Guild Wars 2

Here’s a thought:
On interrupt, cut power and condition damage in half for 2 seconds, stacks duration, up to x (maybe 5?) stacks.

This would be similar to the weakness suggestion but (someone keep me honest here) weakness only applies to direct damage? Would definitely love to see this not as a typical “condition” so +/-condi duration food can’t affect the duration, similar to how thief stealth is a “not a boon”-boon.

Pros:
- Ignores the whole, doesn’t work on thieves issue
- A compromise between power block stopping and not affecting auto attack
- Punishes for skill spam, somewhat of an ideology I believe that a lockdown build should embody.

Not sure if Pro/Con:
- How this affects bosses and PvE. Monsters/Bosses don’t seem to attack very often so this could be viable and not broken.
But I’m a terribaddy at PvE so perhaps someone else can provide input on this.

Cons:
- Brainstorm away!

I’ll just come out and say it:

I think that literally the only correct fix is to make Power Block affect Initiative (and Energy) skills just like it affects any regular weapon or utility skill with a cooldown.

This isn’t, like, unfair.

There’s no technical reason this can’t be done. (Maybe there’s a reason it can’t be done in an emergency patch, but we’ve had how many months of waiting for PB ?)

Power Block, as designed, is one of the most interested Mesmer traits out there: situationally desirable, powerful with the right investment, but by no means a no-brainer must-have, nor a “hard counter” that makes a fight a foregone conclusion. It doesn’t need to be replaced with an alternative mechanic. It just needs to work, consistently.

Rewriting it to use a different mechanic would be throwing away one of our most conceptually interesting traits.

ASP.8093:

I’ll just come out and say it:

I think that literally the only correct fix is to make Power Block affect Initiative (and Energy) skills just like it affects any regular weapon or utility skill with a cooldown.

This isn’t, like, unfair.

There’s no technical reason this can’t be done. (Maybe there’s a reason it can’t be done in an emergency patch, but we’ve had how many months of waiting for PB ?)

Power Block, as designed, is one of the most interested Mesmer traits out there: situationally desirable, powerful with the right investment, but by no means a no-brainer must-have, nor a “hard counter” that makes a fight a foregone conclusion. It doesn’t need to be replaced with an alternative mechanic. It just needs to work, consistently.

Rewriting it to use a different mechanic would be throwing away one of our most conceptually interesting traits.

Unless there is class bias which i refuse to believe

Every other interrupt trait we have works on autoattacks and thief skills. Only Power Block fails on those. There is really no point to using it now. It’s simply way too high risk, way too unreliable and way too low reward. The biggest flavor of the trait in the first place was interrupting autoattacks and letting spammy thieves taste cooldowns for the first times in their lives. That opened up new playstyles and interesting counterplay mechanics for both the mesmer and his foe. Now that’s gone.

Anet shouldn’t bother writing excuses in their patch notes in the future. Next time, they might as well just come out and say: “Fixed an issue: mesmers were having fun.”