Feedback:User/Wicca/What Should have been done to HB

Its' been months since the closure of Hero Battles and I have recently returned to Guild Wars and did some thinking. What should have been done to Hero Battles?

I am one of many people who enjoyed Hero Battles despite its flaws. Regular players understood the format and all its flaws and had great ideas to help balance out HB. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that, due to legal reasons, Anet can't accept feedback/suggestions from forum sites and can only take it from the official wiki. So, I have decided to compile all the ideas that I have heard of from the community through the years and put it into this one suggestion.

So lets refresh our memories and see why Hero Battles was removed. According to Linsey: "Hero Battles format has reached a state of acute distress" "a player base comparable to that of the Ascalon Academy" "largely due to flaws in the core mechanics of the format, compounded by years without skill balances" and "every option[to fix HB]seemed like mere band-aids that wouldn’t truly fix the core issue."

One of the major problems in Hero Battles was that there was too much emphasis on "capping" and not enough on "killing". This led to players using highly defensive team setups that's purpose was to cap and hold all shrines with low chances of death. Build's such as the Dual Meldway and Snareway focused purely on capping shrines and preventing the opponent from scoring kills.

Another problem was the Hero AI. Heroes would occasionally bug up during matches. Here are some of the AI issues that have been noticed: Heroes and AoE Heroes abandoning shrines Spirits Ignoring flag settings Resurrection Bugandand Kiting Bug Thank you Draikin for creating those videos. Another issue that the AI had was that they would often leave the shrine they are flagged at, in order to heal allies at shrines close by (mainly in the Crossing map)

Without any skill balances, Hero Battles ended up having the exact same meta for years. Players abusing the mechanics in order to beat their opponent. The format reached a state of acute distress due to these problems. They reacted in many ways in order to get the attention of Anet. MaT finals were thrown in the hopes that Anet will finally fix Hero Battles. Unfortunately, their hopes backfired right into their faces. Why would Anet remove two formats [TA and HB] and replace it with a new format that has failed miserably?

So here is what players had in mind to balance Hero Battles:

1: Disable all forms of teleportation/shadowsteps. The HBers knew exactly what needed to be done with Hero Battles. They knew that teleports were the biggest culprit in destroying HB. Teleports tied right in with the "capping" emphasis that was present in HB. They allowed players (and heroes) to teleport from one place to another at great distances to reduce travel time between shrines and evidently, allowed for much greater capping power. A common suggestion among HBers was to remove any form of teleportation from Hero Battles. This will include Shadow Meld, Shadow of Haste, Return, Recall, Wastrel's Collapse and much more. Similar to how PvE skills are disabled in PvP, make it so that teleports are disabled in Hero Battles. This will not be a band-aid. There is no replacement to teleports; with it gone, the strength of pure capping teams and over-powered monk teams will be reduced.

2: Increase adrenaline cost for Barbed Spear up to 3 strikes. The very popular R/P Hero Build and its variants has been featured in many builds throughout the life of HB. High damage output, high survivability and the ability to spam/spread multiple conditions made this template a pretty over-powered bar, especially with more than one copy of them. By increasing the adrenaline cost of Barbed Spear, the templates ability to spread bleeding will be less effective. Some have also considered that Apply Poison should be changed so that it only works with bow attacks(in PvP), but I am not sure how much this change could affect the rest of PvP.

3.Give "Coward" a recharge. The "Coward" build for assassins were very popular but because of the assassin's high IAS, they were able to pretty much spam "Coward" on their target. ''This has now been accomplished and will make re-instating HB easier! ''

4. Limit to only one of each profession.Just like in CA. This will solve a number of problems in HB regarding multiple copies of the same build. Such as the Dual Meldway and the 3 R/P builds and the dual monk builds.

5. Heroes cannot be body blocked by spirits and pets. It's very annoying when a hero gets stuck just because a pet or spirit is in its way. It prevents them from doing what they are being told to do and can be the difference between winning and losing.

6. Slow down the morale meter. A very important one - The relatively high speed of the morale meter emphasized and promoted the use of capping builds. Slowing down the morale meter will give the opponent more time to score kills and will make capping builds less effective. Alternatively, match times could be increased to 15 minutes and will also make capping builds less effective.

7. Remove the 'Crossing'. We don't want it. There are just too many issues in this map regarding Hero AI. Any match that occurs on this map is not about who outplays who; it is about who's heroes bugged up less.

8. Fix the AI issues/bugs. Listed above (with links) are videos of known AI issues that should be fixed.

9. Tone down Backbreaker. When Anet nerfed it the first time, they actually buffed it! By forcing sins to use 12 hammer mastery, the damage output from the build was actually increased. The build is here. I am unsure as to what should be done, but I believe that Backbreaker is a skill that belongs to warriors and it should stay that way. The build was very over-powered in HB. ''This has now been accomplished and will make re-instating HB easier! ''

10. No HB ZQuest. We don't want RR-Day to start again. Alternatively, you could decrease the amount of Balthazar faction that is rewarded (maybe only 1000-2000) but I'm sure that everyone would prefer that it doesn't exist.

11. Have a rank requirement in order to get Commander points. Similar to the Champion title. Make it so that people must be in the top 5000 in order to gain points towards the title. This will stop players from purposely losing rating (known as tanking) in order to "farm points" by winning against lower ranked players. However, while adding a rank requirement, there should be greater rewards at the higher levels so that there will actually be a reason to go up the ladder. An idea is to give more points depending on your rank. '''The top 10 players will gain 5 points per win. Top 20 will gain 4 points per win. Top 100 will gain 3 points per win. Top 1000 will gain 2 points per win and top 5000 (rank requirement) will gain 1 point per win'''. The points should be given out regardless of what rank the opponent is.

12. No more 1-2-3 sins. This build which came about as a result of the August 2009 update was very over-powered in HB during its time. This build made spamming "Coward" very easy to do. Most of the skills should be reverted back to the way they were (particularly jagged strike, fox fangs and black mantis thrust).

So, that is pretty much what should have been done to HB. I apologize if I have forgotten anything. Looking at the list, I don't see how all those changes would just be a band-aid. If you think that those changes are just mere band-aids, please state why!

Regular HBers understood the mechanics of HB and with their knowledge, they knew exactly what needed to be changed in order to make HB a healthier format. Anet probably didn't understand the mechanics of the format a well as the players because they have never played it on a regular basis. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I am certain that the above list of changes would be more than just band-aids. These changes may not fix the format entirely, but I am certain that these changes would have given players a much better gameplay experience in HB. This is what we wanted! We didn't want Anet to completely re-design the entire format, but to do these simple changes that would give Hero Battles a much more fairer, healthier and fun gaming environment. We understand that nothing is perfect, but to improve the gaming experience for your players would have been more than enough and those listed changes would have done exactly what we wanted.

I highly doubt that HB had "a player base comparable to that of the Ascalon Academy" because I could always get into matches during peak times. Even if Linsey's statement is true; it will be because players have left due to the frustration of not having anyone to maintain the health of the HB format.

Also, Linsey said that HB was "compounded by years without skill balances." She is basically admitting that it was their own fault that HB went down the pipe. It's human nature to always take the easier option that has the best chances of success (players running over-powered/broken builds) so without any skill balances to keep the format in check, they left HB to rot until it was at breaking point (acute distress). Do they even care?

Thanks for reading my suggestion on what Anet should have done to Hero Battles.