Oh I forgot about the new map. The first point has a really terrible choke imo. Worse than Hanamura since you don't even have that small left window to use or rush in and hide indoors/behind obstacle like Hanamura/Hollywood/King's Row. It's really crammed to push and past that choke you're still pretty open to the defense attacks. Haven't played it too much so it's still just early opinions. The second point door should really not close. It's worse than Gibraltar's now first point where there's only 2 doors instead of 4, though the healthpacks do kinda help offense go in.
This map probably has the highest verticality of all ? I've had a lot of guilty fun playing Tracer. There's just so many nooks and crannies you can hide in and triple blink into a Pulse Bomb lol. (I'm still saying Pulse Bomb is the dumbest ult). Quite a lot of places to hide as Mercy too so yea.
Yep. On top of the fact that you're less likely to be bombarded by most of the team from above on Hanamura A's choke than Eichenwalde's, the choke unfolds into narrow
and uphill territory.
On Hanamura, once you're through, you're through, and the space is open enough that there are routes are around the high ground. The point has many entrances and is on a relatively even level wrt. the defending team. The flank routes in Hanamura are sparing but meaningful; in Eichenwalde they tend to be short and terminate nowhere useful, despite being plentiful.
You raise a good point that the door closing is really, really obnoxious too. It's a checkmark and an important defending point, people gonna die there. The castle has less room for manoeuvring towards the end than
King's Row and
Numbani, really.
(Being downhill matters because it's a lot harder to aim up on some characters and more importantly because of perspective and foreshortening: characters that are above you are rendered smaller and thus harder to headshot, whereas they have a nice view on you from above.)
Pharah is great for taking point A and, oddly, inside the castle, but I see her struggle a
lot in the first payload part because she's so easily taken down if she tries to leave the ground by any properly positioned defenders.