Guild Wars 2

So last night I was doing random sPvP on my Mesmer and ran into another Mesmer at some point. It was a pretty clean 1v1 and I was lucky enough to put him in downed state with ~7k HPs left.

I ran up to him to finish him, though obviously he ported away the first time. At this point I was still doing fine, except for the fact that I was slowed and he had ported to a location that would take me a couple of seconds to reach.

I got there with reasonably high health, when suddenly I died to his Illusionary Rogue just before the stomping animation was about to go through.

Thinking about this part, I am sure there are those who will say “fair game, downed state is supposed to work like that” and those who think “losing 7k+ HPs while the other guy is downed is over the top” and I am fine with accepting both as valid opinions.

At this point, however, people probably don’t realize it, I had already lost this battle, simply because I downed the guy first. His Illusionary Rogue was out (downed state #3), while mine obviously wasn’t as I had just entered downed state. This is the part that I doubt anybody could be claiming to be intended.

How can I lose a fight, because I down somebody first. Why would he ever have an advantage over me, because of that. That’s simply irrational:

http://www.imagebanana.com/view/4l3qicld/Downedaintsound.png

yes downed state is fine but that #3 needs polishing

iTB.1428:

yes downed state is fine but that #3 needs polishing

Actually it’s not fine. The OP showed just one of many examples why it’s not.
Think about a glass cannon thief. Now think about how long you need to kill him (best case scenario). It takes about 3-5s with many classes. Just ONE good burst (backstab, PW, 100b, shatter, dragon tooth + fire grab combo etc…).
But now think about how long you need to finish him sometimes. He ports somewhere you don’t see him right away (behind a stone, down a cliff etc). When you finally reach him again he stealths, then ports again. This can take up to 10-15s.
So time to down: 3-5s
and time to stomp: 10-15s (in this scenario)
Is that what a fight should be like? I really don’t think so.

That’s a second example why downed state is broken.
In allot of fights it seems like the main dmg and the majority of the time you’re fighting in or against downed state… I thought down state is just your last chance in a close battle but not when someone downs you with 1/3 of his hp left.

Down state is a broken mechanic and needs allot of work. I see the point of people saying it’s a part of the fight but do you want it to be the main part of the fight or should the part when you’re both alive and have all your skills available decide who is gonna lose and wins?

Maybe this change to downed state so it deals more damage was to further discourage people from running glass cannons.

@Gohlar, that’s a pretty limited viewpoint

I almost never finish people off when they’re downed. It’s a lot easier to keep fighting/doing other stuff and throwing down an AoE so their heal gets interrupted because downed state attacks are never going to do as much damage as regular attacks. So, the enemy team is down one person and doesn’t waste our time trying to stomp. Win-win. Only class I ever bother stomping are classes with interrupts because an easy blind takes care of it.

I still don’t think that this is what Anet was having in mind – just keep attacking the downed person. Otherwise there wouldn’t be the need of a finishing animation.
And you do see the rogue in OP screen hitting for 6k+ do you? Tell me again how many skills do you have when not downed that summon a pet attacking for 6k+ dmg?

What you’re saying are ways to work around the problem with downed state but it doesn’t change the fact that downed state is broken at the moment and needs to be changed.

Well, it’s hardly shocking, really. Despite what ANet says, the game is GROSSLY unbalanced. Pretty much anyone can see it.

And so it is no surprise that downed state skills are GROSSLY out of balance between different classes as well. Mesmer and Thief have very useful ones. Classes like Engineer have crappy ones. The #2 ability actually pulls the enemy TO you! So they don’t have to run to you to finish you off. Brilliant, right?

The issue isn’t so much the downed state itself or the damage you do in it, but rather the different class abilities. Some classes take a very long time to kill (Thief), others moderate but can pretty effectively fight back (Mesmer), and others just plain suck (Engi).

The game needs to be balanced. It’s that simple. Right now it’s a gory mess. Not the worst I’ve seen, but it’s not “pretty good” as they claim either.

