Its off to the sunny and lush paradise of The Tarnished Coast this time, as we get to work on the second of the three big story branches in Guild Wars: Eye of the North; The Knowledgeable Asura. We'd used one of their underground gate thingies and arrived at Vlox's Falls, an outpost just south of, but unconnected to, Sanctum Cay, and here learnt of the Asuras' enigmatic 'G.O.L.E.M Project', which promises to be some kind of dangerously eccentric magical weapon system. The Asura are the classically absent minded and befuddled genius types provided for comic effect, as seen in a variety of other fiction as 'Gnomes', so at this point, I'll just be happy if when we eventually Press The Button, it kills more of Them than Us.
But before all that, we have to walk the lands and round up a number of these nutjobs and get them to design and build the thing. We started by looking for Oola a gifted, if difficult, Golemancer, and to find her, we had to find her extremely embittered and recently sacked assistant Blimm, last seen in Rata Sum, the Asuran centre of operations and The Tarnished Coast's Town.
Getting there was an enjoyable journey, involving the kind of overland exploration and roaming that I've always likes in Guild Wars. Party up, pick a destination and just go. The map travel feature is useful, helpful and appreciated, but I do quite enjoy taking the long route some times. In this case it was out into Arbor Bay, then across through Riven Earth, both rolling tropical highland types of zone, and very well crafted; massively more detailed than the old Maguuma Jungle zones to the north.
The fighting was tricky in places; pop-up bat things leaping out in the middle of already hectic fights with angry and powerful gorilla types, and winged snake-beasts, and in the later of the two zones, dinosaur attack! Neither expected, nor welcome, but you learn to cope with just about anything given time! Both fascinating zones that bear a great deal more pottering about.
A quick layover at Rata Sum to pick up the almost pathologically bitter Blimm, and onward to Magus Stones - a similar place, but hard work, mostly due to the very fast-moving clumps of Mesmer-based Wind Rider hover-squid things. Catch 6x Crippling Anguish in the face on initial aggro and you know about it! We pushed on through in the end though, and reached the main event, The Elusive Golemancer dungeon mission.
Blimm leaves us outside, warning us about the 'Security System', and in we go. This dungeon is mostly a puzzle based affair, stuffed with golems, few of which you actually have to fight in the traditional manner, and mostly, the various rooms are about working out what switch to pull, what socket to put what object in and so on. Interesting and different; +1, would play again!
Two points in particular stand out. The first was me getting very grumpy about an obviously bugged/broken part of one of the puzzles. I'd correctly realised that in order to survive one room full of fire dart traps, our party must activate a golem that then projects a ward-type ring about itself. While inside the ring, the darts do no damage. The golem then starts shuffling back and forth through the room. To get across, we needed to move with it, keeping in the ring. Easy enough.
Trouble is, half way across, the golem gets stuck, but the ring keeps going. Unsure if this was lag or a bug, or what, our party got scattered and a few Heroes got burned on down. This then causes those AI healers left who can resurrect to run back to them and stand still and try to cast the resurrect, which got them burnt to death, etc, etc. Bit of a farce really, and clearly not quite what was intended. We only got through because one of us made it far enough into the fire traps to 'tag' the next shrine along, so when we all died, we woke up on the far side of it all. Nice idea, but very sloppy.
The other was the "Indestructible" Golem, which my companion had worked out how to actually kill; another bug probably. The technique is extremely hard work though and needs very specific skills, as opposed to, say, picking up the Thing on the floor, charging it up in the glowing socket and dropping it next to the golem a few times, like you're supposed to, which seemed not to have occurred to my Necromancer friend.
Traps defeated, we found a rather grumpy and unhelpful Asura at the far end of it all, who refused to help, despite the obvious threat of DOOOOM for Everyone that the Destroyers pose. A bit of light reverse psychology later, "Well, we don't need you anyway!" Oola is on board, and we're back at Rata Sum, ready to look for Gadd, another Asura crazy. Most Asura so far seem to be largely walking personality disorders, with a spark of genius buried somewhere deep inside. I will be very surprised if The Weapon actually works and doesn't just make things worse, frankly...
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I'm that Special and Precious type of personality that tends to overanalyse trivial failings and misfortunate happenstance, and rather than admit to simply Not Being That Good at an MMO, tend fall back to the comfort blankets of Research, Stats, Analysis and Numbers to help salvage some tatters of Self-Esteem and compensate for simply not being that 1337 anymore, if ever.
