In the battlegroups I play in (Alliance on Ruin, Horde on Vindication) I've had the opposite experience that many describe in this thread. On Ruin the Alliance win a good amount of the time, on Vindication the Alliance borderline dominate the Horde with most games ending 400+ Alliance bonus honor to 188 Horde bonus honor or less and completing the PVP Daily AV quest often being an all evening chore. If they do 'fix' the problem of Alliance getting shut out on Stormstrike and Bloodlust, it will very likely lead to the opposite effect where Alliance are shutting out Horde on other battlegrounds.
It's hard to balance AV since the general skill/gear/attitude of players on each battlegroup and faction varies a lot. Do they just mirror 1 side of the map so both sides have identical bases, claim balance, and wipe their hands free of the mess? Even if they did do that, I still doubt it would be balanced on those battlegroups where Alliance (or Horde) are getting dominated.
I think all people want out of AV is maximum honor for minimal effort, regardless of winning or losing. If the Alliance were getting beat as bad but receiving 200 honor per game, there would probably be much less complaints. It's similar to playing in one of those 45 minute WSG games that has no healers and losing 3-0. It's very demoralizing spending all that time for nothing at all.
I think all people want out of AV is maximum honor for minimal effort, regardless of winning or losing. If the Alliance were getting beat as bad but receiving 200 honor per game, there would probably be much less complaints. It's similar to playing in one of those 45 minute WSG games that has no healers and losing 3-0. It's very demoralizing spending all that time for nothing at all.
Yup. That's exactly it. I enjoyed a good AV as much as the next person, but from a honour/hour ratio... All people really want is their s1 kit (or their s3 stuff) without having to spend the next 500 hours in a battleground.
Even though Alliance almost always wins AV on my battlegroup anyway (I'm not really sure why horde hasn't caught on to any strategy unless it's a premade). I decided to try out some new strategies for fun. I had much more enjoyable games doing certain things than the regular Ruin-BG-Alliance-Side-AV-Rush-Galv>IB>FW>EFW/WFW>Stealth-Cap-RH strategy that horde never counters.
1) Defending Balinda. Yeah, she's a bit weaker than Galv, but her ranged attack can actually make it a bit easier to defend. I can enter an AV and say "5 people come with me to Balinda" and, believe it or not, people will just to see what happens. Horde are never expecting to meet 5-10 alliance at Balinda and I don't think I've seen them kill her when we've done this. Meanwhile, the other 20 or so alliance hit up IB/Galv.
2) Recap SH and IWB after doing step 1. Horde will be spawning at FW now. If they're spawning at IB and rushing, they're not defending. If they're spawning at IB and defending, SH and IWB is an easy recap. Now they will defend FW which is a terrible defense point, the worst horde has available to them. Now alliance has momentum. Horde, even though forced to turtle (at a poor spot) has nothing.
3) Cap and defend the middle towers. Also recap SHB. For honor, everyone loves honor. This will also put alliance far ahead in terms of reinforcements. If horde managed to squeeze out a Balinda kill and a SHB cap they should still be 100+ reinforcements down.
4) After everything in middle is capped, stealth/run past FW to the towers. If horde is still defending FW they will have to back into their base to recap. This will A) spread out forces and B) allow for a window of opportunity for alliance to cap FW. If alliance manages a tower cap, horde is now down 200+ reinforcements and it's pretty much a guaranteed loss. If alliance gets RH, horde spawns at their cave and will go to offense. Kill Drek after RH caps. 500+ honor for alliance, 200 or so for horde.
Yes, there are ways to counter. Defending IB/Galv on horde side is the best thing they can do early. By defending Balinda and recapping SH, it either A) forces horde to send more on offense, leaving IB more open, or B) forces them to turtle, giving them no bonus honor.
These types of AV games also involve way more PvP than "rush" strategy games. I'm almost positive that spending 30 minute in AV and getting 100 or so kills and 300-500 bonus honor will yield almost as much total honor as a 15 minute AV with 5 HKs and the same bonus. I think the best thing about the new AV is, you want to force the other team to turtle. It leads to mass kills for your side and an open map to freely cap whatever you wish as long as you can defend it. Whereas, in old AV, forcing the other team to turtle meant a 2 hour game with no honor.
As one on the receiving end of this strat, I can vouch that we have no idea what the fuck to do when alliance actually defends Balinda or any of the other things you NEVER defend, like Stormhearth Bunker/Graveyard. In particular, guarding the bunkers really works for you guys; you only need 1-2 people there if they can get there before the archers are all killed.
