From best to worst:

1. Cataract
2. Leviathan
3. Zikurat
4. Prison
5. Crucible
6. Exile

I play the rest too rarely to judge them.

 

 

On a map like Cataract it's just about collision. Pile on a flag, cap the flag, hold the flag until you lock or have to go home. Late game it shifts to suicide runs on base portal capping. I don't mean to talk down on the map because as you can see I do feel it's the best one currently, but I think it promotes a very simplistic style of play. It's just dogpile, dogpile, dogpile.

On Leviathan you actually weigh the benefit of war score against increased enemy exp if you're unable to punish someone for double farming. Do you want to take the side portals before you can push the tower which protects the double farmer? oftentimes not.

Also Leviathan doesn't baby the citadel the way Cataract does. On Cataract you'll be pushing the middle or sides at war rank 5 and a two level advantage and the other team will still be running off to cap your HP flag or portals, and not because it's especially clever or advantageous to take those portals, but because they know it's going to take you 5 minutes to plow through four archer towers and four standard towers when you have a constant fear of the other team swooping in behind you. The flags aren't terribly important until giants (or at least cats) hit the field everything else is just so unimportant. On Levi if you run off to go claim the artifact shop your citadel is going to lose 1/4 of its health by the time you get back. You may actually be unable to save it in time, and once you do commit to defense you can't just pirouette back and forth between the crystal and front lane on Levi the way you can on Cataract.

 

Cataract is a forgiving map with very little strategy. It's a map on which a weaker team can claim victory with a single flag lock. I've won a lot of games I should not have on that map. Leviathan is a brutal map that punishes poor decisions at every stage in the game from early side caps to choosing the wrong lane to wandering off to cap flags when your citadel is exposed. You can't make a hail mary pass and win the game on levi.

Leviathan is an excellent map.

Wait a second here...Exile is teh best kthxbai.

I do like The Brothers a lot.  But I rarely get to play it because whenever I play with that many people it lags to hell.

Best to Worst :

 

 

1. Cataract

2. Prison

3. Cruicible

4. Zikurat

5. Leviathan

6. Exile

7. Mandala

8. Brothers

Or does it make it easier for the light to protect both ? Works both ways - not a huge difference.

Leviathan is too slow paced for me. I hate how long the walk to the citadel is. If they made the lanes shorter it would be an awesome map but it doest. It makes the map boring imo.

First of all, not everything in this forum has to revolve around being helpful to GPG - some people actually enjoy using this for discussion/opinions and their own enjoyment.

Second of all, I care about a numbered list. It gives me and GPG a inside look at which maps were/are the most successful and enjoyable. Once GPG know which maps they were good - and which were shit, they will learn from their mistakes and successes and use this to help make enjoyable maps in the future. (E.G - they now know not to make maps which have only one lane of minions and HP crystals next to their portal flags).

They dont care about long heated discussions that last pages and pages about which maps are the best/worst and for what reasons - they want a structured and organised list of good/bad maps so they know what. They only have time for the latter. This is the one thing I learnt from Frogboy in the beta.

Thanks for your contribution anyway

Edit~
And if you look really carefully - you will see people arent just giving lists but are saying what they like and dont like about the maps. E.G. me saying I dont like the long/boring lanes and Leviathan and you saying you like them.

1. Zik: Lots of different things to do there.

2. Levi: Great with 4v4.

3. Brothers: It's like 2 games in one.

4. Mandala: Layout makes for interesting strategies.

5. Exile: It's different.

6. Cataract: Portal flags are way, way too important.

7. Prison: Usually decided within the first few minutes.

8. Crucible: Takes forever.

 

If you wanted to provide a concise list then putting it in reverse order probably isn't the most logical approach then.

Really though your list doesn't match mine at all, polynomial's list doesn't match yours, and kitkun's doesn't either. We're all just offering completely different favorites without explanation as though they were flavors of ice cream, not the sums of their distinguishable features with both good and bad points that could be incorporated into the next map or excluded from it.

The playability for 3v3. Which is basically the size, and perhaps also a "safe" tower near the flags in the beginning.

60% of all custom games are played on this map, thus a bit of more chance for diversity would be nice.