PvP with the Blues is underway with playtesting the new battleground, Deephaul Ravine.
Deephaul Ravine
Deephaul Ravine is themed in The Ringing Deeps where the Foreman Uzjax and Architect Ruffious are tasked with collecting as much valuable ore, gems, and crystals for their respective priorities. Ruffious the Unbound Earthen has big plans for the ore and gems found in the Deephaul Ravine, but the Machine Speakers of the Earthenworks are quite possessive of such precious materials. Uzjax and his team plan to secure these materials before Ruffious and his band of misfits get their hands on it.
Mechanics
8v8 and 10v10 Battleground that will be available in all battleground modes.
Hybrid map in which teams earn points by controlling either of the two active mine carts that move along the tracks on the map, or capturing a lucrative gem (the Deephaul Crystal) that is located in the middle of the map.
The Deephaul Crystal can be returned at either capture point located on the high ground on the opposing sides of the map.
Additionally, there’s a mine cart track that runs above the battleground playspace where players can hop in a cart vehicle to quickly traverse the map, allowing for quick engagements and repositioning.
How to playtest: open the Group Finder (default hotkey: i), then select Random Battleground and click Join Battle! Only the Deephaul Ravine map will be available as a Random Battleground map for Beta.
Please use this thread to leave your feedback following this test.
First thing I notice is the presence of an invisible wall that will obscure the view from distant target when we are on the top rail to prevent us from shooting below. That is great but is it supposed to remain for 7 seconds after we landed on the ground?
After jumping down from the top rail, I can’t attack anything for about 7 seconds, it seems to be on both direction, meaning I can’t attack someone who has been on the rail either.
Edit:
It’s a fun Battleground with lot’s of thing happening. 10/10 would play again.
One issue I noticed was the UI. Specifically, when you pick up the center flag, the display at the top of the screen makes it seem like it is the other team that has the flag.
For instance, when an Alliance player has the flag, the flag UI is listed under the Horde score, and vice versa for when the Horde has the flag. As someone who just started playing the BG today, I found this to be very counterintuitive and often had to “double check” which team controlled the flag.
Another issue is the graveyard rezzes. A couple of times, I rezzed from a graveyard, only to be ported to an entirely separate graveyard. I just found this to be a bit disorienting.
But yeah, that’s all my constructive feedback for now. I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.
I think it’s a super cool map. At the moment it definitely seems teamfight oriented but I’m not sure how much of that is due to map design and how much is due to people testing new talents in beta.
I figure even after launch there will still be a population of players that are just there for combat and could care less about objectives, which is fine. Everyone plays the game in their own way.
The carts seem to move the teamfight around, which I like because it made it feel like a bonus objective, in the sense that even if you’re primarily there for a bloodbath you can kinda fight on the carts and it’s not just a deathmatch.
Given that I don’t know exactly how lucrative it is to capture the crystal yet, I feel like the carts dictated the location of the team fight more than the crystal did. Again though, I think a lot of the teamfight aspect of the map that I experienced was due to people testing out new talents and builds.
Was so happy to help the devs test out this new BG so thank you for doing this event with the community. Here is some of my feedback:
Pros:
Easier to cross the map VERY quickly with carts. Carts add a fun way to cross the map. I would love a button to dismount the cart on my own anywhere but also know that causes issues.
Having an objective in the middle (crystal) that people can fight over AND two carts makes for a few ways you can win the game. Can use different strats etc.
Map is gorgeous and unique. I like how some of the zerker buffs are kind of out of the way when the game starts, so if you go for one you will be late for the team fight. Little trade off there. The buff placement is good imo.
The map plays the same on unrated as BGB (minus mount speed and buffs) which is AMAZING. Some of the other older maps are pretty different in Blitz.
Suggestions/bugs/issues:
Maybe a dismount button on the carts like I said above if some of the issues can be worked around. The more I think about it I am not 100% sure I even like this idea but at the moment I like it more than I don’t.
I never held an orb so I don’t know if it shows you where to bring it at marks the spot at all when you picked it up. I saw a few times people pick it up and run the wrong direction or they didn’t know where to go with it. Maybe put a market on the map so people know where to turn it in? In the future this probably won’t be an issue though as people do it more. Maybe make it so only the unrated version marks the map.
There were some weird map LoS issues in some spots and then I was told about the same type of thing like Mohz mentioned above.
