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Wildstar Dungeon Interrupts

Milleuda

Mother Hen
This is a copy/paste from reddit but is a good read. It's good to know what interrupts other classes can bring to help establish the rotation.

http://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/2apblj/dungeon_interrupts_the_129_strategy/

As many players are figuring out, solid interrupts are the key to success in dungeons.
Benefits include:
  • Increased group damage with moments of opportunity
  • Preventing dangerous casts
  • Dramatically reducing overall damage taken
  • Keeping things grouped together for area damage
  • Developing good communication and teamwork
  • Feeling awesome when you interrupt every single cast on a pull of multiple targets
I've been spending much of my time in Sanctuary of the Swordmaiden to help get people through their attunement process, and played with a wide range of group compositions. Thanks to some great insight from a variety of players, I've developed a sense of what each class offers to interrupt rotations and general best practices. Through this I've come to adopt what I call the 12-9 strategy for interrupts. This strategy is focused on base population pulls, though you can use the same rotations and principles for many boss fights.

The Basics

For this strategy, everyone should contribute at least 2 interrupts. This includes the healer, because when this strategy is executed correctly there is very little damage taken by anyone. Ideally 2 or 3 members run 3 interrupts. In my groups, this is the typical interrupt contributions by class:
  • Warrior - They typically run 2 separate abilities for 1 each, though with some arm twisting can run 3. More arm twisting is needed for a dps warrior to run 3, but if you're struggling to come up with enough, it is worth it. Warriors are interruption all stars because with cooldown reduction AMPs they have a 17 second cooldown on their interrupts.
  • Spellslinger - I've been grouping with a lot of spellslingers lately, and both dps and healers have increasingly adopted running 3. Gate takes some practice, but is well worth using. DPS spellslingers with Trigger Fingers are also interruption all stars, due to shortening their cooldowns.
  • Esper - They typically run 2 separate abilities for 1 each, with fairly long cooldown. I tend to have them last in a rotation since they don't tend to come back up for a second cast. Splitting up their interrupts to go with 2 separate people or with 1 warrior (1 with the warrior's 1st interrupts, and 1 with the 2nd) seems to work well.
  • Engineer - Both dps and tank engineers can comfortably run 3, though it may take a little adjustment to get used to being close enough for the 3rd. I play an engineer tank and run 3 for 100% of dungeon runs outside of boss fights. Cooldown is 27 seconds with cooldown reduction AMPs.
  • Stalker - They typically run 2 separate abilities for 1 each. They can run a 3rd but it is a bit unreliable. Cooldown is 21 seconds with cooldown reduction AMPs.
  • Medic - They typically run 1 ability for 2. The cooldown is 30 seconds. I've heard this ability's interaction with the cooldown reduction AMPs is broken or unreliable.
Once you've taken stock of who can run what sort of interrupts, it's time to set up rotations. We'll start with the more basic 9 strategy.

The 9 Strategy

If you are transitioning from less organized interrupts, this is a good place to get started. The idea here is to run 9 total interrupts, with at least 2 total per person except for 1 person who may have 0 or 1. You then set up 3 types of rotations based on the number of interrupt armor the enemies in the pull have. Put the lowest cooldown people first, so that they can get another interrupt in after the rotation has completed once. For overall priority for going first I tend to put dps spellslingers first, followed by warriors, followed by anyone who is soloing 3 interrupts.
  • 2 armor rotation: Groups A, B, C each with 3 total, hence the "9 strategy"
  • 1 armor rotation: 4 party members one at a time, hence a minimum of 2 each. If you have an extra you may be able to have all 5 participate.
  • Mixed armor rotation: These are groups that typically have 1 target with 2 armor, and additional targets with 1 armor. On the 2 armor target, set up 2 groups of 3 total, leaving 1 group with 2 on the 1 armor targets. If you have an extra you may be able to get an extra person for the 1 armor targets.
This strategy will occasionally require you hold back a group for a critical cast until the earlier groups come back up.

