Kasi

No no, that doesn't work. The whole point of the horde midfield strategy is to guard IBGY heavily while camping Galvangar to prevent him from being killed and to ideally wipe the force on him. Alliance already is trying to just do that, kill them to get some objectives done. It does not work, they get beat 600-0 constantly. The focusing on towers idea doesn't work here. I think if this did really catch on on all servers Blizz would have to do something about it, because 1.5 hour queues for a BG is pretty much unacceptable. But since its only a few BGs, nothing will probably get done.

 

Cheeky

Blizzard is in a rough predicament. I think the spiral of "AV is unbalanced" -> "Don't try" -> "AFK/bot" has reached a self-fulfilling point. Anything done now to adjust the map would have to be so lopsided that Horde will have 2006 all over again once Alliance get back into it. Little changes will mostly go unnoticed since only 20-25 Alliance are even trying most of the time. Maybe real aggressive GM work on AFKers (including temporary account bans) would get enough Alliance to play and try some new strategies. Because the precedent Blizzard has set with AV problems in the past has mostly been "L2AV better".

Cheeky of Havoc

 

Sando

Not necessarily, Blizzard just need to make some well publicised changes to AV to get people to come back and 'give it a go'. Horde used to AFK to a greater extent than alliance currently do (i remember playing a game with less than 5 active horde), and yet Blizzard brought in the well publicised AFK reporting feature and suddenly horde were playing again. The reporting 'feature' came in with no other changes, and yet horde started playing again, presumably because the people who actually wanted to play AV to win came back to the BG now that they weren't surrounded by AFKers. It didn't turn the map into Horde domination, but i went from playing all day as alliance and maybe losing 1 game, to losing 30-40%. All blizzard really need to do is to make some well publicised changes and people will give it another go, and if they work, then it should be fine.

The "AV is unbalanced" -> "Don't try" -> "AFK/bot" isn't really a sel-fulfilling prophecy in my opinion, it just blows out the results. If alliance played to it's abilities every game, they would also win around 30%, i'm sure of this, but it's the demoralisation of a loss meaning 0 points that causes people to give up, and now Alliance win almost no games.

And as pointed out, alliance are not 'boycotting' AV because we lose all the time, we're not going in there because we get 0 honor for a loss. The problem is that horde will almost always get 200+ honor for a loss due to the ease of taking SH and killing Balinda, so they constantly tell Alliance to just take IB and kill Galv for some honor. Well if alliance could do that with any regularity then they would, but it's simply not a solution at the moment just to tell alliance to 'take' what they're complaining about being imbalanced.

It really seems that alot of horde players are missing the point, if we lost every game but got 200-300 points, we'd have a whinge, but we'd still play, much like horde pre-2.3. It's the imbalance of IB giving Horde 600 point wins 90% of the time that causes alliance to not only whinge, but just not play the BG.

 

xiaoxin21

Often vocal communication is important in AV. Telling the alliance what to do in AV will normally get you some honor. I seldom play in an AV where we didnt get Galv down or at least the two towers(IB and TP). You have to constantly remind them not to rush to IB at the start and get slaughtered. And start by defending SH and Belinda and waiting for SF to cap.

This way the defending horde will start to advance and once they are up, we can take down Galv and the towers, few horde will bother to track back to defend.

One of my guildie also claimed that he and 4 others once managed to sneak past the horde to Drek and they downed Drek by tanking Drek and the 4 warmasters with a bear and the rest of the alliance worshiped them like heroes.

 

TheCutlery

So why is the alliance incapable of putting together a 10-15 man group (out of your 40) that can actually go take a tower? Are you trying to claim that the horde has more than that on defense? Not on my BG they don't, but Cyclone is retarded, and our alliance still win 45% of the time. I guess I don't see why you would have a problem taking an objective with a mass force and sitting on it.

Maybe if you told the guys who sit at stormpike from the very start of the game (yes, I've seen these guys, they're in every single game) to actually contribute instead of attampting to slow the zerg down with their awesome scorpion pet, you'd get some honor. I don't see why every game is a zero honor loss unless you either have 35 afk, or just can't figure out how to organize anyone. There should basically be no reason you can't take 10 people and sit in Iceblood tower. And when that caps you run past the Iceblood defenders (Becuase presumably they're fighting your mindless zerg) and you take TP and sit in that. There's no reason at all that you can't get 2 towers down every game if you have people who are motivated to get honor. If your only motivation for being in AV is to attack every horde you see, then I'd say there's a problem, but I have a hard time believing that more than half of the people queueing have that mindset.

