Let me preface this by saying that in my personal opinion the downed-state mechanic is the single most detrimental feature to PvP in any MMO I have seen to date. It has a snowballing effect, isn’t remotely balanced and most importantly isn’t fun. I my book it always was and still is a mechanic designed and balanced entirely around PvE, where to be fair, it’s perfectly fine.
That said I acknowledge that ANet is never going to fundamentally change this mechanic no matter how much I or anyone else complains about it. But maybe there are a few reasonable changes we can all agree on.
1. 1 Rally for 1 kill – This is pretty self-explanatory. I’m ok with the Rallying mechanic and understand arguments about it shifting the momentum of battle and keeping things interesting. And in 90% if situations that’s fine. But having multiple people, sometimes up to 5 or more people rally off a single person they tagged half a minute prior is just not cool and very frustrating and random when it occurs. And this happens quite a bit in WvW.
To use an example, when you catch a ball in Dodgeball you get one team-member to rejoin the game. Having your entire team rejoin because of a single catch would just be kittened and have a massive unpredictable jojo-effect on the outcome of matches.
2. Every finisher-interrupt should have a counter.
Many classes in GW2 can be reliably stomped given the right abilities.
Warrior interrupt can be countered by Stability, Stealth and Blind.
Guardian interrupt can be countered by Stability and Blind.
Ranger interrupt can be countered by Stability and Blind
Thief teleport can be countered by Shadowsteps/Blinks. His second interrupt can not be countered.
Engineer interrupt can be countered by Stability, Stealth and Blind
Necromancer interrupt can be countered by Stealth.
Mesmer interrupt can not be countered.
Elementalist can not be countered. Also being near a portal makes them virtually unkillable.
So the two big outliners here are Mesmers and Elementalists. The Thief downed stealth is also problematic but at least it has a lengthy cooldown and so isn’t available right away.
My goal here is to allow every “stomp denier” to be countered by some sort of ability. This ability doesn’t have to be available to all classes but there should always be ways to reliably stomp with the right class and cooldowns.
In the case of Mesmers, the easiest way to address this would be by simply having the Mesmer reappear instantly after using Deception. This would make it possible to stomp using shadowsteps or other instant teleports, assuming the stomper picks the right target.
For Elementalists things are a little tricker, especially considering their immortality near keeps. You’d need to find a more creative solution for this case.
3. Rezz time vs. finisher time
It seems like that in some scenarios a single player can actually revive faster than your standard finisher goes, making successful 2v1s almost impossible. Why must revives be so incredibly fast? How is this fun and fair towards the already outmanned player?
I also don’t understand why the tools needed to stop such a revive are few and far between for some classes. Some builds simply don’t have any way to stop a revive and given the previous circumstance if revives being faster than stomps, can end up in fights they simply can’t win.
4. Power rezzing by multiple players. It’s stunning to see in WvW just how quickly a group of 5 players can resurrect a previously dead player. It’s a matter of seconds and way too effective considering a dead player should be considered “out” of any PvP battle. This is especially frustrating in WvW when you have a huge zerg knocking at your door and despite your solid defenses the enemies can just continue ressurrecting their dead ad infinitum.
Would it be possible that while in combat a second resurrecter would only add 50% rezz-speed, a third 25% etc? Seems reasonable to me.