Guild Wars 2

We all know downed state has been an issue in WvW and can make being outmanned an almost insurmountable obstacle. I, like many others think it should be removed, but offer up this solution to at least make it bearable when significantly outmanned.

Take away the ability to help other people up via interacting with their downed corpse in WvW, that simple, let them rally, let them bandage themselves, and leave other mechanics such as illusion of life in place. I feel that this would allow downed players to be effectively finished when caught horribly out of position.

I don’t even know how many times I’ve watched a zerg of low skill players, get downed to arrow carts or players, then get insta-rezzed back to full and repeat, with nothing that can really be done about it in a 20v50+. I know this isn’t a fix-all solution, but I feel that it would make being outmanned a little more enjoyable.

Downed is not a problem especially with the debuff

There is no real solution. That being said, I would like to see rally off NPC removed in WvW.

The solution to the down state is to roll a ranger.

Downed state is utter nonsense in WvW….As a mesmer I have often played well out of my range because I know I have tagged an NPC/previously downed player and can easily finish them off if I am downed.

On the other side of the coin, it is nonsense that I am fighting lets say 4-5 people (couple of them upscaled) well I down one fairly quick, I go for the finish: every CC skill in the world is used against me, or instantly 10 circles of AoE dmg…..Now I get that the enemies are protecting their player, but it makes for an uninteresting advantage when I can constantly down even 2 of 5 players at once, and then you got other just picking them back up constantly.

I don’t mind them rezing allies once finished, but it does get silly during mid-fight in a downed state. Don’t get me wrong, I spike plenty of players, usually by dropping AoE’s of my own+mass confusion, but downed state on both sides is “meh” in WvW.

There is an issue with the downed state? Since when? Seems to be a wonderful feature.

I have no issues with people being able to help someone get up, you can interrupt or attack the person doing it. The main issue, in my opinion, is rally.

It breaks the ANET vision that you should never care to have someone along, no segregation of players, etc. Coordinated smaller forces are forced into asking people not to follow them because a walking rally point has a huge negative impact on a fight.

Rally also hugely favors zergs. You can down 15 of them, but if just one person of the smaller force dies, then most of those people are going to rally right back up.

I can live with the downed system, I recognize it favors zergs and work around it, however if I was going ask for changes it would be to remove rally in WvW, it wouldn’t be to stop people from helping downed folks, downed people are death magnets, we should all be happy they exist.

No thanks, half my kills are on ppl rushing in to rez their buddies that i downed.

The downed system is awesome. In the middle of a fight you don’t just give up and hope other players will come to your aid. You fight and fight to try and down someone else or finish off another downed player so you can re-enter the brawl. People that “abuse” the downed system by running around hitting everyone so they can go balls deep into the opposing lines to kill someone else is just a good player.

tl:dr – The downed system is awesome. Anyone who can utilize it is just a good player.

The only change that needs to be made for WvW is that you don’t do damage in the downed state.

People should only be able to rally from either their team helping them up or their team killing people they had previously tagged before going in to downed state. This will keep people from rallying off of PVE mobs unless you yourself aren’t smart enough to not kill the mob before finishing the downed player. This will also make it not feel like you’re fighting the same person twice when outnumbered. It’s utterly ridiculous that while trying to finish someone off that person can spam 1k-3k attacks every second to you while you are also being hit from behind by other players. The 2-4 abilites should stay and have the CC effects but none should do damage.

Nothing like dropping 6-7 and having a mosquito rally all of them. Gotta love that…….

Jscull.2514:

Nothing like dropping 6-7 and having a mosquito rally all of them. Gotta love that…….

This the only major gripe I have with downed state mechanics.

Reviving/Rallying off one shot on an ambient creature is the biggest joke of a mechanic I have ever seen in any MMO. How it is still in the game is beyond me.

I think Anet is planning to give everyone 1/3 health in down state to see if it fixes everyone’s concerns. We necromancers are their test case.

Sureshot.6725:

Jscull.2514:

Nothing like dropping 6-7 and having a mosquito rally all of them. Gotta love that…….

This the only major gripe I have with downed state mechanics.

Reviving/Rallying off one shot on an ambient creature is the biggest joke of a mechanic I have ever seen in any MMO. How it is still in the game is beyond me.

