Avenger's Shield Interrupt

I scanned through the threads, and didn't see one for this.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26850258482&sid=1

All credit to Dekkar for posting his tests and findings.

Dalliah the Doomsayer (in Heroic Arcatraz)

I took this screenshot shortly after she died. She attempted a heal, but I interrupted it with AS. I also interrupted one earlier on with HoJ, which shows up as "Interrupt" in Recount. AS shows up specifically as "Avenger's Shield" and will say "interrupted by" in the combat log. If a mob is immune to the silence, IMMUNE no longer displays over their head, because the debuff just does not get applied at all. I think this is a result of it going from a talent proc effect to a debuff.


http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/7718/w ... 232105.jpg


Unbound Seer (below Dalaran, Crystalsong Forest)

Ignore the first instance of Avenger's Shield. A mage killed that mob while I was trying to test. The second one is the one you should look at. Notice how after I cast it, it interrupts, but it ALSO says "is afflicted by Dekkar's Avenger's Shield". That's the silence. It does both an interrupt and silence if you catch something casting. Both last 3 seconds though.


http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/1735 ... 233253.jpg



So Alandrek, I hope this is proof enough. I can't solo my way to a raid boss that I know is immune to silence, so this is the best I can give. Here are my thoughts and observations:


1. It looks like the combat log changed.

2. The interrupt from Avenger's Shield is now *instant*. It interrupts the moment you cast it, before the shield even hits the mob. Missile speed of the flying shield is not a factor. I repeat, MISSILE SPEED IS NOT A FACTOR IN THE INTERRUPT! Woot!

3. The silence from Avenger's Shield is not instant. Missile speed matters. It's still delayed slightly.

4. AS and HoJ are of course on the GCD. Despite this fact, I feel we're in a much better place regarding interrupts than we are on live. We're the only class (lol, I know the devs love this phrase!) that has an interrupt on a random proc that also does damage, so it has to be on the GCD. I can live with that. It would be nice if HoJ could be glyphed to be off the GCD while removing the stun component.

5. The silence from Avenger's Shield shows as being AFFLICTED by the debuff in the combat log. The aura for it is bugged and doesn't display over the target's head with the SILENCED! yellow tag if you have auras and effects on.

6. Avenger's Shield both interrupts and silences mobs. If the mob is immune to silence, it suffers a 3-second interrupt. It's unknown whether it suffers a school lockout if caught casting simultaneously.

7. IMMUNE is *not* displayed over the mob's heads if they're immune to the silence. The debuff called "Avenger's Shield" just simply does not apply itself. This is likely due to the fact that Avenger's Shield silence is now built into the ability. Being "afflicted by Avenger's Shield" is the same as being "afflicted by Strangulate". The silence is on the ability itself. Avenger's Shield essentially now behaves like Strangulate from a game mechanics standpoint, except that it does damage and is on the GCD as a result of its damage dealing capability.

8. The stun and interrupt component of HoJ are separate effects. IMMUNE still shows up if they're immune to the stun. The interrupt component is labeled "interrupt" in the combat log, and it doesn't show what caused it. This is possibly a bug. However, this is likely related to point #7, because the interrupt on HoJ is now talented through Vindication. Talented effects seem to be calculated in the combat log as separate effects.

The travel effect of AS seems rather advantageous at this point, then. The interrupt happens immediately, stopping any cast in process. Shortly thereafter the silence hits, locking out future casts. The travel time on the silence ought to extend its duration slightly, effectively giving us an extra quarter- to half-second where the mob's casting process is disrupted.

Is it possible to test this on a player? (Would require them to become immune to Silence but not Interrupt.)

KysenMurrin wrote:Is it possible to test this on a player? (Would require them to become immune to Silence but not Interrupt.)

This shouldn't be too hard to test on a player. A spell school lock caused from interuptions will trigger cooldowns to all abilites tied to that spell school, whereas a silence will only come up as a debuff to the affected player. Example, a mage that has his Arcane Missiles interupted would cause Arcane Missles, Arcane Blast, Arcane Explosion, Arcane Barrage, Polymorph, etc etc to all trigger a cooldown since his/her arcane school would be locked down. Since Avengers Shield spell locks for 3 secs, the said abilities will trigger a 3 second cooldown.

Hafta say the AS changes are pretty good thus far. Other change are sucky but not this one.

Actually I think this change is horrible. AS is in our rotation and on the GCD, we can't be saving it to interrupt casts. In PvP, Grand Crusader procs become deadly RNG for the other team; nobody can cope with being spam interrupted and silenced between.

That said, it should be trivial to test on another player because the interrupt lands before the silence.

I'm interested in seeing if there is an actual improvment in HoJ. Somehow they always stuff it down our throat in the tank tree like it may mean something.

Sinnegorth wrote:I'm interested in seeing if there is an actual improvment in HoJ. Somehow they always stuff it down our throat in the tank tree like it may mean something.

With the gaps in our rotation, it was a nice button to push just to stop getting beat on for a few seconds. With the way they did the tree, making ImpHoJ an optional talent, I don't see it being that useful other than the random stun/interrupt it is on live.

Having fought some caster mobs recently on the beta. I can't say I'm impressed. Casters still hurt like hell and you have such a large gap between silence/interupt periods.

Another band-aid fix as usual it seems.

I like the HoJ glyphe idea.
With another point (3) in the Improved HoJ talent (giving a 30s CD reduce) it would work well, I think.

AS on the other hand will most likely cause some whining in pvp (arena) and prevent that from happening, maybe even get some nerfs as soon as the changes go life.

Yeah, I really can't see AS staying how it is due to PVP QQ. They already complain about how Ret paladins 'stun lock' people with HoJ and this is 10x worse than that. Silence/Interrupt every 15s plus random proc plus HoJ plus ShoR burst. Can't run us out of mana anymore because DP was replaced by JotW. Can't kill us because we have tank survivability, though we've lost SS and JoL and 35% AD. We gained another activated cooldown for when you're being focused and the ability to use DP AND DS consecutively.

We still have no gap closer and seal of justice now requires us to be in melee range to apply the 100% movement lock. Since we can no longer cleanse magic effects makes us rely only on Hand of Freedom to get out of snares. Which can be reaplied easily after freedom runs out.

We lost some defence vs getting more offence. We don't have near the tank reductions we used to have. I wouldn't worry too much abuot the pvp qq. Blizzard fully expects pvp to be a mess untill everyone gets new pvp sets. Think begining of wrath. Tanks destroyed people at the start due to default dmg reduction talents and no resilience. Once everyone gears up we can start bitching about balance.