How to bring GW back to the skill of the player to win and not time spent grinding.

I have decided that us Strategy and Tactics players are hard done by, we don’t have what we want, now here is a list of things that would add to the strategy of Guild Wars and make the game rely on the skill of the player not the time they spent unlocking things. As that’s what the game claims, and now it seems for a PvE player to play on a reasonable footing they have to grind to get everything they want, so in reducing the PvP grind they have made the PvE grind worse. So here are my suggestions to move the game back to the skill of the player and no the time spend grinding.

1) Please remove the Mini-Map for all PvP and GvG events. Knowing where the opposition is and their formation, means you cannot properly formulate ambushes and tactics based purely on player skill. If you have to rely on visual confirmation then the skilled scout or the clever tactician will be able to use their natural skills.

2) Remove the primary and secondary profession markers for all characters in PvP and GvG. This seriously affects the tactic of surprise, I cannot pretend to be one thing then pull a new box of tricks out.

3) Removed the showing of what skills are being used by the character you clicking on, and what skills are being used against you. Again this seriously undermines the element of surprise, and removes elements of fear and confusion which are vital in winning battles against overwhelming odds.

4) Warrior Monks should not be allowed to use the persistent enchantments of the Monk. These persistent enchantments which are vital to the monk because of low Armour Level should not be allowed on any profession that is not Monk Primary. Evidence is clear that the Warrior Monk is a seriously unbalanced combination, which not only upsets PvP but makes a mockery of PvE.

5) Make it so that flanked character cannot block, they can only evade or dodge. How can you possibly block someone both in form of you and behind you at the same time. Being able to do this means the tactic of flanking is useless in the game.

6) Make the height advantage affect more than Just rangers. In proper tactics any combatant on higher ground has the advantage. Without this in Guild Wars then it seriously detracts from the ability of the tam to manoeuvre in to formation and gain a good vantage point.

7) I would like to see the amount of damage a character does be reduced with physical damage. At the end of the day a warrior’s effectiveness relies on their health and physical capacity. Without this in Guild wars we cannot possibly use the tactics of wounding to its full advantage.

These are just a few points that could be addressed in order to make Guild Wars in to the game it claims to be. And that is a game where the player’s skill is more important than time spent playing grinding and unlocking items.

yes I’m starring to get really miffed at the incessant dummy spiting of some PvP players. They got what they wanted a progressive unlock system that works just fine. Now they want infinite refund points as well, I mean WTF, will they ever be happy.

I agree. Especially with the removal of the maps in GvG. If not, then a Fog of War sort of deal where you can only see as far on the map as your "agro bubble" expands too.

thats another good Idea I loke the FOg of War aspect, this unknown aspect of combat can be used be the intelligent players to give them the chance to win agianst all odds.

The second they remove the minimap, there will be a maphack.

I agree,

Warrior/monk is too cheap, noobs use them to kill us so easily, its really unfair with mending and stuff on high AL warriors, warrior/monk have no skills, plain good combo

And for map hack, its ture too, but isn't netarena trying to prevent all of these? map is too cheap, for a good player u should know where maps go, of cuz the maps only should be deleted in GVG and PVPs, which that i also agree shows formation on the map instead

last of all, farming, right now u can see the majorioty of pop is warrior/monk, no matter asscended or not, everywhere u see W/M LFG, i still remember where my ele went to ring of fire, thers around only 10 ppl, 8 of them are warrior/monk, its impossible to find a good group with that much warrior/monk in guildwars

None of the points you make have anything to do with Grind or time played, they may be imbalances, or things that don't work the way you want them to, but they don't skew the game so that grind is more important than time played.
I'm not saying your points are invalid, but you leading statements are.
That's got nothing to do with the points below it.

Not funny.

And it's not hard to realize that not everyone lumped within 'pvp' or 'pve' wants the same thing.

You know if they gave us the april beta minus bugs pvpers would not be complaining. Pve would be better too :-/

And there is nothing wrong with complaints as long as a) they have good reasoning (which many are) b) suggest practical improvements.

Ah so your saying good combat tactics and battlefield knowledge are poinless skills and the milirary's of the world shoudl stop using them in favour of time spent on getting bigger guns.

What I'm saying is when you take out the elements I mentioned, the game swings away form what you have attained to how well you the player can think their way out of a situation and used such tested tactics as aambush, suprise and battlefield positioning. You know the few thing that have proven successful in military vitcories all over the world recardless of who had the best weapons and ability.

