For the next week, there will be a smaller map pool to increase the number of games played on the Infernal Shrines:
Battleground Rotation: August 26 – September 2 Infernal Shrines Battlefield of Eternity Cursed Hollow Dragon Shire Sky Temple Tomb of the Spider Queen
Blackheart’s Bay, Haunted Mines, and Garden of Terror will only be playable in custom games until next week.
What do you guys think of the new battleground? Now that it's playable on the real server we should find a lot more meaningful games than we would've had on the PTR, so give it a spin and see how you like it.
Great! I hope I'll be able to play it tonight. In the PTR it seemed pretty snowbally, but it could very well be for the lack of players and the great difference in skill between the teams, we'll see.
It seems to snowball a lot. Winning the first shrine is a guaranteed fort as the other team seems to not be able to defend, owing to the HUGE damage the punishers put out on heroes. It can often turn into a fort and level advantage, as well as giving the winning team space to do camps. Consequently, winning the second shrine as the team in deficit is much harder due to the level/talent disadvantage.
Laning seems a lot less significant? Like the laning phase seems to be over around the time of level 7 since a 5 man push with the first punisher can take you as far as a keep. I suppose you could take a specialist and split push with the punisher too.
Games seem very quick on it. Often ended by the first 3 shrines, before level 20.
I am undecided on whether it is snowbally or people just don't know how to play on it. I have not been on the losing side of the match yet(3 wins), but the third game the enemy team baited the punisher to the back of their first fort, killed it, then repelled us before we could take down the fort itself. This game ended up being fairly long, but we still ended up winning fairly convincingly.
In the late game they actually beat us to a punisher, and we were able to try out the bait/attack thing ourselves. It really just takes having a tank run in first to soak the initial jump/stun/punch of the punisher, then the team can collapse on the punisher pretty safely to kill it.
I do think there is a problem with contesting for punishers in general. You need to be very confident you can win the team fight in order to engage--- if you get wiped or lose on the punisher race by only a few kills, that really sucks for your team. [If there is a prolonged teamfight and the final score is 28-30 for the punisher, you get nothing for it. It's a lot like you just wasted minutes of game time you could have spent elsewhere]
Dealing with the first punisher is rather easy. You can bait him to jump into the fort, while the walls are still up. having 4 towers barrel down at him and the enemy team can't prevent you from focusing it down. Can't tell you exactly how its done without the enemy team helping you. I pulled him in with a dwarf toss, but that was sheer luck.
And I guess lots of the snowball comes from the bee lining that happens to the objective. So Vikings rule atm
But yeah that map is insanely fast. So Kerrigan truly amazing and Tassadar for defense (untested). And the 4th shrine onward basically spits out game enders. Bottom Lane is Specialist heaven. Especially those with Merc Lord. Eric and a Siege camp flatted the fort, before the punisher came out since it was a close fight. But the lane itself is pretty neglectable I think.
Yeah, I really dislike the fact that you don't get anything from the skeleton kills if enemy team got 30 of them. Just played 1 game on it but in that game first Shrine pops we were level 4 and they were level 5, we had 29 kills while they had like 15, but they have managed to get 30 before we got that single kill(because people are retarded sometimes) and since then they were 3-5 levels ahead all the time.
Map probably isn't figured out at all, but still they should at least make that Punisher proportionally weaker with every Skeleton your team kills. There has to be a difference between 30-0 and 30-20, it is just stupid.
I bet that people will figure out when a team should and should not contest the temple, and that may fix the issues of not being rewarded for 29 kills. For example, if the top shrine spawns and you're a level or talent behind, it might be a better idea to take the three siege camps and push the lower lanes and then go back to defend when the punisher comes out. That way you are looking at pressure on two lanes in exchange for probably 1 fort, rather than risking a team wipe by contesting and not getting anything.
Not at all levels of play, though. I'm willing to bet lower leagues will be very snowbally since people tend to just set a waypoint for the objective and not even wait for teammates before heading in.
