Why is Downstate Necessary for GW2?

Granted I'm asking as someone who has more of a problem with rally. The only thing I kinda like about downstate is from the perspective of an attacker. Being a common scenario/moment where there's a downed enemy and their allies are trying to res them. In that moment of resing, their allies are not using skills. Which may leave them open for more punishment depending on all whats going on. However, this is basically a coin toss... Sometimes it's nice and other times their defense is too high... Whether it be more numbers, res traits that make me question if they even lasted more than 2 seconds on the ground... You get the idea.So I can't even say I fully like this "1" thing that I find sometimes appealing.

I'm also a person that, to me, makes sense that if you or someone else went down... You/they deserved to go down. Why? because I understand that to be the inherent Risk by simply joining a mode where death or defeat is possible. Which should go for basically every video game ever successful or not. I can't really say that GW2 would be any more or less successful than it is now with or without "downstate"... Though, I can easily guarantee you that there are plenty of other successful video games where downstate doesn't exsist...

So this has my wondering... Would GW2 be any More or Less successful With or Without downstate? But more importantly...

Why is Downstate Necessary for GW2?

Also, I'm asking from the perspective of downstate being independent from any traits, runes or mechanics etc. related to it. Downstate could still exist without those relating to it... And if they don't revolve around downstate... I'm sure they would revolve around something else in the game. Anyways, just curious on what people have to say regarding the question.

They have downstate, because they had no healers (not even the sort of support healers you have now), damage application in this game is faceroll (especially for certain classes) and because it adds to the skillcap of the game by adding extra teamwork and decision making. Also from the point of view of their "e-sport" it added a point of interest / "drama".

If this game didn't have downstate mechanics it would be even more low skilled and one dimensional than it already is.

Other comments are correct, but imo, it's too easy to res. I have a problem with rally like OP but I do think ressing should be possible. I just don't think it should be that easy. It's way too easy. You can talk about coordination all you want but I don't think it requires much coordination to be ready for your teammate to go down and then press F for a few sec.

I think they should increase the amount of time it takes to res. If you wanna get your team mate back from the dead, you should have to work for it. It shouldn't just be some clutch mechanic that gets you back on your feet after essentially dying.

It is an interesting mechanic and actually makes sense in PvE. It outright sucks in WvW since it heavily favors numbers over skill.

@Straegen.2938 said:It is an interesting mechanic and actually makes sense in PvE. It outright sucks in WvW since it heavily favors numbers over skill.

I hear this a lot, but it is misleading. It is only true in very small outnumbered fights. 1v2 for example. In any larger scale match-up, numbers rule regardless of whether there is a downstate. In fact, it HURTS guild groups since they are usually better able to coordinate a res than a larger random pug group.

The other downside to no downstate is less loot bags. In general, it isn't really a good idea.

Why is downstate necessary? It's not. Removing it gives smaller guilds with a fast, hard-hitting bomb a much better chance at surprising and busting mindless zergs before numbers, rezzes, and rallies take over.

Better question posed for WvW exclusively. Downstate makes sense in some PvE content given how hard some mobs hit. WvW however, it doesn't make sense at all and shouldn't exist. It gives people survival odds that otherwise shouldn't exist when they rely on being picked up all the time. A small group could theoretically pick apart a large zerg known for it's sustain. A few focused attacks could wipe half a zerg easily, that's why downstate shouldn't exist.

People often say the larger group will always win anyway; that is not the case if downstate didn't exist. Last downstate event, larger groups were routinely getting smashed, all it takes is a few focused hits against a group that otherwise is used to running in a ball pressing #1

@style.6173 said:

@Straegen.2938 said:It is an interesting mechanic and actually makes sense in PvE. It outright sucks in WvW since it heavily favors numbers over skill.

Answered imo with thisGuild groups are also better at coordinating where and when to bomb rly hard to down other player, often to just getting overrun by sheer numbers

@Optimator.3589 said:Why is downstate necessary? It's not. Removing it gives smaller guilds with a fast, hard-hitting bomb a much better chance at surprising and busting mindless zergs before numbers, rezzes, and rallies take over.

Because the game is balanced around it. That is really the only reason for it to exist at this point. If you removed downstate you would have to rebalance everything. Try playing a weaver in a zerg with no downstate. You don't even have to get hit by a single thing to die easily, as retaliation can take care of that.

