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.
Which was always the original intent of layout. Horde have Iceblood and Alliance have Stonehearth. You fight over the Field of Strife and the associated points of interest. Snowfall is sort of a midpoint staging ground to use to move against either GY, and whoever controls Snowfall controls the Field of Strife. If Alliance are defending Stonehearth, and every time you die you rez at Iceblood while every time they die they rez right there, you'll never take the GY. And vice-versa.
Originally the NPCs slowed the pace such that you couldn't just madly rush deep into enemy territory because, well, you'd die to NPCs, so the progress was more gradual. Nowadays that's a nonissue and so you see people rushing past these key points. It works in a pure race, but the new AV has definitely shifted things back to a more defensive mindset.
In short, Stonehearth and Iceblood are the key graveyards in AV, and Alliance give theirs away.
I not convinced that losing SH is such a big deal for alliance -- if we defend it, then we're pushing you guys back and are much more likely to lose IB, and if we lose IB then we're bottlenecked before we can even get back to it, so we're pretty unlikely to get it back, and we lose.
If however, we give it away and play defense at the bottleneck into our base instead, then it's more of an old-style race-to-kill-Drek/Van, and in my experience Alliance tends to win those contests.
If the alliance can manage to succesfully trade balinda and SH for galv and IB then yes they will get into a pre-2.3 race which they have a good shot of winning. But if horde play defense around IB/galv and alliance dont play any D around SH then you are likely to get scenario's where horde has all 3 IB, SH and SH and the alliance are in trouble at that point. Leaving SH for free is gambling a lot on capping IB. In the games I played alliance would attempt galv->IB->towers in that order. So if you could wipe them on galv you had them beat.
Once people get the idea that controlling SH/IB is key before you start rushing off after PvE objectives you should see fewer really fast one sided victories.
I think the Distance factors favor horde in initial GY caps.
Iceblood -> Stonehearth is a quicker run then Stormpike -> Stonehearth (assuming Stonehearth GY is contested). So as soon as horde flips that flag and manges to not wipe to alliance they have a huge head start on winning the game. On the other hand Hordes first run from the Cave to Stonehearth is longer then Alliance's run to both Stonehearth or Snowfall. If Alliance repulsed the first wave of Horde cappers at Stonehearth they could easily win an attrition battle. But by giving horde Stonehearth they have a really long run back for any of their offense whether it be going to galv or Iceblood.
In short, Stonehearth and Iceblood are the key graveyards in AV, and Alliance give theirs away.
In short contrast, you'll never convince the retarded Alliance masses that it's a good idea to take/capture/defend Stonehearth.
I take back Stonehearth all the time just in spite of my faction, like I posted above, the Horde defense will impale themselves on Alliance defense up at Stormpike if that happens(If there is defense at Stormpike >_<). However, as soon as I take Stonehearth there is massive QQing in BG chat "ZOMG WTFUXORS ARE YOU DOING TAKING STONEHEARTH, NOW ALL THE HORDE REZ DOWN HERE! QQQQQQQQQQQQ," some profanity, etc, never mind the fact that I just eliminated the entire Horde presence up North, they're more concerned that the game will take 10 additional minutes because they might actually have to deal with Horde defense while having the reinforcement/tower/graveyard advantage.
It just seems that the Alliance doesn't care if they're winning/losing, just as long as it feels like they're winning(even when they're not), and they're not in a "Turtle". Every game is the same thing, "Oh, the 30 or so people that were down south wiped to Galv/Iceblood graveyard, why do Alliance insist on turtling?" Gives me a headache thinking about it.
I'm wondering what inspires Alliance to rush Galv. There's always a lot of sort of "Alliance just sucks at PvP" sentiment thrown around, and being that I've played on both sides, I just can't believe that.
It's hard to change the behaviors of groups of players, especially in the new AV. In the new AV you are punished for playing solo by becoming a reinforcement drain on your team, so you either stick with your bubble, or get zerged.
