This is mostly so that people don’t just run through areas. I agree that it can be a little annoying, but that’s what Swiftness is for.
They do this also just with the pointless slowdown..
If you really want to skip something, then you skip what you want no matter what, even with a slowdown you can run away out of enemy range, until they run back to their silly invisible bonding points to that they always return like being prisoned on a transparent chain that holds them at a place and pulls them back, if they try to run away too far from their boinding point with that they are enchained with.
Or players just pop a stealth skill to skip what they want after being hit and getting slowed, to lose aggro and easily move on until the slowdoan wears of once you are out of range for combat again.
So I totally agree with the Op, this slowdown is just pure chicanery to annoy us with that Anet tries hard to force us to battle against every crap and it doesn’t feel at all anyhow heroic or epic, to get slowed down to the pace of like a snail suddenly, only because you got hit once or in generallycause of entering just a combat…
This slowdown can also be extremly annoying in jumping puzzles, when you fail at jumps cause of this kitten when you get suddenly slowed down while jumping what causes you to jump not as far as you would normally do…
Instead of addign to the game kittened mechanics like this slowdown, Anet should do better and improve the movement system of GW2 so that we can feel over time more epic in regard of movement…
Just look at upcoming games like Everquest Next, which show, how much potential there lies in in character movement to make your character look more epic and heroic and here in GW2, there needs only a fly to fart at you and you slow down ???
Come on, this can’t be serious !!
Personally I like the idea behind sub classes ~ quoted from Chris Whiteside