Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

Y’all may not know me but I’m a totally well known PvPer in this game because I win all the things and bring home all the points so my opinion is obviously very useful. Now that I’ve overstated my importance, let’s begin with my extremely short review of the new maps. Let’s start with Skyhammer.

SKYHAMMER:
As one of the only people who valued the old skyhammer for it’s ability to teach me about opportunity awareness (both offensively and defensively), I find this new Skyhammer quite the bore. The Skyhammer of old had a sense of skill, timing and heap loads of punishment for bad choices but now it’s just….. Battle of Khylo with a new skin?

PROBLEMS:
- It’s boring.
- It doesn’t feel unique.
- Skyhammer shooting once rather than multiple times makes it feel unimportant in the grand scheme.

HOW TO FIX:
- Bring back the plates around each point but make it only breakable by the Skyhammer shots. (This will definitely bring opportunity awareness back).

OR

(If you want to keep it as is aka BORING)
Make the Skyhammer shoot multiple times (preferably 3 times) in one charge so as to be more of a threat to whoever is holding the point. Having it shoot just once makes the skyhammer very very useless.

OR

To make it extra interesting, implement both of the above suggestions.

SPIRIT WATCH
This map was a great map before and I never knew why it didn’t make competitive play. When I inquired about it with some of ye olde PvP players, they said the map layout is uneven, one side has a special way of getting to their node that’s faster than the other side. And that was surprisingly the ONLY reason.
That said, I do like some the changes here;

THINGS I LIKED:
- Skill lock when carrying the orb
- The Orb not spawning so early at the start of the game

PROBLEMS:
- Frequency of orb spawns; Rate at which orbs spawn right now will not affect the game that much. Easy Fix is to let the orbs spawn in half the time it takes to spawn now. Let it spawn 5 minutes into the match but every time it’s used or dropped into a node, it spawns 30s to a minute later. Allowing it to be the comeback mechanic of the map.

- The not so apparent un-evenness of the map? I can’t tell if it’s there but apparently it is so….. fix it?

LEGACY OF TEH FOEFIRE
Nothing much to say here. This change was pretty good overall. That said;

PROBLEMS:
- Slick shoes Engies and Staff Revs wrecking that sweet sweet Defiance bar.
- Almost all classes can beat all 4 NPCs solo and having them rush in all at once rather than one at a time is neither here nor there.

HOW TO FIX:
- Nerf the Slick Shoes and the Rev staff #5
- Give the Melee NPCs more health and the Casters 2 new skills, Static Field and Gust.

And one thing I’d like to add…. why isn’t Courtyard in the Hot-join rotation? It’s the perfect map to be in the Hot-join rotation.

That said, share your opinions on the new changes to the maps guys.

Had my first matches there. Skyhammer got ulimative booring …..
Spirit watch: to less played. Never liked it and if feels a bit better now but somehow more Chilled" …

I hated maps before and I actually liked both maps now.
Boring maps = I can’t cheat with map mechanism when I can’t win fights.
Well Boo-hoo.

I like boring maps.. Next thing you can work on is to make 10 vs 10 battles happen and desing some maps for that.

I Really like skyhammer now. I don’t think that SH had anything about awareness to do, all it was all about was the ability to push, pull and fear the most. Sure you could place yourself right but never ever in a game I think that you should be punished for one little mistake, there should always be room for 2 or a few mistakes. That’s why I am against the quick kill meta that some want.

Can only comment on skyhammer currently but I have to agree with the OP, its completely BORING now. If I only wanted to actually fight someone I would have chosen one of the other two maps that are build for it (forest/foefire). At least bring back the breakable platforms. Change to the cannon is fine I guess, but having the wall around the whole map (or at least on the side that had B, don’t think I payed attention to the other side) and no breakable platforms make this the same as any other map and gives it no uniqueness (other than the rare/occasional skyhammer shot).

Are really good changes, for me I’d avoid at all jump pad in Sky hammer, But in general I like the new design.

I like the idea to lock the skills when you carry the orb but it seems you are really forced to drop the orb almost immediatly if someone attacks you, I don’t find the new skills really useful.

Well its not about winning fights. Its about fun and diffrent action. Map diversity not all the same fighting style. Plane simple fast fighting map is foefire. More movement is on forest. Temple is also about normal fighting but has diffrent layout and gimicks. Then there is kylo. Also a bit diffrent. The last thing we need is a map that plays similar to the 4 we already have for conquest. Skyhammer and spirit watch moved in that direction and this is totally booring. Each map should be noticeable diffrent.
It was OK not to be in conquest but skyhammer was a good map for being diffrent. I disliked the cannon but the layout with all the falls was great.

how frequent is the cannon attack now?
it seems like non existent.

spirit watch seems to have a slower pace now but the orb is worth more now.
50 team score if delivered to owned capture point.

The new cannon is similar to Stillness Like concept but with a decap shot + damage instead of a triple cap.

It’s an interesting mechanic because it can give you the chance to slow down a difficult game without gaining points just for capping a buff like temple.

So in skyhammer winning fights will be always important.

I think Spirit Watch is great now. The frequency decrease means that you can actually focus more on caps, which is exactly what was missing. In my opinion, the map is now competitive.

