Guild Wars 2

The biggest issue with the downed state in it’s current form is the imbalance across the professions. It is an important aspect of gameplay, especially in 5v5 to not receive more attention. Yes, I know the Dev’s are busy, but I am just pointing out where a lot of the frustration is coming from.

1.) Some professions take tookittenlong to try and down (time is a valuable thing) – namely Thief and Mesmer. This is an issue, because if they are sitting on a capture point then you can not cap. So, in essence you have to waste valuable time trying to down whereas if it were an elementalist you could down them right away saving you time and getting your team points faster. Just think that if this repeats 4-5+ times in a match how many points start to add up (yeah, it can go for you as well, but that doesn’t defeat the argument). There is too large of a gap between what some classes can do in the downed state and others can not; really after Thief and Mesmer the other professions are 2nd tier (at least theres can be negated by stability), and then there is the poor elementalist…. shouldn’t they just die right away :P? I mean how often do they really get to use mist form in Spvp?

Then if you are in a situation in 2v2, 2v1, 1v2, 3v3 etc. if a profession can offer one side the opportunity to maintain the downed state longer either by wasting the other teams time from trying to down the player, continuing to DPS as they relatively ignore you, or you are able to get back up easier and into the fight there becomes a glaring issue of imbalance.

2. Some classes are just plain better or more of a threat in the downed state. Whether it’s damage or the ability to be rezzed by a pet, some classes have no chance in a 1v1 fight where both opponents go down at about the same time. I’ve had this happen at least 2-3 times playing as a Guardian where either a Warrior was able to get to the point of activating his/her #3 skill to come up and down me, or facing a Ranger where the pet rezzed the Ranger with me not able to do anything about it (my healing symbol does not heal enough to get me anywhere close to a rally against a player spamming damage on me).

3.) Lastly, some classes just do too much damage in the downed state it seems as well. I’ve seen ample situations where a player had a bunch of AI pets up and went down with me at around 20% hp after a good fight and I end up downed too, because of the damage output from the AI still being active and the downed player able to hit me for quite a bit. I usually just run away now when I know I won’t be able to actually down the player even if I’ve already won the 1v1 fight to cap a point and potentially turn the match.

I was (and continue to be) a supporter of this feature, but it does not work in it’s current implementation. The idea is good, just poorly/lazily thought out. I would vote to disable it for the time being in Spvp until something better is thought out on how to handle it all around. I think it’s perfectly fine for PVE and even WvW, but it’s just not working out in these tourny’s. The ability for a good team to rezz their teammates and cause rallies is a nice part of strategical gameplay, but not there is such a wide skill differential between downed state abilities. It would be at least a little different if a lot of these were from traits, because at least then you could give each profession something that he/she could spec into.

Anyway, it’s late and I couldn’t sleep, so this was probably more of an incoherent rant more than anything else. TL;DR: Downed state idea is cool, works for PVE/WvW for the most part, but needs to be disabled in Spvp (my opinion) for the time being until it is able to receive more attention to be planned out and balanced.

Imbs.7943:

milo.6942:

It is an excellent teamplay mechanic in my opinion, but I guess not everyone plays tourneys.

how do these random idiots have the balls to be so condescending on the forum? Writing that awful guide you have been trying to throw at ppl on the forum does not make you an authority on downed state, and you are not the only tournament player on the forums

i agree. your lack of ideas and tears are much more informative.

Qtin.6940:

TL;DR
Downed stat is horrible, 1 thread for it .. 10 against ..

Yes, way more threads that are against the DS, at least in PvP. And I myself am against it too.

i heard only thieves complain about the down state lol. but seriously i think the down state adds alot to the game because it makes you think. the only thing i wish the downstate had was a ’take the easy way out" cause at this point i get tired of sitting there for 2 mins trying to rez myself only to have someone finish me off in the last 200 hp

tl;dr

noobs complaining about downed state

i only think damage of some classes should be nerfed in their downed state , everything else is fine

i dont mind the downed state in it self. you cancontribute to fight little bit even after your been bursted down.
What i mind is the rally system that if the person who downed you gets killed you get back up. thats just bulkitten

lol at this censoring

I’m up for “balancing” it, but NOT removing.

