it certainly should! A nice PvP guild is starting to emerge on our server (finally), and we run org AV's (and other BG's) with them constantly. Though there is not Q as group option, there are ways to get a majority of your group into the same AV. I only wish blizzard would bring back the Q as group option for AV. And yes, oh so true, defending gets you diddly for HK honor.

Yes, we play premades. 0 honor horde games are not typics, however most games are about 12 mins and horde get very little. (though > 0)

Imo que as a group in AV will just make AV like the other BG's, especially during AV weekend, where teams just steamroll over pugs. I do not understand why people push for this unless they arent playing to have fun games, but just fast honor/tokens.

I think the fast in or out, win or lose mentality can be summed up as this: to compete in arenas you really need the best equipment. I like some BG action, but the amount you have to do BG's to acquire each seasons items, now a neck, ring, 3 armor pieces, and a VERY expensive trinket means you have to at a minimum cap out (75k) every season. BG's are fun in general, however having to grind BG's for 100+ hours EVERY season, on EVERY toon is just plain not fun at all. THAT is why the win/lose but do it fast mentality exist and why there are so many AFK'rs. Who has time to seriously raid PVE and have some fun in the arenas and hold down a job/school/family responsiblities. Just not enough time in a day for it all, so the path of least resistance is afk your honor, play your PVE.

the solution: step 1, was to allow s1 to be honor buyable (check)
step 2: reduce the honor cost of pvp gear by 50-70%, yes 50-70%.

you would see a HUGE dropoff in afk'rs from that change alone.

simple, we do the steamrolling.

but why would Blizz want to promote that?

granted they pretty much do considering they havent changed things since the HWL climb which was obviously flawed for the same reasons.

i just doubt they'd be very blatant about promoting that type of BG play or basically designed non competetive play in anything, at least right now they can pretend they just dont care instead of blatantly admitting they keep things that way so teams can gain honor faster by pharming non teams.


While i understand the redundancy of BG's to get rewards can be tiresome, i think your wrong about player motivation changing if rewards were easier to acquire. It would just mean you/they would have to afk less to get what you wanted.

I also dont think the current rewards are very difficult to acquire if compared to raiding. Also as a sidenote why do you want a battlemasters trinket? for pve? I dont get the appeal with those, they have no resilience, cost aton, and its such a key stat for PvP IMO.

Its not really the game setups that are the issue here tho IMO. Its the mentality of reward driven players who arent driven really by competition but more by the gear. I dont think much would change once you got into Arena in competetive gear, it would still be a focus towards the rewards by any means necessary. Whether you/they paid a team for ratings to get S3 or dodged to do it, the underlying issue here is mentality of reward driven players. You should read my blog on Gameriot:

Hardcores(in every fascet) front the term 'competition' way too hard in WoW from How to contact Gameriot Webmaster? | GAMERIOT

Its really a player mentality issue, not a issue with game mechanics or design. Ideally design should foster competition, but players will always find ways around competition to get the rewards. Thats pretty much the basis of premade vs pug play these days :p[/quote]

Perhaps you take me too literally, since:

I don't think I am being clear enough, as the above isn't at all the point. Refer to this map, and let's try a different way:

http://www.pixelhuset.se/downloads/s...alley_1024.jpg

What is geographically north of SHB?
What is geographically north of Bal?
What is geographically north of SHGY?

That's the point. See how that draws a (figurative) line northbound between them, geographically speaking?

Can we ask these questions of IB? No, because each is East or West of one of the others. That makes them much harder to defend, since they are not encountered in "stages" -- they are encountered as a more-or-less horizontal front, which takes more people to defend.

So the big difference here is the north-south versus the east-west orientation of the Alliance and Horde structures. The north-south paradigm is far easier to defend, and it also takes longer to access each objective along the figurative northbound line: since they are much more widely spaced.

The point I was trying to make here was one of distance. Take Horde charging into SH from the south. Horde simply cannot "hit all of the SH objectives at once" for the simple reason that that aren't all in the same geographic area: SHB is south of Bal, which is southwest of IBGY, which is south of IWB. See how Horde has to travel the distance in order to "hit them all at once?"

This simply is not the case at IB, since Alliance is not forced to ride through Galv's compound to get at IBGY -- they can access IBGY directly, without having to ride the distance that Horde does to get at the next structure along the northbound line.

So, as Horde, I have to travel at least twice the distance Alliance does to reach the equivalent Horde structures. That's a lot more space for Alliance to use to defend = easier to do so.