Skyhammer is a map I hated before and I don’t anymore. Unlike OP I think the cannon is strong enough, full uncap is good against tanky teams. But I do agree it does not feel very unique. Basically, the cannon has become a toned-down “Tranquility” buff.

But overall great job.
Next, I would indeed love Courtyard back, as well as Raid on the Capricorn with balanced underwater combat :p

Dirame.8521:

- Skyhammer shooting once rather than multiple times makes it feel unimportant in the grand scheme.

If you think that a FULL decap every 3 minutes isn’t important, we must playing two different games.

Skyhammer

Pretty boring. Nothing I felt that could turn the tides of a game.

Foefire

Its fine

Spiritwatch

Orb not appearing at start makes this map a bit different because the teams pretty much meet up before they get to mid point. I feel some of the points from orb may need to be adjusted. Since it spawns less it almost makes just capping points worth more than trying to run orb.

What would be interesting to me would be to normalize the points earned to 25 points regardless of who owns the point. If your team owns the point it will create a knock out affect similar to winning tranquility. If it is the other teams point it will simply decap the point. This way bringing the orb can have potential to turn fights, while maintaining the focus of holding points to win.

I played about 8 games yesterday and I couldn’t get into skyhammer…. Either way, I got to try LotF, and I really liked the change. I won my game by the skin of my teeth with our lord in down state, so I think it was a successful change.

Spirit watch I love now. I think the diminished value on the orb early game, the higher score from it, and the removal of profession skills when carrying the orb are fantastic changes. I think spiritwatch may become my new favorite map. One thing, I found it hard to predict the orb spawning, it should be every 2 minutes. (10-8-6-4-2) Instead it seems to take 2 minutes from the time it was capped. Maybe this could work, but it gets confusing I found.

Heres my Feedback on Skyhammer.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Lets-give-feedback-on-skyhammer/first#post6107506

Weren’t slick shoes already nerfed? I thought the change from this patch would make them pretty weak on break bars.

Both maps are way better now, especially skyhammer.

I always enjoyed the challenge of Skyhammer and needing to be aware of where you were standing. I also enjoy watching people jump to their deaths like lemmings (theme from The Simpsons anyone?) We even made a spatial-awareness training area in our guild arena for it/inspired by it, the PvP guys in our guild loved it.

Dirame.8521:

Hey guys,

Y’all may not know me but I’m a totally well known PvPer in this game because I win all the things and bring home all the points so my opinion is obviously very useful. Now that I’ve overstated my importance, let’s begin with my extremely short review of the new maps. Let’s start with Skyhammer.

SKYHAMMER:
As one of the only people who valued the old skyhammer for

….

it was at this pt i realized your post was not worth the time. thx tho

Dahkeus.8243:

Weren’t slick shoes already nerfed? I thought the change from this patch would make them pretty weak on break bars.

From the patch description, they should affect each player at most once. Maybe it does not work with NPC? I haven’t tried nor seen it in action.

I like the new skyhammer changes. It encourages map awareness and awards coordination. The full decap function makes bunker builds less useful, making for more interesting fights. As far as “It doesn’t change the game goes”, I have lost a couple here and there because we owned all 3 points, enemy got hammer, and made a push back into the map because we were trying to recap all 3. That makes for good games. So, yes, I like the new skyhammer over the old one.

Spirit watch I also like because the older version allowed the orb to be spammable, which made for a really unfun mechanic (which is why it wasn’t chosen as much and people always got mad at that one guy who picked it). I actually don’t mind as much when I see spirit watch in the possible maps.

Legacy is also better because it prevents the losing team from using a “Get out of Jail free” card with the lord rush. Everyone who has been around for a while knows that it isn’t a “gg” when one team wins with a lord kill. This has reduced the possibility of that happening.

Overall well done on the changes

Love skyhammer now.

Not sure about spiritwatch, could use a lil more something.

I absolute love the changes they did and my first opinion is that they will work great in ESL and ranked play.

Galandil.9641:

Dirame.8521:

- Skyhammer shooting once rather than multiple times makes it feel unimportant in the grand scheme.

If you think that a FULL decap every 3 minutes isn’t important, we must playing two different games.

I didn’t realize this at first. Now that I realize it and I’ve taken it into account, it definitely sounds interesting but it doesn’t really add much because of how infrequent it is.

I guess I’m comparing the current Skyhammer to the old one when it comes to the fun factor so I guess, take that for what you will.

Jaxom.7310:

Dirame.8521:

Hey guys,

Y’all may not know me but I’m a totally well known PvPer in this game because I win all the things and bring home all the points so my opinion is obviously very useful. Now that I’ve overstated my importance, let’s begin with my extremely short review of the new maps. Let’s start with Skyhammer.

SKYHAMMER:
As one of the only people who valued the old skyhammer for

….

it was at this pt i realized your post was not worth the time. thx tho

somehow im not surprised that an engineer main liked the old skyhammer more

insanemaniac.2456:

somehow im not surprised that an engineer main liked the old skyhammer more

Funnily enough, during the time of Skyhammer I played builds that didn’t focus on knocking people about.

Dirame.8521:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c

can’t argue with a solid reference. The Dude abides.