When I was horde, we would often go up the west wall, Cap SH bunker because it was there, Cap SH Graveyard because it was easy, and then go to Balinda. I think the main reason for doing it this way was just because it was the order that we came across it, not because we, being on the side with the red flag instead of the blue were any more intuitive.
I think it mostly has to do with: If you're horde, you tend to the west. Going up the west side, you run into bunker + graveyard. If the horde is going west, and the alliance is advancing at the same time, the alliance tends east. While the alliance is going east they go through snowfall and Galv. Not only that, IB Graveyard is in the horde zerg's direct path, as is SH Graveyard. This means it's easier for Horde to defend IB and assault SH. Since the alliance zerg tends to the opposite side, they leave SH undefended and go for Galv before IB.
I think the reason for these tendancies is mostly terrain based. In order to get to IBGY, you pretty much have to run in past Galv. Not only that, the horde can jump off IBGY and have a mostly clear path to the north up to SH Bunker. Alliance on the other hand then have to either face the Zerg head on by staying to the west side, or else skirt to the east to avoid them. If they face them head on, they run into the cliff in front of IBGY anyways, and have to go east to get up to the flag. So alliance takes the east, horde takes the west. Alliance takes Galv and Horde takes SHGY.
In the old AV, this was fine for alliance, losing SHGY wasn't a big deal, because after Galv you just took FWGY and sped up through the barren-of-npcs horde base to cap the relief hut. Not to mention the people who wanted to get Galv and get out through re-queuing or /afk for the quick honor.
IBGY is much more defensible just due to the path of least resistance for the horde. SHGY is off the beaten path. Since you can't group queue in AV, it will take a long time for the Zerg to change their tactics. There is a very good chance that I will end up with the group going to Galv first off, just because to stay and try and defend SH would be pretty much suicide, and that would be hurting my team more than trying to keep people alive as they zerg Galv.
I just have to say, it's interesting how quickly this BG has turned around on Vengence BG. The first few days, Alliance was winning a lot.
Now, just as noted above, Horde seems to dominate. 5 to 10 horde defend in Galv's room and manage to wipe a larger alliance force. Alliance can't seem to break the bad habit of running there. In the mean time, SH is capped by the larger Horde force. Balinda gets taken out right about this time, along with the towers there. If Alliance does take anything past Galv, those from Galvs room can defend pretty easily.
The rest of the match is a bunch of spoiled PvE focused people whinning about how everyone else sucks, rofl. It's pathetic. I say PvE oriented people because AV used to be perfect for those not really into PvP. Now it takes organization, and actual combat. No more autopilot for honor. It's very evident how frustrated people are in there.
I was averaging maybe 350 to 450 honor an hour in there, combat kills included. I did better when I left the main group with the rogue and tried to pick peeps off. Even still, that takes time stealthing all over.
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.
With all due respect, in order to defend SH against the 30+ horde advancing there, we'd need 30+ defenders as well. Which means we have no offense, and all we've done is prolong the game, as the horde will respawn at IBGY and move north again. With all the horde spawning at IBGY, we'll never take it. Horde would never take SHGY. In short, SH is undefendable without killing the game. Not to mention, you can never get enough pugs in a group to defend that point.
Also, SH has a few different approaches. IBGY has exactly 1. That chokepoint, and the chokepoint at icewing, are the death knell for the alliance. As was pointed out, you only need 10 or so to stop the alliance at Galv. Once that's done, the game is basically over.
At least 30% of the games I've been in, the alliance has gotten 0 bonus honor. The offense was destroyed, then we were all trapped. Another 20% of the time, a few manage to sneak out and maybe cap a tower, before it ends.
There is something damn wrong with a 0 AV honor game. It shouldn't happen. We don't even need to report afkers anymore, because they're getting 0 honor anyway! I haven't yet seen a horde group get 0 honor. They at least get SH bunker, and perhaps icewing. Or ninja a bunker in Dun Balder.