BTW: I'm not talking about how the map can be played, I'm talking about the placement of the features on the map. I have no desire to get into the former really, since if both sides wanted to they could ride as a 40 man army all the way to AS or RH, which makes discussion of the map moot.

An attempt to clarify the original statement:

You're quite wrong again. The only thing north of all three is IW bunker and a nice chokepoint that works rather well for horde defending from alliance once they take it.

You say Horde can not hit all three at once. Maybe you fail to realize how this works in reverse? Alliance can not defend all three at once. Let me quote what you bolded. because there is greater distance to travel between each individual objective. There is greater distance to travel between each individual objective. That means alliance defending them have greater distance to travel between each defensive position.

Alliance on offence though has to attack 3 structures that are all clumped. This means they are closer together. This also means that horde can defend them more easily because it is easier to guard objectives that are close together. And what the hell is this about accessing IBGY directly? I am not even sure you are playing AV. All horde has to do is park their defence to the side of IB tower. This closes off all access to IBGY other than stealthies. Very similar to this is how alliance can park their defence on the road south of SP and close off access to their base.

North/South vs East/West means nothing. What means something is the proximity of points of interest to the side's respective graveyards and the geography defending those PoI. IB GY covers IB tower and Galvangar because they are concentrated and focused. SH GY similarily doesn't support Belinda and SH bunker, because those are in seperate directions from the GY. Add in that IB GY is defended quite easily by planting a large force outside IB tower, thus closing off the chokepoint to the GY which 2-3 people can easily hold vs stealthers/run throughs. SH GY in contrast has no chokepoint. You can run up from the south, the west or even the north. It's in the middle of a big field.

Hitting them all at once also really has no meaning, especially considering horde starting base is so far north that they can get to SH bunker before we ever do. Lets say horde hits three objectives at once. Who should alliance defend, or what I mean? The GY for if they lose that they are going to lose the other two. So they hold the gy. What to do now? Well go for SH bunker or Belinda. They're in different directions. They can only do one, and given how easy Belinda is and how SH bunker is quite inaccessible and right in the path of the horde respawn route neither are very viable.

Lets say alliance hits all 3 at once. All horde has to do is hold IB GY, because if they do then they move up and take back the tower and then move over and wipe Galv. Alliance having their objectives being concentrated means horde can defend much more easily. This would even be so if there wasn't a choke in IB tower. But once you add that, horde has 2 objectives to defend vs 3 for alliance. And this is what is killing AV today on battlegroups for alliance.

Edit: To clarify on your point on stages, that would only mean something if one had to defeat or take one node to progress to the next. There is no geography on the alliance side stopping horde from going wherever they want. You don't need to take SH bunker or Belinda to attack SH GY. But you do have to take IB GY to have a chance in hell of taking IB tower. The north/south vs east/west is meaningless because of the IB choke point. That is the only stage that matters, because horde if they control that chokepoint controls the center.

/sigh nvm then.

I'm not really so interested in the minor inequities between the sides. In my experience AV works pretty fairly. The reports of regular (if not the norm) 600-0 victories in some Battlegroups with Horde defending IB is what worries me, and that needs a resolution of the IB/Galv defence issue.

AV completely failing is the concern.

Can we refocus the discussion toward finding a decent counter to the horde "by the book" strategy that Alliance can use?

Here is my first stab at it:

The keystone of the Horde strategy is IBGY, but horde does not typically put that many people on IBGY defense. When I'm "leading" AV, I usually ask for 8 at Galv and 2 at IBGY, counting on a few respawns from the galv defense to reinforce IBGY when the Alliance get around to contesting IBGY... with the token 2 starting at IBGY to buy us a bit more time. Once that initial push is beaten, Alliance has a hard time getting the momentum together to beat Galv later in the game.

Breaking this strategy means sidestepping Galv and IB tower and putting the initial push on IBGY off the bat. If Alliance breaks IBGY first, they can later spread out and take the surrounding targets leaving a small defense at IBGY to make sure it caps. The choke is strong, but we typically ask for only 10 Horde to defend IBGY. They can be overpowered by 25-30 rushing Alliance so long as their goal is IBGY first and foremost. Alliance I've seen tend to dilute their power by splitting off to hitting IBTower and Galv.

I think the other big mistake that the Alliance make on Cyclone is they give up SHGY far too easily. SHGY goes down early in the game, so the deaths that Horde forces at Galv and IBGY end up respawning at Stormpike, weakening the Alliance push and putting much of the Ally force on defense. Maybe my perspective is skewed because I typically play Horde defense, but it seems like the Allies are choosing not to defend unless forced to by respawns at SPGY... and boy do we force them.

