The 15% of max hp spell interruption change discussion

[PLitz]

I think this change is harsher than any of the other changes. I understand that casters didn't exactly have a chance before, but now we have a problem where it is very difficult to kill through all of the uninterrupted heals. Culling Time has gone from a passive-play countermeasure to a necessity to get a kill in many situations, even in 4 v 4 matches.

As a tank I feel useless outside of the 10-20 second window where I can set-up a kill with Full Swing, and Holmgang + Brutal Swing or Shield Bash. Most casters now simply ignore me as my attacks are not bursty enough to consistently interrupt their casting.

I would suggest changing it to either the same system but with diminishing returns (lower HP% while they are being attacked consistently) or something like WoW's system where being attacked while casting just sets back your cast bar a little bit, effectively slowing cast speeds but not stopping them outright.

[Ephier]

15% cast interrupt is way too high. This crap needs to be lowered.

[LuceliaUltima]

Sounds like the meta changed to you want 3 people to burst someone throught heals.

[WellFooled]

As a tank I feel useless outside of the 10-20 second window where I can set-up a kill with Full Swing, and Holmgang + Brutal Swing or Shield Bash. Most casters now simply ignore me as my attacks are not bursty enough to consistently interrupt their casting.

I've been having some trouble finding a purpose as a Paladin since the patch as well. Before the patch I had a very clear goal (slow down the healers and be the team's coin vault) but now once the healer has grown immune to my stuns I feel there's not much else I can do to slow the enemy's heals so I switch to being a sub par dps or a sub par healer. With the increased damage penalty from Heavy Metal I also can't stash the team's coins as effectively as before.

I understand the need to change things for casters, as constant interruptions shut down their entire game, but at the same time I feel the patch took away my role in the group. I'd be interested to hear what strategy other Paladins are using.

[Nalien]

They should rebalance tank combos in PvP following the interrupt change... Granted I'm only thinking of Dark Knight here, but give us;

Damage combo (Souleater)
Utility combo (Delirium)
Interrupt combo (Power Slash)

Does that translate over to Warrior and Paladin well? Warriors has Butcher's Block/Storm's Eye/Storm's Path, Paladin has Rage of Halone/Goring Blade/Royal Authority... Are any of those as worthless as Power Slash, though?

The interrupt could do a number of things... Silence, light knock-back, perhaps even Paralysis? If it can work for all the tanks, I'd say one of the three should be Pacification, too... All three having a tool for shutting down mages would be boring, one having a tool to shut down melee/tanks would be much more interesting... Or perhaps that wont work with the new meta, I've not opted to ruin three peoples day by trying out Dark Knight since 3.22...

I think an interrupt combo would work well, though... It would actually let us adapt our approach depending on the situation, rather than all crowd control being locked behind resists/cooldowns...

[Vaeria]

I've been having some trouble finding a purpose as a Paladin since the patch as well. Before the patch I had a very clear goal (slow down the healers and be the team's coin vault) but now once the healer has grown immune to my stuns I feel there's not much else I can do to slow the enemy's heals so I switch to being a sub par dps or a sub par healer. With the increased damage penalty from Heavy Metal I also can't stash the team's coins as effectively as before.

I understand the need to change things for casters, as constant interruptions shut down their entire game, but at the same time I feel the patch took away my role in the group. I'd be interested to hear what strategy other Paladins are using.

Much as I have hated pld these past 2 years for its uselessness outside healer pestering, your words actually make me feel sorry for em for the very 1st time.

[WellFooled]

Much as I have hated pld these past 2 years for its uselessness outside healer pestering, your words actually make me feel sorry for em for the very 1st time.

Our uselessness outside of healer pestering is something I've hated as well, but at least it provided a reason for us to exist in PvP. In PvE tanks, dps, and healers have clearly defined roles and dps and healers keep those roles in PvP, but we tanks lose our purpose. There is no enmity (nor should there be) in PvP and there are precious few options to guard our party. Cover and Testudo are great, but they're so minor when measured against all of our skills, most of which aren't as effective in PvP because tanks are the least likely to be attacked.

I wish we had more ways to guard our allies. Where as dps and healers always have some skill at their disposal that allows them to dps or heal, tanks only rarely have an ability available that allows us to guard our allies. To that end, I wish we had more defensive abilities that could be shared and more ways to divert damage to ourselves so the defensive abilities we already have could be more useful to the group. That way we could function as tanks in PvP instead of, at best, healer harassers.

[PLitz]

That's just it, our role as tanks in PvP came down to being able to heckle either the casters (to prevent them from killing our teammates) or the healers (to occupy them while our teammates set up kills) without that we are tougher to kill but weaker damage dealers. As it is now, having a tank in the Feast is arbitrary, a second melee would do better.

It has always been tough to design PvP with tanks in mind as it is hard to convince other players to want to attack them. Most PvP MMOs don't even use the holy trinity anymore partially for this reason. We sort of had it going for us before 3.22 where the Heavy Medal debuff, while detrimental, would not stop us from hoarding the medals and trying to become the target, just to switch to tank stance and pop defensive CDs.

[PotatoTree]

I like the new changes. Before it was impossible to cast with a tank on you. Now at least you can get a few casts off with some running in between.

[JzBen]

The % needs to be lowered. Good healers are bored or annoyed at the changes, anything they learned pvping the last 2 years gets thrown out of the window when a newbie WHM can just stand there and spamcast. WHM has so many guaranteed cast windows now its stupid. Swiftcast, Surecast, Presence, Prism, Thrill of War/Tetsudo, defense kit (to some extent), Aetheric Burst etc etc. All on top of being able to regen on the move and CC the crap out of people if you only leave 1 guy on them. A WHM + BLM comp is pure toxicity as unless you have a BLM too someone is going to CC your team to high heaven as you cannot interrupt two casters easily. 5% would allow for some leeway, no tomahawk cheese etc; yet still synergise well with WHM skills and adlo (if it works on losing actual hp, not sure on this).