The new arena map
Initially I liked the new arena map. It felt like a standardized way of fighting in a flattened smooth gym environment that featured flat ground, elevation, stairs and pillars without random stuff in the way to get stuck against and without the fps issues. The old Deathmatch map had pillars some classes could go up and camp in and lots of stuff like roots to get stuck against. But I along with what feels like a majority when I talk about it have grown to prefer the old map.
Detaching from combat is very easy for anyone and if you play priest (or rogue) you can just jump up and down the layers because if you walk off a ledge you can do a jump with the height of ascend. This means that if I try to do everything in my power to win a fight I have to win it in a completely unrealistic and cheesy way that will never work in extraction. Priests are very strongly favoured on the new map and that makes it unenjoyable for me as a priest player.
The stairs up are very narrow and favours frost mages very hard since they can cover it with an ice path.
The map is an ok size for solos but too small for team fights. The 5 minute timer is also too short for some matchups and its very hard to run out of meds or class tools unlike before.
You could in a way say that the old Deathmatch arenas were better designed because they were worse designed. They were just a snippet of greenwood day green ruins or the castle and that made them more realistic, you could find yourself having a fight in those environments in extraction and it made the combat be more like rehearsing a scenario minus the PVE. Random spawns meant that an uncertainty and surprise attacks existed which is a normal part of extraction games but on the new arena map you more or less always know where your opponent is.
The new arena map has a function which is to be a fun jungle gym to fight in but other than that I believe most players would prefer to fight in a cutout of extraction maps. It could be one map for most POI or at least one map for each of the most popular fighting zones because that is the environment players desire to learn to fight in.
Alternatively the new map could be redesigned to be perhaps 4 times bigger, only 2 layers, some ruins building. Something to replicate a realistic extraction fight to make it a good map to train in where you won’t pick up bad habits.
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Comments4
Nande
Nov 12, 2025
This bit has to be a priest issue uniquely:
“The 5 minute timer is also too short for some matchups and its very hard to run out of meds or class tools unlike before.”
You having access to more heals then other classes doesn’t mean other classes does not run out of them if the fight is long, and it’s typically in my experience longer against Priests because of it and it’s worse on ranged priest weapons.
Agree on the map being very annoying to fight priests on but i’m also fine with some classes being stronger on some maps while weaker on others given that we have more maps.
I like the idea of a arena that has a similar design to any extraction map, it coul dhave the essence of it without being taken from the extraction map itself while still designing it symetrical for arena.
GWD typically is open with some large terrain objects i.e trees, large-ish rocks, ruins etc.
Crypt indoors, limited highgrounds with limited sight, tighter with corridors and or connected rooms or “pockets”.
Just examples but maybe you get the idea of it.
[Deleted User]
Nov 8, 2025
me perosnally love the new map and this is exactly how i imagined an arena map be implemented and hope we get more maps in this size. it could be a little bigger, not much, just by a bit.
I don’t want an extraction like map, then i could just go into extraction and fight people. Even the old map was terrible and way to big, that just led to a mouse and cat fight stratching way longer then it could.
Arena is a diffrent mode and it’s completly fine to fit/notfit some players.
Inspiration came obv. from WoW Arena design and i love it. “smallsized” hardcore pvp, with no choice then fighting.
i agree that this map favores some classes that can abuse the layers and i hope future arenas will atleast have diffrent mapdesigns to also be 1 layered with pillars. Just like WoW, every arena could favor a diffrent combo and i think that’s amazing.