Maybe, but that issue isn't unique to this map. How many times have we seen new players sprint alone toward a tribute on CH then get melted in half a second 1v5? That just has to be part of the learning curve. The spaces around the shrines are so constricted, it's just always a bad idea to go in unless you're sure that you're not outnumbered.
mm I'm feeling a patch to change punisher damage output based on guardian kills - so if you get 29/30 and lose the shrine, the punisher won't do much damage. otherwise it's, well, too punishing.
People complaining that this map is very snowbally.... i don't know about that. From the games I've played is just that people are bad.
Like we are on a game and they get the first punisher. The enemy barely gets the gate and a tower, we are still the same levels, but the next following 5 shrines my team just never arrives in time and we lose. We always defend pretty well and we are never behind in levels, it's just that people don't coordinate. Then when the enemy wins one of the players go: "this map is really snowbally, they get the first punisher and it is GG" And I'm like "no, they got all the punishers because the team was going 1 by 1 to die or never got to the shrines in time, the first punisher did nothing".
I mean, I could be wrong though, but I think we should give the map more time before we cry for a nerf. (Altough admitedly I don't like the "all or nothing" aproach).
I think they should make the thingies that spawn way harder. So that the team that is behind has a better chance of winning a fight at the shrine. But its probably to early to say.
On August 28 2015 07:23 [Phantom] wrote: People complaining that this map is very snowbally.... i don't know about that. From the games I've played is just that people are bad.
I dunno man, I played a game of 10+ HL and they co-ordinated just fine, but we won the fight for first shrine, got a level advantage (though we didn't kill the fort, just towers), then had a level advantage for the next shrine fight, meaning we won that and then it snowballed out of control. Their comeback potential is very limited.
Though FeyFey's point about Vikings being strong is interesting for sure. Laning just seems to stop save maybe for a split push. With that xp soak, it could contribute a lot.
i have had some good success with Sylvanas and Arthas on the map. Apparently getting wiped while managing to get the punisher is a better outcome then the other way around.
If Sylvanas black arrows all the spiders, does she still get credit even if the enemy team kills them? I saw that on PTR streams and it seemed pretty broken...
The developer Q&A mentioned that they experimented with a lot of different damage levels for the Punishers (both on his autos and on his specials). So I wonder if there's something they were doing in their games that made the first Punisher not feel so strong (so maybe there is something into people just suck, certainly saw way too many people mess up Immortal fights on BoE when it was new).
On August 28 2015 07:23 [Phantom] wrote: People complaining that this map is very snowbally.... i don't know about that. From the games I've played is just that people are bad.
Like we are on a game and they get the first punisher. The enemy barely gets the gate and a tower, we are still the same levels, but the next following 5 shrines my team just never arrives in time and we lose. We always defend pretty well and we are never behind in levels, it's just that people don't coordinate. Then when the enemy wins one of the players go: "this map is really snowbally, they get the first punisher and it is GG" And I'm like "no, they got all the punishers because the team was going 1 by 1 to die or never got to the shrines in time, the first punisher did nothing".
I mean, I could be wrong though, but I think we should give the map more time before we cry for a nerf. (Altough admitedly I don't like the "all or nothing" aproach).
So far had 2 games on it, first one was lost hard from the start, they were always 2-5 levels ahead, since level 4.
We won the second one even though they got the first Punisher that destroyed first fort and killed 3 of us together with them, but then we got 3 next Punishers as we had a lot better team than them(we had Leoric, Butcher, Jaina, Muradin and Zagara, while they had Raynor, Azmodan, Tychus, Zeratul and Leoric).
Still I can't say much from these 2 games, if played correctly map probably is a bit snowballing but nothing out of control as other people are saying, at least those are my impressions.
And yeah, Leoric feels quite broken on this map. On first shrine he is respawning way too fast, while on every shrine after that one his swing kills all of the skeletons instantly.
The only thing I've learned for sure so far is that the punisher alone is really not that great. Without a team to follow up on its stuns, it does decent damage to heroes (but it's easy to make sure your tank takes the damage) and really poor siege damage. It seems like a big CC machine that can (if used well) make a big difference but that doesn't have much sway on its own.