◊ Praetorian

Yeah, exactly. I came out of my last AV with 140 HKs in 30 minutes -- the bonus honor number is smaller than it used to be, but people are so used to having maybe 5 HKs at the end of an AV that they forget about kill honor. Personally I find a series of 10v15 or 20v20 skirmishes at various chokepoints and towers to be much more entertaining than "ok, kill this NPC. Now kill this NPC. Now this one."

 

◊ Vectivus

Don't let your raiders see this! <3



Personally, I immensely disliked when AV became a "run-straight-to-your-opponent's-base" event. In all honesty, I preferred the 3-day-long, epic battles, where 80 players could clash at one graveyard for literally hours on end.

The emphasis in contemporary WoW (I can't believe I'm saying that...) on PvP has drawn people to focus on the points moreso than the battles, however - Battlegrounds are simply time-sponges for people to flesh out their Arena kits.

The new version of AV brings some of that old BG back - the one where people fight one another in immense battles - and I think that it's better for it. The soft time limit imposed by the reinforcement model was very much necessary. However, I think it will be a long time before the 'rush Galv!' mentality subsides - and until then, while the scoreboard may operate differently, the game (AV) is played the same.

 

Siddown

It's strange, Horde seems to defend Galv, where Alliance just let us take Balinda. Not really sure why that is, because I really don't by into the theory that people who play Horde and Alliance are vastly different when it comes to BGs, I wonder if it's just the layout of AV.

So If there are 20 people in your raid that want to play the "Old" AV (meaning last weeks), they can take Balinda and move on while the other 20 who understand the new AV will protect the two capped towers then go back on defense.

Interestingly enough, one thing the Reinforcements seems to have done is (and I believe this has been mentioned elsewhere) that healers heal people now. You have incentive not to let your people die. Also, we got to a point where we finally lost Tower Point, and the calls to fall back and regroup were listened to pretty much universally, meaning we didn't waste unnecessary reinforcements in a 5v20 scenario. We fell back, regrouped and made it 15v20 with the defensive advantage and did a one for one trade off, which was fine with us because we were up by almost 100 reinforcements at the time.

People will adapt, a Rogue who just jumps a healer right in the middle of the defense only to get instantly curbstomped by 10 people defending the healer will soon realize that he's doing more to hurt his team then help them...then again, maybe not (the whole "you can lead a horse to water" thing). Regardless, the game where it was played "properly" was way more exciting and interesting than the "Old" AV game where we just PvE'd to the win (I had 1 HK that game, how exciting).

 

Elerion

I definitely don't expect people to start playing differently just because a death brings their team 0.17% closer to defeat.

I wish I still enjoyed the zerg. Then new AV would probably be fun.

 

Lookit

I think time will cause you to reconsider your expectations. In just 2 days of playing since the patch, I have noticed a huge shift in how PuG BG's play. The daily quests cause people to focus on winning, and the AV changes have caused people to reconsider how they play. Certainly, old habits die hard, especially when talking about something as rote as the familiar AV strategy, but I'm confident that in the weeks to come we'll see a major shift in the standard PuG's approach to AV.

Before, dying didn't matter much, so there was little disencentive to just throw yourself into the fray and get in a few good hits. But the rules now encourage more conservative play, which I think we'll be seeing a lot more of.

 

Korlong

What I have observed is that healing is incredibly important in the new AV. Reminiscent of the days when I would heal with my Shadowpriest so we could push through the defense.

 

crimsonsentinel

I think part of that is the fact that galv simply is a harder boss than balinda and a group of horde can more easily disrupt alliance killing galv than vice versa. That's also why horde often can 5-10 man balinda on their way to SP while alliance typically uses a majority of their offense on galvanger.

 

Maltyrius

I have played quite a few games both horde and alliance since the patch in the Vengeance battlegroup. The results have been notably different as strats have been adopted quickly:

Tuesday: Alliance races to Drek ala pre-2.3; ignores towers as horde does same. Alliance wins 6 of 7.
Wednesday: Horde sends 10-12 back to harass around IB, TP and FW; alliance continues to attempt 'race wins'. Horde wins 5 of 7.

It's worth noting that pre-2.3 horde were winning roughly 80% after the anti-AFK measure were put into place. Obviously small samples from 1 battlegroup but there was a notable difference horde side within 24 hours while the new AV was 'sinking in'. For me, the best part is that the rare turtle I have seen now has an end in plain sight slowly ticking away.

Here is to hoping they can tweak WSG to produce a more enjoyable experience as well.

 

Levidian

Its worth it if you actually play the game instead of just sucking honor out of it.

I get just as much pleasure from holding the alliance to a trash amount of bonus honor as I do from getting a big bonus at the end.

Same reason I would go into AV with 9-10 other people and hold everything on D and keep the alliance anywhere from 0-100 bonus honor depending on Lts lost.

 

Lookit

They could probably just use the same principle they've used with AV. WSG could require 150 "victory points" to win; each flag cap is worth 50 and each HK is worth 1. This means that each flag cap is worth the same as killing the entire opposing team 5 times over. Flags would still be the fastest road to victory, but now even the staunchest turtle would have a soft timer.

Edit: Herein I whore myself.

 

Keltan

Brilliant! Somebody get on the batphone to Blizzard.

 

Kasi

The nice thing about AV is that you could just go queue up in there and regardless if you won or lost, you'd get some honor and make progress. Kinda sad to see that AV is now just like the other ones. If you go in there and your side sucks, you get virtually nothing. This is especially annoying being an alliance player. Already in pre 2.3 BGs alliance won less than a 30% of WSGs, ABs and EotS. And often those losses were the one sided wipeouts that were a total waste of time. If AV is the same, its really going to hurt alliance BGers.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

In Stormstrike (bg5) people are definitely starting to adjust their strategies, and it's becoming really fun. I'm not seeing race style anymore. Sometimes a side will TRY to race, but then they'll lose and lose hard. They actually managed to make the objectives important.

