Tactical Decision Making, A Essay on Guild Wars Leadership

Tactical Decision Making: A Essay on Guild Wars Leadership

Tactical decision making on the battlefield plays a big part in being a successful leader. This essay was written to help new leaders gain better awareness of what kinds of decisions are made and the theory behind them. Of course, as any of the Basin GvG leaders could tell you, reading an article won’t make you a good leader. You become a good leader through practice, practice, practice. By forcing yourself to make battlefield decisions—including making the inevitable mistakes—you will gain the confidence, experience, and attitude necessary for good leadership. Hopefully, this essay will help new leaders see where they can expand their awareness.

History

Back before the game was released, I started getting interested in the competitive side of Guild Wars as a result of my background in games with small combat units (Counter Strike, Unreal Tournament, Battlefield, Quake, Doom etc), and put my observations in this link. At that time, none of us had much experience with GW PvP. You’ll see some familiar voices in that thread, and you can also see that what was very new back then is now standard even in the most casual of GvG. Dedicated flag carriers. Securing catapult kits. Effective use of NPC's. Even the early concept for today's prevalent split builds are mentioned in this thread!

Since then, of course, we’ve seen several very good leaders emerge, many of whom have worked with their own GLTs. This essay grows out of the efforts of the Leadership Team to develop more GvG leadership in the mainguilds.

What is tactical decision making?

Tactical decisions are the moment to moment decisions about what to use, what to do, where to move, what attack skill to use etc. These are all pretty easily understood in the concept of single characters and form a big part of individual player skills--whether as a leader, a follower or a solo character farming loot in PvE.

Making tactical decisions relating to your entire team is a bit different. It’s not about controlling individual characters and skills. Instead, tactical team decisions refer to making decisions about how the TEAM performs micro and moment to moment. Push forward? Change targets? Retreat? These are the decisions, executed right, that make significant impact on battles. A leader who can quickly spot that a battle is lost can call a retreat and save the team needless deaths. Likewise, a leader who can spot an opening or weakness in the enemy team and harness her troops to exploit it, can easily snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

What is the right tactical decision?

This essay isn’t meant to tell you what’s “right” in any specific situation. All of AB’s leaders have learned that most situations are unique. You really have to practice, learn from your mistakes, and watch what other leaders do. You can ask them why they did something. They’ll try to explain. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to explain because tactical decision making comes with experience. It’s tough to explain the reasons behind the decisions, which also makes writing essays like this one very hard.

If you have questions relating to specific tactical incidents, post yourself a new thread and be as detailed as possible about the situation . All of us who lead Basin GvG are happy to help give you advice. Sometimes, we'll even agree with each other.

Factors influencing Tactical Decision Making

Even though tactical decision making comes from accumulated experience, after a while, you start to think about the following key elements of every guild battle.

Phase

Battles go in phases. What phase of the battle are you engaged in? Do you have enough knowledge to make an accurate call? Your approach to a tactical decision in the first 60s is different to a tactical decision in the 20th minute. By that stage of the battle, you have a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents, how well they adapt and react and even an idea already of what does/doesn't work.

The Team

You need to know your team. This is more than asking, "are we a pressure or spike team". You need to adapt and adjust to individual strengths and weaknesses. Is your team good at following direction and orders? Are you better at coordinating or timing than your opponents? Do you have a strength in your build that is hard for the enemy to deal with? Does the team have a counter to a specific element of your build and if so, can you deploy that element of your team to bypass the defense?

The Map

Obviously, the map dictates some of the tactical options open to you. Some maps are good for executing certain tactical options, some maps are better for executing other tactical options. Many people don’t know that you can visit any guild hall just by going to the Canthan Captain at Lion’s Arch! Go spend some time in each and look at the layout of each, the routes, and important features of the terrain. In fact, it would be a very worthwhile project for our experienced GvG players to evaluate each hall’s tactics.