If they made these changes then I could used a two pronged attack using higher ground and the element of suprise to my advantage, and even with character with only basic skills and weapons I stand a good chance of winning. Without them this strategy cannot be used and it all boils down to who has the best stuff and best skills. At the moment GW has nothing to do with the actual skill of the player and everythign to do with what you have unlocked.

So therefore I think my statment is very relivant to the point I made, I don't have lots of thigns unlocked so I tend to do badly in PvP. Now throw in the real battlefield knowns and suddenly it's not about what I have or havenot unlocked it's about bluffing, deception and you know those real tactics that have won so many wars, I think they are called Skills.

As we know in real wars superior fire power does not mean victory every time. however currently haveing the best of everything means those that don't cannot win. Because if this was not the case the top 100 on the ladder would change every week.

I find this sort of contradictory to what you're proposing in the title. How does hiding the skills being used benefit the more skillful players? To me, that makes the game more reliant on luck, which I thought wouldn't really be what you want...

Also I thought all classes benefit from height advantage...

Suggestions 5 and 7 are good though .

I agree with the no being able to see the classes of players and not being able to see the skills that they're using.

The minimap, less damage with lower health, and no blocking on "flanks" I don't agree with by any means, and I doubt we'll ever see them implemented simply because it would change the usefullness of some skills and piss people off.

I mean honestly, how in the world can you choose to "evade" an attack behind you, but simply can't turn around and block it? Yeah right. Like you can totally see enough to "evade" and "dodge" attacks from behind. Doesn't make any more sense that being able to block attacks from behind, except that sort of makes sense because of armor and what not.

And about a W/Mo being an unfair character? Pfft! I'd take my N/W against most W/Mo any day. Why in the world SHOULDN'T you be able to use the echantments of a monk when you're trained in that profession as well?

And I don't think height should affect any other class than rangers, they're really the only ones with the profession that would make sense in that aspect. I mean an elementalist's not going to get any advantage from being higher up except that warriors will have to run up there to kill him. And they already have to do that?

Some good ideas as a whole, the element of surprise things I really really really like. It'd require A LOT more skill for a mesmer or a ranger to interrupt casters and things like that not knowing which skills they were using---or having to recognize them by look only, not knowing whether or not the warrior you're beating up on is the one able to blind you or whether it's the elementalist off to the side would be cool too.

A lot of tactics arn't pre calculated values, when you go in to a fight their are alot of unknowns you don't knwo what skill the enemy has so a lot of the time you just have to rely on luck and quick thinking.

Luck is a good thing it gove no side a clear advantage it means if you ahve to rely on luck so does the other side. If you know an enemies tactics rather than their skills you could cut them off at the pass or alter your tactics to counter theirs.

Not known what the enemy has is a disadvantge in one respect but an advantage in another, because they don't know what you have. It then becomes more about tactics and less about I can use this skill to counter this skill. You would have to prode a teams defences to find their weekness and exploit it. Rather than going oh they have cast thsi so I will do this to counter it.

Their are enough clues. if you heath bar goes green your poisoned. if it goes pink you have some form of life drain. Now you have to decide whats counter attack to try, however knowing your enemy will make this decision proccess easier and faster, defence testing will also be useful. you would have to use battle field intellegence to actually come up with a counter strategy.

The majority of the game is already based on a group's skill (notice that I say group and not player). All of the "leet" items people farm for hours-on-end for are easily accessed by PvP chars.

This could make sense. But if it was removed, wouldn't most of the GvG's become somewhat of a rogue's game? Half of the wins would be made by sending out a bunch of scouts to tell where all of the players are and then sneaking around them to kill the guild lord.

In my opinion, this would just be annoying. Half of making a decent team is having players that can "scan" the other team and decide what you're going up against.
Also, you can pretty much already suprise your enemies. Switch your secondary and primary professions. If you want to play a mesmer, make him a necro/mesmer or something that most players wouldn't think twice about. They'd scan over you and think "just a necro - get him last."

It seems to me that that would pretty much ruin the role of the mesmer. You have to watch targets very closely to see what kind of spells they use, and you can only watch one at a time. If mesmers couldn't see what spells casters were using, they would never know when to interupt or what the proper hex to put on them would be. It would become a wild guessing game.

As for your comment on how they should be reserved only for monks because of their low armor level: What about Mesmers, Elementalists and Necros? They don't have uber armor either.
I'm interested to see how you think it upsets PvP - so I'll save my opinion on that part until you put some of your thoughts behind this very indescriptive comment.
As for PvE: How many W/Mo's do you see out there farming constantly? Now how many Mo/W's do you see? I think I can safely assume you'd say you see more Mo/W's out there farming. W/Mo's by far do not make a mockery of PvE. They don't have enough mana to use enough spells to make them anywhere near invincible. That combined with the fact that other professions can do far more damage than Warriors, I fail to see how W/Mo's make a mockery of PvE.