If the alliance was shutting us out 600-0, I know exactly what I'd be doing in AV. I'd be sitting with the 10 horde who know how to play in SH bunker until it capped. And then we'd move to Icewing or Balinda. Even without ever getting a GY, I can guarantee SOMETHING would burn because you just don't leave that many on Defense and make any offensive progress at all.

You can't really be saying to Horde who've been dealing with this kind of stuff for 2 years that we don't know what it's like. Yes we do, prior to this patch, we did whatever we had to do to get honor instead of coming in with the intention of winning. If the opposing force is going to win anyway, then make sure you get something out of it. It seems like you're not really trying to get anything out of it if you're being shut out every single game.

 

Finkum

At risk of repeating what many others have already stated, there are several reasons why it is very difficult (but, I freely admit, not impossible) for Alliance to burn towers.

- Firstly, the horde players have been in a 1 hour+ queue just to get into AV, and thus they tend to highly motivated to maximise the honour gain, which means that large numbers of defenders can and will regularly attempt to backcap their towers.
- Prior to SH capping (i.e. the first 5 minutes of the game - the part that counts) Horde will res at IBGY within spitting distance of the towers. This means that those who have been killed pushing to Balinda/the Alliance towers/SPGY will be constantly available to reinforce tower defenders if needed, who are themselves able to rejoin the defense with minimal downtime, just as Alliance can do with SPGY later in the game.
- Meanwhile, any Alliance attackers who die will be resurrecting back at SPGY, and attempting to ride back to midfield and go on the offensive will generally lead to a headon collision with the Horde zerg at the Alliance towers. At this point it is more or less impossible for non-stealthing Alliance to do anything other than slowly retreat back to SPGY and lose the war of attrition.

Moreover, prior to 2.3 (when Alliance regularly won the battleground and Horde was suffering from mass AFKers) the emphasis was on killing the enemy general, and thus tower defense was much less prevalent, and in many cases non-existent apart from the occasional lone backcapping stealther. This made it much much easier (quite apart from map geometry) for determined Horde players to cap towers/kill Balinda and still get non-trivial honor.

Simply saying, "we managed then, you can manage now, QQ less" doesn't really account for these factors.

With all that said, I'm sure it _is_ possible for a determined group of Alliance players to cap and hold one tower until it burns, but at this point in time, because of the above factors and the general defeatist attitude now prevalent amongst Alliance, I don't think it will happen outside of organised groups of players using SQ or similar to group-queue into AV.

 

Phantasmal

You basically explained it. If the Horde make a few simple strategic decisions they are practically guaranteed a 500-180 victory, and usually something closer to 600-0.

The midfield consists of everything between Stonehearth Bunker and its chokepoint in the north to Iceblood Graveyard and its chokepoint. Already things are in the Horde favor because:

1. Horde have 2 towers to capture to 1. Alliance has to either break the Iceblood Graveyard or hold the Stonehearth Bunker in order to stay even on reinforcements and honor gain. This is complicated by...

2. The Iceblood and Stonehearth favor the Horde at both midfield chokepoints. Chokepoint battle usually boils down to who has more people, and in both cases Horde will have people rezzing directly behind the chokepoint and immediately reinforcing it.

3. Galv vs Belinda blah blah blah

None of these are absolutely crippling advantages, and with reinforcements they could be said to offset the advantage Alliance has with Dun Baldar, if it weren't for one catch: Horde respawn inside the midfield while Alliance respawns way back at Stormpike Graveyard.

Suppose we have an AV game with an entirely mirrored strategy by both teams. The Alliance mostly rushes Galv, while sending 10 people to defend Belinda. The Horde mostly rushes Belinda and grabs Stonehearth graveyard while they send a team to defend Galv. Both sides wipe entirely on Galv and Belinda. What happens? Every dead Horde respawns at Iceblood and has a short unopposed run back to Belinda. Every dead Alliance respawns at Stormpike and unless they can break through the Horde at Stonehearth Graveyard, that's it. The game is over. If the Horde are playing an aggressive D, Alliance needs a kill ratio that is at least 2:1 and probably much higher until Snowfall caps just to maintain a midfield presence.

