Make Interrupt Time Enhancement Do What People Think It Does

[aethereal]

Everyone sees enhancements to reduce interrupt time and imagines that they will, you know, reduce the time you spend sitting around waiting to cast your interruptible power.

 

They don't.  They just reduce how much of that time is interruptible.  So if there's ordinarily a 3 second interrupt period, with 100% interrupt enhancement, it's still a 3 second period, but one half of it is interruptible (the first 1.5 seconds) and the second half still happens, but if you get hit during it your power isn't interrupted (the second 1.5 seconds).

 

With Assassin's Strikes and Snipes now mostly skipping the interrupt period in combat situations, it feels like we should make it do what people expect: actually reduce the amount of time you spend waiting around.

 

This would help make Snipe sets, which include interrupt time reduction, feel a little less like a waste of an enhancement bonus.  Not a LOT less, because it's still meaningless in combat, but at least you get something from it.

 

Alternately:  Replace all the interrupt-time-reduction components of snipe sets with range eenhancement.

Edited February 11, 2022 by aethereal

[Aurora_Girl]

100% into the alternate idea, not so much thinking the first one is needed.

[Vanden]

Interrupt enhancements already do exactly what I thought they did

[Cancrusher]

I'm going to confess, that I didn't realize they worked that way.  I always throw one into rest, because I assumed it would take less time for the rest to complete.  More the fool, am I, it seems. 🤷‍♂️

 

I suppose that was an exercise in stating the obvious.  😛

[Glacier Peak]

Interrupt enhancements already do what they are described to do. Reduce the interruptable time of a power. 

 

Are you recommending a new enhancement category that reduces activation time?

[Rudra]

I always thought the activation time was the short time after the long interrupt time and the mid-combat use was just the activation time without the lead-in interrupt time. So I also thought interrupt time enhancements made the snipe fire sooner. Shows how little I know.... whoops.

 

Edit: According to Mids, Dark Blast's Moonbeam has a cast time of 1.33s. According to the game, it has an activation time of 3.33s, with a 2s interrupt. So if I'm reading this right, it has a cast time of 1.33s with a 2s interruptible charge up. So yeah, I was under the impression that interrupt enhancements reduced that 2s interrupt time, then the 1.33s cast time was layered on top, for a faster firing snipe. Live and learn I guess. Oh well.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Rudra
Reason for edit in post.

[Naraka]

If you ask me, I think the interrupt attacks got way too much leeway with the HC changes.  The AS change was already implemented but I still think it got off too easy. If you want to use AS interrupt free, you should have to have 3 focus up the moment you click it.  For snipes, you should need a heightened level of perception (+ToHit) to get that no-interrupt snipe OR build up enough interrupt redux to make it insta and ontop of that, give Defender Vigilance a bonus to one of the ST attacks (usually the snipe) to help the AT solo.

 

That aside, I think the IO bonuses for snipes get a bit of a pass because you often only are able to slot one.  Also, maybe give Stalker AS the option of slotting snipe IOs into AS for variety (and if enough interrupt redux is slotted, make the hidden AS as fast as the current unhidden combat AS).

 

 

[Rudra]

Uhm... how do you get 3 focus ups? I see no such enhancement and the build up power only has a 10s duration.... You lost me. As for the snipe, you're saying getting Tactics should be sufficient to not have the interrupt time? I don't really understand your post.

 

Anyway, Experienced Marksman is a set I've never heard of before but found. It has a single enhancement (Range/Fast Snipe) that makes all snipes instant cast abilities. So I guess we can just slot that 1 enhancement... but... I agree that it makes sense for the interrupt enhancements to reduce the interrupt time, not just make a portion of it not interruptible. I'm probably in the minority on this though.

[srmalloy]

On 2/11/2022 at 9:07 AM, aethereal said:

With Assassin's Strikes and Snipes now mostly skipping the interrupt period in combat situations, it feels like we should make it do what people expect: actually reduce the amount of time you spend waiting around.

