Guild Wars 2

Serious. This condition was great for spiking, pressure and working against that Monk, Ele, ritualist or infuse derv (wot?) red barring.
The % based nature of it meant no one got a break. 20% health locked down until removed.
They should’ve thrown this back up on Thieves and Warrior. The whole Backstab ~ Mug ~ Cnd situation they were feeling grimy about could’ve been solved with Deep wound.

Maybe they decided that Deep wound was too cool for PvE or something so they wanted to keep it out of all formats so PvE wasn’t upset that they didn’t have the manliest condition in the game.

I suppose maybe in this “no healer” design they felt such a condition was too strong because there was no one dedicated to condition removal? Considering how much condi cleanse against an individual condition there is on generally every profession and there ability to even isolate conditions (Skills that removes only cripple, chill and immobilize for instance) I don’t think lack of a monk/ritualist would mandate the loss of Deep wound. Since after all with rune of the soldier, Shout rangers with brown bears can remove conditions for the whole party.

Why did they decide to exclude this condition, I don’t remember it an pre-release interview.
inb4wutisdeepwound.

It was a spike & anti-healer measure. We don’t have healers, and their only PvP format is conquest, which is more about area control / denial than coordinating spikes over ventrilo. Sure, you could argue that having a 5 warrior team get their adrenaline up and timing their eviscerates on the same target could work, but we have the downed system, dodge rolling, and various other mechanisms that make such shenanigans no longer exist.

Or to put it another way – GW1 and GW2 have nothing in common bar names and lore.

Part of the mechanic (20% reduction in healing) was incorporated into poison in GW2 (33% reduction in healing). Other than that, a percentage reduction in maximum health isn’t as important a mechanic in GW2 because of the pacing of combat. GW2 is a much faster and more fluid in GW2 than GW1: group fights are usually decided in a few seconds and rarely last longer than a minute unless several bunkers are involved. DW was usually a pressure skill, it acted as a pressure on support and heal classes and was most effective at reducing heal output over a period of several minutes. Since fights are decided so much more quickly in GW2 the pressure mechanic of DW wouldn’t be as important and additional spike mechanics would be unnecessary.

There are certain instances where a pressure mechanic would be more desirable such as certain times when you push the Lord or go for buff at Temple. As well as by itself as a fixed % of health changing, helping to solidify the game against power creeps, and hold bunkers in better control.

Though if you think of a bunker less world which was probably the original vision, then yes DW doesn’t make sense because the TTK is fairly high outside of that.
The main problem with even attempting pressure (which I guess also holds back certain skills like Warrior banners) is that the circle mechanic already puts a time restraint on your actions so more immediate results are needed if not for effectivity but so that you don’t let 10s worth of pts slide up.
Somewhat unfortunate.