set up. Some skills are rather easy to interrupt but only when using MoD (instant). Some skills might be interruptable with Illusionary Wave but not with Counter Blade or Magic Bullet (reflectable).

If you are looking for a format it could look like this:

Skill Name

• Type of interrupt (tactical/trigger)
• Purpose of the skill (heal, CC, burst, interrupt, condition cleanse…)
• Tells of the skill (visiual or common rotations)
• Cast time of the skill.
• List of skills to interrupt this skill.

Bullet points 2, 3 and 4 could be skipped in case of ‘trigger’ to minimize text.

What about listing them by importance to interrupt? It will be a mix with how dangerous a skill is and how easy/difficult to interrupt it is.

For example:
Power lock – instant 1sdaze. It can potentially turn the fight around, and you should avoid it at all costs, but it’s instant cast and pretty much impossible to interrupt, so it would be ranked as not important on the list.

Same goes with shadow return, which is the thief sword #2, and has a 1/4 second cast time.

Churning earth – has a long cast time, making it very easily interrupted. However, it’s also easily dodged, so sometimes it may be better to save your interrupt for when you really need it. Would be ranked above “not important”, but below “very important”, as opposed as simply saying “easy” in an easy/medium/hard list. Another example is Mesmer scepter #3, which is easy to interrupt but not very important.

All heals – very important, for obvious reasons.

Earthshaker – very important, but kind of hard to interrupt. Can screw up a warrior’s rotation, but you can expect the #4 (spin-thing knockback) to come straight after the daze wears of. If you use Chaotic Interruption, and simply walk a bit away, they will waste the spin into the air, and miss you. 2 flies with 1 swat!

Anyway, that’s just how I’d do it :P

Hmmm, what I’d like to know is if Power Lock is going to work on AA and Initiative/Thief skills. If you could shut something like Heartseeker down for 10 seconds, that would severally limit a Thieves options.

But I am unfamiliar with lockdown builds, so I’m not sure what can or can’t be interrupted (other then instant cast), or if skills with no recharge can even be put on CD when interrupted.
Might be something worth trying if you can shut a Thief like that.

It’s going to require intensive testing in either case.

Yoh.8469:

Hmmm, what I’d like to know is if Power Lock is going to work on AA and Initiative/Thief skills. If you could shut something like Heartseeker down for 10 seconds, that would severally limit a Thieves options.

But I am unfamiliar with lockdown builds, so I’m not sure what can or can’t be interrupted (other then instant cast), or if skills with no recharge can even be put on CD when interrupted.
Might be something worth trying if you can shut a Thief like that.

It’s going to require intensive testing in either case.

It would be cool is power block was: “interrupted skills have a 5 second highet cooldown.”, so auto attacks and thief skills go on a 5 second cooldown, and all other skills on 10. I wouldnt see how it’s OP, I already often spend 5 seconds doin other stuff than auto attacks (kiting, dodging, using other skills).

An it woulddefibitely make this trait less useless versus thieves.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Power-Lock-Worth-it/first#post3824801

(almost) All skills that affect the trait. That was 2.5h work lol. I got wierd idea’s at night x.x

Anyway as I said, the trait is completely kitten in like 99% of the situations if you compare it to other traits you can use. Hell I would probably chose the extra mantra charge over this trait even if I had to choose.

Nice ideas ty guys (and I really appreciate the hard work BlackDevil!)

I’m not so sure it’s going to be all that bad, but that thread is perfect proof to shut down people screaming it’s gonna be OP. =D

What I’ve found to be easy to interrupt or to see coming;

Fear Mark, Necro raises his hand (at this point speed is of the essence on that interrupt button) and points it forward, as soon as he points it, you’re already feared. [Medium]

Life Transfer – [Easy]
It’s the thing they do where they have lots of green bubbles floating toward them. Very easy to interrupt.

Enfeebling Blood and Spinal Shivers

Both of these have a very swirly hand motion, very easy to see coming. [Easy]

Warrior, Guardian, Ranger Leaps
Interrupt them because it’s hilarious to see someone almost about to hit you and then they stop dead right in from of you ready to be eaten alive by burst. Also Ride the Lightning from Eles, it’s even more hilarious. [Easy]

Thief, Pistol Whip
Interrupt get a target on them and interrupt them as they start the combo, it’s pretty easy if you can see them coming. [Medium]

Blinding powder
The thief will run away from you, daze him as soon as you see him dodge a distance away. Wait till they come out of the dodge animation to time this properly or else it will fail and they will blind you interrupt. [Medium]

Mesmer;
Phantasmal Beserker
Up thrust of greatsword. [Easy]

Mirror Blade
Forward Swinging arm. [Easy]

Illusionary Counter
Hit him and then interrupt him when he tries to cast the torment. Perform this and unlock troll-face. [Medium]

Confusing Images
A ray of confusion pointed at YOU. [Easy]

Chaos, when you become a game developer I expect some awesome inside info shared with me.

Dirame.8521:

Thief, Pistol Whip
Interrupt get a target on them and interrupt them as they start the combo, it’s pretty easy if you can see them coming. [Medium]

Should note that interrupting the stun animation doesn’t remove any initiative and obviously doesn’t put it on a 5 second cd.

Also, you should add Heartseeker to the list of leaps that’re easily interruptable. If you’re quick enough to remove the blind and manage to interrupt the heartseeker through black powder, it can be pretty devastating to thief.

Pistol whip is only possible to interrupt before the cast and at the last 0.25-0.5sec on the cast. And ye, if you interrupt them ’’before’’ the cast it’s not really worth it unless you are immobilized on that spot.