Making Hero Battles Matter

Well I bought NF, mainly because I was interested in heroes. And one of their uses, hero battles. ANet went through alot of trouble to make many maps for this gametype, and it uses some of the control point fun of alliance battles. It's finally a quick, fast, jump-in-and-play solo PvP for GW, so you don't have to rely on idiots you pick up in RA.

So I spend like half an hour optimizing my characters for a build I think the AI can handle well, (Koss sword + "Charge!", me and souske Searing Flames with a little air/earth utility respectively, tahlkora on healing light), pound the training area to test it out and get some (fast!) free faction, and then head straight into hero battles.

3 games later, I've won all of them 20-1 or 20-2. First team had two monks running spell breaker (worried about searing flames I guess), but I just switched to burning enemy Koss and emptying their healing energy. Third game there isn't even a monk, enemy jin is running barrage, enemy koss, orison of freaking healing (well, it could be worse, i.e. mending, I suppose).

Maybe I need to play more, but my impression is that there are alot of people new to PvP trying this gamestyle out. Now I'm not a l33t pvper or anything, I have some glad points and can monk fairly well in RA, but our guild loses about 50/50 in TA, HA, casual GvG, and we're mostly a laid back PvE guild. But I was still suprised I walked right over the players in a game type (and maps) I was totally unfamiliar with. I guess HB may have alot of PvE players trying out PvP at the moment, which is fine but it means there isn't much there right now than mindless faction for the even marginally competitive of us.

People have mentioned the idea of a Ladder or something for Hero Battles, and building on that idea, there does need to be some kind of matching system that matches up players of roughly equal skill/, so I don't have to be grinding complete newbies into dust all day (not very fun.) One simple change would be to make consecutive victories carry you to the next map instead of out, and try to match players with similar consecs against each other. You'd roll over the first match or two, but then real competition can start.

The other would be to add a title with many rank levels (at least 4, 5). It should be scaled somewhat akin to HA so the lower ranks take few victories to get, the higher ones significantly more. Aside from having something to show off your prowess (not that important... not like your heroes won't play with you if you aren't R3), the matching system could then try to match players of similar rank, to give them more fair, competitive, and fun games. For many many reasons, a "rank farming" build that plagues HA won't be as much an issue, since you're going to hit more skilled players as your rank goes up anyway, you can't just throw crap at them. If you did want to discourage that, have consecutive victories apply 2 points (or maybe 2, then 3) towards the rank, to encourage winning over ending matches quickly. (They're all timed anyway, again unlike HA)

Maybe the newbies will filter out after NF gets a little older, but as it is, I think HB needs something to make it a bit more competitive. This would also likely mitigate the HeroWay madness in HA if players could do hero PvP somewhere else that mattered. Other ideas, criticisms, etc are welcome.

well i now that they have just introduced the commander title, it seems to have gotten worse but not in the degree of more less skilled players, but where, when a match starts the player asks if you want "to roll for it" you both roll a 100 side die and the lowest scorer quits the game allowing that person a free victory and title point, seems kinda under-handed if you know wat i mean, but o well all you can do is do wat you believe is right, as you must be the change you wish to see in the world

The only way to improve hero battles is if they removed them.

Well that was constructive.


I think the new tournament should help with hero battles. Perhaps if they made earning title points similar to HA where consecutive wins gives you more points. (to solve some of the /roll problem)

One interesting idea is adding an HA type chest that drops an item for the winning team. No. You won't see your name go across the screen like in hoh. lol It can be a sigil, gold armor, weapon/shield, of either Nightfall or random item from the three campaigns. Can't think of anything else really, there isn't much of an incentive to do hero battles unless you just want to max the commander title.

Getting a sigil for winning /roll 100? Sigils are already at a ridiculously low 7k, this would make them completely worthless. The only change to Hero Battles should be to remove all emotes and make commander title award streaks, not single wins.