Isnt it about time they fixed Alliance advantage in AV [Archive]

Underling

02-11-2006, 11:33 AM

in Nightfall battlegroup (Euro), Horde wins much more often. In fact, I am exalted with AV, and I've only been in one lost match.

This battlegroup tactics from alliance is to rush the Iceblood gy or even the Frostwolf gy right at the start of the game. Also, for some reason, more often than not, at the beginning of a battle you get about twice as many alliance in, compared to horde. So often I see 35 allies vs 20 horde in the beginning. This makes it a hell of a battle every time - to survive the rushing alliance.

And you often find schmacks shouting 'ALL RUSH SH!' If you get someone like that, it may be hard to find people to defend IB and FW in the beginning of the match. And if you lose IB - things turn ugly. You lose FW - uglier still.

Also, yes, defending IB tower is vital I also find. Sometimes it is hard though to get people to realise that and to come defend.

All in all, I don't see the horde rushing the Stormpike gy at all. But the allies always rush FW gy. Resume: the AV map favours the alliance for such a rush.

Also, in my experience, if you can't organise a defense and the majority follows the orators that urge to skip the defense alltogether, you get to the infamous race, ie horde racing allies to the respective general. I must say I've only seen one successful race for the horde. I would say 99% of such races would be won by the alliance. Resume: I think the AV map favours the alliance for such a race.

One more thing. I think the base set-up favours the allies too. I've seen alliance ninja-take over the relief station many times. It mostly is a simple procedure of siccing a pet on to the guards and then calling it back - the guards will all aggro and follow the pet. Your mate now will simply cap the flag. I've never seen horde ninja-ing the aid station - too many npc'es around is my guess. Resume: bla bla :hanky:

Just wanted to add that generally an AV fight goes likes this in my battlegroup:

Stage 1: fighting alliance everywhere and all over the place between FW gy and SH gy in the beginning, sometimes really drawn out battles between FW and IB

Stage 2: mopping up all the partisans south of SF

Stage 3: fighting around SH area, destroying SH and IW bunkers and gangbanging Balinda - shouting at people to get to IB tower/gy from time to time

Stage 4: summoning of the big boy IL and on toward SP/alliance base

Tiddly

02-11-2006, 11:48 AM

On my server Sylvanas the horde win almost all the time which is a shame as I am ally :(

Magikhat

02-11-2006, 02:24 PM

How about they fix all the battlegrounds, not just AV. I agree alliance has a huge advantage in AV but horde dominate WSG and AB for the most part. Its not fair to fix AV and not fix the others.

Oatmealsmurf

02-11-2006, 03:18 PM

What are the imbalances of WSG... Because I'm honestly not seeing them (AB too for that matter). The Map appears to be identical for the most part to me. Geographically however the Alliance needs fewer people to defend than the Horde due to the placement of NPCs, the choke point at SP... and the Bridge leading to towers/aid station. You get a hand full of decently geared hunters on the little hills at the alliance end of the bridge and getting across that thing is a nightmare.

Additionally you need to get SH before rushing SP because without an advance position it's too easy to lose SP GY and then end up spawning back in the tunnel.... It's near impossible to capture snowfall at the start of the game if you're horde and if you do... you just end up setting up a turtling situation that will make it impossible to move forward anymore.

I'm all for balancing the maps but tell me at least what needs to be balanced. I see far more AB and WSG games won by alliance than I see AV won by horde... and I can tell you exactly why. Tell me what inherent factors in the maps make WSG and AB imbalanced in favor of horde... because to me it sounds like you're asking for an advantage the same that you have in AV.

Dutchgrass

02-11-2006, 03:34 PM

How about they fix all the battlegrounds, not just AV. I agree alliance has a huge advantage in AV but horde dominate WSG and AB for the most part. Its not fair to fix AV and not fix the others.

That is not related to the layout of the BG map itself. WSG and AB are perfectly fine.

Bryant

02-11-2006, 05:45 PM

I don't know about AV because I've never played in it, but the other BG HordeWin:AllianceWin ratio varies per server.

Why? Some factions have better players on one server, and the same faction has players that suck on another. Its not the BG, its your faction. Fix your the players playing your faction, not the BG.

Magikhat

02-11-2006, 06:22 PM

That is not related to the layout of the BG map itself. WSG and AB are perfectly fine.

Yes you are right. Its related to shamans and pvp racial skills. Fix AV to be equal and then you have horde winning 99% of every BG. The only way to offset this is by having a pre made group which some of us cant do.

Weebull

02-11-2006, 06:58 PM

<agree fix AV now>

I'm horde 7500+/21000 to Exalted with the FW and I swear I will never set foot into the giant waste of time HK turtlefest once I finally reach that rep level. Seriously, I can't remember the last AV we've won - it's got that bad.

Linch

03-11-2006, 02:53 AM

[B]I don't know about AV because I've never played in it[/B

Then you know nothing of the topic of conversation.

Its not about gear or player skill we are talking about an imbalance in the BG terrain.

Dutchgrass

03-11-2006, 09:28 AM

Yes you are right. Its related to shamans and pvp racial skills. Fix AV to be equal and then you have horde winning 99% of every BG. The only way to offset this is by having a pre made group which some of us cant do.

No, it's not. It's related to the fact that Alliance generally has a greater player pool, hence more idiots. This makes Alliance pugs torture.

I don't know which game you are playing, but with any remotely decent players behind the keyboard, Paladins are vastly superior as support to Shamans. The fact that 95% of the Paladins think they're helping the group by running into the fray auto-attacking with their crappy 2-hander has nothing to do with faction imbalance.
A well played Paladin is a monster. Shamans being imbalanced and a massive advantage for Horde is utter nonsense.

Aerath

03-11-2006, 11:07 AM

Agreed.

And Horde have a few nice choke points to defend as well, near IB.

Most games I see start off with off with horde grabbing SF. (Fine, you can have it, we take the rest, you spawn in middle of the map.)

You can go around and take SP from behind. You can, to my knowledge at least, only get out of FW that way.

Map differences aren't all that huge.

Underling

03-11-2006, 11:32 AM

You can go around and take SP from behind.

Map differences aren't all that huge.

I have never seen Horde attacking SP at the beginning of the game. I see Alliance attacking FW all the time, at the beginning of the game. Do you think it's because of the superior strategic understanding and a better organisation of the allies? I don't think so. I think it is exactly because of the map.

Dutchgrass

03-11-2006, 11:41 AM

The Alliance spawn tunnel path leads past where Horde would mount an attack on the back of SP, while at the Horde spawn point, people commonly veer to the right when exiting and head to IB. You can't really (or barely anyway) see the FW gy from the tunnel exit.

Oatmealsmurf

03-11-2006, 03:47 PM

Not to mention the frost wolf GY is completely unprotected, in a geographic sense. I hear people talking about the Iceblood Choke point but the problem is (at least in my battlegroup, and my server before the BGs revamp), Alliance will ignore Iceblood which makes the choke point useless. They'll go after Galvanger and then if he's defended they say screw it and go full on attack after FW.

And while SP is easy to defend against a 30 man zerg with only 10 or so defenders, FW is completely out in the open... offering no natural defenses and a 10 man defense team will simply be over run by 30 opposing players.

Then on top of that Alliance can huddle in the tower below the frostwolf towers without worrying about archers... where as once you get half way across the bridge you have absoultely zero cover from the Alliance archers.

To make matters worse... due to the placement of the NPCs... the relief hut is easy to grab with force as the NPCs just watch where as you are probably going to have to deal with at least 3 NPCs to grab the Aid Station. Map is completely imbalanced. It's not as bad as before since they took out the exploit where Alliance used to run along the back wall but it's still a pretty imbalance map.

Ninox

03-11-2006, 04:12 PM

I've not played AV on Horde-side, yet... But as an Alliance forward scout (60th Rogue), I've seen advantages and disadvantages to both sides.

Every loss for Alliance came from 2 related things:
1) Organized Defence at IB
2) Inability to skip past Galv for the extra 50rep

The most lock-down devestating defense was a 3-prong hold.
- 7 Held back at IB to choke up that pass.
- 3 (Warlock, Mage, Shaman) took up an honor guard position for Galv
- 5 others slipped through and took position at the SF GY and harassed res'ers from behind

The trifecta in Galv's building held wave after wave of obstinate and undoubtably unintelligent Alliance that refused to give up the 50rep. By the time the Alliance decided to move on to IB and secure the GY there, they were already too far behind the "race". After giving up Galv, they had 7 in front, and 3 behind keeping the IB Tower from folding, and holding back the offensive in the gap.

The real kicker was that the Horde NEVER capped the Snowfall GY... they simply chewed on any newly res'd players so that they'd either have to wait out another res-cycle, or have to stop on the way to IB to heal up, delaying their return to the frontlines. I think more than a dozen deaths were due to low-hp plummets from the GY... no one expects to get chopped to half HP before the dive to make the ride back up to Galv.

Now, as a forward scout, I'll agree that the FW fort is easily surpassed. 3 like-minded Stealthers can wreak havok back there, even while the Alliance Offence is still playing with IB and TP. The key is to not be noticed until you're ready. Get in, kill the Tower Archers (this is key, as shedding their agro is a royal pain if a Horde Player comes calling), then either dual-cap the towers, or tag-team the RH guards.

If you go for the RH, take position on the mound and take down anyone coming up to re-cap. (They know it's a ninja cap, so will expect no resistance... getting taken out before they even pass the keep is a real eye-opener.) Once you've sent them back to FW GY, then have someone cap the towers, and hold as best you can until the Offense arrives. You may lose the RH again, but in all likelihood, you've pulled 4-5 players off of their normal positions to come deal with you.

If you went with just the towers (solo, or duo crew), then cap both and take position to defend. Again, they know it's a ninja, so only one or maybe two will come around to recap. Send them to the GY, and move to a new ambush point. Never attack from the same place twice.

I'll miss my days sneaking about AV... but someday I'll be back again. Only this time it'll be to go in and harass the dwarves for a change.

