The smackdown on knockdown

Knock down - causes a target to temporarily fall down. While knocked down, the target cannot move, cannot activate skills with an activation time, and cannot switch weapons, effectively removing them from the game for 2-4 seconds.

Unconditional knock down - [backbreaker][devastating hammer][earth shaker][grapple][hammer bash][Magehunter's Smash][shove][spike trap][Signet of Judgment][earthquake][dragons stomp][gale][lightning surge][meteor][meteor shower][shock][Entangling Asp][grasping was kuurong]

Conditional knock down - [coward][none shall pass][bulls charge][bulls strike][counter blow][enraged smash][Griffon's Sweep][leviathans sweep][heavy blow][Irresistible Blow][shield bash][yeti smash][bestial pounce][savage pounce][tripwire][balthazars pendulum][bane signet][Shield of Judgment][psychic instability][signet of clumsiness][churning earth][gust][mind shock][slippery ground][stoning][whirlwind][teinais wind][unsteady ground][water trident][horns of the ox][iron palm][mark of instability][scorpion wire][trampling ox][wastrels collapse][reapers sweep][shield of force]

Knock down prevention - [Balanced Stance][dolyak signet][steady stance][aura of stability][balthazars pendulum][ward of stability][brace yourself][fleeting stability]

With 1,235 skills to PvP with, 55 of them are knockdown skills, while 8 of them are knockdown counters. Of these 8 counters, they cover only 5 of the 10 professions in the game, 3 of them being from the Warrior profession. 2 of them are an Elite, 2 of them cannot be used on self, and none of them (by design) provide an effective counter for knock down. Only 4% of all skills are knockdown skills, while 0.6% are knockdown counters. Yet these knockdown skills are the most popular. Most of the skills you see above have been around since the beginning of Guild Wars, but they weren't always as popular as they are now. Once upon a time, players looked upon the use of knockdown as a tool to be used in rare situations. But as time went on, bad players resorted to overusing knockdown in order to stand a chance against better players. The truth is, Arenanet have a very misguided philosophy of favoring the underdog and turning the tables in order to give him the upper hand. It's the equivalent of playing a game of chess, and modifying the game so that you can have an option at the start of the game to replace any of your chess pieces with a 'free move' card. What this does is allow the underdog to have a cheap alternative to win through, without interacting with his opponent. A bad player would sacrifice many of his pawns and free move his way to victory, while a good player would not resort to such a tactic, knowing that it destroys the spirit of the game by removing the interactivity from competition. One might argue that this cheap option gives bad players a chance to survive long enough to learn the game through interacting with better players. But the history of Guild Wars and the degeneration of its community has shown that it just doesn't work that way, and such a misguided philosophy is out of touch with reality. Rather than learn to interact with their opponent, and out-manoeuvre them through builds, strategies and tactics, bad players resort to this cheap tactic of spamming knockdown, repeating a simple sequence of commands over and over. These builds are designed to limit player interaction and simplify the game in a series of free shot moves. This is why most Melee players have no clue how to play their profession, totally clueless how to position themselves and change tactics. They prefer instead to chase a single target and repeat the same knockdown sequence over and over until it eventually dies.


When you encourage shameful play like this, what do you expect is going to happen? Forest Gump could figure this one out. It isn't like this by accident, this has been a deliberate attempt on behalf of Arenanet to dumb down the game for bad players, and give them a chance against good players. They only have themselves to blame for the shameful and untalented troll/griefer community they've nurtured. You can see another clear example of this mentality in rollerbeetle racing. The underdogs are given an option to stop the race leader in his tracks, by spamming knockdown on them. This leads to everyone parking on the boxes, spamming knockdown on anyone who runs ahead until they get god mode.

The bottom line is this - bad players resort to knockdown spam, good players don't. If you can't win without knockdown, you need to stop using training wheels and learn how to play. Just because you're given a choice to use an underdog cheapshot, doesn't mean you should use it.[build prof][/build]

Sometimes I question whether you actually play this game, the counters to KD are more than enough, and are widely used. Like every monk ever (except you) takes Bstance/Dolyak specifically so they don't get raped by knockdown. AoS and to a lesser extent BYS are also widely used in GvG/HA, AoS used by the prot to keep the infuser on his feet.

