The New AV - Page 5

Kasi · 11/16/07, 6:55 PM

In the end it comes down to the plain and simple fact that alliance is just not as good as BGs as horde are. On every server/bg I've ever been on it was like that. 3-4 months ago I got 150k+ honor with 2 characters and full tokens for both. Most non AV bgs was done in an environment that alliance won at best 25% of games. It was pretty much evident that AV was the only BG alliance won, and that was because the map favored alliance and the playstyle being less pvp'ish favored alliance playstyle.

So now we have a more balanced map (although now horde have an easier mid boss) and its no wonder that the discussion here on who likes AV is very much influenced by faction. I really don't know why alliance suck more at BGs and I've done them on both sides. Is it similar to the arguments about whether people choose pvp or pve servers? Don't know really. But it is pretty evident. Whenever you're in a pug non AV bg before it would be "I'm just here because I need marks, we're probably going to lose anyway and AV is the best honor". Or that even in AV with the old big alliance advantages, alliance still didn't win much more than 50% of the time.

And the new changes to more heavily punish losing combined with the fact that AV still doesn't allow queuing is going to make the new AV much more annoying and frustrating for the players who actually are capable and see their BG dragged down by idiots. Which means its going to be like Calantus said and good alliance will just find friends and do pre-made or semi premades of the other bgs. Something needs to be done about non competitive losses in pug BGs. Losing closely should give you like 85% of the honor of the winners, but losing badly should be like 50%, not 20%.

Calantus · 11/16/07, 7:52 PM

Originally Posted by Siddown

As Hellmount just mentioned, the big difference between playing AV the zerg way and the "new" way (by defending) is the that in a decent game you'll get mimimum of 200 honor via HKs (likely higher), but this honor doesn't show up on the scoreboard at the end.

While I agree with Gurg that there should be a primer at the start of each game, and to that end some in my BG has taken to creating /y macros that they use at the beginning of the round. Another simpler option would be to just have "Est. Total Honor" instead of "Bonus Honor" on the scoreboard.

Did you read my post with the screenshots? In the game where I said it was ~120 point payout, 60 of that came from HKs and in the scoreboard said I had 29 HKs. That's an average of 2 honor per HK. I don't know where you guys are coming up with the large amount of honor per kill but when someone dies near me I typically get 1 honor if I'm defending or with the offence zerg.

Shadowed · 11/16/07, 8:12 PM

Originally Posted by Calantus

Did you read my post with the screenshots? In the game where I said it was ~120 point payout, 60 of that came from HKs and in the scoreboard said I had 29 HKs. That's an average of 2 honor per HK. I don't know where you guys are coming up with the large amount of honor per kill but when someone dies near me I typically get 1 honor if I'm defending or with the offence zerg.

Thats because you're following the zerg, it's entirely possible to get 200 for a few games depending on luck of variety in players or if you're solo farming people which is possible if you hit SP/DB while Horde try and attack SH GY, or if you camp near FW GY.

Siddown · 11/16/07, 8:55 PM

Originally Posted by Calantus

Did you read my post with the screenshots? In the game where I said it was ~120 point payout, 60 of that came from HKs and in the scoreboard said I had 29 HKs. That's an average of 2 honor per HK. I don't know where you guys are coming up with the large amount of honor per kill but when someone dies near me I typically get 1 honor if I'm defending or with the offence zerg.

A five man team defending certain areas, retaking towers (or guarding said towers against back cappers) will get about five honor per kill. Also, I solo'd a few players while taking back a mine once, that's 40 honor right there.

It's not always possible to be in those situations, but I try and find a way. It's a bit strange, it's the most fun (because I'm actually PvPing) and at the same time, it awards the most honor.

Elerion · 11/17/07, 1:05 AM

There's really no point arguing against the fact that the new AV sucks if you're on the inferior faction. It's worse by an order of magnitude, and there's pretty much nothing that can be done about it from your side unless you get an addon to queue up 4+ friends to the same AV.

