Before you read: I’ve only seen the map shortly on a livestream during the first test event.
- CAMPS
The distance between camps and towers/keeps is bigger, which means that resupplying for an assault needs more time. This provides tactical play and you have to think about how you going to siege an objective with the amount of supps. Resupplying for a tower takes two minutes. For a keep it can easily cost 4 to 5 minutes for a resupply.
- TOWERS
Towers have the size of current keeps. They are huuuuge and actually feel like a tower. Each tower has a different champion and multiple ways to defend. The biggest addition I’ve found is that south towers have the WP’s and there are fortified doors. Those are hard to take down. With 4 superior rams we needed 5 minutes to get a fortified door down, which is too long in my opinion.
Besides that, if you want to easily walk past an objective, you need to cap it or destroy a wall. Else you will need to walk around it.
- KEEPS
Keeps? 15% of a map you mean! Keeps are huge! If you want to fully siege a keep? good luck to you! Be ready to make 20-30 AC’s to fully cover the keep area. The champions of a keep are very strong. (We weren’t able to defeat a keep champion with 5 people). That means you need a zerg/blob and I was actually hoping they would prevent blobbing up a bit. The keeps look very nice though. It feels like navigating a maze.
- ROAMING
Roaming feels completely different on this border. The map is huge, so you have to be aware for surprise attacks. Else you will be wasting your time walking again. Solo-ing towers is slightly harder though, but I actually managed to do it… with help of omega golem…
The shrines are a nice addition to the map. They can be done by roamers and together with flipping camps, sentries and kiiling dolyaks it feels more rewarding (WXP).
- ZERGPLAY
Zerging and blobbing in this map is slightly different in my opinion. The map is big and I think you can easily scare blobs away with a few AC’s and a fortified objective. I know that happens in the current borderlands too, but in the desert it might actually work out better.
- DEFENDING
Defending a camp against roamers isn’t that kitten a t2 camp i was able to hold of 4 roamers. (I have to admit the guards respawned in the fight). I think that defending against a fortified objective is a bit too easy. In the afternoon we had a group of 20 and a lot of trouble with opening a fortified gate. (see tower).
- OBJECTIVES GENERAL
I like the new system where you can see the upgrades from an objective. You can do much more tactical planning before going somewhere to assault. You can also easily see which guild (TBD) has claimed the objective and if a guild has claimed the objective, some more buffs can be unlocked.
TL;DR:
Nice and awesome new map. It allows new tactical play and more possibilities to defend an objective. I think that fortified gates have slightly too much HP.
To all the people who are negative about the maze: once you’ll know the map and find your way easily.
Waiting for some pictures!!!!
~Charrnoud,
Gunnars Hold