You can't use elite skills in low lvl arenas anymore.
You can however use max armor and max weapon , if you meet the req for the weapon is another story.
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The reason why low level arena suck so much is because the game was not balanced for pvp around the concept of being lvl 8, it was all balanced around everyone being lvl 20.
I suggest you indeed try with pvp chars if you want to get the feeling of PvP , but unless you find somehow to do GvG or Ha , you will not get the real experience.
In my opinion RA Is worse then AB , so i would suggest to try stuff out in AB but then again this is also flawed.
For me real GW pvp has to have some criteria s.
1) It must require you to have a Res in order to be effective.
In other words, any type of pvp that a res is not needed is not reall pvp.
2)It must require you to have some kind of healing.This either by having monks healing you or that you have to bring healing skills in order to survive,So what i mean is, it must be where the way to win is not just brute force.
3) You must be worried about dieing.Lets take AB as an example, what are the consequences of dieing?Not really much, maybe you lose the shrine you were capping but you res in 10 seconds anyways.
In any high end PvP, you will suffer a Death Penalty , that will hurt and you either have to get ressed by someone ( maybe even waste a sig) or wait till you get autoressed. ( which in GvG can take 2 minutes)
4) It must require humans. ( Do i have to explain?)
So in that sense:
RA:
1)If you don't bring a res ,you might have just cost your team the game.
2)Because of how RA works you can not think about a monk healing you, so you have to do it yourself otherwise , you will die pretty fast.
3)In RA you are worried of dieing because again , it can cost your team the game ,who know maybe you even get 3 other people that none brought a res.You are also worried that because if you die you will be weakened meaning , you have to do more in order to survive and you must also be careful of not dieing again
AB:
1) Brining a res here when your allies will res in 10 seconds anyways is seen as a waste because,there is no penalty for dieing , sure your ally might have to run all the way back from base , but that is probably the worse thing.
2)Because here yo do get to make your team, you can make a team build if you are gonna stick together,which would mean a monk might come in handy,which then equals you can worry a little bit less about healing and think about more damage/utility.
3)In Ab you don't really care if you die or not ( of course you don't WANT to die) Like i said above , if you do die then the worse thing that might happened is that you start all the way back at base and have to run a long distance.
I personally don't like RA because its Random,but it being random it does make you think more about your build,I cant bring all damage skills, what if i don't get a monk, or what if i am blinded all the time while i am playing a warrior, so all these things have to be taken into account when making your own build.
But then theres the part where GW isn't about your build, its about your teams build, your build is just part of a bigger one.
So that where AB comes in, if you where to do it right, you would make somewhat of a team build, ok monk heals war kills, mesmer takes care of casters and Ranger crip shots the target so the war can get to them.
So after that long post , I think i come to the suggestion of trying them all out go Ra/AB/TA/Ha/GvG and then you can get a better picture of GW pvp.
Hope it helped