After playing some more games, I'd agree that the new AV is more lucrative and more entertaining if you're on the winning team. Too bad the opposite is also true, and how you play individually is not really going to affect the success of your team greatly. That's a giant flaw right there, and one you won't feel as strongly if you're on the dominating faction (or even a reasonably balanced battlegroup). When performance does not affect your reward, and the difference in rewards is so immense as it is now, you have a game design kink that needs working out.

Melador · 11/17/07, 11:27 PM

There's really no point arguing against the fact that the new AV sucks if you're on the inferior faction. It's worse by an order of magnitude, and there's pretty much nothing that can be done about it from your side unless you get an addon to queue up 4+ friends to the same AV.

This is the crux of my issue with the new AV. It used to be the one BG where no matter how terrible the other players are, or even if a quarter of them were AFK, you could spend a half-hour or so and walk away with at the very least 400 honor. Post-raid I'd generally fire up an AV just to snag a few hundred honor.

Now, it's entirely possible (and likely in my experience) to end up with a group that just doesn't do the right stuff or fails to guard graveyards or whatever, and you end up burning a half-hour for 150 honor. Plus, it's back to the AV of yore (and that's not a good thing). The other BGs at least have some significant strategy (cap base X it looks low, try to keep 3 bases, etc) that rarely breaks down. In AV it more often ends up with masses of people on either side of a bottleneck, dying over and over, with no real strategy evident, like lemmings over a cliff.

EDIT: After playing four games tonight taking almost exactly 2 hours (queue times included), 3 losses and 1 win, I ended up with ~1450 honor, which is definitely less than I was getting before. It's a lot more hint-and-miss, and given that my goal is pretty much "get my honor grind done as soon as possible" now that I've already done it once and am doing it on my alt, I really miss the consistent 400-or-so AV honor payout.

jusion · 11/18/07, 1:29 AM

Originally Posted by Melador

This is the crux of my issue with the new AV. It used to be the one BG where no matter how terrible the other players are, or even if a quarter of them were AFK, you could spend a half-hour or so and walk away with at the very least 400 honor. Post-raid I'd generally fire up an AV just to snag a few hundred honor.

Now, it's entirely possible (and likely in my experience) to end up with a group that just doesn't do the right stuff or fails to guard graveyards or whatever, and you end up burning a half-hour for 150 honor. Plus, it's back to the AV of yore (and that's not a good thing). The other BGs at least have some significant strategy (cap base X it looks low, try to keep 3 bases, etc) that rarely breaks down. In AV it more often ends up with masses of people on either side of a bottleneck, dying over and over, with no real strategy evident, like lemmings over a cliff.

EDIT: After playing four games tonight taking almost exactly 2 hours (queue times included), 3 losses and 1 win, I ended up with ~1450 honor, which is definitely less than I was getting before. It's a lot more hint-and-miss, and given that my goal is pretty much "get my honor grind done as soon as possible" now that I've already done it once and am doing it on my alt, I really miss the consistent 400-or-so AV honor payout.

My battlegroup is having the same hot/cold thing. I'll have 2 games that take 30 min and I get 150 honor each, then I'll get 2 games that take 25 min and I get 600-1000 honor. Overall, I think it's been more honor for me. But mostly thats just the luck of getting smart players.

Mistaya · 11/18/07, 6:52 AM

I find being vocal at the beginning of the BG and continuing to be vocal during has helped our win record as alliance. Not that I say anything special, "Please guard your towers, in this new AV all the honor comes from tower burning, we have to guard to win guys!" and then being one of those guards and saying things like "Hey, need 2-3 more at tower point, lets hold this so we can win guys need some help here!" is all I ever do and my win record has been pretty decent. Won more than I lost, can't recall exactly how many but I ground out a good 7k honor in the new AV since it started.