If you're like me and sometimes mix up graveyard names, http://wow.tentonhammer.com/files/ga...des/AV_Map.jpg might make this post a little more readable.

Finally

Please just stop bringing this up because race AV was in no way comparable to what is going on now. You did whatever you had to do to get honor? You mean kill a bunch of NPCs unopposed? The Alliance wanted you to do that because if you were busy killing NPCs and Alliance stragglers (creating the passive defense that typically slowed your Dun Baldar progress) you weren't slowing their honor gain. Now, not only does the Horde want to kill those 15 people from capping the tower because it will destroy the Alliance offense and guarantee them a massive victory, but they also get an honor reward just for preventing the tower cap entirely.

Even more finally(serious this time!)
This betrays your lack of understanding of just what goes on during a true Horde defense game. The Iceblood defenders might end up in a fight with a mindless zerg, but after trading casualties most of that Alliance mindless zerg is back at Stormpike while the Iceblood defenders respawn at Iceblood to pick off the stragglers. If the Horde defense strikes before Snowfall caps, there can be no distraction to slip behind.

 

TheCutlery

What kind of a mirrored strategy is that? The horde caps Stonehearth and wipes on Balinda and you guys just wipe on Galv? Stop going to Galv first. In probably half of the AV's I've played, you've got Horde know-it-alls who say "Defense to Galv" and they go sit there, and then you guys run right up and tag Iceblood.

If you hit Iceblood with 30 people, it's gonna fall. Sorry, there's no way you can convince me otherwise. Horde simply doesn't put THAT much on defense.

Yeah, I know you guys didn't hear Horde chat for that entire year. Alliance tags the RH 6 minutes into the game and all of a sudden it's "GG, ANOTHER HORDE LOSS." For some reason the difference between "Winning" and "Losing" creates this massive mental block amongst a solid half of the population who just can't bring themselves to do anything other than throw up their hands in defeat when they see they've lost the game. Personally, I never cared that much about winning and losing because I'm not there for tokens, I'm there for honor. Since I'm there for honor, I do whatever I can to ensure I get some. And don't tell me that it's completely different. You play on Cyclone too, if you're as active as you claim, then you've seen a 500-100 alliance win as well. You know what I'm doing in that game? Sitting with the 10 people who know what they're doing on a bunker, pushing back the swarm of rogues trying to recap it. You guys can do the same, and claiming you can't because you rez too far away is just an excuse.

 

Angerz

1. How do you wipe to Balinda?

2. Good luck getting 30 people to iceblood.

3. With the way respawns work, 30 people can potentially be stopped by 10. Every Alliance that dies will never be returning as they will be behind the wall of horde at SH. Every horde that dies will be back in 30 seconds. Plus sending 30 to IB would mean the horde tap everything else and DB probably burns before you can destroy a tower, because you really cant leave your 30 man zerg force until IB caps, because if anyone dies, they are gone forever.

 

Tejs

Seems to me the problem is you need to hold the Snowfall Graveyard. It might slow you down in the initial push, but you'll no longer have to worry about spawnign back at Stormpike.

Or hell, even turtle on Stonehearth Graveyard. It's originally yours in the first place, and the only AV games I have personally lost are where the alliance just stop gapped Stonehearth from ever being capped. The horde on defense were being wasted and the offense we had kept smashing against an unmovable stonehearth. We capped Stonehearth bunker but lost the reinforcement war.

 

Chulak

This really is going to come down to what will fix the battlegroups that have issues. It's difficult to get anyone to mount a serious defense of anything on Nightfall, much less a coordinated force at Iceblood, but we're one of the battlegroups with fairly even Horde/Alliance win ratios. In all honesty we yell at Hordies for capping Snowfall. We don't want the Alliance Respawn Machine churning out bodies at SPGY or the Aid Station. I can also see that the cap time for Snowfall obvioulsy causes a lag in the availability of reinforcements. The easy step here would be go give Snowfall to the Alliance from the outset (as many have said). Horde in my battlegroup would probably be happy to see Alliance start with Snowfall anyway, as it would keep our nubs from rushing to cap it.

As things are, I'd say sending your main force to primarily defend Stonhearth Graveyard while you're waiting for Snowfall to cap would be the most logical option to break this defensive strategy. This would put the alliance on strong ground to reinforce Icewing, Stonehearth and Balinda and prevent Horde advance. The defenders will get bored with nothing to do and start feeling the loss of HKs, get frustrated with the slow forward progress, and they'll move up to join the offensive to counter your defense...at which point Iceblood should become quite vulnerable.

