First of all,thanks for giving me the chance to join this stress test,it was a great experience!
I was able to run around for a good while and have a look at almost everything,except the oasis event,sadly. Except for the 3 hours tournament, I mainly was with 4-5 guildies roaming around.
Map in general – This map is absolutely stunning! I’m not the kind of player who spends hours walking around to explore but the more I was looking around the more I wanted to see. Everything from general environment to the smallest details was neat and gorgeous, good job!
Cons :
Map is really huge. It would be too easy to avoid each other while running as guilds , for example, and this will lead to long times of hunting groups and walking around.
Servers with small WvW population might suffer in this map. I’ve played on a bronze league server for years and I know you often can’t afford to have scouts in every tower or simply roamers doing their things around. This means it would be very complicated and tiring to defend your borderland especially because it takes a really long time running all the way south due to having only two wp’s, one being at spawn.
Shrines – I really liked shrines and the unique effects you gain by owning them are really good. I enjoyed a lot walking around on lava and I can see how it is going to be a good way to get rid of a group chasing you.
I’m not a big supporter of blessings buffing your outgoing damage but the movement speed was a life saver while walking all the way back.
Air turrets were a real problem, even if you can get past them with dodges/stab ,they are a bit too many and they will eventually force you to stay in a spot 1-2 more seconds waiting for your dodge/cd to avoid being pushed down.
Tower Guards/Keep Lords – Keep lords were really a nice change, each one of them having different skills and combat gives that epic touch that got me glued to WvW and they are actually a challenge and not only NPCs to tag for a champion bag.
Tower guards were ,mostly, a pain. They hurt way too much and some of their skills can be incredibly annoying. I was immobilized by archers at air keep on the bridge, with air turrets all around , rain of ac’s and being hit by those archers for 3-4k.
There are also guards using icebow #5 (I believe it was at a southern tower but I might be wrong) a bit too often,imo. It was 4 of us ramming a gate and I got icebow’d 3 times in what it felt like a short time.
Keeps/Towers – Once again,good job! Keeps and towers are all very different and they all look great, I couldn’t really find a place that I didn’t like.
Cons : I found keeps to be very confusing as for inner/outer and it was always tricky to figure out where the enemy was,what did they breach and so on. I’m sure it will get better once we get the hang of the map but making outer and inner and gates/walls in general a little clearer can be useful.
I’ve noticed way more spots where to place defensive sieges that can’t be taken care of while assaulting a keep, not even with Omega Golems and this will only make siege wars even more common.
Supply depots should be more visible and/or have their number increased according to the size of the keep, a big keep needs to have more than 1-2 depots . Maybe an icon on the minimap could be handy or some sort of sign with the same purpose.
No valid path – On top of breakable walls it was often impossible to use any sort of blink, it was normal straight walls where I would usually be able to blink and if it wasn’t completely impossible to blink,there was only a small part of the wall that let me do it. I’ve checked few walls and north eastern tower was the worst for it,due to having quite a long wall that was pretty much useless for blinks.
Yaks/Sieges – Buff given to yaks while being escorted is very very nice and I can’t wait to see it live in game!
Superior siege looked amazing and Shield Generator will surely be useful, great addition!