Sanctuary one of the few S tier maps. Incredible. Truly an amazing creation.
Northshire good too.
I am not a fan of: Deathrose (4) Twisted Meadows (4) Fountain of Manipulation (4) Thunder Lake w/ Taverns (6) Neon City (6)
Also any map where Undead is the best is usually a trash map (like TM or Gnoll Wood) for FFA.
The weird one that I really love is Banewood Bog. Probably one of my favorite maps of all time. I don't remember which version of it though, but it was the first version I played (with the dragon roosts).
I like Tinker first, Panda first, DH first, Alch first, or Kotg first here. They all have their advantages.
I think the most ridiculous thing you can get here is a high level tinker with a blink stick, but a crown of kings on a DH is also pretty cool. Honestly I have seen some really good Warden play here too, as she benefits tremendously from the center of the map—the problem being she is more difficult to use.
Because you have so many different options, I think you should just choose based on the match ups that you see in the loading screen.
x2 human players: Tinker x2 elf players: DH x2 UD players: Alch or Kotg into Alch x2 Orc players: Whatever you want, just don't fall behind in levels. 1 x All races, I'd go Tinker or Alch if the Undead is like DV cause screw dealing with buffed DL / Gargs without transmute. If you are lucky the Undead spawns next to you and you can just walk over to their base and they have nowhere to run, and you can target other races with your first hero.
-Getting 3 Orbs out at minute ~10 or so is a huge power spike. It lets you creep very quickly while having 50 food of pure production (4 gold mines and massive lumber income, zero army or a single bear only), especially magic immune creeps. It also gives you a ton of pressure against people when they bother you on the map. Often I can just kill a weaker player with 3 heroes at this point in the game, as early as minute 10-12. The damage is just too high for such an early point in the game. 177 total damage per your heroes auto attack [(9 * 6 + 5) * 3], this in conjunction with Haze/BoF/Treants/(Rockets/Manaburn/Acid Bomb), and double staff tricks / rejuv.
-It allows for extremely strong defense while tanking at your moonwells. The pure damage the poison does really minimizes the length someone can spend at your base. It's nice if you need some time to build an army while fighting off teamers.
-It lets you forgo hippogryphs versus Human and Orc, and go pure Chimeras + MG. This pushes the ground damage to an unreasonably high amount. Triple Orb'd, roared hero with x2 AoE spells can beat a large amount of Wyverns or Gryphon/Hawk/Gyro, especially with a MG.
-This early advantage pushes your heroes to quite high levels and the momentum really carries you.
-You can sell the Orb much later, especially on the Alchemist, if enemy heroes start getting to level 7, 8, 9, etc. I'd probably prefer a periapt vs Undead in the very late game, but versus Human, Elf and especially Orc (where cyclone carries me), I would prefer the Orbs.
I know the quality of opponents isn't the greatest right now, but this is by far the best winrate I've ever had. I'm like 160-3 right now, and I do face a decent opponent here and there. I can sometimes finish out games under the 17 minute mark (or faster) even with a strong player in the game, or at least lock an extremely strong spot with 4-5 mines and triple 6 heroes. The speed that the Orb's provide by just that extra bit of power while hoarding for a couple minutes is, in my experience, substantial.
Sorry I had to go out of town. I will try to play it from my laptop, but if it isn't gonna work out closer to the date I will let you guys know if I need a sub.
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