Curse

Shanaeri Rynale · Jul 31, 2007, 05:33 PM // 17:33

Find below are my thoughts on Interrupting and shutdown in general, but focussing on the Mesmer profession. It’s not meant as a be all and end all guide as 1, I don’t know everything about the subject, 2, i’ve been known to be wrong and 3/ It doesn’t mention builds as there are some threads on that already and 4/ it’s mainly PvE focussed.

The notes are from some of my Guilds training session we hold, and i'm told they were useful so I hope they are for you too. What it does do(I hope) is outline some of the mechanics and tips I’ve learned in *cough* hours of playing a mesmer.

Anyway, it’s quite an essay and I hope people find it useful. As I said, it's not meant to provide people with builds; but hopefully outline the concepts and thoughts behind Interrupting and Shutdown so when you are in the creation of build the basic mechanics are understood.

Interrupting and Shutdown.

Why do it?

It may seem obvious but the purpose of an interrupt or a shutdown(I&S) skill is to deny your enemy the use or effect of that skill/s. So what you may say, when we can just overwhelm with damage. But we’ll come to that later.
Lets take an example from PvE. The Ruby Djinn’s in Elona will cast searing flames at your team. If allowed through, this will equate to around 120-140 damage per affected team member, plus the heavy degen of burning; which at -7 degen equates to a health loss of 14Hp per second for around 6 seconds. Giving a total affected team damage if unhealed of a minimum of 204damage(assuming normal caster armor). Regardless of the precise numbers, the point being is it will hurt..

Now of course the monks will heal this off, but that costs them energy and a skill downtime If it costs energy it increases pressure on the team, which in turn increases the chances of a characters death. Get enough pressure and the team will wipe.

Now what if stop the searing flames from hitting?

Players won’t get hit for 204, the monks won’t need to use energy and skill and the net effect is a reduction in pressure for the entire team.
Remember, it’s not damage that kills a team, its pressure. Especially pressure on the energy and skills downtime of the monks.

Killing before being killed is now prevalent in PvE. Steam roller AoE is now pretty much cookie cutter mandatory in some elite places, DoA for example. However stopping that spellbreaker cast by a Margonite monk, Invoke lightning from an Ele can make a team’s chances of surviving the quest substantially greater.

The basics of interrupts.

The base line, your physical limitations

Human being’s reactions are not instant; we require a certain amount of time to react. This reaction time forms one of the core factors in interrupting. Typically this is between 0.22 and 0.27s, trained athletes can get this down to about 0.17s but this is rare and related to twitch reflexes.

A twitch reflex is just doing something, without engaging any kind of decision making at all. It’s an instinctive reaction that operates outside of the brain. The phrase trigger happy, where one just pulls the trigger based on no criteria, only that your nerves went pull.

Google reaction times, to determine what yours are. The best ones those that you have to react when only a certain shape appears.

Trigger happy interrupting, although it will decrease reaction times, will make your interrupts far less effective. We’ll come onto why later.

The base line, your computer and connectivity

One of The other fundamental factors is your ping time and the speed of your PC. Although PC performance is of less importance here, than in say UT2004 if your PC can only manage 20 fps then your interrupts will be less reliable. A useful tip is to turn the graphics settings down.

Ping time is simply the time it takes for the ‘I’ve hit skill x’ request to go through the internet to the Anet servers. Typically this is around 0.1 to 0.3s although it can be longer. If it’s too long then active interrupts may be very difficult. It seems as though the international districts have a higher ping time than local ones, so it’s important to bear this in mind.

Other factors, after cast

After pretty much every skill use there is a small amount of downtime before you can move or cast again. This time is called aftercast. For rangers this time is 0.5s, for other professions it’s 0.75. Exceptions to these skills are stances or shouts with no activation times

One of the effects of Aftercast is to absorb some of the effects of ping lag, but it is a consideration in interrupts as it puts another delay into you trying to hit the next interrupt. I.e you can’t just go bam bam, there is always a delay and you need to be aware of it

Other factors.

For a Mesmer, fast cast can significantly help reduce the cast time of interrupts, but will only speed up spells.

For a ranger, the flight time of the arrow is included in the total time to interrupt. Therefore being closer, favourable winds, being higher or having a faster firing bow can be critical.

