I do not consider PBall to be War2 either. It, more like War3's Dota maps. There are core War3 players that will tell you flat out, Dota maps are NOT war3, as they should not be because it has nothing at all to do with the RTS War3. It's a completely different game in itself. So much so that the map creators actually LEFT Blizzard because Blizzard didnt like their map creations and they started their own company and made "Dota 2".
I do agree that Pball "can" assist a Gow player with unit control but not in enough situations where it would really make a difference. The only instance it would come in handy is with 9/s9 cat battles where the cats have 1HP, something I've done many times myself but it is rare. It can also happen with any of the neighborly spots but its so rare that it's almost insignificant. Trying to protect a cat with footment/ogres/whatever that are practically dead IS a skill, but nothing thats really going to make you improve overall in a real War2 game no matter what the map is. How is that going to help you in B2B for example? It's not.
IMO new players shouldnt even know PBall exists until after they've mastered at least Gow BNE (ef or f) heh. They should actually be playing the Campaigns first, then play some Gow BNE (ef or F) games with the CPUs, then online with players, and then classic Gow (ef or f but with players, not CPUs of course). To me thats the proper recipe to make a great war2 player. I think BNE should be played first because it slowly introduces the player to proper building placement. It's hard to learn placement with things like roads running through the middle of your town
Classic Gow is an advanced version of BNE. Many good players have followed this path. Not sure of many Pballers who could stand a chance vs someone like Swift in ANY map let alone gow. This is an example of someone who followed this exact recipe, there are lots of other examples.
How many PBall maps were hosted on the blizzard servers? 0
How many KPud maps were hosted on the blizzard servers? All of them
Case closed. PBall is a different game.