@tarcheg “broken” is a very relative conclusion in this discussion. If downed state is unfair, then it is broken. If it appears unfair, then it might be broken. But to say it’s broken because you dislike how it functions is a meaningless statement. I guess the heart of the discussion is that I just play the game the way it is. I leave the discussion of balancing to the devs because they are in a better position to assess the overall situation.

I think it’s funny that he totally neglected the fact to show that what really killed him was the unload form the thief that just ran over his corpse.

23 hits from unload.

In other words….mesmer wisely used his abilities to prolong his life for his teammates to show up.

Teammates showed up and kindly finished off his buddies.

Yup, sounds like its working as intended.

@milo
To leave the balancing only to the devs is never a good idea.
The devs stated themselves and most gamers know that the players are the ones that find the real issues. Things the devs have never thought about but since the gamer are playing the game on a much higher level they find ways how to “exploit” certain game mechanic/skills etc.
A game with no player feedback will never even come near to being balanced.

teviko.6049:

I think it’s funny that he totally neglected the fact to show that what really killed him was the unload form the thief that just ran over his corpse.

23 hits from unload.

In other words….mesmer wisely used his abilities to prolong his life for his teammates to show up.

Teammates showed up and kindly finished off his buddies.

Yup, sounds like its working as intended.

The skill on the top was ILLUSIONARY unload. The OP said it was a 1on1 til the end. But thanks for bringing in your clueless input…

I am all for arguing for the sake of arguing, but please tell me how, if we extracted the essence of this little experience of mine, it makes sense for a 1v1 between mesmers to be decided in favor of the mesmer getting downed first?

How can that fact be viewed as anything else than the mechanics being broken. The fact that his #3 in downed actually deals damage is making this painfully obvious, but the same is true for any other downed ability.

They pretty much all allow you to not only recover from your state, but, on occasion, to decide fights with it (be it with a team mate present or not). It is mind blowing to me as to how anybody could defend that, even if it happened on very rare occasions.

It’s a fact that some downed states are a lot better than others.

Some of the better ones – ranger pet rezzing him, mesmer port + illusionary summon (as discussed), guardian multi knock back + heal, thief teleport+invis (although I would argue this is the weakest of the 4.

The other profs have basically nothing, and it’s absurd.

For mesmers, I personally think if they are downed they shouldnt have any phantasms up at all – no profession should be doing 75% of their normal dps while downed.

And it’s obvious that before any serious tournaments start downed states should be balanced in some way across all professions.

Either two options:

1) balance the ele, engineer, necro, warrior up to the other 4 – I wouldnt class the warriors downed as anything special imo. They get up and go down again.

2) Balance everyone to have exactly the same downed state i.e 1 knock back, 1 dps move.

If all downed states were the same, there would be no issues with the balance, apart from power builds doing more dps than condition builds in downed state, but thats a lot less to quarrel over than what it is like now.

I’ve had the exact same thing once.

I was downed by another mesmer. The fight was long and tough but at the end he won. I brought him to maybe 2k max health with some condition actives, but I still sat on my kitten first and told to myself : “yup, gg”.

3 seconds later I down him too (with some confusion damage from #1 and DoTs still active) before he can stomp me. Then, as I was downed first, my skill #3 was active way before his and absolutely shredded him. I rallied and earned some glory.

I really felt like a cheater as this is not how it should work imo. I like the downstate mechanic as it brings a nice team mechanic (protecting your down allies, interrupting rezzers while one of your mate down it, …) but what happened is not “working as intended”. The crucial factor was only that the OP downed state ability was up sooner than his…

This is not just an issue of unbalanced down states between the classes (which they are) but much more an unbalance between being alive and being downed. Down state is in general just much too strong.
As I said – sometimes it takes much more time to stomp someone than to bring him in down state. This is imo a much greater issue…

Downed state abilities are a little unbalanced… but downed state in general is there to promote team play, not 1v1 win/lose situations. It’s about point control, not number of kills. Something my tournament team found out the hard way when we lost to a Korean team that was made up entirely of stability/knockback mongers.