There needs to be more approaches through areas. No chokepoints. I don't care what the original vision was, it's clear that it's not working now. It's time for changes, if this is to be the new AV.
Before, if we were pushed back and trapped at STGY, we could turtle for awhile, build up resources, maybe cap a tower or two, then eventually push out. We at least had hope. Now the game is lost in the first 5 minutes, and I bet those horde are enjoying their 1000 honor AV games.
And no, directing the alliance PUG is no answer. You cannot manage to direct everyone, because at least half the group won't listen to you. The result being, you will never be able to coordinate enough people. With the horde, it's easy. You just need 5-10 at Galv and you win. The rest will mindlessly zerg ahead anyway without needing prodding or direction.
Actually, when defending a graveyard and one person even remotely capable of aoe being up means you get respawns, 20 defending quickly turns into 30 when they all respawn at full HP and Mana versus a group of people who just used a lot to take out that group. Also, the horde don't get there at the same time, you have a good 30-60 seconds before they all get their letting you take out the front runners with ease.
And people were already discussing how stupid it is for alliance to go after Galv first yet they have this incessant habit to continue doing it. It's not our fault you guys make a stupid mistake over and over again.
There is nothing wrong with a 0 bonus honor game since you are forgetting all the honor you got from killing people. Usually that is about half my total honor gain in an AV. Your team plays dumb and you expect to get rewarded for that?
Also, horde manage quite well directing 15 people to stay on defense, I don't see why the alliance can't manage that.
Because 15 on defence is easily enough to wipe Alliance on Galvangar and choke up IB, but the same is not true for horde. Balinda is a joke and Stonehearth does not have a massive chokepoint that chews up attackers. Reread Phantom's post. What he said is very true. The map is imbalanced in favor of horde, the captain is in favor of horde on top of general pvp skill being in balance of horde (so says traditional less than 40% winning percentage in WSG/AB/EotS) Basically AV is now a worthless bg for alliance on many of the different battlegrounds. Even before the changes alliance barely won more than they lost, and that was due to heavy afk'ing on horde side. If this continues expect AV to be a pretty dead place. I'm going to give the place a few more shots this weekend with the AV weekend and see if its still the same. I am not expecting much.
But nobody forces you to go after Galv right away, yet you guys do. What is stopping you from bypassing most of the horde defenses and taking Iceblood right off the bat? Nothing, but now you guys are behind the learning curve because horde are refining their strategies. At least on my Battlegroup. We send a group of 5 of our defenders up to Snowfall now to take that graveyard and gain a huge advantage. Funny thing is, alliance see a group of horde there and decide that Galv is a better target. Its completely laughable.
Yes, you guys lose a tower. I will give you that for imbalance. I will give you that Galv is harder then Belinda. But not developing your own strategy and just keep crashing into Galv is not the answer. Its not map imbalance that causes you guys to do this.
If you get Iceblood, the tower and Galv becomes yours. Horde have been telling you guys how to win for the past week yet you don't do it.
I'm wondering what inspires Alliance to rush Galv. There's always a lot of sort of "Alliance just sucks at PvP" sentiment thrown around, and being that I've played on both sides, I just can't believe that.
I'd assume the alliance go for galv right off the bat is that they got used to the way the race played out. One of the greatest sins a horde player could've done in the race days was to flip SF graveyard. So they assume SF for free, and proceed to galv, which again was almost never defended.
Horde on the other hand (at least from my experiences), used to scream for people to get SH GY before all else, because if not there would be a mid-field stalemate or we'd be back at the cave in no time. With alliance in control of SH gy, they tended to defend their captain quite well. As the race evolved (slowly in my whirlwind anyway), maybe 5 people would grab SH bunker on the way, as SH tended to come a lot easier.