Ambient creatures don’t rally, IIRC; at least I never have been able to. I’m pretty sure the mosquito’s are not ambient.

The only problem with downed state is how an elementalist can put pressure on people; even kill people in the process and mist form back into their tower; heal up, and rinse and repeat.

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

Sureshot.6725:

Jscull.2514:

Nothing like dropping 6-7 and having a mosquito rally all of them. Gotta love that…….

This the only major gripe I have with downed state mechanics.

Reviving/Rallying off one shot on an ambient creature is the biggest joke of a mechanic I have ever seen in any MMO. How it is still in the game is beyond me.

Ambient creatures don’t rally, IIRC; at least I never have been able to. I’m pretty sure the mosquito’s are not ambient.

That’s right, only creatures that give xp can rally you. Do not think this includes “siege” (as it gives XP) but have never tried lol….At the point I realize that there is no stopping me from going down I am already looking for a “yellow” to tag or another downed player not receiving help. Cannot tell you how many times on my mesmer I have loaded up my target on confusion, then switched to my “rally target”, rallied, and then even downed the first target that I loaded with confusion…It is kinda cheesy, but I only learned it early on after people did it to me over and over….

Nothing is as sweet though as those random rallys, the ones you don’t even expect lol.

This really is such an easy fix, but most of you will disagree because 95% of you I bet use this system to your advantage. But when downed, only out of combats can res anyone. Otherwise they have to res by them self. And if that means NO one can res the person downed because they are in the middle of the crap, then tough. That’s the point. Shouldn’t have to kill targets twice.

Jscull.2514:

This really is such an easy fix, but most of you will disagree because 95% of you I bet use this system to your advantage. But when downed, only out of combats can res anyone. Otherwise they have to res by them self. And if that means NO one can res the person downed because they are in the middle of the crap, then tough. That’s the point. Shouldn’t have to kill targets twice.

That would work for me, like you said wont have to kill twice, and then once the battle was over the winning side could rez their people etc…

Issues.5789:

The only problem with downed state is how an elementalist can put pressure on people; even kill people in the process and mist form back into their tower; heal up, and rinse and repeat.

This 100%.

Downstate is not an issue. People go down, and you stomp them. Easy.

The only downstate issue is with eles who can mist form through portals. That needs to be fixed. Of course eles in general are the most broken class in WvW at the moment.

I like that you can revive defeated players. It means you can’t just systematically remove enemies one by one during large battles. If they are a force of 30 and you are a force of 10, you need to either rally more troops or find some other way to overcome the larger enemy force. You have to tackle groups of enemies as a whole instead of just bursting down each person in sequence.

Naffy.1493:

Issues.5789:

The only problem with downed state is how an elementalist can put pressure on people; even kill people in the process and mist form back into their tower; heal up, and rinse and repeat.

This 100%.

Apparently you can immobilise Eles when they use Vapour Form, but I’ve never been able to successfully do it myself. It’s the only part of the downed system that I find questionable as it undermines the risk factor attached to running out of a tower or keep when it is under siege.

Simonoly.4352:

I like that you can revive defeated players. It means you can’t just systematically remove enemies one by one during large battles. If they are a force of 30 and you are a force of 10, you need to either rally more troops or find some other way to overcome the larger enemy force. You have to tackle groups of enemies as a whole instead of just bursting down each person in sequence.

Naffy.1493:

Issues.5789:

The only problem with downed state is how an elementalist can put pressure on people; even kill people in the process and mist form back into their tower; heal up, and rinse and repeat.

This 100%.

Apparently you can immobilise Eles when they use Vapour Form, but I’ve never been able to successfully do it myself. It’s the only part of the downed system that I find questionable as it undermines the risk factor attached to running out of a tower or keep when it is under siege.

Ya I’ve done it before but it’s very hard.. You have to do it while they’re in downed form. And once they mist; it sticks to them, but some people instantly press 2 and mist form away giving you 0 chance to immobilize. The other thing that works is the guardian Line of Warding, but then again the chances of having a guardian with that skill and having it up is just not equal to the amount of Ele’s abusing Mist form.

