HorseStrangler

Join Date 05/2009

+37

Interrupts don't seem like a fully developed concept

Alright, I'm a former wow player, so bear with me here. In WoW interrupting casts was one of most important aspects of PvP, it's no exaggeration that interrupting a heal or a spell which would take you or your partner out of the fight for the next 10 seconds was the most important thing you could do in most cases.

So it should be no surprise that as I try to get better in this game I try harder and harder to improve my ability to interrupt casts, and I've come to the conclusion that interrupts in this game have some fairly major issues, so I have two questions for you guys:

First, and most importantly, are interrupts supposed to be important? Has my WoW experience just unduly raised my expectations for interrupts as a gameplay mechanic?
Are interrupts fun for you? Do you get the same gratification I do when you interrupt a hammer slam, snipe, fireball, etc?

Assuming the answers to both of those questions is yes, here are my problems with interrupts in this game

Most casts are too short to interrupt. It's technically possible to stop a heal, but given that many stuns/interrupts have short cast times themselves, it's just dumb luck if you actually get something with less than a second long cast time, and for some characters even stopping a Fireball is impractical.
Most cast animations are too subtle. I think Hammer Slam and Mass Charm are perfect examples of how more spells should look.
- Now I realize most players don't want to see resources diverted into new spell animations, but if they just tacked the swirling effect from casting Mass Charm onto every casted ability, would that be annoying for you?
Interrupts are too versatile. I don't have a good solution to this one, but take Pounce and Penitence, as examples. Sedna's and Oak's damage and utility are extremely dependant on using those abilities every time they're on cooldown, only in extreme cases do people actually save them as interrupts.

All around interrupts are just a bit too random. It's a culmination of these issues (if you agree with me that they are issues). People tend to use the multi-purpose interrupts abilities as they come off cooldown and accidentally hit 0.5 second casts through 200 milliseconds of latency, and overall it doesn't seem like any real planning or skill went into it. In the end the vast majority of skill in this game comes from gauging opportunity and positioning, not really clutch micro or reflexes.

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I alluded to them already, but lemme point out some spells I think are great examples of what I'd like to see more of

Hammer Slam - Devestating, but highly telegraphed with a bulky cast time and obvious animation. This is absolutely one of the best designed skills in the game, it's fun to use, it's fun to watch, and it's fun to counter.
Mass Charm - Very powerful move, again an obvious animation, and again hilarious when you counter it
Deep Freeze - It's quick, it's ranged, and though it does damage and has a debuff effect, you have a fair amount of time to use it before the debuffs you need to consume expire. This spell (at least when I play) gets a lot of mileage as a true interrupt
Snipe - You always know this is coming, and if you're the target you're not usually in range to interrupt it, but there's a good chance your partner could be. Sounding like a broken record, but again it's got a good animation, it's brutal when it completes, and it takes long enough to cast to be stopped.

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Don't forget mines, for all their irritating manner. They're multipurpose and deadly, but the cast is about as obvious as it gets.

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I don't really like the animation on mines, regulus moving into range to cast them is the real giveaway for me.

That being said, I do feel that mines are one of the better designed spells as far as interrupts go, playing smart against a mine regulus goes a long way, I just didn't have them on my short list because while they're the only ability that makes reg do a hand gesture, I still don't think the animation is quite up there with the others I listed.

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The lag really breaks things, pounce has 0.3 sec cast iirc, plus 0.35 second net_lag, for a 2 sec ability gives you a window of 1.35 seconds tor eact to someone casting and interrupt. In the end its more about prediction and reaction for me, I've interrupted a huge number of spits simply because its blatantly obvious when people are going to do them, despite spit having a very small cast time.

And I think you're wrong about people keeping pounce in reserve as an interrupt, I only leap in early with pounce if I'm absolutely sure theres nothing going to break me into little bits by stunning and ganking me. To ensure that you need Silence, which costs a lot of mana. If you pounce at first possible chance, you're going to die against an Erebus, as he bites to regain health, and then mass charms you. The bite you're lucky to interrupt, but the charm is exactly what pounce is for.

I think Oak gets a lot more use out of penitence as an interrupt than anyone else due to the range and low cast time.