Rangers can also only interrupt when not obstructed and in line of sight.
Warrior/other interrupts of course need to be in melee range

Therefore we can summarise one’s base minimum interrupt time as
Cast time(-FC reduction)+(reaction time+ping response time+decision making time)

For example. Power spike cast time 0.25sec on a Mesmer with 9 in FC is 0.16s . Lets say you have a ping of 0.2s and a reaction time of 0.24s.
Therefore the fastest skill you will be able to hit with power spike is 0.16+0.2+.024=0.6 seconds.

Moving on

But that’s not the end of the story. Remember I mentioned that a trigger happy interrupter is a poor interrupter.? This is why.
Generally interrupt skills have a high recharge time or penalties associated with use, so the skill you interrupt has to be worth both the energy usage and the penalty you pay for using it.

Here’s some examples.

Dwayna’s kiss 5 energy, 1 second cast time, 3 second recharge.

Heal other. 10 energy, 0.75s cast time. 3 second recharge.

Interrupting these skills is not generally worth the time as
1. The cast time is close to that of our minimum
2. The recharge time is very short, meaning that for our 15-20second interrupt skill recharge we have only disabled that skill for 3 seconds. Meaning they can cast it 3-5 times before our interrupt recharges.

Now, there are exceptions to this, which we will come onto later.
So basically, assuming it’s a monk we are trying to shut down she will have other spells that will prove more effective to hit. For example:

Restore life, gives your team chance to finish off the mob before they res

Aegis, gives their team protection from attacks and has a recharge time of 30seconds, so it’s easy to hit and costs a lot of energy.

Spell Breaker is a critical skill to hit, it has a long recharge and for an annoyingly long period makes the target immune to caster damage.

Heal area/party/LoD, although a fast recharge of 5 and 8 seconds respectively, it buffs the entire party making your job harder.

Going Deeper

In addition and to increase the complexity only some interrupts affect certain skills.

Skills come in the following classes
Skill: The most basic skill type. Provides various effects. Every icon on your bar is a skill

Attack: Attacks an enemy.

Bow Attack: Attack that requires a bow.
Melee Attack: Attack that requires an axe, dagger, hammer, or sword.
Axe Attack: Attack that requires an axe.
Dagger Attack: Attack that requires a dagger.
Lead Attack: Begins some attack chains.
Off-Hand Attack: Requires a lead attack or other circumstance.
Dual Attack: Usually requires an off-hand attack.
Hammer Attack: Attack that requires a hammer.
Scythe Attack: Attack that requires a scythe.
Sword Attack: Attack that requires a sword.
Pet Attack: Attack that requires a pet.
Spear Attack: Attack that requires a spear.

Chant: Provides positive effects that trigger on various circumstances.

Echo: Provides a positive effect which generally triggers or refreshes when a chant or shout ends.

Form: Transforms the user and provides various effects.

Glyph: Affects the next spell or spells you cast.

Preparation: Enhances your attacks.

Ritual: Creates a spirit.

Binding Ritual: Affects all allies.
Nature Ritual: Affects all creatures.

Shout: Usually provides a positive effect on allies in earshot, sometimes specific targets or foes in range.

Signet: Has no energy cost but usually has a long casting time and/or recharge time.

Spell: Various effects.

Enchantment Spell: Provides positive effects.
Hex Spell: Provides negative effects.
Item Spell: Creates an item to hold which has effects when held or dropped.
Ward Spell: Creates a defensive area effect.
Weapon Spell: Provides positive effects which cannot be removed by foes.
Well Spell: Exploits a corpse to create a temporary area effect.

Stance: Provides positive effects for the user.

Trap: Provides an area effect usually triggered by enemy presence.

More information can be found on here and at various GW info sites

It is vital to learn which interrupt affects what action

So for example, power block only affects spells and chants. Therefore trying to use it on heal sig, a glyph, stance or trap will not interrupt and you will waste it.

Cry Of frustration deals will skills so will affect all the above

Clumsiness is next attack so a heal sig, or trap usage will not trigger it

Another factor to consider is the previous hex or action you did to that foe, that could still be working on it.
For example. Casting backfire on a caster and then interrupting the next spell that follows is a waste of a backfire invocation. Unless urgent like a res, wait till backfire wears off and then resume.

So if you are trigger happy, you may you only not stop the skill that will help you the most, but you are also likely to waste the interrupt on a skill in which it won’t even affect. Not only that, but you wasting the interrupt will have no effect on the total pressure on the team, in fact it may well increase it.