Stormpike really isn't the superb chokepoint it used to be. If the alliance is forced back around to the flag, they're probably going to get ripped a part by 1-2 warlocks using seed of corruption, because dispelling is tough.
The unfortunate part of the change, is the strongest alliance defensive point (their aid station), is pretty much obsolete. Once the horde is up into north and south bunker, it's just a matter of time before the alliance run out of reinforcements, and need to hope to get drek. IB and the choke at the horde base towers aren't as strong, but they're earlier and protect the later buildings.
An interesting thing I've noticed though, is not spawning at the caves unless it's a last resort. I've been bumped from defending the relief hut all the way up north to stormpike GY. This makes it a ton tougher to bounce them out of your base once they're turning the last GY for whoever gets bumped out.
Can we take the QQing to a minimum and just deal with issues at hand?
1) Galvager > Balinda
2) Stonehearth = Iceblood, in terms of relative easiness to capture/defend. Although I would give Stonehearth a slight edge in defense, because the path to the flag is free of LoS obstacles from the GY, and if someone fights 10 feet away from the flag there are NPC bowmen ready to plink at them.
3) Alliance Base > Horde Base. This is still a significant factor. In fact, due to the renewed emphasis on defense and objectives in AV, I would argue that this has become a much larger factor. A smart group of Alliance players can simply infiltrate the Horde base entirely unscathed, and then grab the GY and BOTH towers in the span of 10 seconds. This forces the Horde defenders to run back to the base and attempt to clear out the Alliance group. If the Alliance group is large/strong/smart enough, they can push back this defense long enough that one or all of the objectives have been turned over. Horde can't even attempt to do something like this in the Alliance base. Just getting in to one of the bunkers without dying is a joke, and surviving more than 20 seconds after capping one without a huge force of 10+ Horde (which is impossible, since you will have been stopped/split/slowed at Stormpike) is not going to happen. The fact that the Alliance can revert half or more of the Horde defense all the way back into the heart of their base, and still manage to succeed even partway, is a huge advantage on this new battleground, especially when you consider the relative value of towers and the opportunity cost associated with pulling people all the way down to the bottom of the map, just to get a tower back.
3) Alliance Towers > Horde Towers. This is pretty much undebatable, and has been true for years (yes, years). Horde towers are incomprehensibly easy to capture in comparison to their Alliance counterparts. The Horde NPCs can be moved off the tower, they do not shoot at you if you are attempting to cap the flag, and they have a much smaller range of fire due to the fact that the archers are all clustered around a smaller radius. And, once the Alliance turns the flag, due to the extremely small confines of the room, it is much more difficult for Horde to cap it back, particularly if they are non-melee classes. All you need is a Paladin/Warrior combo that continually abuses LoS around the tower to defend it against anything short of 5+ Horde focus firing on the Paladin (then the warrior, then the Paladin when his bubble wears off). I've seen three Alliance Paladins solo defend a Tower Point against a large group of Horde simply because no one could kill them due to how easy it is to abuse LoS around the tower. Now, you can try to level this argument against Horde by saying that it makes the towers much easier to defend if they just actively do so, but we all know this isn't the case. The nature of the game is such that you can't have 3 people sitting at every single tower all game - you need a roving group of 5-10 players to defend pretty much your entire half of the field. Any number fewer than this results in pointless defense since any meaningful offense will consist of a group of Alliance 5 players or larger - that one idiot who tries to solo cap a tower is only going to succeed against a team that is pretty much destined to lose anyway.
The last two factors, I believe, are a much bigger deal than Galvager ever will be. Especially when they are put nicely together, a la the Stormpike-Aid Station gauntlet.
