I'm not it saying its bad form.
My philosophy;
If a new guy wants to get good at flying their aircraft and learn fast, he has to practice to saddle at every opportunity.
By product is a good fight with which you can gain experience/learning, and adrenaline rush/fun.
No argument here. But I feel strongly we send the wrong messages to new and old players about HOing. As a community we tend to focus on communicating that HOing is "dishonorable". I don't think that's an effective education approach and it actually exacerbates the problem of name calling, negative chatter on 200, while doing nothing to decrease the number of HO attempts by new and old players.
Player education and training needs to be grounded in the hard reality of MA fighting rather than the sanitary conditions of the 1v1 DA duelist. The new guy needs to learn (sometimes the hard way) why the HO shot isn't the smartest to take and, most importantly,
how to avoid these shots rather than simply assuming some obscure "point of honor" will keep the other guy from pulling the trigger.
Nose off a few degrees, add a bit of vet,
viola...HO missed and fight reset. Eventually the new guy will also learn how to do more than just reset the fight but take advantage through timing and good shooting.