Remember damage doesn’t cause team wipes. Pressure does.

Therefore in our interrupt time calculation we need to include another value. The Decision making time. I.e the time it takes for you to decide should I use this interrupt or not..
For the starter at interrupting this is by far the longest time, and can in some cases be over 1 second, especially if the skill being used is unknown to you.

So in our power spike example we get Power spike cast time 0.25sec on a Mesmer with 9 in FC is 0.16s .

Therefore the fastest skill you will be able to hit with power spike is 0.16+0.2+.024+thinking time =at least 1 second

More bad news

Some skills cannot be interrupted, are subject to non interrupt skills, or need to be interrupted more than once. Kunnevang’s monster skills and Nightmare refuge in Kannaxi for example.

Some bosses have half casting speed and half hex duration, meaning if you are trying to hit a 1 second cast that will be reduced to a .5s second cast, which is outside of our normal minimum time.
Also some monsters carry two copies of a skill, meaning if you stop one. It will use the copy.

In addition you can’t simply stand around waiting for your target to use the skill you want. You will be:
• Kiting
• Wanding
• Being aware of how things are going in the fight
• Deciding if the target you are waiting to interrupt is still the best option
• Looking at the radar and team chat
• Casting other spells at the targets

And all the while this is going on, you have to hit that spell that if it got through could undo all your teams hard work or even be the tipping point in which the pressure gets too much and your team wipes.

Cool huh?

Now for the good news.

Making up the odds

Some skills allow you to increase the cast time, thus giving you more time to think and react. Arcane conundrum and Broad Head Arrow to name but two. Dazed is a very desirable condition to inflict on a caster, not only does it make your job easier, it slows down their rate of cast and makes whatever they are cast easily interruptible(meaning you may not even need to use an interrupt skill).

If you are playing, or practicing interrupting then AC or dazed is an essential part of your bar. If you are playing Mesmer fast casting of at least 9 will also be of great help. Personally if I am playing interrupt I switch in armor piece with a major fast cast rune on, then switch it out when I don’t need it.

Skill line shutdown and extended recharge.

It is possible to equip skills that cause an extended outage on your opponent. I.e increase the recharge time of the interrupted skill to more than what it should be. This is obviously a very valuable thing to do as it not only reduces the pressure on the team for longer, but also gives you a greater range of skills that you can interrupt and still have an effect.
Skills such as power block, psychic distraction, distracting shot, and those causing knock down are all valid and useful ways of extending the shut down period. Be aware that skills such as power block are spells only though. Knowing what attribute line a skill in makes power block very effective as you can choose an easier skill to hit and still get the one you want.

An interesting side effect of psychic distraction is that it seems be able to punch through mantra of concentration, so if faced with that it may be worth a try.

Making it better. The pro-active shutdown or interrupt

There are two main types of interrupt and shutdown skills. Those that work while your target IS doing stuff, and those that linger about and are triggered BY your target doing stuff.

By use of these proactive shutdown skills we can negate a lot of the downsides of ping, reaction and thought time and still achieve the right result.

However these have downsides. You can’t always pick and choose what skill will be affected, they are vulnerable to hex removal and often the penalty paid is often smaller than that if you used an active shutdown.

There are a few Mesmer skills that allow you to do this, guilt(spells cast on your party), shame spells cast on their party, diversion(awesome shutdown skill. Esp if you have a high fast cast and can outcast the target), mistrust(like AoE backfire). Clumsiness is also an proactive shutdown as it waits until your target attacks before triggering the interrupt and finally hex breaker is useful if you are in a hex heavy area.

Necro skills, such as spinal shivers fall into this category also, as when cold damage is applied and you the energy the target is interrupted.

Although skills such as backfire, empathy, spirit shackles and say Migraine cause a player to pause(and therefore shutdown) what they are doing or about to do. I personally don’t class them as shutdown skills as the pause is optional, not inflicted.

Other oddities and fun to use are skills that steal, or globally deny use of skills. Arcane thievery(esp echo’d) can be devastating to a monster, especially as they only have 4-5 skills to choose from.

The use of pro-active shutdown, can be devastating especially when combined with advanced interrupts and shutdown techniques.

Advanced Interrupts And Shutdown Techniques.