Grogzor pretty much hit the nail on the head, too. If Alliance were simply smart enough to attack Iceblood GY instead of Galvager/IB Tower first, they'd win pretty much every single game. Once they hold the GY, they can attack Galvager, IB Tower, and Tower Point with impunity and there is absolutely nothing the Horde can do about it, as they will inevitably by rezzing at the Entrance Cave. This causes them to enter a natural chokepoint between Tower Point and IB GY that will cause them to die in droves, as the Alliance now have a steady stream of reinforcements coming from a much closer location. Not only that, but both Galvager and IB Tower will be well beyond the point of saving, since any attempt to reinforce those positions will lead to death-by-drive-by. If the Horde manage to capture Snowfall, it really doesn't help them much at all since they will be pulled in three directions: 1) Defending Galvager, 2) defending IB Tower, 3) taking IB GY (note that Tower Point is now well beyond reinforcing for anyone who rezzes at Snowfall). Chances are in the meantime Alliance will have destroyed one, if not all, of the objectives near IB GY. If they are smart and leave 10+ defenders at IB, they can push forward and pretty much guarantee a win, since there is no way that a Horde offense can hope to match the speed of an Alliance offense once the Alliance has captured Iceblood. There are no natural chokepoints past Iceblood GY and the Horde base is exceedingly difficult to defend unless the all or nearly-all of the defenders retreat immediately to the base and defend the towers right off the bat (assuming people haven't gone in and ninja-captured them during the onslaught at Iceblood Garrison).
So far, the only times I've seen the Alliance lose a game after capturing Iceblood Graveyard first is when they jumped the gun and decided to zerg everything around the GY and leave it undefended instead of just waiting for it to turn over first.
"User is a tremendous douchenozzel"
-Actual EJ Forums feedback concerning Goreshot.
Once they hold the GY, they can attack Galvager, IB Tower, and Tower Point with impunity and there is absolutely nothing the Horde can do about it, as they will inevitably by rezzing at the Entrance Cave.
They'll rez at Frostwolf, you rez at the Entrance Cave when you have no graveyard left, at least when you don't have IB, FW or FRH.
Actually, I'd argue that the relative strength of the alliance base is far less important in the new AV. Most games are halfway decided before the game progresses to that point by one side having won the battle for midfield thus having a huge resource advantage. Secondly sneaking past the opposing force once you lose midfield is significantly harder with the new dynamics (as well as more punishing as you suicide in your attempt to get past), reducing the validity of the "counterrush" strategy.
The midfield is what decides the game now, which is why you're seeing discussion on IB/SH/SF/Galv/Balinda for the first time in a year. Before, it was all about base's ability to delay attackers, which was favoring alliance (with the exception of the Vanndar pull).
I also think that IB is significantly easier to defend than SH, especially from that side, for the same reasons that SP is easier to defend than FW. SH hasn't got the single chokepoint, it doesn't have strong vantage points for healers/ranged to rain down death from above, and the spawnpoint doesn't have access to the support line of your opposing force. On IB on the other hand, all attacks are focused through a chokepoint, you can stand on top of the hills as ranged to deal damage or interrupt flag, and dps can jump off the graveyard to attack alliance healers/ranged from behind.
I'll give you that alliance towers are far superior both in placement (SH bunker aside) and structure to horde towers though. Once again the value of this seems diminished by the reduced prevalence of solocaps though.
Maybe I'm seeing things through alliance glasses here, but it seems to me that the map turned more horde favorable in almost every aspect. Not that it's game breaking though, I can see alliance dominating AV on certain battlegroups still. The most important aspect is still the development and naturalization of a sound strategy, so Pugs will play "right".
If the mid-field game became a race to see who could take IBGY / SH first, would the alliance be better off than the Horde? There's only 1 approach to IBGY, while there are two approaches to SH. Please correct me if I am wrong, but the pinch point advantage in this situation would still seem to favor the Horde.
You can add in there that it is a much more direct and quick route from the starting point to SH for horde than it is for the starting point to IB as alliance. Also add in there the usual routes people take have alliance going down the left past snowfall with the horde going up the right straight to SH. Perhaps it would work if alliance went down the right and crashed right into the horde advance? But it's hard to change the route after 2 years of people doing that. That route also explains why IB tower is gone after. But still in plenty of the pre 2.3 AVs I did horde would get to Galvangar's area well before alliance did and would fortify. If the horde defends IB GY and area in force, there is nothing you can do as alliance because of the chokepoint nature of it.