@"Sylosi.6503" said:They have downstate, because they had no healers (not even the sort of support healers you have now), damage application in this game is faceroll (especially for certain classes) and because it adds to the skillcap of the game by adding extra teamwork and decision making. Also from the point of view of their "e-sport" it added a point of interest / "drama".

If this game didn't have downstate mechanics it would be even more low skilled and one dimensional than it already is.

I definitely agree with this... However, I don't see scenario's where this always holds true regarding adding more "skill". Besides the example I initially gave in the OP of what I do and don't like about it... Taking away from the skill. Hurting what skill should be present.Also, like you pointed out about the lack of real healers back in the day and how that's a much more relevant occurrence these days. Seems fair to say that the change took away more of the skill that used to exist regarding that. If that was part of the original reasoning behind it's existence.

Damage application is interesting.So through all the balance patches and I'm sure to come... I have more reason to believe that downstate along with the traits and other things that surround it (like damage application). Had more of an impact/role on the kind of balance we have today and have been having... Then times where it did not exist. So the game had significantly more time to develop with downstate... Than without it. Makes me wonder if balance would have been better without it and/or the traits etc.? Hard to tell since it no-downstate never got a fair shake to actually grow with the game.

At the end of it all... There are still seems to be times where it could take skill and others not (allowing less skill). Though, it appears that the overall balance that had the opportunity to evolve with downstate... Help's influence the kinds of "skill" we do/don't have available. As the game grow's with it.

I also think that if downstate pretty much always took skill... most people would consider it to be balanced. And would probably appreciate it more.

@"Ganathar.4956" said:Because the game is balanced around it. That is really the only reason for it to exist at this point. If you removed downstate you would have to rebalance everything. Try playing a weaver in a zerg with no downstate. You don't even have to get hit by a single thing to die easily, as retaliation can take care of that.

It isn't, though. I've heard the argument before that "securing downs" or "converting downs" is an aspect of zerg vs zerg but then at the same time they say downed state is irrelevant since in a zerg scenario the AoE cleave is going to finish any downs. We've already seen once now, and will see again, the effect on gameplay that removing Downed state creates. Sure the 1 shot builds were all over the place in roaming (which this is something Anet needs to address regardless and they just have not for a long time), but at the same time zerg fights were faster paced and could be busted by a more coordinated and smaller guild group.

Roaming also felt better as the actual good players didn't need to concern themselves with cleaving downs to secure a kill or try to use it as a distraction or risk much more health or cooldowns than necessary just to secure the kill. They had a much better opportunity to win outnumbered fights either while solo or in smaller groups.

Now I don't think revives should be something that is removed entirely from the game, I do believe that they need to make "reviving" in this game much healthier in terms of its impact in PvP gameplay and what you "risk" in doing it. As it stands now reviving is just a matter of "Oh, my teammate went down. Lets have the 2 of us just rub them back to life because they won't get the stomp off in time and cleaving only goes so far." and bam, the player you just killed is right back up.

They need to have you give something to get this person back into the fight. Which they have a system in place for this already. Skills that revive, skills like Battle Standard, Spirit of Nature, and so on. These skills revive players who are in the Downed State, they could rework this functionality to function on full dead players, increasing the cooldown of these skills to 5 minutes so that they are not available too frequently and have them revive a single player. Still keep it a sort of AoE ground targeted ability like how Battle Standard works or have the revive radius be centered on where the Ranger uses Spirit of Nature, of course. Ideally it would revive whoever is closest to the center of the radius.

This would allow for zergs, coordinated ones, to time their revives to try and pull off some clutch move and tilt the fight back into their favor and still allow for smaller groups to bring their friends back into the fight. Both of these scenarios still allow for their opponents to counterplay or play around these cooldowns and pressure or fall back as necessary during the engagements.

Implying that this game is still "balanced around downed state" is simply silly as Downed State was implemented into the game due to Anets intention of not having a "Holy Trinity" and therefore not having "Dedicated healers". This game has had dedicated healing, and has only gotten more with each passing Balance Patch (they literally just increased Tempest healing and made Ventari Revs are full blown healer with the patch today) and because of this Downed State is irrelevant and detrimental to the state of the games PvP. It needs to go in PvP modes like WvW, the PvE players can keep it.

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@"Ganathar.4956" said:Because the game is balanced around it. That is really the only reason for it to exist at this point. If you removed downstate you would have to rebalance

everything

. Try playing a weaver in a zerg with no downstate. You don't even have to get hit by a single thing to die easily, as retaliation can take care of that.