I don't quite understand this - what do you mean by flanked? If you mean being attacked, then you're right. People being attacked shouldn't be able to defend themselves. They should just die.

I think I actually agree with that point. Manoeueveouerering should be very important in how a team will play.

I think this would only really matter if it were all warriors out there playing. Considering it's not (typcailly by far), in my opinion that doesn't really matter.


To me it looks like you're trying to make the game a 1v1 game. Most of the suggestions you suggested would make the game more skill-based and balanced on a 1v1 field, but really don't apply to the game as it is (heavily emphasised group combat).

3) Removed the showing of what skills are being used by the character you clicking on, and what skills are being used against you. Again this seriously undermines the element of surprise, and removes elements of fear and confusion which are vital in winning battles against overwhelming odds.

really. how useful do you think a mesmer will be after this?

No. It's nice to be able to see where I'm going and where my buddies are. If anything, the minimap allows for MORE tactical positioning, not less.

I'm somewhat ambivalent about this.

Doesn't this make Mesmer counterspelling somewhat of a crapshoot? It adds more chance and less calculation.

No. Warriors have to pay half of their energy regen per maintained enchantment. That's a large price to pay, pretty much relegating them to using adrenaline based skills, or having energy generating skills. Plus, which Monk enchantments are so powerful that they unbalance the warrior? Also, can't you easily dispel the enchantments?

This might be a good idea. However, is it really flanking for someone to run 2 feet towards someone's back? This seems to me to be more annoying than useful, because GW doesn't have WoW's toggable attack button. You have to have the computer control your movement while your attacking. This would be too awkward.

More heigh advantages would be good, as long as it isn't overdone.

Absolutely not. Gameplay is far more important than realism. If it was just relegated to attack and physical damage, then mages would have a huge advantage. If it affected all damage, this would create an overwhelming slippery slope effect. If it only affected damage, then debuffs, buffs, and healing, would become far more powerful, since they would be the only useful things to do once you start taking some damage. If it affected everything, then no team would recover, because once the Monks start getting hit, they'd be unable to heal themselves. The only good strats would be based around frontloading damage, or preventing frontloading damage.

Sorry im still stuck on the title of this thread. Your telling me that in HoH or GvG youv seen newbs with runes, shiny armor, and fancy skills that dont know what theyre doing beat teams of skilled players, regularly?

I appreciate what you say if you mean that a good team/guild will assist players with less skill and work through builds/help them unlock things for pvp, but thats down to being a good Guild or Team.

I will not accept that a bunch of players totally lacking in the gameplay skills required in pvp will win, simply because they have 'uber' skill bars or items.

If a bunch of noobs gets lead to glory by a team leader who knows their stuff, great. If a bunch of noobs struggle and battle every inch of their way and pull off a great victory against skilled opponents, great. If a bunch of noobs walks into any competitive battle and starts reaching for the 'leet' skills or rushing for monks or 1v1s because of their maxed out characters, they will be shot down in record time.

If your getting blitzed a lot by high level skills, skills only available in tough locations later in the game that doesnt mean their grining beats your skill, no matter your ego. You pick the skills that suit your strategy and your players, and its the combination of knowledge, individual skill, and teamwork, as well as the skills you bring, that gets you a victory.

Grinding will not get you victories in competitive pvp, dont claim so.

You have seriously not thought through a single one of your suggestions. They are truly awful and game imbalancing.

Irrelevant. I can simply hold ctrl and see where any enemy team once they get in range. It also will just lead to people sitting in one group until the other team comes and attacks them. Oh, but wait, the other team is doing the exact same thing!

Yes, you can. I can't see your skill bar. I have no idea what possible skill set you picked out. It says your an E/Mo but are you earth/protection? Water/smiting? Or do you have a diverse ele setup with only resurrect as your monk skill? There are so many possible combinations I could never effectively counter an entire class, let alone a class and its sub-class. That's where the surprise is.

Then you may as well get rid of interrupt Mesmers while you're at it. Yes, the very skilled of that class won't be hindered too much by not seeing what skills are being cast but you don't get to be very skilled unless you practice. And you can't practice unless you see those skills being cast and get to learn their timings through oberservation, trial, and error.

I can only shake my head at this. W/Mo is one of the easiest classes to counter. Don't like those "persistent" enchantments? Shatter them. Necros and Mesmers are very good at that sort of thing.

