Maybe this is intended…. Power Block does not cause stun locking… While in open world events this might be a little to strong, I can see this being very useful in dungeons for opening up new builds. It lets the mesmer go back to a style of play from GW1 (Which is what the community have been asking for) without it being anywhere near as game breaking as infinite stun-locks. This would then let the mesmer play pve with a focus for domination rather than being a phantasm summoner…
To be honest I do not see a problem with that.. It is no less trivializing than some of the reflect builds that people run. The only difference is that this would allow a skilled mesmer to once more hold a boss in place while their party obliterates it.
What is so bad about that.
Sadly, not all skills seems to be interruptable. The Advanced Golem spin (coe) can not be interrupted. Maybe I have to interrupt him right as he’s about to spin, not when he is already spinning.
Thing is, this sort of group would be next to impossible to actually kill anything…
That said, I think the solution for this is not a change to the skill but an addition to enemy mobs, more attacks, weaker attacks yes, but more of them. This would allow rewards for blocking a large attack, such as subject alpha’s aoe without entirely trivializing the content.
This would be neat, but sadly what encounter is so hard that having a perma stun locked boss would make it faster?
I really wish they would of taken the time to create PvE in a way to allow something besides self sufficient “dps” roles that need only rely on active mitigation to survive. The only real support in the game comes from things like reflection, condition removal, and unique class abilities that increase DPS (Timewarp, banners, Spirits, 150 stat Traits, ele might stacking, etc…) And none of those things stack with any kind of supportive stat, healing isn’t needed… not to mention the scaling is atrocious anyways. Zerk or go home apparently in PvE was anets design choice, and I think this crit nerf last patch was an extremely lazy response to babbies crying on the forums about evil bigoted people with “zerker only mentalities” that wont let them into their groups in PVT gear"
Would be great if this was intended as the power block in the original game went through skills that prevented interrupts. However, it doesn’t look very intended to me.
Sadly, not all skills seems to be interruptable. The Advanced Golem spin (coe) can not be interrupted. Maybe I have to interrupt him right as he’s about to spin, not when he is already spinning.
Yeah I already thought about the “why”.
I think it only interrupts skills that have a cast time and an effect after theis cast ends. Skills with effects already going shouldn’t be ruptable. I’ll test this. Someone knows open world bosses that do stuff like this? I’d like to test an unload skill and a spin at least.
(I know arah path 2 is perfect for this but my guild would kill me if it doesn’t work :P)
Finally we tested enough to tell what this trait will do:
As it says: On interrupt it will set a 10s cooldown on the interrupted skill.
Autoattacks: No-Chain-Autohits
will be on 10s cooldown.
Chain-Autihits:
only the interrupted part of the AA will be interrupted
Means: If you interrupt the second hit of an AA-Chain only this skill will have cooldown.
Mesmer Example Sword-AA: [Mind Slash]->[Mind Gash]->[Mind Spike]
If you interrupt Mind Gash the mesmer will be able to use Mind Slash after the AA was reseted.
Bosses:
You can interrupt skills eventhough the boss has defiant stacks.
Two Options here:
Cast with “on-finish-effect”
Skills with an effect that triggers after the cast can be set on cooldown by interrupting.
These skills will have their animation finish but won’t have any effect.
Channel with “while-effect”
Every skill with an effect while casting will be put on cooldown but the channel will go on until it ends.
Did some more testing in SE p2’s 1st boss, Foreman Kreutzerova..
3 of her 4 skills have about 200ms to 400ms cast time and if you manage to land an interrupt in that window, the skill will get interrupted through the defiance and put it on 10s cd.
If you land an interrupt past that window and during the channeling of that skill, interrupt will not happen even though Halting Strike & Illusion of Vulnerabilty will trigger and deal damage and load 3 stacks of vuln on her as if interrupt did took place.
Average human reaction time is 200ms – 230ms so you would have to be extremely skilled to land such interrupt just by reading animation. I managed to hit daze mantra 230ms after animation started, but still failed to interrupt. I’m guessing network latency and/or skill lag is to blame. So, that or just memorize every single skill pattern and which skills can be baited out by something and only then you may take advantage of this trait effectively.
IMO if you are able to reach such level of skill then I would argue that it is not an exploit where Power Block goes through defiance. Just an extremely skilled playstyle.
Did some more testing in SE p2’s 1st boss, Foreman Kreutzerova..
3 of her 4 skills have about 200ms to 400ms cast time and if you manage to land an interrupt in that window, the skill will get interrupted through the defiance and put it on 10s cd.
If you land an interrupt past that window and during the channeling of that skill, interrupt will not happen even though Halting Strike & Illusion of Vulnerabilty will trigger and deal damage and load 3 stacks of vuln on her as if interrupt did took place.
Average human reaction time is 200ms – 230ms so you would have to be extremely skilled to land such interrupt just by reading animation. I managed to hit daze mantra 230ms after animation started, but still failed to interrupt. I’m guessing network latency and/or skill lag is to blame. So, that or just memorize every single skill pattern and which skills can be baited out by something and only then you may take advantage of this trait effectively.
Here’s what you’re seeing.
Power block has no effect on a channeled skill. If you land an interrupt on a channeled skill normally (on a player) the skill goes onto a normal full cooldown, this is how it always does. If you land it on a boss though, since it’s a channeled skill power block does nothing, and the actual interrupt is blocked by defiance.
I was referring to the same skill interrupted at different stages. Take his healing skill for example. If I daze him right as he’s casting the skill (~400ms window) it gets interrupted through defiance. If I daze him as he’s channeling the skill defiance prevent the interrupt. So you technically can interrupt the channeled skill as long as you land it during its cast, which quite often is a very short window of opportunity.
