Guild Wars 2

Personally I like the down state concept because it’s adds more complexity to the game but there are certain issues connected to it.

First, the recent change of the respawn timer. Fixed 15s respawn timer starting after being finished simply destroys the whole idea for ~50% of the fight.
When there is no chance to get a res from a team mate trying to stay alive is absolutely pointless and will effectively prolong the respawn timer. In fact enemies might just tap you every 5s to interrupt your heal and let you die as slowly as possible.

Quick ideas how to fix this:
•let the timer start once a player enter downed state; set it to 20s
•implement respawn waves every 20s

The second issue concerns ressing and stomping. Ressing a player that does not receive any dmg takes exactely as long as stomping him. This means that you basically can’t win a 1v2 against half capable players unless you kill them both at the same time or unless you can outdmg the heal. If it is a 1v3 it’s just ridiculous how fast a downed player is back on his feet.
Some people might argue “hey you’re not supposed to win a 1v2 or a 1v3 and it’s team pvp” but actually people “win” those handicap matches quite often or at least they would win if res wasn’t that strong. Down state interrupts/knock downs/stealth and kitten just makes it even harder. Long story short: ally res is way too strong while self res is way too underpowered.

Quick ideas how to fix this:
•reduce ally res-heal efficiency by 30%
•reduce ally res-heal efficiency by 50% and make self-heal uninterruptable (at least with normal hits)
•leave efficiencies and just reduce starting hp percentage while adding 50% to the total downed state hp to make up for the hp loss

Feel free to add ideas/thoughts about this. In case you disapprove and feel like the current state is fine please write down you arguments as well.

Edit: This is not supposed to be a discussion about downed skill balance, please keep that in mind. Even if all classes had the same skills or no skills at all in downed state the issues described in this thread would still exist.

I approve. I feel like an idiot when I down a player in a 1vs2 and his buddy gets him back up in no time. (anyone expecting me to have an interrupt ready in such a situation must be a god at PvP)

Quickness Stomp
Stability Stomp
Knockback
Knockdown
Stun
Daze
Damage the downed enemy

Problem?

Malicious.6742:

The second issue concerns ressing and stomping. Ressing a player that does not receive any dmg takes exactely as long as stomping him. This means that you basically can’t win a 1v2 against half capable players unless you kill them both at the same time or unless you can outdmg the heal. If it is a 1v3 it’s just ridiculous how fast a downed player is back on his feet.
Some people might argue “hey you’re not supposed to win a 1v2 or a 1v3 and it’s team pvp” but actually people “win” those handicap matches quite often or at least they would win if res wasn’t that strong. Down state interrupts/knock downs/stealth and kitten just makes it even harder. Long story short: ally res is way too strong while self res is way too underpowered.

Quick ideas how to fix this:
•reduce ally res-heal efficiency by 30%
•reduce ally res-heal efficiency by 50% and make self-heal uninterruptable (at least with normal hits)
•leave efficiencies and just reduce starting hp percentage while adding 50% to the total downed state hp to make up for the hp loss

Feel free to add ideas/thoughts about this. In case you disapprove and feel like the current state is fine please write down you arguments as well.

I agree with your ideas about the down state timers. It often can prevent you from re-entering if the enemy lets you bleed out which is enormously frustrating.

However for your second point, I think its rather delusion to balance a integral team mechanic like down state around highly unlikely situations assuming equally skilled players. You probably won’t be winning 1v3s under any circumstance assuming an opposition of skilled players, and 1v2’s are entirely possible if proper skills, builds and options are available(still highly unlikely). Current downed res heals are balanced where proper coordination allows for good comebacks, and allows the game to not be dominated by purely burst heavy teams.

While downed states have preventative measures they are often countered hard by boons like stability. Also, keep in mind when resing the player, the reser is in an extremely vulnerable position. They are incapable of any action and remain in a highly identifiable prostrate position helping their teammate. They often get interrupted by key skills, get bursted down themselves, or fail to get the res off due to incoming damage off-setting their healing output. It can suck sometimes in uncoordinated settings where smart players use the system to keep their teammates alive while your team frets about useless try to down players without helping teammates or getting the stomp.

If your build or someone in your team has not integrated a stomp preventative, or stomp measures I would reconsider your options.

Raytek.6193:

Quickness Stomp
Stability Stomp
Knockback
Knockdown
Stun
Daze
Damage the downed enemy

Problem?

Too many counters..counters that problem.

Yeah, the speed at which people can rezz a fellow downed player is way too fast.

I find it borderline game-breaking in PvP.

My suggestions : Make 1 downed state skill set for all class (it’s really important since the downed state is really really stupid atm with vanishing(thief, mesmer), teleportingthief( mesmer), smoking and going back to almost full hp again(against elementalist you can’t win downed vs downed), 6k+ hitter phantasm summoning craps) Diasable all pets when someone goes down( stupid mesmer phantasms…)

I disagree. The idea of downed states is great. The real issue is how the downed states are imbalanced accross professions and that abilities that allow safestomp are uneven accross professions. Both are described more in depth here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Top-3-issues-of-GW2-PvP-structured/first#post851656

Raytek.6193:

Quickness Stomp
Stability Stomp
Knockback
Knockdown
Stun
Daze
Damage the downed enemy

Problem?

