Guild Wars 2

I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that this skill is 99% useless. If you use it, supposedly you get one full second of invisibility, but I think it is more like half a second. Monsters just hover over you until you reappear.

On very rare occasions, if I time it so I do a shadow escape first, then a smoke bomb, I manage to break aggro if the shadow escape gets me out of line of sight, but usually that doesn’t work.

Does anyone have an effective way to use this skill or is it pretty much wasted?

I think it would be much more useful if it lasted long enough for monsters to head back towards where they normally go. That is, if you get a monster to chase you and it downs you well away from it’s normal stomping grounds, you should be able to smoke bomb long enough for it to turn around and go back. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Down State is not really there to help you out. I mean your “down”, you are too wounded to do anything, and only most basic skills are your only resort to save your fleeling life.

If you are solo, and you are down, then you should be punished. It’s not there to help you ress each time you fall, let’s be reasonable here.

This skill saved my life countless times. It prevent Finishers from executing you.
Your teammates get an extra attempt to save your downed butt. Your ennemy needs to cast it again, at the cost of being downed themselves. It’s great.

PvE wise, you prevent aggro, again giving your teammate the opportunity to help you back on your feet.

It’s the best one of all professions in my opinion. Ranger gets a full heal, which should be nerf imo.

- Warrior, engis, guardians, revenants can’t do kitten;
- mesmer move and go stealth, but it messes up the revives. I think same for eles;
- Nero can’t do much.
- Rangers get twice the heal, as long as they fail to stomp.

I don’t do much PvP or WvW, so that aspect hadn’t occurred to me.