Serrat

03-11-2006, 04:18 PM

Yes you are right. Its related to shamans and pvp racial skills. Fix AV to be equal and then you have horde winning 99% of every BG. The only way to offset this is by having a pre made group which some of us cant do.

how is it shamans, problem with earthbind? its very easy to remove that.

problem with ghost wolf? see how far the shaman gets while his GW is getting dispelled by a priest, though lets face it, seems not many priests are aware of this cos they rarely do it, instead they try and melt my face while im trotting away.

shaman aint that good a flag carrier, druids are a lot better hands down, and for alliance pallys are very good flag carriers, you may not have the ghostwolf but you do have blessings which can get you out of a jam that the shaman couldnt.

shaman frost shocks, pally uses blessing, by the time the cooldown is finished pally should be out of range.

sorry but WSG and AB are fine(except in AB it seems quicker for A to cap stables than H to get farm :p )

in both WSG and AB at least for my server, the horde have worked togeather long time, we had to group up to get in because of the faction im balance, so while alliance just done there headless chicken act.

now even with linked battlegrounds, even when joining as single, often horde work togeather(of course not always)

yes the way for alliance is to go as a group, but then thats the only way you guys will ever work as a group.

personally im not even sure there is a problem with AV, i just think that alliance have been playing with the zerg style for so long, and actually have people who defend there base, since a small team can hold off the base long enough for the alliance attackers to take down Drek.

were as horde send 38 into attack while 2 defend if your lucky, either that or they just happened to me turning in stuff when i check the battlemap.

horde often spend so long messing around with the ole " Kill Belinda!!!!111" that intthe time it takes to either get enough people to do it, or to decide againt it and head for the fat dwarf, alliance have stormed down to iceblood, took our galvanger, and are gearing up to take on Drek.

and getting back to the shaman thing, ive been in many a AB and WSG were ive been the only shaman and we still won, so sorry nothing to do with the shamans.

Magikhat

03-11-2006, 04:19 PM

No, it's not. It's related to the fact that Alliance generally has a greater player pool, hence more idiots. This makes Alliance pugs torture.

I don't know which game you are playing, but with any remotely decent players behind the keyboard, Paladins are vastly superior as support to Shamans. The fact that 95% of the Paladins think they're helping the group by running into the fray auto-attacking with their crappy 2-hander has nothing to do with faction imbalance.
A well played Paladin is a monster. Shamans being imbalanced and a massive advantage for Horde is utter nonsense.

While that may be part true, you can not count out better pvp racial skills. If you take better racials, classes and players then there you have it.

mesonm

03-11-2006, 04:30 PM

I think that Blizz should just switch sides for the factions each month....

Weebull

03-11-2006, 05:14 PM

A well played Paladin is a monster.

And 2 paladin can be utterly frustrating. Even a few Pally's - when played well can be a huge "resource" drain for the horde (rage, energy, mana and time). Even with a numbers advantage, they are very tough to bring down.

Grendo

03-11-2006, 08:59 PM

Ive played horde (pvp server) and alliance (pve server) up to rank10 on both. I agree with Aereth and Ninox completely, the difference isnt huge. Its a matter of playstyle and tactics.

FW is actually harder to defend then the horde equivalent, as not only can you not see an attack coming, but when it does, its available from just as many sides. You have no line of sight. Nevermind the advantages of sniping from high terrain. Thats just one example.

WSG does have a slight horde imbalance, if its used in your battlegroup. The mill area near the horde gy is a much better flag hiding spot than anything the alliance has. Directly next to the gy, and can avoid LoS completely. Other than that, any supposed class imbalances (which I dont think exists. Shamans favor wsg, paladins AB) has no bearing, nor does skill. Alliance you simply have a bigger pool, and thus more morons than horde generally have. The percentage of good players is the same generally.

Sadly, morons arent nearly organized enough to decide to all go one way or the other together.

Stormblack

04-11-2006, 01:45 PM

I've played both horde and alliance and initially had similar reservations on this whole 'Horde is superior at PVP' thing but personal observation (and frustration with my teammates) leads me to believe this is actually correct and - having played horde (and a shaman at that) I have to say the 'superior' racial/pvp classes talk is utter nonsense imho.

In any BG, the gear, individual skill and class abilities have far less impact on a game than how the players work together to win.*

Perhaps the most trenchant point to take from the topic is that all other things being equal, the horde requires much more organisation to mount an effectively co-ordinated attack and defence whilst the Alliance can simply zerg forward and 9-10 times win through sheer force of numbers (since the FW terrain itself has a much more negligable requirement for organisation). It is without a shadow of a doubt a much simpler operation (and therefore easier) to win AV as Alliance.

*The only exception to this rule I've experienced is 10-19 WSG where twink teams with +100 hp enchants out the wazoo (predominantly alliance - who seem to have a lot of angst to work off on us horde PUG groups :p) can get such a great advantage from those high requirement extra's that they waltz through almost anything their opponent can attempt to do to stop them - and it still requires them to coordinate as a team somewhat.

Raistlin Majere

05-11-2006, 08:39 PM

Paladins counter the Shaman advantage in AB. But yes, Shamans are the best class for the layout of WSG.

KalziEast

05-11-2006, 11:26 PM

Aerath, you don't win a game by playing defence the entire time. Not unless every alliance player suddenly falls asleep at the keyboard (which is highly doubtful.) I've only seen a few AV wins (15 TOPS, I've done AV well over 100 times, and my friend has even played to help me get Exalted, and he's only seen maybe 5 wins and he's done it more than me.) and YES, it's due to the fact that they have better ground. I mean, a game can last OVER AN HOUR at the bridge of Dun Baldar (Or whatever it's called.) yet it usually takes them not even 5 minutes to get past our gates, and all the way up to our Towers.

It's like our archers only go "Wait until they're 30 yards away then shoot." whereas their archers go "Once they get mid-bridge, pelt them with arrows, that way they can't advance even though there's only 5 Alliance guys defending that bridge."

Linch

06-11-2006, 02:18 AM

KalziEast

06-11-2006, 04:32 AM

That may be the first time anyone's ever agreed with me on this site, lol.

Aerath

06-11-2006, 11:46 AM

Horde only needs to break the first wave of incoming alliance. After that they go for Galvangar and you can scoop up SP / AS easily.

Loathe to give horde more tips, but oh well...
Long since exalted on my main and my rogue is getting there as well.

kubull

06-11-2006, 12:49 PM

My first few goes at AV, we're really easy and the horde always lost but as a few posts stated there is no advantage for either race (in WSG, AB or AV) once the allience takes IB we can win, but if the horde defend IB really well the allience is stuffed, the win can come but it will be hard.

And strangely since this post has come up I've had a hard time in AV :laughing: :laughing:

Thanks alot :laughing: :laughing:

Fek it I like the Challenge, plus the longer ya stay in AV the more rep ya get! (obviously not a much as winning it but eh!)

MixiMan

06-11-2006, 01:34 PM

Hey,

i had the same problme on my old server, the Horde tactic would be race, if the alliance have doen it the match before--> no more defence and we would then loose tha battle. I was so frustrated with that that i quit playing for a while :( i had a mage on a fairly new PvE server.

Now i have a Lock on an old PvP server racing towards lvl 60. i hope people on a PvP server will be more competant when it comes to...well...PvP :)

On a side note: AS can be ninja'ed, look on google video and search for faxmonkey, in one of his vids (stupid mage tricks) he show you how to do it.

Richakin

06-11-2006, 07:48 PM

i think the Blacksmith in AB favors horde...as no matter how fast i rush to it i barely get next to the house before 3-4 Horde are at it :(

I only queue for AB to get the rep for the rewards...and well i win 1 out of 10...I only playin WSG when its our guild running it cuz we have 3 druids :)

AV we always win, im 1/2 thru revered and ive lost i think 2...

Seldom

06-11-2006, 08:07 PM

I'll echo the defend IB sentiment for Horde. If we hold them at IB, we usually win. But if we have to fall back to FW, it's pretty much a kill Bal and be done with it kind of day. I prefer to play D (more HK's on D) and if I can get peeps to defend IB ... or rather, the pass between Galv and IB, we will win.

From my experience (Exalted AV), sitting in front of Galv's bunker is a mistake. Most of D should sit at the pass between Galv and IB. When Galv does his "I'm being attacked" shout, that's when you send peeps to defend him. It's like shooting fish in a barrel while they are inside his bunker. Especially with AoE mages and priests healing Galv. Alliance can over-run you while you're outside. Plus if they send some peeps to ninja IB while you're at Galv, you've lost your respawn advantage.

Keep IB and you can defend at a 2:1 disadvantage. Lose IB and you've given up Galv, both towers and most likely, the game.

P.S.
Please note that losing IB is more a WHEN you lose IB statement. It's the bottleneck for alliance in the same way that SP and bridge are the bottleneck for horde. No it's not fair. Which is why horde needs to hold IB longer than alliance has to hold SP.

Deadzmcgee

07-11-2006, 02:28 AM

Before the xrealm BGs, on Laughing Skull, I got two characters to exaulted with AV pretty easily as we won around 90% of the AVs. The alliance advantages have always existed, but they aren't as extreme as people make them out to be. To a degree they are even balanced by the much smaller (but existant) advantages the horde have. The real problem with AV is 1) the fact that (I can't speak for other battlegroups) these new xrealm players can't figure out that getting snowfall is a worthwhile investment and 2) that the "bridge of death" still takes entirely too long to get across vs the easy walk the alliance have through the horde base. Noticed I listed the bridge of death at #2... that is because as long as people don't use any logic in AV we will continue to lose, even if the BG is balanced.

Underling

08-11-2006, 11:31 AM

because as long as people don't use any logic in AV we will continue to lose

Quoted for the most lame statement on these forums

What logic?! Do boxers use logic? Do lovers use logic? Do I use logic when PvPing?

I'll answer the last one: No, I don't. I mash buttons and shout at people who just stand near the action and soak reputation instead of riding back to retake a tower/gy or some such

Deadzmcgee

08-11-2006, 10:48 PM

Quoted for the most lame statement on these forums

What logic?! Do boxers use logic? Do lovers use logic? Do I use logic when PvPing?

I'll answer the last one: No, I don't. I mash buttons and shout at people who just stand near the action and soak reputation instead of riding back to retake a tower/gy or some such

Um... maybe thats why you don't win? This game isnt Tekken or something, nor is it hard. You find things that work. When <X> happens, I do <Y> and then try to improve on that with a solid strategy. It is pretty simple really, but I can't imagine youd have much luck mashing your face on the keyboard in between angry battlegroup spam.

Whatever works for you though...

Oatmealsmurf

08-11-2006, 11:03 PM

Deadzmcgee

09-11-2006, 01:48 AM

Please explain why snowfall is a worthwhile investment of the Horde's time. All taking snowfall accomplishes is turning the game into a 4 hour marathon of trying to break an alliance turtle.

In a lot of games horde doesn't make it any easier on themselves by choosing to not play defense but I have yet to see a game in which capturing snowfall made it easier for horde to win ... unless it was mid game, the alliance has no other forward positions and horde already has SP.

If you capture Snowfall before SP you will be in a marathon stalemate.

If you fail on your first push without it, you are respawning in the cave. Most AVs cannot recover from that. I have no idea why you think it causes the game to go longer. Before Xserv that is pretty much what we always did in our AVs, and we usually won very quickly. I got 2 characters to exaulted in almost no time at all when groups were doing just that.

