Q:
down skills
If you unlock the Head of the Snake mastery, your downed skill 1 steal health on every professions.
Ele, theives, warrior, and ranger all have very good downed skills.
Mesmer is far from perfect, but it’s not extremely bad either. At least not all the time.
Necro steal health and have fear, which is fine too
I never played the other 3 enough to be downed but Guardian downed skill 3 seems powerful enough.
Engi have to use skill 2 and 3 as a combo I guess.
Revenant, I don’t know.
Being downed means you’re about to die. The skills shouldn’t be powerful, since you’re dying. So imo they’re fine as they are now. We already got a pretty good buff to them with Head of the Snake episode.
(edited by Haishao.6851)
The downed skills are pretty fair in my opinion.
- Guardian: (2) is a knockback, interrupts stomps. (3) some healing
- Rev: (2) is a knockback, interrupts stomps. (3) some dmg
- Warrior: (2) is a knockdown, interrupts stomps. (3) is a mixed bag, good for saving an ally to prevent a wipe, a gamble otherwise.
- Engie: (2) is a pull, interrupts stomps. (3) is a knockback, interrupts stomps (also aggroing everything nearby)
- Ranger: (2) is a daze, interrupts stomps. (3) is pretty cool since it can heal through a lot.
- Thief: (2) is a teleport, so prevents stomps. (3) is a stealth, so can prevent stomps.
- Ele: (2) is invulnerability and allows you to run a good distance, preventing stomps and allowing time to rally. (3) is an immobilize, so can delay a stomp
- Mesmer: (2) is a random tele, so prevents a stomp; also includes a clone to distract the unwitting (not very helpful against skilled opponents). (3) is a phantasm that… can be distracting.
- Necro: (2) is a fear, so interrupts a stomp. (3) is an aoe condi, so can delay a stomp.
Most veterans have access to (5) Signet of Agony, which is an AoE knock, interrupting stomps and other skills.
There are definitely some better (3) skills (ranger would be my pick for “best”, not rev nor necro), but there’s really only one that’s problematic (2) (mesmer, since the random destination prevents it from effectively avoiding death in a lot of situations).
All of the (2) skills avoid/prevent/interrupt stomps, which is their main purpose. None of the skills are get-out-of-jail free and all (3) have some value in at least a few niche situations. I wouldn’t agree that rev|necro are best nor that guardian is worst. The goal isn’t to allow you to personal down anything (unless it’s close to death already) — it’s to give you a fighting chance to rally, with help.
tl;dr downed skills do what they are supposed to do: get out of a stomp and give you a chance to rally if your teammates are on top of things (even if some could be a bit better or toned down to match the others).
PS it’s a poor rhetorical technique to insult the people who you are asking to change the status quo; consider editing your run-on paragraph to remove everything that isn’t about the specific requests and critiques. I might disagree with your opinion, but I’d still like to see you make a better case.
of all, necro’s is the most broken tbh. There were times you actually down the reaper after a long hard fight only to get down by their down skills and from that moment you are dead.
Ranger "downed’ skill cant be used immediatly, you need to wait timer (giving plenty time to finish you off).