The new maps are out. They are a neat solution for trait cycling as now if you want to play wizards you either have to go fire storm or battle mages for low tire . I started playing 3DC today and out of first 8-9 games only won against mirror matches as I can remember. Few of the maps are absolutely ****** with stuff like mazes and no line of site! Its soo bad i guess even 2 warrior wizard's, wizard has even become useless from what I saw. Well lucky I got back the 80-90 point I lost as had some decent enough warrior gear for 2 warriors. Mostly from +2 and +3 steps. I think now there is clearly one new meta! 3 Darf warriors in place of 3 DC with nimble strikes! RIP Wizards! Lets all hail the 3 warrior and 2 warrior 1 priest new meta!
I'm excited to see how Vampire Evolution fares on the new maps. I've only played one game on them with my build, and it was a casual, and I absolutely wrecked... but my opponent was running triple elves and overextended at every opportunity, so I'm not sure it was a good indicator.
VP remains best strategy. 2 war / 1 wiz is great 2 war / 1 priest Firestorm still somewhat viable My impressions so far.
In my opinion 2 of the maps favours DWC and the other 2 favours warriors. I normally don't play DWC but I started playing them yesterday. I tried them in this maps and went in a 6 win streak with them.
I agree with that, and I'm glad this time the rotation is more balanced, instead of the 4 pro-wizard previous maps. However, as TheShadowTitan said, 3DC is still a very good option, and you see a lot of them in the mid and low rank. It's just that now they are more beatable than before. I think all the whining of 3DC players is beacuse they got used to having that map advantage that they don't have today in all the maps as they did before. I think it all depends on what elo you have. If you are in the low to mid rank, where there is still plenty of 3DC builds, FS is great, and also 2 war 1 wiz IF you have WWe to counter 3DC. 2 war 1 priest will have a hard time against those 3DC. Instead of that, if you are in the high rank, where you don't see too many 3DC, 2 war and 1 priest is a viable option, 2 war and 1 wiz is still good, but FS isn't, as you will usually have to face at least 2 warriors in the opponent team with armor and a priest that can heal or a wiz that can ww you. Of course you can put Inmovable and some armor remover in your FS build, but it will be difficult to win anyway, with all those NS warriors in the high rank.
I'm curious, which 2 maps do you think favor wizards? Vulcan Path is a no-brainer because it heavily favours wizards teams. It's almost as bad as Celestial Koi. But I don't think any of the other 3 favor wizards, not even close. The other three have all kinds of nasty things like tight spaces, tons of cover, and victory squares that force you to split your team. Also 6 wins means nothing unless you can do it consistently, and I know you cannot, because I'm playing more or less the same build and I know how easy it is to lose, even against people who are 300+ below you in the ratings. I'm guessing Jacques hasn't played any other maps than the last two rotations (based on his join date), and he probably hasn't played control wizards either, so he might not be the best person to evaluate map balance from a control wizard perspective. I've played 500+ matches with wizards in the last 4 rotations and I think it goes something like this: Haunted: All maps more or less favored wizards. Haunted Crypt is the all-time most pro-control wizard map. (BAD) Gladius: All maps more or less favored warriors imo (although I didn't play these much). (BAD) Ice: Bridge gave wizards a slight edge, Ice House gave warriors a slight edge, last two were pretty balanced. (GOOD) Vulcan: lava map gives wizards a huge edge, other three favor warriors and WW/WWE, making it a rock-paper-scissors map minigame if you play wizards. (BAD) I would like to point out that this is not just my opinion. It's based on my fight stats and rating in these maps. We can talk in theory all day long but in the end it's the raw data that counts. My point is that I don't really care what people think about map balance unless they have actually played wizard teams and seen the maps in action. If you don't play it, you are just guessing. I think that the most balanced set of these four was definitely Ice maps. None of the maps in that rotation felt like an auto-win, but none felt that I was at a huge disadvantage either. I'd be interested to know what melee players think about the last 4 rotations.