I think it adds something different to “regular” play.

Either:

a) Get rid of Downed State in PVP. Yay.
b) Balance class interruption abilities (are they trying to say classes should or shouldn’t die more than others…? If so, wtf is up with the ele class)
c) Modify the Downed State hp pool to be much, much, lower.

Example as a solo player in… wvwvwvw:
atop a roof, you snipe someone who doesn’t move away when getting struck. All his friends move away because they are not baboons. He falls down, dead (almost…?), his friends res him near instantly as you can’t do anything and the game forces you to get interruption-based weapons / skillsets for the mechanic, and boom the baboon is back up and running to be stupid again. It really makes it so a punishment system is quite unnoticeable.

Can’t 1v2 people in Spvp very well unless extremely broken. The whole mechanic tells me it’s just there to help noobs and inspire people to cluster together. It rewards being in a giant group and makes people numbers instead of individuals.

All in all, I don’t see the company removing this horrible COD mechanic anytime soon, so I’d be happy if they just reduced the hp and made it so they are not in tank-mode as they are downed. Or balanced the interrupts… either way, it’s not like I can’t adapt to it, but it makes pvp less fun. It is not satisfying tearing through people when they turn into an annoying fly in your hair afterwards, and the annoyance is only exponentially higher when they are 2+ in number.

I like the downed state mechanic. It gives you a slight chance for a second shot. Sure the downed state spells need some fixing in numbers and cooldowns. But in general its a nice addition for me.

Although my post will prolly submerge in this thread, where only a small percentage of the players do have teams and play serious sPvP. I will add up that downed state brings some nice strategic elements in teamplay. Also every team has some stability, block, haste or w/e skills on the field for fast stomp – and much cc and hide to revive teammates. So the actual stomping is not the problem.
THE PROBLEM IS…
the ridiculous damage a player can output while downed.
Firstly its making 1v2 with any class impossible, second – its quite punishing to down someone, when he does much more damage to you downed, than alive… While this is giving the defending team advantage and enough time to reach ur downed teammate and get the enemy at 10% hp – i don’t think that punishing the actual winner of the 1v1 is the way to go.

Hopefully when , and if , there will be private servers ( heard about it ages ago but not implemented at release ) we’ll have the option to disable it .
Anyway IMO is a really horrific mechanic for pvp , making impossible to win 1 vs 2 fights , and i don’t care if you say that i’m not supposed to win 1 vs 2 , if i am better i should be rewarded for it , not being punished by a random guardian pushing me away to res the downed mate .

i like it in PvE.

i dont mind it in WvW.

i hate it in SPvP.

Liav, Araditus (edit: and Mescaline) was talking about 1v2 fights being impossible to win because if one of the enemy is downed they will just get ressed by their ally. If he understood how downed state works and had planned ahead by bringing appropriate skills he wouldn’t have so many problems killing downed enemies.

If you’re downed and are alone, you’re just dead. There’s little you can do, and I didn’t mean to imply there was. If you’ve got an ally nearby then you will see if that ally is skilled enough to res you.

Mescaline.2743:

Anyway IMO is a really horrific mechanic for pvp , making impossible to win 1 vs 2 fights , and i don’t care if you say that i’m not supposed to win 1 vs 2 , if i am better i should be rewarded for it , not being punished by a random guardian pushing me away to res the downed mate .

Obviously you are not better.

The only thing that needs to be fixed about downed state is that Mesmers and thieves use it as a time sink, you can either spend the lifetime it takes to find the real mesmer and kill him while in combat with other people or the lifetime it takes to finally stake the thief who keeps vanishing, whom you could kill in time if not for the team of enemies who are of course Zerging a point, and having to fight zergs benefits thieves and mesmers who already have infuriating downed states, warrior rally coming in a distant 3rd place.

Rhydian:
From https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Downed-State-Tutorial/first#post102407 about mesmer and thief downed states:

• When you’re finishing a mesmer and they disappear, their clone will appear, and then a second later somewhere else they will appear. There will be a giant red down arrow over their heads. That’s them.
• When the thief disappears, just move to cancel your finisher (save time), walk over and finish them again.

