I’ve seen a lot of misconceptions and frustration regarding downed players and F-inishers, so I decided to post a little “get to know your downed players” post so that people can start being pro-active in dealing with downed state instead of frustrated.
First of all, a lot of people are coming in with the attitude that a downed player should already be dead. This is just not true. Sure, in other games that’s how it works, but not this one so you just need to get over that hump right now. If you go in with the attitude that getting a player to downed is only 75% of the fight and by no means guarantees your victory, you’re going to save yourself a lot of frustration.
Next you need to accept that most classes are going to have at least one interrupt for your F-inisher. This is where paying attention to who you’re fighting is key. Here’s a breakdown of how the downed player is going to ruin your day:
Elementalist – Yay! Free stomp! Or if you’re really slow, they get to mist form away.
Engineer – AoE knockback.
Guardian – AoE knockback.
Mesmer – Body doubles. Keep stomping until you hit the right one.
Necromancer – Single target fear
Ranger – Daze nearby targets
Thief – Short distance teleport. If not immediately stomped, they can also hide for 3 seconds.
Warrior – Single target knockdown. Wait too long and they get to rally, ending in immediate defeat.
Awesome, now you know what to expect from a downed opponent. So how do we intelligently deal with these abilities?
First of all, you’ll notice that warrior, ranger, guardian, and engineer do some sort of knockback, knockdown or daze. What you should be asking yourself now is “Do I have a skill that grants stability?” If the answer is yes, you can pop that skill before stomping to avoid disruption. I’ve heard mixed things about whether or not stability protects against fear, so I’ll let someone else weigh in on that.
But I’m a thief and I don’t have fancy stability! Fear not! You can stomp while stealthed! Stealth stomping will result in success about 90% of the time.
But I’m fighting a thief and I’m slow on the draw and can’t deal with him teleporting and hiding! In this case, you might want to finish them with damage. Remember that this is always an option, and depending on where a player is downed in relation to the fighting, it might just make more sense to AoE the area to finish them with damage.
So now you know how to finish a player, does that mean you always want to finish them first chance you get? Usually the answer is probably yes, but I’d say that in some cases it makes more sense to leave an opponent in the downed state without finishing. First of all, in WvW particularly, players always try to be good samaritans and helped their downed comrades. With even a minor amount of communication between a team of players, you can lure in victim after victim trying to help their downed friends. In sPvP, it’s also worth noting that a downed player is a lot less effective than one who is running around, so if you can leave a player downed, it can keep them out of the game a lot longer. That thief might be doing more harm than good for his team by teleporting and hiding if it’s indefinitely leaving him in a downed state.
So there you have it. Some tips and tricks about downed players and F-inishers. Hope that helps and happy PvPing!