Spatula

Wasn't the answer to this debated over the last 20 pages or so?

 

Amonra

It sounds to me as if you are in a very similar position to alliance on the Rampage battlegroup. The alliance have become so used to losing that half the raid doesn’t try any more (and not that many even queue up). The horde on the other hand are hungry for easy honor and the 2 hour queues just serve to whet their appetites – by the time they finally do get in they are going to go all out for the maximum win.

What this means is that there are effectively 20-25 alliance against 35-40 horde. And no matter what tactics we adopt (we’ve tried them all!), we are simply too outnumbered. Fundamentally we are stuck in a rut of losing which is almost impossible to break out of – half the people just don’t care enough to try.

Prior to 2.3, alliance won most of the games by rushing Galv/IB. The reason this worked is because the horde was stuck in the rut of losing and had mass AFKs. 35 people descending on Galv/IB overwhelmed any defence – even if the horde put all their active team on defence we would break through. The very few alliance deaths simply bolstered the defences against the weak horde attack.

The only difference was that the alliance didn’t much care what the horde did as long as we won most of the time. We made no real effort to defend our bunkers, officers and GY but simply aimed to hold the horde off at Dun Baldar bridge long enough to get Drek dead. The result was that the horde got pretty reasonable honor for their quick loss and still queued up. However in the current games the alliance are getting 0 honor for a loss and very few are queuing up.

I’m not sure what Blizzard can to do remove this problem, although banning non-active participation is a step in the right direction. Changing the map will shake things up, but fairly quickly one side or the other will get stuck in the rut of not caring enough.

 

dotOrion

In general yes, but I was asking for advice for the situation I provided

Anyway, I'd say the revamped AV is overall bad.
It's fun if you fight in small groups over a tower or a graveyard, yes (which never happened in the rushes)

But since a battlegroups AV wins seem to be biased towards one faction all the time, the change has brought nothing but frustration to the losing side who gets close to nothing worth of honor anymore.

 

Cwealm

You are correct. On my horde mage on Ysondre, after waiting for two hours for AV to pop, I am to the point where if the alliance kill Galv and accomplish nothing else and we win with 540 replacements to their zero, I feel like the battleground has been a loss. Seriously.

Although this is the case in every BG. All we (and I mean horde as I have both a 70 alliance and horde mage) ever face is alliance premades in every battleground all day long, so on the rare occasions in ANY battleground you face a PUG alliance team, you can bet we are going to go all out. I have noticed that my personality has changed in these matches. I would never spawn camp in graveyards before I rolled my horde toon, but then after getting curb-jawed by alliance premades with people who don't even strafe the last few months in EOTS, AB, and WSG, when I am facing a PUG, I just want to inflict as much pain and get as much honor as possible. A 4 cap in EOTS is not enough- I want to kill them where they spawn. A 5 cap in AB is not enough- I want to push them back to Trollbane and make them miserable. And since I know I probably won't earn anything but the minimum honor for the next five matches as I face nothing but premades again, I have to behave this way, otherwise I earn no honor.

 

Pyre

So you want to encourage the pug Alliance not to even play and so make your queue times even longer? This is baffling to me.

 

Amonra

It sounds amazingly like Rampage BG. The problem of AFKs is so bad on the alliance side that the only way to get a proper WSG, EOTS or AB game is to join a premade. The average hastily put together premade doesn't get together to better stomp horde pugs - we join so that we can avoid the AFKs. This trend reinforces itself because any alliance joining a pug now have a higher proportion of AFKs, making the active players evern more likely to join a premade. Plus, as you say, the horde applying maximum pain to the few alliance pugs they come across further reinforces the trend.

A lot of these premades have no minimum restrictions so gear is often terrible, and the tactics and organisation are nothing to write home about. However the one thing they wont have is people not actively participating. 15 people paying attention and at least making a pretence at strategy is a huge advantage to have when against a PuG.

It's relatively hard to get enough people for an AV premade, and then to get the majority of them into the same battleground. Thus premade AVs are almost unheard of.

