Guild Wars 2

Skyhammer is the definition of design failure because it requires specific team compositions to have better than average odds of success. This forces players to play other professions than the ones that they choose or are adept at and familiar with. This invalidates many hours of time invested in learning a profession and mastering its play style.

Skyhammer’s layout favors necromancers because wells can completely cover an approach to a capture point and fear lasts long enough to send players off of ledges to their death. It also favors guardians who have frequent access to stability and to a lesser degree rangers because of Rampage as One. Professions with many knockback abilities can be useful, but most teams do not stray far from the 2 guardian, 2 necro, 1 X make up.

The majority of the winning teams have 2-3 necromancers or guardians. If you don’t have stability you need to stay away from the Skyhammer controls, and point B. Points A and C are marginally easier to defend, but you will fight a losing battle against either necromancers or guardians in these locations.

As an engineer I cannot even use one of my best point defense tools—turrets. Laugh if you want, but they are tailor made for a map like this, and with Accelerant-packed Turrets an engineer has plenty of knockback to make himself a dangerous opponent. One strike from the Skyhammer destroys them all. The radius of the Skyhammer attack is such that it is impossible to place the turrets safely and in places that will threaten enemies assaulting the points.

With only 2 abilities that grant Stability—1 second from Rumble, and 15-20 seconds from Elixir X (105 second cooldown), we are not equipped for the amount of knockback and fear that hammer guardians and necromancers can bring to bear on us. We currently have no role in a serious strategy for this map beyond the few knockback abilities we can bring, but sadly they are all short range with very little blowout, and they are on long cooldowns.

Q: During testing and design were you aware that you were creating a map that would encourage and reward degenerate team compositions?

Q: Will you be removing Skyhammer from tournament rotation seeing as it falls into the same category as Spirit Watch? (see my first question)

Q: Are you satisfied with trends in team compositions due to the game mode—that is, teams with the mobility to trivialize map size and layout tend to win more than lose?