The 12 Strategy

Hopefully the 9 strategy is treating you well and you're seeing a night and day difference in speed and smoothness of clearing dungeons. I was on the 9 strategy for a long time, until some great players opened my eye to the next level of interrupt coordination. As big of a difference you saw going from disorganized interrupts to the 9 strategy, you may see again with the 12 strategy. If you're running double dps warrior groups all the time or just have really high group dps, there may not be much benefit, but it can make less powerful dungeon compositions really close the gap to compete with those sort of groups. We had a Stormtalon's Lair run with engineer tank, spellslinger healer, spellslinger/medic/engineer dps finish in 22 minutes, right on pace with one of our double dps warrior runs. With the 12 strategy comes a real feeling of control and teamwork, as you basically keep pulls on complete lockdown as you bombard them with area damage.
  • 2 armor rotation: Groups A, B, C, D each with 3 total, hence the "12 strategy"
  • 1 armor rotation: All 5 party members one at a time, hence a minimum of 2 each
  • Mixed armor rotation: These are groups that typically have 1 target with 2 armor and additional targets with 1 armor. On the 2 armor target, set up 2 groups of 3 total. On the 1 armor target, set up 3 groups of 2 total.
With this strategy it is typically not necessary to skip any casts in favor of a critical cast, except for certain niche boss situations. For example, on the leaping miniboss in Swordmaiden we let leaps cast unless it is about to die.

General Tips

Depending on the pull, you may be able to repeat the rotation from the beginning once it is done. When in doubt resort to calling when you've got the next cast after the rotation has finished or things have somehow fallen apart.
For Kel Voreth you will likely need to call out some additional rotations for the 3 and 4 armor targets, which isn't too hard to do once you're used to working this way.
As a tank I often call out what rotation to use for a pull, especially as the group is getting started.
The 1 armor rotation is also very useful for packs of 0 or 1 armor mobs that go all over the place like the bees and swarm crawlers in Swordmaiden. In this situation, we ignore the cast bars and simply start the rotation whenever the enemies are grouped close together. The next person goes once they see the enemies start to move again. This keeps them grouped up for area damage, which I've found makes them far less annoying to deal with and speeds things up more than the moments of opportunity. You'll get a few incidental moments of opportunity this way anyway.

Communication

There can be a bit of learning time as people get used to executing the rotations. I've found that people start to get the hang of it after a couple pulls, and good communication helps a lot. For communication I tend to suggest that people say something like "Alice went, Bob next." After the initial rotation, you may need to change to just calling when you've got the next cast, like "Eve next." For the mixed pulls you may need to add the target name for clarity. For example "Alice went, Bob next on cats" or "Eve next on cats." Call out if you've used yours especially if you miss and just continue to the next group in the rotation. If there's a mistake where someone goes early, do the same and go to the next group.
Thank you for reading and I'd love to hear any tips you have for dungeon interrupts.

TL;DR Interrupts are love, interrupts are life. How many interrupts is enough for a dungeon group? 9 is adequate, 12 is glorious.
 
Funny that a healer posted this ... really helps when that tank doesn't take damage XD

Um yes... it makes a BIG difference when there are interrupts to prevent damage. Plus, with the chain pulling that happens for the silver runs it prevents OOM situations when you aren't blowing all your cool downs on trash mobs.
 
Me and Subtle were able to 2 man that optional boss in STL on the jump pad from 150k because of my solid 3 interrupts available at every cast. It's so useful, I cringe when DPS have 0-1 interrupts. "It breaks my dps rotation" is a bad excuse when MOO increase dps by 200% across the board for those 4 seconds every 10 seconds.
 
I would love to run Gate(2) and Arcane Shock as a healer, but I do like my current build. I run void pact most of the time and I find it pretty useful. I would have to change my AMPS to make it work, and then I would be angry if I didn't like it and had to change back. I LOVE having a free cheat-death as a healer in my current build. It's super useful if something insta-gibs me and I get to walk away with an extra life.

**

After playing with the builder I may be able to have my cake and eat it too.... I still don't know. I'm on the fence, especially when it gets hectic for healers sometime.
 
Well I let my groups know I carry one interrupt for back-up only. I'm never part of the official rotation as a healer but understand that stuff happens, so they call it out if they need mine.

I could spec higher but would seriously gimp my ability to heal through certain instances, so unless the dps are confident they won't get hit by mechanics I don't carry more than 1 at a given time.

We did our first silver run STL last night and with my back-up we ran 12 interrupts. So it is doable for sure. It just takes careful planning and coordination ahead of time before entering the instance.


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Me and Subtle were able to 2 man that optional boss in STL on the jump pad from 150k because of my solid 3 interrupts available at every cast. It's so useful, I cringe when DPS have 0-1 interrupts. "It breaks my dps rotation" is a bad excuse when MOO increase dps by 200% across the board for those 4 seconds every 10 seconds.

I would gladly run more if I had them...that's why on specific situations I'll tier up my one interrupt so it takes down 2 IA instead of just 1.
 
I love and hate arcane shock. I wish it would actually interrupt things that are already being channeled. It doesn't.
 
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