Oatmealsmurf

09-11-2006, 04:05 PM

Getting to exalted is no big feat in AV... I went from revered to exalted in one weekend.

This is how it works in our battlegroup...if you send your resources to capture SF and fail you're really screwed because that is where Alliance always goes first. In my battlegroup there is almost always very little resistance at SH for the same reason we let them have SF. Better to have the opposing forces divided than to have to overcome all 40 in order to progress. I would still like you to explain further...

Even if you fail to cap SH... you will rez at IB not in your tunnel. I've only seen capping SF turn a game once. And again this was in a game where horde held IB, Alliance held FW and Aid Station and were pulling marshalls. Meanwhile while they were pulling Horde took back FW and then a few of us who were inside with Drek caused alliance to wipe... we grabbed Relief Hut real quick and then a few people when and capped SF... That put them all the way back in their tunnel but we were already on the timer to take Aid Station... and all of a sudden a sure loss turned into a sure win, completely reversing the map.

I have seen several times, however, one or two fools who won't leave SF alone screw everything up for horde offense who was in the middle of trying to take SP... forcing people to either ride through the bottleneck of death to the flag or through Alliance respawns in the tunnel if they tried to go up and around.

Then they turtle until they can either ninja SF back or IB... you need to let Alliance have their advance position so at least some of them are mounting an offense.

SP is the most important GY to get for the horde because it's the easiest one for Alliance to defend. If you take SF and SH then the entire alliance team is spawning either in their tunnel (right above SP or at SP itself). Makes capturing SP unneccessarily hard and long.

mesonm

09-11-2006, 05:29 PM

Getting to exalted is no big feat in AV... I went from revered to exalted in one weekend.

This is how it works in our battlegroup...

I submit that your example either might not have been recent....OR....It is certainly not common...

I have 60's on multiple servers in different battlegroups, and they queue up with totally different queue times (several minutes, vs two hours...) and the winning percentage is much different.

Oatmealsmurf

09-11-2006, 06:07 PM

Maybe it's horde vs. alliance factor. I'm horde and our AV BG queues are pretty much instant.

mesonm

09-11-2006, 06:36 PM

Maybe it's horde vs. alliance factor. I'm horde and our AV BG queues are pretty much instant.

Perhaps...The one that is the longest is alli...

My horde get in nearly right away.

Lydda

09-11-2006, 08:03 PM

What are wait times? I haven't seen them since cross realm BG's. When I queue for AV, I can't even make it to the guy to turn in my tokens before the next AV pops. At least that is the nice part fo being horde I suppose.

The not so nice part is the losses we always seem to have in AV, although I must admit that since switching servers (and battlegroups), my win percentage has gone up significantly. Yes, there are definitely Alliance advantages on the map and would like to see the bases either made symmetrical or have the factions switch bases every so often. I don't see 20 NPC's on the horde side right by the relief hut. Not only that, the horde relief hut is too far from the recall point. The Aid station is right in front of Van AND people recall right there. This is a big advantage, along with all the NPC's that are bunched together.

The towers for the Allies are one thing. Send in a couple of rogues to take out the archers, and you no longer get hit halfway across the bridge. Yes, I may not get as much rep because I don't have as many killing blows, but it sure helps our team out a lot when those archers are dead. Even if alliance recaps the bunkers, the archers take a while to respawn.

Main horde strategy: Defend IB chokepoint (not Galv) and leave SF for the allies so they don't respawn at SP and take SH. Then take SP (Take the HIGH road or go underneath their chokepoint bridge!!!) and work from there.

Amiral

12-11-2006, 03:55 PM

hum... all this makes me remember a game before the X-realm BGs...
basically, all the alliance bunkers were out, including the Dun baldar ones, but we hordies just couldn't push further than SH.
Summoning the Icelord did not help, nor did the wolf-riders or Reavers.
the front always stopped at SP for some reason, never managed to cap the flag, and during this time we on defense had a small team (pally, priest, warrior, warlock) summoning people into the cave with gnolls.

Then I realized the horde many times suck, and do it hard :shocked:

a note though, the alliance had at least 15 mages in the game (yep), so the SP bridge were a dream for them :rolleyes:

Adamous

15-11-2006, 05:59 PM

i dont know if any1 has noticed, but the alliance have to run up the hill when we have the flag..... and im pretty sure u run faster downhill ..... which means the horde can get away with flag faster, and takes less time to return flag.... surely this is unfair.

also getting to the bs is easier for horde, the road in more fdirest from the farm, and takes longer to get there for the alliance, surely this is bad as that is the main base in ab.

Aerath

15-11-2006, 06:28 PM

*cough* People are talking about Alterac Valley here - not Arathi Basin.

Ninox

15-11-2006, 08:46 PM

Not only is the discussion about AV, not WSG or AB, but your theories are completely wtong.

1) Speed running up or downhil is the constant, unless you are dealing with cliffs (can't go up, only down).

2) The run to the Blacksmith in AB is very much equal, if you don't do any swerving and keep to a steady line.

I've done AB with my 29th (now 36th) rogue a hundred times, and he's gotten to the flag at the exact same time as the alliance. (To the point that he was half a mile ahead of his teammates and all alone for a good 10 seconds versus 3 Alliance... that 10seconds feels like forever, trust me.)

The Horde-vs-Alliance fight about AV is really very close. The only major difference is that Horde defensive positioning is halfway into the map, while the Alliance are perfectly set for a Bunker Defense. It's just a matter of those playing on Horde-side to recognise the strategic value of "choke points" and "defensive delay actions", and learn how to use them effectively. Every match I played as Alliance where the Horde had learned and utilized those lessons was a sure loss for our side.

Shanda

15-11-2006, 11:03 PM

well, tbh I do agree with the statement that Alliance side has an advantage in terrain over hordes in AV. Both how the bases are built and where the best defence can be setup. Im playing on Grim Batol (Alliance ofc :) ) Ive never really been interested in BG´s but due to recent events, (getting wraithblade from maexxna).
Made me enter AV to get the last rep I needed to get a decent offhand fast. Haddent been there for so long that it came as a chock how the new tactics were used. (my earliest memories was back at the days when ppl actually engaged in battles over SF and below on the lake for 5 hours..And even then I remember to have cursed over the impossible task of getting Iceblood^^)

But now, the whole alliance raid just passes iceblood, takes FW then purges the hordebase, the general game takes 10 mins or so. And alliance win 95% of them. (whick I was very happy about, ofc)

And giving drek 2 wolves as extra defence dosent make up for this in any way

Underling

16-11-2006, 11:34 AM

I usually play in Nightfall battlegroup. The alliance goes straight for FW, but the horde defend usually, and usually win.

With Nightfall servers on extended maintenance, I joined my old server and played AV. Alliance caps IB gy and IB tower, while Horde keeps assaulting SH with zero defense. No-one bothers coming to defend IB at all. Next it's FW obviously, while Horde is racing Alliance to SP gy.

End result, Horde loses as a rule in that battlegroup

lythrdskynrd

16-11-2006, 02:10 PM

That is not related to the layout of the BG map itself. WSG and AB are perfectly fine.

This reminds me af a quote that someone has in their Sig on the official forums...

I AM ROCK!
SCISSORS ARE FINE
NURF PAPER

lythrdskynrd

16-11-2006, 02:16 PM

or have the factions switch bases every so often.

Now that's a *REALLY* interesting idea - if upon every second game
the start side switched ... or if there was a 50% chance you started
on one side or the other

lythrdskynrd

16-11-2006, 02:19 PM

*cough* People are talking about Alterac Valley here - not Arathi Basin.

people are talking - conversations sometimes dance
from one related subject to another
i'm sure you'll recover

:smiley:

cough drop?

Underling

16-11-2006, 04:16 PM

I AM ROCK!
SCISSORS ARE FINE
NURF PAPER

Lol

Quote of the year!

Underling

20-11-2006, 12:25 PM

Btw, in my battlegroup the Alliance now farm AV. They win within 12-13 min with a max killing blows of 3 or 4 :shocked:

The whole Alliance raid ride straight for FW relief hut and cap it + base towers. They ignore IB/FW gy totally. Result - if you is a Horde, you can farm AV tokens at a nice quick rate of four per hour :hanky:

ConnerMacleod

15-12-2006, 07:40 AM

Underling, you're the only intelligent post here. 500+ AV runs on my part, you follow his advice you may actually win. Has nothing to do with the map, Ally just PvE's better than horde do and we actually come together on this. It's hard to get people to even play O in some Ally AV games. And real quick, the map favors Horde more, you have a fort and a ton of towers from which to rooftop camp. We have what, some hills and a bridge? Wussies.

I don't want to tell you too much that may get you over that "Our map sucks, alliance should lose more" fantasy. Here's the secret - when we (ally) get to FW, we encounter zero resistance we win in 15 minutes. We get there and there's actually people DEFENDING FW, we have a 2 hour AV on our hands.

If you guys would learn to play a balance of D and O, you wouldn't have a problem. Given the current honor system I love the honor factory you guys have made for yourselves. No strategy, just overwhelm with numbers. My honor meter just ticks off like a spindle when you guys do your thing. Please, don't use strategy, ever. Just be horde and keep zerging with 40 men and leaving your general to die quickly. Keep messing around at SH and never move forward, you never know how many kills you may get just by delaying the push! Don't worry about Stormpike, he's safe in ally hands. I'm almost geared out on one character with all the honor you give me for free.

Findariel

15-12-2006, 08:32 AM

I think that Blizz should just switch sides for the factions each month....
Best idea thus far imo.
Make start locations random.

Falgorn

15-12-2006, 10:34 AM

Alterac Valley. My favourite place to be in World of Warcraft.

I will tell you the one advantage the Alliance has in this map, and it's a 80 meter stretch of bridge outside our base.

There is something fundamentally satisfying about holding a bridge. Think back to Warcraft 1 and 2. How many of you had your Archers and catapults lined up in defence on bridging points? I find that 25 Alliance can be pushing forward and 15 alliance working as a group can hold Stormpike and failing that the Bridge for a long long time.

I have noticed Retribution Paladins stopping to heal people at the Bridge point, and I have seen Feral druids shift back into Elf form to heal and become more team oriented. There just seems to be something about holding that Bridge that makes people look around and take in the big picture and defend with everything they have.

Underling

15-12-2006, 11:13 AM

Has nothing to do with the map ... Here's the secret - when we (ally) get to FW, we encounter zero resistance we win in 15 minutes. We get there and there's actually people DEFENDING FW, we have a 2 hour AV on our hands.

I hear you Conner, but the map does have advantages for the allies. Or at least in my opinion at any rate.