Simonoly.4352:

I like that you can revive defeated players. It means you can’t just systematically remove enemies one by one during large battles. If they are a force of 30 and you are a force of 10, you need to either rally more troops or find some other way to overcome the larger enemy force. You have to tackle groups of enemies as a whole instead of just bursting down each person in sequence.

Naffy.1493:

Issues.5789:

The only problem with downed state is how an elementalist can put pressure on people; even kill people in the process and mist form back into their tower; heal up, and rinse and repeat.

This 100%.

Apparently you can immobilise Eles when they use Vapour Form, but I’ve never been able to successfully do it myself. It’s the only part of the downed system that I find questionable as it undermines the risk factor attached to running out of a tower or keep when it is under siege.

What youre saying is a good team of players cannot kill people, and actually gain grown on the enemy in that fight. Thats bullcrap, and part of the reason this mechanic is the worst in mmo history.

MrKnieves.4162:

There is an issue with the downed state? Since when? Seems to be a wonderful feature.

Downed state is basically a wall because you have to kill players twice.

This is an issue of scaling. In small scale fights like 2 vs 2 or 3 vs 3, finishers are mandatory because they are usually the fastest and safest way to kill a downed player.

In much larger fights like 25 vs 25 everything changes. Structured 25 man teams have enormous damage potential and can down and fully kill a player much faster than going for a stake.

If you try to stake with a 25 man rushing you down with stability, perma swiftness and massive condition removal, you realise that standing still for 4 seconds (even if you are performing an invulnerable stake) is a very bad idea. Against teams like that you have to be zoning constantly. You can’t afford to stand still and give up a positional advantage.

And heres where the problem is. Large asymmetric team fights. i.e. 15 vs 40.

The 15 man team can instant down 20 players by putting all of their DPS on cooldown. But they have to do it again to finish. They cannot safely stake without becoming totally immobile. If you become immobile you risk getting focus aoed and downed yourself. Now if they still have 20 dudes on their feet and they kill 1 of your players, they get a rally.

I understand why Arena.net put this barrier in. They want to encourage players to band together into large armies and everything about WvW from the player caps to the supply cost of quickly getting through 2x keep gates indicates that WvW is meant to be played on a big scale.

Nevertheless, I think downed state health is far too high and rallying is far too punishing for teams that must fight using hit and run, because they have a severe numbers disadvantage. Whilst WvW was designed to be played on a big scale, it was also meant to be fair, with 3 teams fielding approximately the same numbers with not too drastic variations throughout the day. The glicko rating system was meant to group servers with similar population/timezone coverage to ensure fairer matches over time.

The reality is that you never, ever kill 40 players with 15 of your own. It is literally impossible because of damage caps, downed state health and rally mechanics.

If you watch videos of small teams killing armies 3 or 4 times their size you will notice a consistent pattern:-

They never actually engage the entire army at the same time. i.e. a 15 vs 40 is really about pulling and separating the bigger team so you can tear off bite sized chunks, like 4 or 5 players at a time that are hopelessly out of position.

However you cannot really forcefully separate a structured team that understands positioning and buffing. These teams are characterized by having:

1) perma swiftness ( so they all run at the same speed and can move in formation),
2) immunity to hard CCs (due to high Stability uptime)
3) frequent soft CC removal (in the form of cleanse conditions).

Having uninhibited freedom of movement is what allows these teams to engage constantly on favourable terrain – i.e. on top of a healing rain or healing spring, to retreat to a geyser or to higher ground without separating. If you are significantly outnumbered, no amount of skill is going to save you against the downed state wall and a rally against you.

Lol’d pretty hard at worst mechanic in MMO history. There’s quite a few of us that enjoy the mechanic, it’s a good thing you don’t speak for everyone. Yes, and all of us are obviously baddies because we don’t comply. *sigh.

MrKnieves.4162:

There is an issue with the downed state? Since when? Seems to be a wonderful feature.

Downed state is basically a wall because you have to kill players twice.

This is an issue of scaling. In small scale fights like 2 vs 2 or 3 vs 3, finishers are mandatory because they are usually the fastest and safest way to kill a downed player.

In much larger fights like 25 vs 25 everything changes. Structured 25 man teams have enormous damage potential and can down and fully kill a player much faster than going for a stake.

