Guild Wars 2

When I first got into GW2 I was really exited about the PvP because from the outside it looked like skill was a huge factor. I thought that unlike in other mmos, if I was really good, I could take on several people at once and still win. I thought that with enough skill, I would be able to even take on three people at once and still win.

Well now that I’ve gotten pretty good at PvPing I’ve realized that I was completely dead kittening wrong. Just in a two vs one scenario, unless both of your enemies are complete and utter dip kittens, you cannot 2v1. Now why is that? The answer is the downed state.

If the down state was simply a state at which you were able to be revived by a teamate and nothing else, I would be fine with that. However Anet doesn’t stop at just that. They decided that it was a good idea to not only give everyone extremely strong abilities in the down state, but even decent damage. We’ll take the most extreme case of the Revenant as an example. This class can hit for 1k damage per attack (which is quite fast) and also permanently slows you while doing so. On top of this, when you manage to get close to stomping him, he can knock you incredibly far away while putting 5 stacks of torment. Don’t get me started on their 3rd ability. Now imagine trying to stomp this opponent while any other class in riding your butt with massive damage and cc (because you’re not dodging).

Yes there are some gimiky ways to down someone such as invuln and stability, but not everyone has these abilities and more than likely they will be on cooldown from fighting the opponent you’re now trying to stomp. However, even with this gimiky stomp, several classes such as thief, mesmer, and elementalist, can say “kitten you” with their 2 abilites and foil your stomp.

I love this game’s PvP and I love having good team play, but the down state just feels WAY too strong for a downed state. I mean come on…if someone lost all of their HP, give them some consequences for crying out loud. In the case of the Revenent I swear he is stronger while DOWNED than while he is up (although Rev is pretty broken if played right while up).

I don’t care about PvE all that much to be honest, so keep the downstate if people like it in PvE, but it needs to be changed in PvP. The way it is now, you cannot 2v1 unless you are just fighting really really awful players.

TL : DR – Downed state is too strong and makes 2v1’s nearly impossible against somewhat competent players. This diminishes the value of skill. Players need to be a lot more helpless in downed state.

Disagree with me? Give me some feedback on why you think being so powerful while downed is a good thing? Just in a non-flaming manner please

downed state is fine.

if one is competent enough, they can put down 2 opponents and keep them down.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

downed state is fine.

if one is competent enough, they can put down 2 opponents and keep them down.

Perhaps if these players are just really awful, which is something I addressed in the OP. Against remotely competent players I don’t think this is true. You have not given me any reason to believe this besides stating that it is true. Give me a reason.

I don’t think any game should allow you to win vs. 2 equally skilled players. The problem with gw2 however is that you can’t even 1v2 much worse players. (unless they are completely new) Not only that, but even if you outplay your oponent and manage to down 1 of them, as soon as you’re stomped/killed they get back up and your efforts have been meaningless. In other games killing 1 enemy in a 1v2 does at least even the score somewhat, as both teams are down a man for a bit. Sadly I don’t see them ever fixing this. Some downstates should at least be brought down though. (rev is ridiculous)

That’s why top tier players go for cleaving while focusing the other guy who’s standing. Stomps are purely for 1v1s (or when you have a safe stomp available).

I will agree that revenant downstate is ridiculous, even worse than pre patch downstate necro IMO.

Being so powerful while downed is a good thing™ in PvE

I did some 2 vs. 1 engagements so far today on Herald and bested them. I guess they must all be “dip meows”(?) or something. One person goes down, other person tries to resurrect, burst and interrupt on location (unless Stability), both players down—LoS to recover health if necessary, and range poke to keep them downed. Hardest fight I had was versus a Chronomancer and a Dragonhunter. That got my adrenaline pumping!

PS: My downed state as a Revenant is terrible.

Absconditus.6804:

One person goes down, other person tries to resurrect,

Yes these are the terrible players who you can win 1v2s against. If he just sits there and tries to res the other guy while you cleave and kill them no kitten you can win no one is fighting you.