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I use my interupts and stuns all the time on different characters. You almost never get to interupt a shield or heal, but interupting damage abilities and teleports is always great. I make a point to save them till I feel some sort of cast is about to get used.

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If you pounce at first possible chance, you're going to die against an Erebus, as he bites to regain health, and then mass charms you. The bite you're lucky to interrupt, but the charm is exactly what pounce is for.

Again though, Erebus's Mass Charm is one of the few spells out there that actually has a readily identifiable animation, I would say that's an exception.

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Not all skills are designed to be interuptible. I dont think you'd see many healing sednas or shield QoTs if you could interupt them the moment they were preparing to heal their target that just went under 50% hp.

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I have the setting on medium obscenitor and I agree, there's just not enough info to interrupt effectively. No cast bar .. no animation.. and a lot of spells are just bloody fast. And I also agree for sedna and oak.. if you're saving your interrupt for something chances are you're gonna lose the fight and be the one to flee. I would like to see more easily distinguishable spells.. swirls and what not would be great. I play prettymuch zoomed all the way out since i play regulus a lot and am watching for snipes and I can barely even notice erebus's stun like that.

Maybe I should just go back to WoW haha..

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Not all skills are designed to be interuptible.

This is a pretty good conclusion and I definitely came to it as well. I would say that the purpose of a fair amount of cast times is to disrupt movement... Gameplay would be effectively unchanged if casting a heal, for example, were instant but stunned you for .5 seconds, same idea with stunning other characters for the duration of their extremely short casts and making them instant. Not that I support doing that, I'm just pointing out that it would accomplish the same end in a slightly more annoying fashion.

I dont think you'd see many healing sednas or shield QoTs if you could interupt them the moment they were preparing to heal their target that just went under 50% hp.

Now on this I disagree for two reasons. First, I think it would be an overall gameplay improvement with how interrupts currently function. Take Pounce or Penitence for example. There would be a real decision between interrupting a heal and focusing the damage and debuff on the target you're killing. Short range stuns like UB's would be interesting too as it would allow the focus fired target to move and could force the UB to move away from his target. There would be a give and take there which might complicate heals in a good way rather than make them tedious.

Second, I would assume more damaging abilities would become susceptible as well, so Senda in particular might be more fun to play as you could use pounce to focus more on preventing damage in additon to healing it.

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i think its important to keep in mind that there are several different varieties of ability that interfere with the enemy's ability to use their stuff. also need to keep in mind that its not just enemy spells that you're looking to interrupt. item activations (particularly of consumables) are VERY easily interrupted. thats one of the main things you try to do with interrupts actually.

1) Full Stuns

- Mass Charm, Foul Grasp, Boulder Roll, Frost Nova

- prevent all actions, make enemies highly vulnerable for a couple of seconds

2) Micro-stuns

- Penitence, the proc effect granted by Regulus' Deadeye (yea i know it sucks)

- causes enemy to "hiccup", interrupting whatever they were doing for a fraction of a second. won't create a window of vulnerability like a full stun but will definitely disrupt the enemy's rythmn.

3) Interruption

- Pounce, Deep Freeze

- full stop on whichever spell was winding up but no consequences to other things. Deep Freeze has a pretty unique cooldown extending debuff which under certain circumstances can effectively act as a long duration Silence effect.

4) Silence

- Silence, the activation on Deathbringer (its an artifact)

- only stops mana abilities but still highly disruptive. better than Interruption or Micro-Stun, worse than Full-Stun.

so i don't feel like the concept of Disruption isn't fully fleshed out in this game. there's alot of stuff that causes some sort of disrupting effect. just getting to know the quirks is the important bit. abilities like Silence are designed to get around the fact that some alot of abilities are instant casting and cannot be Interrupted. abilities with cast times are extra powerful due to their vulnerability to Interruption and Micro-Stunning.

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Quoting transitive,

reply 10

words

Full stuns also cripple minion builds, mainly because it stuns the minions for much longer than it stuns Demigods.

I think Silence stops items too?

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yea, silence does stop items. yet another incredibly useful feature.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

First, and most importantly, are interrupts supposed to be important? Has my WoW experience just unduly raised my expectations for interrupts as a gameplay mechanic?
Are interrupts fun for you? Do you get the same gratification I do when you interrupt a hammer slam, snipe, fireball, etc?

