Guild Wars 2

For my POV: I played 20-30 matches overall. All of them as a Mesmer. I used the same build in all matches, as it was successful off the bat.

Impressions:

While what I wanted was a mode that would create team fight synergy, and this is not that mode, I did enjoy Stronghold far more than I have enjoyed Conquest. It’s just simply more fun, even with the added PVE element.

I also feel it needs a separated queue. There will be people who just want to play Stronghold. I feel it will attract a different sort of audience as opposed to what exists in Conquest. It may be time to switch focus for the spvp side.

Another reason I feel it needs its own queue is that I think it would work better with one added player per side. Five per side leaves some of the elements of the mode ignored. Currently, there’s supply, two lanes, NPCs to kill or escort, Heroes to summon and a Trebuchet. Five players spread out over those objectives tends to leave some of those objectives ignored. A team of six could put 2-3 per lane with one or two dealing with the other elements of the map. Five players is just a player short of the map getting full use.

I know part size is limited to five, so that creates a technical problem, but I feel ANet should really consider improving party options anyways, and it really needs to consider Stronghold having its own queue. Certain builds do not transfer between it and Conquest, and it takes nearly the whole minute of prep to completely switch a build.

Issues:

-Spawning Heroes awards too many points imo. Had many matches where individual scores were even, but overall score was 100+ points apart. Couldn’t figure it out complrely, but my guess is that this mainly had to do with Hero summons being worth more points than Hero kills.
-Shooting through gates nullifies Doorbreakers too easily. Engy Flamethrower can flamejet behind a gate and nullify NPCs.
-Treb hits on doorbreakers draws their aggro, causing them to ignore the gate and attack the treb.
-The issues with channel canceling. (Immob)
-Timer ran out often. Mode might need a Victory or Death scenario when the timer runs out. Far more interesting than one side turtling out a timer.