Eisenwald.8562:

When I first got into GW2 I was really exited about the PvP because from the outside it looked like skill was a huge factor. I thought that unlike in other mmos, if I was really good, I could take on several people at once and still win. I thought that with enough skill, I would be able to even take on three people at once and still win.

Well now that I’ve gotten pretty good at PvPing I’ve realized that I was completely dead kittening wrong. Just in a two vs one scenario, unless both of your enemies are complete and utter dip kittens, you cannot 2v1. Now why is that? The answer is the downed state.

If the down state was simply a state at which you were able to be revived by a teamate and nothing else, I would be fine with that. However Anet doesn’t stop at just that. They decided that it was a good idea to not only give everyone extremely strong abilities in the down state, but even decent damage. We’ll take the most extreme case of the Revenant as an example. This class can hit for 1k damage per attack (which is quite fast) and also permanently slows you while doing so. On top of this, when you manage to get close to stomping him, he can knock you incredibly far away while putting 5 stacks of torment. Don’t get me started on their 3rd ability. Now imagine trying to stomp this opponent while any other class in riding your butt with massive damage and cc (because you’re not dodging).

Yes there are some gimiky ways to down someone such as invuln and stability, but not everyone has these abilities and more than likely they will be on cooldown from fighting the opponent you’re now trying to stomp. However, even with this gimiky stomp, several classes such as thief, mesmer, and elementalist, can say “kitten you” with their 2 abilites and foil your stomp.

I love this game’s PvP and I love having good team play, but the down state just feels WAY too strong for a downed state. I mean come on…if someone lost all of their HP, give them some consequences for crying out loud. In the case of the Revenent I swear he is stronger while DOWNED than while he is up (although Rev is pretty broken if played right while up).

I don’t care about PvE all that much to be honest, so keep the downstate if people like it in PvE, but it needs to be changed in PvP. The way it is now, you cannot 2v1 unless you are just fighting really really awful players.

TL : DR – Downed state is too strong and makes 2v1’s nearly impossible against somewhat competent players. This diminishes the value of skill. Players need to be a lot more helpless in downed state.

Disagree with me? Give me some feedback on why you think being so powerful while downed is a good thing? Just in a non-flaming manner please

For how long have you been playing? Your topic reminds me of 3 years old topics on this same forum when the game was just released. Then people adapted and get experienced.

I’ll have to agree with you OP that certain downed skills give a lot of advantage.
It’s kind of a bummer that thieves, mesmers and elementalists can counter any kind stomp but well, they don’t have any healing abilities that will help them get up faster. Then there is guardian and ranger who have it and still they have a long CD after getting downed and after being used (guard’s healing symbol duration is short, pet heal is nice but has a long CD as well).
Though if we all had the same effects on all 1-4 downed skill but different names, it would be boring
About those stomps, once I saw that revenant #1 being able to go through shield of courage and slow you anyway when other professions’ downed conditions can’t be applied through SoC (but that happens rarely, it’s a simple bug)
I do safe stomps with banish and JI or just cleave the crap out of my enemy.
I love it when my enemy gets safe healed so all I have to do is just to banish the downed enemy instead of the one picking him up, it looks hilarious

P.S.
Guardian’s #1 downed skill is really freakin’ weak.

Mallis.4295:

Yes these are the terrible players who you can win 1v2s against. If he just sits there and tries to res the other guy while you cleave and kill them no kitten you can win no one is fighting you.

Most people, decent players, will try to resurrect a downed ally. And even if they don’t, once one person is down, all you got to do is continue cleaving. They got to make a choice, to let their ally die from the cleaves while you damage them as well, or to try and get them up. Either way, you have the advantage, as their ally creates a distraction in most cases. Your subconsciously weighing the pros and cons of trying to get your ally back up, even if you aren’t directly focusing on it. This can result in you playing worse.

