Curse

JR · Feb 16, 2007, 02:00 AM // 02:00

CA/TA Map Guides -- D'Alessio Arena (Annihilation)

Also known as:
"The beach map"

General Layout

The D'Alessio Arena is a diverse map, with open areas, a rocky elevation connected to a ramp by a bridge, hiding a secluded grove with a poisonous swamp and narrow alleys digging through the rocky elevation. Due to the positioning of the spawn points most of this diversity typically goes ignored as both teams just slug it out at the beach around the ramp and bridge, making them practical center of the map. This map is also poorly mirrored, giving each side somewhat different terrain around their bases.

Both bases (A, B) open up to the beach, divided by the long ramp into seperate beach sections (I, H), with H being the larger of the two. The two beach sections are connected by a passage between the rocky elevation and the ramp, spanned by a bridge (D). The beaches slope down along the ramp towards the water in the west, where the access point to the ramp lies almost against the water line (F). Over the ramp and passage lies an elevated platform (E), from which a forked path leads downward into a grove with a poisonous swamp (C). From this grove, two exits on the north and south side of the grove loop back to the bases.

The Maps

Terrain Quality

The terrain on the D'Alessio Arena is smooth throughout, with the exception of impassable trees dotting the land side of the beaches. For the south beach (H) these trees are spaced out across the grassy part of the beach, for the north beach (I) they're situated closer towards D, and clumped up to the point where kiting through them can be a serious pain for a melee ranged character. One tree isn't likely to get a character stuck, but it's easy to misjudge the yields between two such trees and a third player; ofcourse this also means the person kiting can get wedged in, so whichever side you're on, stay alert there.

Hazards

The D'Alessio Arena has a poisonous swamp (C) which reapplies the Poisoned condition every 3 seconds on anyone standing in it, causing 4 pips of health degeneration (8 health loss per second). A protection monk using Mend Ailment can attempt to improve the skill's healing efficiency by adding Poisoned to whichever other conditions he's already suffering from, and if your team is better prepared to deal with the poison, you can use the swamp to kite melee-ranged characters around in for a slight advantage. Such a trade-off becomes more attractive if you can bait multiple melee-ranged characters in for an uneven poison spread, but always make sure you can survive the 4 pips of health degeneration on top of whatever damage you were already taking. In most matches however the secluded grove and its poisonous swamp won't ever be a factor due to its far-off location; trying to move the fight towards it for some marginal advantage is typically not worth it.

Strategy

The common engagement pattern on the D'Alessio Arena is to move straight towards the passage between the ramp and the rocky elevation (A->D, B->D). Offensive casters hoping to launch their initial volley of spells uninterrupted can break line-of-sight by moving against the ramp, casters from base A have the added option to hide behind the rocky elevation on the left side of the passage, which due to asymmetric map design offers them a sharp enough corner in this wall.

Fighting on the beaches

The beach is the most open area on this map, making it an attractive, straight-forward battlefield for most teams, and any ranger-heavy team should try to force a fight on the southern beach section (H), being significantly larger and having fewer options for casters to break line-of-sight. Casters staying near the ramp can hide around the corners to break line-of-sight, which especially against ranger spikers can cause at least a few spikes to hit bedrock. When in the northern beach section (I), there is a narrow but deep trench in the northern wall (G), which is perfect for taking cover in against line-of-sight attacks, with sharp corners allowing you to more easily outmaneuver rangers repositioning themselves to harass you. Just beware of melee ranged opponents blocking you inside.

If the open area fight turns out as a disadvantage, use the passage underneath the bridge (D) as a chokepoint for a closer combat fight, move onto the ramp (remember that any non-line-of-sight spells can hurt you just as easily when cast over the edge of the ramp, which can give the opposing team free shots while you reposition yourself) or move towards the secluded grove, using the tunnels as chokepoints.

Going up top

Rangers and occasionally casters can be found moving off on their own on this map, attempting to position themselves on top of the bridge (D) or on the rocky elevation (E). The advantages of this approach are height advantage (increased range and damage for rangers) and relative protection from melee-ranged characters; the disadvantages are a long preparation time (exclusion from the fight while you get into position) and the risk of being excluded from the fight yet again if the opponent repositions himself away from the center or out of sight from you. When facing a team that splits up for this purpose, simply move out of range of the 'elevated' opponents: out of casting range for casters, and depending on the bowtype used by rangers either break line of sight by moving against the rocky elevation or create enough distance by moving away from the center.

A more suitable purpose for the ramp (F) bridge (D) and terrace (E) is as chokepoints; with the full team moving onto them you can force a fight on a long, narrow path (since if they do not follow you onto the ramp and cast from the beach, you can always fall back out of their range behind E to recover), which makes area control tools such as traps more effective. The boulder at the center of the terrace (E) forks the path briefly, and works very well to break line-of-sight by moving around it. Be aware that you sacrifice mobility by fighting in tight spots - the only way to kite here is forward or backward, and most of the time both routes take you further away from your team than is desirable.

The bridged passage suffers from all the usual traits that bridges in Guild Wars share - a player on the bridge can bodyblock a player below and vice-versa, traps on top will get triggered by players below and vice-versa, melee attacks ignore height difference (they merely require you to move against your target manually since auto-move does not take this peculiarity into account), etc. The odd z-axis implementation also causes some peculiarities when teleporting - teleporting to a position underneath the bridge (Rebirth, Consume Corpse, etc.) will actually place you on top of the bridge instead of below it, which in certain instances can ruin your day.

Faking out

In a common engagement, if you feel you're going to be a high priority target (e.g. monk) with less to do at the start than the rest (i.e. monk), you can make a feint towards F at the start. If you notice opposing players mirroring your move (suspecting you're either coming around the other side, or plan to go up top) and start heading to F as well on the other side of the ramp, wait until they're about halfway, then move to D as normal. If your team pushes into the opponent's beach section, this can give you a window of up to 20 seconds where the baited players waste time getting back to the fight, giving you a short starting advantage.

-[iQ]Silmor