I have been working on my gear the past few weeks and finally hit 407 which I am comfortable with to get into Mythic +, but I am just not very good at interrupts at all.
I did a +2 which was extremely easy and I feel I didn’t even need to interrupt anything, and then last night I did a +5 Freehold, and I feel like a few instances I missed my interrupts and probably made the group a bit angry.
So when the tank pulls 6-10 mobs at once, I have no idea which ones to interrupt. I have an add on with a woman that yells INTERRUPT, and I scramble to look at which one I need to interrupt, and by the time I see which one is casting something it’s too late. How the hell do I target that mob quick enough to interrupt?
Also, how do you know who is going to interrupt? I could burn my kick cooldown when someone else interrupts them, which seems bad.
I really want to start climbing higher in Mythic+ so any help would be much appreciated.
My damage is fine and my survivability is fine so far, it’s just the damn interrupts. I am spending a lot of time looking at my bars to get my rotations down, along with avoiding stuff on the ground, moving with the group as the tank moves the enemies around, etc. It’s so hard to see some random enemy in the group casting a very short ability that I need to suddenly target and kick.
Habit. Make sure that your interrupt key is binded in a place that is easy to reach as well. Personally I put my interrupt on Q but do whatever works for you, get into the habit of knowing what mobs need interrupted and do it as much as you can and eventually it’ll feel like clockwork.
You do the dungeons, see the abilities, and learn which are priority, yeah. There’s also MDT to check which mobs cast what if you’re unsure as it lets you highlight individual mobs and see what they do.
If you still are getting used to your rotation, then I would suggest spending more time doing +2s til you feel more comfortable with that.
When you get fully acclimated to your rotation, then start worrying about interrupts.
You can start with practicing interrupting in more 2s, this way you won’t feel stressed about missing an interrupt or interrupting the wrong thing.
You can always look up a guide for each dungeon. Wowhead has good ones. The wowhead guide will describe each different important trash mob in the dungeon and tell you what cast they do that needs to be interrupted.
Start with one dungeon, learn those mobs and their interrupts while doing a 2. After you feel as though you’ve mastered the interrupts for that dungeon on a 2, move up a key level in the same dungeon.
I think Underrot would be a good one for you to start with.
Once you’ve mastered underrot on 5, then go to find another dungeon guide on wowhead and memorise those interrupts.
Then just keep repeating until you master the interrupts for each dungeon. At this point, your mythic plus score will start to get a lot higher and you’ll find yourself getting invited to higher and higher keys.
I use a plater profile - there is normally only one or two mobs in a pull that are critical for interrupts and I just use them as my centre for cleave so when interrupts are needed I’m already on them. They also usually stagger their casts so if one gets interrupted by someone else I just quickly tab through to the next mob that has something I know needs interrupting.
Worked well enough to get me all 20s and a few 21s last season and a 2764 IO.
Experience is helpful with learning which adds to prioritize–but here’s a good general rule of thumb. Be suspicious of casters, and extra suspicious of mobs with titles that make them sound like they could be healers. Even if you know for sure a mob is a healer, not all of their casts may be heals. You’ll see by the name of the spell going on their cast bar, and in time you’ll learn to recognize it.
Here’s a good example I noticed the other day; There are mobs in Neltharius with ‘Bonetender’ in their name. it turns out they cast a spell called ‘Cauterize’ that heals.
Another one that’s good to pay attention to are the adds from Vortex Pinnacle with ‘Adept’ in their name. Those are important to remember because its usually safest to target them first, which is important for us to help the group. I don’t remember the name of the heal, but it may be something obvious with ‘heal’ in the name.
Sometimes a mob isn’t a healer at all, but its spell or ability can become infamous and thus easier to spot. In Brackenhide Hollow, some of the mobs love to cast decay totems. I think ‘totem’ or ‘hex’ is in their title, but honestly can’t recall right now. Regular trash mobs that try to pull this can be interrupted.
In the boss fight where there are three of them, one of them puts totems and one of them is a healing one. That one is best to save the interrupt for.
Another older example of this is from one of the dungeons in Bastion during Shadowlands. The giant battle-mech style mobs had a move called ‘Rebellious Fist’ that used to do a lot of damage where interrupting was best.
Just in showing the willingness and curiosity to do better, you’re already pulling ahead of others out there. Be patient with yourself and you’ll get there just fine
Now here, I have something that can concretely help you right now. A little trick I learned and love
This is a macro I made. Adapted from one I read about that had been built with Mages’ Counterspell in mind. This is known as a ‘mouseover’ macro. Its popular with healers in particular. It means that you can simply mouse over a mob, and it will count as you targeting it! So then you just hit the spell.