Absconditus.6804:

Mallis.4295:

Yes these are the terrible players who you can win 1v2s against. If he just sits there and tries to res the other guy while you cleave and kill them no kitten you can win no one is fighting you.

Most people, decent players, will try to resurrect a downed ally. And even if they don’t, once one person is down, all you got to do is continue cleaving. They got to make a choice, to let their ally die from the cleaves while you damage them as well, or to try and get them up. Either way, you have the advantage, as their ally creates a distraction in most cases. Your subconsciously weighing the pros and cons of trying to get your ally back up, even if you aren’t directly focusing on it. This can result in you playing worse.

If you try to revive a downed ally and get killed by a guy who you are 2v1 against you are bad and deserve to lose. If you aren’t bad and MMR is working as intended this situation will never actually occur.

If stomping was ever fixed it would be easier to win 1v2

Just roll a reaper and you should be able to 1v2.

never had this issue, been in plenty of 1v2 with a mixed result, but its not impossible to win.
But to your point; The “improved” mmr-system should make you face more competent players and the chance of winning 1v2 should decrease if no other factors weigh in (starting hp, cds…).
Make sense? no?

edit; or follow Yasha’s advice and roll a class that not everyone knows how to hard counter yet.

RKyrk.4761:

never had this issue, been in plenty of 1v2 with a mixed result, but its not impossible to win.
But to your point; The “improved” mmr-system should make you face more competent players and the chance of winning 1v2 should decrease if no other factors weigh in (starting hp, cds…).
Make sense? no?

edit; or follow Yasha’s advice and roll a class that not everyone knows how to hard counter yet.

The only hard counter to reaper is focusing them down with multiple people since necros don’t really have any block/invuln. Other than that they’re just a pain to deal with.

Downed state is not the reason you can’t win 2v1. You can pick some stability or skills like elixir s, and stomp without problems.

Problem is, skill floor in GW2 is very low, while skill ceiling is above human level. It’s just very hard to be very good at this game. Too hard. It takes cyborg skills to avoid all important attacks without cast bars, and to time all yours between plentiful evades/invulns/blinds/blocks – where 95% of these things are instant. Did I mention asura models?

Asura models giving you grief? Use the standard model option and everyone becomes Human. Personally, I have never had any issues reading an Asura. I wouldn’t say it takes cyborg skill to avoid a lot of detrimental attacks coming your way, nor to land yours. That’s mind games and tactical usage of your skills, deciding which skills to sacrifice to guarantee (almost) that another (few) hits.

Standard models only for ranked. And ranked is closed now.

Dagins.5163:

Downed state is not the reason you can’t win 2v1. You can pick some stability or skills like elixir s, and stomp without problems.

Problem is, skill floor in GW2 is very low, while skill ceiling is above human level. It’s just very hard to be very good at this game. Too hard. It takes cyborg skills to avoid all important attacks without cast bars, and to time all yours between plentiful evades/invulns/blinds/blocks – where 95% of these things are instant. Did I mention asura models?

Very good explanation. Personally i think you are correct but i also think that downstate plays an important role in this as well. Stomping doesn’t work vs many classes post-HoT, thanks to quick resses.

@Absconditus
You forgot, that a) ranked is offline, and b) ranked is not the only PvP option, and everywhere else you can’t normalize models. Personally, I don’t normalize them in ranked anyway, because it makes the game look ugly. However, if there was an option to only normalize asuras, then I would go for it.

And about ,,mind games and tactical usage of your skills’’ – I would absolutely love if it was true, but sadly, it isn’t. GW2 is a spamfest, too many combat actions are random and uncontrollable, especially in melee clutter.

@Quadox
I agree, some downed states are to effective at being ,,helpless’’, especially when the players gear for vitality and toughness. They would really use some standardization.

