Skills Sideboard?

I was thinking about this...one of the problems with the current skill system for PvP is that you never know what you will come up against as far as your opposing teams Builds are concerned.

So, if you bring the wrong Build/Skills with you there is not much strategy you can employ to win BUT after you lose in this scenario, you have no idea what you will come up against next...

Factor in the fact that you can't switch out skills on the fly and you really end up relying on luck and hope that the team/players you are pitted against are something your current Build can handle/be competitive with.

Why not have a Skills Sideboard that you can access during a match? Allow maybe 2 or 3 slots that you can put alternate Skills in which can then be hot-swapped during a match.

Put a short (like 5 or so) regen on a newly swapped in skill to prevent unintended combo exploits (like being able to use too many skills in a row, etc) OR create a "Swap Points" system much like the Attribute Refunds where you can only hot-swap skills so many times per match but allow that points pool to regen to full when the match ends.

Any of you more advanced PvPers think this a good idea or see problems with it?

Laters,

Tzu

I'm ok with that as long as it isn't the whole skill bar...like you said maybe just 2 slots can be changed out.

This wouldn't be good... the whole point of restricting our available skills to 8 is to a) make sure we're not too powerful by ourselves, and b) make us think hard about the skill loadout we're coming out with. All the skills have their uses at the right time, in the right combination, with the right combination of people... I think if you build yourself right you wouldn't need a sideboard with "alternate" skills.

-TJ

You sort of help illustrate the problem here. Unless everything lines up perfectly for you, chances are you are going to have Skills in your bar that are not as useful as others might be.

So having two alternate slots...which you will also have to put thought into what you fill them with (I'm not saying give everyone full access to all of their unlocked skills during a match)...will allow you to place skills that you might need to use but dont normally carry in your regular Build.

It would be similar to the sideboard cards to a Magic:The Gathering deck.

And maybe you could only swap them in once per match, to give the decision to use the alternate skills more gravity.

Although I understand your point, the fact is the nature of GW is changing quite often these days.

Adding two more possible skills to use during a PvP match would, IMHO add more strategy rather than detract from it or make everyone overpowered.

Laters,

Tzu

i love this idea, i thought of the same thing a while ago, but seeing it here made me remember...

just like aside deck in MTG.

i suggest :

allowing you to bring 2-5 swapable spells
But limiting the times you can swap them...like attribute refund points...Allow you only 1-2 swaps per certain amount of exp

Or just limit it to swapping 1 skill per side skill slot.

I strongly disagree- this would essentially add extra skill choices.

Part of playing guild wars is having to make hard choices, and for competitive PvP, understanding the current metagame.

There are so many skills that are 100% conditional, that I think this would be a good idea.

Right now, most every guild is running their own gimmick (spike damage, minion zerg, spirit spam, etc), and really don't try to do anything to 'counter' the opposing teams. You can't, because you never know when or if you'll run up against that specific build.

I think a small sidebar would be great. 1-2 skills, and only let you swap once on each. Say label the sidebar "A" and "B", and consider your standard 8 as "1-8". This means if you swap 1 for A, A is in your lineup till the match is over, and 1 can't come back. Same would hold for any # and B.

It provides you with a little flexibility, yet doesn't really increase your power any. Maybe some Elementalists would swap Ward Against Melee vs Ward Against Elements. Or Mesmers could swap Mantras. Monks could change up from Condition to Hex removal, or have lots of both, if that's what they saw.

A small sidebar would provide another level of depth to the metagame.

if we get, say, a 1 or 2 card sideboard, after a couple months of play those 1 or 2 cards will, in a way, become a necessary part of players' strategy and will no longer really be a "sideboard". then we'll be begging for a 3 or 4 card sideboard. this will continue until we're demanding that we should bring all our skills with us.

i say keep it as it is now.

What you are saying is largely the same as just increasing the number of skill slots.

If you want to be able to handle a variety of enemies, use the eight slots you have. Really focused builds will be less versatile and unable to deal with many kinds of threats.

I think it's an interesting idea, but to me it's largely the same as just having more slots, which doesn't change the nature of the problem. So now you have ten slots, but you still can't deal with everything.