Okay, sure. Now, remember that animation time is partly determined by the amount of primary effect that a power does, so attacks that do more damage will generally have a longer animation time, which means that if you slot an enhancement that decreases the length of the animation, it should also decrease the amount of damage that the power does (cf. how combat snipes do less damage than 'slow' snipes). I'm sure you'll see lots of people rushing out to slot enhancements that lower the damage of their interruptible attacks just to get a slightly shorter animation time.

[arcane]

On 2/11/2022 at 5:52 PM, Rudra said:

Edit: According to Mids, Dark Blast's Moonbeam has a cast time of 1.33s. According to the game, it has an activation time of 3.33s, with a 2s interrupt. So if I'm reading this right, it has a cast time of 1.33s with a 2s interruptible charge up. So yeah, I was under the impression that interrupt enhancements reduced that 2s interrupt time, then the 1.33s cast time was layered on top, for a faster firing snipe. Live and learn I guess. Oh well.

Snipes fire one of two powers (quick and normal), and it’s possible you’ve got stuff mixed up between the two. Look at Aid Self and see if it makes more sense since that one doesn’t have 2 sets of metrics.

Edited February 13, 2022 by arcane

[aethereal]

5 hours ago, srmalloy said:

Okay, sure. Now, remember that animation time is partly determined by the amount of primary effect that a power does, so attacks that do more damage will generally have a longer animation time, which means that if you slot an enhancement that decreases the length of the animation, it should also decrease the amount of damage that the power does (cf. how combat snipes do less damage than 'slow' snipes). I'm sure you'll see lots of people rushing out to slot enhancements that lower the damage of their interruptible attacks just to get a slightly shorter animation time.

The damage formula does not include animation time.

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

The damage formula does not include animation time.

Procs do. Now a days a great deal of damage comes from procs.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

Procs do. Now a days a great deal of damage comes from procs.

 

I mean, in a fairly unimportant way, sure (Edit:  this was unclear.  The cast time of a power has a non-zero, but fairly unimportant effect on the proc rate).  I have no idea if interrupt time is counted in proc rates, but if it is, shaving a couple of seconds off of the combined cast + cooldown time of, what, slow snipes and slow assassin's strike seem deeply unlikely to make anyone sad.  If it does, they could, you know, not slot interrupt time reduction -- we have the same dynamic, but much, much, much more relevantly, for recharge time reduction.

Edited February 14, 2022 by aethereal

[Rudra]

I really don't see proc damage being adversely affected by the ability to shave off a second from the long wind up of the non-combat snipe.

[TheZag]

Ill admit that i thought interrupt time reduction enhancements were a reduction of the interrupt time not a reduction of the interruptable time.  But i only play 1 character with a blast powerset with any regularity and its ice blast so i dont even have a snipe.

 

Id rather see interrupt time reduced from the enhancement.  Yes the enhancement would mean your damage per activation time would increase but damage enhancements make your damage per activation time increase as well.  The difference here would be that after the first cast you are in combat and the interrupt time enhancement does absolutely nothing until you exit combat again.  Seems fair enough for interrupt time enhancements to increase DPA once per combat cycle.  And if they reduce proc rates on that initial snipe then i think players should feel completely free to not use them.  But i was unaware of cast times affecting proc rates,  i thought it was just the recharge time of a power that changed it.

[Zeraphia]

I think for me, it's just that interrupt enhancements are completely not worth even slotting. That may sound very harsh, but it's just how it is. All Snipes are better off with their actual Sniping sets (especially Manticore's...) 

 

I think the bigger issue is there is no set with interrupt time as its enhancement thats worth slotting as an IO set. 

[Rudra]

Uhm... all the sniping sets, including Manticore, include interrupt enhancements....

 

Edit: Except for Exploit Weakness for some reason....

Edited February 14, 2022 by Rudra

[Zeraphia]

2 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Uhm... all the sniping sets, including Manticore, include interrupt enhancements....

This is true but in the way you build most the time, you tend to skip the specific ones that include interrupt if you can avoid it in favor of damage/accuracy/recharge/endurance. There are a lot of things that are interruptible that are not snipes that could get something out of being a set worth slotting for general purposes.