Let’s use a clear analogy here for a second. If you play against the world champion in chess and he lacks a queen you should still be able to beat him as the correct strategy for forcing your win should come to you: trade pieces off, get your pieces out, and reinforce lanes leading to entry points, even giving up the queen for a rook (especially if only you have a piece after sacrificing) to further simplify things to snuff out any faint hope of him recovering somehow and minimizing careless mistakes on your part (get those knights off the board they can screw things up when looking ahead!)

Likewise in GW2 if a game is balanced properly then the two should win with best play. I practice 1v2’s (both as the 1 and the 2) with the expectation I’ll lose, the real “win” is holding out for a long time and putting up a good fight and not trivially going down like a punk. It isn’t enough to know how to down players in 1v1. sometimes you’ll need to know when to play defensively and apply those tactics. When you do win a 1v2 situation you just kinda feel sad that people could be that bad or that the win wasn’t quite deserved since they’d likely start the battle down on some health and with so many critical skills on cooldown.

Sunshine.5014:

Being so powerful while downed is a good thing™ in PvE ;)

I felt like such a noob when I confronted the shadow leaper and his bow and arrow buddy at the chokepoint. I went after the archer frog since if it has a bow and arrow it likely has knockbacks and AoE cripple too (as a daredevil cripple isn’t as meaningful to me but I shouldn’t have to blow a dodge just for cleansing) so I went after him first. I noticed my health rapidly going down. I shadow refuge, reengage, shadow leaper in stealth triggered a spike trap, I do some S/D #5 and 1 daze chaining, take out the archer, I go down, and just beat the shadow leaper in downed. Could have gone either way was way too close of a fight for just two trashmobs :( Daredevil elite came in handy but I’m typically stingy with it since it can be interrupted or whatever I’m beating up can get knocked back wasting so much potential DPS. Also wait for interrupts to proc so I can unleash it properly without interruptions.

Absconditus.6804:

Mallis.4295:

Yes these are the terrible players who you can win 1v2s against. If he just sits there and tries to res the other guy while you cleave and kill them no kitten you can win no one is fighting you.

Most people, decent players, will try to resurrect a downed ally. And even if they don’t, once one person is down, all you got to do is continue cleaving. They got to make a choice, to let their ally die from the cleaves while you damage them as well, or to try and get them up. Either way, you have the advantage, as their ally creates a distraction in most cases. Your subconsciously weighing the pros and cons of trying to get your ally back up, even if you aren’t directly focusing on it. This can result in you playing worse.

No, actually. Watch all of the top players playing. Going for an actual stomp is neeeeeevveeeeeeer happening in top tier matches unless its a 1v1, you won the fight, they’re on the point and you wanna cap. If you have a knock back, they usually knock you off to just let you bleed out. That’s all in a 1v1.

In a 1v2, its all cleave bby.

Agemnon.4608:

Let’s use a clear analogy here for a second. If you play against the world champion in chess and he lacks a queen you should still be able to beat him as the correct strategy for forcing your win should come to you: trade pieces off, get your pieces out, and reinforce lanes leading to entry points, even giving up the queen for a rook (especially if only you have a piece after sacrificing) to further simplify things to snuff out any faint hope of him recovering somehow and minimizing careless mistakes on your part (get those knights off the board they can screw things up when looking ahead!)

Likewise in GW2 if a game is balanced properly then the two should win with best play. I practice 1v2’s (both as the 1 and the 2) with the expectation I’ll lose, the real “win” is holding out for a long time and putting up a good fight and not trivially going down like a punk. It isn’t enough to know how to down players in 1v1. sometimes you’ll need to know when to play defensively and apply those tactics. When you do win a 1v2 situation you just kinda feel sad that people could be that bad or that the win wasn’t quite deserved since they’d likely start the battle down on some health and with so many critical skills on cooldown.

Haha, I would like to see you beat the chess world champion with only a queen handicap, hahahaha. Video please.

Dagins.5163:

Downed state is not the reason you can’t win 2v1. You can pick some stability or skills like elixir s, and stomp without problems.

