Interrupts - do you use them?

[Achilles]

I'm trying to understand, Elerond, but I just can't. So I'm giving up. Good luck!

[Elerond]

I'm trying to understand, Elerond, but I just can't. So I'm giving up. Good luck!

 

I don't know what there is so hard to understand?

 

Topic idea is to converse how to make interrupt more interesting mechanic and I voiced opinion that mechanics behind interrupt should first make more clearer for players by offering them ability see all the interrupt rolls.

 

Or do you mean that you don't understand how it's active use of interrupt mechanic if you target attacks from character with high interrupt value towards enemies that use abilities/spells which effects you don't want in play and therefore giving you higher change to delay their ability/spell use and give you party more time to kill said enemy before anything bad happens?. Or do you not understand why I think that such use of interrupt mechanic feels currently waster of effort?

 

I just have difficulty to comprehend what you don't understand or what was the problem in first place in this whole conversation.

[Achilles]

@teioh_white I give Pallegina interrupting blows. Between that, her natural perception, and zealous focus/critical focus, she's a beast. Favorite thing to do is to have Kana chanting with the concentration and frighten phrases on loop and an Estoc on one side of an enemy and Pallegina with the above set up on the other. He's debuffing the enemy's concentration, she's buffing both of their hit/crit percentages, their both flanking and hitting with long duration interrupt weapons...I've seen them tag-team Thaos in <15 seconds (and prevented him from hopping into either of his back-ups). Glorious.

[Achilles]

@elerond interrupt doesn't work the way you think it does and doesn't need to be tweaked because it's working as intended. There's nothing to make "more interesting" because it's 100% passive and happens behind the scenes. If you don't understand how it works, I've explained it here and there's a hole thread devoted to it in Character Builds (assuming that it isn't in the cyclopedia).

 

There. Is that sufficiently clear?

[Elerond]

@elerond interrupt doesn't work the way you think it does and doesn't need to be tweaked because it's working as intended. There's nothing to make "more interesting" because it's 100% passive and happens behind the scenes. If you don't understand how it works, I've explained it here and there's a hole thread devoted to it in Character Builds (assuming that it isn't in the cyclopedia).

 

There. Is that sufficiently clear?

 

Interrupt works as I think it works, but you don't seem to understand what is my problem with it.

[Infinitron]

This conversation reminds me of the "works as coded" meme from The Daily WTF.

Edited November 25, 2015 by Infinitron

[aweigh0101]

all i know is that I've roflstomped WM areas with 3 martial units using 0.75 sec interrupt weapons each, and all three units with 18+ Perception plus Interrupting Blows ability and the mechanic works exactly as you think it does based on the Cyclopedia information.

the Ice Trolls would get almost permanently stunlocked by my 3 interrupters as well as the Ogres; versus the fish people interrupts didn't enter into the equation since they just paralyze your units regardless of whatever the player input is (there is no player agency involved).

the only reliable way to defeat them is to clog up their affliction pipelines with units while laying down your own CC/AoE's, but this is a whole other discussion.

Interrupting Blows + 18+ Perception on casters is even more succuesful in stunlocking enemies when combined with spells.

As for how you can more "actively" control Interrupts all that's needed is manual timing of your units attacks and also what weapons they use. The best way to interrupt an enemy is to hit them DURING their animation, be it an attack or a spell, therefore sometimes it is recommended that you not just left-click > gang-attack but actually stagger your units' blows on the enemy so that each one catches the mob just as the previous interrupt is wearing off.

An easier way to manage this staggering of interrupting attacks is to have the 4 interrupt durations represented via each unit sporting a different weapon with a different interrupt duration.

Personally I prefer using 0.75/1.0 sec interrupt weapons and simply micro-managing the blows. When in doubt, buff Perception on a caster and give him interrupting blows and watch AoE's debuff and interrupt while your martial units begin to control space.

it IS an underused mechanic, and it ISN'T explained well in-game: it's taken me 3 full play-throughs to even begin to utilize it beneficially, and it has absolutely crept into my meta-gaming power-builds. Right now I finished a 4th play-through, and in this last one (and in every playthrough onwards) I picked interrupting blows on every single unit and think it is 100% essential to any build.

