roquer

On our battlegroup games have been getting shorter and shorter. This weekend most games I played were 12-14 mins long. Alliance lost more than they won, but usually it would have been 30 seconds or less between Vann dying or Drek dying. The general strat seems to be both sides capping their first 2 towers and general uncontested, with at least 30 people on Offense. When the first 2 towers burn, the reinforcements from the towers is usually enough to turn the tide and obliterate defense on both sides. From then on, its just a matter of waiting for at least 1 of the 2 remaining towers to burn, and a lot of trinketing back to defend your commander.

I'm not complaining. Winners usually got 450 bonus honor, while losers got 350 or so.

 

Solstice

What's all this talk about "strategy" in PuG AV's? Maybe it's just my BG but I can't remember a single occasion either prior or since 2.3 where any AV game I've experienced has been influenced by either faction employing anything remotely resembling coordinated tactics. The way some people are going on this thread makes it sound like some sort of "battleground" rather than a mindless zerg to accumulate honor points. Tssk.

 

Melador

As Alliance, that just boggles my mind. I've literally never had even that level of organization pre-AV-start.

For Alliance the pre-game plan is pretty much "1. Skip Galv, 2. Cap IB and its towers and defend them, 3. Push to FW and cap those towers quickly after IB caps, and 4. Defense is for those who die or are slow out of the gate". That strategy is pretty much the only way I've seen Alliance win. Problem is, no matter how much you yell, there are going to be 5-10 people that end up going to Galv when we still are waiting for something to cap (usually IB) and then our offense falls apart and we lose.

For those insisting that honor/hour is the same because it's made up by HKs, that's only true if you're playing certain roles. If you're the one sitting on your hands at IBGY or a tower because it needs to be defended in case some horde show up, you're getting diddly for honor from HKs.

Also, I'm not seeing any bonus honor this weekend at all either. Still 62 for tower caps and ~550 for an overwhelming win, same as it was last weekend when I was playing.

EDIT: Wow just got rolled by a Kargath premade. 25 minutes total and less than 40 total honor (0 bonus). That really just shouldn't be possible.

 

Elendril

I'm pretty convinced that there's no holiday weekend bonus honor for AV right now - they probably just didn't include holiday weekend values when they recoded the honor rewards for the zone. I've been on my druid for most of the day and have only come out with about 14k honor, when a similar timespan in the old AV (especially winning as often and as convincingly as I had been) on a holiday weekend would've been at least twice that.

That said, I've seen some interesting things today - Wind Riders and Lok actually made appearances in some of the games I was in. Granted, those games were pretty much already decided at that point, but it's interesting to see what the changes to make attrition matter have done to some of the old dynamics.

 

Phantom

That's exactly it.

On this forum, we have a number of expert raiders. They are used to working to a strat. Real PUG AVs have no strat. You can yell and command and cajole and beg all you want, but there will always be people that do what they want. Thus, the principle of KISS applies: Keep It Simple, Stupid. The best we can do, is get people to avoid Galv, and race south. This tends to work the best, because it's simple. Most can understand it.

For those of you with great strats, save them. Wait til they allow premades in AV, and then you can employ them. But unless you have 5-10 queing up in the same AV, you're not getting a brilliant coordinated strat going.

And let's all be honest with ourselves here: We're in this for honor points. The vast majority, that is. AV was always about honor per hour. That means that it'll revert back to a race soon enough, if it hasn't. Once the novelty wears off, people will go back to 15 min games, win or lose. Rather than risk a drawn out 45 min fight that lowers your honor per hour, even if you win. 3 losses at 300 honor a piece and 15 min a piece, are better than a win at 45 mins and netting 700 honor.

If it were possible, I'd suggest two settings for when people sign up for a BG:

1. I want honor per hour

2. I want loads of pvp

Both are currently incompatible with the current AV (both at the same time). But take a guess as to which option most people want?

 

diospadre

I absolutely love this strat. Every alliance player tries desperately to stay mounted so they can get to frostwolf base, only to get snared by a few piercing shouts and decimated by the 10 or so horde around. A few might make it through, but it ends with horde winning at ~560 reinforcements.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I tried summoning lok over the course of a few games last weekend. One time that I managed to get enough blood to summon we were already at 400 reinforcements versus their 80, so nobody came to summon. I think it requires 175 blood to summon, so they should really drop that down to around 100 if they want it to actually happen.

The mines are pretty good right now, but the summons/riders and such should be changed to be easier, especially for defensive ones

 

diotox

Yeah, I think when they changed the format of AV, they completely did not consider AV weekend at all and forgot about bonus honor. I'm not seeing the slightest bit of difference in honor gained between right now, and earlier in the week.

 

crimsonsentinel

This is happening in my BG already as AV weekend progresses. The horde can be almost guaranteed a win if they hold IB GY and force alliance into a turtle, but they know its a 45+ min game so they stopped doing it around Friday, and now its mostly back to being a race again. Theres more defense than before, but not as furious a drive to destroy the alliance offense and holy IW bunker.