Problem is, skill floor in GW2 is very low, while skill ceiling is above human level. It’s just very hard to be very good at this game. Too hard. It takes cyborg skills to avoid all important attacks without cast bars, and to time all yours between plentiful evades/invulns/blinds/blocks – where 95% of these things are instant. Did I mention asura models?

I don’t completely agree with you regarding the downed state, but I definitely agree with you regarding the skill ceiling and floor. Too many animations in this game are so subtle or similar that you’d need a microscope to predict them.

There are skills in this game that literally have the exactly same animation as an auto attack. There are also animations that are so similar to other skills that the only difference is perhaps a 20 degree angle difference in the bend of the left arm. Not only these, but there are plenty of instant cast no animation ranged abilities that are literally impossible to dodge unless you have a crystal ball. This, compiled with a cluster of other problems, is why this game will NEVER ever in a million years become even a semi popular e-sport like they apparently plan.

Regarding the 2v1 scenario, if you manage to down one of your enemies yes you can attempt to cleave the two of them. However the other enemy still up can easily disable you with a knockback, fear, stun, ect. (take your pick, everyone has over 9000 cc’s now’a’days) and res his ally before your able to get back on him. All a Dragon Hunter has to do is put one blades trap down and presto, free res. If you are dumb enough to walk into the trap to attempt to cleave them, the DH can just shoot you with his unblockable shot and knock you away. In the case of the Ranger, he has his knockback arrow on a low cooldown, his pets taunt, his pets knockdown typically, and there is still the cc that the downed player provides. This could go on and on for most all classes.

So I apologize to the people that disagree with me, but you haven’t swayed my opinion on this matter. You’ve only made me realize that you think bad players are actually good. Any semi competent player who knows how to press a crowd control button can stop you from cleaving or stomping or can simply kill you with the help of their uber powerful Revenant downed friend.

They attempt a res, you down them….? Your build is deficient if you’re pure melee.

SlayerSixx.5763:

They attempt a res, you down them….? Your build is deficient if you’re pure melee.

You’re making a claim without any evidence or reasoning. Just down them? It’s like answering the question “how do you kill a Dragon Hunter” with a Shia lLabeouf quote “Just do it”. Please put more effort into your post next time.

When I first got into GW2 I was really exited about the PvP because from the outside it looked like skill was a huge factor. I thought that unlike in other mmos, if I was really good, I could take on several people at once and still win. I thought that with enough skill, I would be able to even take on three people at once and still win.

Skill is only part of the equation. You also need a good build on a good profession. Revenant for example can fight multiple opponents just fine at the moment, but a warrior will have trouble unless they one shot 3 people with gunflame.

It’s certainly harder to 1vX in GW2 than it is in other games, but it’s absolutely possible. Take any competent player, put them in a hotjoin match, and watch them solo three people on a point.

I have to agree 100% with the OP, but it’s pointless because they will never remove the downed state. Not even from Spvp, where it really doesn’t belong.

It just doesn’t fit well in Spvp. It makes zerging incredibly powerful (yawn), and it eliminates opportunities for interesting or unexpected play. You can almost always predict how a fight will go because of it.

Using the downed state to your advantage is really easy when you outnumber your foe and basically impossible when you do not. I think SPvP stomps should be auto quickness’d at the very least. I have despised the downed state system from the start because any MOBA player or PvPer from other popular MMOs will quickly see it doesn’t fit and totally eliminates a lot of fun “clutch” or “omg” moments that happen far more frequently in other games. Furthermore, I’m just about the only one in my circle of friends who stuck with GW2 pvp, as most everyone else quit due to their hatred of the downed state for all the reasons the OP and I are describing.

I am in fact so certain of this that I’ve been preaching from the start, “Just try no-downed-state as a custom game mode option and watch how successful it becomes.” Now would be an especially good time, because soldier and other toughness builds are dominating so burst builds (those which would benefit the most from this change) aren’t really in danger of becoming too strong.

