Guild Wars 2

Let’s face it, nobody (okay hardly anyone) uses the “descent” talents. These are the talents that are centered around taking fall damage, such as ‘Decent Into Madness’ for the mesmer. They’re a niesh pick at the best of times, at the worst of times, they’re completely useless.

What we could do is instead of the talents activating when we take fall damage, we could have them activate when we’re knocked down. (or sunk when underwater) This is not only a good counter to knockdown spam, but would allow respites, and windows of opportunity for anyone knocked flat on their face.

Examples:
Descent into Madness – Create a Chaos Storm around you when you are knocked down.

Descent of Shadows – Release a blinding powder around you when you are knocked down.

Death from Above – When you are knocked down you release a shock wave that launches all nearby enemies around you.

Well most classes already have a trait that reflects the CC applied. (Mesmer, Elementalist, engie to an extent).

Also the traits are much more useful in WvW. So the change you are suggesting would only be useful in PvP/PvE.

You should do some WvW, I’m sure you will be stuned by how many people that want to move freely and quickly on map use these. Because taking half the falling damage is a very good reason to take them.

It’s actually pretty good in WvW

Ssenkra Bloodroot.1028:

Let’s face it, nobody (okay hardly anyone) uses the “descent” talents.

You forgot an important sentence after this:
“And here are absolutely no numbers to proof my statement.”

Do not touch my fall damage traits, they’re the main reason why I say alive in WvW >:(

I thought all classes have an on-being-CCed trait? Mesmers copy them back to the attacker (not reflect as someone said above :P ), Rangers stealth, etc?

Carighan.6758:

I thought all classes have an on-being-CCed trait? Mesmers copy them back to the attacker (not reflect as someone said above :P ), Rangers stealth, etc?

It would be funny if you could stack two, though. Imagine being cc’d as a mesmer and both reflecting it and making a chaos storm, or being an elementalist with tempest defense and getting a shocking aura and a static field.
Instant lockdown.

Carighan.6758:

I thought all classes have an on-being-CCed trait? Mesmers copy them back to the attacker (not reflect as someone said above :P ), Rangers stealth, etc?

The mesmer do reflect the CC.

Reflect- to send something back, redirect something that strikes a surface.

The surface being the mesmers face. The CC still applies to the Mesmer but it reflects back at the applier

Ah yeah, the nomenclature in GW2 is a bit wonky in that regard. Feedback says it reflects projectiles (same with Warden’s Feedback and Mirror and so on), you never suffer the attack with these.

I always thought these talents were fairly well designed and while not popular, not completely ignored either.

Despite a similar these they have different effects for each class and require using the environment to your advantage in order to utilize them to any effect. That imo is a sign of great skill-design even if there could be more opportunities to use them.

But if you do find such an opportunity, like jumping an enemy blob from above, then they do make quite a difference.

I don’t get the hate for the -fallingdamage traits, either.

What is the actual problem with them? That people can take shortcuts others cannot?
Because that is their real use, at least in WvW. You can take routes and jumps enemies cannot. You can push enemies off ledges, jump after them, and face a 60% vs 5% fight. Or a dead enemy and a lootbag. You can surprise entire groups and zergs by having an entire zerg jump into them from a ledge they immediately thought was too high.

(edit)
Oh, come to think of it… could it be that people try to think of these as “Trigger X on falling damage”? Seriously, they’re not about the secondary effect. Those are a nice bonus, but rarely if ever the point. They’re useful for the increase in mobility and map coverage they offer you.

try do a jumping puzzle without those traits…. frustration levels will just be increased by infinite amounts.