Its music and sunlight in council-style boss fights where you’re dpsing one target, but still need to stay on top of interrupts on another close by, and also naturally in M+. Sometimes when things are getting wild and the air is thick with mobs, I simply throw my curser out with faith that it will get Something, and know that I interrupted something.
I’ve been using it for years and recently adapted it for my warrior. Here it is:
(when another class wants to use it, simply replace the word ‘kick’ with the interrupt spell you’ve got)
Edited to point out that there’s another time an interrupt can be helpful, and that’s if a mob is standing away from the aoe pack casting spells. If that mob is interrupted, he’ll run and join the others and make it easy to get aoe’d down.
Don’t forget you aren’t expected to get everything; just to help when you can. You’ll do fine
I just did a +7 Halls of Infusion and did pretty well. It wasn’t bad at all actually except for some entanglement affix that was extremely annoying. When I heard INTERRUPT from my add on, I seemed to always be on the right target to kick lol.
Think I am going to stick around +7 for a bit and get used to the dungeons now.
Try and learn what casts need interrupting, there are so many that you can ignore, and many that if you miss it’s death or a wipe. And it’s the same with CC, some mobs need to be CC’d or you just die. As a tank main I have learned to always hold my interrupt and CC for those specific ones that can wipe a group or kill the tank.
Like in Freehold there is that mob near the second boss who casts 2 spells, one does minimal damage and the other can kill your group, save your interrupt for that second, longer cast and ignore the first one.
It mostly comes down to experience, however there are guides online that can give you some info, but it’s still a lot to learn and practice helps.
Macro/Hotkey markers as a tank and quickly tab mark critical targets.
OR
Use addon to auto mark pulls.
If you’re pushing w/ a team, people already know each pull and what to focus. They’ll be split into groups to interrupt, stun, knock, all of it. (or if you’re in a PUG like me we just YOLO it and spam interrupts. I usually save fear and chastise for just before a cast goes off when I’m helping).
At certain key levels EVERYTHING kills you to include auto attacks, so you pretty much need to stun, interrupt, and disorient every single thing that isn’t directly on the tank. Or use cooldowns to survive.
First, learn the mobs and which of their spells need to be kicked.
Then, one thing you can do to make it easier is focus target the mob you’ll be interrupting and then use a focus interrupt macro.
As for the mouseover idea, it’s not something I would use for interrupts. For me, mouseovers are great for healing spells or damage spells, but you might find yourself accidentally kicking the wrong mob in a big pull with a kick mouseover.
I don’t know if its Plater (an addon I strongly recommend) or default Blizzard thing, but the MUST interrupts are orange (as in you don’t kick this it probably kills the group) and the rest is yellowish for me.
You should kick as much as you can, especially in higher keys (16+ and upwards), but if you see your grp not really interrupting all to much save yours for these.
The higher you go, the more damage the “normal” casts do, so they need interrupts aswell. But until 10+ they don’t do to much and you can let the healer heal you. Afterwards (16+) it can happen you get oneshot if 2 hit the same player.
One of the MUST interrupts is the AoE fear in Brackenhide Hollow to give you an idea.
Further most of the times you can just hit tab will angeling the camera at the mob casting. I don’t know if there is a smart targeting going on, but 90% of the time if I look at 3 mobs and only 1 is casting it will pick the casting mob first.
But remember most mobs can be CCt and all forms of CC interrupt. So use stuns and other ccs if the mobs are not immune to it. Thats more of a trial and error thing.
Get plater an addon that adds better clarity to mob importance and cast times the. Get a mythic plus profile of your taste. They will color the mobs different depending on importance. Like pink are prio targets and blue are casters that are immune to interrupts but can be stunned and such
I use whiiskeyz it’s really good. Color codes high priority enemies. Tells you when you have an interrupt available(this feature kinda buggy). And also puts little sparkles over super important casts.
Then it’s just learning about what each cast does and when it’s worth being kicked. For example I tank, and so when I see a random damage cast like earth bolt aimed at me, I might just let it go off since I could tank the damage and I’d rather have the kick, but if it’s on my healer or mage then it’s a more important kick.
The best way to teach it is to force you to learn it through experience. That would require players being forced to go through dungeons as they level up and being forced to learn to use interrupts.
This is impossible however, as quite a few interrupts are not baseline, dungeon content is not required to level up, and when you are using a dungeon to level, they are so easy you really just have to follow the tank around and watch everything melt.
But since we don’t leave in that ideal world, best bet is to just join a M+, get an addon that yells at you that an interruptable cast is coming, and bind your interrupt key to a very easy to reach button.
Everything folks are saying is good. As someone who tanks 20_22 keys in pugs without voice i would add, if you are a fast twitch player dont interupt immediately. Let a cast get halfway before spending your kick just to ensure you arent overlapping with other fast twitch players.