Here's the thing, though. Horde dilute themselves just as badly when they ride into SH. 10-15 split off for Balinda, 5 split off for the south bunker. This leaves 10 or less (probably fewer due to AFK's) pushing for SHGY.

Here's what I would recommend to Alliance playing against the GALV/IBGY choke strat:
Ask for 10 on defense at SHGY. Offense storm IBGY hard and fast, ignoring Galv and ignoring Snowfall. Keeping SHGY in the early game keeps your offense strong and fast. Once you've broken IBGY the whole horde defensive falls apart, as we all know getting through the horde base is like throwing a pencil down a hallway.

I finally got people to listen to me in our Battlegroup, for awhile people kept perpetrating this lie that a 15 min race is somehow better then a 30-45 min win. I convinced enough people to finally go back to defense and we one twice in a row with 750 honor for 30 minute games. A lot better then the 300 you get from the 15-20 minute races.

Also, some guy had the audacity to say that 30 min AV's were too long. Too many of these people forget the 4-24 hour AV's in the golden days of WoW.

Then explain what you mean. You say that horde has to hit them all at once. Why does that matter? You also say you have to take SH bunker because they're in a line. That is also not true because none of the 3 objectives blocks anything. You can run past any of them.

This is what the issue is all about.

1) None of the alliance areas protect eachother.
2) Alliance doesn't have a choke point in the field of strife. Horde does.

If alliance can make it not about the field, they have a decent chance of winning as long as 10-15 play defence at SP and DB. On our bg if it goes into a pure race horde wins 80% of the time because Belinda goes faster than Galv and those towers that conveniently spread more across than north to south generally take longer to cap. Although that is not really much of a concern. More of a concern is alliance idiots not going for the towers first when they know its a pve race. If you take that many into galv you should take enough to cap everything in the south so once Galv is dead you can almost move straight to drek. But people waste time on Galv and not even cap the towers beforehand and we fall way behind.

Given more skilled players alliance can win, but really there is nothing alliance can do if horde stacks 20 defence on IB choke. They will hold, alliance won't get past, even if SH held the layout of the field of strife ensures horde will take 1 at least of the objectives there and they will win on points. Given equally skilled players and number of healers horde should win every time.

Edit: Basically a strat of horde sending 18-20 defence to IB to hold and the rest to SH to cap is unbeatable by pug alliance.

Bless you. :P I hope that soon every battlegroup learns how to win AV in constant shutouts so we can get more people to take the imbalances and/or honor payouts seriously and hopefully get a fix for one or both.

I'm not so sure your Battlegroup will be thanking you when horde are facing 2 hour queues. Currently in Vindication 90% of all AVs are simple races, with both sides getting at least 300 honor, with the winners tending towards 500. Alliance probably win 60-70% because of the relative ease in defending the Alliance base, but most games are also 15 minute affairs (and Alliance is the side with queues, though they're typically only a few minutes).

30 minute games are fine if you're in a frontline or a defense point, but if you're off doing the thankless-but-necessary job of defending a tower that doesn't see much resistance you're literally halving your honor vs rush games.

Personally, I'm very thankful that Vindication is sticking to the rush games.

To be quite honest, this post (imo) is one of the worse I've seen, it's ignoring the difference between farm and competition, as well as secondary reasonings that are always involved in a PVE guild. Just real quick, when people queue up for a BG because they need upgrades, they want the upgrades, given how much of a hassle it is to get stuff (huge flaw in the honor system) a competitive game is annoying because it takes longer, and you just have to grind longer. When people already have the gear, then they do want hard games, that's why arena is so successful at high ends, you've got the gear, now it's just competition. PVE guilds usually fall out of first place because of inner guild issues, which is usually the reason they break up, they don't say "shit we're not number one /gdisband" they slowly become less successful due to guild issues and disband that way.

It's widely accepted that when people are simply there to gain honor, they want a fast game, because they want their honor up. You can't get your gear by playing hard long competitive games over and over again, it doesn't work, that's why people don't do it, it's not rewarded, and avoiding long games is rewarded.