In addition there are other ways to counter knockdowns, for example using block, like guardian or blocking stances since most KDs come from melee. You also should have interrupts on your midline (ranger/mesmer) who can interrupt KD chains or if you have an ele packing blind they can blind the spikes, no problems there.

Bad players arn't the ones who use KDs, the ones who can't deal with KDs are.

Unless of course you think every player who plays HA and GvG are bad players, which kind of speaks for itself.

DarthXX wrote:

Sometimes I question whether you actually play this game

I've played the game far more than you and you know it. 11,893 hours and counting. You've spent many hours in Alliance battles, humping my leg, chasing me around the map spamming knockdown blindly and calling me silly names. Just a couple of days ago, my PUG teams won against you over many consecutive wins, because you were too busy humping peoples legs with knockdown spam to capture shrines.

DarthXX wrote:

the counters to KD are more than enough, and are widely used. Like every monk ever (except you) takes Bstance/Dolyak specifically so they don't get raped by knockdown.

Really? How many Mo/W do you see? Not many at all, because those counters weaken you considerably by locking your second profession to Warrior, all for an insufficient anti-knockdown. Most Monks have always been Mo/Me.

DarthXX wrote:

AoS and to a lesser extent BYS are also widely used in GvG/HA, AoS used by the prot to keep the infuser on his feet.

[aura of stability] doesn't work in 4 vs 4, due to it being target other only. In order to use it for your Monk, you need another character to invest heavily into Protection Prayers for it to last a functional amount of time. Even then, the duration is very short and knock down lock is easy to achieve. Even in an 8 vs 8 environment, many players still think it sucks, and hence why it's only used sometimes (not as widely as you claim). All you need to do is attack the prot instead of the healer, which is better choice anyway, due to healer cast times being too slow for a good spike. If you think [infuse health] is a good skill, you're gravely mistaken. It's popular due to the standard of Monks being so bad that they take far too long to heal, and overuse [infuse health] to compensate for their slow reaction times and bad builds. Picking off an infuser after an infuse is very easy to do, and when you also have skills like [frenzy], you're sitting in a glass house in a hail of gunfire. If you look at the outdated gwbbcode here, you will notice that the skill info says '5-20 seconds' - [aura of stability] - while the current duration at 12 Protection Prayers is only 7. This is an example of how the game has been purposely imbalanced to allow bad players to stand a better chance through knock down spam. [brace yourself] only works for a single knockdown every 12 seconds, making it useless against knock down spam. The only time it would be worthwhile is by having a team full of Paragons, and of course Paragons have been conveniently nerfed to oblivion.

DarthXX wrote:

there are other ways to counter knockdowns, for example using block, like guardian or blocking stances since most KDs come from melee

Blocking and kiting can only go so far. Not far enough, not by a long shot. Any moron can run a knockdown spam build and chase a monk in circles all day until he gets a lucky knock down. The difficulty rating of working against knockdown through blocking and kiting (especially when it's coming from multiple sources) is far higher than the village idiot level of skill it takes to press space 1 2 3 4 over and over. That's why it's popular. A bad player can beat an average player easily, and sometimes a good player if they're lucky. Without it, they don't stand a chance. Blocking is almost always 50%. On a Hammer warrior, all you need is a single knockdown to begin a knockdown lock, with a 50-100% chance of success. Blocking Enchantments like [Guardian] are almost always expired by the time they use their next knockdown. Block stances are easily removed through [wild throw], [wild blow] and [wild strike]. Notice that [wild blow] removes all adrenalin. The purpose of this was to originally prevent a Warrior from initiating an unblockable knock down chain through it. [wild throw] and [wild strike] are deliberately left as they are to allow bad players to exploit the game through knockdown spam. You only do knock down spam because you lack the talent to win without it. It's a cheap toddler level option, offered to bad players so that they can stand a chance.

DarthXX wrote:

You also should have interrupts on your midline (ranger/mesmer) who can interrupt KD chains

Which brings up another problem. Interrupt spam is infamous for being a tool for morons to stand a chance against good players. Most interrupts come at very little sacrifice and no penalty for failing to catch a spell/skill. Just like knock down spam, and even moreso, interrupt spammers are popular because they limit player interaction and allow a very bad player to win against average players on a regular basis, just by randomly mashing buttons. Interrupts, like most knock downs, have no penalty for their failure. Imagine if you lost 100 health and 10 energy every time your knockdown or interrupt failed. Some skills, like [meteor][meteor shower][grapple][spike trap][earthquake][dragons stomp][lightning surge][churning earth][whirlwind] and others, have a reasonable penalty, and/or involve interaction between the players that allow the knockdown to be reasonably avoided. Other skills are deliberately buffed to give you this cheap shot through knock down spam. One look at skills like [coward] and you just can't deny this with a straight face. It's that obvious.