I lost one game where the alliance had 37 resources remaining, but had both mines and that was what made the difference

 

Davia

It's definitely a lot more interesting now, I don't know if the game I'm thinking of last night is the one you're mentioning; it may not have ended quite that close, but us having both mines is definitely what allowed us to win the one I was in, and I remember shield slamming you a few times, so it might have been the same game.

 

Victarion

Personally I am not a big fan of the new AV at all.

I've played a few games this week so far and even though I am always #1 or #2 healing at around 300-400k for 20 minute games alliance still gets rolled. I look at the charts afterwards and I see myself at the top and than ten horde below me, there's just not enough one person can if everyone else sucks. This isn't to say that one person should be able to determine the outcome of a forty person game but I really hate how putting in 100% for 20+ minutes nets me 20 honor. I never AFK'd in the old AV but with the number of horribly geared/skilled players in AV I'd be more likely to consider it under the new system.

The only reason I liked the old AV is that while all the alliance retards rushed straight to Drek I could convince a couple DPS to follow me around and kill every LT and cap every tower and ensure at lest a solid chunk of honor for putting in the effort to do something. New AV feels like all I do is stand around trying to heal green machines while I watch a couple horde 5/5 merc warriors killing everything.

 

Zraknul

Galv is definitely more powerful than Balinda; whirlwind vs fireball + slow. Healer + X kills Balinda (I tank her all the time on my lock with draining). I'm pretty sure there's a solid honor bonus for keeping your Captain alive till the end, and you don't want to let the other team to take the 100 reinforcements off your team. It's nice that they have a larger impact on the game than just their buff and they're worth a little bit of honor to kill.

I'm definitely enjoying the change. You still get the big epic fights, only they're not a stalemate for the next 6 hours. And the tactical aspect besides zerg for the other team's base is great.

 

Drunkmunky

Did 5 AV's last night, ground the Allies to a pulp every game. Capped everything and downed Vann, total bonus honor was 647. So in 5 games I got 3.8k honor, games were around 20minutes each.

I'm definitely loving the new AV, there was a lot more actual PvP and people were defending!!! Unfortunately the Allies were nubbing it up big time last night, I kinda feel bad for them, it must have been really disheartening to be beaten so soundly game after game.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

They did give Balinda a water elemental which makes her slightly less trivial. It can be banished/cycloned however and is typically ignored while you burn her. She's still a pushover for the most part unless Alliance help

 

Ngita

Problem is no 1 person can see it through. For example join a new game at 8pm. By midnight have alliance pushed right back to their base. 4am you had completed all the pve assists you could and made inroads but the Alliance were still be hanging on. But you have to sleep sometime. Join a AV 12 Hours later and Horde are pushed right back into their base and then realise its the same AV!

 

Kasi

So basically this is looking like horde loving AV, alliance hating AV. Not sure why alliance are so much worse at BGs than horde is, but it seems the only option I'll have for getting consistent honor (moved from Malfurion to Uther and the new bg wasn't as good with BGs pre patch as the old one) is to do premade ABs/EotS with friends/guildies, because I know on our server that the win/loss rate for AV is pretty bad.

 

Calantus

It's funny hearing people say "we won most/all of our games and this is way fun, good show Blizzard". Imagine you queued against yourself for every one of those games and instead got stomped for 100 honor a pop. It's not so much fun that way, and for the side that loses on their BG this AV is far worse. I can't honestly see a BG9 alliance player saying they like the new AV unless they're a masochist or really, really lucky with the games they get into. This is why horde now have 5 minute queues on our BG and I suspect those queues will only get longer. I've pretty-much given up on AV as I get comparable honor queueing with just one other person into the daily BG and it's much less frustrating because alliance both know how to win, they want to win, and I have a much larger impact on the game. Not to mention if AV is so good for horde but has a queue horde will be leaving BGs all the time when their queue gets up, I remember when that was the way it was for alliance and it cost many a game. Can't wait.

Also I may be wrong but WSG was giving us 185 honor per win and from memory it was 145 prepatch, this in response to Angeron saying th eother BGs don't give bonus honor this patch.

 

gatzu.

At least in BG9 there is no difference realistically in av after about 20 games I'd say 90% of them there are just offense zerging and tower burning.

The only way this kind of 10 minute no real pvp will ever change is if they make it viable (honor farming wise) to defend. Because the reality of the situation is most people are in there for honor not to "have fun".

 

Spoony

I think the new AV's horrid.

Back when I was in the 51-60s bracket, there was so much more teamwork and coordination involved, absolutely nothing compared to the AFK 61-70s. We would summon lok, fully upgrade guards, send in riders/aerial, it was a blast.

But now...

The factor is solely decided on tower captures and reinforcements; there used to be so many comebacks of factions with no towers left versus the ones that had all their towers left, retreating to lure out the turtles, and so forth.

If anything, I think the npcs need more HP, a lot more. But take away their damage capabilities and teamwork would also shine there.

 

Siddown

You are definitely cherry picking posts to back your arguement. Not every talked about winning, Lord Beef specifically said he enjoyed a game in which he lost. Many people spoke of how they liked it because it's no longer a mad PvE Zerg and that there is actually PvP in AV again and didn't even mention winning or losing.

Listen, we all get you hate AV (new and old), move on.

 

Nitz

The AFKers have returned and definitively, chain loosing with 0 honor and a token might be a good learning experience.