You can add in there that it is a much more direct and quick route from the starting point to SH for horde than it is for the starting point to IB as alliance. Also add in there the usual routes people take have alliance going down the left past snowfall with the horde going up the right straight to SH. Perhaps it would work if alliance went down the right and crashed right into the horde advance? But it's hard to change the route after 2 years of people doing that. That route also explains why IB tower is gone after. But still in plenty of the pre 2.3 AVs I did horde would get to Galvangar's area well before alliance did and would fortify. If the horde defends IB GY and area in force, there is nothing you can do as alliance because of the chokepoint nature of it.
I agree, i don't quite understand how it can be argued that SH is harder to take than IB with equal defence. Horde can take 1 bunker well away from SH, which is very hard for defenders of SH to take back because of it's distance from the GY. The second tower wont fire on you attacking SH, same as the second IB tower, both are there to punish you for skipping the GY. IB has only 1 entrance, and can be escaped without interferance by alliance. The first Horde tower is very close to IB, so the alliance need to capture it before moving into a defended IB, and if they subsequently get beaten back, it is simple for the horde to quickly move out and recapture it while still being well within defending distance of IB.
I personally think that the early game undoubtable favours Horde, the alliance advantages, most notably the bridge of doom, don't come into play until very late, and often by that time the game has been decided. Also, i think it is much harder for alliance to restrict horde to a 0 point loss than it is for horde to keep alliance to 0 points, as i think the close proximity and defensiveness of IB and surrounding fortifications make it much more likely alliance will be stopped there than horde stopped at SH. Most games won as alliance that i see are where horde have taken the first 2 bunkers and SH, and alliance has put up a strong defence at SP. Alliance then complete everything, and horde are stuck on SP or just pushing the bunkers when Drek is killed. While the losses that i suffer as Alliance are often worth 0-100 bonus honor.
Ultimately, i think that once Alliance start playing it properly, they'll win close to 50%, but the ones they lose, i think they'll lose by alot more, and so AV will be more profitable in the long run for horde than alliance.
If Alliance were simply smart enough to attack Iceblood GY instead of Galvager/IB Tower first, they'd win pretty much every single game. Once they hold the GY, they can attack Galvager, IB Tower, and Tower Point with impunity and there is absolutely nothing the Horde can do about it, as they will inevitably by rezzing at the Entrance Cave. This causes them to enter a natural chokepoint between Tower Point and IB GY that will cause them to die in droves, as the Alliance now have a steady stream of reinforcements coming from a much closer location. Not only that, but both Galvager and IB Tower will be well beyond the point of saving, since any attempt to reinforce those positions will lead to death-by-drive-by. If the Horde manage to capture Snowfall, it really doesn't help them much at all since they will be pulled in three directions: 1) Defending Galvager, 2) defending IB Tower, 3) taking IB GY (note that Tower Point is now well beyond reinforcing for anyone who rezzes at Snowfall). Chances are in the meantime Alliance will have destroyed one, if not all, of the objectives near IB GY. If they are smart and leave 10+ defenders at IB, they can push forward and pretty much guarantee a win, since there is no way that a Horde offense can hope to match the speed of an Alliance offense once the Alliance has captured Iceblood. There are no natural chokepoints past Iceblood GY and the Horde base is exceedingly difficult to defend unless the all or nearly-all of the defenders retreat immediately to the base and defend the towers right off the bat (assuming people haven't gone in and ninja-captured them during the onslaught at Iceblood Garrison).
