Hero Arena

[L|S >+>+G+<+<]

First off, apologies if this is in the wrong place. Please feel free to move it if it is.


I'm just having a moan I guess at the hero v hero battle arena.

All anyone seems to do is bring sf builds to it. m3h
I saw like maybe 3 ppl who bought a build other than sf during 2 hrs or so.
Come on think of something original eh????

Personally this sux & has driven me away from doing it.


sf hero build ftl imo :(

[Warskull]

Just stop playing hero battles and go do some real PvP. Heroes battles are flat out a joke.

[Agyar]

Strange, I thought people stopped running the SF builds pretty quickly. If there's one thing that annoyed me about hero battles, it was the introduction of Razah, making teams with him or him and a ritualist pretty hard to knock off the altars.

Countering SF is easy though; interrupts and Frigid Armor should make it an easy win. It's not even that strong a build there if you can push through the first spike and down an ele or two. And any build with a bit of pressure behind it should be able to do that.

And while I agree Hero Battles aren't really a great form of PvP at all, offering a "Just don't play there" solution doesn't really help.

Edit: P.S. You may find more suggestions or support in the Hero/AI sub-forum of the campfire, here (http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=243)

[Allmightybob]

Heroes Arena is the fastest faction gain for me right now. Heroes Arena barely rewards wins, until that changes I'll be running the highest offense builds to squeeze out faction as fast as I can.

3 E/N and a N/E all with copies of Searing Flames is the fastest way I can kill another group at the moment.

[furbat]

I love hero battles. That being said, SF is there so noobs can get some faction. If you can't beat a SF team your build is trash and you need to start over. Dont gimp yourself with hard counters like friged armor or mantra of flame. Against SF make sure you disable whatever condition removal you have on your monk. Having your monk spam conidtion removal on allies with full health is never a good thing. But yeah, any competent presure should be able to take out a ele pretty fast, and SF is much weaker with 2 eles than 3.

Try using powerdrain as e management on you healers. A couple of interupts help out.


I also bring a mesmer with spiritual pain anymore, eats rits alive.

[The Ernada]

I love the Hero Battles too. I've also noticed all the Searing Flames builds as well. But those are usually not too much trouble for me. What annoys me are the holding and running builds where the heroes are set up to camp the center shrine and the player is setup to just run from shrine to shrine. It's not fun to play against (losing has nothing to do with it) and so I just quit as soon as I see that type of holding build.

[unmatchedfury]

I personally think that hero battles would be great if decently skilled players actually played there. Most of the cookie cutter builds can be easily defeted with the proper knowledge of what your doing. Xinreas weapon absoulutly WTF pwns searing flames teams ( 16 seconds of no SR is murder) And spiritual pain is arguably overpowered the way it clears away spirits.

balenced bulds have a decent time of it winning. It also alows for ALOT of personal invention. It could be great its just FAR to easy to abuse ATM.

The think i like about it is that its a real test of you good YOU are. Your team is taken care of. You have to know what your doing. what shrines to cap in your opening pattern and how to take advatage of his opening pattern to gank or expand quickly. Also you have to change the way to play according to the most popular builds being run that day.a Mesmer is almsot always on my team. he's an invaluable tool against anlost anything.

[Former Ruling]

and how to take advatage of his opening pattern

Their strategy: Run straight to the Center Shrine...Camp For 10 Minutes.

As long as you can't get them off that shrine, they win. So you cap the other shrines, and try to own them and camp the shrine yourself..

[Dragonious]

Just stop playing hero battles and go do some real PvP. Heroes battles are flat out a joke.

Couldn't have said it any better...Though I commend ANET for trying, I actually want them to take the title for heroes out of the game. It's rolling or steamroll builds which isnt fun at all..

[JR]

Interesting post on the matter by Rayne of [iQ]:

