Dragon Ball Arena

Dragon Ball Arena

Map of Dragon Ball Arena

Type

Activity

Region

Kryta

Loading screen

Image(s)

Click to enlarge.

Dragon Ball Arena is an activity released as part of the Dragon Bash 2013 and reintroduced during Lunar New Year. Players can talk to Finolla in the Crown Pavilion to gain access to the arena.

Mechanics

Players are placed on a team of five with the objective to kill the opposing team. Players spawn with only the Dragon Sphere skill and 10,000 health. Throughout the arena are blue health orbs to restore health and power-ups to improve the player's offensive and defensive options. Upon dying, all power-ups are lost and the player will respawn in their team's base. Each player kill is worth 20 points, and the first team to reach 500 points wins.

The arena itself features jump and zip pads. Jump pads launch the player up, allowing them to reach higher ground, while zip pads launch the player forward much like leap skills.

Respawn points

Blue Team Rally Point

Red Team Rally Point

Effects

Location of power-ups in the arena.

•  Dragon Speed — Effect given to all players that increases movement speed.
•  Dragon Damage — Power-up effect that increases damage dealt by 4 times for a short period of time.
•  Invisible — Power-up effect that grants stealth for a short period of time.
•  Heal 10 / 25 / 50 — restores health by a certain amount.

Skills

Upon spawning, players only have the Dragon Sphere skill. Power-ups in the arena unlock further skills but are lost upon death.

#	Skill			Description
1	Throw Dragon Sphere	0.25¼		Throw a dragon sphere at your target, dealing 1500 damage.
1	Super Dragon Sphere	0.25¼		Throw a faster long-range dragon sphere at your target, dealing 1500 damage.
2	Dragon Bomb	0.5½	2	Throw a dragon bomb that explodes on impact, dealing 3000 damage.
3	Ice Blast	0.5½	3	Send out a blast of ice energy, chilling foes near you.
4	Dragon Kick	0.5½	15	Do a flying kick at your target, dazing them and dealing 1500 points of damage.
5	Dragon Stomp	0.75¾	15	Stomp the ground, creating a whirlwind that reflects dragon balls.

Gameplay Tips

Strategy

• A popular strategy is to group together with your teammates and move around the arena as a single unit. You can chase down enemies and avoid being singled out by the enemy team.
• Call Targets to focus on one opponent at a time when multiple targets are present.
• Use bounce pads, dodging, and terrain to evade enemies.
• Prioritize upgrading Dragon Sphere to Super Dragon Sphere as fast as you can. The upgraded skill allows you to attack faster and hit enemies more accurately.
• Avoid being chased. You cannot fire the Dragon Sphere skill backward. This makes running away a huge disadvantage if you can't escape quickly.
  • Dodging through an opponent can put you behind them, giving you a slight break from their attacks if they don't respond quickly. Dodging backwards through them will also finish facing them, which allows attacking them while they may be still turning around.
  • Use bounce pads to misdirect enemies chasing you. You can jump up and then immediately run back down to escape.
  • If you have Dragon Stomp you can cast that as a diversion while you continue running away.

General Tips

• Ctrl-right clicking the Dragon Sphere skills will allow it to auto-attack with minimal cooldown.
• All power-ups spawn in the same locations. Memorizing the locations allows you to pick up the power-ups right at the start of the match.
• There are small health restores (1000 points), medium health restores (2500 points) and large health restores (5000 points). Grab them before your opponents do, but note that you may only pick up health restores, when you are not at full health.
• There are two special power-ups which only activate for a short amount of time. Both spawn in the middle of the area.
  • The first one is a perfect cloak, which makes it impossible for your opponents to spot you; it spawns at the upper wooden platform when the timer hits 8:23, 6:10.
  • The second one grants quadruple damage and spawns on the stone platform at the bottom of the central room when the timer reaches about 7:23, 4:00. While affected by the quadruple damage power-up you glow yellow/orange and can easily turn a close match.
• Skills have very long aftercast delays and will not interrupt each other or override each other's aftercast delays, queuing instead, and so using two skills in quick succession (e.g.: spamming the skill #1) may add up to over 2 seconds before a third skill starts activating from the moment activation is attempted, which will make it seem like the game is lagging even though it is not.
• The #2 skill Dragon Bomb is spawned at the game start, with all of the other skills appearing at least 20 seconds after the time the map was created.
• Players can pick up a skill they already have, preventing other players from getting it until it respawns.
• You can see what pick-ups enemy players have gotten by what's displayed below their health. ( Dragon Bomb,  Dragon Kick,  Dragon Stomp,  Ice Blast, and  Super Dragon Sphere). Avoid going head-to-head against someone that has a severe upgrade-advantage over you. Call Target on them and gang-up on them with your teammates.

• 

  Small and medium heal

• 

  Large heal orb

Powerup Tricks

• If two people run over a power-up at the same time, both players will receive the skill.
• Casting Ice Blast while using a bounce pad allows reaching higher ground. You can move from the lowest layer to the highest layer with a well-timed Ice Blast.
• Dragon Bomb is a large AOE skill and can be used to hit players on a level above you. This is useful if enemies are on the wooden catwalk platforms or the large square platform where the invisibility buff spawns. Additionally, if you're in the sewers near the Dragon Stomp power-up area, you can throw Dragon Bomb above you and hit enemies near the Dragon Kick power-up.
• Dragon Bomb can also be used to hit enemies inside the reflect bubble from Dragon Stomp. If the enemy is standing close to the edge of the bubble throw the AOE right in front of the bubble and the splash damage should hit them.

Related Achievements

•  Daily Lunar New Year
•  Dragon Ball

Historical achievements

•  Lunar New Year Dailies
•  Lunar New Year 2017
•  Lunar New Year 2016
•  Seasonal Activities
•  Dragon Bash 2013

Notes

The Guild Wars Wiki has an article on Dragon Arena.

• The Dragon Ball achievements do not count towards The Dragon Bash Experience.
• Originally Dragon's Gaze required 100 interrupts to get the achievement. It was later changed to 20 interrupts for the successive years.
• Rewards used to be given directly from the completion of the activity; and were obtained by doing the repeatable Dragon Ball Champion achievement. These historical rewards were:
  • Dragon Coffer - winning a match.
  • Piece of Zhaitaffy - losing a match.

Trivia

• This game format was first developed by players of the original Guild Wars as a "dodgeball" style Guild versus Guild match.
  • All players agreed to use the same build, e.g. using Lightning Orb (a high-damage projectile), Shock (a touch-range knockdown), and Windborne Speed (a single-target movement speed increase).
  • The format caught the attention of ArenaNet, who further developed the idea into the special-purpose Dragon Arena PvP format, used during festival events.

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Activities

Daily activities	Crab Toss Sanctum Sprint Southsun Survival Keg Brawl
Historical	Basket Brawl
Festival activities
Lunar New Year	Dragon Ball Arena Celestial Challenge
Festival of the Four Winds	Aspect Arena
Halloween	Lunatic Inquisition Mad King's Clock Tower & Stopped Clock Tower Reaper's Rumble
Wintersday	Bell Choir Ensemble Winter Wonderland Snowball Mayhem Toypocalypse