I don't think you can cap the relic until the final gate falls. I recently had a vehicle get destroyed while attacking the final gate and my passenger fell behind the final wall but was unable to click the relic.

You can definitely get feared through the door and cap the relic.

From first hand experience this weekend I can say that this is no longer true. Once feared inside you cannot do anything with the relic to win the match nor can you get back out of the room. You can be standing under the relic on the far side to capture it just as the Keep wall comes down.

First some tactics:
Already mentioned:
1. defend the GYs to prolong defense - note: they are in range of canons so you can interuppt capture indefinitely
2. dps down tanks on beach as the ships land
3. you should always bring a bomb - deploy after you tank blows up
4. roguestep victory - shadowstep to guns, bypass to cap GYs
5. don't cap the final GY until AFTER the yellow gate is open - even then I think theres a good argument NOT to cap it.

Not mentioned:
1. command&conquer style - I have yet to see a gate withstand a 4-tank rush, no matter how well defended
2. ride shotgun - ranged dps can excel if they ride INSIDE the tank - use your timed cast nukes, you won't be interrupted or damaged until the tank falls. The biggest threat to tanks is direct damage, not canons. This is the best way to counter


And now about fairness:
I'm unconvinced that the 'alliance starts first' rule has any effect on fairness at all (except maybe for achievement completion). I've played enough SotA now to see a rough 50/50 win ratio.
But if people are really stuck on this (and many are) what Bliz could do is trade the start position each week.

The first 1 1/2 pages of this thread (composed during beta) give the impression that SotA has a defensive advantage. This has not been my experience in live. I've only seen a few 10 minute failures when my fellow Alliance team are idiots. 6-minute or better caps are pretty typical (for both sides), now that people have figured out how to play offense.

Then you haven't thought about it enough. The biggest effect is just on how long it takes a team with a big advantage to win and get their honor/marks. Assume you have a premade group that can both defend successfully (for ten minutes) and take the relic (on offense) in five minutes. If this is a Horde team, they will need fifteen minutes of play to win (ten minutes defense, five minutes offense). If this is an Alliance team, they only need to play for ten (five minutes offense, five minutes defense). So they will gain honor 50% faster than the Horde PVPers in this situation.

The only disadvantages horde get to always starting second are:
1. Achievements
2. Honor/marks per hour

At the moment, its almost impossible for horde to obtain Defense of the Ancients - Achievement - World of Warcraft as we must hold the walls for the full 10 minutes.

In the same vein, a good horde team can defend for 10 minutes, then maybe steam roll the gates in 2-3 minutes. Total game time is around 15 minutes (counting preparation at the start of each round). Most likely horde will have lost at least the first 4 gates in those 10 minutes of defence.

A good alliance team steam rolls horde first round in 2-3 minutes, then only need to defend for 2-3 minutes. Horde take down 1-2 gates at most. The alliance gets full honor for their offence and extra bonus honor for having gates still standing. So in less than half the time, the alliance receive more honor for playing well.

It's not that simple though. Horde can target alliance vehicles faster. Horde also get explosives before they land while alliance have to wait a minute for theirs. When the sides switch, the guns do not repair (or do not always repair, not sure).

That said they should just switch between who gets to start so we don't even have to worry which one has the small advantage this way or that way.

About the whole fairness thing :
I'm at a loss, what issues could there possibly be with randomized start ? Both horde and alliance are now completely balanced with same classes, are they basing the decision on the minute racial advantages the horde supposedly has in PvP ?

Sorry for going off the 'fairness' topic but I was wondering if anyone has ever noticed invisible or stealthed tanks. During one game the last couple of gates kept getting hit (you could hear the impact sound) but there was no tank nor any flying boulders to be seen anywhere near it.
I was dead while the last gate was destroyed and the relic captured so I couldn't see if it might have been bugged with a rogue/druid stealthing.

You're missing the biggest issue, because horde are on defense first, it means that they need ~15 people on the beach ready to kill cannons. When a game is starting, more often than not they won't have 15 people. It only takes four people to push O, so alliance can push the walls before the horde who are just connecting can even make their way down to the beach.