The past few days, I've tried directing pugs on a different strat, trying to get 10-15 to defend SH bunker. Here are my results:
1. If we completely destroy the horde offensive, they rez at the cave. They then swarm IBGY (regardless if there are 10 defenders) and take it back. Only once, have we managed to destroy the horde offense and still hold IBGY til it turned. That was a looooong game. Eventually, in order to progress south, we had to let them have SHGY anyway. Thus, there is no way to completely stop the horde offense, and still cap everything in the south, as the horde do to the alliance.
2. The horde offense might stall a bit, but kills us at SHGY and takes it. They then proceed as normal. This had mixed results. Sometimes the horde defense killed our offense (because we didn't have 35 people on it, since more were defending SHGY), and we're back to the 0 honor slow loss. Sometimes, if the offense managed to keep going, we would manage to slow the horde enough, that we kill drek as the horde are zerging dun balder.
As someone said, midfield decides the game now, which is why STGY and the dun balder bridge are irrelevant, and why Galv/Belinda and IBGY are coming to the forefront. The new changes are shining a big light on the inequalities in the map. And IBT needs to be taken, because the arrchers cut us down as we move into the choke point to take IBGY; Where the horde defense holds us. So that's why the alliance offense is generally split.
It all depends, really, on where the horde are defending. We have to guess. If they are waiting in galv's room, then we have to take IBGY and IBT. If they are at IBGY, we try to kill Galv first real fast, in case the offense is later destroyed (getting at least some honor). So rushing straight to Galv is a valid strat. But as was pointed out, it takes so very few horde in that room to destroy a much larger force.
I think, way back, there was an understood agreement between the sides. To bypass each other and race to the other's base; as people have noted, a pve race. Sure, a few might put up a fight, but usually not much. The only exceptins, are when the horde chose to kill alliance riding by icewing, trying to get to the front, and then finding themselves at a turtl in STGY.
Now, the horde is no longer following that, by having an aggressive defense. Something the alliance cannot do, due to the layout. I forsee, tho, that if the horde continues to put up a 10-15 man defense, the alliance might very well start putting 20-25 at SHGY and really turtling the game. They know that their offense will be destroyed anyway, so why not? Soon, many AV's will be lasting upwards an hour or more, with nothing capped, as people just kill each other in the middle until the reinforcements run out. It really won't be worth much honor per hour anymore.
Sadly, the only way I see this changing, is if the horde goes back to the original plan, of people mostly ignoring each other and rushing north/south. I think the smart people will see, that, win or lose, the 15 min AV is still the best honor per hour game.
The "lets rush past eachother" thing just doesn't work anymore, as a team of 3-5 could potentially halt the entire opposing offense just by backcapping towers. There is no way a pug will be able to handle Drek+2 or more WMs unless they got lucky and had a couple strong tanks queue. I assume something similar is true for horde.
The best thing this latest change has brought to AV is the fact that there's actually some level of interaction and even(!) some modicum of evident pvp. Prior to this, horde and alliance could have conceivably been playing in completely seperate instances of the BG; there was [close to] zero interaction between the sides. The pve race was the polar opposite of what I'd signed up for, so I'm happy that this has been addressed [even though presently some players from both sides are having trouble making the change].
While it's probably the wrong place to state this [given the mechanic-heavy vibe of these forums in general], I think if one of your reasons for not liking the new AV includes not getting as much honour/h as you were previously, then no amount of theorycrafting and tactics discussion is going to dissuade you from your convictions. I understand that honour points are a necessary evil for most people who want to participate in arena seriously, but your motivations don't sit with creating a battleground that allows for more dynamics, you just want to get that 60k asap, so anything hindering you isn't going to be viewed objectively as it should.
The "lets rush past eachother" thing just doesn't work anymore, as a team of 3-5 could potentially halt the entire opposing offense just by backcapping towers. There is no way a pug will be able to handle Drek+2 or more WMs unless they got lucky and had a couple strong tanks queue. I assume something similar is true for horde.