It would prolong the game by 5 or 10 minutes, but if you can get rid of 1 hour queues what's 10 minutes longer for the game? Once the Horde defense force starts to break up you reform for a zerg on Iceblood, and if you've successfully defended Stonehearth GY one zerg will get you Iceblood and break the Horde defense. We all know that once you get past Iceblood you can just ride into Frostwolf Keep, so any coordinated defense should fall apart entirely once you get past Iceblood.

The obvious issue with a fundamental strategy change is to get it implemented in an environment that's a PUG every game, but the smart and experienced players will very likely see the value in a new strategy and the sheep will follow.

 

deadlights

Sorry but the alliance advantage was just as pronounced prior to the changes it's just Alliance didn't want to acknowledge it. I have to say I'm getting quite the chuckle out of it now that reinforcement change has flipped the script so to speak.

It wasn't quite so bad when AV turned into an absolute race (other than that style of game is completely devoid of fun) but the fact is against just a moderate dedicated defense taking SP was a chore and a half and getting across the Bridge to Aid Station was an impossibility. There was no way Horde could match the speed that Alliance could get across the map unless it was a full on race with absoultely no defense. And on the odd occassion when horde was able to mount a successful defense. It just turned things into an impossible to break turtle. Before, the NPC nerf I literally went a year never having experienced a Horde AV win (kept going though for frostwolf mount and the tome of shadow force).

Before, alliance could turtle all day irrespective of the towers and stealthers could go ninja foward GYs and eventually transition to offense while horde was still trying to break the turtle at SP. End result being Alliance still comes out in front of the race. Now that the towers actually mean something turtling is a losing strategy because by the time your stealthers can actually cap and hold FW or RH you're too far behind in reinforcements.

I will acknowledge the map imbalances but you aren't going to get a lot of sympathy from me. Welcome to what AV 1.0 felt like on the otherside.

The map needs to be balanced but it's funny that Alliance would rather not queue than actually adapt to the new structure that doesn't support a mindless zerg and find a way to get some honor... it is there to be had... you're just not going to get it by sending 30 people 2/3 of the way across the map before you attack something, which is never how AV was meant to be played in the first place.

 

Kasi

Why oh why do horde keep bringing up arguments that have already been answered in this thread? Can you not just I dunno, read the thread? Defending SH is not viable. And it is certainly not viable by saying defending SH will make IB GY become more vulnerable.

Reasons why?

1) Good luck getting the alliance zerg to go to SH GY and defend it. No one wants to be the anvil to the incoming horde hammer. It's hard enough to make sure that the alliance doesn't all go to Galv.
2) If you could get enough to defend it, it still doesn't work. SH GY is not defendable in the same way that IB GY is. Because of the chokepoint and how much easier it is to get to the flag, SH will always need more defenders. Thus lets say both sides have 30 guys available. If both send 20 on offence and 10 on defence the horde have a much greater chance of capping SH GY. Your strat only works if alliance can cap IB GY while holding on to SH GY. Fat chance that happening in a game between equally skilled teams. Most likely is IB fails to get taken while SH does. That leads to a certain alliance loss. Then next most likely is maybe that neither gets taken. Which leads to:
3) If both sides hold their GYs in the middle, horde wins. They can take out Belinda and SH bunker far easier than alliance can take out their objectives. Sure alliance can have games where they hold SH gy and stuff north of it all game, but since they lose Belinda and the Bunker and they never take any objectives, they get crap honor from the BG that takes a ton of time.

So stop suggesting great strategies that are completely divorced from reality, and have been explained over and over again in this damn thread why they don't work. The best way for alliance to win?

1) Send 30 right away to IB GY and overwhelm the defences and take it. Send 10 straight to SP or just have them go to SH and not try to hold it, just try to bleed horde there and reform at SP. Anyone who dies from the 30 offence zerg go to SP and base defence, hopefully no more than 5.

