Guild Wars 2

Caedmon.6798:

Jackalrat.5493:

Warriors are a bit too strong atm. The fact that they have a meta build using the zerker amulet and no other class does is pretty solid evidence of this.

They need to be and will be toned down.

Thats your whole reasoning ? Sorry if that made me chuckle.

Well the reasoning behind it is pretty obvious. They have just an immense invulnerability up time, as everyone has pointed out, that puts every other class to shame in that area. Guardians, Mesmers, and Engis are either blocking (countered by mechanics) or cannot perform many actions during their invulnerability time. Rangers can use theirs only once, and lose a signet in the process. Necros are mushrooms.

Endure pain = 8s of direct invulnerability, they have two different sources of resistance, and they also have a reasonable amount of block uptime. Warriors get to run this amulet and do massive damage because of the amount of time they get to just ignore damage.

Warriors are a bit too strong atm. The fact that they have a meta build using the zerker amulet and no other class does is pretty solid evidence of this.

They need to be and will be toned down.

Unfortunately, necro has never had good survivability. When options for staying alive were handed out, we got “health sponge”, which is useless against burst compared to escapes, blocks, evades, in invulns which nullify all damage.

But don’t worry. Necros also have the most garbage, useless power builds in the entire game.

…I uh…am not sure where I’m going with this. Anyhoo, play condi and be used to dying a lot or play something else. Sucks, but that’s how it is.

So, the usual shortcomings of a build that is incredibly powerful 1v1 (in a balanced system) is that its mobility is lacking. This is, of course, never the case for a thief. Thieves always have amazing mobility because they’re kings of weaving in and out of fights. Good thieves usually don’t want to just sit toe-to-toe.

But this…permanent evade build that DoTs you up. How do you fight this with a more traditional power build? Like rangers, guardians, warriors, necros, etc…

I’m not here to cry OP, just curious…is there any way to beat this? I’ve engaged them and had them just evade while killing me (relatively quickly). Seems they can dodge as many as 6 or 7 times consecutively. They can easily 100-0 most people in that time, I’d think.

Eater of Peeps.9062:

OMG. Do you realize u r complaining about a class that from day 1 of beta until seas 2 of spvp was useless, underpowered, and unwanted in pve, wvw and pvp. We finally get to play and r a viable class and all ppl want to do is nerf us back into our unplayable oblivion.

Not complaining about necros.

Just…condi necros. But tbh it’s actually about half the condi builds out there. They need to be toned down. Power is far too weak atm.

Uncle Dalty.8327:

2) Condi Burst

-Condis are a slow drain… it doesn’t make sense for them to being killing faster than every power build out there

-been said before but just for completeness… condi takes one stat and is only mitigated but cleansing (impossible with all the condis out there) or (resistance which will quickly be corrupted) or runes that reduce duration (they all suck and again it doesn’t make a difference cause there are so many condis flying around)

Q F F T

Quit this game a while back because, after HoT, when the meta got really bad…power necros were in the toilet. Worst of the worst.

Then A. Net buffed condi necros and I’d pretty much had enough. Scepter doesn’t need any help at all. Dagger/Greatsword/Axe/Power builds in general are more or less unusable once people start running standard meta builds. It seems like it’s been this way for months. Years? Maybe years.

I briefly got excited and thought the issue had been addressed, but after a day or so of PvP my MMR threw me into the meta-only matches.

/QQ
Any chance they’ll ever address this or is it pretty hopeless? Right now my options are fight by flailing around a little Harry Potter DoT wand (Sorry, not my thing) or be completely useless to my team.

Wish there was some way to PvP without these meta builds. Absurdly overpowered, cookie cutter stuff. Pretty frustrating.

I guess in this context “it’s fine” means “run this or you’re trash.”

But that seems to be the issue with PvP in this game. Perhaps the balance I was seeing was just a consequence of low MMR, where people are still running unique builds. As soon as I climbed a bit, just condi builds as far as the eye can see.

This post refers to conquest, so it’s here on the PvP forums.

Every necromancer build uses this thing atm and it’s really brain dead. Just got rolled over by a team of 5 scepter necros.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the balance in this current patch, but scpeter necro is absurd.

I am a necro player, but I really don’t wanna run the build that requires me to run around flinging a magic wand. Every single meta necro build is condi scepter. This clearly needs to be toned down in a way that hopefully doesn’t hurt power necros, which I suspect everyone will agree are far from overpowered.

Condi builds are pretty nuts right now and particularly hard to counter.