I admit that, at first, I thought this was the worst idea and the worst format they could have spent money on. So I decided to play a few games to see what it was all about. The first three games I played, my opponents opening move was to ask if I wanted to /roll. When I didn't respond, they left the game and I was the winner. The fourth game I played my opponent chose to move to the center shrine with his whole team, I moved there as well and gave him some beatings, the game ending 20-2. The fifth game though, was not like any other I had previously played. I entered the game and saw my Korean opponent splitting all four of his guys to different shrines. I thought I would be able to hunt them down one at a time with my speedy team (Charge!) while capturing a shrine or two before camping the center shrine and forcing a fight there. I was not so pleased to find out when I reached the first shrine that my opponent teleported away (Shadow of Haste). On my way to a different shrine I hit a well placed trap bomb that slowed my advancement to the Mending Shrine. Upon arrival I found myself whiffing on the kill again as my opponent teleported away (Shadow of Haste) and saved himself from degening out with Feigned Neutrality. As I captured the Mending Shrine my opponent got his first point from the Center Shrine and had recaptured the Cultists Shrine which I had previously neutralized and captured. I decided to stop chasing and move to the Center Shrine to force a fight or accumulate morale points. Upon arrival I hit another trap bomb (I'm not sure if you can change the formation your Heroes follow you in but it hit 3 of my 4 guys each time). I realized my opponent was recapturing the Mending Shrine, but also that he didn't have a Monk. I started to beat on a N/A Hero only to have him teleport away and use Feigned Neutrality to save himself. My Warrior hero was ineffective due to the traps, and I was feeling a lot of pressure from the degen (conditions and hexes) as well as the player controlled Domination Me/A that was ruining my Monk hero. Despite having targetted heals on myself as well as my other remaining hero, I couldn't keep up with the 4 offensive characters and the lvl 24 NPC (I think that was attained through the Cultists Shrine?). I die along with my Healer hero while my other two Heroes are degening out at ~40% health. I look up at the 2-6 score which is about to be 2-9 considering my two remaining men are about to die and the center shrine being reclaimed by my opponent. Knowing that I was clearly out of my depth, I chose to resign. I don't think I could possibly describe with my meager writing skills the bewilderment I felt after the game when I thought about how much micromanagement this guy was using in my sound defeat. He was able to anchor and keep track of multiple Shadow of Hastes, while also (I assume manually) placing trap bombs in anticipation of my movement. After schooling me with movement and teleporting, he also beat me straight up (though the previous capturing of 3 buffing shrines aided him for sure). For those who think this format doesn't take a great deal of skill, I offer this as proof that this is not exactly the case. I think that even though this was GW I was playing, the player skills that it required were completely different than the those I had refined playing GvG. I admit to being a HvH nub, but I think it's fairly easy for anyone to see this guy had quite a bit of skill.

It's funny to me how one experience completely changed my mind about how skill intensive HvH was. I've been rocked plenty of times, I especially remember how badly I got beat down as a nub; but none of those times left me feeling like I did after that match. I knew without a doubt, that no matter how much I practiced, I would never be as good as that guy.

All that being said, I would prefer a TA ladder ;p

http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/showthread.php?t=44324

[Hyunsai]

I think that Hero V hero requires a Warcraft 3 like micro management skill. Not really something we do often lol...

[Seltack]

Just had a match that definitely restored my faith in this game type as being viable for good competition/fun matches. Played a guy from aNc in a 19-20 match, both running aggressive builds and actually using the other shrines besides the centre.

Sure there are a lot of bad matches, but if you can get one brilliant match then with abit of work there's definitely potential.

It might be nice to add a bonus for capping a certain number of other shrines, perhaps +1 score if you get all the shrines bar the centre or something to discourage holding builds, though I've been fortunate to avoid facing too many.

I also think "balanced"/control builds are viable with a lot of skill on the player's part. I played with 1 monk, 2 warriors and me as a surge/gale dom mesmer and when I was chosing/shutting down the correct target on the opposition team in the correct way things started dieing and defense was sound. However with the wide range of gimmics you have to fight against its hard to bring enough counters, and to know exactly what you need to do versus a certain team. That's why its so effective to run ridiculous front loaded builds or overly defensive builds as most of the time it works. Once people are more skilled (as has happened in HA/GvG) it will be possible for people to play less gimmicy builds because they will actually be able to counter things through skilled play/movement. Or atleast I hope this will happen, from a small amount of testing of it I think its possible.

Some sort of obs mode feature along with the tournament may also improve things because people will learn how to go about countering the lame stuff with more traditional builds and so the standard of play will increase.

Basically, don't count it out yet, I think its a game type with potential with perhaps a few changes once it has had time to mature/settle down from the "zomg farm title" stage.

[Draikin]

Their strategy: Run straight to the Center Shrine...Camp For 10 Minutes.

As long as you can't get them off that shrine, they win. So you cap the other shrines, and try to own them and camp the shrine yourself..
This is incorrect: you'd only have to cap the NPC shrine, go back to the center and proceed to cap it because you have an extra player. The common tactic for these holding build is to use an assassin with shadow of haste: first of all you force the opponent into a situation where you have capped the NPC shrine and the center. If he can't take down your team (currently this is usually accomplished by using dual monk + Rt builds), the opponent will (at least he should) try to cap the NPC shrine. If he moves the entire team towards the NPC shrine you'll simply follow him, so most of the time he'll try to sneak out while the battle at the center is raging.

Here's where Shadow of haste comes in: suppose he makes a run for it, you simply use SoH and proceed to follow him. Even if you get into trouble, you can just cancel SoH, regen with feigned neutrality and head back. Even if the opponent can cap the NPC shrine in the meanwhile, he still has to head back towards the center. But he can't head back because you will cap the NPC shrine again. Meanwhile the center is still under your control, and no doubt the spirit nests are doing significant damage to his team of heroes. He has to actually kill you if he wants to have enough time to cap the center without losing the other shrine, but you have SoH to get back to safety every time.