2) Have a strong group of 5 from the IB force go back and try to cap SH and IW bunkers. The only time I've ever seen a crushing alliance win has been when the offence zerg got to relief hut and capped it while a force of 5-7 alliance went back up the chain towards SP and recapped everything and killed the entire horde offensive. The horde in this one were already taking DBs and aid station, but 7-8 people coming up from a premade retook every objective and completely wiped out the offensive force. Horde were then forced to rez in their cave, they took back FW, but we were too entrenched in their base to get us out. Rest of the game consisted of us backcapping towers and killing drek in the face of waves of horde defenders trying to wipe our kill of him.

3) Leave a bunch at IB GY, cap the towers in the middle, kill Galv, push south, if strong horde defence just tie up FW defenders and skip it and cap hut. Then take FW or just leave it to rot. Taking FW before relief hut if there is 5-10 defenders there is a good way to lose, especially if its a race.

Actually for our BG the best way we've been winning lately is just send 5 right away to the relief hut. Another 5-6 take IB GY and area, rest hit galv. Even if we have no defence, our offence will beat horde if people move fast. Skipping FW GY is key in this strat, because any defenders there will just respawn at Relief hut, making it harder to take.

So yes, your strategy doesn't work. All defending SH ever does is concedes Belinda and SH bunker to horde for the chance of, well I dunno what. The chance of taking IB GY while you hold SH GY? Aka very little chance at all, given players/teams of equal skill. All it will end in is a grindfest in the middle where the only honor alliance will see is diminishing returns on horde players and the slight chance they might be able to hold 10 people in IB tower long enough to see it burn. But that way pretty much forfeits any chance for alliance to win, which is why they don't do it!

 

Kasi

You know the funny thing? The current strategy that horde is using to crush alliance? Was completely and totally viable with the old map/bg. Send a lot of people to IB GY and galv and camp them and crush the alliance offence. Belinda and SH bunker were still as easy to cap back then as they are now. The fact is that you just didn't do it. You had too many afk'ers, you didn't care enough, you hadn't found the strat, whatever, the fact is you could have been doing this all along and you failed to do so. Because with no reinforcements the game would just drag on, nothing would happen and no one would care. Horde yes couldn't get past SP, but alliance wouldn't get past IB. But the strat was just as viable back then as it is now. Horde just didn't do it.

Btw what is this way to get honor? You mean conceding defeat in the middle of the map and hoping to get some honor off DR horde kills? Well shit sign me up for that. That sounds exciting. A 45+ minute game where at the end all I have to show for myself is the kills I got? Hell no, I'm just going to find some friends and do what I did last night, run premade WSGs for 10 minute 200 honor victories, or do some ABs or whatnot. Av 1.0 was nothing like this is now. In Av 1.0 horde got honor, alliance didn't take a strat that explicitly denied horde getting any honor. All we wanted to do was get our honor, because as any alliance will tell you, pugging BGs in the other 3 is a painful frustrating experience. I know people in guild who've gone 20 EotS in a row without a damn win. AV was our only honor, so we tried to make it as fast and honorful as we could. Horde in this strategy pretty much broke that contract. Sure its more pvp, but we didn't want pvp and we never have from AV, all we wanted is honor. And we can see now that the honor has been taken away how many people on alliance on SS and BL really want to do that place. The answer apparently is not many.

 

deadlights

I suspect people keep bringing that up because it was the same line of garbage that we got from alliance regarding defending SP vs. defending FW. And you could have said the same thing pre reinforcements about convincing horde to defend Iceblood even.

Nothing you are saying is something that long time horde hasn't experienced. We know what it's like trying to convince people to defend a position where they will die more than they kill. Back then alliance told us to suck it up and defend Iceblood and FW. And while there is a Choke point at Iceblood it can easily be ridden past to a wide open FW and strategically it doesn't hurt you. Where as SP is an absolute necessity in trying to assault Van and we didn't have the luxury of being able to skip an inconvenient GY to cap.

The solutions for recouping honor on alliance side aren't pretty but they are there.

 

deadlights

No defending Iceblood and Galv wasn't the end all be all answer unless you wanted to devote at least half your raid force to it in order to preserve both Galv and the IceBlood tower. You could hold Iceblood indefinitely with 10 or so but there was nothing to stop 5-6 from the 30 man ally zerg from riding past to a wide open FW and capping that instead while defense was busy with the rest at IB. See Horde didn't have the luxury of skipping the GY that was inconvenient to take when a defense was mounted. Sending a lot of people to IB in the past and turtling there would just result in a complete stalemate... negating both honor and a chance to win. So instead horde decided let's get our honor by killing Bal capping towers and hope we can beat Alliance across the map. If we don't win at least we get some honor.

