Hello Darkfang, I promised a look at the map once I found time, here is my 'review':
Review - Graveblight
(Version August 11th 2023)
Description: Graveblight is a thematically coherent custom melee map. The map features strong creeps, customized item drops as well and neutral hostile buildings that give flavor to the grave-themed map.
Terrain: The map's terrain is visually pleasing and sufficient for a melee game, though at times it can feel slightly empty, especially in the open areas.
Layout: As a mirrored melee map the layout is fair to both players, however, there are various aspects that affect the layout in annoying ways: some creep camps are located at the end (or after) narrow passages (Mercenary Camps, Village Bandits) and the middle area, despite being a thematically nice twist on the map is quite hard to reach: not only is it blocked by creep camps, its also a very narrow pathway for your army to walk through.
Creeps: The creep camps are very strong, starting from the easiest camps (both level 8) with Envenomed Weapons really punishing the players hard. I'd argue a little too hard. Almost every single creep camp features some form of slow, stun, or other crowd control, making the already tough creep camps even tougher and somewhat of a struggle. In my play I never even challenged the hardest creep camps as they are too hard to contest: The middle camp total level is 42 and features 4 creeps that will summon skeletons (8 skeletons) the moment you attack it due to the hostile building, increasing the total level to 50. The narrow entrance to the middle makes it virtually impossible to fall back once you have initiated the fight. The item drops from creeps overall are too numerous: Heroes' inventories quickly fill up with low-tier permanent items which quickly becomes a nuisance.
Gameplay: From a gameplay perspective, the layout is quite straightforward as strong creeps essentially block the middle area of the map. The extensions are wide open for an easy attack. The large scale of the map encourages creeping, but due to the creep camps being so powerful, players will often find their army severely wounded or killed, requiring a fallback to the base, extending the play duration drastically. The unguarded Marketplaces and Merchants are strong spots on the map, however, due to their placement they serve no very interesting gameplay purpose: players are very unlikely to face each other at them. The low gold amount in the starting gold mines further encourage players to take their time expanding their bases and collect force for a final strike, otherwise they will find themselves in a really bad spot that is hard to recover from.
Recommendations:
While I can see universally strong creeps as a feature of the map, I think you have slightly gone over with this. Take another look at the creep camp power levels (especially what abilities the camps have) and make adjustments. The terrain doesn't offer much strategic points - a wild idea would be to move the unguarded triple-shops to the center and make two graveyards (with slightly weaker creeps) on the sides instead). This would make it more likely for the players to clash without a direct attack taking place.
Also, I'd revisit the item drops and make adjustments accordingly - especially considering how strong the creeps are, the item drops feel often quite disappointing.