After last week's abysmal failure to defeat the Remnant of Antiquities, I went back to the drawing board, and hard. I also went back to basics quite fiercely too. Elaborate mucking about with exotic Primary/Secondary Combos is fun, certainly, and its always very satisfying to make such a bizarre pairing of, say, Mesmer and Dervish work in some fashion, but when you get down to it, there's one thing that the Mesmer is very much designed to do, and that's Interrupt.
When targeting an enemy, you can see what he's doing by looking at the top of the screen. On the whole, they use the same skills that players do, and take the same amount of time to cast them. A given monster will always have the same 'skill bar', although they don't get eight slots and rarely get more than one profession to choose from.
When they use a skill, the icon appears, and the lil progress bar starts to fill, taking a varying amount of time depending on the skill's activation time. If you can use a skill on him that interrupts, before that bar completes, his action will fail to take place, and when that action can potentially be a sodding great rock falling on you from outer space, or indeed, laying down a massive and distant AoE Cripple/Bleed field, as the Remnant likes to do, that can't help but be a Good Thing! Pain Avoided! Yay!
One thing a Mesmer/Any can do that no other combination can, is increase ranks in Fast Casting. This makes the spells cast faster (duh!) which is useful generally, but in particular helps you beat an enemy caster to the draw with an interrupt spell. The Mesmer also has a large selection of Interrupt skills to choose from, most of which take only 0.25s to throw out. With FC at 12, that becomes 0.14s. The above Meteor spell example takes 3.00s to cast and is one of the easier ones to beat to the draw, but even so, there is still a significant human element to it all - hand-eye coordination and response timing.
Have a go at this:
Human Benchmark: Reaction Time Test (Flash)
I came up with an average of 262ms in 5 tries - longer than 0.25s. And that's just 'Click Now!' Interruptions in Guild Wars also involve decision-making; What type of skill is this? Is it a Spell or a Signet or a Stance, or what? Will this one kill us all, or should I hold my interrupt in reserve for the next one?
All this means that there are a lot of skills that the enemy will use, which even the most hyperactive tartrazine-fueled teenager simply won't be able to interrupt, so interruption is about choosing your moment, certainly, but the Mesmer can help even the odds somewhat. Here's my custom designed anti-Remnant interrupt build:
The Interruption of Sp-
Mesmer/Any
Fast Casting 14, Illusion 13, Inspiration 11, Sunspear Rank 8
Requires: Prophecies (#1), Nightfall (#3, #4, #5)
Equipment: Anything really, although look for staves or wand/focus that 'Halve the recharge time of spells, (x%)'. Halving the casting time isn't so important as all of the above are very fast already, being in the 0.25 bracket mostly. Three attributes are needed, rather than two, so Major or Superior Runes in some or all of them would be helpful. Watch the health hits though, and go with Sup Vigor and Survivor Insignias to compensate.
Its an old school build, with one purpose only - to stop the enemy getting spells out. There are two parts to it; the Slowdowns and the Interrupts proper. The Elite, #1 - Migraine, is a reasonable degen, but most importantly, doubles the time it takes for the enemy's activation bar to fill up, giving you twice as long to hit the 'Stop! Mesmer-time!' button. #2 -Arcane Conundrum is similar, has no degen, but does have an AoE effect. This is less important as you'll be focusing on one enemy at a time mostly. #3 - Frustration, only increases the time by 50%, but makes subsequent interrupts cause damage, which is nice. Other spells with a similar effect that might work here include Stolen Speed (Elite), Enchanter's Conundrum (Elite) or Confusing Images, all of which slow the enemy casting speed down in some manner.
Having slowed the bugger down, you now stand a much greater chance with the rest of the bar. There are a large number of possible choices for actual interrupts, but I've gone for Inspiration or Unattributed here. #4 - Cry of Pain is a decent choice in any build, particularly with high Sunspear Rank, and interrupts Skills rather than Spells as well as it's hex-based blast effect; handy! #5 - Web of Disruption is an interrupt that does Skills too, and lingers for a delayed second interrupt after 10s. Nice, but hard to know what an enemy is going to be doing in exactly 10s time. #6 - Leech Signet is a Signet (costs 0 mana), does Skills and can gain you energy if used right. #7 - Power Drain works on Spells and Chants (Paragons mostly) and gains energy too. #8 is my Spare Slot here - I've gone with a self-heal, but another interrupt would work here just as well, or another Slowdown. The Norn Skill "You Move Like a Dwarf" would work well - a knockdown. Knockdowns also automatically interrupt.