Maybe if they ever implement deathmatch arena they will have to look into it or removing it, but at this point, that’s not what PvP is in GW2.

aydenunited.5729:

Downed state abilities are a little unbalanced… but downed state in general is there to promote team play, not 1v1 win/lose situations. It’s about point control, not number of kills. Something my tournament team found out the hard way when we lost to a Korean team that was made up entirely of stability/knockback mongers.

Maybe if they ever implement deathmatch arena they will have to look into it or removing it, but at this point, that’s not what PvP is in GW2.

There’s no doubt it’s meant to promote team play, and I totally agree having it in the game as it adds an extra element to pvp.

But you can’t get away from it, 1v1’s do happen, 1v2’s happen, 2v2’s happen etc. Numerous times I’ve downed a mesmer on treb with 5k health, which should be a relatively easy stomp, but I have to move away and dodge the summoned illusionists that hit for 5k each whilst they are downed. Or having a downed fight with a ranger getting upped by his pet.

In tpvp you notice downed state indifferences a lot more than hot joins.

Hsulf.9370:

2) Balance everyone to have exactly the same downed state i.e 1 knock back, 1 dps move.

yes and just delete 7 professions in the process sounds like a great idea its finally a balanced game!

/sarcasm
by the way if you think mesmers downed state is good have you seen warrior? its just vengeance finish him back up again.

tom.7468:

by the way if you think mesmers downed state is good have you seen warrior? its just vengeance finish him back up again.

only if specced..remember this detail…

tom.7468:

Hsulf.9370:

2) Balance everyone to have exactly the same downed state i.e 1 knock back, 1 dps move.

yes and just delete 7 professions in the process sounds like a great idea its finally a balanced game!

/sarcasm
by the way if you think mesmers downed state is good have you seen warrior? its just vengeance finish him back up again.

I actaully feel the professions are much more balanced than the current down states.

op as a mesmer you should have summoned your illusions and let them finish him or let them keep him downed while you wait and heal.

milo.6942:

Maybe this change to downed state so it deals more damage was to further discourage people from running glass cannons.

@Gohlar, that’s a pretty limited viewpoint

why is that?

i crit someone for 4,5k on my thief in downstate, i’m just fine with glasgun ty

You have a good point…

For my point of view you should have won that 1v1, 7k HP its a lot.

For my experience fighting mesmer as a ranger its a pain in the arsh, especially if its a illusionary build. IF I WON, and put him down i have to go away and heal me to take the mesmer out.

The illusions do to much dmg.

1. It’s not about what he could have done different, it’s about a too strong down state.

2. Just to argue with you about what he could have done:
-OP killed him with shatter burst so there were no more phantasm doing dmg for him.
-downed mesmer used teleport (2nd skill) and teleported luckily behind a rock, so there was almost no time to attack him in between to finish him with dmg
-when he was finally visible again and OP found him, the downed mesmer summoned the rogue which instantly killed the OP
Yes I watched that 1on1 from a far and safe distance.

This thread is about the fact that the mesmer going first in down state had an advantage over the other one because he could summon his rogue first. It doesn’t matter how often this will happen – fact is, it did happen. And there are many more of those examples. Downed state was meant as a last chance kind of thing but not to win a fight which was already 100% lost…

op as a mesmer you should have summoned your illusions and let them finish him or let them keep him downed while you wait and heal.

The fact that I was playing a mesmer is beside the point, as not everybody can keep damaging a target without actively engaging. However, let’s assume I would have run away to heal up, pretend I still had phantasms out and not used them to finish him to keep him downed. 15+ seconds later I would have come back to a mesmer in downed state and 2 illusionary rogues or a revived mesmer, if an ally had shown up while I was recovering.

I’d like for them to just remove the downed state all together from W3 and sPvP

tarcheg.4872:

Downed state was meant as a last chance kind of thing but not to win a fight which was already 100% lost…

qft

Med.6150:

op as a mesmer you should have summoned your illusions and let them finish him or let them keep him downed while you wait and heal.

The fact that I was playing a mesmer is beside the point, as not everybody can keep damaging a target without actively engaging. However, let’s assume I would have run away to heal up, pretend I still had phantasms out and not used them to finish him to keep him downed. 15+ seconds later I would have come back to a mesmer in downed state and 2 illusionary rogues or a revived mesmer, if an ally had shown up while I was recovering.

as a mesmer you should know what opposing mesmer can do you to you, you knew the rogue is coming and yet you let him stab you in the back for huge damage. If the hit was not in the back, yes, something is very wrong, but this was easily avoidable by simply turning around or killing the rogue.

