There is a ridiculous amount of stuff going on with this map. New players and pugs have a hard enough time dealing with the mechanics of simple conquest maps. Now they are asked to learn about supply, summoning NPCs, and other advanced strategies which may change moment-to-moment.
First suggestion: Improve conveyance of NPC summon spots. At the moment it is very convenient for experience players because you literally just drop down, turn around, and press F right at the start, then rush mid or whatever. The problem is when new players encounter this map, they may drop down and keep running. I only found out about the summon spots near the end of my first match, which was very confusing.
I’m not asking Anet to dumb Stronghold down. I’m just suggesting you make it more obvious and intuitive that you need to return to the spawn area to interact with these summon things. Right now they just look like doors that are part of the scenery, and they are located in such a way that you would have to turn around and face back towards spawn to see them. I personally would have never known had I not seen a team mate channeling in front of one. The first impulse I’ve always had in pvp is to get out of spawn and get into the fight as quickly as possible. These summon door things are a complete 180, figuratively and literally.
It’s going to be very frustrating for solo players and new players who have to learn to break established behaviors for one specific map.
Second suggestion: Make the lord regen out of combat, or add some way to heal him through map mechanics. Every game I played was pretty much the same. One team would be first to break into the lord room. Then all that team had to do was rush in, attack the lord, die, and repeat. As long as they kept trickling in, they could constantly chip away lord health until it died. This forces the other team to attempt to bunker down and stop anyone from entering the lord room, or else lose the game.
This situation occurs with far too much time left on the clock. Its nearly impossible to keep all 5 enemy players out of that room for a full 6 minutes, especially when they have stealth and teleports. The only other option is to try to rush their lord faster, which weakens your defense of the lord room and allows them to spike the lord down even quicker. It feeds back into itself. The more you try to defend, the less chance you have of turning the battle around, and the more you try to turn to offense, the faster you lose. The game basically snowballs the moment the first team breaches the lord room.
A simple out-of-combat regen or healing mechanic would force the enemy team to mount a proper attack every time instead of just trickling in steadily and chipping away.