But I’m rushing this post a tad because I know it’s absolutely for nothing, so how convincing I am doesn’t matter. They’ll never do this change. Their plates are too full and they’ve come too far with the downed state to drop it.

…srsly do’ – jus’ try it gaiz<

SlayerSixx.5763:

They attempt a res, you down them….? Your build is deficient if you’re pure melee.

Or they use stability, invuln, invisibility, instant-rez skill, cc on you, quickness, etc etc etc

This is not a valid argument.

Thanks for your input Jackalrat I have to admit, I think you’re right to doubt Anet on ever removing the downed state from spvp. Although it’s a sad state, I appreciate your voice in the matter. It’s good to know I’m not the only one with a solid head on my shoulders. They have a lot bigger fish to fry at the moment I guess too. Just adding this to my list of reason to move on to Blade & Soul or Black Desert before long.

Eisenwald.8562:

Regarding the 2v1 scenario, if you manage to down one of your enemies yes you can attempt to cleave the two of them. However the other enemy still up can easily disable you with a knockback, fear, stun, ect. (take your pick, everyone has over 9000 cc’s now’a’days) and res his ally before your able to get back on him.
[…]

If you are fighting two opponents that are equally skilled as you are, and they don’t make any mistakes, you aren’t supposed to stomp both of them. If you are fighting two noobs, you can still win if you use stability or an ability like elixir s.

I still upkeep, that downed state is not the reason you can’t win the first scenario, but the stupidly low skill floor / insanely high skill ceiling.

In general – bad moves are barely punished, easy moves are too powerful, and smart plays are not rewarded enough.

What we truly need is rising the skill floor:
- making certain abilities backfire (like make DH traps hit allies),
- removal of powerful passive procs (like free elixir s at 20% hp),
- opening hit frames after evades (including evades from weapon skills),
- making ALL healing skills possible to interrupt,
- nerf sustained regeneration, give us real attrition play.

and lowering the skill ceiling:
- introducing cast bars,
- fix strange skill queues that delay interrupts/weapon evades.

Winning 1v2s is certainly possible, but how you handle the first downed player is crucial. You need to run high dps, and unlike 1v1s have to make 0 mistakes.

With function gyro even 1v3s are possible, although has to be perfect..

Downed state is here to stay OP, if you stick around you’ll learn the various mechanics (we take it for granted but there’s a lot). Essentially if you’re 1v2 your best bet is to poison then cleave/interrupt the resser – any launches (on the downed player) are also very effective.

Eisenwald.8562:

I have to admit, I think you’re right to doubt Anet on ever removing the downed state from spvp.

Why should they remove it, dude? I think you must have a point there but still downstate is a great and unique mechanic and many people love it. And why’s that even fair to be able to take on a 1v2 in a 5v5 conquest match, where players grouped up – more or less – in accordance with their skill and experience level?

Eisenwald.8562:

Just adding this to my list of reason to move on to Blade & Soul or Black Desert before long.

Yes, it looks like you just picked the wrong game for you. You should try that notorious Korean game that exists for more than 10 years already and that I actually still enjoy playing sometimes, where you cannot make a good fraps vid without winning a 1v3 or a 2v5 on a regular daily gang basis somewhere on a farm spot.

What do you people think about making knockback skills and pulls hit downed foes like launches do? Since many classes don’t have a launch.

Quadox.7834:

What do you people think about making knockback skills and pulls hit downed foes like launches do? Since many classes don’t have a launch.

Well I think it wouldn’t be much of a logic from the physiological point of view in most cases.

Yasha.5963:

Agemnon.4608:

Let’s use a clear analogy here for a second. If you play against the world champion in chess and he lacks a queen you should still be able to beat him as the correct strategy for forcing your win should come to you: trade pieces off, get your pieces out, and reinforce lanes leading to entry points, even giving up the queen for a rook (especially if only you have a piece after sacrificing) to further simplify things to snuff out any faint hope of him recovering somehow and minimizing careless mistakes on your part (get those knights off the board they can screw things up when looking ahead!)