Yes 6k damage is a lot, so maybe it needs a bit of balancing, but then again this is a hit from behind

Sure with 6k hp left while stomping in a spvp match with 7 other randoms running around the OP should waste 5 more seconds for a already DOWNED player just not to die himself?
Wasting 5 seconds in tpvp match (for 1 illusion) can change everything and 6k+ hp should ALWAYS be enough when you want to finish someone – that’s at least my point of view and I seriously don’t understand how someone can defend the dmg and power of down states.
And btw – What do you think would have happened after he had killed the rogue???? Yes, the mesmer would have had his teleport back up after that his rogue…. I’m sorry but something is broken…

Yes I too would love it if I could spawn a 6k dmg hitting fire ele that people had to avoid, and mist form didnt have a cd when I entered downed state! 6k rogues for everyone!

I suppose I should have cancelled my finishing animation at 3/4, because of the possibility that he’d spawn the rogue at that precise moment, right?

Still, all this talk about what could have been done is beside the point. Especially since it’s highly theoretical. What’s next? Is anybody going to jump in telling me I should have focused on killing the rogue while I was downed?

+1 I have been hit by that smoke bomb for over 5k damage several times. Never thought to make a screen shot, but it does need toning down.

Pimpslapper.2047:

+1 I have been hit by that smoke bomb for over 5k damage several times. Never thought to make a screen shot, but it does need toning down.

Exactly, shouldn’t be in the game ^^ No one can do that amount of dps while downed, why should a mesmer?

The average mesmer goes into a downed state with an iBezerker chomping at your heels porting through walls as well as the spawning rogue.

You lost when you decided to go for a stomp at a downed mesmer at 7k hp… Should’ve kept on attacking, building your illusions and conditions on him, fully expecting the possible outcome that you would go down too. At the time you would’ve gone down his health would be low enough for your downed attacks to finish him off along with your illusions hitting him.

Please read the thread before posting something which was already answered several times…
Phantasms were shattered and on cd. Almost no time for attacks cause the 2nd skill is instant ready to teleport – after that it took a while to locate the real mesmer cause of the position he luckily teleported. After finding the real one he summoned the rogue for a 6k+ attack and gg…

Med.6150:

So last night I was doing random sPvP on my Mesmer and ran into another Mesmer at some point. It was a pretty clean 1v1 and I was lucky enough to put him in downed state with ~7k HPs left.

I ran up to him to finish him, though obviously he ported away the first time. At this point I was still doing fine, except for the fact that I was slowed and he had ported to a location that would take me a couple of seconds to reach.

I got there with reasonably high health, when suddenly I died to his Illusionary Rogue just before the stomping animation was about to go through.

Thinking about this part, I am sure there are those who will say “fair game, downed state is supposed to work like that” and those who think “losing 7k+ HPs while the other guy is downed is over the top” and I am fine with accepting both as valid opinions.

At this point, however, people probably don’t realize it, I had already lost this battle, simply because I downed the guy first. His Illusionary Rogue was out (downed state #3), while mine obviously wasn’t as I had just entered downed state. This is the part that I doubt anybody could be claiming to be intended.

How can I lose a fight, because I down somebody first. Why would he ever have an advantage over me, because of that. That’s simply irrational:

http://www.imagebanana.com/view/4l3qicld/Downedaintsound.png

Well, you didn’t have to stomp him. Stomping carries with it the risk of taking more damage. You could have just attacked him and killed the rogue when he spawned.( you knew it was coming) also, since you did down him first, if you would have done damage you would have an advantage. You weren’t dead when the rogue hit you, you were just down. You could have teleported away from the rogue and killed him, granting you the revive.
Sure, downed state has some problems( eles being the most prominent) but this was entirely your fault and had nothing to do with improper balance.

Rangers and Necro’s are fantastic at downed state duels as well.

