Scud121

Sadly, your right. Doesn't mean it shouldn't happen though. I would like to see the reinforcements amounts raised by 50% and decent bonuses for summoning your riders/Uber-Boss and Flyers. Currently, I generally have enough marks by the end of a battle to summon at least one of those, but since its over so fast, they don't even appear. Boosting the reinfocements would directly effect the length of the battle, provided decent defence is provided for the bosses. And TBH, if the opposing team zerg through, chainpull/OT the marshals and kill your boss, you have noone to blame but yourself.

 

Duilliath

Fancy seeing you here...

Have to say I don't remember a yeti boss on Alliance side. We had harpies and just needed to steal back a banner.
Probably still is up, as it's the quest for the trinket.

Should go try n see what he's about. Can't be much harder to solo than Murp or so.

Alliance can't defend the routes to Balinda, SH -and- SHGY.

The difference is that IB is -after- or -at- the chokepoint, SH is in front of it. I'd think Balinda is slightly harder to defend too, due to positioning, but in all honesty that's probably not too big a difference.

On top of that, I don't think I've ever seen Alliance reach SF before Horde manage to get there.

If we defend SH, you respawn @ IB - not FW. For you to respawn at FW, we'd have to cap IBGY first, which ain't happening unless a) Horde stop defense there or b) Alliance get a clue.
Neither is extremely likely.

Alliance here still thinks that capping IB is an instant loss - not much difference from your SF tale.

 

odie85

Starting on Friday, the queue was 4-5 minutes around 2 pm. By 6 pm, the queue jumped to 8-10 minutes, and by 10 pm it was around 15 minutes. While I am not sure that it is really Alliance not knowing how to play correctly in BG9, i beileve its just the Horde have figured out exactly what to do...depending on the group and if people are vocal. By vocal I mean, asking people to hearth back and defend, pushing forward, killing Balinda, saying X amount of allys at Y location. when people talked in BG chat, we won everytime, when people wouldnt call out help, we lost. I played about 20ish games over the weekend, and lost 3, and in 2 of the 3 losses, we had more bonus honor then Alliance.

I also noticed that horde was not looting enemy bodies, while its a habbit from when i used to do preforms, about 25 minutes into the game, my bags were full. So I hearthed back, turned in everything i had, (i was only doing turn ins for the easy rep, on friday i got 8k rep with Org) and the wing commander NPC's yelled out that I gave enough supplies for the Aerial Assault, I could even ask for a beacon but it wouldnt give it to me. Did they change this and not mention it?

 

Galanna

That's strange, i have already completed the flesh turnin for Mulveric once and Guse twice (even if there was only one time i could plant the beacon before the game ended), but i had not encountered this problem.

 

Myonax

Was your inventory full?

 

odie85

No they were not, everything that made my bags full, were turned in to each respective person. I will try again, and see if it was that my bags were full, or if I was just being an idiot.

 

khalid

The quests used to have a minimum faction, I cant remember what though. I notice you are a BE so might not have very good faction if you didnt do AV an awful lot.

 

Galanna

I know directly sending the commander into action requires Revered, and that for the beacon Honored works. I'm not sure Friendly is enough, but it is possible.

 

odie85

Well my armory link does work, but I'm 999/1000 exalted.

I tried it again last night, and the commander still wouldnt give me a beacon. I put in a ticket, and the GM says that BE's and Draenai sometimes cannot pick up the beacon. I went on an alt and tried it on them (orc hunter 999/1000 exalted) and the commander did give me a beacon. So maybe the instance server hiccups sometimes.

 

Calantus

I've been thinking of quitting WoW solely because of the new AV. It's now impossible for me to get decent honor without a premade. WSG/AB/EoTS have always been bad for honor without a premade and now AV is even worse than those 3. Infact this WSG weekend I spent a few hours in WSG because the 82 bonus honor I get per loss makes for faster honor than AV now. We even win a few! It's just... depressing. I need to gear up 2 characters but I can't find the energy to give a fuck anymore.