[Cantousent]

This is fascinating. On my current run, I was using a lot of CC, as I think most folks do, especially when they see how effective it is. Now, I've been staggering CC to get off just as the foe is getting close to finishing a spell. If I mix and match with high interrupt melee attacks, I can skate through just about every fight, which is particularly useful for the first forays against ogre druids in the endless paths.

 

I lack the skill or game theory knowledge to contribute to the thread, but that doesn't mean I can't voice a little appreciation for it.

[Guest 4ward]

 

as others have stated, interrupts are either random (with premade chars) or stunlock oppopnents (with player generated chars) and simply are an action taking up time while if i'd want to break from melee and move/reposition as a tactic i need to do that instantly and that only goes by simply clicking somewhere with your mouse (with the melee system gone).

[Boeroer]

By lowering concentration. For example with the phrase "Thick Grew Their Tongues, Stumbling O'er Words". Well, that's not really an active usage of interrupts, but it still helps.

 

Edit: Terrifying also helps and stacks with this...

Edited November 26, 2015 by Boeroer

[Achilles]

And that's the point (which apparently bears repeating): there are things you can do to improve the math, but that's it.

 

Even in aweigh0101's scenario, you're at the mercy of a d100 roll.

[Boeroer]

Aren't you always?

[Achilles]

Too funny.

 

You were oblivious to this two posts ago (hence why the obvious was repeated).

[tdphys]

One way to make things more interesting would be to require spell casting to give a penalty to concentration.. the higher level the spell, the more the penalty.  Then you need to make the casting action of larger spells long enough to allow interrupting.  

[Infinitron]

One way to make things more interesting would be to require spell casting to give a penalty to concentration.. the higher level the spell, the more the penalty.  Then you need to make the casting action of larger spells long enough to allow interrupting.  

 

Right, that's exactly the sort of thing that I'm talking about.

 

So you have a general interrupt system but it's particularly useful for spell disruption. You use it for spell disruption first where it's more immediately reliable, then go "Hey, maybe with some effort I could use this for other purposes as well". 

 

In general, Pillars of Eternity has a lot of "general" systems that would be easier to make players "opt in" to if they were additionally tuned to be particularly useable in more "specific" situations like that. The best of both worlds.

Edited November 27, 2015 by Infinitron

[WorstUsernameEver]

I generally agree with Infinitron if the purpose is to make Interrupt more valuable on a mechanical level, but in terms of usability, adding even more inputs to the formula would just discourage your average player from using the mechanic even more.

[Boeroer]

Too funny.

 

You were oblivious to this two posts ago (hence why the obvious was repeated).

Nay.

 

I just think interrupts are working ok and you can do something to improve them if you want. Like you can improve your chance to do crits and so on.

But I get your point. An active ability that would give you a higher chance of interrupting (like Barbaric Blow does for crits for example) would indeed be nice - but I don't really miss stuff like that. So now I call it quits. Don't want to step on anybody's toes...

 

p.s.: Maybe I'm funny though.

 

p.p.s.: Also: I had two glasses of port wine when I posted that - I can hardly remember...

Edited November 27, 2015 by Boeroer

[Achilles]

I generally agree with Infinitron if the purpose is to make Interrupt more valuable on a mechanical level, but in terms of usability, adding even more inputs to the formula would just discourage your average player from using the mechanic even more.

The mechanic isn't "used" now. Just like a critical hit, an interrupt is the result of circumstance.

Edited November 27, 2015 by Achilles

[tdphys]

 

One way to make things more interesting would be to require spell casting to give a penalty to concentration.. the higher level the spell, the more the penalty.  Then you need to make the casting action of larger spells long enough to allow interrupting.  

 

Right, that's exactly the sort of thing that I'm talking about.

 

So you have a general interrupt system but it's particularly useful for spell disruption. You use it for spell disruption first where it's more immediately reliable, then go "Hey, maybe with some effort I could use this for other purposes as well". 