Read what the prior poster stated. 20 people aren't going to stand at galv's room and IB gy for the entirety of the game with no opposition... they will move forward. I don't envy the job of trying to convince people to defend instead of zerging but those are the cards you've been dealt.

 

TheCutlery

So the map needs to be changed because you're not smart/coordinated enough to use the correct strategy?

If i bypass all 4 nodes in AB and run directly to the stables, and steadfastly stick to this strategy, do I not deserve to lose? I should win because that should be a viable strategy? That's nonsense.

 

Calantus

Ah good, fresh faces bringing old arguments yet again. This thread has been done to death guys and nothing you're saying is new to it. Except maybe this:

You do know that what the WoW PVP Forum retards/trolls say doesn't actually apply to the entire alliance, right? Cut it out.



For those saying that alliance should work for honor just like horde used to it was never the same for horde at least on my battlegroup. For starters Balinda is much weaker than Galv and she was even weaker for the majority of alliance dominance. Also, honor was decided by NPCs that could be soloed if alliance left horde alone. And guess what, that's what they did. Horde on BG9 currently have the mentality of shutting alliance out of honor. That is their goal, not winning quickly, not winning all the time, but absolutely shutting alliance out of honor. They (literally) send 10+ man squads to back-cap anything we take because they just really don't want us to have anything. When alliance dominated we yelled at anyone trying to do the same thing. If you were doing anything but attacking the horde base or defending behind SH you were a pariah and so people rarely did. I have been in a few shutout games by alliance and the amount of abuse hurled at the people holding SH was legandary. In short, we LET you get the honor you were getting (for our own selfish reasons), so don't come here saying that alliance should fight hard for their honor just like you did. Trying to get honor from a side that wants you to get 0 honor and has 4 minutes to get around to stopping you is a lot harder than killing soloable NPCs when the other team wants nothing more than to get out of your way and onto offence.

 

Kasi

I already explained why its not the correct strategy. Countless people in this thread have explained why it is not the correct strategy. You defend at the part of the map that favors you. SH in no way, shape or form favors the defender at it. Defending SH GY gives you nothing but a defeat on the field of strife, a fight that 95%+ of the time horde will win. Why would alliance choose a strategy that nearly guarantees them a loss? Horde in here (well some of them) go defend SH GY, that will get you a win. No it won't. In games between players of equal skill all it does is ensure you lose a grindfest on the field of strife where you can't defend SH bunker and Belinda like horde can defend IB tower and Galv

Tell me Thrush how defending SH GY is the correct strategy? The only way it can be the correct strategy is if you can defend it while taking IB GY. Giving a halfway competent horde team, that is impossible. Yes you can against a team who doesn't defend IB GY send 20 there and cap it and defend SH with 20. However if horde defends IB GY with 15 there is nothing alliance can do to make any progress on the map. If by defending SH GY you don't manage to take IB GY you have just lost the game. Because you will have a far harder time killing Galv and IBT then horde will killing Belinda and SHB? Why would one choose a strat where you have a 5% chance at best of winning?

As for running past the chokes and capping, umm sure that happens. It happens to both sides. If alliance is defending at SH it is just as easy for horde to run by and get to the DBs or the bases as it is for alliance to do it at IB. The 2-3 people at SP won't be able to stop you. As long as you have people (like a group of 4-5) to backcap towers you'll always get them back in time. But one thing you said did make sense. Sending a lot of people to IB in the past and turtling there would just result in a complete stalemate... negating both honor and a chance to win. This is what it is now for alliance. Sending people to SH GY results in a stalemate, negating chance to get honor and killing chance to win. Yet you expect us to do this? And unlike the old alliance wins, in this case horde gets everything when they win.

 

Xertigo

I think that the basic problem with the new AV (which has been hi-lighted by a few people earlier in this thread) is that there is no 'simple' Alliance strategy to win AV, while there is a simple Horde strategy. However, that isn't to say there aren't good strategies to win. A basic working Alliance strategy is to split up the horde by attacking multiple points at once: 10 defend SHGY, 5 defend SHB, 5 IBT, 20 (15 assuming 5 afk'ers) IBGY. Once IBGY falls, alliance can pretty much use that overpowered chokepoint to lock down the map and push for a win. Using 2 tower-capping groups of 5 (hopefully each with at least 1 healer), pretty much negates the power of the back-capping 10 man groups (assuming that both groups are coordinated enough to start the cap at the same time).