I agree with the defense bit though. Lately, Horde charge the SP gy and aid station more and more often right from the start, while - at the same time - some people actually volunteer to defend. And in most cases, Horde wins if we get defense volunteers And charge SP etc, forgoing SH completely. If no-one stays back to defend the relief hut and the general, Horde usually loses

Harsgalt

18-12-2006, 10:38 PM

It all depends on your server/s

Some servers the alliance are ridiculously twinked, I recall entering pvp as a horde at lvl 16 and I see a rogue with crusader enchantments (wtf?!) on both weapons. Needless to say that guy could dispatch me a fellow rogue within two solid seconds and I just left. beats getting farmed

On other servers hordes win constantly (It seems I am on the losing side upon server switches lol).

construct

19-12-2006, 06:35 PM

It's balanced now, we (alliance) have a clear shot into your base, and you (horde) guys can bug out our marshals and go straight for our end boss guy.

Sparksey

19-12-2006, 06:47 PM

Talking of the enviroment being unfair, horde can jump their gate in WSG and hide to the side of their base.....

You own us in WSG and we do the same in AV.

I find AB to be fair though.

mipbar

19-12-2006, 08:04 PM

Theres nothing wrong with AV. Hordes best defensive point is IB defend that and you will win over 50% of games.

He's right. I play both alliance and horde in AV at level 60. The horde side is always debating on two things...

1. Some say, NO DEFENSE, everyone go offense. If we zerg the LT's and towers, and let the alliance win in 15-20 minutes we can move on to the next bg (since there's no wait time for horde) and get the next honor...

I can see the benefit of this and who cares about winning. It's fast honor.

On the other hand...

2. Others say, we need to defend, otherwise alliance wins period.

And they are right too. If you don't defend on the horde side the horde will lose every single time. Alliance can run right into the RH and get it SO EASILY it's not even funny. The archers are a joke since they aren't spread out and no npc's really to deal with.

So you decide...

Peter

21-12-2006, 03:55 PM

I've started running org AV with some other guilds on my server (Archimonde). Vent is required for group q'ing, and we win in 15-20mins.

The strat is very simple, rush past SH, run across the lakes and meet under the bridge. Wait ~1min for alliance to clear out then rush SP GY, once that is taken wait until it caps (and let horde pugs catch up), while you are waiting backcap SH with and kill some lts.

By the time SP caps balinda should be down. Rush to the base and take the GY, if there is resistence keep pushing with 40 and hold the cap.

If there is no resistance once the GY is capped single pull vann and kill him.

The key to winning is
1. 15-20 org group
2. go ACROSS the lake and UNDER the bridge to ninja cap SP
3. single pull general

Thats it, 15min horde wins. Even if both sides are on full offense horde will win because of the single pull.

Dutchgrass

21-12-2006, 04:05 PM

It's balanced now, we (alliance) have a clear shot into your base, and you (horde) guys can bug out our marshals and go straight for our end boss guy.

Alliance can single pull Drek just as easily.

All those that really consider AV balanced should read this thread, as it has a well thought out and clear comparison of the north and south side of the map:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=58736173&sid=1

Now, this doesn't imply I don't think most Horde games consist of idiots who refuse to use any form of tactics. Just defending IB/Galvanger with about 10 people would make a huge difference, but sadly, Horde still thinks a full out zerg without any defence works.
Then our offence is halted by the defending Alliance, one person cries out that it's a loss, and suddenly 75% of the raid just wants to sit it out for a quick single mark. It's laughable.
So yes, a huge part of the Horde loss ratio is also accountable to the total lack of any tactical defending and the general concensus that since Horde has fast queues anyway, it's better to lose fast than win slow. Alliance has longer queueus, so generally they're more focused on actually getting the most out of the game.

Talking of the enviroment being unfair, horde can jump their gate in WSG and hide to the side of their base.....

You own us in WSG and we do the same in AV.

I find AB to be fair though.

Firstly, Horde has no way to jump the WSG gate unless you consider exploits a valid environment advantage. :rolleyes:
The argument that an imbalance in the AV map is warranted because Alliance loses more WSG (which has nothing to do with the map) makes no sense.

Serrat

21-12-2006, 04:19 PM

didnt read every post in the thread however i will say.

i dont think that alliance have an advantage over horde.

the only thing is that horde seem to lose any intelligence they had once they get to Stonehearth.

"everyone ride to SP dont dismount"

so everyone dismounts creating an hour long battle on the road to SP.

"everyone get to SP no defence"

in this case if alliance have a small dedicated defence as often they do, it can slow us down for a long period, more so with the position of the bridge and GY, then as we dont have defence alliance can just walk in.

when we have a defence then hordes chances increase of winning.

even if alliance take IB and FW gyd's a decent defence at FW keep defending by the towers keeping alliance at the bottom of the slope will impede them in the same way the bridge does for us.

it keeps them all tight togeather making AOE easy.

unfortunatly now after the recent honor changes, a lot of people who have either not pvp'd much or just dont care about winning have entered AV and pay no attention when orders are given and run around like headless chickens at the meer sight of alliance.

capping and defending flags couldnt be futher from there minds(also applys to PUGS in WSG and AB)

still horde on my battlegroup still manage a decent number of wins despite the handycap that we have.

dunno how it is on alliance side, as not really played much, but always seems like you guys are slighty more organised at doing whats needed.

i mean you in general, cap all the GYs on the way down, take all the towers, take out galvanger and then tank Drek.

while horde will have an argument about if they should take balinda or not, or take the towers(heaven forbid we should burn the towers down making it harder for alliance to take Dreky down)

i wouldnt normally go on, but after last night were i had 3 AV battle that took up 2 1/2 hours due to people not wanting to budge from the road to SP, they seem incapable of either taking the high mountain pass, or the route under the bridge.

rgirty

21-12-2006, 04:20 PM

Alliance can single pull Drek just as easily.

How? All the groups I am in spend more time on the WM's than Drek himself. Often pulling 2 or 3 WM's and getting a lot of folks killed.

Dutchgrass

21-12-2006, 04:22 PM

How? All the groups I am in spend more time on the WM's than Drek himself. Often pulling 2 or 3 WM's and getting a lot of folks killed.

Taken from the thread I linked:

It might be if we had paladins that could bubble the pull, in fact, I saw something rather amusing today. A single paladin, in the same guild as a warrior friend, bubbled and ran into Dreks room, pulling everything inside, and running back outside, resetting Drek. The warrior then tagged Drek, and ran outside, hugging the inner wall, and not resetting Drek. The paladin then reset them, and DREK WAS PULLED SOLO. That’s right, alliance can do it too, and easier. From this point, fears ran everyone outside, instead of inside, doing absolutely nothing. Drek was disposed of fairly quickly.

rgirty

21-12-2006, 04:25 PM

that would take premade effort i'm thinking. The pugs i'm in aren't coordinated enough to do that.

It is tough sometimes to get someone to tank him, or someone to heal the tank.

Dutchgrass

21-12-2006, 04:27 PM

that would take premade effort i'm thinking. The pugs i'm in aren't coordinated enough to do that.

It is tough sometimes to get someone to tank him, or someone to heal the tank.

Same Hordeside. It's sad seeing healers do omgwtfdps while the poor Warrior trying to tank Vandar gets owned. :rolleyes:

rgirty

21-12-2006, 04:35 PM

I think pally's do the majority of the healing on our side, priests are typically shadow other than the rare disc. A few druids seem to heal as I get a regrowth tossed on me now and then when I play my wife's mage.

Talryn

21-12-2006, 04:46 PM

I've played a ton of AV and I've never seen these exploits used. I can't even say if these really work as I haven't seen it myself.

I think it is foolish to compare the Alliance vs. Horde advantages in AV while considering exploits. These are obviously things that were not meant to occur. Blizzard may very well fix them in the future.

I've played both sides and I do think the Alliance has an advantage over the Horde. I think the reasons why have been elaborated upon in the past and I don't think we need to rehash them.

Both sides are made of a random 40 people. If either side is so naive to think that the other group is just stupid or bad at PvP, then I don't know what to tell you. You'll get a mix of people and don't assume the people most vocal in the chat channel are intelligent or concerned with winning. I honestly believe that the Horde who claim in the chat channel that Horde should have no defense purely want to get in and out.

I believe the Horde can win but it takes more work and co-ordination than the Alliance side. If you play both sides a lot it is hard to really say as Alliance we do anything better. I've been in games where both sides have a defense and the Alliance just has a much easier time defending their end of the map. Why do you think so many Alliance are quick to go defense, especially people with high ranks in front of their name? They know it is easy to hang back and get lots of HKs right there. I just haven't seen as good of a defense at the Horde base against a true push. I've seen Alliance riding in one by one and getting killed but that's their fault.

Peter

21-12-2006, 09:34 PM

azis

23-12-2006, 01:14 AM

I think that the allies may have an advantage over horde in AV but when i play my 60 UD rogue and we rush SP then we normally win because we rarely have anyone at our base defending.
I think you can either all defend or all rush theirs no mid point because if you try to do both you will get swamped in defence and wont have another people in att to kill SP in time

Wotok

23-12-2006, 03:38 PM

There's absolutely nothing unbalanced about AV. Horde just don't play as the alliance does.

In a pure race to pull the end bosses, we were beaten by the horde. Granted, they were a premade, but the alliance was hauling ass to cap GYs and get to the end boss.

The only reason that the alliance wins so much is because latecomers end up on defense. I rarely see any horde defending, and that makes all the difference.

Underling

23-12-2006, 09:52 PM

Taken from the thread I linked:

It might be if we had paladins that could bubble the pull, in fact, I saw something rather amusing today. A single paladin, in the same guild as a warrior friend, bubbled and ran into Dreks room, pulling everything inside, and running back outside, resetting Drek. The warrior then tagged Drek, and ran outside, hugging the inner wall, and not resetting Drek. The paladin then reset them, and DREK WAS PULLED SOLO. That’s right, alliance can do it too, and easier. From this point, fears ran everyone outside, instead of inside, doing absolutely nothing. Drek was disposed of fairly quickly.

I don't understand. Aren't you supposed to fight Drek or that ugly dorf inside the fortress only? What's this pulling out mean?

Underling

23-12-2006, 09:54 PM

There's absolutely nothing unbalanced about AV.

Horde loses more than half of games by far. I say it's unbalanced. Same people play both sides, and this is consitent across realms. You can't honestly say it's because those who join Horde are more stupid

LunarSolaris

27-12-2006, 01:09 AM

Horde loses more than half of games by far. I say it's unbalanced. Same people play both sides, and this is consitent across realms. You can't honestly say it's because those who join Horde are more stupid

I don't think he said anything about horde players being stupid.

I think it boils down to mentality.