Information

In small unit combat, information is the most powerful tool that a leader has to harnass. The more information and the more accurate that information is, the better the chance of determining the tactical option that gives you the greatest chance. That sounds easy but is actually very hard to do in battle. You don't often get a chance to focus only on what the enemy are doing; you have to manage that while doing all the other things a leader does. It’s not just about assessing only your enemy, but also what your own team is doing.

Some tips for making the right decisions

As mentioned earlier, no one can tell you exactly what to do when, but there are some things that all of us GvG leaders try to attain. However, don’t worry about trying to remember all of this if you’re a beginner; just try to focus on one or two. If you set the goal of practicing only one or two of these each time you lead, you’ll eventually get to the point where you can keep all of them in your head at the same time.

Permanent Advantage

Always look for ways to gain a permanent advantage! This seems obvious. Sure, killing the enemy gives them a -15% death penalty which could end up permanent, but is it always the best option to kill off as many as you can? Here's a couple of other things you can do to get a permanent advantage! Kill NPC's. They don't respawn. Prioritise your target calling to try to DP an enemy out. Think to yourself, what’s worth more to you toward eventual victory? 10 kills spread across the enemy team, or 5 kills on the same enemy? Many new leaders don't factor in the -60% no auto res rule. For me, I'd swap 12 kills on different members of our team for 6 kills on one enemy in most every case! Sure, its 2 kills for them to 1 for us, but we gain a PERMANENT advantage, they gain a TEMPORARY advantage.

Information!

I'll stress this throughout the essay because its so damn important. There is a lot to keep track of in Guild Wars. New leaders quickly get overwhelmed with what’s important and focus on the micro aspects of leadership, leaving the macro elements and the information capture to get pushed to the back. That’s a really common error and decreases the efficiency of our leaders. So what should you be keeping track of? Everything! In particular:

* How many times you've killed each enemy.
* When the flagstand was captured.
* Where everyone on your team is.
* How the enemy react to your movement.
* What the enemy do in certain situations.
* How much DP your team members have.
* What the individual builds are on the enemy and your team.
* What is happening at the enemy base and your base.

Obviously, for new leaders, you can't suddenly try keeping track of all that information; it’s overwhelming. Some of that information is easy to acquire during a battle. Ask your team members to announce their DP for example, when you want to update your own internal memory of it. Check out your base on a respawn. Ask the flag runner to make sure they type the time of capture in team chat. Some of this information no one but the leader will be looking at and it’s up to you to harness the power it gives you.

Learning to keep track of the enemy DP was hardest for me. You need to constantly adjust it based on morale boosts. Every time they kill one of you, they get a 2% boost if they are alive. Every time they get a boost from the stand, they gain 10%, whether alive or dead. Try to spot quickly the 2-3 key enemy characters and track their DP. Doing just that can make a huge difference to your win ratio. Securing a permanent 7v8 advantage makes wins much more possible, regardless of who the 8th character is. Eventually, you’ll get to the point where it’s such second nature that you can usually get it right for the entire enemy team of 8 by "gut feel".

Abuse the enemy!

This sounds quite unbasinly, but all it really means is getting the enemy to work against themselves. Harassment is very good. There are a few ways to do this. Send 1 character through their lines, around the back, whatever. Get in their face, give them what looks like an easy kill and see how they react. The early stages of this are all about information gathering. If the enemy sees "Base under attack" what’s their reaction? Do they send someone back to deal with it? Do they ignore it? Do they send a team back?

Once you know how they react, work with it. If they send a team back, then you can easily gain an advantage by timing a push to the stand with an attack on their base. It’s easy to maneuver a lesser skilled team around and dictate the terms of the battle. Don't try to push through an 8v8 at the stand if you know the enemy sends 3 back to deal with an attack on the base. Send one of your team to their base, force them to send the 3 back, then take a 7v5 matchup at the stand! Presto, the enemy just shot themselves in the foot. Next time, the better teams won’t make the same mistake, so punish them! Send the flagger and a support character toward the stand to hold their attention and charge their base with the remaining 6!

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/gw/forums/index.php?showtopic=5230