Have you ever been in a raid with less than stellar interrupts? I’ve seen it happen many times. A small number of players seem to have that confidence where they feel they can conquer just about any spells or abilities thrown their way. That is, until the encounter decides to throw a wrench in their plans. It usually sounds a little something like this:
“I got next inter—No, I’m trapped! I can’t do anything!”
If you’re lucky, there’s another player with an interrupt who can bail that player out. If not, the group may have just suffered a large setback. Having dependable interrupters on your raid roster is one of those little things that grant peace of mind to everyone. Your raid leader can rest easy knowing that certain abilities will be shut out. There have been times when I cursed because a key melee player had to run out or died due to some random ability.
From what I’ve seen, raid groups usually have a minimal amount of players for interrupts. This allows for maximum DPS time from other players because if don’t need to worry about catching key abilities, they can focus more on their DPS.
But the case I want to make here is for stability. Doubling up on interrupts can help cut down on the number of wipes due to unnecessary boss attacks going off.
Some examples include:
- Wind Shear: 6 second CD, 2 second lock out
- Shield Bash: 12 second CD, 6 second lock out
- Pummel: 10 second CD, 4 second lock out
- Kick: 10 second CD, 5 second lockout
This is just the start though. There’s a whackload of other classes with interrupt capabilities (Mages, Death Knights, etc).
How should you set teams?
Your interrupt teams will vary by encounter. A typical setup would involve two teams of 2. Preferably, the interrupters would share similar cooldowns and lockout times. Back in Burning Crusade, there was an encounter called Reliquary of Souls. You could find it in Black Temple. That encounter really brought out the necessity for skilled interrupters who could identify which skills to let go and which ones to shut down (like Deaden, Spirit Shock, etc).
A more recent example encounter would be Maloriak where Arcane Storms and Release Abberations need to be controlled.
Every interrupter should use macros to announce their interrupt skills. Actually, if you want to take it one step further, I highly recommend an addon called RSA. It’ll announce whether you were successful or unsuccessful with your interrupts. Or even if your kick got resisted or if the target is immune! Great to have!
If you have a skilled player who can carry interrupts on their own, then you can definitely disregard this post. I’ll raise my coffee cup to you on that. For the rest of us who sometimes struggle with blown interrupts, that safety net will do more in the long run.
Deciding who should do interrupts should depend somewhat on which classes are available, because it disrupts some classes’ rotations more than others.
Frost DKs, Pallies of various flavours, and Shamans of various flavours have it the easiest because interrupts either don’t cost resources or don’t use a fairly limitless resource.
Classes like Warriors, Unholy DKs and Rogues on the other hand, have to use a resource that is always limited and leaving 10/20 rage/energy/RP can really mess with a rotation. These should be last on the list of potential interrupters, where choice is available.
Then you’ve got ranged interrupts like Mages or Shamans who need to pinch in case a melee class is unable to step in and do the job. Ascendant Council come sin mind for that one.
Enhancement shamans probably have the best interrupt in the game – off the GCD, 6 sec CD and lowers threat? Yes please!
I’m always asked to go Enhancement on fights we need an interrupter (it’s a 5 sec cooldown if you talented in Reverb btw), and I am on solo interrupt duty. We assign a back up interrupter(usually our DK) in case I die or can’t get the next interrupt for whatever reason.
You might also want to take into consideration that some classes (mage/warrior, maybe more) that can talent a damage buff when they successfully interrupt.
A class not mentioned here that has interrupting to offer is feral druids. Though I am unsure of the exact spells which can be used as a cat/bear (though I know skull bash can be used in both).
Our druid tank took the arcane storms solo on Maloriak, and did a good deal of the shadow nova interrupts on Halfus. Freeing up the DPS to kill adds/drakes.
With regards to interrupt related addons, as there are many different ones which announce for different reasons. This can caused us some problems when trying to organise interrupts.
Our raid leader actually ended up writing his own simple addon for announcing just so he knew exactly what was meant when someone shouted “Interrupted!”. While it seems like something trivial it actually helped a great deal with the coordination.
Every time a typo slips through my proofreading net *twitches*
We started running 2 prot warriors to alleviate concerns with interrupts. A good shaman with a wind sheer / focus macro will make your life easier.
Pro feral dps tip: do arenas and get the pvp gloves for the reduced energy cost on skill bash. It took me from always missing to always being ready in no time flat.
I think one of the issues in the 10 person raids right now is the huge reliance on interrupts. On a few of the fights interrupts are sometimes needed every 4-5 seconds (although I hear the latest patch alleviated this somewhat). I haven’t done 25 person raiding in Cataclysm yet, but in the 10 person raids this sometimes means we have a really hard time with the fights due to lack of interrupts, and even when we do have two classes that can interrupt reliably, the frequency of the interrupts combined with fight positioning means that we almost always have at least one, if not two DPS off the main target and onto whatever else needs to be interrupted. This has certainly been a source of irritation for my guild, and it sucks to say “sorry can’t bring your class you don’t have a good interrupt”.