How can people see the highest population side quitting AV in large enough numbers that the minority side has 15 minute queues now (for BG9) and not see that there is a massive problem? That's for my BG anyway, and I hear the BG Mal'Ganis is on is the same way. It's not the AFKers either, they're still in there despite the anti-AFK measures. It's alliance being fed up with the gross imbalance of points that now goes on in AVs where one side dominates the other.

 

Aonea

How about the Alliance stop standing around with their epeen in their hands and start trying to earn their Honor? The Horde adapted to the new AV. We figured out what to do to win and we are doing it, while the Alliance still seem to hold onto the old way of doing things like their safety blanket, afraid to change anything.

You want honor, you want your wins? Then get in there and DO IT. In fact, many people have explicitly layed out in this thread and many others exactly how to do it to ensure wins for the Alliance every time. So get rid of this 'Poor me' BS attitude you have and get to it.

 

Kasi

No it is not wins for the alliance every time. It is wins for the alliance if the horde doesn't play smart. If alliance plays smart and horde doesn't, horde will lose. However if horde splits their forces and sends 15 to IB GY and the area around it and 25 to attack SH, then there is almost nothing alliance can do to win. This is not balanced, as people have said numerous times in this thread. This is very easy to see from the map geography in the middle. IB area is easily guarded at the chokepoint. Guarding that area just takes one clump of people. SH and its two surrounding objectives require 3 groups of alliance defenders. Hence the issue.

Alliance on many bgs has gotten around this by not contesting SH and just hoping that horde rushes through so fast that IBGY is taken, it turns into a race and alliance can win that. Especially if you have a small group who can backtrack and take things. Just retaking one of SH or IW usually can give alliance enough of an edge to kill Drek first, since its hard to pull Vandar with 3 WMs up, much harder than it is with 2 for most pugs.

Thankfully though most horde have realized that a big win fought between SP and IW is just too slow and not worth the time invested. Spend 30-40 minutes for a 500+ point win, or 10-12 minutes for a 350 point win?

 

Mode

The alliance in my BG (Nightfall) have come up with a rather innovative counter-strategy: They simply ride past Iceblood to FW and often straight into our base. Yes, the Horde can usually pick off a few as the zerg rides by, but not that many. By the time the alliance makes it to the relief hut, the Horde will have already tapped Stormhearth GY. Any alliance that dies will get knocked back to SP. If the Alliance manages to tap the relief hut, it's game over for the Horde. On the other hand, if the Horde mounts a successful defense at the relief hut the entire alliance O is obliterated and blown back to SP. It's pretty much double or nothing.

So you're probably saying to yourself, "But what if the Horde put up a defense at FW?" Then we wouldn't have one at Iceblood, now would we?

 

Calantus

You do realise there are 39 other people in AV right? I can't solo AV to victory. I never said the map was imbalanced or that alliance are at a disadvantage. That's not what this is if that's why you're so offended by my saying we lose all the time. I said that alliance on BG9 loses AV far too often for whatever reason and when they do we get very little points. I've tried herding the cats through this BG and while it works to an extent it still gives a very poor winrate because most people either don't listen, don't agree, or suck too much to pull it off. My honor has gone from 1-1.5k per hour down to around 300-500 per hour whereas horde honor in BG9 is basically the same. The funny thing is I actually work harder for that measely honor than I did before the patch.

EDIT: I was wrong, apparently horde queues on BG9 are 25 minutes now and still going up.

 

Sando

You've told us, as horde, how to win this BG? Wow thankyou for that, having gotten exalted on 2 characters on Alliance side AV, i completely missed how to actually play this game. The 'horde advice' in this thread has been to hold SH, play the same game as the horde, and it's been said probably a dozen times in this thread why horde have an advantage if that's done. This thread is degenerating into the WoW general forums, where even legitimate reasons for alliance losing or getting less honor are passed off with "qq lrn2play".

I mean really, basically you're saying to defend SH and the towers despite the disadvantages for alliance if they do this. This has been based of a few people saying 'yeah we did it this way and it worked well, don't know why we can't do it all the time'. This is because it's an inferior strategy, and when you've pulled it off it's been because the Alliance had a much better raid in that BG. Saying 'but it worked then, why not now', is like saying that a druid topped the DPS meters once, therefor all of them should be topping the DPS meters all the time, despite all of the legitimate reasons why they shouldn't. People listen to reason on that sort of thing, why have the concerns raised in this thread been passed off as Alliance whining?