Can I say that AB and WSG are unbalanced because the horde whins them more by far? I don't think so. Horde play those matches better. Alliance plays AV better.

I think a very valid point was made in that I notice in each AV match I join that the horde ALWAYS fill up first, followed by trickle-in alliance. So... you get an initial rush of alliance followed by late-comers. The late-coming alliance get nailed as they head out, and then end up on D. The D then bogs down the horde and usually enough so that it gives the alliance time to roll through to Drekk. At that point Alliance are usually ahead and win the match. In the vast majority of cases of AV matches I'm in VERY few (if any) harde try to stick back and defend. As a result, the alliance roll right through to the end virtually unchallenged.

It's all in the way matches are played. I think if alliance ever tried to actually concentrate on WSG or AV we'd see better balance. Same with AV.

The idea that the terrain favors one side or the other is rubbish. If anything, an argument can be made that it's easier for horde to get in and pull out the elites at the end than for alliance given the set-up.... not to mention occasional ability for horde to exploit (which doesn't seem to happen much, but it does happen).

Grendo

27-12-2006, 01:29 AM

I don't know what happened when BGroups started. When I played horde we won the majority of games, using a pretty simple strategy. Hold IB as long as possible (since thats the major horde bottleneck equivalent to the bridge), and then the same at FW and finally RH. Meanwhile, our offense would push to SP as fast as possible, and instead of trying to do everything inside DB, we would focus on one tower at a time. Ride up and into the window of the right tower, hold up in there till it capped, and then did the same thing to the left. Once both towers were out, pushing the RH was easy.

Of course, this is in a no-race situation, and depends on a solid defense tactic. Neither thing many horde want to do anymore. And I cant say I blame them - with the ezhonor the other two BGs offer them with insta-queues, AV becomes nothing more than a quick mark-farm.

Theres no imbalance - sure, if you try and compare one fortress to another it appears that way, but thats not where the horde defense really shines. NPCs are hardly worthy of a comparison given how quickly they fall to an incoming zerg, or ignored all together.

Sadly, neither side has still yet to understand the 'ride through and fight on the flag' mentality en masse.

Sundestroyer

27-12-2006, 01:57 AM

Of course, this is in a no-race situation, and depends on a solid defense tactic. Neither thing many horde want to do anymore. And I cant say I blame them - with the ezhonor the other two BGs offer them with insta-queues, AV becomes nothing more than a quick mark-farm.

Actually you can get more honor per hour in AV now, as long as there are no turtles. The bonus honor and kill honor are both greater than what is possible in AB and WSG.

Dynafrack

27-12-2006, 03:01 PM

I have never seen Horde attacking SP at the beginning of the game. I see Alliance attacking FW all the time, at the beginning of the game. Do you think it's because of the superior strategic understanding and a better organisation of the allies? I don't think so. I think it is exactly because of the map.

I have been on a SP rush w/ my 52 Shaman on a 60% mount and won the game minutes later. If all the horde do it it'll work same as alliance and FW. Problem is not everyone will ride there without stopping to fight.

Drpep

27-12-2006, 03:40 PM

I have played alot of Av these last few weeks and i think i know the flaw in horde tatics. I play a horde mage by the way. We go straight to stonehearth gy and bunker and then stop to kill the poor alli that are late in joining their zerg. This is all fine and dandy until you get to sp gy and there are always 10 sitting on it waiting on the horde putting up a decent defense. Do they mean to turtle sp? I dont think so, These are the same ones that could not get by SH. We force them to play defense becaseu thats the only place for them to go. IF we just let them by at sh we would have it alot easier.

Same thing happens on horde side if alli take sh gy and you spawn us in the tunnel.

Does horde need a defense? Yes. but only about 3 to 5. Place them at fwgy. Defense should only be used to slow down the ninja gy stealing and after the main raid hits our base, then d should stay as a group and try to just take towers back. If they are burned then head up and join the o.

Dutchgrass

27-12-2006, 03:48 PM

Having 5-10 Horde at IB/Galvanger often makes or breaks the game.

rgirty

27-12-2006, 05:05 PM

I play alliance, and I can tell you how the horde wins against us almost every time they win.

1.- Kill as many alliance as you can that are late on their way to the zerg.
2.- Don't defend IBGY.
3.- Put 7-10 people at FWGY, a couple hunters with a priest a lock or two maybe a mage..rogue.. but as long as its 7-10 people.
4.- Rogue from FWGY re-caps IB tower at every chance, until it burns.
5.- Once FW gy is taken move defense to RH.

What this does is--

1.-- Makes people re-spawn at SPGY. Most if not all Alliance players hate this, and don't want to play Defense. In ALL of the av's I've been in there are less than 5 people who actually play defense. The Alliance "turtling" you see is simply the alliance trying to get down to the zerg. They eventually get tired of trying to get by and spirit walk the entire distance to the offense, which takes a long time.

2. Let alliance Offense spawn at IBGY, they will try again and again to take FWGY.

3. I have seen 7-10 horde at FW gy hold off 25-30 alliance players simply because they do not come in one wave. All of the alliance players try to rush the flag single handedly. Out of the 25+ alliance at least 5 will be trying to cap the flag while 10 of the other 20 will be either running back to the battle from IBGY or trying to recap IB tower again. Eventually the alliance will probably get FWGY but at this point the horde should have made serious progress with their Offense.

4. Half of the alliance offense will look for this rogue and re-cap this tower, again and again and again.

5. RH defense of 7-10 can hold the alliance off for a long while. They'll be running all the way to RH from IBGY until FWGY caps.

Every time I see 7-10 horde defending FW gy you can add at least 45 minutes to 1 hour to that game and almost assure yourself that the horde will win.

To summarize, all the straggling alliance the horde kills ends up at SP gy. They might defend for a while but then they start spirit walking to offense. While this is happening the alliance is working on fwgy. If this takes 30 or so minutes to happen a lot of alliance will AFK out of what they consider a turtle. New players will come in, look at the map and either afk out or just hang in the tunnel and leach honor. This reduces the alliance defense to nearly nothing. When alliance finally does take FWGY then RH by the time that the alliance pulls the first couple warmasters the horde are on vann and its GG.

From the alliance side, its kinda frustrating that alliance does not act in unity.

I do something that most people probably would consider not nice. But, after so many of these and my limited playtime I simply don't want to compete in 1 two hour av each night then have to log off.

If I get to FW gy and there are 7-10 horde there after I die I AFK out. I go farm somewhere for the majority of the deserter debuff or do some auction house work. I then join another AV that hopefully isn't a 2 hour match. I get more honor this way, then I would if I spent another 1.5 hours in the first AV. Also, make some gold on the side.

Inferna

27-12-2006, 10:00 PM

The Horde always leave there elites out to dry. If 5 horde guard the FW and 5 others gaurd the IB gy thing would be alot different. Supporting your elite units is the key. Once IB is taken by the alliance those 5 horde will respawn back at FW where they can help defend the elite commander by FW gy. Once alliance takes that then they respawn at the relief hut and continue there defense.

That is what alliance does and that is why we always win, because we defend our GY's they are the biggest objectives early in the game. The times that the horde effectively guards there GY's they win or it is a very close fight. There is no adavantage for Alliance, horde has different areas they need to guard. FW is not the same as SP, but IB is very similiar to SP in terms of its ease to guard and it has many elite units roaming that area.

Drpep

28-12-2006, 03:18 PM

I have to disagree that IB and SP are the same. Alot of games now, have the alli bypass it all togethrer, which is easy to do, and go straight to FW. SP is a must or we cant advance. I also agree that defense at fw is a must, but if you have more then 3 on d now adays, you get screemed at in bg chat. I always take my mage to fw right when the game starts, becasue thats where the first 2 ninjas head asap. One pulls the other caps, all i have to do is kill or delay the capper and this messes them up. However if 3 or 4 come i am toast and fw is lost.

Had a strange game last night. We were doing very well and had about 10 on defense. Held FW until we got sp then 5 stayed on d and we held the hut until we capp alli hut. After loosisng hut we went north and everything was going well. There was no alli pulls from Drek's room until we were on our last gaurd in vanns room. We went all in and 5 sec later alli had drek down. I was very upset, how in the world did alli kill him that fast when they still had at least 4 gaurds in the room.

Oatmealsmurf

28-12-2006, 10:06 PM

Supposedly there is a way to bug the guards in Van's room ... maybe they figured out a way to do it in Drek's as well.

I think a good point was made in that you can bypass IB... all you have to do is get a ninja team to tap the flag at FW and then the rest of the allies can ride through to FW to defend it. It will help to play defense at IB but allies do not have to take it, don't even need to ride by it to go to FW... like Horde does SP...

Another issue is if you really mount up and ride straight to SP you will run into half the Alliance Zerg at the choke point next to the bunker.... all it takes is for 3-4 allies to dismount and snare you and the archers will take you down before they join the rest of the zerg... so you have to wait.

But... if you can avoid the alliance zerg or just ride past the last few ... 25 people straight to SP will work...

I still think people who act like there is no alliance advantage on that map though are smoking. Horde can win with a little bit of organization... but all things being equal Alliance will win a race every single time.

Grendo

28-12-2006, 11:28 PM

Supposedly there is a way to bug the guards in Van's room ... maybe they figured out a way to do it in Drek's as well.Theres no supposed about it, its definitely doable and used frequently in my battlegroup, sadly.

Alliance don't bug the WM, but it is possible to solo pull vandarr, using a paladin and a LOT of coordination - which you wont see except in premades. Generally speaking however, theres little WM to pull in comparison, so this situation happens even more rarely than can likely be 'caught', as opposed to the buggy alliance WM.

It will help to play defense at IB but allies do not have to take it, don't even need to ride by it to go to FW... like Horde does SP... The reason they are compared is because both are 'choke' points. To get anywhere past IB tower, there is only one path. To get past SP, theres actually 2-3, but most consider the main road and the bridge the same thing. Even the long road to Sp is not a true choke point, but most horde teams wont recognize the other paths en masse.

I still think people who act like there is no alliance advantage on that map though are smoking. Horde can win with a little bit of organization... but all things being equal Alliance will win a race every single time.Back when races became popular (right after the death of 3day AVs), horde had no problem beating alliance in a 10min race. Between this and the other points above, im not sure where the imbalance still lies...and I dont even smoke :o

Drpep

29-12-2006, 02:57 PM

Solo pulling Drek and Vann are both doable and i have seen both done. Vann- Hunter pulls the whole room out side, tank grabs van and holds him in the front of the room. Everyone all in and front of room, gaurds reset and van dies.

Drek- Hunter or pally pulls room war or pally tag drek and pulls him along the outside wall. Drek thinks he is still in his house and Drek dies.

