Interuption Strategies for Hard Mode

Spinal Shivers necro + cold weapon

I find dazed works the best in HM. But that's moreso due to the lack of good condition removal in most PvE mobs. And if they do have it... learn it, love it, and distract it!

Also for HM on the mesmers... I've found having frustration helps a lot. But not a lot of people get what I like to call two man 'buddy' combos going. EG: I'll tag-team w/ one other player to take down something while the other 6 go about their business.

Just for the record... my typical bar in HM ranger has been.

14exp (11+3), 12/14marks(10+1+1/3), 11(10+1)wild
Burning Arrow*, needling, RtW, concussion, dshot, LR/NS/dust trap, Troll, hard rez has worked reasonably well as a baseline GP build for me.
(I have gloves of minor/superior marks which I switch out if I need more/less life in PvE). Druids armor.

Since they finally brought needling shot back up to usability. It's great DPS skill in HM (higher level enemies w/ high AL... all armor ignoring damage... win win). And once you get that monk dazed... use your zealous string and just keep spamming... if you see him use something like signet of devotion distract it.

This is less of a direct interupt strategy, but more of a team support strategy. (14exp, 13/15surv. 11/11/8 distro). As you can tell it's an offensive 'combat trapper' (stance tank, trapper combo)
Smoke Trap*, barbed trap, flame trap, dust trap, Lightning Ref/Nat Stride, Whirling Def, Healing Spring/troll, lightbringer rez.
Again I keep two pairs of survival boots (one minor, one superior... to swap in as HP/tanking requires).

Works best when paired w/ a daggers/swords/axeman. But you go in right after the initial tanks and turn into a stance tank. (lightning ref for 11s, whirling for 19s, LR for another 11s... that's 41s of tanking time. With 19s of 'downtime' and also over 20s of nearby 'blind' time. It's really amusing because you can actually get whirling defense going for some pretty impressive DPS against the wands, arrows, and spears that inevitably get tossed at you.

I've also been known to pull out items from the old-school cripshot playbook. domination ranger. (prepared shot, diversion!, blackout). Those were good skills for PvP back before nerfs, and while not PvP grade anymore, they still work in PvE! Occassionally, have fun w/ the 'double debilitator'.

I've also been known to go barrage/smite. Scourge healing is rediculous amount of fun in PvE . Orison... bwahahaha... go ahead orison yourself for all of 10 points or so. Too bad, you can't do a ranged 'smite' anymore and get expertise on it... (changed from 'attack' w/ any weapon to a spell).

Those last two are more of 'disruption' as opposed to 'interupt' strategies which I only included as they're closely related. You don't always need to absolutely shut down the target, but merely render it inefficient.

Edit:
Interesting idea spinal shivers. Ages ago there was a marksman's wager, spinal shivers combo that was used. And since wager got that duration buff, it's probably usable again. (you should be reaping in more energy per hit than shivers takes...). But overall, I can't see it being better than choking/practiced unless you have other curses you'd like to bring (you actually will have enough energy w/ wager to cast 10 energy spells regularly even w/ chillblains). (the attack speed reducers, defile flesh (67% healing efficiency) are really about it that I see, barbs is nonfunctional cause you're using cold damage).

Choking gas/IAS still works fine - especially if you equip a ranger helper with it too. 2* choking gas + IAS is an AoE interrupt of spells every 0.67 seconds on average - this means that the large majority of spells will get caught. Daze can obviously work too, as can Spinal Shivers.

Frustration is a super skill, punishing the foe for each interrupted spell/skill/attack; bring Norgu along, get this on a foe and pepper him with Incendiary Arrows for example - on an attacker it will interrupt each attempted attack pretty much and cause the 50 or so frustration damage, with needling shot on the bar you can pound out the armour ignoring damage while shutting down an attacking enemy, and it's not shabby on casters either.

Due to the semi-random nature of two attackers hitting it would probably be more like every 1.33/sqrt(2) = 0.95 seconds.

If you pack [wiki]Frustration[/wiki] and invest in Illusion you might as well take a look at [wiki]Arcane Conundrum[/wiki].

BHA makes it much easier to interrupt stuff. Choking gas/IAS can still work, but it's more luck when you do interrupt. You can also combine your build with something like a migraine+arcane conundrum+frustration mesmer that supports you.

Re: Choking Gas & hard interupts
I agree, bring either savage or distracting if you're running choking. If you're playing choking your job is to interupt. Choking cannot interupt non-spells. Of the two, I prefer distracting. You can tab targets while bombarding choking dust on the caster and distract skills like heal signet and immediately switch back knowing that that skill is shut down for a good 20s now.
Also signet of devotion isn't uncommon on PvE monk mobs... and it's important to disable that one as well.


