Guild Wars 2

I miss deep wound. In gw1 players generally had more survival power and instead of instagibbing people, you had to apply deep wound to lower their max health then spike them down. This gave players an indicator that they were at risk for death and at least gave the option of trying to remove the deep wound condition before they were killed.

In gw2 when you eat big damage you just die. It’s even worse that big damage attacks are not even telegraphed and power creep is going to get worse with the elite specs.

I think deep wound can return to gw2 to help with this, but it would need some changes:

New condition: deep wound

Players struck by deep wound have a portion of their hp greyed out. If hit by an execute attack, the greyed out section is lost.

Once a deep wound is triggered, nothing can stop the grey portion from being lost. This means even if you have an invul, getting executed will still cost you the greyed section.

Certain skills are changed to apply a segment of their damage up front and the rest as deep wound. Other skills become executes.

An example is thief backstabbing now causes deep wound and heart seeker becomes an execute. You can also allow teammates to trigger deep wounds you apply.

1.) scenario a, thief uses backstab and applies a deep wound. A ranger hits the same target with maul, which is now an execute. The target takes the maul damage then loses the greybar from having deep wound trigger and just explodes. The target can cleanse the deep wound before the maul and survive.

2.) scenario b, warrior with rampage gets struck by deep wound but defy pain triggers. He is invul but gets hit by an execute and loses is greybar, which kills him even through invul.

I think this mechanic will add some much needed depth and counterplay to big damage. Also it will help balance players chaining invuls or active defense.

Note that deep wound always takes away the grey regardless of armor or protection, which makes it good for breaking bunkers. To trigger the execute must hit, so blocks and aegis can still stop execute attacks unless they are unblockable.

Like pulmonary impact, deep wounds can stack to cause the greybar to become larger and larger, making a successful execute even more deadly. With a big stack of deep wounds a player can visually see the grey and know they will get rocked if they get executed.