DarthXX wrote:

have an ele packing blind they can blind the spikes

There's an old term, 'Blind Bot', that refers to Air Elementalists that spam blind through [blinding surge] or [blinding flash]. It's called that because it takes no skill at all to run (like a very simple bot program), and can permanently shut down martial professions very easily, winning most PvP matches... eventually, and slowing the game down to a snail's pace. This was one of the earlier 'idiot friendly' options added to the game, and even promoted by Arenanet themselves at one point. Only bottom end players used this, because they didn't stand a chance without it. Everyone else had the self respect not to run it. Notice the difference between [blinding surge] and [blinding flash] compared to skills like [belly smash],[dust trap] and [smoke powder defense]. Certain easy skills are deliberately buffed to the extreme to allow bad players to stand a chance. This imbalance is not by accident. It's due to an old misguided Arenanet philosophy of giving the underdog an unfair advantage to even the odds. This is their main sales gimmick, as an attempt to make the game appealing to casual players. This was the very core foundation of Guild Wars from day one, and advertised as such in the early days. The game was never meant to be balanced. It was meant to be rewarding for bad players and unfair to good players. The only balance intended with Guild Wars was an attempt to make it a 50% win/loss ratio regardless of how good you were. Anyone excessively outside of that is either far ahead of everyone else, or heavily exploits those 'idiot options' like knock down/interrupt/blind spam.

DarthXX wrote:

Bad players arn't the ones who use KDs, the ones who can't deal with KDs are

Keep telling yourself that. Whatever makes you feel better about doing it. You still struggle even when you abuse it. It's time to take a clue, and see the world outside the 'PvP for dummies' handicap.

DarthXX wrote:

Unless of course you think every player who plays HA and GvG are bad players, which kind of speaks for itself

Most of them were, most of them are. Why do you think GvG died so early on? It's the very reason I stopped daily GvG a long time ago, and refuse to do Champion title in disgust. Why do you think they made the tournaments to begin with? Do you really think it's coincidence that Evil, War machine and Ncsoft are all Korean? The wool has been pulled over your eyes. Why do you think the average skill level has continued to decline over the years instead of improve?

It's like this by design, due to a misguided philosophy that continues to this day. Don't expect any different from Guild Wars 2.[build prof][/build]

Statements like this

Terran wrote:

Really? How many Mo/W do you see? Not many at all, because those counters weaken you considerably by locking your second profession to Warrior, all for an insufficient anti-knockdown. Most Monks have always been Mo/Me.

confirm suspicions like this

DarthXX wrote:

Sometimes I question whether you actually play this game

Statements like this

DarthXX wrote:

I play purely to troll and grief other people, it gives me fulfillment in an otherwise barren and meaningless life

confirm statements like this

Terran wrote:

this has been a deliberate attempt on behalf of Arenanet to dumb down the game for bad players, and give them a chance against good players. They only have themselves to blame for the shameful and untalented troll/griefer community they've nurtured

2 things,

First you seem to not only fail at GW but also at sarcasm,

and you got a bit of a correlation fallacy going on there bro being a troll =/= being unskilled.

Good article.

My conscience bears witness to it. I remember that the main reason I ran KD-spam builds in the past was because I wasn't good enough to best skilled players. Instead of trying to better myself I opted for the easier more user-friendly option which requires no growth whatsoever...namely KD-Spam. As you said, anyone can press 1234...etc. KD-spam allows a total newbie to dominate a seasoned player. Is it because the seasoned player really isn't good? No. It's, as you said, because Arenanet skill balancing is designed to make newbies equal to veterans. They erred greatly, in that they sacrificed growth/self-improvement for user-friendliness. Which is why, as you and I have discussed in-game, many of the early GW players quit.

Thanks for the article.

Hey Terran, I just want to clear up a question I've had for awhile but never got around to asking.

Would you ever condone the use of skills like [Coward] [Devastating Hammer] [Backbreaker] and other skills like them?

And if so, in what environment? Could you provide example builds?
[build prof][/build]