The game still is "balanced" around down state, despite Anet shifting their design philosophy. There are many traits and skills that interact with down state, and a large amount of them was implemented after Anet introduced holy trinity roles. It is very likely one of the reasons why the insane burst we have is not completely unacceptable to the devs. If you did not have the safety net of the down state I believe that burst would have been changed a long time ago.

I am not arguing that down state should not be removed, but if you simply remove it without rebalancing the entire game then the gameplay will become even more cancerous than it already is. Unfortunately, Anet seem unwilling to make the sweeping changes that would be necessary. They only do incremental changes at a glacial pace. The meta in WvW has been almost the same since PoF released. That right there should tell you everything. The PvP meta has changed a bit more, but is still way too similar to what it was when PoF released.

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@Ganathar.4956 said:Because the game is balanced around it. That is really the only reason for it to exist at this point. If you removed downstate you would have to rebalance

everything

. Try playing a weaver in a zerg with no downstate. You don't even have to get hit by a single thing to die easily, as retaliation can take care of that.

True, but thats why I would like for them to rework those traits and such. I wouldn't imply that they just ditch it, I want them to do better and make the PvP more healthy because as it stands now its just...so annoying.

@"Whiteout.1975" said:

Why is Downstate Necessary for GW2?

Because of hundreds of finishers that people have purchased, and more that ANet continues to sell in the TP etc... Imagine the screaming people would do if they couldn't use their favorite finishers... even though these days it's more important to just kill the guy fast, there will always be people who want to see that "awesome" finisher over the body of the dead enemy... and always be ANet making money off people buying finishers ;)

@"Balthazzarr.1349" said:

@"Whiteout.1975" said:

Why is Downstate Necessary for GW2?

I get what your saying... But I honestly just think they could rework the finisher's to just trigger on death naturally... Based on who delivered the finishing blow or maybe who delivered the most damage.

If they nerf ressing speed to about 50%, so poison will a actually do something too on a downed body I wouldn't have any problems with downstate.They can keep it in PvE and PvP because of the downed body still count for nodes and for bleed opportunities.WvW is a war zone map and now that mounts are a thing, a brainless skipping fights utility, downed state should be removed forever and if you die you are sent back to spawn.

Downed state allows for some flex between numbers, skill levels, classes and builds and adds a deeper layer of tactics to combat. It lets players help and support each other - a critical way tothink in any team combat game and the same reasons other games have downed state or revival too. The entire concept is "you're not alone, here take my hand". Loose that and you loose the heart and soul of GW2 combat.

People always seem to forget just how huge WvW is. All maps queued on all 3 sides is ~1000 players. This isnt some organized tournament between a few people on the same skill levels. If you cant handle combat with downed state, you are supposed to ask for reinforcement. Because you are clearly not enough. And even that is after the fact that good players can fight heavily outmanned "despite" downed state. This isnt some myth, its reality. I've seen 20 man guild groups crush 40 man pug zergs by plowing into them in a surprise push. I've seen solo players fight 1v3 and win. I've seen 5 man groups sustain against 15 peeps.

So what is the problem with downed state?

There is no problem except in peoples head. Skill still matters and the reason you lost due to that "darned downstate" is because you didnt fight good enough. Maybe you where outmanned, maybe you where outmanning the enemy. It doesnt matter. Its projecting failure on a feature that can both help or hinder you... but you choose to only see the hinder. Yet still everyone will claim they are only here for the fights, when they are clearly only here to win. If they dont its downed states fault. Or something elses fault. Never is it their own.

@Straegen.2938 said:It is an interesting mechanic and actually makes sense in PvE. It outright sucks in WvW since it heavily favors numbers over skill.

I disagree partially'Cheaper' skills like mi, petrez on ranger, transfusion etc. Are counter demanding skills

Smallscale like 7's-15's IT asks good communication and cooperation, yes it's a lot harder if it's 7v15 but still possible.

On bigger scale 30-70 yes, on that matter the numbers count more

@Whiteout.1975 said:

Why is Downstate Necessary for GW2?

Because its part of the game since release, traits and skills are built around it. Handle it or change the game. Its like complaining about the dodge function.

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Downed state allows for some flex between numbers, skill levels, classes and builds and adds a deeper layer of tactics to combat. It lets players help and support each other - a critical way tothink in any team combat game and the same reasons other games have downed state or revival too. The entire concept is "you're not alone, here take my hand". Loose that and you loose the heart and soul of GW2 combat.