I think once the alliance starts really holding at Stonehearth and waiting on Snowfall to cap before pushing Tower Point/IBGY we'll see more equal games. The old "give them stonehearth/bum rush Galv" mentality is taking its toll on alliance pugs. Horde's main strategy has not changed, but alliance strategy needs to change significantly.

I'm only concerned that the alliance will give up rather than adapt.

Nayt · 11/18/07, 3:06 PM

Originally Posted by Howard Roark

Some guys came into our game, started yelling in some foregin language or something, capped SF, and then started rezzing and jumping off the bridge to their death over and over and over and over. We lost really quick.

They each had like 40 deaths. I guess they were timing it so they could rez, die, and be ready for the next rez right away within 30 seconds. I thought it was pretty funny but everyone else in the game was pissed.

Same thing is happening in my AV right now. Seems it's "cool" to kill yourself in AV and make your team lose. Like 5 people are doing it and people are counting and cheering them on. I still haven't won a game of AV yet. ALl my games are 600 - 45 or whatever.

Drunkmunky · 11/19/07, 12:07 AM

Seems there is a return of AFK'ers now, last couple of games I played had at least 10 afkers and I reported them all but nothing seems to come of it. They are still taking up spots and not helping out

Phantom · 11/19/07, 2:16 AM

Originally Posted by Kasi

In the end it comes down to the plain and simple fact that alliance is just not as good as BGs as horde are.

Not entirely. There is an inequality in AV that lends itself more to horde than to alliance. These come in a number of factors:

1. The aforemention Belinda vs. Galv, of which the former is much much easier. This has been discussed before, so I won't go too much into it.

2. This extends to Drek vs Vann as well, and the corresponding warmasters and marshals. Drek and his WMs are much harder than Vann and his marshals. Kill Vann with a marshal or two still up isn't that hard. It's damn near impossible t kill Drek with 2 Warmasters still up. The random charges and whirlwinds eat people up.

3. Each side has their own bottleneck. However, the horde bottle neck comes at Stormpike GY, and by that time, they have 1-2 GYs and the horde assault can easily mow down anyone trying to get back to the front. They can also go around 2 different ways to reach STGY. The alliance bottleneck comes at Iceblood, which is near the start of the game. Couple with the Galv problem, it's very easy for a moderate horde defense to wipe the early alliance offense, sending them all the way back to STGY. Thus keeping them trapped as defenders.

In 75% of my games, the last point has happened more than I care to remember. So in order to fix AV, there must be balance. Either make all the WMs and captains have the exact same set of abilities, or tune them better, ie, make Galv easier(get rid of the fear) or belinda harder(give her an instant cast aoe fireball volley).

The bottleneck issue is more difficult. What I would propose, is a modification of the landscape. Allow 2-3 ways to IBGY. For instance, create a traversable hill to allow access from the cliff at the rez point. Alliance could come in at IBGY from 2 ways. This still doesn't compare to the horde coming in at STGY from 3 ways, but it's a good step. Perhaps, if they were truly into it, allow a short cave cross from behind Galv's room, and opens up just outside Tower Point. Either way, that bottleneck kills the alliance offensive permanently. And this is assuming an equal PUG vs. PUG mentality.

Emeraude · 11/19/07, 2:30 AM

I've been in 50 or so AV games post patch, win/lose it seems about even, though I will say for the first time in the 3 years I've played this game I saw Alliance get shut out in AV(0 honor), it almost happened a second time but I nabbed the Irondeep mine and ninjaed 20 points I guess heh. I haven't seen Horde shut out since I used to organize AV runs with the Join as Group option. My observations from this week of AV are as such.

Alliance typically lose when:
1. 10 or so Horde meet them at Galv, and wipe them, I read about this on the forums, and didn't believe it until I actually saw it but it was true(Rarely happens).
2. They lose Snowfall/Iceblood after capping them, or don't cap them at all, no where down south to rez, everyone on def, nobody captures anything(Happens alot).
3. They don't defend Stormpike GY/Stormpike Aid Station, these are the biggest killers, even if the offense is slow, having SOMEBODY back there to stop the Horde from flowing right in buys the Alliance time(Happens alot).