Now they will defend FW which is a terrible defense point, the worst horde has available to them.
I would not advise trying to force a fight at FW; many Horde have caught on that it sucks and simply fall back to the hut ASAP unless they think we can use it to back cap IB Tower/TP. Your best bet to force a fight there is to ninja the relief hut early on. Unless the Horde is already pushed back to FW, it's a long walk from anywhere and you can just camp the trinket spot. If you can get 4-5 there, it's GG.
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A guildy noticed something unusual on the Nightfall battlegroup: The Horde plays a lot better at night. After about 11 PM central time, the games go from about 50/50 with the losing side getting 200 honor and the winners 400 honor to the Horde winning something like 60-70% of the games and sometimes executing those brutal 600-0 shutouts(Which they never do during the day). I have no rational explanation for this. It might just be an artifact of my small sample size. Does anyone else's anecdotal evidence back this up?
my first guess would be bed times combined with who just got out of raids and are looking to get their honor for the night. Usually those players will be better geared, more experienced and more willing to entertain actual strategy than your average pugger.
I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm just speaking from the perspective of improvement overall in horde game play. But Alliance has a lot more people than horde, generally speaking, increasing your chances of being matched up against geared/knowledgable alliance players. So when the kiddies log off for bed there is probably more of an impact on the horde side compared to alliance.
As one on the receiving end of this strat, I can vouch that we have no idea what the fuck to do when alliance actually defends Balinda or any of the other things you NEVER defend, like Stormhearth Bunker/Graveyard. In particular, guarding the bunkers really works for you guys; you only need 1-2 people there if they can get there before the archers are all killed.
Lol, this works because it surprises you, not because it is a viable tactic. We can't defend SH because quite simply horde gets there before we do. I have been in several premade games recently where we did defend Belinda, and yeah it worked to a degree. However what it did every time was lost us IBGY for a while. Eventually offence got on track and managed to push horde south, but we had to spend all our time in the north backcapping the DBs, IW, SH bunker and SH GY. In one game we managed to keep them all, but in a couple others we lost 2/4 towers. We eventually won all the games through attrition.
I would not advise trying to force a fight at FW; many Horde have caught on that it sucks and simply fall back to the hut ASAP unless they think we can use it to back cap IB Tower/TP. Your best bet to force a fight there is to ninja the relief hut early on. Unless the Horde is already pushed back to FW, it's a long walk from anywhere and you can just camp the trinket spot. If you can get 4-5 there, it's GG.
Yes you're right in that if you don't cap relief hut before FW than it becomes hard to win through killing Drek. However if we do this combined with an active defence this is a very good way to win through reinforcements. If relief hut is your only GY you will eventually be drained down and lose, even if we don't take either FW tower.
A guildy noticed something unusual on the Nightfall battlegroup: The Horde plays a lot better at night. After about 11 PM central time, the games go from about 50/50 with the losing side getting 200 honor and the winners 400 honor to the Horde winning something like 60-70% of the games and sometimes executing those brutal 600-0 shutouts(Which they never do during the day). I have no rational explanation for this. It might just be an artifact of my small sample size. Does anyone else's anecdotal evidence back this up?
Kinda the opposite for WW. Alliance plays better in prime time. In offtime we have higher numbers of afk botters and we lose more.
Lol, this works because it surprises you, not because it is a viable tactic. We can't defend SH because quite simply horde gets there before we do.
This is the one thing that annoys me about AV above all others.
As a paladin, with crusader aura, I can mount up and run straight to SH Bunker. Most of the time, by the time I get in, the flag is already turned grey.
It is much much easier to harass a player or two to prevent them from capping a tower than it is to sit there and channel a cap with a couple people hanging around it.
Not to mention unless I have a friend or two in the BG it's pretty hard to get people to help defend SHB
Yeah playing in there as a group of 5 and playing in there as solo is a completely different beast.
If playing with a group of 10+ there is a lot you can do:
- Wipe horde on Belinda.
- Have a couple roaming squads that make sure you don't lose anything in the north
- Go straight to relief hut and cap it, you can get a 12 minute win pretty easy that way.
- Pretty much stonewall horde at any single point you choose. You might loose stuff though if you don't spread out, which then makes it easier to take stuff if they focus.
Regardless with 10+ people in there you'll win.
If you have 5-6:
- You can wipe horde on Belinda, but that means you'll lose everything else.