Horde have a much better position for early game, Alliance have a much better position late game, which is blatantly obvious as soon as you've played a few games. Both sides should play to their strengths, it's just that when horde do that and win, alliance get 0 honor, when alliance do that and win, horde get 200+ bonus honor. I personally think it's the thought of going into a 20 minute game for no reward that is putting alliance off, not losing all the time. The win % hasn't really changed from what i've seen with the arrival of 2.3, it's just that now alliance basically gets no honor when they lose, and that's demoralising.

 

Symbul

EU-BG6 isn't like that at all. Horde win 50% at best (usually less) and it's rare to see Alliance even get less points than we do when Horde wins. I'm not sure why and how alliance are always pulling in more points than Horde is but they are.

Late night games are terrible as well because the horde AFKers/botters are in the 30+ every game. Alliance have their share of leeches but Horde don't have enough active players to even kill Balinda half the time, let alone cap a tower. I'm not exaggerating when I say 30+ either, it really is that many. I have plenty of time to count while I "defend our mine". Being the "hardcore" faction atm means having more players who are in it for Arena and aren't gonna fuck about wasting 100 hours in pug BGs for competitive gear, and get click bots to farm honor while they sleep instead.

Right now it seems to me that if both sides play like fucking planks then Alliance comes out ahead - just like old times - and that's what matters because that's how the unwashed masses do play most of the time. I wouldn't mind 600pt wins over the 0-62pt losses I get at 1am+.

 

Ngita

That is of course part of the problem. If a side feels they are going to lose people dont put out the effort Even if they arent activily afking they are just riding along with the group. When you see 15 people ride past a untaken tower to go sit outside Dreks room and wait for towers to turn its prettty sad.

I do understand that battlegroups differ. BG9 comes down to two gametypes. Enough people hit IB in force then race to relief hut and it comes down to a 50/50 <15 min race . Or the Horde succesfully wipe the alliance O at IB/Galv and its a 600/20 30 min fight .

As for honor just trotting my main and various alts through the BG daily is enough. I should easily collect the 30-40k honor I need for season 4 by the time it rolls around.

 

Pyre

I played about two dozen AVs on Saturday on my druid, none took longer than about 15 minutes to complete. The general Alliance strategy was to at least tag every gy and tower on the way down to Drek, but only defend the relief hut and the two FW towers. If the Horde decided to retake graveyards further north, it was largely unopposed. Once the FW towers burned and the relief hut was taken, it was a full-out Drek zerg. If there were any concentrations of Horde on defense, they were obliterated by a 35+ zerg. Alliance lose surprisingly few people when attacks are 3:1 and 4:1. Those that do die before a southern gy is taken respawn very far north, but since there's no defense up there anyway, they run around the Horde offense if possible and head south to rejoin the zerg as quickly as possible.

Alliance lost exactly two of those AVs, both because Horde managed to kill Vann before Drek died. There were several that I didn't have any HKs at all. We never attempted Galv, certainly never bothered with defense, and always lost Balinda very quickly. If the Alliance advantage is in the endgame, it seems to make sense to get to the endgame as quickly as possible, even if that means abandoning shinies like the extra honor from Galv. With instant Alliance queues (boy is that different from when I pvp'd 18 months ago), churning instances seems to generate more honor than actually engaging Horde players.

 

Fleebenworth

Several other posters have already described the differences between the horde and alliance layouts and why we must forfeit SHB and the like. SHB, Belinda and SHGY simply cannot be defended in the same manner as horde defends the Galv-IBT-IBGY combo. In fact, in the vast majority of games, SHB is capped before the front of the alliance even makes it across the field of strife. If that does not scream 'map imbalance' I'm not sure what does. Yes, the alliance need to place more emphasis on defense, but the map as it stands right now is skewed heavily against it.