Necro can put out a ton of dmg in downed state while healing, I’ve won alot of downed state fights because of that, it’s kinda sad though.

@tOss:
are you actually believing what you’re writing? It’s absolute normal for you to get downed by someone downed when having 7k hp left?
And are you serious about attacking the rogue? Not only does he goes into stealth after using smoke bomb but the other mesmer will kill you much faster with his rogue than you can kill the rogue with your auto attack.
And please stop saying he should have attacked the downed mesmer – he had time to aa maybe 1-2 times before he ueses his teleport. I don’t know how much knowledge you have about targets which teleport away and are invis for a couple of seconds but good luck with attacking such a target without any AoE.

Why not just remove all abilities from Downstate and give us 2 buttons. Heal and Release to respawn. Downed state is suppose to be a time where teamwork prevails, so make teamwork mandatory to survive.

The way some people argue I totally expect at least one poster to chime in within the next hours and tell me how I should have stacked all my conditions on the mesmer when he was at 3k HPs and let him down me to secure the win with a rogue.

Don’t you people see the underlying issue. Can it be more obvious?

Albane.8367:

Why not just remove all abilities from Downstate and give us 2 buttons. Heal and Release to respawn. Downed state is suppose to be a time where teamwork prevails, so make teamwork mandatory to survive.

I would really like that change tbh.
Downed people can still be rezzed but players will be less of a danger once they’re downed.

Downed state abilities are just stupid beyond reason. Keep the pebble tossing if you must and the self-heal too.

But get rid of the rest.

tom.7468:

Hsulf.9370:

2) Balance everyone to have exactly the same downed state i.e 1 knock back, 1 dps move.

yes and just delete 7 professions in the process sounds like a great idea its finally a balanced game!

/sarcasm
by the way if you think mesmers downed state is good have you seen warrior? its just vengeance finish him back up again.

Are you serious ? Warrior is a class with one of the most crappy #3. Vengeance means you have 15 seconds to DEFEAT an enemy, and you begin with ~6k hp. If you don’t defeat him, and he’s only downed, when you’ll be defeated cause of Vengeance, he’ll rally. Honestly, when I see a warrior with vengeance, I don’t even bother. If I really am low on hp, I put a small stun/cc, but that’s all.

And currently, it seems stupid that some gets a mono interrupt, while others have an AoE interrupt. If you want to win in Pvp, choose the class with the best downed skills.

Warriors vengeance is pretty bad, if vengeance put them into a downed state afterwards it would be kinda op.

I get what devs are trying to do, add creativity to downed state. But the balancing in this regard is pretty bad.

We will know when downed state balance has been achieved, when we are discussing the state of underwater skills in a serious manner.

As a mesmer, if I’m spotted/marked and have stun clears on CD, I’m a piece of wet tissue. That’s why I’ve learned unless it’s a 1 on 1 or 2 on 2, and they and aren’t a mesmer, thief, or ranger (they do crazy dps downed), I rarely bother trying to stomp anymore. You just either end up getting 12k backstabbed or hasted HB, knocked down/back or take a ton of AoE damage in most cases.

I find I can often then kill others trying to rez fallen people, or at the very least not die to the AoE zerg ball of death that tends to take place around nodes.

Downing needs to be 25% faster, and healing needs to be ~25% slower. You should also NOT be allowed to rally from an enemy dying, ONLY from healing yourself or from another player.

Zeta Reticuli.9203:

I find I can often then kill others trying to rez fallen people, or at the very least not die to the AoE zerg ball of death that tends to take place around nodes.

Downing needs to be 50% faster, and healing needs to be ~25% slower. You should also NOT be allowed to rally from an enemy dying, ONLY from healing yourself or from another player.

I take it the ball of death around nodes is 8v8 hot join therefore your feelings might be based around that game mod.

I actually feel the healing, rezzing, rallying, and time it takes for all is a reasonable amount. I actually think they have this exact part spot on. It’s just abilities.

If they change any of the timings for reviving, number 5 downed, or finishjing, it would break the downed system and would require further testing.