- Recap middle bunkers/towers or take relief hut.
- Best way as a 5 group is to just ping pong between IW and SH bunkers.
By yourself? :
- Hope you can get some people to help you take relief hut early
- Barring that help take IBGY and guard it or one of the middle towers til it caps.
- If you're alone even in that, then join the zerg, hope that you get it to work. Too many times I've tried to solo cap IBGY and got ambushed by horde and killed, which leaves me with 2 others stuck at SP. I guess this is class dependant, I certainly feel better solo capping a GY with my shaman (CL wipes out 3 plus I drop an elemental) than I do as my warrior (guaranteed to lose 2/3 of my health killing guards)
I've seen that on Stormstrike as well. While the reputation here is that every match is 600-0 in the horde's favor, all the afternoon matches that I participated in (not a big sample size, it should be noted) were generally more like rush games, with little defense on either side.
I think this explains a lot of the complaints in the general forums about a certain faction "always" losing a particular BG. It seems more like it's a certain faction, on a certain battlegroup, at a certain time of day, in a particular BG, that has problems.
Alliance on Bloodlust won an AV last evening (Oceanic time).
I was with the small defense force, ready to intercept them at Galv, instead they rushed to IBGY with about +25, completely decimating us when we responded there. They ignored Galv for a while and had the majority of the zerg sit on IBGY until it capped, simultaneously they sent 5 man squads to harrass TP and FWGY. When IBGY capped, they went and got Galv and IBT. During this time, we pushed up to TP (think we capped it back) and halfway to IBGY maybe before they routed us and pushed south, steadily we lost TP and then FWGY. They also had stealthers taking the FW towers, which diverted some of our attention. Finally we found ourselves in FW keep, trying to keep them at bay up through the twisty path between the towers. Eventually they just overwhelmed us and took our aid station by having multiple mounted people rush in. They had something like ~45 reinforcements when they won, I think they actually killed Drek because we had the reinforcement advantage when they got our aid station.
Not sure what our offense was doing, I presume they were following the standard strat. When it ended, they were on the bridge bleeding reinforcements, stealthers trading DB towers with alliance defense. I don't know who had the mines.
They seemed pretty well coordinated, though there wasn't major representation from any one realm, maybe a cross realm sync-queue ala scOrn D:?
I'd be interested to hear from any Alliance that was in that match to find out what was going on in their /bg chat. This was at around 11 pm aest.
It is much much easier to harass a player or two to prevent them from capping a tower than it is to sit there and channel a cap with a couple people hanging around it.
Not to mention that alliance towers/bunkers are alot more dificult to retake than horde ones, a sole horde can keep from 1-2 alliance players up to 3-4 players busy for quite awhile (depending on gear/class on both sides). Just by running arround the circle inside, jumping down to the stairs, run up again, move in and out of the "windows". Locks, mages and healers are really annoying, yesterday a season-something-or-other resto druid kept 4 alliance busy in north db bunker just long enough for it to burn (not the full timer ofcause :P), just by moving about, constant hot'ing himself and moonfiring anyone trying to recap flag.
Horde recapping their towers is somewhat easier, alliance is allways inside (maybe +1 standing just outside the door in stealth), comon tactic is to get into the room and either get off a aoe cc or just a aoe dmg spell. On my horde mage I usually run up into the tower with invisible on and frost nova the room, and then its just a matter of if I have help and/or what type of classes and their gear I am up against.
In offtime we have higher numbers of afk botters and we lose more.
After looking in detail at my BG's most recent 30 or so matches on WarcraftRealms.com, I believe the problem is AFK's. For whatever reason, the number of alliance AFKs is greater to a statistically significant degree. Take this match, where there are literally twice as many alliance AFK as Horde. Conversely, see this match where there are twice as many Horde AFK. Unsurprisingly, the Horde lost that one. In most of the examples I look at the number of AFKs is what determines who wins or loses. This explains part of why premades tend to do so well: Because a greater-than-average percentage of players are guaranteed to be active, your team does better overall. It explains the alliance losses at night: There are fewer matches running so the bots get more concentrated in the games that do exist.
I would welcome a more rigorous, automated analysis, but here's my take for now: If Blizzard cracks down HARD on AFKs, the alliance win/loss ratio will improve.
