1. I'm thinking of the mythic/heroic cycle. Hero ends up separated from hearth and home, hero faces a series of trials, the hero gets torn down and suffers, but then the hero rises, there's atonement, and finally the hero returns home. I think Gail's aiming for something like that here, and this is the start of an ugly period in Diana's life that she will triumph over before returning home. 1. B. The last time I remember thinking "the writer is trying to do something Epic, in the mold of the heroic cycle" was Devin Grayson's Nightwing, with Blockbuster dying and everything. So I really hope Gail doesn't linger for too long in telling this story.
2. Ares went down way too easily. I know that part of the impact was meant to be just how abruptly he was taken out, but... he's Wonder Woman's oldest and most powerful foe. And yet killing him was as easy as killing Maxwell Lord. I think Wonder Woman's foes badly need to be built up, and I don't think this makes Ares look like a particularly dangerous foe. And since I wasn't wowed by Cheetah or Psycho in this arc either (oddly I thought Cheetah's appearance in Secret Six used her better), I don't think this did a good job building up her existing foes.
3. I'm really not loving the Hephaestus cannon, sorry. I don't get why it deserved the name "Hephaestus cannon". It was an unusually large and fancy gunpowder and cannon-ball canon. I preferred the Amazons that could fight an army of OMACs.
That said, there are definitely some things that I liked in this issue.
But... that ending. I just don't know about this. I'm completely with bluefall in saying Wonder Woman needs her gods like Captain America needs America. We're dealing with "Nomad" here. I just don't know.