Guild Wars 2

Hi. There’s a lot of misunderstanding going on so let me lay a framework that can help us have better conversations about the downed state. I’m not a developer, but I think I understand it enough to make assumptions about its purpose in pvp.

What is the downed state?
When your health reaches 0 you are given a second health bar, 4 new skills, and are unable to move. You slowly lose health. Death only occurs if your health reaches 0 again, or someone “finishes” you. You can come back to your regular self if your health reaches full, or an enemy you’ve damaged recently dies.

Why does it exist at all?
To discourage full teams of burst damage. There are no dedicated healers, there is no one that can save you from a focused spike of damage. If the downed state did not exist, the fastest way to victory would be to concentrate multiple people on one target and kill them quickly, rinse and repeat. This was a very popular tactic in GW1, and was only mitigated by healers “catching” the spike, often needing split-second reactions. If you take away the healers, you need some way to “catch” spikes. Downed state accomplishes this by giving more balanced teams a chance to get a handle on the situation, interrupt finishers and rescue their teammate.

Why do I get interrupted all the time trying to finish people?
All classes have some kind of skill that stops you from finishing them (except elementalists at the moment, sorry). You can, and should, use skills that help minimize the risk of being interrupted.
These include any skills that offer you:

• stability
• stealth (if they can’t target you, they can’t interrupt you)
• evasion
• blind or block (in situations vs physical cc such as from a warrior)

You should strongly consider bringing a utility skill that offers one of these in order to help finish downed players quickly. It can be very important.

How am I getting interrupted multiple times by the same person!
Their skills recharged. You waited too long to finish them, or were kept busy for long enough. There are very useful skills on slot 3 of downed players. The recharge times are balanced so that if you are 1v1 you should not have much trouble finishing them. Example:

1. You down an engineer.
2. You begin your finishing move on them.
3. They wait until the last possible millisecond and use their cc skill to interrupt you.
4. You begin your finishing move again.
5. They die.

If you wait more than a few seconds after their first interrupt, the engineer will have his skill 3 available which is a large explosion knocking enemies away, and you will waste more time trying to down them. The downed mechanic is not meant to prevent you from finishing your enemy when they are alone. It is meant to give their team a chance to rescue them if they are near.

Mesmer and Thief downed states are OP!
No, they’re not.

• 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.

Earlier I was downed but the enemy didn’t try to finish me?
Yup. If you’re downed, you’re next to useless. You can’t kill yourself, and any damage you take will interrupt your heal. You were playing against a good player that realized this, and was trying to keep you in limbo for as long as possible so you didn’t respawn. A variant on this is to simply wait for the timer to hit the next respawn interval (I don’t remember when they are) and then finish you, so you are dead for the longest time possible.

I’ll add more as I think of them.

A large part of ‘skill’ in any RPG is learning the ins and outs of the available classes. The advent of downed-state abilities adds one more layer of skills to figure out. One issue that impacts the rate of understanding here is the fact these skills are only ever on display for short periods of time(under normal circumstances).

By far the biggest complaints I have seen on these boards, as far as downed-state PVP goes, are directed towards mesmers and thieves. This stems from their ability to ‘waste’ entire finish animations—not just of one player, but even a whole group.

Aside from the advice the OP graciously outlines, there are a few ideas I try to keep in mind to reduce time wasted during finishing:

IT ONLY TAKES ONE FINISH. I often see groups of two or more all stop fighting to finish one person. Stepping back not only allows you to continue the fight, it may put you in a good position to finish if your buddy gets knocked-back or tele’d away from.

DON’T JUST WATCH THE CAST. As soon as you start the sequence, pan your camera around looking for your next course of action.

KNOW WHAT IS COMING. If it’s a mesmer: it IS going to warp. Have your finger ready to move and stop the cast, and your camera set to swing around in search of her. With the mesmer especially, you’ll want to click-target the crumpled body laying under the bright red arrow; if you don’t, you may end up wasting a cast on a clone.

While I’m certain there is much more to consider, keeping these few ideas in your brain can help with any profession you choose. The OP points out some things I had not yet considered concerning role of downed-state in a game without dedicated healers. I hope that with time discussion turn away from how shocking it is that new mechanics exist, and towards understanding how to best approach each fight—down to the bitter end.

The timer is every 20 seconds, so :0 / :20 / :40 seconds on the clock.

As an aside, I love this post.

You are in a competitive game. Both an opposing warrior and thief are downed. Who do you stomp?

Balanced?

You down a mesmer and there are two phantasms up. What is your course of action?

Zin.6170:

You are in a competitive game. Both an opposing warrior and thief are downed. Who do you stomp?

Blind and stomp the warrior, let the thief bleed and give him a full death later.

Zin.6170:

You down a mesmer and there are two phantasms up. What is your course of action?

Zap the phantasms, let him bleed if he’s off the point.
*edit

Downed state can suck a tree… Really, I dislike every part of it.

Thief vs warrior: Whichever was closer. However this scenario is a little annoying because the warrior will kd me no matter who I go for. I agree that thieves are more annoying than other classes, but mostly because my invuls I can pop for stomps do nothing (mesmers too in this respect). All other things being equal it would take about the same amount of time.

The mesmer: I would watch my health and go for the stomp. Just like vs any other class.