So, a little before the launch of Blade and Soul, I quit GW2 in a real huff.

A lot of you remember how bad the balance got in PvP right after HoT launch, and the community was desperate for a balance update. For me, the last straw was when, after weeks of waiting for said patch, it came out and buffed condi reapers (the only necro spec not suffering) absurdly. Seemed like A. Net was just playing nerf/buff roulette in their offices.

I said some pretty harsh stuff about ol’ A. Net, but a recent hankering to come back and play struck me. I was expecting the worst, especially since I’m a big fan of running a squishy greatsword reaper build with a warrior alt. A few months ago, these were builds that could not compete in PvP at all. (There may have been a few particularly good players, but most people were running tempest, druid, chronobunker, and scrapper. Few heralds in there).

Well, A. Net, things are looking a lot better now. The insanely OP specs clearly got toned down. I honestly was convinced that would never happen. I owe you guys an apology.

Probably a few specs out there still need love, but nothing is striking me as absurdly strong. Tempest sustain is pretty strong and Dragonhunters really pack a punch, but whatever balance issues exist now are basically null and void compared to 4 months ago. Keep it up and keep giving into our hysterical whining. Thanks.

Condi builds in general are a bit too strong atm.

I have always ran power builds, just kinda my style. Swapped from power reaper to a condi reaper, and was winning so many fights with very little experience with the build.

Buff power or nerf condi. Preferably the former.

Crinn.7864:

Ya’ll realize that removing downstate would make running bunkers mandatory right?
Downstate is what allows glassy builds to exist.

Disagree entirely. Bunkers excel because of the downed state. When rezzing or stomping you have to survive a lot of damage (well, some of us do…). Glass builds cannot do this easily. Glass builds can knock people down, but finishing them is much harder. If anything, loss of the downed state might cause burstier builds to get an unintended advantage.

That being said, I agree with OP and have been saying this from the start. Downed state never fit well in PvP and does not belong. It stagntates gameplay, makes most outcomes predictable, and makes zerging far too effective by making 1vX’s borderline impossible.

But it’s here to stay. ):

Condi reapers are strong. Certainly viable. I don’t think they’re as bad as druids, eles, scrappers, or DH, but they’re viable. Stronger than a lot of builds.

Power reapers suck eggs.

Two words: Diminishing Returns.

Plz A. Net.

This is too dramatic and the answer won’t be this simple. I hate this terrible bunker meta as much as the next person, but what you’re proposing would just trash half the builds in the game.

The actual solution is going to be a much more complex fine-tuning, and it will need to be on a class-by-class basis (build-by-build, even).

I could see Diamond Skin becoming something like, “All condition duration is reduced by 75% when above 85% life”, several of the druid heals getting longer cooldowns and less capacity for condi cleanse, mesmers losing a little bit of their evade time on blurred frenzy, etc.

But we can’t just throw a huge blanket nerf on an entire playstyle because 3 or 4 builds are OP, however absurdly OP they might be.

Yasi.9065:

Lets see, my aura ele has atm… just for you… standard meta build.

Health: 18,995
Diamond Skin wears off at: 17,096
Raw damage you have to deal: 1,899

I can think of at least 1 build per profession right now that can drop ele below diamond skin constantly without that much of a problem.

Except you have 40% DR from portection constantly, constant regen, and above 90% no condis (a HUGE source of necro damage) can be applied, including the chill we need to catch you and the poison we need to outdo your healing.

Have you ever fought a Tempest ele 1v1 as a necro? Unless they’re just unusually bad, it’s borderline impossible.

Sorry, there’s like 50 threads on Diamond Skin. Balanced mechanics just don’t generate that kind of QQ.

And sadly power necros don’t fair any better against them because you need to be able to stick poison and chilled on them to get through that sustain…and those condis won’t apply and certainly won’t stick.

I also have a similar issue with druids. Their sustain is absurdly imbalanced. It’s both frustrating and incredibly boring. With a marauder build, I’ve had the experience of landing the Reaper Elite -> Gravedigger -> Executioner’s Scythe -> Full Soul Spiral on Frost Field and the druid, who ate every bit of that damage, just be like, “lol necros – full life bro!”

I’ve played for years and for most of that time have not been whining on these forums, but HoT’s meta has left me just pouring rampant QQ into these threads. With respect to this game, there is a major sense of disappointment and I’ve no impression it will get better. This might sound dramatic, but if they can release stuff that’s this poorly balanced, I honestly don’t think Arena Net is ever going to be able to get this game to a respectable place of balance. Not even by MMO standards, which are pretty forgiving.

