They Tell Me Knock Down Is Great...

They tell me knock down is great for Warriors, but I'm just not seeing it.

Backbreaker - Elite, some +dam, 4s KD, but very high adrenaline cost means you rarely get a chance to use it, especially in PvP. Sure, you'll get an uncontested attack or two in if you do get it off, but a miss or a block is catastrophic due to the adrenaline cost. Still seems to be the best of the Warrior KD skills. :/

Devastating Hammer - Elite, high adrenaline cost, only does Weakness as a secondary effect (nice if you're fighting a boss or Jotuns, but otherwise quite meh). I suppose combining it with the otherwise useless Heavy Blow might be decent, as long as you don't mind waiting forever to get adrenaline again.

Earth Shaker - Elite, AoE KD, no extra damage, very high adrenaline cost, same downsides as Backbreaker, except for the extra time to get in an attack or two without the foes being able to fight back, plus having to get multiple foes together in order to make use of the AoE portion is quite difficult, given how everything runs around like headless chickens after the squishies...

Grapple - Elite, cheap Energy cost and activates quickly. Normally these would be plusses, but the long recharge, knocking yourself down (though at least Dolyak Signet & Balanced Stance can stop that part), and losing your stance makes the skill useless.

Hammer Bash - Adrenaline based and drains ALL of your adrenaline. Might be okay in a Warrior's Endurance Hammer build, but only then.

Magehunter Smash - Elite, very high adrenaline cost, virtually worthless secondary effect (Guardian/Aegis don't seem all that common in the wild, and you'll rarely notice whether you've just gotten lucky against a 75% block chance or if the enemy happened to be enchanted).

Shove - Elite, cheap Energy cost, activates quickly. Long recharge, so rarely used more than once or twice a spawn. Requires moving foe for its damage, which generally means giving up your IAS so that you can actually catch a foe while it's moving.

All the other Warrior skills that give knock down are conditional, and thus very unreliable for KDing foes. The exception might be Enranged Smash - its large +damage component and quick recharge mean it's not so bad to sacrifice your IAS to catch up with moving foes (at least in Normal Mode; Warrior IMS rather sucks and it's still hard to catch things in HM). "Coward!" would be good if it weren't Elite. Griffon's/Leviathan's Sweep and Irresistable Blow are decent if you're going into missions where you know that you'll be blocked a LOT (Kourna missions, perhaps).

So, what am I missing about Knock Down that makes KD builds so great?

Earthshaker one of the best warrior elites in PvE, and nothing to scoff at in PvP. In PvE you should combine it with FGJ!, stonefist insignia, pulverizing smash, whirlwind atk, crude swing, etc. Adrenaline shouldn't be an issue. Also, give you heroes skills like splinter weapon, mark of pain, and strength of honor. As for positioning, flag your heroes and make use of corners and create chokepoints and just get better at picking out clumps.

Devastating hammer is another great skill but using it against jotuns is pretty lulzy, they have knockdown immunity.

I'm sure other people can fill you in on the other skills and their uses.

Well, you can't attack, move, cast when knocked down, so the knockdown itself is actually extremely strong, especially in PvP.

You mentioned that backbreaker is not very good in pvp, but it actually is quite strong. Let's say you are facing a monk who doesn't have balanced/dolyak or activated too late (it happens a lot in low-end pvp) you can bash on him 4 seconds. You can reduce the adrenaline building time by using a furius spear/hammer etc mod and enraging charge for a lot of starting adrenaline. I would say backbreaker is in PvE only useful for singletarget missions, like ruins of morah, where you can render varesh harmless by knock locking here

Devastating hammer is better then you would think because weakness is a strong condition, it's the cheapest KD skill without all your adrenaline cost, but as said above, only useful for single target kd.

Earthshaker is one of the more useful elite's in pve (see the meta on gwpvx.com) since you can knockdown an entire group, while the other party members can kill the whole group.

Magehunter smash, yes in pve aegis/guardian etc is not very common, that's why it's actually only used in pvp, where you see a lot of block skills.

shove, not really an opinion about that

grapple is just imo not a good choice imo, doesn't matter for what

Hammer bash is good for knocloking a target in pvp, to let him stayed knocked down, again, not that much use in pve like you said

Said it once and I'll say it again, in PVE, Knockdowns are pointless.