Oh sure it will help. Doesn't solve the fact that 70% of alliance in AV are a bunch of retards. Sometimes its like lemmings throwing themselves off the proverbial cliff at Galvangar. "There is 10 horde in there!! All in! WTF, why am I at SP" followed by the few people who did the right thing getting steamrolled in the IB area.
After looking in detail at my BG's most recent 30 or so matches on WarcraftRealms.com, I believe the problem is AFK's. For whatever reason, the number of alliance AFKs is greater to a statistically significant degree. Take this match, where there are literally twice as many alliance AFK as Horde. Conversely, see this match where there are twice as many Horde AFK. Unsurprisingly, the Horde lost that one. In most of the examples I look at the number of AFKs is what determines who wins or loses. This explains part of why premades tend to do so well: Because a greater-than-average percentage of players are guaranteed to be active, your team does better overall. It explains the alliance losses at night: There are fewer matches running so the bots get more concentrated in the games that do exist.
I would welcome a more rigorous, automated analysis, but here's my take for now: If Blizzard cracks down HARD on AFKs, the alliance win/loss ratio will improve.
People AFK because you lose and you lose because people afk.
The reason why AV is not going on some battlegroups is because they cut the honor for the losing side by a whole lot. Before the recent change Puging AV and getting creamed was the fastest way for the horde to pug honor. The result is that even though Horde lost a huge percentage of the games they kept playing because it was either AV or get yourself in a good preform. If they add back in the free honor that was the elite NPCs and maybe made defending Dun Balder worth while in terms of honor the alliance would come back.
Lastly there is no real reason to think that the alliance would do better if no one in the BG was AFK. In fact judging from the other BGs horde pugs should keep a very good win percentage vs alliance pugs on a fair map.
So with needing to keep SH and not being able to take IB or Galv because of it you have no option to attack whatsoever. The only way to win with anything short of "massively outplay" is to hold SH and take and hold SF until it caps. We've talked about the strategy before but it seriously is the only decent option at this stage. I haven't been able to get people to defend SF, but spamming "SKIP GALV" at least stops them from tempting the horde towards SF and taking it back instantly. Ressers at SH tend to push onto SHB and there's a possibility of taking that back but it's not a good idea to focus on it.
The problem comes when you've capped SF. Anyone dying in the midfield will ress at SF, and SH will slowly become undefended. It's hard enough to make players stop on the way to where they are going and defend a GY, it's quite another to get them to go out of their way to defend SH. Eventually you will lose SH.
The question is what to do with the opening you have with SH and SF in hand. Hitting Galv is popular with the masses but honestly hitting Galv before IB is a disaster in the making. During that time horde will take SH and gain map position whereas you have gained nothing but some honor and reinforcements. Hitting IB is difficult because it is a very powerful choke, made even more powerful since you're pinning the majority of the horde force down there if you attack it (until a ninja, I'll get to that). I think it's probably impossible to take with a pug against a large defending force.
A stalemate in the midfield is not in alliance interests because of the well documented imbalances there so you really need to push on through. This imbalance is made more severe because of player imbalance in BG9 where horde have much better ninjas. We lost one game where 3 people ninja'd SP and held it until it capped. I kept calling for people to fall back but not enough did. We also have frequent ninjas against our DB bunkers. Alliance on the otherhand don't seem to understand the concept. A ninja on FW would likely pull a few defenders off IB and allow us to take it, but I haven't been able to arrange anything like that.
So basically my strategy at the moment is:
- Hold SH.
- Cap and hold SF until it turns.
- ???
- PROFIT!
I think ??? needs to be "ninja FW GYs and Ts to force def off IB and cap it" but I honestly don't know if alliance in my battlegroup are capable of it.
This is exactly how AV on my server was played pre-battlegroup era (back in the initial iterations of AV) when it was server only battlegrounds. From what I hear I'd imagine it was similar in most other battlegrounds. The large numbers of NPC's allowed alliance to have steady defense at SH (same with horde at IB) so the vast majority of the fighting was done on the field of strife. The end result were 5 day games with the eventual winners decided mainly by how many people from the other side decided that sleep was more important.
The general AV win ratio in my battle group is around 70/30 in alliance favor. At least that is what it was like pre 2.3.2, and now I've tried 5-6 games at different times trying to complete the daily pvp after the patch. It has turned into 100/0 for alliance, and will mostly likely lead to horde maybe winning 1 game in 30 or something when even less active players choose to enter the BG in the first place.
The buffs to the alliance bosses is totally uncalled for in my battle group, just made an annoying situation even worse.