Horde typically lose when:
1. They cap Stonehearth, they lose Stonehearth, then they all impale themselves on Stormpike GY defenses, and have to rez back at Frostwolf or Frostwolf Aid Station(Very Rarely happens)
2. Alliance play defense at Stormpike GY/Aid Station, and have something resembling a competent offense(Happens alot)
3. Ironically when they have too many on defense and Alliance has captured Iceblood, their offense gets pushed around they lose Stonehearth, don't cap towers, etc(Happens in moderation)

It's a very odd new world in AV. Alliance benefit more from defense from what I've observed while Horde benefit more from offense.

Sabyn · 11/19/07, 2:46 AM

Alliance have been steam rolling horde in BG9 in my last 5 or so games. It seems like them ignoring galv is key. If they don't focus on that and horde get skimpy on defense its over. Eventually all the horde get stuck at FW while alliance make it past to drak.

Before those last few games horde had been dominating a lot. Same hot/cold.

So is this just variance or can we see any clear bias? I think horde neglecting defense early on is what starts the game in a downward spiral they just cannot come back from.

◊ Lord BEEF · 11/19/07, 3:02 AM

On Stormstrike I've played probably 15-20 avs now. On day one and two I lost a few, won a few. The past couple of days I haven't lost a single one, and they haven't even really been close.

What happens pretty much every time is I call for a small defense of galvinger. Between 4-15 (usually close to about 6 or 7) come and show up to defend galv, and we easily wipe the incoming alliance. Galvinger doesn't even get involved very often actually.

The alliance seem to split forces between going for galv, going after iceblood tower, graveyard, and tower point. After galvinger is sufficiently safe, I and a small handful of other horde go and retake those nodes. With the spell damage changes, a t6 resto druid is a god compared to your typical pug alliance, so I make short work of them while keeping my entire team up. This isn't meant to be epeen bragging, but t6 gear has very high numbers and most alliance just don't stand a chance.

After that, the alliance is below 200 resources and we either get into somewhat of a stalemate at stormpike graveyard, or rather the ramp before the bridge to be specific. If this happens we can hk farm them for a while, and these are the games where i'll have over 400k healing done by the time we win. Alternately we'll have a few people sneak in and get the towers in their base and it's a quick victory.

I've seen no real exceptions to this.

On a side note, I'm starting to see more alliance afkers as time goes on, which certainly isn't helping their cause any

Grogzor · 11/19/07, 3:21 AM

Just had the best game I have played since patch. 10 of ours intercepted their offense at Galv and wiped them out. Spent the next 25 minutes cleaning them up as they made haphazard attempts at a charge. Got Snowfall slowing down our advance but letting us keep all our towers. Successfully destroyed the towers in their base via Ninjaing. Spent the last 5 minutes all on offense mowing them down. 35 min AV = 1k Honor.

kaib · 11/19/07, 5:07 AM

So, new AV on my BG (reckoning, europe) is totally fucked up. Last three I played we had between 10 and 13 peple afk (inactive tagged) in our cave.
Sad thing: We won those 3. Means on alliance side it must have been the same or MORE people afk leeching. Way to go to fix the afk problem in AV blizzard.

Trilly · 11/19/07, 5:15 AM

I'm pretty disappointed with the new AV, but that mainly stems from non-stop losses. As mentioned by many before, AV was the one BG where you could queue solo and actually expect to get some honor for your time. Win or lose, suck or not, your side would still get enough honor to make it worth your while. On my mage I could kite a few Lieutenants and guarentee my side at least 20-60 honor. That's not the case anymore. Since the patch I've been in one winning AV (a nail-biter down to the end, winning 5-0) that took several hours. The majority of the losses had me walking away with next to no honor (<100) for an hour+ of my time.