 

Morph

I play on the Alliance and we win at least half of the matches. Saying that, Horde don't very often defend at Iceblood as has been suggested here. The one cardinal sin for an Ally is to take Iceblood GY. We tend to play very aggressively and have 10 or so go straight to FW, and we don't want the opposition spawning in defensive positions. Same if horde take SHGY. Also, the game length goes up for both sides if either of those gys are taken, so less honor.

Reasoning for this is that if an Ally dies before FWRH falls they will respawn at Dun Baldar or in the tunnel and be into a defensive zerg position. Depending on timing this will often result in driving the horde back out of Dun Baldar and pushing south down the road towards SH. If FWRH falls we let the horde through to take SPGY and SPAS and defend the DB bunkers to the last. Once the DBGY falls any ally spawns at FWRH and immediately joins the Drek zerg. Same goes for the horde in reverse. Mobility is much more important than in the old AV. The other change is that we don't defend FWGY after we have FWRH. Usually we're lucky enough that a hapless hordey comes past and takes it for us

I'm also amazed that so few use their AV trinket to return home. It's incredibly useful. As a rogue I try to defend SH Bunker (or more often to attack it, as it's the only bunker/tower that is closer to the opposition than the owners). If the Dun Baldar bunkers are taken early I usually trinket back to DB and retake them, hoping to send the offending horde back to IB GY. Once they are their 'en masse' and the bunkers don't look like they can be retaken I either suicide to get a free ride to FW or I head for the middle bunkers if they are still salvageable.

With the exception of the Horde entrance being a quarter way up the map and the Alliance entrance being as far north as you can get, I think it's reasonably balanced. If either side commit too many resources to one area they are vulnerable somewhere else and there lies the opportunity. I never get bored of it now.

 

◊ zeidrich

Saturday on Whirlwind I played about 12 AVs on my mage, and won 10 of them. This weekend the strategy had changed to a race, with all horde on Offense. This meant no contest on our offense and we would: Kill Galv, while people go and flip everything from IBGY to FWRH. Alliance normally had 10-15 people on Defense, which meant we slowed horde offense enough to win the race.

The games we lost were because we were too agressive. We didn't defend IBT or maybe TP, couldn't kill Drek with as many warmasters, and didn't have time to let them recap.

My favorite games were by far the ~25 minute 500 honor back'n'forths over the 12 minute 350 honor rushes. But I doubt I'll often see them again. As for pure honor gain, the rushes are the best whether you're winning or losing. Assuming both sides leave each other alone, the honor of losing a race is still better than the honor of winning a game properly.

After those 12 games I had to queue myself up for WSG/EotS/AB just because I really wanted to fight players.

 

Alhena

My experience matches yours, zeidrich. On my battlegroup, any PvP in AV is incidental. Both teams just rush for the general, with little or no defense. It's over in 10-15 minutes, and it's somehow even worse than the old PvE rushes. At least before the changes a people were willing to play the kind of stubborn defense could make the Horde earn Stormpike (and in my opinion D was far more fun than O); now everyone just charges south.

 

◊ zeidrich

It's all a matter of Honor though. The new trinkets are 30,000 honor. The full s1 set is a boatload. The belt/boots/bracers are nearly 50,000. Even doing rush wins, you still make only like 1200 honor per hour. Assuming you've got everything else you want, and just want to get the upgrades boots/belt/bracers and trinket, you're looking at 67 hours of AV in order to get it. Or like 228 games at ~350 honor each. There's really no wonder people stop caring about the game itself.

I kind of wish that blizzard would have left the bugged daily honor at 4,000. So you could focus on winning 1 of 4 BGs rather than losing the same BG over and over again as fast as you can as the primary method of honor acquisition.

 

diospadre

This only works if both sides have instant queues, and with horde facing 30min and growing wait times, it is in our best interest to ensure that you don't receive 1 point of bonus honor.

 

Kasi

Actually it would be in your best interest to let alliance win some honor, thus actually bringing more alliance back into the games and shortening your wait times. All you are doing is ensuring that your queues get longer and longer. If you make sure alliance never gets one point of bonus honor I hope you are prepared for your queues to go to 1 hour or even longer. In effect all you are doing is killing AV for your BG.