Hsulf.9370:

Zeta Reticuli.9203:

I find I can often then kill others trying to rez fallen people, or at the very least not die to the AoE zerg ball of death that tends to take place around nodes.

Downing needs to be 50% faster, and healing needs to be ~25% slower. You should also NOT be allowed to rally from an enemy dying, ONLY from healing yourself or from another player.

I take it the ball of death around nodes is 8v8 hot join therefore your feelings might be based around that game mod.

I actually feel the healing, rezzing, rallying, and time it takes for all is a reasonable amount. I actually think they have this exact part spot on. It’s just abilities.

If they change any of the timings for reviving, number 5 downed, or finishjing, it would break the downed system and would require further testing.

Yes, I only play 8v8 (would play tournaments if they were casual friendly/didn’t require grouping to do decent). So my opinions are based on that group. I’ve played in a few tournaments, and won, and it’s not as if the worlds are night and day. The same problems occur for both more often than not. It just often that the problem appears to be way worse, or is slightly different in 8v8.

My main gripe, and cause for frustration (and I feel others’ as well) to do with the downed state is not that it exists, or stealth stomps/revives, or OP/UP downed skills, it’s that you can rally from an enemy player dying. They don’t even have to die near you, or have them targeted! You just had to have tagged that player previously to count as a kill for you.

So kids, Go into a full node in 8v8 and spit out as much AoE to everyone as you can (what people do anyways to get points), and hope that when you get downed, an enemy player dies before you do.

I don’t know how you’re having issues with one of the easiest down states to deal with. What happens when the mesmer gets you down? Thief and necro can do more damage, ranger and guardian heal while attacking, ranger and engi can rez themselves almost instantly (spirit elite and elixir R), and warrior can get back up to stomp so really the only thing that should die to a downed mesmer is a bad engineer and an ele.

Side note… Rally is terrible.

tarcheg.4872:

@tOss:
are you actually believing what you’re writing? It’s absolute normal for you to get downed by someone downed when having 7k hp left?
And are you serious about attacking the rogue? Not only does he goes into stealth after using smoke bomb but the other mesmer will kill you much faster with his rogue than you can kill the rogue with your auto attack.
And please stop saying he should have attacked the downed mesmer – he had time to aa maybe 1-2 times before he ueses his teleport. I don’t know how much knowledge you have about targets which teleport away and are invis for a couple of seconds but good luck with attacking such a target without any AoE.

I didn’t say it was absolutely normal, I said it was completely avoidable. I mean for him to kill the rogue before he gets downed. As a mesmer he has plenty of options to damage the rogue. Plus, if he was observant he could have dodge the attack. The rogue has a good duration between each, plenty of time to finish a downed opponent or heal.
Just because someone is downed doesn’t mean you can just omgstomp them. Even if he teleports you can just target him again.
Just once, analyze a situation. instead of giving up and just saying it’s broken, Use your head and think of an alternate approach to a situation. kitten

Odaman.8359:

I don’t know how you’re having issues with one of the easiest down states to deal with. What happens when the mesmer gets you down? Thief and necro can do more damage, ranger and guardian heal while attacking, ranger and engi can rez themselves almost instantly (spirit elite and elixir R), and warrior can get back up to stomp so really the only thing that should die to a downed mesmer is a bad engineer and an ele.

Side note… Rally is terrible.

Are you even playing this game? My god “one of the easiest”.

So teleporting around, stealth, decoys, keeping your fantasms and being able to summon a fantasm that hits for 5k+ dmg is easy?

I dont have a problem finished guardians, they can AoE interupt once then they get stomped. By now the Mesmer is porting all over the place and dealing way more dmg. And i have never seen a Ranger or Engineer self-ress, mostly because they rarely take the required utility skill and actually benefitting from it (dropping it mere moments before you are downed) is incredibly hard.
And other then that, what do they have? Rangers do decent damage, Engineers do pretty much no damage and just wait for you to stomp them. Might even lend you the courtesy and pull you in to end it all faster.

Ele is a complete joke to finish off. Warriors are predictable, underestimated, but still predictable. Thieves can be a pain, but no where near as bad.

Mesmer is without a doubt the hardest profession to actually finish off.