User:SylvXIII/Invisible Shutdown

Introduction I

Log in your account. Make a Mesmer and give him a funny name like "Distracting Shot". Go Me/R with whatever bar you prefer but DO NOT bring Distracting Shot among your 8 skills (no PD/Complicate either for the sake of my example). However, have a bow on one of your weapon sets. Go in Random Arenas and wish for a balanced group. Now whenever someone tries to Rez, switch to your bow set and stand right next to them. If anyone attempts to fake cast you, they fail and suffer "Invisible Shutdown". Considering you do not rupt Ressurection Signets (ok maybe with Cry/Leech, but that's not worth fake casting, it would be pretty stupid to do so actually) and the player tried to fake cast a Signet you cannot possibly interrupt, he just shut himself down by wasting his own time because he was convinced you would Dshot his Rez Sig (make sure you didn't have another Rez Sig disable-er in your team before laughing). That was simply an illusion/mind game designed to make his own mind go against him. That's the basic: use the tools the game gives you to confuse the mind of your enemies in order to make them do useless actions.

Introduction II

Mind games are fun, at least for me. While a side usually has the advantage in winning a mind game in Guild Wars, the outcome is the only thing that matters. "Did he dshot you or not" for instance is pretty important. It doesn't matter if you faked him twice and he didn't fall for it: in the end the winner wins and the loser loses and there's no in-between. In Guild Wars, an online game with a wide PvP side, a player can find many instances in which he and another player will play a mind game against each other. Simple examples are "Bull's Strike" and "Interrupts". After A KD chain, there is a quick mind game: the Warrior wants to land a successful Bull's Strike but the KD'ed foe does not want to be KD'ed by it. Interrupters want to interrupt, but nobody wants to be interrupted. Both sides have reasonable tools to win the mind game. Of course, it's not always fair. Fakecasting a Resurection Signet successfully is more difficult than Dshotting it. While mind games can be extremely challenging and rewarding, the subject of this article concerns an error players make while thinking they're currently having a mind game with somebody else. I call that mistake "Invisible Shutdown": a self-applied shutdown due to the player's strong conviction that another player will try to win the mind game that is only in his mind.

(more to come)