 

Melkortopia

We run Ally AV pre-forms on Moonrunner.

The solution is to send all 25 people on offense straight to IBGY right at the very beginning, and then defend that graveyard til it caps - and only after that, breaking 5 people off to go kill Galv and sending ~15 people to go get TP. Stealthers cap RH and FW towers, the alliance Offensive moves around FW GY to support them.

Oh, and 15 people on defense defend SH GY, SH Tower, and Balinda, which is usually pretty easy to do, considering how the horde tend to trickle in and attack all three areas at the same time.

If pug alliance pick up on that very basic strategy, it will go back to 50-50 win ratio.

 

Amonra

Unfortunately the strategy is based on having 40 people in the BG actively participating. Rework those numbers based on the 20-25 people in an alliance pug on Rampage and you either fail to take and hold IB or fail to hold SH.

Concentrating on defence of SH means the horde simply skip it and take towers, balinda and even SP GY while maintaiing pressure on SH. Alliance can't spread out to defend those without losing SH GY. It's a loss, but something of a drawn out loss.

Concentrating on taking IB means losing SH GY and the alliance offense is whittled down by the horde defenders. Any dead alliance respawn at SP and have extreme difficulty getting past the horde camping near SH GY. Very quickly we run out of offense and the horde take back IB (actually more often we don't manage to take IB in the first place).

Trust me, we've tried every different strategy you can think of. The active alliance players are actually generally fairly willing to try any strategy that gets called out, I guess on the basis that it can't do worse than our usual 0-600 loss. But we just don't have enough people to pull off any strategy against 35-40 horde who are out for blood.


Our best strategy is bizarrely to try and cap/hold snowfall GY. The horde have free rein to rip through our GYs and towers, but once snowfall caps we have a reasonable chance of taking out galv and maybe a tower or two before the game ends. This is because our offense are able to get straight back to the front lines. Unfortunately this is never going to be a winnnig strategy.

 

Spatula

The situation you provided is the exact same situation we've been arguing about in relation to the Stormstrike and Rampage battlegroups for nearly the whole thread. There have been many many possible counters discussed and debated; please go read the posts and find something new to add, rather than just rebooting the discussion.

 

Cheeky

Has anyone seen if there has been a noticable effect on Alliance AFKers since the announced account bans? I'd like to think 40v40 for a few weeks might provide a more accurate picture of how bad the Alliance have it. As said, great strategies when you are 25v40 still mean a crushing defeat.

(I'm not saying the map doesn't favor Horde, it does, but it shouldn't be 600-0. I think the AFK imbalance is magnifying the effect quite a bit.)

Cheeky of Havoc

 

Karamoon

Genuine question - why would you PUG all day long? It's not like you have to have full S3 gear to form a premade, most alliance premades are a bunch of people who get members from /2 and often have several members in full PVE gear (especially healers). I don't really get why horde players talk about constantly getting stomped by alliance premades when I know from being in them that 'premade' generally means '15 people who are not AFK and will follow a basic strat to a degree', rather than 'hand-picked honor farming team'.

 

Cwealm

On Ysondre, where I leveled my horde mage, forming premades is not an option. There just isn't enough interest. You may be able to throw together a pseudo pre-made of me, 4 blood elf ret pallies, and a newly dinged shaman, but that is just about it.

But really, 15 people following the same strategy, with or without comms, is going to destroy a pug. Add to it that most BG's in this battlegroup for whatever reason seem to start 15 on 10, then add to it that half the horde, upon seeing another premade leave the battleground for one of the other two BG's they have queued for, and it does not take an honor farm premade to stomp a pug. Add to it that there are a healthy number of honor farm premades on vent, and the situation for PUGGING just worsens.