I'm a WoW player too! But the obvious answer is that Demigod is not WoW, they play very differently and shouldn't be compared too closely. Perhaps WoW has fed you too much information on a silver platter instead of letting you figure out what is happening and when to interrupt (I'm directing that angst at WoW btw, not you). I agree that perhaps more animations could be used for spell casts but I think theres a fine line between giving people just enough information, and giving them too much and taking a large portion of the skill out of the execution.

And yes, I do get that sense of gratification interrupting those moves and the like

If you ask me, interrupts are actually in a good place at the moment. I'd hate to see this game become as interrupt/stun/counterspell dependant as PvP in WoW has become in recent years. Stuns are useful now, without being game breakingly important. As I said, I like where they're at!

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Well, interrupts aren't usually seen in this type of game, so I was surprised to see them here in the first place. Interrupts are very important in Guild Wars and that influences my opinions similarly to the OP. The biggest problem with interrupts in this game is that most spells in this game are very fast. You can't reactively interrupt fireball or mines with Pounce. Anticipatory interrupts work, but reactive interrupts are nearly impossible. The second problem is that so many abilities in this game that interrupt also do incredible other things (big damage, slow, armor reduction, etc) so you rarely want to save them for interrupting. Thus interrupting is often relegated to chance rather than purpose.

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Anticipatory interrupts work, but reactive interrupts are nearly impossible. The second problem is that so many abilities in this game that interrupt also do incredible other things (big damage, slow, armor reduction, etc) so you rarely want to save them for interrupting. Thus interrupting is often relegated to chance rather than purpose.

Yeah, honestly I find most interrupts more frustrating than fun because of this. For example Boulder Roll vs. Pounce. I've interrupted plenty of pounces with it and I've had plenty of Boulder Rolls interrupted by pounce, and next to none were intentional on either side, I'm sure.

I guess what the posts here have lead me to wonder is why are so many abilities interruptible at all? I think the main reason is to prevent movement while casting them, to give the opponent a break from your auto-attack and forcea tradeoff when you use those abilities. In that sense I really do feel that almost any ability with a cast time under 1 second could be made instant cast and just make the player stun themself for the duration of the previous cast time and there would be no real change of tactics or strategy, hence why I feel they're a but underdeveloped.

Anyway, that's for the replies so far, including the ones that disagree with me.

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As you've mentioned, most (all except for sedna's silence? I'm not thinking hard atm) interrupts come with a bunch of other effects too. Perhaps they intended these interrupts to be just a bonus along with the rest of the effects, instead of the other way around? I've only intentionally used them as interrupts for some of the longer casts anyway, specifically porting away which is such an unsatisfying end to a duel!

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I play frost tb a lot, so I try to save my deep freeze till the last second when I'll need it to interupt something. I let my auto attack do a lot of my damage. Like against Sedna or Oak, I'll let them get off one heal or one shield, and I'll start counting in my head to like 5 or 6, then I will deep freeze them because I know that they will usually be relying on having a second chance to cast that ability in order to survive.

Lately though I've actually been starting to interupt heals that way, which is hilarious. I mean I guess that simply deep freezing my opponent a bit earlier would prevent them from healing for the 6 seconds or whatever that deep freeze lasts, but I've been managing to do it with penitence and foul grasp lately too. Its kinda luck, but you just gotta predict those skills rather than try to react quickly and interupt them.

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Sedna's heal is relatively easy to get since you can control the circumstances that force her to cast it. When she gets low, she heals. Use your interrupt at about the time you think you would heal if you were Sedna. You can also try to interrupt the second heal by counting. Fireball is a bit tougher but you can get it by counting. Ice TB's usually cast in order so you can get one spell by interrupting right after the completion of the previous one. Fire AoEs are often telegraphed by the TB rushing into melee range, you can get them pretty easily by interrupting at his optimal stop-and-cast point. Interrupting right after a Queen's shield breaks often gets her next shield.

Most of these techniques can be prevented though split-second delays if your opponent realizes what you're doing (not many do, though). However, even with an aware opponent these instances happen so infrequently that genuinely intense mind games almost never occur.

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