Easy fixes if you ask me, Drek should reset the min he hits the door and Vann s gaurds need a large argo rad.

Also fixes i would like to see on horde side. Place towers farther apart and father back into the compound. Put our vendors and elites in or near the building leading to our compound (you know the one that sheilds the arrows from the alli)

Fixes i would like to see in general. Gaurds in towers should reset if they leave the tower. Elites at flags should have a smaller reset rad then the non elites. All gaurds at all flags should auto argo anyone trying to take flag. This ninja kiteing crap is cheap on both sides.

Oatmealsmurf

29-12-2006, 03:33 PM

The difference Grendo is you can jump the barrier from the main road before you even hit IB so you don't have to pass IB's flag... yes horde can stage a defense below the tower and before the graveyard to stop this from happening but that means you do not get the aid of your NPCs on the flag and you will basically get run over by the zerg. Horde has no choice but to deal with Duffy in a very defensible area.

I still think your smoking (no offense... i kid i kid). LOL... It doesn't make sense for horde to suck so bad at AV but rule AB And WSG if there aren't innate advantages for the Alliance on AV. I think by the way that Horde has some innate advantages ...

I think the Horde has some innate advantages that help them with PvP success as well but they aren't based on maps. I think the racials (in small part) combined with little to no queues (thus giving them more experience across the board) gives horde an edge. It's gonna be worse too when the Blood Elves and their AOE silence comes into play.

Drpep

29-12-2006, 04:04 PM

It's gonna be worse too when the Blood Elves and their AOE silence comes into play.

OOooo

Bloodelf Pally--Bubble run into Dreks room (while alli all in) AOE silence and wipe. So cheap.... Sounds like i play alli side with such evil thoughts.

rgirty

29-12-2006, 04:28 PM

I think the Horde has some innate advantages that help them with PvP success as well but they aren't based on maps. I think the racials (in small part) combined with little to no queues (thus giving them more experience across the board) gives horde an edge. It's gonna be worse too when the Blood Elves and their AOE silence comes into play.

I could be totally wrong here, and have 0 facts to base this on. I only have my own experiences and personally having RL friends who play both factions.

The alliance has a greater average of young players than the horde.

Horde faction is typically older and more mature.

Most younger people who play seem not to care much about other people on their team. They try to play hero and take everyone out by themselves. They don't listen to any kind of strategy or instructions. They don't really see or understand the concept of everyone working as a team. This seems to be problem #1 with alliance. Along with the fact that a large majority of the alliance faction seems to be either rogue, or hunter. Both classes that do very well solo. They seem to basically go off on their own and do their own thing, in the bg and often in the entire scope of the game. I believe this is one reason why people often complain about their playstyle in instances. Many of these people have never had jobs, and few are married. The work environment and or being married seem to be the biggest factors in changing one's mindset from "what am I trying to accomplish?" to "what do WE want to accomplish?" The prime example of this was the snowball debacle. Blizzard had to take out the ability of using snowballs on one's own faction due to the amount of people who were being detrimental to their own faction. Again, I have no facts to back this up but I saw a large number of people being taken out by these on the alliance side and very few on the horde.

Horde side, more mature older people who work as a team have a goal and accomplish it. I think these people probably have overall less playtime, thus explaining the overall PvE progression scale of the two factions with alliance guilds typically having more progression and Horde dominating 2 of the 3 bg's. With AV as the one place alliance does well. It is structured to the alliance mindset- Forget playing as a team and helping others, just rush FW and RH as fast as you can. If alliance players really wanted to win, you wouldn't see them turtle at SP they would be spirit walking to RH or FW and trying to help the offense. While this does happen occasionally it is the exception to the rule.

With TBC I expect the two factions to have a little more balance. With the invasion of a million blood elf legolazz clones.

Again, I could be wrong just what I see in my limited observation.

Oatmealsmurf

29-12-2006, 05:04 PM

That's a popular rationalization of the phenomena and it would be self serving since I play horde but I think it's just too convenient. I know too many people who play both sides.

I think there are more kids on Alliance because there are more alliance. The problem I have with that explanation is if we are working under the assumption that horde is in general more team and strategy oriented... then why is it Alliance who play defense and not horde when defense is the difference between winning and losing in AV? Why is is so hard to convince horde to take the high road to SP instead of running straight into the buzz saw?

Additionally not listening and not paying attention to strategy to help the team would work against the Alliance in terms of PvE progression... but generally Alliance is ahead of the horde. Again I think this just comes down to shear numbers. On our server for instance which is only medium size... there are only 3 horde guilds who have made any meaningful progress into BWL... (I don't count going into BWL without a clue and having no prayer of downing Razorgore). We have only one guild who's made it into AQ40 and Naxx. Alliance side is much further ahead... The problem continues to be not enough of certain classes.

When I joined the guild there were only 2 active locks... when we filled out our locks we all of a sudden had problems with Priest and Shaman attendenced... When that was remedied then we couldn't get enough hunters and rogues. The only two classes we've had no problems filling out are mages and warriors. But other guilds would KILL for our tank situation.

There just aren't enough experienced lvl 60s to go around on our server and eventually people get tired of the lack of progression and either move on to a more advanced guild, or they lose interest in the game or real life interferes... so it's a constant juggling act trying to keep enough people active to maintain class balance necessary for BWL and beyond. On Alliance side there are so many more people that it's easier to keep an active 40 man raid roster intact and make continual progress.

Overall I don't think the mindset is all THAT different... and it's just the layout of the AV map that makes it easier for Alliance to overcome the fact that no one is interested in real strategy. If Alliance were forced into a bottleneck type area at FW (a GY they need to capture) instead of IB a GY that is oftentimes skipped altogether I think you'd see a big change in AV results.

rgirty

29-12-2006, 05:16 PM

then why is it Alliance who play defense and not horde when defense is the difference between winning and losing in AV?

They really aren't playing defense at SP. These are just the people who got killed on their zerg to the RH. As many have said, alliance does not really heal nor wait for GY to cap before moving on. Very often if you die at galv, or anywhere near IB you will pop at SP. You can't get by the horde so you are stuck there er..trying to get by, which looks like defense. This goes right back to my theory of no teamwork. If alliance would wait for GY to cap before moving on to the next GY it would be a lot smoother for both sides. Time after time I see 8 or 10 alliance rush FW gy at the start, only to get killed pop back up at SP then complain about how all the other NUBS didn't rush FW gy and /afk out of the game. Then new players come on to replace them, and they also can't get to the offense they are stuck at SP because they can't get by the horde.

Oatmealsmurf

29-12-2006, 05:47 PM

Okay I see what your seeing and I can see how that would happen.... but whether it is their intention to play defense or not... it's a defacto advantage as a result of the map layout. When Horde comes out of their tunnel they are in limbo... in the middle of FW and Iceblood... with Iceblood being closer. While Alliance comes out of their tunnel right above SP. Main point being I don't think that horde are any more strategic in their mindset than alliance and the map layout of AV ultimately dictates how many games play out.

It would be much better if Alliance actually needed IceBlood... but what you see a lot of times even when people play defense at IceBlood is Alliance will send their zerg and get stopped... eventually a couple of rogues/druids go ninja FW and then the Alliance cease attacking IB and ride to FW to defend it. Alliance has the luxury of not having to defend anything before SP GY if they don't want to... and their defense won't lose any of it's effectiveness.

Horde on the other hand has to defend up at IB and needs their front two towers more.

Grendo

29-12-2006, 07:26 PM

and you will basically get run over by the zerg. Horde has no choice but to deal with Duffy in a very defensible area.

It doesn't make sense for horde to suck so bad at AV but rule AB And WSG if there aren't innate advantages for the Alliance on AV.First, Duffy or any LT really, shouldnt be causing much difficulty for a strong offensive push. They are easily duod, or even solod by a kiter, completely taking them out of the equation after the first big push. Also keep in mind that horde dont have any LTs that can be easily skipped as several path near IB - alliance has two.

I think the horde domination of AB/WSG (assuming pug v pug) is its AV weakness. Lets admit it - there's not much strategy involved in a AV match. Its mainly who zergs and/or ninjas better. While alliance tend to not work together very well, they have mastered the zerg, theres no doubt about that. Horde zerg attempts tend to be sluggish, and not in sync. When I see horde premades handle it, they do it so much more efficiently. So, in pugs, there must be something thats missing. I havent touched my hordie since some of the bigger changes, so perhaps I need to familiarize myself with that side again. Heck, I could probably get into the same game on both toons and compare. Thatd be a fun fraps movie ;)

You could probably dig deeper as well, as with the smaller population generally, they dont work with as many as 40 different people often. In addition, until the recent pvp changes you could easily say that alliance *in general* are better geared, possibly cancelling any racial bonus horde may have.

Oatmealsmurf

29-12-2006, 08:21 PM

Yeah Duffy isn't too hard.. to deal with but it does take actual strategy (even if it's just one person thinking) to take him out of the mix... but he still does effect things. I usually will come up from under the bridge and grab Duffy, run back underneath the bridge and then fear kite him solo to keep him away from the flag. But if you don't have someone kite him away he'll throw a monkey wrench in a lot of zergs because there is no planning... and especially if someone on the Alliance side decides he's going to assist Duffy in anyway he can to keep him from being killed.

Takes more players to down Duffy (unless as you said he's being kited) than it does to deal with people... acting like he's a non factor is not realistic. Now LTs are truly almost nonfactors... and easily soloed by many classes.

Inferna

29-12-2006, 08:56 PM

Horde's so called advantage in AB and WSG is more of a myth than fact. The reason why people get this idea is that there are way more alliance and thus more alliance pugs. These alliance pugs will end up getting rolled everytime they go against a premade and they will cry the most on the forums about it. Those who cry loudest get heard and eventually people believe them.

In my good alliance premade groups it has always been 50/50 against horde premades. The alliance that complains about horde being better at pvp are puggers or people who raid and try to pvp with there guild and get rolled because they dont know the first thing about pvp and expect there gear to win them games.

AV is hardly pvp, someone pointed out a while back that it is more of a PvE zone than a PvP one, which I agree with.

rgirty

29-12-2006, 09:10 PM

Horde on the other hand has to defend up at IB and needs their front two towers more.

The most effective defenses I have seen are at the gate leading to the RH. that can be well defended by only a few amount of people as it is a fairly narrow opening.

Oatmealsmurf

29-12-2006, 09:30 PM

No it's not a myth... when I'm in a PuG against an Alliance Pug it's almost laughable in AB the weekend before christmas 75% of my games where a PuG faced a PuG ended with horde 5 Cap. And that's truly not an exaggeration. I never was in a losing game unless I was facing a premade. WSG is a bit better Alliance side but we still win the vast majority of games PuG vs. PuG.

