Do you Want an observer mode in Guild Wars 2

Obs mode may be largely to blame for the quick spread of gimmick builds, but it also made a huge difference to player skill levels.

Evil? Yes
Good? Yes
Should it be in GW2? Yes

I've never used it...

If you think Obs mode is bad, you are retarded and should stop living

Sometimes, it's better to take a step backwards, than to take a whole wrong turn.

3. I dont care

Keep it as long as it does not show what skills are being used.

That's a good way to do it.

That's a rediculous way to do it. So essentially you get to watch warriors and dervishes attack things, casters wave thier arms around, and general positioning that goes with other aspects of the build that you can't even see? If people couldn't use Observer Mode I bet the wiki and guru would have every meta build used anywhere at any time posted in thier respective guild sections. Without the skills people are using you don't learn or see anything. It'd be a waste of space.

This kind of "learning" does have a lot more in common with spying: you remain invisible, see it all and just literally copy it or create pre-emptive counters.
As the devs allready have announced that they plan on giving spells in GW2 distinguishable spell effects, I don't see the necessity to make it so easy as to also have the spell names shown to others.

Yes, of course. why not?

sure Obs helps in the proliferation of gimmick builds, but the root of that is poorly balanced skills that are infrequently tweaked.

people whining about builds being copied obviously don't understand what's needed in actually running a build successfully against another competent team

yis. there is simply no reason why it shouldnt be there.

Yes, I enjoy watching when I am having a snack.

Yes, I sometimes watch the top matches, and some guild related battles can be quite funny to watch.

Being a PvE player, I don't care much if skills are showed or not.

Yes. I like watching some of the big gvg tournaments.

Whilst I agree, that is a somewhat shallow viewpoint. GW is a team game, and a significant part(whether we like it or not) is the team build. Isn't it fair that guilds that happen to posses a talented build maker should gain some reward from that? There are plenty of players good enough to copy a build AND understand its underlying mechanics.

A good recent example is the Mindblast build used by RUS. When they first started with it they rolled everything in sight for about 24hrs. It then started to spread until within 72hrs a good proportion of the top 200 were running something very similar. Within another 48hrs after that, people not running that build had made the necessary adaptions and by the end of the 2nd week the build was fading out on obs mode. Given a GW without obs mode, RUS might have been rewarded with a month or more of build advantage before it was countered/copied en masse. I'd argue that by coming up with something a little bit different, they deserved some sort of advantage.

Obs mode has done a huge amount of damage to GW, but like I posted before, its value as a tool to increase the average level of player skill has been massive. Obs mode is needed to provide a player base with a decent depth of knowledgeable and skilled players, and should therefore be kept for GW2.

I never used it, I don't care.

1. YES, most definately. Fun to watch the big-time matches; I'll never be part of them, so at least I can watch!

2. No.

I could write big long reason, but there's no point writing it since observer mode going to be there for GW2.

2. No

Make your own builds kids.

2. Pretty much kills build variation.

The main point people have for keeping it is so they can watch high end gvg, removing HA observer would best.

Sure obs mode spreads gimmick builds faster, but they'll spread eventually and obs mode actually gives lower ranked teams an idea of what balanced builds are like (aka not something like 2 HH wamo, 2 barrage ranger, 1 ms nuker, 1 avatar of balth derv, 2 woh monk).