KDs are fun and can be useful, but the better option is to outright kill. With 7 heros at your disposal, you should be able to kill ANYTHING in about 2 sec flat regardless what they are doing.

In the story of Earthshaker, its great to see a whole mob KD'ed at once, but if you have them balled up like that, 100b + MoP + Splinter will wipe them, so KD'ing them is just a waste of time.

With that said, I still play ES once in a while to keep things fresh or a little of DSlash + Brawling Headbutt.

This is PvE!

There are skills you can bring to boost your adrenaline gain. Bring them.
Also bring things like Crude Swing and Whirlwind Attack - both are good ways to gain adrenaline and work very nicely with Earthshaker. Using them and the skills linked above mean you can pretty much chain Earthshaker non-stop until things are dead.

Knockdowns are useful but less valuable than they are in PvP. With that in mind, only Earthshaker is really worth bothering with in PvE when it comes to hammer elites and KDs.


Quote: Originally Posted by Way2dead

Actually I've found Backbreaker+Renewing Smash to be pretty good in areas with small mobs or situations where you only have to kill one dangerous foe. Earth Shaker in all glory but if you cannot ball up at least 3-4 mobs it feels fairly bad. BB+RS is a nice alternative if you want to go hammer anyway.

Look at the standard 2 monk PVP backline. Knock one down and you halve the prot \ heal power for 4 seconds. Imagine how much damage your entire team can do in those 4 seconds if saving their strong skills for that time.

Well, pvp is all about opportunity. You don't build up adren on said monk, blatantly cast your fully charged attacks at him cuz chances are he has guardian or stance up. Focus someone else then switch to the targets you want to blow up. All you need is that first hit to get things rollin. I always try to fool the monks I'm up against, constantly switching targets, blatantly enraging charge to them and waiting for stance to wear off. You also want to watch for shield bash.

I don't get the hating on these hammer skills because of adrenaline requirements. With Frenzy/Flail and For Great Justice, you should be able to get the adrenaline in about 2 seconds.

I dig knockdown because it's fun, but I'll admit to switching to 100b + Mark of Pain when I know I'm going to be moshing it up somewhere hard. There are just too many guys who have resistance to knockdown, but no one (other than Cyndr) is resistant to a sword in the face.

Yeti smash is super underrated. The condition isn't hard to meet, and unlike earthshaker, it actually attacks everything - even if the KD condition isn't met. Between that, whirlwind and crude swing, most of your attacks turn into AoE.

Withering Aura applies weakness just before Yeti Smash, which means guaranteed KD.

OP doesn't realise keeping people on the ground means their helpless and all they do is receive damage. It's like Panic, essentially. But you can't also lineback >

Quote: Originally Posted by DeBron

Devastating hammer is another great skill but using it against jotuns is pretty lulzy, they have knockdown immunity. Well, I only used 'em as an example since they were the hardest hitting melee critters I could think of off-hand.

Knocking down normally immune enemies in PvE is as easy as slotting Earthbind on something. Its not like communing ritualists are out of vogue or anything, it should be easy to fit into a build.

What does kd do? It's offensive, it's defensive, it snares, locks position for aoe. It interrupts key skills, it is worth every bit of adrenaline if you can lock a target down into uselessness.

Urfshakur warrior, rit with Earthbind, Mesmer with Psychic Instability.

They'll stay knocked down a fire nuker could wipe them out.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Brawling_Headbutt

Quote: Originally Posted by Carboplatin

Said it once and I'll say it again, in PVE, Knockdowns are pointless.

KDs are fun and can be useful, but the better option is to outright kill. With 7 heros at your disposal, you should be able to kill ANYTHING in about 2 sec flat regardless what they are doing.

In the story of Earthshaker, its great to see a whole mob KD'ed at once, but if you have them balled up like that, 100b + MoP + Splinter will wipe them, so KD'ing them is just a waste of time.

With that said, I still play ES once in a while to keep things fresh or a little of DSlash + Brawling Headbutt. Assuming that you are killing an enemy in 2 sec, then with a KD heavy build you're killing it in 2.5 sec, with the enemy doing 0 damage to your party in those 2.5 sec, instead of the 100 they would have done had they not been on their behind the whole time.

But I concur that ES or DS+BH is the way to go for knockdowns.