As for looking at AV, yes, the whole map needs to be redone. I've played as horde way back, and I play alliance now, right now the IB graveyard, balinda vs galv, those are pretty huge, the reason they're looked at because right now they're causing crushing defeats that lead to alliance getting 0 honor out of AV, and thus horde getting 2 hour queue times. However, once you get past that, there are issues the other way, Frostwolf Keep is definitely harder to defend than Dun Baldur. The choke point to get to Stormpike graveyard is pretty brutal, versus Frostwolf Graveyard is very easy to take. In the base setup, the alliance bridge is way easier to defend than any of the "choke points" in Frostwolf Keep. Really, at this point Blizzard needs to acknowledge AV is broken, every change just makes it bad in some other way as they fix one thing. Explain it away through something silly like "the constant battle in Alterac Valley has taken it's toll on the land, and seismic movement has lead to avalanches, earthquakes, and devastated terrain. The bases have been rebuilt but nothing is quite like it was before!" and redo the whole map.

Honestly, when that's your definition of Alliance success, you're describing the problem fairly well.

The first reasonable change to make is to make Balinda as hard to kill as Galv, if not harder, given the defensive logistics described in this thread. A second change to make is to give bonus honor to the losing side for towers assaulted but not yet capped. Some amount less than 62, but greater than nothing. One of the more common problems with your Alliance success description is very often the game ends before TP and/or IBT completely cap, even though at that point they're often largely unopposed. A third potential change to make is for it to be much harder to ninja cap either FW tower and either DB tower, whether that's done with more NPCs or terrain changes (especially with DB North). This would allow for more coherent pug defenses on either side. Zerg racing is popular because it occasionally works, and removing that is the first step to getting pugs to consider more enlightened strategies.

Well, the current problem for alliance in my battlegroup is that they often come out of AV with zero honor. A lot of the people complaining in the forums insist they don't care about win/loss, they just want to get decent honor out of the situation. An alliance zerg to IB with minimal defense accomplishes that (200ish honor in 15-20 min, better than you can get in any other PUG BG), but I haven't seen it catch on yet, outside of certain times of day.

Balinda is actually easier to defend than Galv, in that she's much closer to the relevant graveyard. She's harder to defend in that she sucks, but if that's taken care of she certainly does not need to be stronger than Galv.

...to the extent that they'd rather not have the solution be so overboard as to guarantee Alliance win percentages equivalent to current Horde chances. I think everyone wants a reasonable chance to win.

Perhaps not, although Balinda is harder to defend simultaneously with SHGY and SH bunker than Galv/IBGY/IBT, as outlined upthread. Maybe then the solution isn't necessarily stronger as much as sturdier relative to Galv, so that any random 5 Horde will actually have to take a little while to defeat her, thus perhaps thinning the freight train headed to SHGY.

Many people refer to 20-45 minute games here. This sounds extremely long to me. Not saying you're lying, just saying that the games I've played were usually shorter than that.

It's AV weekend this weekend, and I've just queued for AV on the Alliance side all day long on my PvE server, Turalyon EU. Queue was about 5 minutes, and the games lasted between 5 (!) and about 30 minutes, and every single one of them was dominated by mutual rushing.

I encountered the same premade Horde group twice, and their strategy was simple: rush as a group, ignore everything, kill Vanndar. This led to a 5 minute win and a 6 minute win which gave both sides (!) about 220 bonus honour. Boring as hell, but very effective for honour farming, assuming that Horde still has 0 queue time in our BG (2k honour per hour during AV weekend).

New AV? What new AV?

If Blizzard really wants to have the "old" AV back (which, personally, I enjoyed a gazillion times more than these rush-fests), they need to change much more than moving a graveyard a little bit, or making Balinda a bit harder. Something like Vanndar and Drek'thar not spawning until all towers have been capped, or perhaps a complete redesign. Would be great fun to finally be able to do something useful with all those [Armor Scraps]

So I got 57 AV marks on my paladin today, and reached a moral crossroads. Between the Alliance BG chat and first glimpses at Horde defense, I know three minutes into the game about how long it's going to take and what the chance of winning is. I hate to /afk out of matches, but let's say you see a turtle coming (one small group hell-bent on rushing RH, another group insisting on taking out Galv immediately, nobody really committed to taking IBGY, and at least some defense there). You know that as people die and rez back at SP, they won't ever commit back to offense again, so chances of taking towers or anything else honor-related are pretty slim. You're looking at a half-hour to 45 minutes of uncoordinated haphazard defense resulting in a bare-minimum loss. Do you /afk out and surf the EJ boards for 15 minutes, or stick it out and try to rally the troops?

You alt+f4, wait 5 minutes and then log back in again to being outside of the BG and having no deserter. Or you could queue for another BG before entering AV if you're willing to play the other one.

I don't see why you'd owe it to anybody to stick with a losing AV.