SPvP either just isn’t their concern or the people calling these shots just aren’t very good at what they do. It sounds harsh, and maybe I’m mistaken, but I have a hard time getting over the idea that, with no experience in doing this, I could devise more balanced mechanics than people who are professionals.

I mean, at very least, how hard is it to take a player sample and let them play test your mechanics and actually use that detailed user feedback? Doesn’t even seem like they do this, or (if they do) that they account for any of said feedback. Like, I can’t imagine they had a decent player sample PvPing with the reaper’s greatsword and being like, “Oh, yeah, this is an effective weapon.” or that they had testers successfully bursting down druids/DS tempests in skirmishes who had any idea how to PvP with the class.

I mean, anybody else see the footage of the greatsword the dev was using in SPvP before HoT came out? He played one round with it, was horribly ineffective and got utterly stomped, and immediately switched to another weapon for the next game. Yet…what they released was basically that same weapon.

It’s been said, but it’s a bandwagon I have to jump on:

Just say no to Reaper GS unless you’re in for having your matches be 80-90% miserable with the once-in-a-blue-moon, “Oh hey, that was cool. I did something! Guys? Did you see that? I did something!”

Zoltreez.6435:

i prefer a more bursty meta then this bunker boredom…..
the prob is some Bunkers are also can Burst hard

won’t improve personal skill but it WILL improve the healt of PvP and might and a bit more fun into the game.

This. 100 times this.

As a necro who would love to see DS get nerfed, I totally believe you could kills necros just fine without it. That class honestly isn’t that strong, some players are just intimidated by the giant marshmallow that is our healthpool.

That being said, I’ve also killed a lot of eles who didn’t have diamond skin and when they do have it I feel totally useless. That’s why we want it nerfed. Even if you lose, you want to see the effect of your actions to gauge your strategy and effectiveness.

If your opponent seems entirely undaunted and constantly at full life…it feels very pointless to participate. You want to describe a “why bother?” situation – there’s one if ever there has been.

If you can win without it, as you say, I can’t see why you should care.

I know the current balance/meta is (as we all hope) on its way out, but it’s been quite a while that we’ve been stuck with some pretty excessive nonsense in Spvp. I’m not really enjoying queueing atm, because I only seem to have success with heavy condi as my necro (which I don’t enjoy playing) or very little success at all with my warrior (which is boooo).

So I threw together my impression of the current tier list. It could probably be heavily improved, and it’s not super specific. I’d like to see what others would throw together. Thanks for reading.

Edit: Just to reiterate the title, this is a solo queue tier list. I am sure things change with upper level coordination, teamwork, and team composition.

God Tier – Blatantly Overpowered
Celestial Druid (But really almost any Druid build…)
Celestial Diamond Skin Tempest

Tier 0 – Probably Overpowered
Bunker Chronomancer
Marauder Scrapper
Marauder Trapper Dragonhunter

Tier 1 – Strong (Should represent top tier but are way out-classed by God Tier and Tier 0)
Power Shiro Herald
Condition Reaper/Necro
Power Shatter Chronomancer
D/D Elementalist
Bunker Guardian
D/P Daredevil
Condition Herald

Tier 2 – Not Overpowered, Unlikely to Compete Well vs Current Top Tier
Most Thief Builds
Essentially Every Warrior Build
Power Reaper/Necro
Power Guardian
Power Engineer
Trap Condi Ranger
Power Ranger

In my experience, the hardest setups to do well with atm (i.e. the least viable) are the power warrior, power reaper/necro, and the power rangers (I laugh everytime I write “power ranger”…).

This meta has a ridiculous amount of sustain and uptime on immunity (blocks, evades, invulns) and power builds are absolutely out to dry, with the exception of Dragonhunters and Scrappers, who have other imbalanced mechanics to keep them going.

I’d like to see sustain come down on the current unrivaled kings of PvP (Tempest and Druid) and maybe an overall bit of love to almost all direct damage setups. PvP has grown incredibly stagnant, mostly dominated by bunker builds slowly withering one another down.

I agree that chronobunkers are still a bit too strong vs most builds.

At the same time…Diamond Skin is NOT what bunkers should be. It’s blatantly overpowered.

You never see warriors in ranked because they’re all in legendary league.

Top 0.0001% see warriors. That’s all.

Meanwhile tempests and druids get table scraps. No love.