We’ve seen how the effects of our physical body, technology can affect how well we interrupt and shutdown a target. We’ve also seen how the use of some skills can mitigate theses limitations.

We also touched on the downside to these pro active shutdown skills, in that very often the penalty paid is smaller than an active one, they are vulnerable to hex removal and you can’t really choose what you will stop.

To help us get around these, we have one weapon up our sleeves. Anticipation.

Anticipation is the art of observing the skill being used, knowing what the next one will be and then casting the interrupt at the same time as the follow up is starting to cast. Anticipation allows us to short cut the decision process(we’ve done it already) and also helps in hitting the faster casting 0.75 and less reliably 0.25 second cast spells.

In addition watching the casting animation is an excellent guide as to when your target is about to cast, there is usually a fraction of a second of animation before the skill starts to be used. Use this animation to reduce the time to interrupt. Back in the days before the skill warm up bar this was the only way to do it. Also if you listen carefully different skills make a different sound, that can also be of great use in learning anticipation and interrupting while kiting.

Typically anticipation knocks about 0.5 second off of our total cast time.
To be a great interrupt/shutdown player you need to know the effects and priorities of pretty much every skill in the game(or at least the most common ones). Know the areas in the game intimately, know in advance what skills to prioritise on, what to hit and what not to, and apply that knowledge in fractions of a second.

Not only that, but you have to be focussed on the entire battlefield and have acute situational awareness so that you are ready to react to the slightest priority change.

Yes it’s hard work to learn, yes it requires a level of awareness in play that is very different to that of the renewal nuking or SF ele(as valid and satisfying as that role is) but it brings ones understanding, enjoyment and satisfaction of play to a whole new dimension. It’s both a challenge mentally and physically and for those who want to try something new or improve on it’s well worth the time.

Thoughts about hard mode and Cry Of Pain.

Since every mob has effectively fast cast and fast recharge, active interupts such as powerblock, spike etc have lost a great deal of reliabilty. Of course taking arcane conundrum increases the cast time to what it would be normally but then you lose another precious skills slot.

Since skills have a substancially reduced recharge time there is now often no point in trying to interupt. In my view you are better to deny the use of the skill rather than interupt.

For the mesmer, proactive interupts such as guilt, shame,mistrust, and especially diversion are a godsend. since the mobs still have limited skill bars, diversion can quickly make that annoying shiverpeak protector an easy kill. Especially since diversion will shut down the skill for longer than a normal interupt will. Try to use diversion in the same way you would use predictive interupts(i.e start to cast just before the skill you want to disable starts to cast) and you'll find it's effects immense.

Also, dont understimate the value of sig of humilty and SV/AV in hardmode. Monsters love to physical attack and SV/AV is devestating in some areas(such as the Scarabs in Maguma).

When in hardmode diversion never leaves my bar

Naturally a broadhead arrow ranger, can make things easier still, so in an area where shutdown is essential a BHA magrid or Jin can really help.

Cry of Pain is an excellent interupt skill. The temptation is just to use it as a nuke and cast it as soon as the trigger hex is applied, but when used when backfire or empathy is about to expire on the monster it's effects are amplified.

To sum up

• Human factors, not only game mechanics affect our ability to interrupt and shut down
• Some Interrupts only work on selected skill types
• Be choosy about what you interrupt.
• Don’t always rely on active interrupts, proactive ones can be just as effective and reliable
• Use Anticipation to get ahead of the game
• Learn skills, environments and to read the situation.
• Practice, practice and practice.
• Have fun

Redfeather1975 · Jul 31, 2007, 07:05 PM // 19:05

That's very helpful Shanaeri.
I would suggest a little section about e-denial too.
Power Leak is a good skill in that not only does it interrupt a spell it also can deny energy equivalent to 1-4 spell casts depending on the opponents spell costs on their bar.

Shanaeri Rynale · Jul 31, 2007, 07:12 PM // 19:12

Thanks red, I left E-Denial out as the guide is PvE focussed and E-denial in PvE is pretty much useless. Give me a day or so and i'll add a section tho. Or just a line that says "In PvE, E-denial is generally useless" - lol

Redfeather1975 · Jul 31, 2007, 07:33 PM // 19:33

Fiddley foo. I forgot this is mostly for PVE.
Yeah putting a blurb about how e-denial is pooey for PVE is just about all that can be said. lol
Thanks for taking the time to put all this together for everyone!