People always seem to forget just how huge WvW is. All maps queued on all 3 sides is ~1000 players. This isnt some organized tournament between a few people on the same skill levels. If you cant handle combat with downed state, you are supposed to ask for reinforcement. Because you are clearly not enough. And even that is after the fact that good players can fight heavily outmanned "despite" downed state. This isnt some myth, its reality. I've seen 20 man guild groups crush 40 man pug zergs by plowing into them in a surprise push. I've seen solo players fight 1v3 and win. I've seen 5 man groups sustain against 15 peeps.

So what is the problem with downed state?

There is no problem except in peoples head. Skill still matters and the reason you lost due to that "darned downstate" is because you didnt fight good enough. Maybe you where outmanned, maybe you where outmanning the enemy. It doesnt matter. Its projecting failure on a feature that can both help or hinder you... but you choose to only see the hinder. Yet still everyone will claim they are only here for the fights, when they are clearly only here to win. If they dont its downed states fault. Or something elses fault. Never is it their own.

It has nothing to do with acknowledging ones own mistakes, you can do that plenty and improve and still be faced with the scenario of a 1v3 where you down one of the enemy players and have the choice of cleaving, stomping or kiting away should you be low on CDs. Stomping can be interrupted or you can use valuable cooldowns to maybe avoid this or the enemies can just beat on you while you're stuck in an animation that can't be sped up, cleaving leaves you similarly vulnerable while also potentially using valuable cooldowns as well, kiting just gives the enemy the opportunity to revive their friend by both just rubbing them which they will also likely do even in the scenario where you try to stomp as they will revive them faster than you stomp or when you cleave as they will fill the bar faster than you can deal damage to the downed or their friends.

So do people just have to acknowledge that its a mistake to just do any of these things in that outnumbered scenario or is it maybe that the mechanic is just unhealthy for PvP? You can shunt the blame onto people's own mistakes all you want, I'm fine with that as its usually the case with most situations of "oh I can't beat this class" complaints but these aren't "lrn2play" situations, these are "I'm getting killed because someone who should be out of the fight just got brought back into it and its all because 1 or two people just pressed F."

Yes there are scenarios in which lesser numbers can take out larger numbers, it does happen for sure. I've seen it, you've seen it, the people who have been on the giving and the receiving ends have all seen it. Thats not the point. The point is that it feels garbage in terms of a gameplay aspect especially because of how weirdly and improperly weighted it is between different "styles" of play in WvW.

For Zergs its almost entirely freaking negligible. If someone goes down in zerg vs zerg they are typically just going to get melted by all the AoE anyway so rallying is rare and you're not going to get picked up because you're getting bombed. So ressing has even less importance there.

For havocs/small group play its important as you have enough people to quickly revive another player if 2-3 of you all try to revive at once which makes trying to secure a kill off a downed extremely important but almost impossible should there be a healer present (Firebrand for example) as they can either MI the downed or heal the players reviving them so they aren't downed for long. And this is especially apparent should one side just have more numbers than the other.

For roaming and small scale (1v2, 2v2, 1v3, 3v3, etc) it will always favor the ones with numbers as they can just gather and revive and you run into the problem that I described above.

The problem lies in that you could be a skilled player yet die because while probably being able to handle all 3 people in a 1v3 scenario, that person getting right back up from downed state because you realistically can't exactly stop the res if they want it to happen leads to that. I'm not opposed to revives, I'm really not. I am opposed to the fact that it functions the way it does.

Also if you're trying to compare GW2 downed state to for instance...BR games like Apex and such with the downed state...very different. You don't have defensive cooldowns and spammed heals or invulnerable states in a shooter like those. If you try and go to revive a downed teammate and you do what people do in GW2 you get sniped in the skull. It works there because of the risks involved, GW2 does not even remotely have similar risks like that.

I know there is a lot of people that hate the event (for whatever reason), but as a roamer, I be like...

:)

Its necessary for weavers cuz you always die from retal after casting meteor shower :/

@spectrito.8513 said:Its necessary for weavers cuz you always die from retal after casting meteor shower :/

reduce meteorshower to a single impact , 20 targets.

Why necessary? Because of 40 man 1-shot zergs, that's a good reason. We going back to pirate ship real fast thanks to the geniuses arguing against a mechanic that is fine as long as you don't all stack BG.

@MUDse.7623 said:

@spectrito.8513 said:Its necessary for weavers cuz you always die from retal after casting meteor shower :/

It would have to do 20k damage to be comparable to current one.

They can just make retal scale with attacker's % health pool instead of defender's power stat. Or just add icd on it, like auras have one.