And just like there are more PuGs Alliance side because there is a larger population... there are fewer premades on Horde side due to a lower population.

Inferna

29-12-2006, 10:05 PM

Maybe now that is the case, right now there are a HUGE influx of people not interested in winning but just in grinding honor points, more so than before the patch. Before patch 2.0 came out I noticed the alliance pug community was getting more competitive because they were in there because they *enjoyed* pvping and for the most part wanted to win. There was no real reward before the patch as much as there is now. Just the thrill of competing.

After the patch things are ridiculous I will agree, premades meant to lose just to farm bonus honor and worthless tokens, 10-15 cavebots in AV. Its a problem on both sides but I'm sure its much more prevalent on the Alliance side of things.

edandor

29-12-2006, 11:20 PM

im not even go to read this whole post...its 11 pages. but i will say this:

NO

horde wins almost every wsg and ab, period. ive one 1 ab and 2 wsg in like 3 days. and i pvp ALOT. its just go in, farm some kills, get my 1 mark of honor and restart. if you change av so that the horde can win then the alliance would never win a bg. sure, this 1 bg isnt fair, but you guys still have 2 bgs that you always win, so i dont wanna hear it

Raistlin Majere

30-12-2006, 04:03 AM

The age theory is the most absurd theory out there. I look at the few people playing WoW at an internet cafe and what faction are the kiddies playing? Horde.

If anything, its the racials, insta ques, and underdog mentality that gives the Horde the BG advantage. those stats attract alot of good PvPers. Insta ques are almost enough for me, but the time it takes to level and properly gear a druid is out of the question.

Underling

01-01-2007, 10:51 AM

Telcan

01-01-2007, 02:03 PM

I really did not know the horde complained this much. Whenever you guys cant win all the time you complain. IMO horde wins most AB because they usually carry more mages/locks. Alliance wins most AV because alliance puts up defense. And no it isnt just people who wipe down the road, some people actually trinket back when SP is attacked. From what i have seen you can usually just walk in FW unopposed. And to me WSG is a push, i win far more of those than AB but less than AV.

Moral of the story: stop complaining, blaming blizzard and organize, it can be done. If AV horde premades can do it with regularity it shows it can be done.

Kjevle

01-01-2007, 03:28 PM

Interestingly I think I've been in a total of 2 losing AV's since I started pvping, and I've won atleast 200 marks in there.
I've won a total of 1 wsg, of about 50 (most I've left after they have taken over 1hr), and in AB it seems about 50/50 when it's pug vs pug, but vs premades it's usually a loss.

Seems my experiences are the total opposite of smurf's.

And, as an aside, AV isn't about winning, it's about honor. Atleast in my opinion.

Bigairbrucey

02-01-2007, 01:11 AM

Seeo

02-01-2007, 06:07 PM

OMG guys... QQ more lol.

There is NO TERRAIN ADVANTAGE for the Alliance in AV.

You just can't preset AV, so yes, the horde will suck. Alliance are masters of the PuG, Horde aren't. That's why.

All the really good Horde PvPers are presetting AB and WSG, not AV. All the good Alliance players are going to AV, because AB and WSG are all presetted by the horde. End of ****ing story.

Oatmealsmurf

02-01-2007, 06:30 PM

OMG... Alliance masters of the PuG? Are you kidding me? Please stop Seeo.

Seeo

02-01-2007, 06:38 PM

AV Proves it.

Prove me wrong?

I think your working off the "Alliance are a bunch of 12 year old immature girls" theory.

Yeah, I'm serious... Well, I know that when it comes down to PuG vs. PuG ... alliance will win 95% of the time whether it's AB, AV or WSG. From my experience, and yes, I PvP a ****LOAD.

Unless I've been just lucky for the past few months, which I highly doubt, Alliance owns the Horde when it's PuG'd on both sides. Almost all the time. And I think it's cuz the PuG Alliance are so used to going up against Presets, that it's only made them stronger. And I play both sides here.

Goretusker

02-01-2007, 06:50 PM

horde wins almost every wsg and ab, period. ive one 1 ab and 2 wsg in like 3 days. and i pvp ALOT. its just go in, farm some kills, get my 1 mark of honor and restart. if you change av so that the horde can win then the alliance would never win a bg. sure, this 1 bg isnt fair, but you guys still have 2 bgs that you always win, so i dont wanna hear it

WTF? That is quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever read. WSG and AB are perfectly even and Horde have a higher win percentage. Now saying that this is a reason for AV to be unbalanced is like saying this:
Since Manchester United win a lot in the premiere league they should play on smaller goals in champions league games.

And Seeo Nobody thinks that all Alliance are bad players and Immature. Actually what I think is that if there are 50% good players in WoW half of them are on Horde and Half on Alliance.
Its just that of the other 50% (stupid bad players) 20% are horde and 80% are alliance.

And in AB and WSG I have made the experience that at times when only HC players play i.e. 3 in the morning the win % is even or maybee slightly in favor of alliance. At 2 in the afternoon when all the schoolkids come home Alliance pugs get steamrolled by horde pugs and premades alike.

Oatmealsmurf

02-01-2007, 06:59 PM

No offense Seeo but I've seen your posts about your pvp tactics in the Hunter forums and they aren't really as sound as you believe... some of them are quite bad actually.

And if you had read the thread you'll know that the assumption you just made about how I view the Alliance just did what they say assuming always does.

AV doesn't prove anything... In PuG vs. PuG matchup in AB and WSG horde rolls... and a lot of times it's not even funny in AB... we're talking 5 caps galore... sheer domination. I don't run in a lot of premades because I'm in a pve oriented guild and I pvp mainly on my own time thus a lot of PuGs.

I think AV proves a map layout advantage for the Alliance and nothing more. I've already laid out my argument several times in this thread so I suggest you just go back and actually read them. The bottomline is there are a lot of small tactical advantages map wise that makes life in AV easier on Alliance added up they make a difference. No one is saying the maps are completely unbalanced to make it impossible for horde to win but the fact is horde actually has to implement strategy to have a shot in AV... All Alliance need is a mindless zerg. If you can't see the difference in that then that's on you.

Seeo

02-01-2007, 07:20 PM

No offense Seeo but I've seen your posts about your pvp tactics in the Hunter forums and they aren't really as sound as you believe... some of them are quite bad actually.
If this is some sort of lame ass attempt at taking away my credibility then **** you. I dish out more trouble than my opponents can handle. If I'm not in the top 4 in KB's and HK's every friggin' time I go out in the battlefield, then A. My roomate is playing my toon, or B. I'm drunk on a friday night.

I'd skin you alive in PvP.

And if you had read the thread you'll know that the assumption you just made about how I view the Alliance just did what they say assuming always does.
No I didn't read the entire freaking topic, sue me. I'm at work with a clogged up internet connection.

AV doesn't prove anything... In PuG vs. PuG matchup in AB and WSG horde rolls... and a lot of times it's not even funny in AB... we're talking 5 caps galore... sheer domination. I don't run in a lot of premades because I'm in a pve oriented guild and I pvp mainly on my own time thus a lot of PuGs.
I could believe that, but I'm never ever on at that time, and when I am in a PuG, it's normally very late at night. And I'm normally the one with the gameplan, and normally we loose to premades... but when I get a PuG, almost always win.

I think AV proves a map layout advantage for the Alliance and nothing more. I've already laid out my argument several times in this thread so I suggest you just go back and actually read them. The bottomline is there are a lot of small tactical advantages map wise that makes life in AV easier on Alliance added up they make a difference. No one is saying the maps are completely unbalanced to make it impossible for horde to win but the fact is horde actually has to implement strategy to have a shot in AV... All Alliance need is a mindless zerg. If you can't see the difference in that then that's on you.
QQ more... seriously. Stop trying to make excuses. AV is as imbalanced to horde as AB is to alliance. It's nothing game-breaking, it's just the way things are.

Oatmealsmurf

02-01-2007, 08:58 PM

And exactly what do you base "eating me alive" on? The fact that we disagree? You have no frame of reference to infer that other than you're own defensivness. I took that shot because of your comment re: how much pvp you do... which means what? Nothing... "a lot of pvp" to you could mean very little to someone else. And as has been pointed out constantly before the honor revamp... time spent pvping does NOT equate to skill so really. Whoopdee do you are near the top of the HK chart on your AVs. So am I and every now and then I can completely dominate a BG... but for all I know you're standing below the Alliance Bunkers potshotting and farming HKs from the otherside of the bridge where no one else has the range to hit you without being pelted by arrows from the archers... or maybe you shadowmeld in the flag room and wait for squishies to come in so you can two shot em. For all you know I'm running around ninjaing KBs with shadowburn or I'm off just picking off stragglers midfield in WSG with no regard to actually trying to win. Hashing over that sort of thing as "proof" that one is good at pvp only makes you look foolish.

A Hunter near the top of the KBs list for a BG??? Wow never in a million years have I seen that... Do it with a druid or and then it MIGHT (and I stress "might") mean something. A Hunter topping the KB list is no big thing... it's quite easy to do as a matter of fact. There is almost always a hunter or three in the top 5 of KBs. All you have to have is halfway decent gear and stay alive... which is easy to do if you stay in the back of a group and don't allow yourself to be isolated.

I take issue with your posts often because there is nothing of substance to support your case. And on the rare occassion that you do actually explain your tactics or stategy in the hunter forum they appear to be outright false or over generalized basic strategies that don't work agains skilled pvpers.

Go back and read mine and you see that I'm perfectly capable of explaining to you exactly what makes the map unbalanced from my POV... All you can do is say "QQ more" and "no it's not, because Seeo says so" "Prove me wrong" (like you've proven anyone else wrong who's come before you). And I'm not going to go back and rehash all my points for your benefit. You being on a crappy internet connection is not my problem. If you don't have time to read what a person has written prior to your entrance into a thread the least you can do is not make grand sweeping assumptions about what they believe.

You actually come accross as one of the people who gives alliance a bad name... claiming that you are the mastermind of your wins in a PuG. A good PuG is happenstance... there isn't some great strategy that you have that no one else has been able to come up with... it just means you were lucky enough to land in a PuG where people are willing to work together and not run off and do their own thing. Why is it that people like you always try and take the credit for a group effort just because you yell out commands in raid chat?

And one final tip... repeatedly making the same statement over and over will not make it any more true than the first time you said it. At this point you're just trolling as you have yet made an honest attempt to discuss the topic.

brandondash

02-01-2007, 09:11 PM

a bunch of stuff
bravo oatmeal. agreed on all counts.