IMO Haunted where good for Wiz . Gladius where equilibrated. yes yes i know ppl think they where warrior oriented, i dont share that opinion, and yes i played 3 wiz on then. Gladius wall was my favorite map, Ice was so so but i would give it a edge to wiz and Vulcan are equilibrated with a edge to melee, i rly like the design of the heart of the mountain map. The thing about Vulcan maps, arent that pure melee are a powerhouse, the prob is when they have a friendly wiz, now that is a hard battle
Sadly I don't know the names of the maps (is there any link to all the maps, new and old, so I can see their names?), but I've been playing since the Haunted maps, I know that. And while is true that I almost didn't play with 3DC, I did play A LOT against them in the last rotation with a 2 war and 1 priest team, and I always lost (that is when I got tired of losing against 3DC and started to search for a counter, and I found FS to be a perfect one), while I had a very good win rate against not 3DC decks. So I can talk about wizards teams based on my perspective and my "raw data", that is just as valid as yours. Again, it's not guessing just because someone don't play with a 3DC deck, because you do get to face them a lot, no matter which build you are using. And you can see them in action. No guessing needed. I guess you didn't see your "raw data" here, because if you did you couldn't say that Ice maps were balanced when you had a 70 % win rate using your 3DC. And maybe you didn't see either that the meta get infested with 3DC everywhere during the Ice rotation. I guess that was just a coincidence. Yes, they were good, as you say. But good for 3DC only. No balance at all in the previous rotation. It could seem less favorable to wizards than the other 3, but still, one wizard walked into the closest victory square and he could see 2 of the other 3 squares. So, anyone who dared to put a foot in those squares got frosted or moved with WoW. And if you didn't have those, simply put some lava there and problem solved. But let's say that map wasn't good for wizards (which imo wasn't the case), the rotation wasn't balanced at all anyway.
SLG the other map is Vulcan Forge, you can stay in 2 VP and control the other 2 from far away. As I said in game lobby, I went in a 12 winning streak with 3 DWC (lost one game in the middle to disconnect while I was waiting for game and I don't know but a game started even after I disconnected).
Yes, that is the same thing that happened with Ice House in the previous rotation. Put one wizard in one VS and control other two from there. That is why imo even that map was pro-wizard.
I disagree with ice house favouring DWC. There are big diferences between this map and ice house, wizards had to spend more 1 walk to get to the second VP and there was less space around the VP's. Basically, in that map if wizards go for other VP they are giving an advantage to the other team, warriors could easily get near you with just one run, a great example of that is my match against SLG in the peasant tournament, you can say that that game isn't an example because it's peasant but in normal MP that happened alot in my games too. In ice house you warriors teams didn't need to go for more then 1 VP, you could play the waiting game there, in this new map it's a different story, you can't play that waiting game, you have to go for VP's or for the Wizards. In ice house you could be near the wizards just by using run + 1 step attack, the same isn't true here.
That's a good point, though as I said before, even with that map not being good for 3DC, the rotation was not balanced.
I can't complain about last rotation, I was playing 2 Warriors and 1 Priest and I got 4th place of the ranking during that time. Anyway that doesn't mean that the map rotation or balanced or unbalanced.
I play 2 wizards 1 warrior. On the Gladius rotation I was at 1700 ranking. The Winter rotation saw me drop to 1150. The Vulcan rotation has me thus far back at 1600. Maps that are "on paper" bad for wizards are the ones where I'm performing the best.
IMO there where only a couple of maps with a clear favorite ( Koi Pond im looking at you) but if people adjust abit,play careful and work a bit harder, the rotation in itself ends up in the end to be balanced
The problem is that there are some players that don't want to adjust their deck even just a bit. They want to play with the same build over and over agains and have good results no matter how the maps are. They think the maps should adjust to them instead of the contrary. And they get angry when the maps don't favor their builds and blame the maps for the bad results they are having.