This guy is playing the coveted Temponodruid.

Of course he thinks meta is fine.

Chronobunker
Tempest
Druid

Compared to these 3, everything else can stay as it is. Revs and Scrappers are strong, but those 3 are kinda braindead OP. The sustain is so extreme it’s boring.

Didn’t play for a couple days (yay Christmas). My league rank is pretty low and I think the majority of the bunker mesmers, tempests, and druids passed me.

Queued up and had like 10 really fun games in a row. Lots of necros, thieves, dragon hunters, and engis. Not that these classes are super weak, but fighting them was fun. Felt interesting and not super predictable. Players took damage. Conditions were applied and situationally removed rather than just instantly removed 100% of the time. Dynamic things happened, guys. It was beautiful. For a bit, I forgot how frustrated I was with the current meta.

Then queued up a match where the enemy team had a chronobunker, tempest, and a druid. All with pretty meta setups.

Sadness enveloped me. Like a blanket.

Much godmode. Many loss. >:

Think I’m just going to wait until everyone running those builds is Ruby+, and then do ranked with all the fun people. It’s a perfect plan! And we all know the vast majority of the fotm community will inflate to that rank long before A. Net nerfs those broken builds.

Warriors, thieves, necros, and engis? Mesmers, druids, and eles running unique builds? Join me! Let’s let those guys fight it out at the top in matches where a player dies only every 10 minutes.

I also experience similar issues with this skill. I often see it go on CD with no animation, or sometimes the claws will come out, go right across someone, and there will be no effect. No stability, no immunity, no evade. Just does and says nothing.

Once you get to higher levels of competitive SPvP, you’ll probably find your best fights are vs other Reapers. This has been my experience.

Reapers are just not that strong atm compared to the most popular meta builds. Druids and Tempests will out sustain you, Dragon Hunters will blow you up, Thieves will easily avoid your attacks (and retreat if they, for some reason, start to lose) and a good Revanent will definitely rock you. Especially condi revs which have near permanent resistance. Even a GS/Hammer warrior can really mess up a reaper as long as they use their CC when shroud is down to take advantage of our lack of stability.

If I run into another reaper, even those using our most “meta” build (carrion frostfire) I usually fair pretty well. That being said, many 1v1’s with other classes I tend to avoid. Balance changes may help us out, but we’ll see.

I don’t think our condi builds are too bad, but our power builds seem to need a boost. Not to damage so much as sustain.

Rym.1469:

Poison is what you seek.

Cleansed easily. Never even applies to DS ele.

Hmm. The more I think about it, the more I am thinking those changes could cascade into more unintended consequences.

Should probably play it safe and just tone down druids and DS eles. They’re clearly ridiculous.

We need a non-cleansable heal debuff akin to mortal strike from WoW.

Druids are basically as strong as any healers in WoW ever were, now, but they can also cleanse the only heal cut in the game. Teams with 2+ druids (or DS eles, at times) seem to have godmode. That is some really boring gameplay…just whacking away at non-budging healthbars ad nauseum.

Is there any way to counter this besides a super coordinated burst from 3+ players?

And is it reasonable that such a level of focus and cooperation is needed to stop druids from the effective immortality they achieve just spamming their abilities?

Or, alternatively, just tone back the healing on the particular offenders. Either way, fix plz, cause non-moving healthbars are a snoozefest.

Hey guys.

Been playing a lot of different power reaper builds recently. I’ve been able to get decent success in teamfights, and have actually had several games where I’ve gone zero deaths while effectively roaming from point-to-point.

I have tried many variations of soldier, sentintel, and barbarian with lots of sustain. These builds have been pretty fun. When I get into a 1v1 situation with other necros, it’s usually going in my favor (though slowly because this meta is so kitten tanky…)

However, when I end up 1v1 against most other classes I find those fights are really, really hard.

Druids and DS Elemantalists’ HP barely budges. Their constant sustain is pretty tough to deal with. I’ve actually had times where I’ve landed a Reaper Shroud 5 into a full 4 on druids and the effect was hardly noticeable.

A decent Revanent also tends to wreck me pretty badly. If they’re built for evasion, they will perpetually have stability and be in immunity frames for most of a fight.

Even warriors can be trouble. Maybe some necros would laugh at this, because we’ve all had the experience of wrecking some inexperienced warrior, but if you fight a quick one who pops rampage and knows to focus their hammer skills on you while you’re out of shroud? They can actually do quite well.

Dragon Hunters are 50/50. You survive/avoid the traps, you’ll probably win. If not, you’re going to die very quickly.