Reasonably simple to use. Tab through the targets until you find a suitable candidate. You should probably prioritise in order of average casting speed, to give yourself the best odds of doing the job:
Slowest Casting: Elementalists, Necromancers
Medium Casting: Monks, Ritualists
Fastest Casting: Mesmer, Dervish
And if all those are down, you can try your luck with unaided Skill interruption on Warriors, Assassins, Paragons and Rangers. Individual monster types may vary however; some Elementalist monsters use fast skills, and so on. Particular attention should be paid to specific Monster Skills, as these can often be extremely dangerous and/or annoying; Giant Stomp, Diamondshard Mist, etc, and keeping Boss monsters suppressed is core to the role here.
Once chosen, open with Migraine, and get ready on the interrupt section of the bar. Keep an eye on it's hexed status (purple down arrow) and apply the next Slowdown when each runs out. (I'm not sure if the Slowdowns stack - must test it more!). As you work on each set of monsters, you'll start to see which long spells each uses and which short ones. Casting time is something of a game balancing lever, so in general, the longer a spell takes to cast, the more devastating it will be when it finishes. You won't have enough interrupts recharging fast enough to totally suppress most monsters, to choose which to use and when, carefully.
Adding a Ranger Hero or Henchman with Broad Head Arrow and other bow attack interrupts can help cover the gaps and provide total lockdown on the target monster. Zho is a good choice for this, and Acolyte Jin and Magrid the Sly both make excellent Interrupt Archers if set up right. As the Slowdown is a hex on the monster, not a buff on you, assisting Rangers get its benefit too, particularly helpful as many of their interrupts are 'on the next shot', further adding delay and difficulty for them.
Don't worry about actually killing the monster - that is a job for the other members of your party. Your main job here is to identify the really dangerous enemy spells, and prevent them from happening. This can mean enemy heals as well as the big hitting enemy nukes. Do bear in mind though, given the reaction timing test above, some Skills you simply won't be able to beat, even with the Slowdowns piled on. Stances are all insta-cast, and even with Migraine, you'll be hard pressed to catch the 0.25s (now 0.5s) ones 100% of the time. It is definitely something that gets better with practice though, so don't give up!
I guess a Secondary Mesmer could use this build, although I'm not sure why anyone would entirely abandon their Primary profession. A lack of Fast Casting points will make life more difficult however. Possibly a more mixed Ranger/Mesmer based interrupt build might benefit from the use of Migraine and similar? I'm less familiar with the interrupt opportunities available to non-Mesmer, non-Rangers however.
Downsides of the build are largely that you do very little damage, meaning that careful thought needs to go into Henchmen and Hero selection - someone needs to do the actual killing. That's not your job however, and not why you're here. It has little in the way of self-defence, and involves a lot of standing still and staring intently at the very top of the screen, finger poised on mouse-button, while all the other squishies are running away from melee beatings. It becomes easy to forget to Run Away yourself, so try to keep an eye on the action as well from time to time and leg it if necessary.
The biggest downside I found, is that it requires a much greater level of sustained concentration than most other GW roles - you can't keep it up for hours at a time, as you can with more damage based PvE builds. You need to be alert all the time to get the most out of it, and this does get quite wearying. I found myself switching away from it to more regular builds quite often. In the right and specific place however, it becomes a party-saving godsend, and makes previously impossible things fairly straight-forward. If I ever find myself in that wretched last Factions mission again, this will be the build I'll try.
Its a hectic kind of sub-game, but rewarding when you can get it right. For much of our second romp through the Sepulchre of Dragrimmar, myself and a BHA equipped Magrid managed to play merry havoc with the various spider Necromancers and ice monster Elementalists; spell after spell met the 'click' noise and purple stalled progress bar. It all paid off the most at the end however. The Remnant of Antiquities managed to get a few spells out - I'm quite new to this afterall - but it was nothing like the massacre of our previous trip, and eventually, with much patient and determined interruption, we were avenged! Score one more for the Dungeon Handbook!