 

In general, Pillars of Eternity has a lot of "general" systems that would be easier to make players "opt in" to if they were additionally tuned to be particularly useable in more "specific" situations like that. The best of both worlds.

 

 

The nice thing is it would lead to some asymmetric strategies... spell casting could become bigger and more meaningful... ala BG2 upper level spells,  maybe we could quiet some of the old "wizards aren't demi gods" crowd,  but then you'd also have to actually protect your magic user to make it happen.   However, the only problem with that is there's already some pretty serious wizard defenses out there.   What really needs to happen is to divorce interrupt with hitting, or perhaps make interrupts happen on a graze up without relying on the crit/hit/graze modifiers.  ( I think that those affect the interrupt chance, don't they?) maybe hit and graze have the regular interrupt chance, but crit is a guaranteed interrupt.

Edited November 27, 2015 by tdphys

[WorstUsernameEver]

 

I generally agree with Infinitron if the purpose is to make Interrupt more valuable on a mechanical level, but in terms of usability, adding even more inputs to the formula would just discourage your average player from using the mechanic even more.

The mechanic isn't "used" now. Just like a critical hit, an interrupt is the result of circumstance.

 

I got that the first time, thank you very much. What I mean is that players can specifically go for abilities/spells/weapons with high interrupts and build a character that can get Interrupts more often. But if that's only good for very specific actions that have to be recognized by the player, the mechanics get mudded even further, discouraging all but the nerdiest minmaxers from trying to exploit Interrupts fully by skewing the circumstances.

[Infinitron]

Josh Sawyer says: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3706905&pagenumber=678#post453245797

 

Edited November 28, 2015 by Infinitron

[Achilles]

 

 

I generally agree with Infinitron if the purpose is to make Interrupt more valuable on a mechanical level, but in terms of usability, adding even more inputs to the formula would just discourage your average player from using the mechanic even more.

The mechanic isn't "used" now. Just like a critical hit, an interrupt is the result of circumstance.

 

I got that the first time, thank you very much. What I mean is that players can specifically go for abilities/spells/weapons with high interrupts and build a character that can get Interrupts more often. But if that's only good for very specific actions that have to be recognized by the player, the mechanics get mudded even further, discouraging all but the nerdiest minmaxers from trying to exploit Interrupts fully by skewing the circumstances.

 

Yes, I definitely got that impression when you posted the word "using".

 

I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me what "very specific actions that have to be recognized by the player" means. I'm also still at a loss to understand what is so complicated (aka "mudded") about an interrupt vs concentration roll. And you're gonna get mad at me for repeating myself again, but as I stated earlier, Durance (with a -3 Interrupt) still rolls a lot of interrupts. So, yes, the "nerdiest minmaxers" *can* do some things to juice interrupt, but they are probably doing so at the expense of other things. You're more than welcome to create a list of game mechanics that nerdy minmaxers have never, ever done this with.

 

Ta-ta

Edited November 28, 2015 by Achilles

[evilcat]

Best interup i use is death. Solves all the problems.

There is also variety of interups like mass knockdown or stuck from spells.

Interupts just are here, and sometimes the are nice. Like having this dual wielding fast beating ogre and stucking him out of action.

 

But it is not something i build for, since there is no interrupt build. Stacking percepcion does not count.

 

One thing to do would be to add talent:

Everlasting Interrupt - Your interupts last twice as long.

Lockdown - when you interupt, you actually stun target (useful for rogues)

Pet peeve (ranger only) - your companion attacks have higher chance for interupting and interupts last longer

Still probably nobody will take that, but some maybe would mess with the idea for lols which is good enought, if someone have fun it is ok.

Edited December 19, 2015 by evilcat

[anameforobsidian]

I would probably make interrupt an effect of specific abilities / spells.  Minoletta's Missiles would get it.  Maybe you could have a mageslayer modal for melee weapons that would give interrupts.  Or maybe you could boost rogue interrupts to make them a bit more desirable.

Edited December 19, 2015 by anameforobsidian