 

Leempi

Are you factoring in queue times for this? For me it's pretty much a guaranteed 10 minute wait for bg's now if not more. Minimally, 1 round of av will be 25 minute including waiting, and if you loose: 250-300 honor. If you spend the time and defend, at least for horde, it becomes a pretty one sided affair, and you spend 40 minutes for 650 honor.

Playing to win will get me more honor in the long run.

 

crimsonsentinel

I think he's speaking from an alliance POV, who ironically enough, have instant AV queues now. Gogo instant queues.

 

Duilliath

There does look to be bonus honour awarded at the end, but it's rather low.

Check your combat log and you should be awarded 82 honour when it ends.

 

kaib

Anyway, they tried to nurf AV and made it even better. It's by far the best honor grinding BG still. Just now in my BG (reckoning, EU) BG servers crashed the second time cause there are sooo many AVs up. It feels to me it's even more honor/time then it was before. I don't see the other BGs seeing any more use for honor farming.

And there is definitely strategy invovled, sadly it is rather simple. Grab 3-5 people, 1 healer, rest dps, wait 90-120s after the other faction tagged the towers, then run in, kill the guards and tag them. Usually you can even get SP or FW respectively. That just throws the other faction way too far back due to the tower capping taking super long compared to the time a whole AV takes.

That is also the biggest problem I have, I think it was mentioned before. You tag a bunker/tower, stand there idle for 3-4 min, then a party that outnumbers defenders jumps in and kills everyone and your time was wasted.
Fixing that would be rather easy, just use the same system that EotS bases have. The more stand in there, the faster you take it (needs to be capped by 5 or 10 people, or something like that) and no instant defense any more. That you can instantly take back stuff if your faction owned it last is just bullshit and makes the defenders-run-around-in-one-zerg 'strategy' way too good.

 

Metrosexuelf

The weekend is indeed turning it back to the race mentality which is unfortunate because it usually ends up only being 400 honor in 15 minutes which is subpar. People don't understand you get much better honor by holding and capping towers. Also whereas I used to see at least 2-3 mage trays being summoned at the start I'm not seeing any. The reason: it costs reagents. Give me a break.

 

Cwealm

I always summon them, but I have seen several gold farmers ask for refreshment tables, loot the entire table, and then afk out.

I am not kidding.

 

Venomia

We played lots of AV this double honor weekend with guildies (about 5-20 people, depending on time, just queueing at the same time roughly and the ones that didnt get in joined manually after) on ventrilo and as expected won pretty much all except maybe one game where pretty much the rest of alliance except us kept wiping on galvangar for 20 minutes and we were not able to get them off there. Got around 20k+ honor per day for it.

Anyway, after this experience I gotta support Gurgthock's call for 5 man groups or something similar for AV. The small organized unit is insanely powerfull and would definetely make the game more pleasent experience (for those in groups of course, I can imagine solo honor hunters in greens / blues could be quite gutted).

The tactic that worked for us was all go to Balinda straight away, shatter the horde attack there and retake stoneheart / icewing bunkers and make sure defense is solid and we dont loose anything. After that we waited what the rest of group does (some went straight into attack, some actually helped with defending) and we did exact opposite. I'd say that one of the most important factors in the new AV now is solid and flexible defense which gives you time to attack and not loose tickets during it.

 

Ajuga

Bumping a question a couple of pages ago:

 

Thud00

The key to a horde win is defence. This should be concentrated at the IB GY chokepoint. Standing there you are poistioned to prevent anyone going past to take IB GY and IB tower. Anyone that dies can quickly jump down, the dead attackers have a long run. If they go for Galv its a short run, if a rogue ninjas TP its a short run. We dont have to do more the alliance keep coming and we always outnumber them due to our close GY.

The easiest way for alliance to win is to take SF and let horde take SH. This leads to most of the horde heading up to SH. The alliance at SF can now cap IB GY (ignore Galv). At this point we have the same situation as in the last AV. Each side is racing for the general. Thats a race alliance always win. You just cant persuade horde to move backwards and retake IB GY or defend Galv once they are at SH. They keep going along the SP path held up by a few defenders. Meanwhile alliance caps horde towers and zergs into horde base.

The game is about IB GY choke point. For horde keeping your defenders there, for alliance tempting those defenders away so you can cap the GY.

 

Skeez

From memory you had to kill the Yeti and plant a standard through its body. This gave some rep and gold for a quest back in the first incarnation of AV. I assume the yetis have just been left in for no real reason other than at some point they may do something with them.

On a side note I have been noticing Horde getting more and more dumb as the weekend progresses. I started out with some dominated wins and it got closer and closer with more horde having no idea what to do. After explaining for the 6th game in a row what reinforcements are and how to play I just gave up yesterday and went into a WSG fixed. I cannot wait for the weekend PvPers to go back into hibernation and let us win properly in AV again :-)

 

Vandermonde

I'm baffled by the fact that i'm still seeing so many afkers as alliance. They're consistently getting flagged, and there really isn't any bonus honor to be had half the time any more anyway, yet there are still 5-8 people in the cave on a regular basis.