If Sota is to be truely fair, there would need to be another minute added to the starting time so d can properly prepare and get enough players.

Horde always defending first is a major problem in probably more battlegroups then mine. Everytime you play on non peak times you start with 5 players. Having a full group after 2 gates are already down every game gets a bit dull aswell.

There's an extremely simple solution to the win-relevant imbalance problems: lengthen the pre-game setup period by 1 minute. Explosives come online, latecomers have time to trickle in and get into position.

As for the achievement, it could be changed so that the server records first wall down time, and if Horde complete their offense before their first wall would've gone down, it could simply award the achievement on the basis of what would've happened. On the time spent per game, though, the defending team is just screwed.

Regarding the turrets: they always respawn if killed, I think, but sometimes don't regen if merely damaged. Now in Wintergrasp, all vehicles blow up upon the end of the game, so I think it should be fairly easy for them to import whatever script they use there and apply it to all the turrets and whatnot; that'd ensure full health respawns of the turrets.

I had that tank bug happen to me when I was in a tank before. I have no idea what caused it but I brought down the first gate while being attacked by a few horde, once I got through I was at like 20% and everyone stopped attacking me, I just rolled through the next 2 gates and the final gate without a horde near me at all; everyone else was down by the beach. But once I got to the relic, I was unable to leave the tank for some reason and therefore couldn't cap the relic. I left the game a few seconds later, so not sure what ended up happening.

I also was unable to use the melee based attack and was only able to use the range one, so it might be something like the issue above where tanks were at their spawn point using the range attack to hit the doors.

Strand of the Ancients

* Antipersonnel Turrets will now gain vehicle immunities, use falloff damage, and damage increased to 4000 + 200 per level to compensate for falloff.


I haven't seen this been mentioned yet. Perhaps I'm being stupid, or I have missed something somewhere, but does anyone know what this actually means? Specifically, the "falloff damage" part.

I would like to know this as well, as for a point of reference, anyone know how damage is calculated earlier? Just wondering how big of a buff this is to the damage.

Changing the course of this thread a bit. In Strands, many games start out with a zerg to one color. Horde often adapts to this quickly, but find ourselves on one side (with the alliance deciding to zerg the other side). Eventually, Horde runs back in time to stop the Alliance push as the Yellow gate is reached/destroyed. At this point, I feel some theory work needs to be done since something different always happens.

First, asses which GY's are not taken and defend them. The exception is the south GY. Allowing the south GY to be taken while defending, does slow the offence. After rezing, they have to run back to the west and east GY's taking more time to get in a vehicle. After the yellow gate is down, however, it is sort of a toss up if you should take the south GY. Personally, I still feel it should not be taken because A) with only the east and west GY you still rez next to the workshops and B) the defence does not rez right next to the final gate allowing you more time to do damage before killed players rejoin the fight in the court yard.

Second, tank drivers need to form a line. You don't want to be on top of each other as the anti tank weapons will hit each tank for the same amount when stacked. You are also allowing AoE damage to hit all tanks. Really, what you want to do is form a line so the defence is forced to attack, one at a time, each tank. This minimizes their overall tank DPS while maximizing your own tanks survivability (the exception is the lead tank of course).

GY's and bombs are huge. I have seen games won soley through the use of bombs after the first wave of tanks was stopped. And I have seen games lost because no one capped the GY's after getting through the walls.

The other two big mistakes I see are not knowing when to DPS a turret down, and spacing the tanks too far from each other. These may seem simple to you/me, but my hope is to spark other ideas for people to share. It is too easy to take the first, and even second wall down in a pug. The key, comes down to what your team does (or doesn't do) to ensure strategic areas are defended/attacked accordingly.

PS Anyone else feel that the turrets in Strands should be the same as those used in WG (except the range)? I hate having to leave a vehicle because someone is in the turrets "blind spot." Maybe add a small AoE knock back?

Anyone else feel that if the horde defend for 10 mins they should just get the win and call it a day?

At this point the alliance can no longer win the game but only tie. This not only causes many people to just quit and give up as is, but even if the full 15 tried hard to stop the horde - lets be honset, if you couldn't get to the relic in 10 mins the odds of stopping that same team for a full 10 is very unlikely.