Power Return

You present a flawed argument, EE. First, you pick out power return and pit it into the worst situations you'd use it - on 5e energy spells, on fast recharging spells, on minor pressure/damage/healing spells.

Then you take your pet power block, and pit it in its BEST situations - when it would interrupt a vital skill, of the main attribute of the target, when you are not using some other elite...etc.

When a build is thought through, it almost always has *some* strategy it's trying to execute. Examining skills stand-alone is not productive. Comparing power return to other interrupts in situations when it wouldn't be very practical is duhh. You're practically slamming on the skill because it's not power block. Hey fine, there are situations where you'd take power block over power return. There is a myriad of skills, even in the current metagame that you could effectively disrupt with power return. Spikes(ie, returning an orb), consistantly disrupting a mesmer's burns and diversions(which you could argue is very effective, since it saves tons of energy on your monks), constantly putting holes in a necro's hex spam, denying monks their energy management and slow-casting spells - not only can you do all this, you can do it with the best consistency, unlike the other drains.


Power return also doesn't require any invested skill points for its most important effect - interruption. The rest of the mesmer interrupts just don't recharge fast enough to be used for consistent interrupts, and are instead used to punish an interrupted target severely. Power return is not for that - it is simply as an extra disrupt to your opponents tactics. It's not really something you'd focus your attention on - it's not *that* disruptive, and it happens too often to really stop it. However, constantly having something tripping over the execution of your strategy is one of the things mesmers are really good at, and power return helps exactly that. We have a winner.

You present a flawed argument, EE. First, you pick out power return and pit it into the worst situations you'd use it - on 5e energy spells, on fast recharging spells, on minor pressure/damage/healing spells.

Then you take your pet power block, and pit it in its BEST situations - when it would interrupt a vital skill, of the main attribute of the target, when you are not using some other elite...etc.

When a build is thought through, it almost always has *some* strategy it's trying to execute. Examining skills stand-alone is not productive. Comparing power return to other interrupts in situations when it wouldn't be very practical is duhh. You're practically slamming on the skill because it's not power block. Hey fine, there are situations where you'd take power block over power return. There is a myriad of skills, even in the current metagame that you could effectively disrupt with power return. Spikes(ie, returning an orb), consistantly disrupting a mesmer's burns and diversions(which you could argue is very effective, since it saves tons of energy on your monks), constantly putting holes in a necro's hex spam, denying monks their energy management and slow-casting spells - not only can you do all this, you can do it with the best consistency, unlike the other drains.


Power return also doesn't require any invested skill points for its most important effect - interruption. The rest of the mesmer interrupts just don't recharge fast enough to be used for consistent interrupts, and are instead used to punish an interrupted target severely. Power return is not for that - it is simply as an extra disrupt to your opponents tactics. It's not really something you'd focus your attention on - it's not *that* disruptive, and it happens too often to really stop it. However, constantly having something tripping over the execution of your strategy is one of the things mesmers are really good at, and power return helps exactly that. Possibly.

However let me point a few things out; this is the fastest recharging mesmer interrupt by three seconds. It does not put "holes in a necro's hex spam" as you claim as these spells recharge quickly, and since you "return" the energy needed to cast these hexes back to them. Example of such would be power return to life siphon; you lose 5 they lose 3 and cast the hex again in 2 seconds. However if you "spiked" the hex they would not have access to this energy even at 0 in rank power spike is the better option here as they will be casting less hexes over time, with more points in rank power spike becomes unbelievably better.

Disrupting mesmer skills has the same problem as many are quick recharging; so disrupting these will pose little threat. Take for instance diversion (a popular skill) even if you interrupt it every single time it is cast (looking over the fact powerspike could do the same) you still suffer a 2 point energy net loss. Because of this net loss; you will slowly become locked down yourself. Because of this, you are being less effective than the opposing mesmer due to the fact that he/she (as time approaches infinity) will be able to accomplish his/her job more effectivly while you cannot. Other mesmer hexes are difficult to interrupt due to fast casting, and also due to the same scenario presented above.

Another flaw in your arguement is that you claim that power return is useful on higher energy cost spells; while this is true we must look on who uses these higher energy cost. By higher cost I assume you mean at least 15; so that you are in a net gain for the energy; thus the recharge time will not matter. This brings us to lightning orb, blinding flash, heal other, heal party, and exhaustion spells- all of which are used by primarly elementalists. The problem being is that energy is of little worry to this class. As Evilsod suggested you could attempt to continously interrupt Ether Prodigy with Power Return and another interrupt, however constantly doing it with power spike would provide more benefit. Perhaps they could both be used in junction to shut the elementalist down. I do suspect however that due to the return of energy that they would be allowed to cast other spells such as lightning strike which would get through the interrupt barrage. Basically expensive spells are used mainly by elementalists; and they are not concerned with energy.

In PvE this could be useful(due to energy gain being pointless to the target), but I would still perfer powerspike due to it dealing damage to enamies that are not supposed to be alive that long in the first place(the reason the energy gain is pointless).

Consistantly interrupting with power return, while disruptive, is not in the mesmer's favor (due to net loss); thus there is a sence of irony of it being the fastest recharging spell interrupt in the game, but the one the mesmer will want to use the least.