Hero Battles
From Guild Wars Wiki
This is a mission entry. For information on the outpost, see Hero Battles (outpost).
Hero Battles is the name given to the mode of PvP known as Hero versus Hero (HvH). In this contest, players enter the battle with 3 Heroes, and fight another player and his/her team of 3 heroes. A player must have a named account to participate in Hero Battles. There are rated and unrated battles, the rated battles counting towards a rating on the Hero Battle ladder. Similar to GvG, players are matched for rated battles based on their rating on the ladder.
Note: One's game account must first have access to Guild Wars Nightfall or Guild Wars: Eye of the North in order to obtain and utilize Heroes.
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[edit] Access
- Map travel to The Battle Isles (Great Temple of Balthazar) from Tyria, Elona, or Cantha.
- To access Hero Battles you must unlock at least three Heroes onto your account. If you haven’t already unlocked the first three Heroes, just complete Zaishen Basic Training with a PvP character, then talk to the Priest of Balthazar, who will give you free unlocks.
- New Characters must talk to a Priest of Balthazar first before they can travel to Hero Battles.
- Once unlocked this way, you can map travel to the Hero Battles at any time.
- You must own either Nightfall or Eye of the North, or you cannot unlock any Heroes.
Alternately, you can open your Hero menu (hit the H key) and click on 'Account.' Then click on 'Travel to Hero Battles.'
[edit] Objective
The objective is to be the first to score 20 morale points, or to have the most morale points at the end of 10 minutes, whichever comes first. If both teams have equal morale points after 10 minutes, Sudden Death mode will begin - the first team achieving a point will win the battle. This can be done by capturing shrines and receiving morale for it and/or by killing members of the opposing party. You get one morale point for each kill you make. How morale works is explained below.
[edit] Capturing shrines
In hero battles there are several shrines that can be captured. Every shrine gives one or two morale regeneration. The capturing of the shrines goes in a similar way as in Alliance battles. You can capture a shrine with 1 or more people. The more people that are at the shrine the faster the capturing goes. If you and your foe have an equal amount of people standing at a shrine the capture meter will stand still, there won't be any change. On the maps Desert Sands, Hero Battles and The Crossing there is a NPC shrine. The NPC counts toward a member of the team for capturing shrines.
[edit] Morale
The list below shows how long it takes before a point is received for a certain amount of morale regeneration you have:
- 1 morale regeneration : 100 seconds
- 2 morale regeneration : 50 seconds
- 3 morale regeneration : 33.33 seconds
- 4 morale regeneration : 25 seconds
- 5 morale regeneration : 20 seconds
[edit] Maps
- Bombardment
- Desert Sands
- Hero Battles also known as The Beachhead
- The Crossing
[edit] Rewards
- Each victory in a rated battle is rewarded with one Victory Point which is the main component of the Commander title.
- Unique kills, holding shrines and victory will award Balthazar faction.
- While participating in automated tournaments, Tournament Reward Points will be awarded based on the performance.
- When the player wins enough matches and increases his rating, the player will become visible on the Hero Battle ladder.
[edit] Automated Tournaments
In hero battles it is also possible to participate in Automated Tournaments. In order to participate for automated tournaments you need to have a named account. To register for a tournament you need to press the enter battle button during the registration time. The registration times can be found by talking to Tolkano. You also need to talk to Tolkano to get a Tournament Token, one tournament token is needed to register for the automated tournament. A tournament will take approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes.
[edit] Tips
- Go to Options → 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 will not use skills 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 anti melee hexes on this monk.
- 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.
- Common mistake made by people new to Hero Battles: If you go to capture an opponent's shrine, he can simply also send back 1 hero to simply stop you from capturing the shrine, so the heroes do battle aimlessly while the opponent is still gaining points because the shrine still hasn't been neutralized. Simply vice versa, if your opponent sends a hero to take a shrine currently owned by you, sending back 1 hero to stop him is a good idea, but if you get there by the time the enemy hero has already neutralized your shrine, you'll just have lost a shrine, while the 2 heroes aimlessly fight. In this manner, most Hero Battlers send 2 heroes to counter 1, or generally, 1 more than the enemy has sent.
[edit] Possible strategy
First you need a good solid team of heroes which can be expensive - see the Heroes section - although once enough Balthazar faction has been spent you can "reroll" characters and heroes at will - however earning that much Balthazar faction can be a challenge in and of itself and is a form of expense.
A common build often consists of an Assassin or Warrior, a Monk, and two splittable characters. However, there are 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 with you are trying to capture the shrines. Your strategy depends on that of your opponent. Many times the opponent will go for the center shrine first.1 The center shrine gives you a +2 morale generation, but that is a slow way to win the battle by itself. If they all go to the center, then you should send out one hero to each other shrine to capture it. You should head with one of them to a shrine to increase the capture rate of that shrine, then take that hero to another shrine, and so on. Then you should head for the middle. If your opponent heads for an unprotected shrine then send a group, or all, of your heroes at the group with the least amount of heroes on a shrine. Otherwise just keep capturing shrines.
On the other hand if your opponent takes this strategy, then move your whole group around and one by one take out the groups of one or two heroes of the opposing army. Then adapt to the other strategy and try to capture as many shrines as possible.
The above is merely the summary of a strategy which can only exist in a hypothetical hero battle scenario which is highly unlikely - because smart players generally change their heroes location frequently, or are able to score kills on heroes that are moving to a shrine before they get there. Thus, all strategies should be based on the logical reactionary choices that are presented to the player as the match persists.
- 1 Better strategy is to go for NPC shrine, because it gives you an extra member of the team which gives you an advantage. You can for example fight 4 vs 4 and let one of your heroes run around capturing shrines.
| Locations in the Battle Isles | |
|---|---|
| Towns and outposts: | Great Temple of Balthazar • Guild hall |
| Cooperative missions: | Zaishen Challenge (Outpost) • Zaishen Elite |
| Arenas: | Random Arenas (Outpost) • Team Arenas (Outpost) • Heroes' Ascent (Outpost) • Hero Battles (Outpost) |
| Festival outposts: | Costume Brawl (Halloween) • Dragon Arena (Shing Jea Boardwalk) • Rollerbeetle Racing (Shing Jea Boardwalk) |
| Explorable areas: | Isle of the Nameless |
| Landmarks: | Forbidden Path |
