Hero Battles

Hero Battles was the name given to the mode of PvP known as Hero versus Hero (HvH). In this contest, players would enter the battle with 3 Heroes, and fight another player and his/her team of 3 heroes. A player must have had a named account to participate in Hero Battles. There were rated and unrated battles, with the rated battles counting towards a rating on the Hero Battle ladder. Similar to GvG, players were matched for rated battles based on their rating on the ladder.

One's game account needed access to at least Guild Wars Nightfall or Guild Wars: Eye of the North in order to obtain and utilize Heroes.

Access
Alternately, you could have opened your Hero menu (hit the H key) and click on 'Account.' Then click on 'Travel to Hero Battles.'
 * 1) Map travel to The Battle Isles (Great Temple of Balthazar) from Tyria, Elona, or Cantha.
 * 2) To access Hero Battles you must have unlocked at least three Heroes onto your account.
 * New Characters needed to talk to a Priest of Balthazar first before they could travel to the Hero Battles outpost.
 * 1) Once unlocked this way, you could map travel to the Hero Battles outpost at any time.
 * 2) You must have owned either Nightfall or Eye of the North, or you could not unlock any Heroes.

At the Hero Battles outpost, press the 'Hero Battle' button that appears on the party roster. A window will appear and offer two options:


 * Rated Automatic Match
 * You will be matched against an opponent with a similiar Hero Battle rating. The victorious player will gain Hero Battle rating, and the defeated player will lose Hero Battle rating.


 * Unrated Automatic Match
 * You will be matched against an opponent with a similiar Hero Battle rating. Your Hero Battle rating will not be affected by this match.

During the Automated Tournament registration time window, you would have goten an additional option to register for the tournament.

Objective
The objective was to be the first to score 20 morale points, or to have the most morale points at the end of 10 minutes, whichever came first. If both teams had equal morale points after 10 minutes, Sudden Death mode would begin - the first team achieving a point would win the battle. Morale points were gained by capturing shrines and by killing members of the opposing party. You earned one morale point for each kill you made. How the morale system worked is explained below.



Capturing shrines
In hero battles there were several shrines that could be captured. Every shrine gave one or two pips of morale regeneration.
 * To capture a shrine, a team member needed to be in earshot range of the shrine.
 * The NPC in Desert Sands, Hero Battles and The Crossing counted towards a member of your team for capturing shrines.
 * The speed of capture was dependent on the number of members a team has more than the other team in the vicinity of the shrine.
 * If the shrine had the same number of team members from both sides, then it would not shift in either direction.
 * If the shrine was already captured by the opposition, it had to be "neutralized" first before gaining control.
 * Pets, minions and spirits did not count towards capturing of the shrine.
 * Capture speed was capped at 4 pips in either direction.
 * One capture pip required approximately 11 seconds to capture a neutral shrine. Each additional pip reduced the time by 1 second.

Morale
The table below shows how long it took before a point is received for a certain amount of morale regeneration you had:

Maps

 * Bombardment
 * Desert Sands
 * The Crossing
 * The Beachhead

Rewards
Balthazar's Faction and Victory points could be obtained from Hero Battles.


 * While participating in automated tournaments, Tournament Reward Points would have been awarded based on the performance.
 * When the player won enough matches and increased his rating, the player would become visible on the Hero Battle ladder.
 * Victory Points added towards the Commander title.

Automated Tournaments
In hero battles it was also possible to participate in Automated Tournaments. In order to participate in automated tournements you needed to have a named account. To register for a tournament you needed to press the enter battle button during the registration time. The registration times could be found by talking to Tolkano. You also needed to talk to Tolkano to get a Tournament Token, one tournament token is needed to register for the automated tournament. A tournament would take approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes.

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Tips

 * Go to Options &rarr; Control and bind keys to Command Hero 1 to 3. An important part in Hero Battle is capturing shrines, so if you can select your heroes quickly on the keyboard and send them to the right spot on your map or radar can help.
 * Using hero behaviors to your advantage is important.
 * Heroes attack the target with the lowest maximum health, thus if a hero is faced against one foe with a pet, the hero will prefer to attack the pet. If you want to make sure your hero attacks the other foe and not his pet you need to manually target. Either by calling the target (CTRL-SPACE) you want to attack or by using target button on the hero panel while you have the foe selected.
 * Heroes are less likely to use healing skills, either to heal themselves or an ally, when they are walking towards a location until they reach it. If you see that your hero is under attack and the hero is not using his healing skill you should manually select this skill on the hero skill bar.
 * Heroes see targets with a bow as a ranger, with a melee weapon as a melee target and with a caster weapon as a caster. This will have consequences, for example, with a hero casting hexes. If a monk carries a sword, the hexing hero will cast certain anti-melee hexes on this monk, depending on the way the AI was coded to use the skill.
 * You can talk to the NPC from the NPC shrine to give him the order to follow you or stand still at its current position. However, when the NPC is casting a skill on a foe that is walking out of casting range, the NPC will follow that foe until he can finish the cast. After following his foe, the NPC will not return to the position where you spoke to him but will remain at the position he ends up after casting his skill.
 * Never give up. Many battles are lost because players give up when they see the opponent has a higher rank or more points than they do. However, a battle can be turned in your favor even if you are more than 10 points behind. Likewise, don't get cocky just because your opponent is playing poorly or has a lower rank than you.

Possible strategy
A common build often consisted of an Assassin or Warrior, a Monk, and two splittable characters. However, there were many builds possible given the flexibility of the heroes and the number of primary characters, and what is common will, like other PvP areas tend to evolve and change over time - especially with skill balancing that Arena Net periodically engages in.

To start off, you will be trying to capture the shrines. Your strategy will depend on the map, your team build, and how your opponent splits his team.

Hypothetical Scenario
Your opponent goes for the center shrine first with his entire team. You should split your heroes and send one to each of the rest of the shrines. You can accompany one of them to speed up the capturing, but keep the opposition team within your radar. If the opposition makes any movement towards any of your lone heroes, flag him away if he is out-numbered. Once you capture the outer shrines, you can make a move for the center shrine with the aid of the npc(if there is one) or shrine bonus, and hopefully recap it with the advantage. If the opposition splits off his heroes to capture the outer shrines, counter it with the same number of heroes from your team. On the other hand if your opponent splits his heroes and send one to each shrine, you can counter it by splitting 2-2, covering 2 shrines. Depending on your build, you can kill the opposition's lone hero if he does not flag his hero away fast enough.

The above strategy is just for one of the many possible scenarios. Experienced players will flag their heroes to another location anytime the hero is out-matched and try to score kills on heroes on the move. Thus, all strategies should be based on the logical reactionary choices that are presented to the player as the match persists. -->

Removal
It was initially announced by Linsey Murdock that Hero Battles will be removed and replaced by a "4v4 Sealed Deck format" in her August 28th, 2009 journal entry.

Hero Battles, along with Team Arenas, were permanently removed and replaced with the Codex Arena in the October 22nd, 2009 update.