Thieves, which players love to talk smack on, can actually do pretty well vs Reapers too. No, they can’t sit toe-to-toe on a point with us, but they can kite us pretty well.

And, like I mentioned, I have the most luck 1v1 vs other reapers, so I feel like I can’t be the only one who is noticing a lot of the other classes dance around us in 1v1 scenarios. Are we just strictly a teamfight-oriented fighter?

PS – and obviously ever using the greatsword in a remotely competitive fight is out of the question. Not the point of this post, I just always feel compelled to voice that. Once in a blue moon I’ll see a GS reaper in ranked, and he’s nearly a free kill. Poor kittens. ):

King xiuras.3615:

- I am not a reaper necromancer who got unlimited stability and 2 lives.

Warriors have access to more stability than reapers.

Reapers have one skill in DS and the elite.

Warriors have Balanced Stance, Dogged March, Dolyak Signet, and their Elite. Their might be others, but those 4 I know off the bat.

+1

Good contribution.

It would be cool to see some similar math for Marauder Scrappers, Druids, and DS Elementalists, but I know those might not be as easy.

And maybe Reapers so we can all have a hardy laugh.

Supreme.3164:

Jackalrat.5493:

Wow, seriously? Reaper?

Only elites I’d say that AREN’T blatantly stronger than the reaper are daredevil (which can totally beat reaper 1v1) and any kind of warrior.

Scrapper, Dragon hunter, Druid, Tempest, Chronomancer…all of these are waaaay more difficult to deal with than Reaper.

A necromancer saying that…reaper is weak?….well that’s a surprise :-)

And most everyone else in this thread.

I’m saying Reaper because, even though I play one, they are my easiest targets. I always go for other reapers first.

Other classes are just way too hard to kill. Escapes, invulns, blocks, immunities to CC constantly, and druids and DS eles have enough regen to make your head spin.

Personal score only matters to a limited degree. If you are the lowest player by 100+ points, something may be off, but a difference of 20-50 points here and there is totally meaningless.

In fact, having a really high score might mean you stack-capped repeatedly (multiple people on an uncontested node).

Wow, seriously? Reaper?

Only elites I’d say that AREN’T blatantly stronger than the reaper are daredevil (which can totally beat reaper 1v1) and any kind of warrior.

Scrapper, Dragon hunter, Druid, Tempest, Chronomancer…all of these are waaaay more difficult to deal with than Reaper.

Yeah, strange vendor bug. Nothing serious but a minor inconvenience.

When I click “Sell Junk” my greatsword is still in my inventory. Kind of a pain to have to manually vendor it.

Reapers aren’t even registering on the OP scale atm.

Dragon Hunters, Druids, Scrappers, and Chrono bunkers are all laughing at them.

Agree 100%

Never seen this game’s meta in such an awful situation. I’m not just buying gems, I’m done logging into their game.

Maybe I’ll come back in about 6 months when they’ve decided to improve the meta.

Making a post like this, I expected to get some backlash of, “Fine. Quit. LoL, L2P noob.”

But not one bit of that so far. Just pure agreement and lamentation of this game’s utter failure to be enjoyable.

I don’t make comments like this on forums. Been a hardcore PvPer since vanilla WoW, and I’m never blaming devs or speaking in extremes like this but come on Arena Net. You need a TREMENDOUS balance patch and a borderline overhaul to make this worth a kitten .

If they don’t, I bitterly hope their PvP hemorrhages players like mad. If they ignore it enough to let it get this bad, they kind of deserve it.

I am not here to talk about what’s OP or UP, as I think plenty of that has been expressed across the community. Lots of things are terribly broken and the things that aren’t are sitting ducks.

However, the imbalance that HoT’s power creep brought isn’t even as bad as what it’s done to the gameplay itself. I mean, my go to description for GW2’s PvP has always been, “Yeah, it’s a bit of a clusterduck.” (Obviously not duck)

But now it’s just pure absurdity. The busy-ness of spell effects is overwhelming, but on top of that some builds are almost perpetually untouchable. I don’t mean they’re overpowered (though many of them are), I mean that you literally cannot interact with them for huge periods of gameplay with no input of skill on your part. Without considering balance, this is just purely NOT GOOD GAMEPLAY. It’s totally unsatisfying. Players want to have an effect and consequence sense of playing. This is such a principle hallmark of good PvP that I sometimes feel like an A. Net dev never sat down and queued for PvP in this game once. There’s just so much that jumps out as, “Oh, wow, that shouldn’t be like that…”

