Well sure its the best way to do things. The point is you can't argue this into balance of things, because it is dependant on so many things.

1) How many stealthers does your side have?
2) How competent are your teammates?
3) How good is the backcapping team?
And most importantly
4) Is horde doing the same thing to you?

It's just as likely horde ninja'ing things is pulling people off of your attack on IB, so saying that you should ninja stuff will work is kinda silly. It's dependant on too many variables and you can't count on it. In the end I assume that all things being equal both sides are trying to ninja as much and the ninja'ing siphons off equivalent amounts of manpower from the middle part, making it in the end even.

That's really not true. It is functionally impossible for the horde to steal the alliance hut unless everyone knows how to NOT pull those goddamn 60K HP mobs that infest their base(You CAN clear all of the base trash out with three people, it just takes a long time and is easily disrupted by any level of alliance defense). This contrasts with the FW relief hut which can be ninja'd by ANY single class in any number with any level of coordination because you never end pulling the entire base. If Blizzard just moved those mobs to somewhere else in the base, we could ninja their hut every single time. We'd also beat them to Van every time because we wouldn't have to spend 4 minutes clearing the trash out of their base.

Next time I'm running premades, I'm going to experiment with just ninja'ing a Dun Baldar tower and selectively pulling the base trash one at a time.

Well sure its harder to ninja the hut. But unless you get SP too thats not going to do you a lot of good. What I was talking about was ninja capping the DB towers. And I've seen it a lot, since the alliance archers don't shoot into the building. Very easy for a pally to solo cap the place and hold it against 1-2 alliance by just abusing LoS, bubble, bop and such.

Why are horde offensive stealth strikes pulling people off your assault team? Presumably the alliance up in the northern half of the map will be attempting to deal with ninja attempts on SP or Dun Baldar, the same as horde up north don't concern themselves with Relief Hut attacks (aside from "someone down there get the RH back NOW!!!" followed by a wall of timer spam).

Yes, the quality and composition of your team and the opposing team matters. Sometimes you can do all the right things and still lose. That's the spice that seperates pvp from pve. It doesn't make discussing strategies pointless. For one thing, you don't actually need stealthers to contest objectives south of IB, it's just easier for them to get past the chokepoint.

...
Perhaps you should go and tell the archers that, because they apparently haven't gotten that memo yet.

I do this, and it works very well. You have to be in a very specific position to not get hit by the archers, because they do shoot inside. Then, you are in combat until you have killed all the archers.

It is easier for an ally to do this, as the horde towers are really nasty on line of site. It just takes some practice. You just have to be thinking, which 85% of the people playing AV obviously are not. (By this I don't mean anyone on these boards)

The best part is you almost always only face one defender at a time, and for certain classes thats a winning battle. I can thank the silly rogues that cap a tower and move on to a different one for that. People are so used to capping back an undefended tower because of that, they do not expect to meet resistance. Even more so, I don't care about killing you, I just care about keeping you from re-capping the tower, which a lot of people can't seem to fathom.

I really think AV is a great game right now, I just wish I could play it (gogo Rampage 1.5 hour queues). Not because I win 600-0, but because I think it is really rewarding for those who can strategize. I do not think it is as impossible for the alliance to win as they seem to feel, but I wouldn't be against buffing Balinda.

I haven't played AV on Alliance side since TBC (I did play my warrior to exalted before though) so I can't comment on how the new AV is for the Alliance. For Horde, however, Blizzard needs to make some changes if they truly intend on balancing the game. One is to move the NPCs or reduce their aggro range so that they don't need to be killed every single time. The Alliance never has to kill a single NPC. I don't see how anyone can call the Horde having to kill the NPCs "balanced." Hell, DBS has an NPC at the entrance that you can't bypass unless you're a stealther. Is that the case with the Horde towers too in the new AV?

The second change is the archers. Alliance archers still shoot at you when you're at AS, but they don't hit you when you're at RH. Can't really call that balanced either. In my battlegroup, the Alliance pretty much always ninja the RH and send the Horde in a state of panic and let's-lose-fast-so-we-can-start-over mode.

Alliance archers are harder to LoS than horde. By far.

I've played AV to exalted on over 8 characters pre TBC. Both on Horde and Alliance. I've only played the "new" av as horde.

Few observations:

Alliance bridge needs to go. That or their archer range needs to be reduced to the same range the horde archers have with their vastly increased Z axis check.

Alliance NPC's near aid station need to be moved. Period. It's ridiculous that Horde has to clear 8 NPC's with 200k+ hp if ONE STRAY FEAR happens and alliance NEVER has to deal with horde NPC's.

Galv needs to be nerfed slightly. 5% less damage-ish.

The whole "rez at a GY if a GY is available instead of your cave" is bs if the only GY open to your faction is ACROSS THE MAP. If you're closer to your cave than the only open GY, you should rez at your cave.

30 minute time limit needs to be in place. Here on Craptastic Emberstorm, games can drag out for over an hour STILL.

Mines need to be more valuable.

Mines are far more valuable the longer the game lasts. I'm slightly puzzled by you suggesting a time limit and finding the mines useless when games last an hour.

No no no, I don't mean value to the win / loss of the BG. I could give a flying monkey's arse about losing or winning. I ment value towards bonus honor. Having a mine capped when your team wins / loses to give you more bonus honor to help increase honor / hour is what I was suggesting. Sorry for the confusion.