 

Cromfel

And can you honestly say that there is counter to this tactic? Current AV simply cant really be won by Alliance if horde uses some variant of your said tactic. It just isnt likely due SH bunker being so close to horde IBGY and Balinda being pretty much 1shot no matter what kind of group gets in there. You gotta think about the whole scenario. If this happens, horde will always get 1 tower points ahead due SH bunker, and normal situation is that they also kill Balinda. This leads to inevitable fact that defensive horde will win 100% of the games.

I dont mean that this happens always, Alliance wins some games. But when you start to make scenarios and counters to certain tactics, alliance map layout has no counter to certains ways of Horde tactics. Galvanger is extremely easy to wipe by few horde, and if nothing else the IB tower itself is so close to IBGY that when SF is kept in conflict, there are no real ways to dominate any part of the map for alliance. Remember that we are not talking about premade 40vs40, this tactic is bullet proof defensive way for horde to win by few smart players. That can not be countered by equal amount of Alliance smart players.

You arent really employing smarter strategy, you are employing the tactic that gives alliance no options to counter it. That tactic in worst case scenario will always lead into horde victory due SH bunker or even Balinda. SFGY gives room to breath, but thats yet another GY that you have to defend in order to advance, what often leads to loosing SH bunker, hence making your win less likely forwhile if you cant outdamage the defence for Galv/IB. And meanwhile you are very likely to loose SHGY hence loosing 2 towers and balinda by default.

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Grogzor

They did it just yesterday against us. A bunch of 'em went on the offense, took the graveyard and held it against our respawns and when they capped it they pretty much sent small groups to each tower and the majority into our base. It really wasn't hard for them at all and very difficult for our defense to stop them.

But when it comes time for me to remove your wings, and you, you must try to fly...

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Venomia

Uhuh, maybe I'm stupid, dont hesitate to tell me if I'm missing something, but this seems to be bit like a pointless whine. The AV map isnt side symethrical, so it cant be 100% balanced - but I dont think theres any SERIOUS map imbalance in place at the moment. Both Tower Point / Iceblood towers are close to Iceblood GY, both Icewing / Stoneheard Bunkers are close to Stoneheart GY. Both IB and SH gy's are chokepoints. Balinda is very close to Stoneheart, Galvangar is actually bit further away from Iceblood (from PvE point of view I think Galvangar is slightly harder thanks to his whirlwind and aoe fear, but both are no big deal anyway to kill, so rarely makes a difference - both are very hard to kill if theres any decent defense in place).
The bases itself and surroundings might be different, but usually when one side reaches those with sufficient numbers, its thanks to the outcome in middle.

 

◊ Praetorian

I disagree. When I'm giving instructions/advice to my team at the start of the match, we have four priorities:
1) Don't let Galv die.
2) Don't them contest IB, fight on the flag, and push them back.
3) Get SH GY; hold SH GY.
4) Try to tag Snowfall before it caps for the Alliance.

Reverse this for Alliance, and it's a workable strat.

AV is all about controlling where your opponents respawn, much like AB in a sense. If we let Alliance have Snowfall, we're never going to hold IBGY while mounting an offense. Not possible. If we control the Field of Strife and Alliance are pinned at Stormpike, then we can have 30 on O bottling them up while a roaming group of 10 picks off those who slipped through and recaps any towers/GYs they manage to tag.

Similarly, if every Horde player who dies in the initial rush respawns at Frostwolf, they're going to be in serious trouble. I have lost a total of one AV in 2.3 and it was as a result of this happening. ~25 Alliance ignored Galv and rushed IB GY. They secured it and tagged Snowfall. The rest quickly recapped SH GY as the Horde zerg moved to Balinda, and eventually the Horde on offense were picked off by the Alliance respawning constantly right next to them. Respawning Horde ran from Frostwolf to IB GY in disorganized clumps and got picked off. Once IB GY capped, the match was as good as over.

 

Cromfel

Pointless whine? Serious map imbalance? Are you making this up or whats going on? He made argument of hes tactic being just good and them outplaying their enemy, when in reality there isnt much to be outplayed. The situation leads into defensive killfest where by default Horde will lead by 1 tower worth of points.

Map layout may seem like identical in distances, but the tower locations create something different how they play. As by defending Galvanger you are always defending IB tower same time, because you run trough it. Where Alliance will defend SH tower or Balinda. And even then the tower behind SHGY is open for attack, where TP is basicly defended by blocking the way when going to Galvanger. Distances have nothing to do how certain routes create defensive aspects only because people have to go trough them.

Similiar tactics can be executed, but they require different amount of players due these "defensive lines" that are created by simply going to defend Galvanger. Players rushing to SH bunker are away from balinda defend, and leaving wide open route to Icewing bunker. Players going to Balinda will leave SH bunker open. The amount of players needed for succesful defence on alliance side is a lot larger than it is for horde.

This is how I see the layout working, with your given tactic. And there are no solid ways for Alliance to counter it. Hence if none makes mistake, the points will be in favor of horde. You are excuting tactic that has no real counter from alliance side, nothing that couldnt be breaken apart by few players.

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