Guild Wars 2

Could someone please clarify this trait:

Strength of the Fallen
Lose health 33% slower while downed.

Does it:
1) Make you take 33% less damage from specific/all sources while downed?
2) Give you 33% more health while downed?
3) Reduce your ticking-damage to 66% of their value?
4) Make the ticking-damage occur every 1.33s instead of 1s?

Usefulness/Uselessness of this trait is irrelevant, I just want to know what it really does.

Unfortunately it’s more like option 4.

After some tests this is how I think it works:

When you are downed you get given an HP pool that’s approximately (scaled for level) 125% of your vitality added to your current Health ( incidentally, this means that guardians are much easier to finish off by DPSing down than higher health tier classes in PvP ).

You get a condition that slowly drains your downed health pool at a rate of 3.33% per tick. This condition is re-applied every 3 seconds and lasts for 3 ticks.

Strength of the Fallen decreases the condition duration by 33% meaning you get 2 ticks of the condition every 3 seconds ( you can see this because you get 2×1 sec ticks followed by a pause of 2 seconds when traited )

It has no effect on direct damage (from players/mobs for instance) you receive while you are down.

Using Bandage appears to clear the condition while it’s channeling

Healing you receive from Bandage or Symbol of Justice is percentage based on your vitality (3% and 24% respectively), and has no relation to your healing power.

Toughness has no effect on the condition’s effectiveness although it does combat direct damage received from other players.

So people who have dismissed it as worthless probably haven’t appreciated just how worthless it actually is. If you want to last longer while downed you need to stack vitality and toughness ( or roll a warrior/necromancer )

Not a trait worth using.

Rigel.3092:

Not a trait worth using.

I think 99% of guardians know this, but having never actually used it, even I was surprised that it didn’t actually mitigate damage, and how inherently unfair downed state is for thieves, eles and then guards because of their base Vitality and/or Toughness

finding a guard using this trait is rarer than getting a precursor.