That's not entirely true. I was on my paladin (full season 2 arena gear, no honor gear - kara gear in all those slots) doing the AV daily earlier and we had IB and TP both recapped when we were at drek. I just found the 2 best geared tanks near me, buffed BOL, and sent them tells "charge in, keep them off me and I'll keep you alive". They weren't great tanks; mobs got loose (I heal-tanked 2 of the warmasters for a good bit) and they were in a mix of season 2 and kara gear (I salv'd myself to start off and still got beat on some, then switched to wisdom later) but we got the job done and I kept them both up through all 4 warmasters for a win.
There are 2 points I have not read here yet. First of all, the Iceblood Graveyard respawn does not pass by the Iceblood flag on their way back to the front. Stonehearth Graveyard respawn does. This is a big Alliance plus because some players tend to ignore the imminent danger of loosing their most important graveyard if they do not actually see people capsizing the flag.
Secondly, Stonehearh Bunker is readily avaible for Horde offensive. Many games I lost in AV went the following: Alliance defense would stand right behind Stonehearth Bunker, where the Horde forces split up. 5 to 10 people decide to not bother attacking Stonehearth graveyard and hold the bunker instead, the other 15 guys get slaughtered by alliance defense, which then proceeds to slaughter the bunker defense and take it back. After the initial plunge at stonehearth Horde cant build up enough momentum to destroy or capture stretegic points on offense anymore.
Generally people are lured to the tower objectives and forget that without respawn closeby they will have a very hard time to hold the tower objectives long enough to destroy them.
So far i see new AV to be higher honor gain. I played a few games where it took 11m to get ~400 honor (horde got ~300 in the same game) with pretty much instant queues, which is probably ~2-3k honor in a hour on average on non-AV-weekends... as long as zerg mentality is maintained.
Most games 2-3 people ninjacap fw + rh and then cap towers, while offense zerg kills galv and works on two other towers with a 2-5 defenders left on each.
At the same time horde does the same for alliance base. Token defense at "bridge of doom" stops aid station from getting capped though. I haven't seen any defenders at horde base at start other then what looked like bot running there.
Each tower flip extends game by 4m required to cap it again, and usually doesn't happen twice... so if you get one turned back game extends to ~15-19m.
Overall it's the same rush, but no elites at flags makes ninjacapping them a lot easier... by the moment there are some defenders back you usually get a few helpers too and can last long enough.
From a Horde perspective the Allinace posters have a point. By removing the that god forsaken bridge from the equasion the map now favors the horde.
What I've noticed in my battlegroup:
*We ARE going to take SH...we just are. I've played games where the alliance tried to hold it and the normal zerg offense ran them over and took the GY. If they stall us there, we have (much to my pleasure) started to reliably take SF and force the turtle, a winnning situation for us.
*Also sidestepping the defense and Galv to Cap IB is generally ineffective. Horde now res at FW and after a few kills we will be back in enough force to recap before it turns.
...As a caveat a game I did lose was do to the alliance only leaving a tokenk defense of 2 palles 2 locks a and a hunter at IB and flushing south of the map taking FWGY and RH before we could properly react/reorganize and forceing us into a race by making us res at SH and fight our way back to the the south.
*If the Horde stop the Alliance offensive at either Galv or IB we them move forward to take Snowfall and then choke any hope the Allinace have of advancing over Icewing Bunker with 25 at the top of the hill comeing up to the bunker and 15 or so more doing harassment and trying to ninja and keep the Alliance back in thier base and on the road.
2.3 favors the horde, plain and simple. As a long time PvPer I'm fine with it. The exact factors that contibuted to the 18 hour games, then the races and finally afk city are now on our side. The game is now won midfield, where the horde have a decided advantage and the alliance tendancy to turlte make it a slower war of attrition that is basically impossble for the Allinace one we have SHGY and Icewing bunker.
Save the Alliance queuing in groups they are going to have a rough time in AV, as the horde did pre-2.3
11/19/07, 2:54 PM
