Make GVG ATS Sealed Play

One of the ways to balance GW GvG I came up with is Sealed Play in ATS.
Sealed Play means that both teams have a number of limited and random skills to use. ArenaNet made Sealed Play tournaments in the past giving skills ranks from 1 (elite skills) to 3 (usually unused skills) and giving both teams a number of skills per rank, while this was very unbalanced, because one team often had an advantage just because of the skills.

My idea for actual GvG ATS is to give both teams a number of random skills (also considering the skill ranks), which are the same for both team. So when they know their enemy, they would also see a table of skills for each profession to use and then would have n minutes to switch chars, create weapons etc and add any of the skills allowed for their proffession to their skill bar (with the limit of 3 chars of the same proffession, so it won't get spike vs spike with some skill sets).

Just as an example:

For the warrior proffession there are 2 elite skills per weapon attribute and 6 skills per weapon attribute (2 of rank 2, 4 of rank 3; with some exceptations like every sword warrior has one skill that inflicts Bleeding directly (not Seeking Blade) and Gash or every axe warrior must have one skill that inflicts Deep Wound or every hammer must be able to inflict Weakness) and 20 of strength and tactics and without attribute (5 of rank 1, 5 of rank 2, 10 of rank 3). Then every proffession would have e.g. access to all 2nd proffession skills and 5 random elite skills for each second profession of which they could use 3 (to prevent things like FC eles, which you could play every time).

So this warrior may have to choose from:
Triple Chop, Whirling Axe, Dismember (r2), Executioner's Strike (r2), Agonizing Chop, Lacerating Chop, Penetrating Blow, Penetrating Chop
Devastating Blow, Enraged Smash, Hammerbash (r2), Heavy Blow (r2), Mokele Smash, Belly Smash, Yeti Smash, Crude Swing
Hundred Blades, Quivering Blade, Barbarous Slice (r2), Gash (r2), Galrath Slash, Hamstring, Jaizhenju Strike
Battle Rage, Flourish, Headbutt, "Charge!", "Coward!", Healing Signet (r2), "Shields up!" (r2), Sprint (r2), Flail (r2), Protector's Strike (r2), Leviathan's Sweep, Signet of Stamina, "None Shall Pass!", "Retreat!", Deadly Riposte, Desperation Blow, Protector's Defense, Wary Stance, Flurry, Frenzied Defense
.. and several 2nd proffession elite skills I don't want to list and Ressurrection Signet for everyone.

So as you see it takes quite some skill to make s team build and player builds with such a limitation and a fixed amount of time (I think of 5-7 min) and players would have to build, get used to and play a variety of builds.
A quick example for a two warrior frontline would be:
1. "Charge!", Flurry, Barbarous Slice, Gash, Bull's Strike, Galrath Slash, Healing Signet, Rezz
2. Devastating Blow, Heavy Blow, Mokele Smash, Bull's Strike, Flail, Sprint, Healing Signet, Rezz

Reason: You see the same skills sets over and over, it'd be more fun to use different builds every ATS battle and you couldn't just copy&paste an imba build and go top 100. However un-ATS battles should keep the same.

Note: If it's not clear till yet, both teams will get the same skill sets.
Maybe you could add that to Hero Battles too, but I didn't think much about that.

Would like to get some opinions on this, since the time it was page 1, only ~5 more hits were done. Some opinions from GvG players would be nice.

I would say yes and no. Yes, because I think Sealed Play would be awesome and would have a huge benefit to a lot of GvG players who don't know what different skills are. Yes, because I also think it would be a lot of fun

However... no, don't REPLACE ATs. I <3 ATs even if they are long and difficult. I would say either have two options when joining an AT (to have it either reg. GvG or Sealed Play) or have it be a different arena like Team Arenas or HA or even RA. I also say no to having both teams have the same skills to work with. Then you would go into the match KNOWING what the other team would have available.

As a side note, if they were to do this, you'd have to be able to use all the skills in your 'deck', unlocked or no, if just for the duration of the match.

/signed for obvious reasons.


Also remove 1v1 hero battles completely, make them 4v4 human AT's.

Yeah, but imagine on team has Light of Deliverance, Zealous Benediction, Eviscerate, Melandru's Avatar and the other team has Healing Light, Restore Condition, Triple Chop and Hundred Baldes. Would be quite unfair


However, you could also add a random generator, if good or bad elites are drawn for each team or something like this.