If you try to stake with a 25 man rushing you down with stability, perma swiftness and massive condition removal, you realise that standing still for 4 seconds (even if you are performing an invulnerable stake) is a very bad idea. Against teams like that you have to be zoning constantly. You can’t afford to stand still and give up a positional advantage.

And heres where the problem is. Large asymmetric team fights. i.e. 15 vs 40.

The 15 man team can instant down 20 players by putting all of their DPS on cooldown. But they have to do it again to finish. They cannot safely stake without becoming totally immobile. If you become immobile you risk getting focus aoed and downed yourself. Now if they still have 20 dudes on their feet and they kill 1 of your players, they get a rally.

I understand why Arena.net put this barrier in. They want to encourage players to band together into large armies and everything about WvW from the player caps to the supply cost of quickly getting through 2x keep gates indicates that WvW is meant to be played on a big scale.

Nevertheless, I think downed state health is far too high and rallying is far too punishing for teams that must fight using hit and run, because they have a severe numbers disadvantage. Whilst WvW was designed to be played on a big scale, it was also meant to be fair, with 3 teams fielding approximately the same numbers with not too drastic variations throughout the day. The glicko rating system was meant to group servers with similar population/timezone coverage to ensure fairer matches over time.

The reality is that you never, ever kill 40 players with 15 of your own. It is literally impossible because of damage caps, downed state health and rally mechanics.

If you watch videos of small teams killing armies 3 or 4 times their size you will notice a consistent pattern:-

They never actually engage the entire army at the same time. i.e. a 15 vs 40 is really about pulling and separating the bigger team so you can tear off bite sized chunks, like 4 or 5 players at a time that are hopelessly out of position.

However you cannot really forcefully separate a structured team that understands positioning and buffing. These teams are characterized by having:

1) perma swiftness ( so they all run at the same speed and can move in formation),
2) immunity to hard CCs (due to high Stability uptime)
3) frequent soft CC removal (in the form of cleanse conditions).

Having uninhibited freedom of movement is what allows these teams to engage constantly on favourable terrain – i.e. on top of a healing rain or healing spring, to retreat to a geyser or to higher ground without separating. If you are significantly outnumbered, no amount of skill is going to save you against the downed state wall and a rally against you.

Teams that fight grossly outnumbered like this actually rely on the sheer incompetence of their opponents.

Jscull.2514:

What youre saying is a good team of players cannot kill people, and actually gain grown on the enemy in that fight. Thats bullcrap, and part of the reason this mechanic is the worst in mmo history.

Precisely. A good team of players need to devise suitable tactics to overcome greater numbers. A good team needs to think holistically in WvW in order to succeed. You can gain ground sure, but not by just killing each person one by one, you need to gain ground by implementing superior tactics and responding correctly to your enemies tactics.

Solution? There is no problem! If you don’t like it, play a different game!

A friend and I go to fight a group of 6. We down 2 of them, and we both go to stomp. The other 4 players still alive, without interrupting us, without attacking us, without getting the downed players to knock us off, can rez the two downed people FASTER THAN THE STOMP ANIMATION.

This is ridiculous. Anyone that thinks this mechanic is working is most likely terrible at the game and getting downed a ton. Don’t lose the fight in the first place and you won’t need to rely on such cheese.

The problem with downed state is when you are fighting severely outmanned, its almost an impassible brick wall. Hence my thread.

Edit, also the downed state forces elitism as you don’t want to bring bads into your roaming party cuz they will just end up being rally bait for the other team.

One solution to the down state problem in WvW could be this:

When you get back to fight from rally or rez you don’t start with half life as it is now but with 15% life.
That way rally or getting rezzed is a nice thing but at least you have to care about your health and get away instead of just instantly jumping back into battle.

That would help a bit in a way that if you really focus on an area where you don’t want people to be rezzed they will pretty much instantly be dead again from all the aoe if they get up with only 15%.
As it is now they will probably get away alive. If you want to make it hard to just come back to fight immediately you could put a 3 second CD on every skill and put endurance to zero.
That way there would be no dodging away, no mistform away, no blink/teleport or whatever escape skills there are.
Being downed or dead would mean that you are really weakened and people might think about if it is worth rezzing someone mid fight if he probably will lie there again in a few seconds.