The problem is that those abilities are spread out uneven accross professions. Daze doesn’t work against downed enemies btw…
Could it be that you safely stomped enemies with Distortion and Stealth so far?

Raytek.6193:

Quickness Stomp
Stability Stomp
Knockback
Knockdown
Stun
Daze
Damage the downed enemy

Problem?

This does not really solve the problem except for Quickness. When winning a 1v2 people usually don’t have any interrupts left. Some classes don’t even have access to interrupts unless they run a specific weapon set. Stability will never ever help because ally res+player heal will rally the enemy faster than the stomp is cast.
Damaging the downed enemy only helps if you can outdmg the heal which is hardly possible on condition builds and therefore just favours burst builds yet again.

For those bringing up class balance here, I’d like to point out that this is not supposed to be a discussion about downed skill balance. Even if all classes had the same skills or no skills at all in downed state the issues described in this thread would still exist.

Stability stomps also do nothing against those teleporting thief corpses as thay spam knives that cripple and hurt a lot coupled with odd lightning proc for 3k.

downstates that can avoid stability stomps are pretty overpowered since you can lose a fight by getting stability stomped as necro while 3 enemies are down (thief/mes/ele).
People shouldn´t rally from stomps. That doesn´t represent the actually skill of a team and is too random for a competitive game, falling behind that far.

It happened just yesterday that I had to down a Warrior and a Guardian 7 times in a 1v2 before I could stomp them both at the same time because I managed to down the second one while he was trying to res. This needs to be fixed because it’s just frustrating to be unable to stomp because of game design flaws.

If by “game design flaws” you mean stops put in place that allow coordination between multiple people working to win a team fight sure.

Downed state is fine. Only thing that should even potentially be glanced at is ele’s health going back to full (as in 75%) after using their #2.

By game design flaws I mean stomp time being longer than res time and res hps (counting downed#4 in) being higher than avg sustained dps. You don’t even need to interrupt a stomp, just res to save your mate. How can you call that coordination?
Rallying team mates 7 times in a row doesn’t put someone clearly winning a 1v2 under pressure.

Brutalistik.6473:

Raytek.6193:

Quickness Stomp
Stability Stomp
Knockback
Knockdown
Stun
Daze
Damage the downed enemy

Problem?

Too many counters..counters that problem.

Blink stomp
Aegis stomp
Blind stomp

Mesmer and thief downed state are the biggest problem. Classes with the most escapes shouldn’t also get the most Op downed states. This reeks of class favoritism over balance.

A necro’s minions poof on downed state so why doesn’t a Mesmer’s more powerful phantasms? And why would the most powerful burst/escape(thief) class be given a 50% increase to downed dmg(trait) and the most evasive and effective two stomp avoidance abilities?

The down stat was on a wave spawn, it meant that high end teams would keep you on the ground till the spawn wave poped, then kill you for full rez duration.

its teamwork, you go solo its your own business. learn to counter, interrupt or something.

I havent tested it myself, but I think the ideal system would be for the stomp and the res to be roughly equal in time.

Thus, whoever reaches the downed player first, would win.

You always have a stomp available, and similarly, the enemy always has their res available. So the situation can be tipped in favour of one side or the other if either of you has some interrupt skills available to use.

i starting to believe that downed state should not have abilities that do DMG. Instead it should be only support / heal / interupt / escape. Whatever.. but since the game is 1v1 and 2v2 oriented its so shame that some fights are simply too bad because once you got your enemy to downed state, he will win.. because he can do more dmg than you in downed.

why some classes can do over 1000 dmg is behind me.. when in downed..

Rieselle.5079:

I havent tested it myself, but I think the ideal system would be for the stomp and the res to be roughly equal in time.

Thus, whoever reaches the downed player first, would win.

You always have a stomp available, and similarly, the enemy always has their res available. So the situation can be tipped in favour of one side or the other if either of you has some interrupt skills available to use.

If you count in the heal of the downed player then res time is shorter than stomp cast time. It already happened to me that the enemy was rallied even though his ally started ressing after I started my stomp cast.
Also keep in mind that some classes have very limited access to interrupts depending on their build and/or weapon set. I’ve also seen people using stability to res. Your only chance then would be quickness.

Basically everything mentioned in this thread to secure a stomp (such as blind/stealth/aegis/stability) is meaningless if the effective res time is shorter than the stomp time.

Downed state detracts more from the game than it brings. It promotes a zerging mindset (numbers > skill), ruins 1vX’s, and s rife with bugs/exploits/edge cases.

And in the end, what does downed state truly bring to PVP? Nothing we didn’t already have – MMOs have had rezzing since forever.

besbin.6302:

Stability stomps also do nothing against those teleporting thief corpses as thay spam knives that cripple and hurt a lot coupled with odd lightning proc for 3k.

Thieves are firing lightning while downed now? Why don’t you play one, see what they can do while downed so that you won’t be coming to this forum walking the dinosaur with pockets full of spaghetti?

Ulyssean.1709:

besbin.6302:

Stability stomps also do nothing against those teleporting thief corpses as thay spam knives that cripple and hurt a lot coupled with odd lightning proc for 3k.

Thieves are firing lightning while downed now? Why don’t you play one, see what they can do while downed so that you won’t be coming to this forum walking the dinosaur with pockets full of spaghetti?

sigil of air