Guild Wars 2

As most are aware, there are some utility skills available that “revive allies.” In my experience, and from what I’ve read and heard, they only work for downed allies, not defeated ones. There may be exceptions, but I’m not aware of any; if I’m wrong, I’d be happy to know which skills work for defeated players, so I hope someone will tell me.
For reference, I’ll link the skills here.
Guardian: Signet of Mercy
Ranger: ‘Search and Rescue,’ Nature’s Renewal
Elementalist: Glyph of Renewal
Necromancer: Signet of Undeath
Engineer: Toss Elixir R
Warrior: Battle Standard

I can understand its current function for the mesmer skill, Illusion of Life, since the mechanics limit the skill somewhat in that regard. Not trying to single you out, mesmers, but it seems like this skill is working as intended, and its intent seems pretty intuitive. It’s like being downed, but with your normal abilities. I approve.

However, for the rest of them…

My personal opinion is that they should be changed to revive defeated allies, too. I think the penalty for defeat (broken armor and shame) is already sufficient without the extra revival time, and the recharge times on these skills seem disproportionately long, especially in PvE (where reviving an ally hurts nobody, unless you count hostile NPCs, but I don’t hear them complaining on forums). I haven’t played a lot of PvP, but from what I’ve seen, the presence of a respawn timer means there’s no reason to use these skills (kind of like taking a Resurrection Signet in Alliance Battles).

As it is, the window in which these skills are useful is so small, it’s frustrating. Signet of Mercy has almost a four-second activation time, too, so it would actually be quicker in most cases to simply walk over and press F. There are many scenarios in which a player is downed several times before being defeated (I’m thinking of the Champion Karka, among others), and those make Signet of Mercy even more useless. Once you use it, it’s on recharge for several minutes. If you wait until they’re defeated, the signet doesn’t work.

So I propose the following:
Reduce recharge or activation times when these skills are used on downed allies. If it’s deemed necessary, increase recharge or activation times when they’re used on defeated allies. But please… Make them work on defeated allies.

This may be tricky to implement on some of those skills, like “Battle Standard,” but it wouldn’t be impossible. It’s an elite, anyway, so it would be harder to call it overpowered due to this proposed change. Regardless, I still think it’s worth amending whichever skills would be practical. Please consider this.