The lone bright spot, for me, is the small increase in HK honor when I sneak off by myself. The Horde will usually try to retake the southern mine after I cap it, and I can get about 100 honor per game from kills before getting overwhelmed; more if they stream in solo.

Shadowed · 11/19/07, 5:37 AM

Originally Posted by Trilly

I'm pretty disappointed with the new AV, but that mainly stems from non-stop losses. As mentioned by many before, AV was the one BG where you could queue solo and actually expect to get some honor for your time. Win or lose, suck or not, your side would still get enough honor to make it worth your while. On my mage I could kite a few Lieutenants and guarentee my side at least 20-60 honor. That's not the case anymore. Since the patch I've been in one winning AV (a nail-biter down to the end, winning 5-0) that took several hours. The majority of the losses had me walking away with next to no honor (<100) for an hour+ of my time.

The lone bright spot, for me, is the small increase in HK honor when I sneak off by myself. The Horde will usually try to retake the southern mine after I cap it, and I can get about 100 honor per game from kills before getting overwhelmed; more if they stream in solo.

Several hours? Unless you're specifically trying to drag out a match, it's not really possible for them to last beyond 50-60 minutes even if you only burn the first two towers and kill the captain they're down -250 reinforcements, and in a turtle reinforcements should be dropping at a "relatively" quick pace.

Aphyrax · 11/19/07, 6:50 AM

I haven't played enough AV to make final conclusions, but the ones I was in Alliance lost because they played like in 2.2. Small contingents suicided into our base to ninja cap everything. But now Horde actually runs back and defends. Result, 5 less reinforcements for Alliance for no real gain.

Having played AV since the day it was released I totally do not buy that there is some massive Horde advantage. One can theorycraft until the tauren come home about this distance and that tower placement, but ultimately to win you need two things. People who don't do anything stupid/AFK and some capable healers on defense. Healing is absolutely key in AV now. Unfortunately there is always a shortage of healers in BGs.

Strifen · 11/19/07, 10:48 AM

I played a bunch of the new AV this weekend and I have to say it was a blast.

I'm not sure about other battlegroups but on Stormstrike I lost 2 out of the 20 some-odd games of AV I played, and that was because a group of 5-6 <Might> ran right into our base and capped everything and held it off the start. Every other game was a complete blow-out win, with us getting 500-600 honor and the alliance getting under 100.

On Stormstrike from my experience the new AV horde seem to shut down the alliance 95% of the time. I'm not sure if I was just getting lucky games but considering the number of games I played this weekend it doesn't seem so. The strategy of 10-15 on defense holding them off at Galv first, wiping them there then back-tracking and re-taking ice blood GY won it for us every time. Alliance haven't yet grasped that defense is what wins the new AV, not offense. I started feeling bad because there were a lot of games were alliance seriously got 20 some-odd bonus honor and we came out with 600+

As for honor gain, well it was very good. Average games took 30 minutes with queue and all, and I was looking at on average 800-900 per game. Staying on defense and hunting people down for solo kills in the field of strife makes for a ton of extra honor (20 per kill extra) - Go go crusader aura.

Hellmount · 11/19/07, 10:49 AM

I've noticed similar trends as described above.

Alliance are predictable on our BG and send all their O to rush galv. From there one of two things happens. Horde sends no D to galv and it turns into an old school race with alliance winning their fair share. Horde sends 7-15 D to galv, wipes the alliance raid, takes SF (already has SH and both bunkers) and wins in a turtle around SP and the bridge.

The only time I've seend defedining galv not lead to a guaranteed horde win is when the horde rushed to balinda and didnt successfully cap SH.

THe reason it's so easy to win as horde is that alliance will without fail blindly wipe their whole raid on galv before they have capped a single tower or GY. As such they lose 20+ people who have to res back at SP. By the time they run back horde should have SH bunker, SH GY and IW bunker contested and almost capped.