That is why it is a bad fix, it dosnt solve anything in battlegroups where either side is looking at a near total win all the time... but you got to admit, its a fix that involves the least amount of work for blizzard. So lets hope they dont see the "improvements" in player activity they are looking for'. 'cause you know that, that will just result in 6 months of wait before they look at it again.
Oh and just to recap, I have posted my wishes for change and stuff that is imbalanced, but I am lucky enough to be in Cyclone BG. Seems like 60/40 up to 70/30 in alliances favor, with only few games where hordes honor is low (188'ish, which is still fairly good considering 250 honor for a AB win on honor weekend, which takes atleast twice as long, if you are just looking at honor per hour). So I dont have a absolut need to cry about AV from a personal and selfish point of view (note: people losing all the time have a right to be selfish about this!), I just want a fair and fun battleground. (edit: that also rewards me at a reasonable pace )
They really should re-wrap AV as (as I recall it) they have said they wont make any more large scale bgs. It isnt content that the game "outgrows" like MC/BWL/ZG/AQ (which offtopic is a darn shame they aint scheduled to be reworked like naxx), there will just be another bracket as each new expansion becomes available. They should put it down as a WotLK change, take their time and get it right(maybe even put in siege weapons! like they talk about for the exp bg). If that were to become true and it would be told to the masses, then I think most people would quiet down as that would be an acceptable time to wait IF it would be a real remake of the bg (and gief new battleground rewards for higher brackets!).
Well I don't think this fix does not make or break the AV on either side.
But I would actually replace Balinda completely, if I was to fix this.
Horde faces some High Astromancer Solarian, while the Alliance has to cope with some Gurtogg Bloodboil.
On our battle group, the Alliance wins most of the times but as it is now every side gets their fair share of honor in a reasonable time. The Horde could switch to the "scorched earth" strategy anytime to just not only win the battleground, but also let the Alliance go home with zero honor.
With that fix, make sure the Warlock soloing Balinda has a mana potion with him now.
I'm utterly confused at the "cap sh gy" thing I'm hearing about. We have a win ratio that usually slightly favors alliance and it usually just goes like;
horde -> balinda -> sh bunker & iw bunker -> (NEVER taking SH gy) -> keep 2-4 people at each bunker -> storm SP gy, everyone we meet in our way will respawn @ sh gy and leave SP alone -> storm BD.
Whenever someone caps SH gy there'll be huge fights at SP and or the road from IW -> SP severly prolonging games and in many cases loosing our game.
The downside is that, when we win, it's usually around 370-420 honor.
(tip of the day horde; make sure you stop by jeztor and free him for extra 20 honor).
As for the new changes ? Doesn't change anything but having us do balinda > then the bunkers instead of SH & IW & Balinda at the same time.
I'm in the "just mirror the damn map and nps allready" camp here though, blizzard realised balancing shamans and paladins was impossible, you simply cannot balance two things that are fundamentally different.
The problem with the map right now is that alliance don't have a choke point in the middle and horde do have one.
No the problem with the map is losing used to give reasonable honor which is why there was no 20+ page whine thread on EJ before AV was changed. All they have to implement is some way to give the alliance back at least some honor whilst losing and it's ok again. Horde had the short end of the stick for what, four years and there wasn't such a whine feast. Just get the honor flowing for alliance again and everythings golden.
Wash the spears . . .
. . . while the sun climbs high.
Wash the spears . . .
. . . while the sun falls low.
Wash the spears . . .
. . . who fears to die?
Wash the spears . . .
. . . no one I know!
- Aiel chant
A guildy noticed something unusual on the Nightfall battlegroup: The Horde plays a lot better at night. After about 11 PM central time, the games go from about 50/50 with the losing side getting 200 honor and the winners 400 honor to the Horde winning something like 60-70% of the games and sometimes executing those brutal 600-0 shutouts(Which they never do during the day). I have no rational explanation for this. It might just be an artifact of my small sample size. Does anyone else's anecdotal evidence back this up?
My suggestion about this would be to count the number of afk, in my battlegroup the reverse tends to happen about midnight where the afk level on the hordeside seems to race up compared with that on the alliance side.
No the problem with the map is losing used to give reasonable honor which is why there was no 20+ page whine thread on EJ before AV was changed. All they have to implement is some way to give the alliance back at least some honor whilst losing and it's ok again.
Call me crazy, but I would like it to actually be fun, too.
01/09/08, 12:35 PM
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