Likewise in GW2 if a game is balanced properly then the two should win with best play. I practice 1v2’s (both as the 1 and the 2) with the expectation I’ll lose, the real “win” is holding out for a long time and putting up a good fight and not trivially going down like a punk. It isn’t enough to know how to down players in 1v1. sometimes you’ll need to know when to play defensively and apply those tactics. When you do win a 1v2 situation you just kinda feel sad that people could be that bad or that the win wasn’t quite deserved since they’d likely start the battle down on some health and with so many critical skills on cooldown.

Haha, I would like to see you beat the chess world champion with only a queen handicap, hahahaha. Video please.

The point is sometimes overwhelming resources trump skills and those with the resources from a theoretical standpoint would win in a perfect play scenario. Yeah people aren’t perfect but one person has half the skills as two people. Two people have twenty abilities between them, that’s more interrupts, knockbacks, pull ins, heals, etc., than the one person has. Yes people have won 1v2 before but only because the two were inexperienced, in a non-optimal state (below max health and abilities on CD), or simply careless while the one’s skill more than made up for the two’s resources.

I’m still confident the world champion could beat me down a knight, but a queen is a bit much.

Downed state mechanics don’t ruin PvP. They ruin the one-man-army aspect of PvP and make it almost solely about teamwork. ROM will stream his games from 2v2 tournaments and it’s fascinating to watch because often he and his teammate will just be initially downing one of their opponents to force out cool-downs. They generally wear down their opponents to the point that they don’t have a stability or an invuln and ROM or his partner can save a fear to perform a successful stomp. It’s like a mix between the pace of a fight in an FPS game while also retaining some elements of a more strategic game like chess. Downed state is such a cool mechanic for highly coordinated team-play but it’s also flat-out awful for when we’re playing solo/duo against a larger group using mic’s. Overall, it’s not good and it’s also not bad. It’s a trade-off and one that’s heavily biased toward teamwork and coordination. Ultimately, the mechanics of GW2 are built to encourage us to treat PvP like a 5v5 e-sport and to punish us for resisting this kind of play. It does suck that they haven’t included options for alternative versions of PvP, like death-match without downstate, but perhaps that’s something they could include in the next expansion.

Agemnon.4608:

Yasha.5963:

Agemnon.4608:

Let’s use a clear analogy here for a second. If you play against the world champion in chess and he lacks a queen you should still be able to beat him as the correct strategy for forcing your win should come to you: trade pieces off, get your pieces out, and reinforce lanes leading to entry points, even giving up the queen for a rook (especially if only you have a piece after sacrificing) to further simplify things to snuff out any faint hope of him recovering somehow and minimizing careless mistakes on your part (get those knights off the board they can screw things up when looking ahead!)

Likewise in GW2 if a game is balanced properly then the two should win with best play. I practice 1v2’s (both as the 1 and the 2) with the expectation I’ll lose, the real “win” is holding out for a long time and putting up a good fight and not trivially going down like a punk. It isn’t enough to know how to down players in 1v1. sometimes you’ll need to know when to play defensively and apply those tactics. When you do win a 1v2 situation you just kinda feel sad that people could be that bad or that the win wasn’t quite deserved since they’d likely start the battle down on some health and with so many critical skills on cooldown.

Haha, I would like to see you beat the chess world champion with only a queen handicap, hahahaha. Video please.

The point is sometimes overwhelming resources trump skills and those with the resources from a theoretical standpoint would win in a perfect play scenario. Yeah people aren’t perfect but one person has half the skills as two people. Two people have twenty abilities between them, that’s more interrupts, knockbacks, pull ins, heals, etc., than the one person has. Yes people have won 1v2 before but only because the two were inexperienced, in a non-optimal state (below max health and abilities on CD), or simply careless while the one’s skill more than made up for the two’s resources.

Quite true. You are probably good at chess, for a beginner like me your example seemed funny.