In Spvp right now, you mostly just spam abilities into a sea of immunitiy, block, evade, insane regeneration, stealth targets disappearing over and over etc etc. Not to mention that survivability is so out of hand, most everyone is running a build that would be considered tanky by the standards of most previous metas. There’s very little sense of impact or presence. Other PvP games and MOBAs just don’t have PvP combat like this because it’s atrocious.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, more abilities means people have found even more way to implement CC, a very useful PvP skill, into their build. CC is getting insane, and while a lot of classes have constant stability now (which is ridiculous in its own right), many of them do not. I think it’s time for this game to see diminishing returns on CC at the very least.

Long story short: This game is not fun anymore. It always had problems, but now it’s just a big, ugly, unsatisfying mess. It’s not fun to play, it’s not fun to watch, and I am quickly getting to a point where I am just looking for the next MMO to let me out after several years of being pretty exclusive to GW2.

Apologies for a QQ post, but after years of trying to get into this PvP for all the things I’ve liked, I’ve lost hope that they can make this any fun. I hate to be this guy, but I just don’t feel like A. Net is making good choices when it comes to combat mechanics. I should have known their design was never going to fully mesh with me since the downed state always seemed like one of the worst ideas in Spvp. “Let’s slow down combat and promote zerging. Players love that!”

I know a lot of people will keep queueing up with insane meta builds (Chrono, Herald, Scrapper, Dragon Hunter) and I hope they enjoy what’s left, but I really want something more versatile, compelling, and just satisfying to play.

PS – I know crying on these forums is a waste of time, but venting makes me feel slightly better. :P

Yeah. NCSY really helps. My one issue seemed to be Heralds who really knew their stuff and they don’t seem to know how to deal with having that block crouch countered.

Fellwitch.4536:

First off I am so extremely disappointed that I cannot use great sword in spvp.

Second – your build looks very interesting and I will definitely try it out tonight. How will you deal with block spammers though?

Totally agree on GS, bru. That weapon needs to be an AoE cleave weapon for real. 300 range or something.

Admittedly when blocking becomes a huge issue I usually switch targets. This is a very teamfight-centric build.

You could replace Rise with NCSY, potentially.

Edit – Actually going to try this now. Will update with my experiences.

I can agree coms help. Some players will pick up on things others realistically couldn’t have and can voice them.

That being said, OP is basically correct. It’s unfortunate, but I don’t see it ever changing. Elites made it so much worse.

Dragonhunters and chronomancers. Bit too much CC on them, IMO

SlayerSixx.5763:

They attempt a res, you down them….? Your build is deficient if you’re pure melee.

Or they use stability, invuln, invisibility, instant-rez skill, cc on you, quickness, etc etc etc

This is not a valid argument.

I have to agree 100% with the OP, but it’s pointless because they will never remove the downed state. Not even from Spvp, where it really doesn’t belong.

It just doesn’t fit well in Spvp. It makes zerging incredibly powerful (yawn), and it eliminates opportunities for interesting or unexpected play. You can almost always predict how a fight will go because of it.

Using the downed state to your advantage is really easy when you outnumber your foe and basically impossible when you do not. I think SPvP stomps should be auto quickness’d at the very least. I have despised the downed state system from the start because any MOBA player or PvPer from other popular MMOs will quickly see it doesn’t fit and totally eliminates a lot of fun “clutch” or “omg” moments that happen far more frequently in other games. Furthermore, I’m just about the only one in my circle of friends who stuck with GW2 pvp, as most everyone else quit due to their hatred of the downed state for all the reasons the OP and I are describing.

I am in fact so certain of this that I’ve been preaching from the start, “Just try no-downed-state as a custom game mode option and watch how successful it becomes.” Now would be an especially good time, because soldier and other toughness builds are dominating so burst builds (those which would benefit the most from this change) aren’t really in danger of becoming too strong.

But I’m rushing this post a tad because I know it’s absolutely for nothing, so how convincing I am doesn’t matter. They’ll never do this change. Their plates are too full and they’ve come too far with the downed state to drop it.

…srsly do’ – jus’ try it gaiz<

I’m actually using the 15% AS in RS grandmaster. It’s pretty sweet with Dhuumfire.

It’s also currently in the highest rated meta SPvP build for power reapers on meta battle. Obviously you’d go DC for a condi build. Not that I think meta battle is an indisputable authority, but that trait isn’t too bad.