However, good luck trying to get that sort of coordination out of a pug or getting more than 1 or 2 healers in your 40-man pug. I find the a major difference between Alliance and Horde is that Alliance pugs are filled with people trying to gear up their DPS alts and there are very few healers.

 

Phantasmal

I'm of the same opinion as you with regards to honor, but you've got me pegged wrong as I've been experiencing the new AV on other characters. In particular, I have a new horde rogue on Rampage that I am trying to get arena gear for. Every AV I've been in has been a dominating victory for my team, and as great as that might seem, the 500-600 bonus honor per game doesn't make up for the hour long queues. I cannot blame them for giving up because they have to play perfectly to have a chance at any bonus honor in games where our defense was sloppy and uncoordinated.

For a specific anecdote, the game I just came out of for the AV daily was one where our initial defensive attack was pretty awful and they rushed Iceblood and quickly capped it. It didn't really matter because even though they were wiping the floor with our defensive positions, we were still getting enough kills to slowly whittle them back to the usual Stormpike turtle after I snuck in and grabbed Iceblood back. It was kinda sad really. They deserved that win for out-maneuvering us at the start, but the end result was maybe 120 honor and a slow reinforcement loss inside Dun Baldar.

So from my horde perspective I want the Snowfall change because it'll make these defensive midfield games more competitive, which will lead to Alliance queuing and my wait times shrinking to something reasonable.

 

Kasi

Best and simplest way for alliance to win? Hope that half the force going to Galv gets wiped but they manage to kill them. The people who die are forced to rez at SP and hold horde up enough for our offence to win. :p On WW not enough alliance actually play defence to matter, so early deaths is the only thing that can build up our D. If its a straight race horde win every time, because alliance is just too stupid despite being repeatedly told to not send 25 into Galv every fucking time.

 

Angrenous

We are group q'ing 20 people into AV and winning 600+ to 0. It's not a quick win, but it's fun as hell. The advantage of the coordinated q is that you have 20 people that listen to strategy and the rest of the raid pretty much as to follow along. Among the 20, we are not all geared to the teeth. The plan works like this:

Step 1) 10 to Galvanger, 5 to IB, 5 roaming on a per-need basis
Step 2) When Galvanger is safe, take Snowfall *prior to cap* (gasp!)
Step 3) When Snowfall caps and all alliance are killed south of Snowfall, zerg SH GY.

Basically, we just push the battle up the field in a coordinated fashion. By the time we destroy the Dun Baldur South Bunker, we win.

 

deadlights

Ah Calantus please save the straw man tactics please. In General that is what alliance would say in threads where AV map imbalances were the subject of conversation. I'd like to think people are intelligent enough to not pick nits as you are doing in your rebuttal to me. The ratio of alliance only players who freely admitted to the map imbalances of the past compared to the ones who told horde "QQers" to suck it up was so miniscule it's not even worth mentioning. You can take it for granted whenever I use the term "Alliance" or "Horde" in the future that it refers to the overwhelming majority of players and not the scant few in the nether reaches of the bell curve. I acknowledge there are no absolutes.

Furthermore I acknowledged that changes should be made. Just quite honestly I don't have any sympathy for the Alliance side after what horde side had to endure whenever we took issue with the AV set up that was clearly in favor of the Alliance.

Kasi. Please actually read the entirety of what I posted. And try to look at it realistically. If you choose to ride straight through SP to AS flag horde takes damage from the second they hit the halfway point of the bridge until they kill all the npcs at the flag. And most likely they will pick up a few more NPCs on the way. It's not at all comparable to riding past tower point into wide open territory to the least defendable flag on the map. Breaking a 10 man defense at Iceblood is a lot easier than breaking a 10 man defense at SP due to the proximity and layout of the strong hold defenses. It's just that simple. Bottomline is at the end of the day SP is the flag that is easiest to defend (at least IMO) due to the geography followed closely by IB. The difference being in your realistic average PuG. Horde absolutely has to cap SP. Alliance just have to get past IB. World of difference. Against a 10 man defense if you can get 4-5 people past IB and tap FW you will break the defense one way or the other. Either they send people to cap FW back and you overwhelm them at IB and force them to defend the undefendable FW 10-25 ... or you cap FW outright and have the numbers in your favor making you able to work back to take tower point and IB at your leasure.