There were some UI issues like the scoreboard can’t be sorted and the UI issue with the flag I noticed like Alecthegreat mentioned.
I also experienced this.
Overall I had a blast testing this. Found some bugs, explore the map and already have some idea of strategy. The only thing that was a little concerning was most matches started with most players running to the center for a death ball. But they probably is mostly do to people who hadn’t been on alpha or beta or got to test say in Blitz last week were trying to see how their class felt. I am VERY interested to see how this BG flows as balancing starts to come in. Excited even.
Thanks again for your hard work! Been waiting for a new BG for a while to be excited about!
Probably for the best. The top is just a single track for getting across the map fast. Funneled pvp in a tight corridor isn’t the most fun. (unless you’re a deep breathing devoker)
Not to mention any pet classes are an absolute nightmare to manage in BGs when a Z axis is involved and you need to get them down.
On the general subject of pet pathing in BGs… including this one.
Delves and a lot of dungeons have special pet logic that allows a pet to teleport down to you if you jump off a cliff and they’re not currently engaged in a fight. Is there any reason this can’t happen in BGs? It would be a great quality of life improvement for pet classes, as currently they have to take the longest route possible to get back down to you.
The crystal gives 100 points.
The carts give 100 points (each)
Controlling one cart gives 3 points per tic.
Controlling two carts gives 6 points per tic.
So, that is interesting. There is more value for the crystal in Blitz than in random BGs, but the cart captures stay the same. Perhaps that is to counter the faster score from tics for controlling the carts.
A lot of the matches tonight were stomps because of the random BG format which allowed for full five man premades. So, I suspect the main cause for these stomps where premades vs. pugs or premades vs. smaller premades. Check your data on that one.
My suggestion would be to use the 8v8 Blitz format for testing this BG if you want more even matches to look at. That would also circumvent the problem with alliance queue times versus horde queue times.
Yes, extremely annoying. I was in camo and jumped down a ledge, my pet stayed above and got whirlwinded out by a warrior which also uncovered me far away at the bottom.
I play tested this map on a healer and it remains the single worst experience in the game… I played again on a DPS and it was fun, on a tank and also fun; why was healing terrible? Chasing the out of range players running all over the map complaining about not getting healed, pecking at the players or raid health bars taking up half the screen only to watch them grey out as the player further move away from healers. Look, I’ve healed since BC was new, predominately on a shaman, but the healing then was reasonable… there wasn’t monk flying off the screen, Paladins double mounting away from the healer, DH and Evokers leaping and gliding around the map at will, rogues and druids speed bursting and going stealthed, Warriors leaping and charging away from the healer… meanwhile there you are, changing forms to keep up but unable to cast a heal, dropping feathers for a speed boost only to find the slow warlock saying thanks as he ninjas one to catch up. Meanwhile, its all hunt and peck for mouseover casting, using targetoftarget macros to dps if the other players stand still for half a second, or encountering half of the other raid centerline killing you with 5-8 players all bursting you down… Healing is its own reward and there are serious skills involved with being great at it, but the game has destroyed the desire to heal simply based on mobility of those you are trying to heal, the broken aspect of pug healing (none of the above is an issue in guild or premade groups as these people know your woes), and the seemingly inability of anyone to address the greatest issue: why is there no macro or script available to healers to “heal the person with the lowest health” in range for any given heal… This would let the healer actually see the game and not stare at 10 boxes. then looking around to see who is in range, enemy near, etc… Unfortunately, now comes the UN-moderated comments of git gud, l2heal scrub, or other tidbits of forum trolling…
Fished this out of the wall of text. I would really discourage this because pvp healing is not reverse whack-a-mole where you just heal the lowest health person at any given time and make hp bars go up. That’s more of a raid thing imo.
I like to think there’s more complexity to pvp triage than this, and I don’t think I’m the only person that enjoys the greater complexity of healing pvp over the clicking boxes minigame.
That is true yet healing pug BGs or solo shuffle is the least fun thing in the world… its like being the healer on the comp stomp team and no matter what you do, your team is hell bent on doing wut they do without having any sense of what healing takes… Its not for everyone I know but still a macro that gives healers something other than mouseover, striking 2 keys for one action, wondering why the people don;t use defensives… it is not an enjoyable experience for most dabbling in healing or wanting to heal as a new player
I will link this in here too. There are some responses in an unofficial feedback thread I started for people who had played it before the Play with the Blues event. Hope all this helped!