It takes no more than 6-7 secs to stomp any class – even with no stability. However the problem is mes phantasms, ranger pets, necro minions, war pure wtf dmg, thief sigils proppin’ and any other kitten, making over 9000 dmg for those precious 6 seconds.

I just think the skills need a change. Every class has some class specific ability, like warrior can rally for some seconds before certain death, elementalist can use vapor from and gain movement + invulnerability, thief can stealth… these are fine. But the interrupts are too imbalanced at the moment. Guardian gets AoE knockback, while warrior gets only single target knockdown, and elementalist gets no interrupt at all. This should be fixed. Skill 2 should be a “fair” skill, if one class gets an AoE knockback, then the effects of the other classes should at least be AoE interrupts as well.

I think the downed skills are reasonably fair (excluding elementalists). The guardian aoe knockback is really not a problem if you let only 1 person try to finish him. Likewise for the warrior you don’t even need to use your stability if you have 2 people trying to stomp him.

Wait, so in this game when I get someone down to 50% (or something) health, they fall over, become unable to dodge, lose access to most of their skills, and become vulnerable to an instant kill attack.

That makes them far easier to finish off than other games where they can keep fighting at full power right until the last hitpoint.

Why are people confused about this? Oh wait, you think you’ve killed someone when they’re down. No, you’ve just taken a percentage of their health.

I haven’t played all the classes yet, but I think Mesmer and Thief’s downed state is insane compared to other classes.

Ezekial: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Downed-State-1/151072

The downed state should be removed.. period. Kill an elementalist and just finish them off without a problem. Yeah they can into vapor form but if you are on them within a second or to you have no issues finishing them off and you can follow them in vapor form. While some classes disappear and reappear still possible to finish them off but takes far longer and wastes time. Some classes can get back up, or output great damage with clones, illusions or pets. Its unbalanced in so many ways. I love getting downed and finished off right away but when I try to finish off a mesmer, necro, thief, warrior it can take forever or they take me down with cause of the damage they can put out.

Like I said its unbalanced and should be removed.

Aginor, try taking skills to help finish downed players.

The only problem I have with downed state is rallying, and some classes being able to dish out way more damage and avoid getting hit while downed than others.

Another problem with the downed state is kind of the opposite of what’s been discussed here. If I am at a node protecting by myself and someone else comes up to fight me 1v1. If I beat them and get them down I DO NOT finish them off. Instead, I damage them only to get them to about half way down and then let them try to heal up a little and then do it again. Since there is really no way to just “release” they either have to slowly bleed out or they keep on trying to unsuccessfully rez while I damage to stop their heals. Now, sure sometimes this backfires and other players arrive and rez them or the warriors get back up. But many times I can keep a player out of the fight for a very long time by intentionally not downing them

Bleeding out is not that slow and keeps you in battle for way too long to be good. Ofc this is the first tactic we applied in competitive sPvP and its not that great against half a decent team. However, we always stomp (when possible) at :18, :38, :58 or so which proved a lot more effective.

I still say that downed state is nice and the only issue is the dmg output when downed. Make pets, summons, phantasms and player dmg 66% lower and everything will be just fine.

I have more CC when im downed then when im up and walking around LOL

I fail to see how downed state prevents teams full of burst builds. That don’ make no sense.

If a burst team is coming at you, whether it’s 2v1 or an outright zerg, you’re dead, and going to be stomped. If it happens to be 2v2, then they’ll focus on player at a time if they are reasonably coordinated. Then you’re dead, followed swiftly by your teammate. Burst builds are also not the end-all-be-all as they tend to focus so much on damage, that once you work out their combo it’s easy to counter (100B, HS, Pistol Whip for starters). That’s the real incentive to avoid fielding them too heavily in competitive PvP; they tend to be gimmicky, or based around long CDs (Haste, Frenzy, Bulls’ Charge) so they won’t even be that effective in a teamfight unless they have their combo up.

The reality is, downed state does nothing to prevent burst builds as most of them include quickness anyway which makes stomps happen faster.

If downed state isn’t fixed / adjusted or better yet removed from PvP completely, it’llkitten me off enough to just stop playing eventually. Been playing competitive PvP games for over 10 years, this mechanic has no place.