Guild Wars 2

Downstate!

Lots of people hate it; lots love it. Even more want to see it tweaked a bit, mayhaps.

I fall into the last category! I am very happy with the existence of downstate in GWs; but I also feel that some normalization, balance changes, and penalties from ever ending up on the ground in the first place would work wonders in making it even more welcome in the game. My view point is from a PvP/WvW perspective.

I won’t pretend like my opinions matter more than anyone else’s or to Anet in any significant way, but I’d like to provide some food for thought

So! To begin: You downed someone. Good job! Now you go to immediately stomp, but they are ressed by one person before you can even complete the stomp animation. Well, that’s kinda ridiculous. What did downing the player even do? They get up—with a good chunk of hp now. And then what? They heal. Just like that, they’re back at 100%, and you ate a decent bit of damage trying to stomp. It’s as if they were never downed in the first place.

What change should be made to make it more enjoyable? Well, my core suggestion is this: if you are downed, you rally with a max health penalty for a set duration. This will make the player easier to be downed for a length of time, as well as making temporary down generation a viable strategy while fighting—down one player, focus on the next, down the debuffed player again quickly after they res. It will also help prevent rallies from causing one sided sweeps in zerg fights. After a few rallies from one zerg, the other zerg would begin to net some as well from rallying off players that had previously just been downed. What exactly am I thinking? I’d say 1st down caps your health at 75%; 2nd caps it at 50%; and any subsequent rally will reset the 50% capped health debuff.

I’d say that giving this debuff a 1 minute timer before automatically being lifted would be fairly balanced! And no, going out of combat should not remove it. That would be abusable and discourage fighting. But you can still get back to your temporary max health by doing that, at least!

My other core suggestion: Start the first downstate’s hp at 60% or so. Right now, it starts very high; and that allows for immediate resses by another player before you can even stomp. Another player can try to dps them down while you attempt to stomp, sure. But the entire point of downing someone is to make them vulnerable to finish. One person ressing someone before a stomp channel can even complete simply defeats the purpose of stomping—to avoid having to dps them down. Plus you’re likely taking dmg while trying to get the stomp off yourself—and wasting strong defensive cd’s that you’ve saved, waiting to stomp, like Stability.

So those are my main two suggestions! Other than that, here’s a significant change that I wouldn’t mind seeing:

Downstate normalization. Some downstates are simply better than others. A Warrior will almost always win a downstate battle. After that, almost always a Ranger. And some are just plain better at avoiding stomps—Ele, for example.

If they all were, say, normalized, then people wouldn’t have so much room to complain about downstate, since it would be much more predictable and balanced, even if slightly weaker on some classes. My idea would be this:

1. A class-flavored dps skill (as already is)
2. A class-flavored interrupt (no exceptions.)
3. A class-flavored control/support skill (like Ele immob or Guard symbol, but not Engi or Thief’s double stomp avoidance)
4. Bandage

This would allow for more stomp predictability and doesn’t totally castrate downstates, since the recent Stability changes make cc’ing the stomper a totally viable strategy. Of course, there’re still skills like Ele’s mist form and such, but those already stomped 5 out of 8 classes anyway! That’s up to Anet to figure out. But, like this, it’s just more consistent. And balanced. Plus, I mean, come on, a person down in the dirt really shouldn’t be able to do much. Especially not stand up in a cloud of mist and run into a nearby tower or onto a capture node (sorry, Eles)

And lagniappe:
Hard ressing (ressing a defeated player) while in combat in WvW really needs to go… it’s kinda silly (to me) that you can just get 5 people to res someone who just got stomped out. It defeats the purpose of outplaying a larger number of enemies when solo/duo/you know!

Note: This isn’t comprehensive and does not cover all the tweaks that would have to be addressed if these downstate changes were implemented (such as profession health while downed). That’s too much for one post. I am aware that these suggestions reduce the player’s survival capabilities while downed.

For the record: I play Mesmer and Ranger (which have strong downstates).

Thank you all for reading! This is simply meant to be a thought-provoking, titillating catalog of suggestions on a subject that I am deeply fond of in GWs. I’d just like to see some changes to compromise between those who despise it in its current form and those who love it.

I invite you to construct on this, add your own ideas, or pose helpful criticism!