Another possible solution for wvw:
Slow down rezzing a downed player to 50% of the actual speed so that it takes twice as long. Rezzing a really dead player seems fine to me if one person rezzes. If a zerg rezzes one person it is just too fast. How about you limit it so that if a zerg rezzes a person it’s just about three times as fast as if one person is rezzing. That way there is no incredibly fast rezzing of dead people any more.

I’d like to see downed state totally removed, but if anet is in love with it, I think it should be re-tooled.

Roamers and people that fight in small teams hate downed state. Zerglings don’t seem to notice the problem. Almost everything Anet has done involving WvW seems to cater to the zerglings, so I’m not expecting a change.

You know there is a debuff in place everytime you rally less health then after 4-6 you insta die

At the very least change it so that the cast for stomping is guaranteed to be shorter than the time it takes to res a downed player.

Fighting hard, doing everything right, just to see two people res someone faster than your stomp can cast is frankly pathetic.

So i’d like to see it changed so that players can only rally off players, and players in a downed state take longer to res. Watching 5 people pick up a downed player in less than a second is the perfect example of how broken this is. Compare time to kill to time to res.

Literally every mechanic in this game favours zerging at the moment.

Parthis.2091:

At the very least change it so that the cast for stomping is guaranteed to be shorter than the time it takes to res a downed player.

Fighting hard, doing everything right, just to see two people res someone faster than your stomp can cast is frankly pathetic.

So i’d like to see it changed so that players can only rally off players, and players in a downed state take longer to res. Watching 5 people pick up a downed player in less than a second is the perfect example of how broken this is. Compare time to kill to time to res.

Literally every mechanic in this game favours zerging at the moment.

This isa solution I can accept most aren’t good but this one would work because yes the res time is to quick and is annoyung when some1 resses off a moa or something

Parthis.2091:

At the very least change it so that the cast for stomping is guaranteed to be shorter than the time it takes to res a downed player.

Fighting hard, doing everything right, just to see two people res someone faster than your stomp can cast is frankly pathetic.

So i’d like to see it changed so that players can only rally off players, and players in a downed state take longer to res. Watching 5 people pick up a downed player in less than a second is the perfect example of how broken this is. Compare time to kill to time to res.

Literally every mechanic in this game favours zerging at the moment.

And all the zergers are the people in this thread saying “heyyyyyyyu no problemmmm this system is perfect, YOU guys are the ones that are bad because you can’t get stomps off with your 8 people in the middle of 40. What’s wrong with you playyyy another game cmonnnn” lol Anet needs to give us a break. Some of us actually know how to play outside the realm of needing 15 around us.

I like downed state and rally both. Just forces you think a bit more/pay more attention and yes, it can turn a fight. But it’s a system everybody can use.

In a 1vs1 not long ago, I had this Engi downed and had low hp myself. In belief of myy victory I didn’t pay attention. He rallied due to a yellow dolyak and downed-killed me I learned the hard way. I see it more as a strategic option.

The downed state is imo extra-hp, which everbody (except us Necros) have in an equal manner. Nobody generally benefits more from it than others.

I also like happy feeling when you’re nearly dead, have given up inside to suddenly pop back up and be able to reenter the fight (or escape :P)

Jscull.2514:

Parthis.2091:

At the very least change it so that the cast for stomping is guaranteed to be shorter than the time it takes to res a downed player.

Fighting hard, doing everything right, just to see two people res someone faster than your stomp can cast is frankly pathetic.

So i’d like to see it changed so that players can only rally off players, and players in a downed state take longer to res. Watching 5 people pick up a downed player in less than a second is the perfect example of how broken this is. Compare time to kill to time to res.

Literally every mechanic in this game favours zerging at the moment.

And all the zergers are the people in this thread saying “heyyyyyyyu no problemmmm this system is perfect, YOU guys are the ones that are bad because you can’t get stomps off with your 8 people in the middle of 40. What’s wrong with you playyyy another game cmonnnn” lol Anet needs to give us a break. Some of us actually know how to play outside the realm of needing 15 around us.