I've never seen it, but if the alliance were to run past galv to IB GY, the 10 horde sitting in galv's room with their tumbs up their asses wouldnt be much use and I'm sure alliance would roll that AV. But it seems without fail on my BG alliance live or die by their rush galv at all cost mentality.

Melador · 11/19/07, 12:44 PM

Alliance haven't yet grasped that defense is what wins the new AV, not offense.

I'm just not sure that's true for alliance though. I haven't played a ton of the new AV, but for the most part when we won we capped IB quickly and then made sure to hold it, with most of our team on offense and just enough defense to slow down the horde or do some annoying back-capping.

Keeping/losing IB is the key to the game for Alliance. If we lose it, we're spawning back behind the chokepoint so it's incredibly difficult to form any kind of offense again and more often than not we end up turtling and get ground down to a loss over a very long match. If we keep IB, we generally can cap the towers pretty easily and kill Drek before the horde kill Van.

The whole cap-in-10-seconds hold-for-5-minutes mechanic just doesn't work very well though, IMO. It's fine in AB because a loss of a node isn't that big a deal. But in AV, the loss of IB is incredibly hard to recover from, and it's really pretty simple for the horde to take IB from us since we'll by necessity leave only 5 or so people guarding it (since the rest of offense has to start capping the towers).

I haven't played horde AV at all, but the lack of a single chokepoint if they lose their forward GY means that it's easier for them to trickle people to the frontlines without getting picked off one by one. Alliance-side, we actually have to organize pretty significantly to break through the chokepoint with any kind of real numbers still alive, and getting organization in AV can be a challenge, to put it mildly.

Fundamentally, I don't see why they didn't just mirror the map entirely.

Hellmount · 11/19/07, 1:06 PM

For horde the choke point happens in capping SP graveyard and then again crossing the bridge into the alliance town.

I agree with you though that the key for alliance is to cap IB before they start at Galv and the towers. Or at least have a strong hold on the area around IB. I feel like a lot of people's frustrations (alliance side) with the new AV would end if alliance gave up the mentality that they need to get galv first. It's suicide if he's well defended. In the mean time I'll enjoy the easy wins.

◊ Praetorian · 11/19/07, 1:50 PM

Alliance's problem is that they surrender Stonehearth GY while I always see Horde fighting to recap Iceblood GY over the course of the game. A game where we let Alliance keep Iceblood is a game that goes very badly for us, which we either lose or end up narrowly winning with us in their base and them in our base like pre-2.3 AV.

Horde tends to split 4 ways at the start -- ~10 play D, ~10 go to SH Bunker, ~10 go to Balinda, ~10 go to SH Graveyard. If Alliance sends 20 to Iceblood to contest it, and the other 20 hold Stonehearth GY from the initial rush, then Horde respawns back at Frostwolf, while the remaining Alliance continuing to respawn at SH GY can easily mop up the remaining Horde at Balinda and SH GY. Now the respawning Horde will likely pressure and perhaps retake Iceblood, but in the meantime Alliance now should control Stonehearth/Snowfall and the front line of action should be at Iceblood.

Instead I can't remember the last time I ran to SH GY to start and found more than 1-2 players there, or maybe some running past to Galv who stopped to try to defend. They all run past Icewing Bunker and then take a sharp right down the hill towards Snowfall, instead of trying to play defense. Once you let the Horde respawn at Stonehearth, there is no possible way SH/Icewing Bunkers are going to survive, and then you're in trouble.

In short, Stonehearth and Iceblood are the key graveyards in AV, and Alliance give theirs away.

Grogzor · 11/19/07, 2:38 PM

It seems that Snowfall is very important now as well. If the horde are able to take it then you are able to move your defense up to the front of the field of strife sending 2-3 people back to recapture ninjaed towers. If you can get Snowfall and Stonehearth, Alliance cannot win.