Risks vs. Rewards:
This is just me, but I find that BHA is a bit of a crutch. It works, it works well, but if the ranger's good, concussion shot is just as or more usefull. (mostly due to the recharge... 5s recharge on concussion vs. 15 on BHA but also non-elite). It's mostly a matter of potential too... w/ BHA I can keep one caster dazed indefinately short of condition removal. But I can only keep one caster dazed. W/ Concussion shot I can get the same effect, but only if I can hit, but more importantly I can spread the love and daze more. (this is especially true when you get multiple necro or ele mobs in one place).

That said, one of the things about HM is that it makes what are normally better skills because the risk is neglible in normal mode harder picks. Sometimes you need to use the more reliable skill for reasons outside your control. They're just casting too fast, lag is bit heavier than normal... etc. It encourages you to actively play w/ your skillbar and not just run w/ a single build all the time.

One of the reasons archer's signet is as it is... archer's, serpents quickness, concussion produced something which was firing dazing interupts every 3-4s w/o any energy issues at all. There was another one floating around which was archer's, savage, concussion, mantra of inscriptions/signets... just spam savage/concussion.

Don't get me wrong, I use it now and then... Such as when lag is worse than normal. Another example, In the gate of pain I ran with BOTH concussion shot and BHA (and was keeping 3 torturewebs dazed at once). Which worked better because I told people if I called a target it was dazed, so the alliance warrior or assassin would break off and beat on it while I move onto another 'undazed' one w/ interupts. But there we start seeing again... teamwork benefits which can be rough in a PUG.

The same goes for spells like arcane conundrum vs. frustration. The doubled casting time is nice... but the extra damage is better since the 50% should already push your interupts from marginal to good. A good player should probably go for the extra risk/reward because they'll be able to make use of it.


Other x-class support skills:
Another mesmer skill which I've found rather fun on the ranger is 'hypochondria'. This is actually one which works really well w/ BHA because you can use it to spread the daze a lot farther than epidemic. (and even better, normally the target gets nailed w/ bleed/cripple/deep wound etc. from people beating on other targets 'in the area'. So the dazed in this case gets covered w/ a large condition stack. This is a skill I use when the game is a bit laggier.

Quote:

Re: the Spinal Shivers idea.

Used Marksman's Wager/Spinal Shivers (and Shivers of Dread) the other day to good effect; not as strong as daze in a sense, since it requires cold damage to trigger (feel free to include a Winter somewhere) but also stops skills. Called Shot and Crossfire give two shots to hit through blocking, allowing you to continue energy gain on blocking targets (2 energy to shoot the called shot, gain 9 or 10 back). Worth trying if daze is likely to be removed, since hexes are often less likely to be removed. Made HM Glint pretty easy, and by having two copies of the hex could spread it around a bit throughout the expedition. No energy troubles, as long as you either swap to a target without blocking or stick to using called shot and Crossfire once blocking goes up.

We finished 3 more Prophecies HM missions and bonuses over the weekend and found that [skill=text]Concussion Shot[/skill] + [skill=text]Archer's Signet[/skill] to be the most efficacious. [skill=text]Choking Gas[/skill] with an IAS, with a perfect short bow, never did the trick: it always seemed to miss or be blocked at the critical instant and then there's the issue of it only interupting spell casting. Like others on the thread, I'm interested in exploring [skill=text]Spinal Shivers[/skill] again and will probably start carrying a bow with an icy bowstring or equip my cursing necro hero with a cold staff. The Illusion magic suggestions are also provocative.

[skill=text]Needling Shot[/skill] with an IAS which was never of much more than "academic interest" in PVE is now particularly useful. Over all HM is proving to be an interesting experiment. I hope and expect Arenanet makes appropriate use of what can be learned from it in Eye of the North and especially GW2.

So once more, thanks to all for a number of useful recommendations.

If you're talking group dynamics, maybe a N/Rt w/ Spinal Shivers and Draw Spirit and a R/any with Winter?

Personal-use, I would definitely give the Spinal Shivers + Marksman's Wager combo a try. Actually, I think I'll try it myself.

if you like to try something different and just by chance using a splinter ranger setup;


i found warmonger's weap adequate for my personal hm needs. since you already have a respectable amount of channeling already, casting warmongers on a suitable melee partymate interrupts repectably. sure it may not be active all of the time, but it was sufficient enough for me to have no problems for situations like double dolyaks in hm. 10 en that can't be reduced by exp may seem steep, but compared to the usual dist & savage, it's usually a cast-and-forget affair, and you can go about doing other business.

if pure ranger skills are your thing; i found timing dist/savage while they cast can be a bit hard on non-premium internet connections. anticipating when they'll cast was better for me in my experience and connection. the ai has some casting/skill activating patterns that's noticable when you fight them often enough.