New Maps Suitable for Ranked?

New Maps Suitable for Ranked?

in PvP

Posted by: Hooglese.4860

Hooglese.4860

Spirit Watch (SW), Skyhammer (SH), and to a lesser extent Revenge of the Capricorn (RoC) are currently not in ranked. The first two have gone through some significant changes to improve them. RoC is brand new and not out of “beta” so it may be subject to change. I think it’s about time to look at whether or not they’re well enough designed to be in ranked queue. I’m not going to answer that but open it up to debate.

First of all SW. It has been my least favourite map pre-change. The mechanic of the orb was heavily influinced by stability, superspeed and movement skills, so naturally there was an orb runner imbalance. It’s been changed to lock your skills to inhibit such things from effecting it. SW’s layout is also a reason for why it should be questioned. There’s a large emphasis on verticality, which gives ranged weapons an advantage and creates falling damage for those sweet instant kills. Luckily all of those are off-point, but it would still give, say, a guardian an advantage over a low-health player trying to escape on the rafters. On the flip side the shorter distance from spawn to far allows for good sneaky back cap play and potentially quick counter play. With the orb placed off of the mid->side path, a team can out rotate a zerg fairly easily. The additional teleport path from orb to mid also makes this map a lot better for those that can take advantage of it. This map now feels a lot more like Temple with out the critical buffs, which I like.

Okay, who didn’t hate how SH worked before? Ambushed, pit, death. Chasing an enemy, pit, death. Dodge the hammer, pit, death. Knocked into a corner, fall through the world into water, have to dc and reconnect. It was extremely gimmicky and gave a huge advantage to classes that had a lot of access to CC, not to mention the hammer was very easy to hold for AI builds or trappers. The cherry on the cake were the RNG jump pads that would only slow you down and kitten you off. All of that has, by miracle, been fixed. No more death pits, the hammer has been changed, the jump pads work and just for QoL the mid’s balcony moved down so there’s much less “obstructed” for both those on and off of it. It’s still got points against it though. Far isn’t accessible from spawn unless your team is unaware, but for this we gotta assume top-level game is being done. This is because player’s headed mid can see if there’s someone coming for their home node and intercept quickly. The hammer now decaps all enemy nodes and hits the area twice with a lot of power, which is second in strength only to tranquility, yet happens more frequently. On top of that the mid node is the closest to the portal to the hammer, which really isn’t ideal for teams holding only their home node, but then again if they get it that flips the game. I’d rather it be in a location equidistant from all nodes and spawn, like stillness or the orb. That aside, the map design is good, since at each point you have limited visibility and with the multiple +hidden paths into each point, good rotation is essential and makes a bunker’s life miserable. It’s probably one of the funnest maps right now.

RoC is subject to change so I’ll keep it real short. For starters, a far rush is impossible since it’s both too far and can be intercepted by player on mid, since you can teleport through the gate. Each point has extremely long visibility with no hidden paths so if you’re holding you should never be surprised and sneaky decaps can be stopped by players fighting off point. The bell luckily shakes up rotations enough that it can cause a snowball for a team and is located in the center of the map, so comebacks are possible. I’d like to know what’s going to happen with this map, because it’s new and not frustrating. Well except when everyone selects it for two weeks straight.

I’d like to hear what people have to say about bringing these maps into ranked, like a yes/no with a reason why. Idk about tourney play because I’m a filthy casual and don’t really do those.

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revenant – Hoogles Von Boogles
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