hero battle exploitation?....

I have been playing in hero battles sense the game came out.
I was rather disappointed at the play style they incorperated but treated it similar to an ab and was doing fairly well til lastnight.

on countless occasions I was running into a team with either 2 monks and either a set of crip shot or water ele,or 1 random hero with the player running a shock sin gank. It took me several times to see what was going on.
The other teams would engage the heros and allow me to cap then they would strictly go for the NPC's. with them having 2 monks on a 4 man team it made it hard to kill them. they also were spamming cripple or water hex's to stop you from chasing them to the incoming res'ed NPC's.

Doesn't this defeats the purpose of doing battle's of hero vs hero?
once i caught on to this they then started running to their base where they have the benfit of doing 50% more dmg and taking 50% less dmg. Mind you i am running 2 D/W,MO/ME, Random... so even with the buff not once in any of the matches could the opposing party kill me or my team. thus letting them win with what kills they get strictly on NPC's.

I have not liked the NPC's in hero battles sense the beginning because this is supposed to be Hero VS Hero.

Does anyone else find this a cheap playing style by exploiting the npc's death to win against teams they couldn't beat face to face?
Should the shrines also offer some kinda points bonus for holding the shrines?

ATM it seem endurance and interferance builds with 1 gank are near unstopable because of exploiting points off the npc's death.

all in all i feel hero's are a great addition to pve and pvp alike but IMO there is alot of work to do with the HvH battles.

I always though that in PvP, as long as its isnt exploiting a bug to win, then even cheapskate tactics are still considered good ones until it becomes unbalancing which then a nerf/patch is in order to preserve balance.

No offense.

So far the monk AI is pretty bad and they burn out of energy really quick, so fairly easy to beat 2 monk teams. Just split up the attacks. I've faced a 3 monk team once and took them out quite easily.

The build I was running had 3 KD thumpers, so had each thumper pick on a monk and it was fairly straight forward after that. KD + Beastial Mauling = GG when facing caster based teams.

It'll be interesting to see if people start running FOTM builds like 3 Vamp Touchers + 1 healer.

I have been doing hero battles and have won twice as many as i have lost..have only done about 10. I have been running, mind u the same build since day one, a straight healing paragon with only 1 attack skill(to focus fire of heros). 1 poison/cripshot ranger wth dodge(key skill b/c this is the utility char who can run and cap bases while fighting other team) 1 fighter war set up as bullscharge with an axe and plague touch and 1 dervish with mark of pain(b/c ppl are still new to hero's and they tend to group them up). Have been running this with no problem mind u we have had a few close matches but if u give ur hero's sufficant self healing with a great offense then they shouldnt be a problem.

I win 85-90% of mine to. I am saying that its rather cheap to win by killing a npc when you can't take the team.

as for the monk issue you say you have. change the build my monk does great and rarly taps his energy.

Hero battles should be that a battle. not get ahead killing a npc then kite to your base for 50% more dmg and defense.

this could be fixed if they removed the npc from hero battles and left it 4 vs 4.

The "center shrine" gives you points for holding it. There's no reason that you should ever chase someone into their base- if they retreat there, use that advantage to make sure you control all of the shrines(unbalancing the fight even more). Then just hold out and let your points accumulate from holding the center shrine. If they're sitting in their base, they're not out killing you or holding shrines, so they'll have to come out and fight. Just don't let them take the center shrine, and you'll own someone with a hyper-defensive build every time.

i have lost to this method even holding all 4 shrines. all it takes is for them to get the npc once then they run interferance and send out the gank. if they get noticed on this they run for their base. I am saying they are exploiting the npc for kill count.

Its not to often but it is still annoying to see such a cowardous tactic.

Hero Battles refers specifically to the npc heroes. Why would you think attacking those npcs is not part of the game? Based on the opposing team's set up it might be the only thing you can really do. If the other guy plays a warrior and brings 2 monks are you going to dutifully sit there pounding the warrior while he kills your whole team? No. you are going to start killing those monks of course.

I played a lot of games tonight and didnt see a single water ele or cripshot ranger. The tactic of keeping the enemy team seperated using crip and water hexes actually sounds like a really nice plan that would take some skill to pull off effectively.

What I did see a lot of were bunnythumpers (rampage as one is amazing), eles using liquid flame which seems very effective in a fire build, and to my great surprise and annoyance, a lot of npc minionmaster necs that turned out to be very effective.

I started out trying normal balanced type builds and losing badly as I tried to figure out the scoring and such. later on though I started getting more wins than losses with a thumpway team. I think its an interesting type of battle and I'm looking forward to running some of the more obscure team arena builds there just for the fun of it. Might grab the nec hero and try running a minionmancer in my team too.

i just dont feel its right to win by killing a shrine npc and running interferance on the enemy to repeated gank the resing npc. To Me its just cheap.
kinda like a touchie. cheap and noobish but effective.

I have however been allowing the enemy to cap 2-3 shrines and then sending my 3 heros in to fight while i cap to prevent this from happening sense my 3 heros handle 80% of teams as a 3man.


but ty for the comment.

I totaly agree with you, it seems really frustrating to have someone/group, go into a battle against another group and lose because the other group is killing the NPC's and not you're group. It's a very poor set up and takes away from a HvH battle, in fact it really isn't a battle any longer at all, it's just a race to see who can kill the NPC's first, and take the center shrine. Killing one of the other teams Hero's is just a bonus at that point.

eh i'm still winning 80%+ of my battles. only a select few use this tactic and its rare ya see them anymore.