I recently played this map a few times with my friends, and found a few things that I wanted to suggest. I didn't read the 169 pages of comments, so some things might have been suggested before, though.
- I find the skill placement in the menu to the lower right to be very unintuitive. On my keyboard, as is the case on all other keyboards I know of, D and F are located below E and R. However, in the menu on the lower right the D and F spells are located above the Q, W, E and R spells. When I played the priest, I used W and D as "those two damage spells I spam", and oftentimes I confused the two, wanting to use W when D was off cooldown. This is because D is below W on my keyboard, and my brain just confused the patterns. Therefore, I would suggest swapping the second and third row in the menu to reflect the layout of a keyboard. Maybe also move D and F to the right, and the ability level up submenu to the left of them. This would be a lot more intuitive to relate spells and spell cooldowns to what my left hand is doing on the keyboard. While this might be a really weird thing for more experienced players, I think it is beneficial in the long run.
- Summons appear to mostly just be in the way. They clutter the map with models that block movement, and I think this is detrimental to a map that consists mostly of narrow corridors. I fully recognize that summoning builds are a substantial part of hero design, but still think that it causes problems. I see that they can soak up hits to divert damage away from the heroes, and that the reduced mobility is the cost for this, but wonder if the reduced mobility is worth it especially with many summons. I should note that I played this only once, with a hunter using the spirit wolf shoulderguards and a murloc summoning naga, and have since told my coplayers that I refuse to play in a group that builds for summoning. Would it be possible to at least partially make summons without collision and click-through? This would recude the problem drastically, while also giving the possibility to have these summons soak hits. It would merely aid to dampen the effect of both positive and negative aspects in very heavy summoning scenarios.
- I think it is a shame that some things are hidden behind RNG barriers. I played through the entire map twice, once solo and once with friends. I then read online that both doors in the masters chamber simply require luck to open, together with a few other things that just require luck. It was somewhat frustrating to not have acces to these parts of the game, simply because the required items did not drop. Even when finishing the game, it feels incomplete. This is a point I assume has been brought up before, and that you might fundamentally disagree with, but I still wanted to bring it up.
- My backpack is cluttered with items that only add backpack skills. I think this limits backpack space too much, since I carry a phase teleporter, the moon key and the pickaxe, recuding my space by half. PErhaps it would make sense to, upon obtaining the moon key, give the moon key spell to all backpacks (of all players), and consuming the key, i.e. not adding it to the backpack. There are not many situations where the players are so spread out to warrant that only one player can open moon key doors, in my opinion. The same goes for the pickaxe. Only the phase transporter would be exempt from this, as it is a bought item. In the end, inventory space was simply a bit too limited due to these items, especially when quest items become involved together with gate/chest keys.
- There are a few grammatical errors or other mistakes:
1. In the tooltip for Colossus Smash, it should be "gains" instead of "gainst"
2. In the tooltip for Thunder Clap, it should say that the damage is dealt to enemies (i.e. "[...] dealing damage (+75% of Strength) to enemies [...]"), as it then refers to "them" in "their auto-attacks", without specifying who "they" are.
I have encountered a possible bug where using Colossus Smash applies the miss debuff even when used in Battle Stance. However, I do not know if the miss chance is just 0%, and the debuff is applied for convenience. Also, This was only on one of the murlocs in the second trashpack after the second ressurrection stone. I might have accidentally triggered the stance swap twice, and used colossus smash in between.
Otherwise, I think the map is incredibly well done, and it really shows that about 10 years of development are behind it. I really like the replay value that is has, in particular due to the interplay between heroes, causing me to use a different hero depending on what my teammates pick.