Over the weekend, I managed to pvp for 6 hours. I got in 3 av's in that time period, two of which were against alliance premades from khadgar that destroyed us (waiting two hours for av to pop to get stomped by a premade is a certain special everyone should experience). The third AV was one I entered was one someone afked out of when the horde was winning 550-6o something. I was in it for 2 minutes, DB south popped, and the game ended. That is when I just gave up. My overall honor take for 6 hours of non-stop pvp- 3200 honor and a near broken mouse.

Personally, I have had enough and am transferring servers. But that is the situation. The AV mess has made things miserable for horde and alliance alike, which is why this thread is 30 pages long and still going strong.

 

Amonra

Well, from someone who has had so many 0-600 losses in AV that I have given up on it entirely, I get a warm fuzzy feeling to know that the horde get destroyed sometimes too. The 2 hour wait they had makes it that bit sweeter

I shouldn't enjoy it I know, but I guess it's the same as your desire to ruthlessly exterminate any alliance pug you come across. Deep down we know it's causing long term problems for our faction but we just dont care!

But on the plus side, if your situation stays bad enough then there should be enough interest to get premades of your own together. That's how it worked on alliance side for us.

 

Zapf

Considering the difficulty it would be at times for everyone to get the same av back when it was near-instant queues on our side, having to wait 2 hours to see the results feels like the equivalent of performing tele-surgery with the mars rover.

 

Amonra

Lol. I was actually thinking that the horde would start making premades for EOTS, WSG and AB to counter the fact that they can't get decent honor in pugs.

You need to get really desperate before AV premades become the norm. And unless horde premades close down our honor options in other battlegrounds, that not likely to happen.

 

Kasi

You can't defend SH Bunker. Well at least not by meeting it with force. Horde cap it before alliance can even get there. You have to go back and recap it if you want to contest it. He is right about IBGY, but if 25 do hold there, then it usually is enough to take it. But only if one thing happens. Don't defend SH GY actively. If you do the horde rezzing in the south will come back and smoke you at IBGY. You have to give IB GY time to cap. Which is why you defend SP gy. Sure have some token defence at SH GY and IW bunker to delay horde from capping each by about 30 seconds is great. The time from that gives IB GY more time to cap and thus when SP defence starts killing horde and sending them back to FW, your defence at IBGY is about to cap and thus can hold. If you let 20 go north past SH, then with 5 people back in base/south doing guarding, 5 people randomly doing nothing or doing things like ninja capping DB will only leave about 10-15 max to retake IBGY. IBGY even if not capped can easily hold against that as long as they have some healers.

 

Duilliath

Yes. It seems as if they came out in droves to collect some last honour quickly.
It also seems as if some of the cave hoppers turned to recall bots instead.

That said, what's up with the silly horde wandering around IB tower doing absolutely bugger all ? Is that the favourite Horde bot site ? Or just a result of having IBGY and Bots ressing there ?

 

Rockstar

If you have an active defence at IB/Gal, then defending at IB graveyard or Galv is the new "afk point" for the slightly more active afk'ers.

Defending a node (with sound active) while I read forums or finish some work for the next day is a great deal more attractive than doing it while watching my timers refresh themselves and wasting time looking at the scoreboard/talking in gchat.

 

Aida52

In Misery [EU] alliance wins pretty much all AV's.

Usually the 5-6 alliance with a clue ride straight ahead for the horde base towers (taking frostwolf/relief), while the zerg kills Galv.

As the 20-30 horde are done with Balinda and on to Icewing bunker, the alliance zerg has already killed Galv, run down iceblood tower, tower point, and riding down to Drek.

This is the standard scenario on Misery [EU].

There is no defending at all: usually you have 3-4 horde riding to Galvanger, who will get overwhelmed by the 30 man ally zerg. In horde base you will have the standard 3-4 AFK:ers running circles, with 1-2 players trying to defend frostwolf GY.

The horde that die and respawn at IB have ZERO interest in reclaiming IB tower or Tower point, they just move on towards Vanndar again.

The games usually end with alliance killing Drek while 20 horde is still killing NPC's in the ally base.