This is a fantasy based game. As PieXags pointed out, how can you evade an attack from behind you? How can one person stand against 12 physical attackers? How can glowing dots in a giant ring make someone miss their attacks half the time? Because it's a game and a fantasy based one at that. It's not supposed to be realistic.

This is the only point you have with any semblence of reasoning to it. And yet under scrutiny, it really doesn't hold up. The only scenario, with the way skills are setup, it logically affects besides one with rangers is sword warrior vs sword warrior. Anything else is really irrelevant.


Great. Calling for a damage nerf on a class that already does inconsequential damage. Sheesh. At the end of the day, an axe to your head should hurt a lot when you don't have a helmet on. The way physical damage works right now is fine.

Bad idea, you thought runners where bad wait till we get hiders.

While we are at it remove the mesmer class.

Yep then it rely on the skill of the players not the skills your chracter has. if you have to defend the Lord then you better damn well hang around and defend him. If you see a scount then you know your rumbles so you better get into a good defensive poistion. It would mean you would have to base your tactic on the skill of the scouting player, if that scout is useless then your intelligence will be flawed. If he gets spotted you will ahve to change tactics and start thinking on your feet.

The whole point is if you leave you guild lord open to attack and you don't spot the attack then it means your at a disadvantage because the player did not pay attention. Not the fact you did not have the right skills or best equipment.

At the moment you can use some degree of suprise, but you only have two choices, so automatically that narrows down the option. Now imagin how much mare scary things woudl be if you only know one option and you had to work out our discover the other. it would make you think twice before charging in all sword swinging. Also part of making a good team is being sure you can be ready for any given situation. now not having all the best skills and equipment means those players cannot be fully ready. Yet team which is good at bluffing can stand jsut as good chance as a team with everything unlocked.

Fair enough it would make their life a harder but if you work as a team and pass on information to the other members, then if someone spots one skill or spell being used they can pass on the information, meaning the Mesmer would have to rely on the rest of the team for support. Same as the rest of the team would ahve to rely on each other because their are more unknown factors.

Becasue some W/Mo's who tanks through PvE thnks they are invincable in PvP and end up messing things up for the team. As for the other classes, a Monk is your healer, he is the life of the team it makes sence that he shoudl ahve a defensive advantage over everyone else. The cost of mending and other such enchantments is quite a lot for a monk, but that cost to a warrior is nothing becasue of adrenaline skills. Becasue of the advantage of adrenaline skills I don't think they should get the monks defensive advantage as well. Look at the ranger, take ranger primar and expertese reduces the cost of only ranger skills. Again it's an advantage only to rangers, each profession has it's own unique advantage. Except the monk, who advantage can be used by anyone who takes it as a secondary.

To be honest I see a lot more W/Mo's out their, why do you think teams are struggling to find a Monk, why do you see looking for a monk messages. you never see looking for a warrior. I would love to see more Mo/W's please bring them on. but sadly every wher I go I see W/Mo's and they talk about how they single handlely did this, that and the other.

Flanking is a form of suprise attack, wher you attack the opposition fomr a side they are weekest at, unable to defend or cannot easaly see. basically attacking form the side or rear, and taking advantage of blind spots.


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I'm not talking massive amounts like DP, but maybe up to 5% degridation in damage. This will give the monks something more to think about as they would need to keep the warriors battlefield effective. You might find like this that Monks would concentrate on being better healers.

Not realy, it measn as a team you would have to co-ordinate more in the battlefield and before a fight. You would need other skill team member to pass on information quickly to those who need it. A Mesmer would become a littel more reliant on the rest of the team, a warrior would be a little more reliant on the monk. AoE skills we be reliant on the information of the scouts. Everyone would be reliant on a good team leader to co-ordinate.

It comes down to unknowns you only know what your team is capable of and how they work together. Everything else you know in a battle is attained through team work. When your defending you are relying on people to spot scouts. With the points I made each member of the team becomes reliant on the rest of the team and their ability to act as a well oiled unit. Rather than reliant on the skills they have unlocked.

I mean if stuff you have unlocked in irrelivant, then why are the PvPer obsessed with haveing everthing unlocked. The ideas I put farward make it irrelivant what you have unlocked, becasue at the end of the day if your tactics and team cannot work together then it the players skill at fault not the skills and unlocks in the game.

Don't like Adrenaline on that W/Mo? Hex him with Soothing images. Right then and there his effectiveness goes down. Hell, add a blind to that and we'll see how fast he gains that adrenaline. Don't like his enchantments? Remove them. There is nothing imbalanced about W/Mo. Nothing.

Disagree with all of them. This isn't an FPS where backstabbing and surprise attacks will win you your match.