Barkshield and Cast times

gradii

If I have a shield from barkshield on me, and it absorbs 100% of the damage of a hit, is there still a chance to be interrupted or CC interrupted when casting?

vorphied

gradii said:

If I have a shield from barkshield on me, and it absorbs 100% of the damage of a hit, is there still a chance to be interrupted or CC interrupted when casting?

Damage taken isn't going to stop you from casting, regardless.

However, Barkshield does nothing to prevent CC. The only instance in which it would is if the CC effect were contingent on actual HP damage being inflicted, and I can't think of an example of that off the top of my head.

If you're asking this because you're weighing whether to go with Barkshield or not, the answer is to go for it. It's the most broadly useful armor enchant you could invest in right now.

gradii

no, I use barkshield already. But I've had the ice patch in spell mastery becuase if I cant apply it at range my steal time will get interrupted 99% of the time I try and cast it. If I had a way of NOT being constantly interrupted (steal time is bugged- interrupting it puts it on full cooldown) I could afford to put something else on mastery.

vorphied

gradii said:

no, I use barkshield already. But I've had the ice patch in spell mastery becuase if I cant apply it at range my steal time will get interrupted 99% of the time I try and cast it. If I had a way of NOT being constantly interrupted (steal time is bugged- interrupting it puts it on full cooldown) I could afford to put something else on mastery.

Your Steal Time cast will be interrupted whenever something pushes, pulls, or otherwise causes CC; simply being hit is not enough. Yes, I'm familiar with its behavior, and it can be annoying. Rather than trying to use Icy Terrain to root them from a short distance (for all of the 0.25s that any mob with CC resist remains rooted), I do one of two things:

- Run into the mob group, drop Icy Terrain, then walk or teleport out of it to start casting Steal Time as the mobs close the gap. Steal Time will slow their advance, and they'll be stunned by the time they're back in melee range.

- Bait mob attack animations for a moment and then cast. The majority of enemies have slow-activating attacks, and other enemy types tend to use their most annoying powers immediately (like some of the Barbarian-type enemies who will try to pull you in). Get mob attention, teleport once as they wind up for their attacks, then cast whatever. You can avoid interruption and typically hit more enemies since most of them will have converged on your first location and spent at least a full second swinging at where you were.

gradii

So what do you put on spell mastery? to me enfeebling ray looks like the best choice becuase it adds 10% more damage taken.

vorphied

gradii said:

So what do you put on spell mastery? to me enfeebling ray looks like the best choice becuase it adds 10% more damage taken.

Personally I put Disintegrate there for lack of anything better. Ray of Enfeeblement has a longer CD and isn't as useful when a target dies before all of its damage can be delivered.

As stated by someone in another thread, Shard of the Endless Avalanche is another option for Arcanist AoE. I don't much care for it, but you may find it helpful to push into a group if you want to buy a little extra time. Some mobs take a few seconds to get up, while others pop back up instantly. The damage isn't great, but Wizard AoE in general isn't great, so you do the best you can. Disintegrate if you want to have something to snipe elites and stragglers on a short CD, SotEA if you fancy aiming a rock into mobs every ~19s for more damage per cast

One more note regarding Shard: I haven't checked lately, but it used to be the case that the Shard would disappear if the caster were CCed, so if you use it, make sure you can summon and push it without interference.

Have I mentioned that Wizard AoE sucks?

gradii

Arcanist aoe sucks, but Thaumaturge aoe is godlike, problem is thaumaturge single target is lacking enough that people dont like them in boss fights.

vorphied

> @gradii said:
> Arcanist aoe sucks, but Thaumaturge aoe is godlike, problem is thaumaturge single target is lacking enough that people dont like them in boss fights.

Thaum is also terrible at AoE. Both Wizard paragons have slow and weak AoE compared to other DPS options.

Remember that the expectation is to change your loadout before boss fights when possible. You can play Thaum for dungeon AoE and swap to your single target Arcanist spec for bosses.

gradii

Its almost never possible to change loadout before a boss. its only in dungeons like LOMM and harder that people dont buttrush ahead faster than you can swap.

vorphied

gradii said:

Its almost never possible to change loadout before a boss. its only in dungeons like LOMM and harder that people dont buttrush ahead faster than you can swap.

Most lvl 70 and 80 dungeons have gated boss areas with a campfire. LoMM is actually an oddball in that it offers a campfire right before the second boss but lacks one right after it, so you have to swap your powers on the fly. You can't change your loadout until a few rooms later.