So yeah, horde in misery EU seem to believe that rushing is still their best strategy, but they will nearly always loose that race. Frustrating when your daily PvP is winning AV.

 

Yaelle

This is how it works on our battle group as well.

It's kinds of a gentlemen agreement where both sides (winners and losers) gain most hp/hour. The winning side sacrifices some of their honor in not defending the towers and the battleground will finish fast.

Sometimes the Horde will execute the "Scorched Earth"-strategy where the Alliance will end up will near zero honor, but even with the Horde winning and getting a lot more honor for that single battleground, their honor per hour will turn out to be lower because the bg will take that much more time to complete.

Comparing these two scenarios you can see another problem. While playing this gentlemen agreement turns out to be more rewarding (even if you lose) than actually playing right is one of the problems av currently has.

 

Captain Winky

I've actually come to love AV in my battlegroup (Reckoning). Prior to the "big patch" queue times were typically 45 minutes to 2 hours most of the time, reducing to 15-20 minutes on AV weekend. The limiting factor was generally Horde, as they had so many AFKers that they completely lost interest. Most of them would queue AB and dominate there instead.

Post-patch, queue is generally <1 minute. I've frequently seen upwards of 30 AV going at once. Typical game is won or lost in 15 minutes, with very few becoming turtles. Typicall Alliance route is rush to Galv, half kill Galv, half rush onward. Cap towers, leave 1-2 defenders behind at each one, take FW GY. Rush onward, take FW towers and RH. Galv group then follows behind to clean up any leftover mess while RH is capping. Once RH caps, destroy Drek, game over. Horde has the same strategy adapted for our side of the map. We win half, we lose half. It works out. May not be the way the game was intended to be played, but the AV race is fun for me in its own right. In a good race, the win requires perfect execution, as Alliance and Horde rarely engage the opposing generals more than 30 seconds apart.

 

Melador

Sadly Vindication is turning the other way -- we both had a unspoken gentlemanly agreement before that both sides would mostly rush and not put up much D (or at worst Alliance would have a halfhearted D at Stormpike), so Alliance would end up with 400+ honor and horde would have 250+ honor. I assume horde queues were instant because alliance had 10 minute or so queues. Games were 15 minutes max.

In the past couple weeks the vast majority of games have horde putting up serious D at the typical IB chokepoint. Usually we'll still get Galv, but typically between that and IBGY and IB Tower we'll end up being so thinned out that we won't be able to hold much, and we'll end up with about 100 honor to the horde's 300-400 or so...but games are generally in the 35+ minute range, resulting in a slower honor gain for everyone.

If it keeps up much more Alliance is probably going to end up not giving Horde SHGY, and still probably losing, but making the games even longer.

 

Pointyleaf

Hmm.. I'm in Vindication, but have been having good luck lately. Usually a good portion of the offense goes for Galv, while 10 remain on defense and about 5-10 go straight for IB/FW/RH gys. I think I'm 6-2 for the last several days, and that seems pretty typical, about 75% wins.

Occasionally you'll have a good group, where the full offense hits IB except for a few for Galv (and of course except us who go on to FW/RH instead). I did one yesterday where the Horde hit Belinda first, I got smoked by horde defense around TP while trying to get to FW - and spawned back at SH gy, which no horde had bothered to tap. We ended up having 5 of us kill Galv while everyone else capped IB and FW. A strange game, but fun.

I nearly always go for FW and RH gy, since so few other alliance do, and so few horde defend them. It's pretty easy to ride ahead while some others tap IB, grab FW, wait for the rest of the frontrunners to catch up, then kill the few horde around RH to win the game (basically).

 

deadlights

I think it shows exactly how out of whack honor gains have been in AV that we have someone lamenting the fact that people are actually using strategy and pvping in AV which is getting in the way of the honor per hour. From my perspective sounds like AV in your BG actually might be close to being fun and yet that's something to be sad over?

 

Melador

Given that I've played about 300 AVs and have 10-40k more honor to grind for gear for Arena, plus all the honor for another almost-70....yes.