The obvious way to beat this strategy is to keep control of the NPC shrine yourself, and not lose to his assassin one-on-one. In this scenario, you have to pay attention to where he uses SoH. During a one-on-one fight at the NPC shrine he might use it and run back to the center, but if you follow him and he cancels SoH when you're not paying attention... The other way to beat this is to consistently wipe out the 2 Mo + Rt (or 2 Ne/Rt + Mo or 2 Ne/Rt + Rt) holding build that's holding the center, but that's not as easy as some people make it sound. Keep in mind that while you're using your team to kill the holding build the assassin is flying over the map capping the other shrines, which increases their defense even further.

[Diddy bow]

man ppl who do sf generaly are suprised when you tell them (or SHOW them >;) ) there are other builds out there, spirit spammers are kinda annoying too, spirits should go die..
I always like trying out somthing intresting in hero battles since they killed heroway

[JYX]

Interesting post on the matter by Rayne of [iQ]:



http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/showthread.php?t=44324
Yeah I've also had similar matches. I would say that there could be skill involved in HvH. Currently there is definately no incentive to employ any skill. If GvG had no ladder, no rating system, no tournaments, a crappily implemented title system that HvH currently has, it would also be underdeveloped Guys who have this kind of micro and imagination are there for sure, but why would you even experiment with trapping, teleporting, no monk teams when there is no penalty for losing? Just run the same rit/monk/shring capping holding build and win most of the time. Or roll a die and win quickly that way. A good ladder and tourney system will give people an incentive to not lose at all, improve the format and bring out an element of skill that's been buried in a lot of crap.

There's something to be said for the spectator value of these two formats. I imagine a game of HvH played well (such as the match rayne describes) being a lot better to watch than a game of TA. TA matches are typically short, front loaded, with many pets. This is in a system of rank/reward that is much better than HvH. Yeah the level of competition and skill is higher currently than HvH by a long way. There are two major questions though:
If there were ample incentives for HvH and TA to be played at a high level, would TA still be a lot more skillful than HvH?
If played at a high level, would a game of TA be more entertaining to watch than a game of HvH?
Pros may only be interested in playing the game, fact is though that a lot of guys end up only watching the high end tournaments. HvH isn't developed enough to say yet for sure, but I think the spectator aspect may be something that really sells it in the future.

[Sinful Doom]

I know anet has about 32,000 other things going on atm but I would love to see them make a Team Area 2 where we could cooperatively play on the Hero maps. The strategy on these maps could be alot more interesting than simply going in and facing a team heads up like in RA or TA.

[The Ernada]

I'll say it again, if they want HvH to be taken seriously, they really need to change some of the mechanics to discourage the defensive 2 monk + rit holding builds. I'd say 1 out of 4 builds I see out there are a variation of this. Just plant the 3 defensive heroes in the center while you run cap the shrines. BORING to see the same strategy and builds all the time.

I think it was a mistake in making the center shrine give points so quickly because it just encourages people to camp. Also the spirit spam camping reminds me of back when ranger spirit spamming was just annoying and tedious. Sitting there killing all the spirits in order to break through the defenses isnt really fun.

So while I still give HvH my support and I had a lot of fun, I'm already burnt out because of the rollers and the cookie cutter holding builds. It's too bad, it had a lot of potential.

Oh and yes, it would be nice to see TA get some of the same maps (except let's hope it doesnt encourage holding builds)

[Thom]

A well designed offensive control build should steam-roll a holding build. Find 2 characters that will occupy a monk and one guy with spiritual pain or other spirit control. A fairly simple control build can quickly pressure through a holding build and break the hold which normally is enough to secure the win.

[Draikin]

A well designed offensive control build should steam-roll a holding build. Find 2 characters that will occupy a monk and one guy with spiritual pain or other spirit control. A fairly simple control build can quickly pressure through a holding build and break the hold which normally is enough to secure the win.
In TA this might work, however here you're dealing with heroes who have no idea how to deal with spirits. A single wanderlust can shut down your monk because he's trying to cast spells after standing up only to be knocked down again. Pressuring through the holding build once is not enough here, since they'll be back in no time spamming more spirits. While you might be able to steamroll them at the start, soon the runner will have capped all the shrines, meaning they have all the bonuses and an extra NPC to cap the center. Unlike you, they only need to gain the advantage once to win this match. If your team goes down once they'll have time to set up their defenses and you'll be faced with a situation where there's a dozen spirits waiting for you at the center and all the other shrines have also been capped by your opponent. Good luck trying to reverse that situation.

The tactic I use is simply to beat them at their own game, which means letting the rest of my team handle the holding build (and hope they survive) while I try to cap the NPC shrine. This is why shadow of haste is such an important skill to have here: If you activate it at the NPC shrine, you can run to the center and proceed to cap it. If you see the opponent running towards the NPC shrine you don't have to follow him, you can just take your time beating down the rest of his team and cancel SoH when he gets there. Depending on the map you might also still be in range of the center while capping other shrines, which means you can manually select the spirits and let your heroes attack them while you're busy running around or fighting 1 vs 1 with the other runner. Usually these battles are very repetitive (running back and forth between the center and NPC shrines) and won't end until time is up.