"New" Pearl River Thoughts?

[Rexxie 10,788]

I like this map. It's pretty rough on thin TDs or scouts unless a lot of things go your way, but it's fun on heavies and mediums.

The middle of the map is hyper-important. The other flanks feel like distractions, especially the north (the old heavy brawl zone). The ability for mid to not only use the plateau to support field, but to use the branching roads to both defend base & ruin anything that tries to cross the north is probably overkill. I do not think I have ever lost a game after healthily taking mid.

South can be a gamble; my main problem with it is that it's too easy to stall out and provides very little arty cover. If you can ensure it's not going to stall out (3 med platoon vs few tds) you can absolutely take it and win the game before mid is decided. Usually it's a last resort you take if you made the mistake of running a bad TD, though.

North is pretty & useless. The arty cover there is nice though, so if you cant contest the middle for whatever reason & there's a lot of arty, this is probably your best bet. Farm some HP here and then flex mid. Reminds me a lot of Glacier's heavy zone - no map dominance and very hard to push from, but safe and can usually be flexed out of.

 

[Wanderjar 298]

going to be interesting if this hits CW rotation though

[sr360 4,988]

BLECCCHHH.

(I play a lot of lights and fast meds these days)

[lavawing 498]

3 hours ago, Rexxie said:

I like this map. It's pretty rough on thin TDs or scouts unless a lot of things go your way, but it's fun on heavies and mediums.

The middle of the map is hyper-important. The other flanks feel like distractions, especially the north (the old heavy brawl zone). The ability for mid to not only use the plateau to support field, but to use the branching roads to both defend base & ruin anything that tries to cross the north is probably overkill. I do not think I have ever lost a game after healthily taking mid.

South can be a gamble; my main problem with it is that it's too easy to stall out and provides very little arty cover. If you can ensure it's not going to stall out (3 med platoon vs few tds) you can absolutely take it and win the game before mid is decided. Usually it's a last resort you take if you made the mistake of running a bad TD, though.

North is pretty & useless. The arty cover there is nice though, so if you cant contest the middle for whatever reason & there's a lot of arty, this is probably your best bet. Farm some HP here and then flex mid. Reminds me a lot of Glacier's heavy zone - no map dominance and very hard to push from, but safe and can usually be flexed out of.

 

1. be a fast heavy
2. rrr and go mid
3. bump into mediums
4. flex back to the north to clean up
5. game won 

 

[MagicalFlyingFox 1,022]

I drove down the road from the north to the middle then up the enemy road to the middle and appeared behind 5 enemy tanks on the north.

 

Farmed the fuck out of them.

 

Map isn't horrible, and if you can pull that off, its fucking hilarious.

[GehakteMolen 2,063]

I like it, one of the better maps atm (also says enough about the other maps...)

I never understood why they removed it in the first place.

Now erlenberg, after 4 (?) reworks, that one should just be removed, only reason its still in, is because its one of the oldest maps, and thus more a matter of pride as logic, but it STILL suks dik!!

[kolni 69,670,872]

only had it 4-5 times so haven't figured the map out quite yet so i'll give it a few more games to try and find a solid opening instead of having to react to everything - so far i've felt out of place most games

[DrWeb7_1 7]

I like the soundtracks for this map, personally. The map design is good as well, but looks like the curvature of my hands does not allow me to play acceptably efficient.

[GehakteMolen 2,063]

3 hours ago, kolni said:

only had it 4-5 times so haven't figured the map out quite yet so i'll give it a few more games to try and find a solid opening instead of having to react to everything - so far i've felt out of place most games

seems to be mostly the same as old Pearl River, heavy side and mid are connected with road, from which you can shoot the open zone in front of flag.

Main change is, flag used to be open, making cap impossible if ppl camp mid, the houses in the middle got removed, and open side got changed, but i never went there anyway, so dunno

[Balthazars 210]

I've had it quite a bit, mostly all in mediums or lights, so I have always gone mid, which seems to work pretty well so I find myself agreeing with the proposal that the mid seems to be super important. From there you can either farm the rice field, or risk poking around the hill to the heavy brawling area.

It's certainly one of the better maps as it doesn't feel like a map that if it loads in you're thinking "aw, ****" just because you're in a particular type of tank.

[crapcannon 67]

Just came back after a 2 year hiatus. Have not encountered Pearl River yet.

Is there a link to all the current maps that are being used?

I came back when I heard you can ban 1-2 maps. So I banned Ensk.

[Snoregasm2 646]

1 hour ago, crapcannon said:

Just came back after a 2 year hiatus. Have not encountered Pearl River yet.

Is there a link to all the current maps that are being used?

I came back when I heard you can ban 1-2 maps. So I banned Ensk.

Make sure you turn encounter off then as map bans only work for standard mode, meaning you can still get Ensk on encounter if enabled. 

[crapcannon 67]

12 hours ago, Snoregasm2 said:

Make sure you turn encounter off then as map bans only work for standard mode, meaning you can still get Ensk on encounter if enabled. 

Yeah that's one thing I never forgot to do.

[DrWeb7_1 7]

15 hours ago, crapcannon said:

Is there a link to all the current maps that are being used?

Map exclusion menu represents the list of all maps available in the game. You can also give a shot to an article to official Wargaming Wiki, but some data may be incorrect or/and outdated.

[Archaic_One 1,853]

I never thought it needed to be removed, they just needed to repair some of the OP TD camps overwatching the cap.  It was always one of my favorite maps because you could actually flank properly.

[DrWeb7_1 7]

3 hours ago, Archaic_One said:

I never thought it needed to be removed

Same applies to Windstorm, in my opinion. That was a decent map that got scrapped after update 1.0/0.9.23.

[GehakteMolen 2,063]

19 hours ago, DrWeb7_1 said:

Same applies to Windstorm, in my opinion. That was a decent map that got scrapped after update 1.0/0.9.23.

Yeah, windstorm was also fine, and certainly better as fucking erlenberg or sand river...

[DrWeb7_1 7]

17 minutes ago, GehakteMolen said:

as fucking erlenberg

I excluded that map right after that function became available.

[GotTank 8]

One easy way to fix some of these maps is to make more of the map usable. For example how they opened up mid. I've said that since release - 30-60% of each map is either mountains, ocean or closed off city blocks. Then there's the two main chokepoints where people stare at each other for million of years until someone gets bored and suicides. All they need to do is have more ways to flank and maneuver, which makes scouts and lights more viable. I think this map is an example of this - it's a lot less annoying now and battles have better flow. 

On 8/30/2020 at 11:19 PM, DrWeb7_1 said:

Map exclusion menu represents the list of all maps available in the game. You can also give a shot to an article to official Wargaming Wiki, but some data may be incorrect or/and outdated.

Thanks for the link. I just watched an old replay from Stalingrad, could not remember what the map was called until i looked it up just now. No idea why they took that one out, it was actually decent without a lot of wasted space. It seems they remove shitty maps instead of fixing what is wrong about them, and replace them with new shitty maps - rinse and repeat 

[8_Hussars 348]

I like the new Pearl River.  Concur that the middle courtyard is important.  You get to farm the heavies/meds that want to fight the center lane, you get to farm almost the entire center of the map from the upper courtyards and lower road, you get to farm the backs of the center lane if they fall back, and you can escape if pushed/counter pushed without taking fall damage.  

[SkittlesOfSteeI 1,680]

I miss the ability to rush the enemy's back road up top and farm the hell out of slow nerds but I guess thats the kind of thing they want to reduce because its frustrating to deal with. Otherwise yeah it feels the same and I love how mid is opened up