And if there are 2 open graveyards, both across the map? The change is an important one for horde, as it causes horde displaced from IB to respawn, and defend, FW, rather than appearing on the other side of the valley in the cave. Really, the problem is the location of the horde starting cave. Move it to where the wolf NPCs are now, and stick those NPCs in the vast empty space by the RH that is always used by alliance stealthers.

What I was referring to was times on Offense For The Horde(!) I'd get sent back from Stormpike to RH because Stonehearth hadn't capped yet. Or The times When you're on defense, and the only GY that horde have usable atm is Stormpike. Both Scenarios suck arse, and could be avoided with a simple revoking.

WoW Forums -> Balinda and Vanndar Health Increased – Hotfix

Looks like they're trying to do something to stop the steamrolling, I don't see how this will really make Balinda any harder, it's her abilities that are gimp, not her HP count.

While I understand the concept of "baby steps", this is likely not to go over well. The alliance will complain because giving Balinda and Vanr more HP won't really help all that much. She's still a pansy and he's still unnecessary to win. The horde is going to complain because they will see it as Blizzard caving to the whiners (despite Drysc's post that the data and statistics they have been pulling indicate this too).

It's a nice gesture, but perhaps that's all it is? A peace offering that's designed to entice people back into AV, but not any real meaningful change?

It seems like a gesture to get alliance to give AV another try. The alliance don't lose 600-0 because of the map imbalance. Stormspike GY is still the most defensible point on the map and if they put up any fight at all they can keep all of Dun Baldur uncapped and force Horde to bleed them out to win. The reason they get blown out on some servers 600-0 is because the they have given up trying. Tossing the Alliance a pretty worthless buff may be nothing more then an attempt to get Alliance to say "Well we got a buff let's give it another shot."

If they were hoping to entice more people into AV with this change, i think they will be disappointed. Well, that probably depends more on how much more hp Balinda has gained, but still that's a pretty weak move.

I'm really confused how Blizzard could think giving Balinda more HP helps in the slightest. She sucks, and giving her more HP doesn't make her suck less, it just makes her suck slightly longer.

ed: I don't mean this as a WTF BLIZZ WTF comment; I'm honestly curious what giving both of them more HP can fix. They usually tend to have reasons behind the changes they make, but the benefit of this one goes completely over my head.

The reason I like 60 av at the moment is you see every possible variation of strategy you can think of and Belinda living doesnt help if Alliance dont cap anything at all. ie 23 Reinforcement win Horde get 250, Alliance got 84.

When your down too 2 hour queues, a significant number of the alliance are playing just for the token. Getting them too defend for 2 mins longer to keep 60 honor is a fairly hard sell.

The only advantage is does give longer to do something about it. Defending SH bunker and you hear the call they are trying for Balinda. Rush over only to find her allready dead is somewhat pointless.

Increasing Belinda's hit points is a small change that will likely go unnoticed for the most part and not solve the problem in Battlegroups where AV has already died, it might for the interim prevent AV from dying in the remaining battlegroups which I think is the overall intention at this point.

Blizzard has stated only certain things can be hotfixed without a patch, mob HP being one of them. This hotfix shows blizzard realizes there is a problem with AV, and they have done something (which is better then nothing) in the time between patches. Blizzard however will lose signifigant credibility if the podcast doesn't talk about AV, or the 2.4 patch does not include a signifigant patch to remedy the problem.

I agree - I think the Alliance that had given up on AV will maybe try one game, but unless it's a (lucky ?) win, they will say "nothing has changed" and leave AV again until some other changes are made.

I think your "doesn't suck less, just sucks a bit longer" probably sums up the situation pretty well.

It might, however, buy Alliance a little more time, either to down Galv in the same time, or to grab a party to harass defend Balinda. Either way, it will probably slightly slow down the reinforcement advantage Horde have when they down her first.

The problem i see is that if Blizzard decide to take baby steps in fixing this, Alliance will become disillusioned with them fixing it at all. Every time a change goes through like this, alliance will jump in and do a game or 2 before realising that it really changed nothing and go back to not queueing or AFKing. This is fine, but if it happens too much, alliance will stop even trying out the changes blizzard makes, meaning that those changes will be ignored by the public, making them impossible to test to see if they've been effective. It's pretty simple, if you keep dissappointing someone, they'll stop being hopeful, and if alliance aren't hopeful, they wont queue even when blizzard make their 'baby steps'.

Ever-so minorly, yes. Pending no other changes, she'll still be soloable on my 69 sl/sl warlock until she runs out of mana and beats me to death. Something like, say, doubling her fireball damage and making her immune to stuns or interrupts so that she at least requires a healer would be more useful.

As has been said though, Balinda has little to do with why Alliance are losing 600-0 (on some Battlegroups).

After playing quite a bit of AV over the past couple of weeks I tend to agree that this change is meaningless. Most claims that trying is the issue are fairly valid but I've been in a number of BGs where the Alliance team is actually trying quite hard but just lose out by numbers in the reinforcements battle. The only exception to this is when you have a decent group of stealthers taking TP, E/W FW towers and holding them before the main push into the base happens. Increasing Vanadar's health is an absolute joke -- 95%+ of horde wins don't even touch him (that I've seen). Morale is quite low at the moment and the souring that's happened with AV is probably not going to be easily fixed -- if that's what they are looking for.