But this is getting off topic. As I said. I acknowledge the map imbalance. I just don't have a lot of sympathy and it tickles me to actually watch alliance players complain about AV now when we've been saying the map is imbalanced for years only to meet protests.

 

◊ zeidrich

Most likely way to win on our battlegroup:

Let horde do it's thing capping stonehearth and stormpike. Alliance takes and holds Iceblood because all the horde is on offense. A few people re-cap stonehearth. Horde offense is splintered, and deaths from taking Iceblood respawn at DB. DB defense moves up and retakes stormpike and many head to reinforce, kills scattered horde offense. Horde is spawning at frostwolf now so being disorganized they run through the chokepoint at iceblood trying to get back to O and die. Eventually the fight moves between IB and FW, which is one we can win even through attrition. Unlike IB vs SH, where we will lose a battle of attrition.

We can win if we don't recap stonehearth. Assuming enough people die on offense (it's really the only way we get a decent defense) and horde has over exerted itself, or is playing particularly defensively themselves, we can kill the offense, and retake stormpike. If we somehow managed to get a position lead we can hold off their offense at stormpike, at least long enough to get a time advantage and win a race.

If horde manages to cap stonehearth 4 minutes into the game and we don't have stormpike, we've lost. The only way we could possibly recover would be to have an organized team retake it, which of course is hard because they're respawning there. Plus we wont get back stormpike because they are very close to reinforce, and due to the alliance base layout with the bridge, there will be a lot of horde milling around the flag as they likely wont zerg across the bridge if we're heavily defended.

More likely, as karnadas said we will lose the people to galv, not IBGY, which will give us some honor at least. If we lose enough people but kill him, we will have a sufficient defense. Horde will have vacated IBGY by then and we can turn it. Chances are that wave will be respawning at stormpike. From there it is a race with the majority of horde between SH and SP, and alliance split 50/50 between defending SP and attacking between FW and IB. If we take FWGY before horde takes SPGY, chances are we will probably win the race, assuming they don't have a great lead on towers, or back cap IBT or TP.

If horde ever adopted a strategy of attacking stonehearth, and holding it until it turns, I can't imagine, other than having the organization of a premade, we would ever realistically win.

The issues IMO are simple. Early game alliance can do 2 things:

1) Defend Stonehearth. Because of the positioning of Balinda and SHB, defending stonehearth means sacrificing these objectives. This puts us 50-150 reinforcements behind the horde. If we defend SH and Horde defends IB, we will lose a very long game.

2) Cede stonehearth. This is what we normally do. The only reason we ever win in our BG is because all the horde goes offense and we can take Iceblood. They also turn stormpike long before stonehearth is capped, and often leave stonehearth relatively undefended. If horde were to defend stonehearth: We would be down 200 reinforcements because we would lose IWB as well. Stalemate between SPGY and SHGY is a loss for the alliance.

Horde starts out with an advantage due to the weaknesses of SHB and Balinda. If they force a turtle due to defensive play, and we trade kills 1 for 1, we are already ~150 reinforcements behind, and we will lose due to reinforcements. On my BG we only win because horde plays recklessly offensive.

If reinforcements were removed, alliance defense might be a viable strategy. But while it might occasionally net a win, it would mean a 1h+ game, mostly spent in the FoS deciding who could take the other's graveyard.




Personally I think the best balancing needed would be moving balinda closer to the SH Flag, giving her an aoe silence or aoe polymorph, increasing her arcane explosion damage, renaming IWB to Stonehearth Bunker, and moving Stonehearth Bunker to the Lumber Camp or down in the valley past SH towards the harpies and calling it Icewing Bunker.

Either that or remove the fear from galvanger, reduce his WW damage, and move tower point out to the middle of the field of strife and shift galvanger closer to snowfall graveyard, so he is not a short saunter from IBGY.

OR if you want to be really lazy and not change the geometry at all: make snowfall the early game objective. Disallow tower caps and graveyard caps and entry into Captains Quarters until snowfall is taken for the first time. Snowfall is fairly neutral in terms of difficulty to get to early game. Even give it a much shorter cap time, say 2 minutes. Fight over snowfall until it has capped, and then whomever has snowfall has the early game advantage.