Small gameplay question - 'thou shall not pass!'

What skills can effectively stop one or more enemies from approaching onto you? I mean, stopping them completely dead in their tracks. I've been playing for only a few months, but I figured there would be a more effective way than knockdown or just slowing them down a bit with crippled conditions. I actually mistakenly presumed traps could hold an opponent down for a while (wrong game), and wasted some time in Pre on an elementalist/ranger.

I can of course see why a pet or summoned creature or party would help in that department. I'm mostly just curious about skills though. Any.

I've been browsing the vast archive of skills for a while now, and I can't seem to come up with anything better than a skill that knocks down or cripples.

A complete stop would like the mesmer elite Psychic instablility, great skill if the mesmer can pull it off. You can also use skills to slow, not stop, like ele hexes. For instance deep freeze and stuff like that.

I think that would have to be a Knockdown(KD). Not my forte, but the Knockdown page can be reached from the Snare page.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Snares

A knockdown not only stops them dead in their tracks, it prevents movement or skill activation for 2-4 seconds. I don't see how you could get better than that.

Earthbind, Wanderlust, "You move like a Dwarf!", EVAS
Nice combo of heavy KD extending it's duration or making bosses vulnerable to them. The best thing against 1 enemy.

Yeah, theres not really any way to truly stop someone in their tracks. Knockdowns will keep someone down and a kd warrior might be able to keep 1 person/monster knocked down, mesmer skills like Psychich Instability can knock down an entire group. Other options slowing a group down might be Water Magic hexes like Deep Freeze will hit a whole group for something like 66% slow, other water magic hexes can slow a single opponent down by like 90%, otherwise you've already seen crippling in action.

All of the above, but where there are exploitable corpses a mob of necro minions is the best means of keeping them out of your face.

If they do get in your face either just kill the offender, or kite through your minions and past your warrior or other melee. Get the attacker(s) busy with something else other than your healers.

Ah ok, then it's all pretty much as I thought. Thanks for clearing this up for me, everyone.

Ice snares and Earthshaker/Yeti Smash (use with crudeswing for adrenaline pumping and have withering aura on you from your necro for Yeti). You can spam KD till they're dead.

I think the OP was wondering if there was a true knockout skill that will hold the target in place for more than 2-4 seconds.

The mechanics of GW would make any such skill a god-mode skill for AoE damage dealers and change virtually all the dynamics of the game. Most of the updates over the last 2 years have been a reflection of the GW2 philosophy of reducing the "tank-spank-heal" holy trinity.

In PvE if you just want to stop the mobs from getting at you, consider bringing 1 or more MMs, as a massive minion wall is a capable meatshield vs the AI.