how to recognize a spell ?

Hi, i have a simple question probably. I trated using a mesmer and i love the charactre but as mesmer it is important to recognize ifthe enemy is using a spell or any other type of skill. Signets are easy to recognize. For the rest i always just guess that anything with a long castingtime is a spell. However from experience i know this is not always true.

To never waste an interrupt, should i learn all spells all charactres use by heart to recognize or is there any other way to see quickly if a skill being used is actually a spell or any other type ?

thanks you for reading

If its a monk, ele, mes, necro then the skill they're using is most likely a spell. If its a ranger or warrior then its probably a non-spell skill.

often playing mesmer myself, i know most skills by heart and know what to use to interupt. It's a matter of experience, over time, you'll learn what to interupt and what not

there is no way to know what type of spell your target is using, unless you move your miuse-pointer over the skill-monitor and read the description, but by the time you did that, it's usually too late to interupt anyway play mesmer a lot, and you'll see it's not that hard to learn em all

ok thanks for the quick responses At least now i know i am not missing something crucial

(noob story: it took me some time in the beginning to discover that a hex was displayed pink and a condition brown, LOL)

depends on the condition . Only bleeding displayed as compleet red with the brown down arrow. Also condition hexes or degen hexes display pink/purple on the hole bar. The rest is most of the time If you do this that will happen hexes.

Umm, when an enemy casts a spell or uses a skill a little bar appears under their names and tells you exactly what it is they are doing... Am I the only one who sees that?

no, you're not, but not everything an enemy uses is a spell : skills, shouts, stances are also displayed, yet most mesmer interupts only interupt spells, and that's what this question is about

Go into options and rearrange your HUD. I made the enemy skill icon huge and close to the center of the screen, and can clearly wee what skills are being used in an instant.

It takes time and practice. You'll learn that you don't need or want to interrupt everything they do. You just need to interrupt certain spells usually.

For example: If you are in a group trying to take down a monk boss, interrupting his heals is usually not practical because those recharge quickly and he has more than one anyway.

But interrupting his Mark of Protection, that's priceless.

I always tell my interruptor to be *sure* to block MoP, everything else is gravy.

Of course, this is for my situation, you'll find your own situations. But usually you just need to block one or two key spells....but what's key for you may not be a problem for someone else. It just takes experience.

I never interrupted everything anyway, but i never thought about recharge or energy cost. I will look at skills in this site. Thanks for that tip

Try to know every skill picture (at least the ones that are played with alot) so you know what they're casting when you click on them. I don't think you'll ever know what someone is casting by just looking at the animation, there are many skills with the same animation.

Interupting Mesmer is one of the hardest (if not the hardest) builds to play, though, if you play it really well, also one of the most effective builds in both TA and CA. Try interupting spells with:

1. Long recharge
2. Long casting time (try to interupt them at late as possible, for example, an 8 seconds cast spell, interupt it at 7 seconds of casting)
3. Anything that is really important for a character (OOB for Monks, Healing Signet for Warriors if they don't have a Monk etc.)

I hate to fight interupting Mesmers in CA that know what they're doing. If they interupt my OOB, I'm messed up so badly

if you play with sound on, you'll also notice that different skills/spells/etc have different animations and different sound effects. Some of them are subtle, but they are there, recognizing sounds could save you from the ele warming up a fireball just a few feet behind your mesmer

OK. Really basic question. Can one recognize what more than one character is doing at once? Or is it only the one you're locked onto as a target?

Thanks!

You only see the skill casting bar of your target.

Most spells have similar or the same animation.

1 unique thing I memorized the animation for is the Nature Ritual EoE (Edge of Extinction). Its long enough cast time, to swith to them and get it not put down, but most mesmer spells cant interupt nature rituals (only spells).