Guild Wars 2: Downed State, Stability, and Fear

Hello, this movie will discuss downed state, the importance of stability with respect to downed state, and the potential importance of fear for countering stability.  I say the "potential importance" of fear because it is not yet clear if fear is meant to be a counter to stability or not.  The tooltip for stability says that it works against fear but that is not the case in game.  IMO, I believe that it is the tooltip that is in error and that ArenaNet does intend for fear to be a counter to stability.  Time will tell.

I went through three phases with respect to how I felt about the downed state.  In the first BWE, it was "I hate this."  In BWE2, it was "Okay, I don't like this but I guess I can put up with it."  In BWE3 it was "Hrm, downed state introduces some interesting mechanics and tension to close fights in the game."  The dynamic of a fight changes drastically when a player is downed, and the stakes are very high when there are downed players on both sides of a fight.  There are mechanics and abilities specifically designed around the downed phase of a fight.  Teams and players who chose to ignore those mechanics and abilities will suffer the consequences.

Area Control Guardian (Scepter/Shield/Staff) BWE2 footage - Part 2

The following movie is the second part of my BWE2 footage of my Guardian using Staff/Scepter/Shield.  This one was done mostly for entertainment.  I'll do some commentary style movies for the Guardian with my BWE3 footage.  ATM, I'm thinking I will switch to Scepter/Shield and Scepter/Focus since Martyr is being moved to a utility (and a few other reasons).

Area Control Guardian (Scepter/Shield/Staff) BWE2 footage - Part 1

The last class I tested during BWE2 was the Guardian.  It also happens to be the class that I think best fits my playstyle as I really feel I can have a significan impact in every sPvP match that I'm in.  All of this footage is from Sunday, so I'm still learning the class.  I make mistakes and there is definitely some fine-tuning that needs to be done on the build.  However, I think it gives a pretty good feel for the area control that a Guardian can bring to it's team.

I'm not going to do an extended write-up for this build at this time.  I'll save that for BWE3 after I've corrected some errors in my play and fine-tuned the build a bit more.