Guild Wars 2

Just had three Skyhammer games in a row. It’s not fun for me, and unfortunately i’m at the point where I’m going to start AFKing my future Skyhammer matches, and then it won’t be fun for any of the other 9 people either. Hope I can count towards the metrics to give you a better idea of how opposite of fun this map is when you have to play it in solo queue.

Rome.3192:

Just had three Skyhammer games in a row. It’s not fun for me, and unfortunately i’m at the point where I’m going to start AFKing my future Skyhammer matches, and then it won’t be fun for any of the other 9 people either. Hope I can count towards the metrics to give you a better idea of how opposite of fun this map is when you have to play it in solo queue.

Sorry sir, you are not a make believe person I can take credit for who agrees with me. Your information is invalid.

While an overwhelming amount of players seem to lean towards disliking the Skyhammer map, myself included, afking the game mode isn’t the correct way to go about it.

That’s intentionally disrupting another player’s game and should be bannable imo. Not everyone can sit around and play all day. Some of us have careers and families and can only play 3-4 games a day at best, so if we get Skyhammer twice and you afk it twice, you’ve successfully wasted a majority of the hobby time a player may have.

Quit being a child and go about things the right way, your post is little more than a tantrum. Be constructive.

Just go in to team queue. Use your head. I don’t play skyhammer any more and it is glorious.

I hate skyhammer too. But there’s no need to AFK, just click the PvP icon and choose a new map.

The player ability on Sky Hammer is really terrible. Necro’s fearing you off, rangers shooting you off, thieves pulling you to glass, engis pulling you to glass or knocking you. No balance what so ever.

Garillo.1349:

While an overwhelming amount of players seem to lean towards disliking the Skyhammer map, myself included, afking the game mode isn’t the correct way to go about it.
…
Quit being a child and go about things the right way, your post is little more than a tantrum. Be constructive.

Agreed. I’ve been vocal in my opposition to Skyhammer being in the solo queue rotation but I would never subject 9 other players to an unpleasant experience just because I didn’t like a map.

Suck it up and fight for your team, or don’t go into solo queue.

Every time I enter that map I hate it more.

At least give us the option to queue without skyhammer and spiritwatch. I play soloQ to have fun, practice new classes, and test builds for teamQ. I can’t do that when I get those two maps 10 times in a row. I’m not even exaggerating.

Pugging in teamQ isn’t worth a kitten .

hellsmachine.4085:

I hate skyhammer too. But there’s no need to AFK, just click the PvP icon and choose a new map.

He is talking about solo queue tourney. You can’t leave the map without turning off the game or afking, nor can you choose not to do the map once your queue has popped. That’s why you see so many posts/complaints about skyhammer. Like you say in hotjoin you can just choose another server to play on, so its no biggie for hotjoin.

skyhammer best map!….only cuz its ez to troll people that hate it.

EDIT: oh kitten , this got long. Apologies, but I’m finally putting down hopefully all of my complaints and suggestions.

My issues with skyhammer:

- 1-shot-kills are the primary method of winning battles. These are frustrating to die to, and unsatisfying to pull off. Something like the midpoint on Kyhlo, where knocking someone off guarantees a decap, is fun - but this is because you’ve not removed 100% of their health at once, you’ve just knocked them down a level.

- CC skills, and their counter Stability, are not even slightly fairly balanced between classes, and nor should they be - combat is meant to be balanced around damage, control and support all together, and one map focusing so heavily on control is not a good idea if this particular trilogy is to be maintained.

- Many people don’t like to run their regular builds on Skyhammer, because they feel forced to build around stability and/or knockbacks. Ignoring my other problems with the map, this might be okay... if we could easily change builds while in the map. In a soloq match you get 2 minutes before starting in which to enter the map and (try to) chat to your team about tactics - if someone has to spend 30 seconds or more resetting and reallocating traits before entering the map, they can’t do this, and they also have to remember to change back to their proper build before queueing for the next game.

- The hammer is too bloody strong, and it is very hard to win if you can’t at least stop your foe from holding the secondary objective - or if the opponent at the hammer is built to do so. The trebs at kyhlo are powerful, yes... but they can be dodged by players who pay enough attention, can be held by both teams at once, and can be destroyed for a while so that an enemy player has to spend a minute or so away from combat rebuilding it (a good deal less if portalling up, but in my experience are terrible at holding the treb).

- It’s buggy as hell - folks can fail to die after falling, people still report issues with using teleport skills across the glass, and I frequently try to go through the gate (both up to and down from the hammer) and find myself immediately teleported back and given the debuff.

- Solo Queue is random teams matched against random teams, and this map can take this to the extreme - if one team happens to be much more heavily focused on CC/stability than the other, they’re probably going to do much better. People shouldn’t be expected to reroll when playing a soloq game - sure, you’ll sometimes get unlucky class matchups on other maps, but there aren’t all that many hardcounters around and skilful play can still lead the ’underdogs’ to victory - this just isn’t the case when knocking someone backwards a couple of hundred units can count as a kill.

- It’s very easy to see if someone unstealthed is coming up to the hammer... and there’s only one route up. This gives trappers/markers an immediate advantage against assailants, when they should instead be very vulnerable when controlling such a weapon.

- Pets and other NPCs can’t get knocked off like players can - a minor issue, but still a bit frustrating when combined with all of the others.

I really like a lot of the design of the map - lots of ways around, the jump pads work well, and there’s actually a reason to bring anti-falling-damage traits to PvP to use offensively due to the multiple levels - but proper PvP within Guild Wars 2’s combat system should not exist on a map like this.

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So, how would I improve Skyhammer, if it’s to stay in solo queue?

- Falling through a platform doesn’t kill you - you instead land in an area with multiple jump pads back up to anywhere in the map. One largely flat expanse under the map could do this.

- Remove the /stun/ from the Skyhammer, but keep its damage. It will function well to support players on a point, but no longer guarantees a combat victory for those fighting at the point (if the enemy lacks stability).

- Wall in the hammer’s platform, and increase its size a bit (so that we don’t have camera hell on it as happened in the Queen’s Gauntlet or the current Marionette fights). Getting knocked down through a glass panel means you have a several-second walk back up to the Hammer, or you can choose to run back down to the map -maybe a curved path to somewhere near points A and C?

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There’s no way to make this map fair or fun in my eyes without major changes, rather than just small tweaks to some of the edges. I like to win and lose fights against players rather than against terrain or the abuse of it - and existing maps show that terrain can still play a large part in combat anyway, with the windows in Kyhlo or the bluffs at the keep on Foefire.

Remove the map from solo queue rotation, please, and give us it back when it isn’t instagib-tastic - we don’t play on Capricorn because underwater combat is unbalanced, so why are we forced to go to Skyhammer?

I agree with posters

Yeah don’t AFK – that is really bad. I prefer to spend the entire game cliff diving off the edge of the map.

Solo queue is bad, hotjoins are more fun than solo queue right now because I can actually choose not to play skyhammer and spirit watch.

I actually reckon capricorn would fit better in solo queue than skyhammer