Bro you sound mad why so much rage man I know you think wvw should me more like a tdm or spvp but bro the mad is killing the mood man

elorei.6251:

A friend and I go to fight a group of 6. We down 2 of them, and we both go to stomp.

Bad play on your part.

Next time, pick a target and stomp it solo with your buddy ready to CC anyone that tries to rez.

frostshade.3617:

Parthis.2091:

At the very least change it so that the cast for stomping is guaranteed to be shorter than the time it takes to res a downed player.

Fighting hard, doing everything right, just to see two people res someone faster than your stomp can cast is frankly pathetic.

So i’d like to see it changed so that players can only rally off players, and players in a downed state take longer to res. Watching 5 people pick up a downed player in less than a second is the perfect example of how broken this is. Compare time to kill to time to res.

Literally every mechanic in this game favours zerging at the moment.

This isa solution I can accept most aren’t good but this one would work because yes the res time is to quick and is annoyung when some1 resses off a moa or something

Actually half the people get downed pretty fast and there are quite a few mechanics that protect while ressing etc.

Some classes can already use stomp effectivly already. Making stomp even faster would be quite annoying to both parties.

I think it would be easier to lower the max number of people able to ress a downed player (even though I’m against changing anything).

Remove upstate imo.

Quite often when roaming solo, I down a target several times during the fight until they finally get defeated due to downed penalty. It’s really quite weird how noobfriendly this game is.
Currently 1 person can res faster than you can stomp without quickness.

Jscull.2514:

But when downed, only out of combats can res anyone. Otherwise they have to res by them self. And if that means NO one can res the person downed because they are in the middle of the crap, then tough. .

This is actually a very good idea

The solution to the downed state problem that doesn’t exist is to make it so banner doesn’t rez the lord.

Queue this up as another fairly non-issue that will be complained about endlessly.

And I hope everyone with their personal solutions realize if they were implemented, there would be a new group of you on this site to complain about that.

Svarty.8019:

The solution to the downed state problem that doesn’t exist is to make it so banner doesn’t rez the lord.

..no. This is another tactic somewhat intelligent players use to their advantage, but people want taken out because they don’t know how to counter it.

Have a somewhat organized, intelligent group with you and this is never a problem.

Kryyg.8576:

Get rid of downed state in WvW, period.

This will allow smaller mans to fight large groups.

If everything is equal, a larger group should take down a smaller group. Everyone complaining wants everything to be equal and balanced so that no advantage can be acquired whatsoever, but small groups should be able to defeat large groups given the same skill?

That makes no sense.

Get rid of downed state in WvW, period.

This will allow smaller mans to fight large groups.

UCF Knight.8095:

Queue this up as another fairly non-issue that will be complained about endlessly.

And I hope everyone with their personal solutions realize if they were implemented, there would be a new group of you on this site to complain about that.

Anyone see the irony in this or is it just me? Oh well, have a nice day guys and good luck at reset tonight!!!!

TogoChubb.3984:

UCF Knight.8095:

Queue this up as another fairly non-issue that will be complained about endlessly.

And I hope everyone with their personal solutions realize if they were implemented, there would be a new group of you on this site to complain about that.

Anyone see the irony in this or is it just me? Oh well, have a nice day guys and good luck at reset tonight!!!!

No, feel free to share the irony with the rest of us.

UCF Knight.8095:

Queue this up as another fairly non-issue that will be complained about endlessly.

And I hope everyone with their personal solutions realize if they were implemented, there would be a new group of you on this site to complain about that.

Svarty.8019:

The solution to the downed state problem that doesn’t exist is to make it so banner doesn’t rez the lord.

..no. This is another tactic somewhat intelligent players use to their advantage, but people want taken out because they don’t know how to counter it.

Have a somewhat organized, intelligent group with you and this is never a problem.

Kryyg.8576:

Get rid of downed state in WvW, period.

This will allow smaller mans to fight large groups.

If everything is equal, a larger group should take down a smaller group. Everyone complaining wants everything to be equal and balanced so that no advantage can be acquired whatsoever, but small groups should be able to defeat large groups given the same skill?

That makes no sense.

Obviously if it’s a small group v a large group and they have the “same skill” the large group wins. Common sense ftw.

This change would allow small groups to be competitive against large groups and allow the skilled small groups to beat unorganized large groups.