Inferna

02-01-2007, 10:22 PM

The reason why horde pugs will 5 cap in AB is because the alliance pug is letting them do it. The reason why horde pugs 3 cap alliance pugs in wsg is because they let them do it. Most alliance goes in with that mindset, they don't care about winning, they want to get honor the quickest and easiest way, they have no pride about winning or losing. This 'culture' as many people say is very frustrating to players like me who try and win every match, thus giving us a bad name.

It really has nothing to do with the Horde being better at pvp, because they aren't. When I'm in a pug that wants to legitimately win from the onset we almost always do. If the alliance actually tried to win we wouldn't be having this convo. I can't count the number of times I have entered a bg only to have 3-4 people saying to stay at the stables and farm honor or at the wsg GY and let them 3 cap. Its really not even a comparison to say you are better at someone when half the team isnt even trying or is afk botting on honor weekends.

I can see how Horde thinks this way, its logical to think that if you are winning 80% of the time that you are better and more skilled. The bg system is flawed, there is no incentive to win. I will give that the horde is more confident and determined overall, but skill wise I disagree. Horde doesn't realize or care that the alliance doesn't even try these days but thats the truth. I don't mean to burst you little ego bubbles, but play a 60 alliance character for a couple of weeks and you'll see that half of the alliance pug players enter the bg looking to lose rather than win. Why? Not because the horde is so skilled but becasue it requires no effort, you just zone in and walk away and the match is over before you go afk or just wander around.

A similiar argument is made for the Horde in AV, its not they we are dominant or have adavantages. Its that give up before the match even starts.

There is no incentive to win, BG's aren't real pvp imo. It has never been a solid estimate of skill. Once arena battles come out, that is when the real pvp will begin.

Oatmealsmurf

02-01-2007, 11:02 PM

I personally never said horde was "better" at pvp than alliance... I'm just wanting someone to explain why horde rolls in AB/WSG and Alliance rolls in AV if it's not the layout of the map. No one has yet come up with a rational and logical reason. And that is why I still believe AV is a tad unbalanced in Alliance' favor.

All of the theories including your own are based on some mythical prevailing mindset that is common throughout a population. And that to me has no merit. It is no more true than so many racial stereotypes that have been popular in our society. (blacks are lazy, whites can't dance, asians are great at math etc.) There is no emperical data that backs up such a contention as Alliance comes into AB/WSG to lose or the Horde equivalent in AV. It's just a convenient (and lazy) rationalization.

It also does not follow basic logic. How do the same horde players who come into AB and WSG expecting to win fall into a self fulfilling prophecy in AV where they expect to lose. That is not true of a person's mindset in general. Either you expect to win or you don't. Before cross realm BGs I saw the same people in AV that I destroyed in AB/WSG and they would just dominate us. You can't tell me that we went in there and expected to lose to the same people we just destroyed in AB. Similarly how did Alliance collectively come to the conclusion that they couldn't win in AB/WSG and then decide they were gonna draw the line at AV and would play their best?

It just doesn't make any sense... I'm sorry. You simply can't speak for a mindset and apply it to millions of people when you don't have any facts whatsoever to back it up. Servers for the most part are isolated... you're inferring that ths mindset jumped from server to server or maybe two or three transfers brought it to each server like a virus. I could see how it would be true for servers here or there where just by the luck of the draw they ended up with a lot of very good pvpers on one side of the server and not so many on the other. But in such a case there would also be the fair share of servers where Horde dominated AV and that doesn't seem to be the case in all the first hand accounts I've been privy to. It doesn't make anymore sense than generalizing that Alliance are all whiny kids.

The most even BG both pre cross realm and post crossrealm in terms of outcome has been WSG... it's also the most symetrical in terms of layout. The most uneven BG in terms of outcome has been AV... the most asymetrical layout. Coincidence? I'm sorry I don't think so... and no one has been able to explain it with anything that is based in fact to this point. Only some intangible, unprovable idea of a prevailing mindset across all servers.

P.S.

What is real PVP? This is another idea that always struck me funny. PvP is PvP as far as I can tell. There are different types of PvP (world vs. duel/arena vs. BGs) to be sure... but how one can be anymore of "real" pvp than another is beyond me. If your implication is that world pvp is "real" pvp I would disagree. I mean jumping someone with half life and/or mana or enganged with mobs out in the world isn't really a measure of skill either. And if you try to narrow the scope too much by leaving stuff like that out (which constitutes a lot of what happens in world pvp, probably even the majority) then you are left with really very little that qualifies as "real"...

Steamboat

02-01-2007, 11:22 PM

I won't read all 11 pages either. But I will say this:

On the last AV bonus weekend I did nothing all Saturday but Alterac Valley from 7am until 10pm. I play Alliance, and I was in only 2 losing AV's that day.

90% of the wins were the same. Alliance zergs to Galv, then we either take IB or go straight to FW (sometimes even skipping that and going RH.) Both sides are going offense, but the Horde bothered to kill some Alliance on the way and now those Alliance are stuck on defense. The alliance didn't stop to kill any horde, and that's the difference in the whole game.

Almost all the Horde wins I've seen since AV started lasting 15 minutes were done the same way - when the Alliance zerg got to Galv, there were at least 7 or so Horde defending at Galv. We worked through the defense, but they slowed us down enough that we were just starting to pull warmasters when Vann died.

IMO the reason Horde loses AV is that they stop to kill Alliance when they should be zerging the NPC's, and the Alliance stays focused on the NPC's.

Also, on the horde do you get warlocks summoning people from D to O? Alliance chat is often spammed about how we need more on offense, and it's not uncommon to have a warlock down by FW or further who will summon 5 or 10 people from D to O.

Inferna

02-01-2007, 11:56 PM

Seldom

03-01-2007, 01:22 AM

Just one comment on ally performance in AB/WSG PUG vs PUG. Lately, allies have been respectable. As with anything else, if you do something enough times, you will get better at it. Individually and as a group ... Provided that you play with the same groups.

I believe that it took longer for allies to gel as a group because they have such freaking long queue times. Hordies can queue and enter AB in a few seconds. We have more opportunties to play and since we have a smaller populations, we have more opportunities to play alongside each other.

I rarely see node assignments called out anymore (1:LM 2:BS 3:Mines). Horde just know what to do. We tend to keep an eye out for other battles as well. If BS is doing well and we see that LM is not yet capped (and horde dots disappearing to cave), we reinforce LM.

This kind of situtional and positional awareness doesn't come naturally for a group or random people. They must have played a LOT of AB's to know to run to LM if they see mini-map dots disappearing from the flag and reappearing at the GY.

Since, AB and WSG are considered "fair" maps, it's logical to expect ally PUGs to slowly become adept at winning it. It's also logical to expect horde PUGs to do better initially due to small populations. I guess, if I were going to call a horde advantage in AB and WSG, I would say that we have a low population advantage. Which allows us to gel as a team faster since we see the same hordies in our teams more often.

Again, I want to stress that it takes a LOT of PvP to become good at PvP. Both individually and as a team. Which explains why horde do well in AB and WSG. I'll leave AV alone since we're beating the gravestone now. The horse has died a long time ago.

Seldom

03-01-2007, 01:24 AM

Oatmealsmurf

03-01-2007, 02:41 PM

Your assumption that horde roll alliance in ab/wsg is just as silly as your racial stereotype analogy. Thats based on no empirical data as well, just your own opinions and maybe some posts you see on the various forums. It seems that way because all you here on the forums is people whining. Alliance is the majority of the wow players so there voice will be heard loudest and thus there whining is heard the loudest.

I have never once seen any evidence supporting your theory other than people whining on the forums. Where is your empirical data to support your hypothesis in the first place? This whole argument is flawed I agree, its based on perspective. Maybe my battlegroup is different, I do premades and pugs. I have better success in wsg than ab in beating horde but thats just me.

Collecting first hand accounts of experiences in the various BGs is the best we will ever get in terms of empirical data. This is the prevailing conclusion throughout battlegroups among posters on the official forums, this forum and others... and it happens to match my first hand experience as well. Much research is based on the collection of data through surveys. It's an accepted scientific practice. Especially in social sciences where there isn't much that can be proven in the way things can be in physics for instance.

So no it is not the same as my racial stereotype analogy or projecting some sort of collective mindset onto the entire alliance/hord population. Could I be proven wrong? Sure... but I don't think Blizz keeps a record of how well alliance PuGs do against Horde PuGs. They probably have data on overall wins/losses but premades will skew that data so you can't apply it to PuGs.

So yes while I admit my evidence is anecdotal for the most part and I have no intention of doing a real responsibly run scientific survey for the purposes of a message board discussion.... It's much more rooted in scientific method than stereotyping. And I believe I mentioned that WSG is the most even in terms of outcome.

rgirty

03-01-2007, 04:15 PM

I personally never said horde was "better" at pvp than alliance... I'm just wanting someone to explain why horde rolls in AB/WSG and Alliance rolls in AV if it's not the layout of the map. No one has yet come up with a rational and logical reason. And that is why I still believe AV is a tad unbalanced in Alliance' favor.

Ok, like you I cannot state fact only my experiences. As someone who has played only bg's since the patch I will give you the easy answer for this.

People who play alliance DO NOT like to defend. That is your answer. For whatever reason, blame it on the younger people who play alliance or the alliance offensive mindset or whatever you want but alliance do not like to defend. They also do not really do anything organized.

My proof of this.

1. People spend a long amount of time spirit walking from SP gy all the way to RH so they can get on offense instead of defense.

2. You will rarely see a node in ab defended by more than 2 people IF you can get that many to defend it and by defend they usually just go afk for a while.

3. The alliance zerg to RH is just that, it isn't a concentrated organized effort it is just a bunch of people running to the same place. The reason Alliance dominates AV is because they all zerg RH. Rarely do you see anyone playing defense, the only ones are the people who get killed before any gy pops. For some reason people don't realize you can just wait for IB or FW to cap before hitting release instead of releasing right away and landing at SP. Why do you think people scream in BG chat to let horde pass at IBGY and do not turtle? Because alliance players hate to play defense.

4. WSG? no defense.

It really is not a map problem in av... I originally thought it was, but it really isn't. I've seen a hunter in each of the towers block people from capping the RH for over an hour. If a hunter would defend each of those towers and 4 or 5 stay at RH a druid/lock/hunter/mage then rogue perhaps the horde would never lose. The trick is to do what alliance do they let horde have SH so that they will pop there and not back in the cave, if horde would simply let alliance have IB people would pop there and you wouldn't get the mega turtle at SP. But instead the horde try and kill every straggler who is getting to the zerg and thats why they lose. They create a massive alliance defense simply because they kill people who are running by. If the horde just left 6 on defense in the RH and let all the alliance go by they would have an unbeatable strategy. The opening to RH is narrow and the alliance will not attack in a wave to overtake the defense of the opening. Just don't start killing alliance until IB pops or don't kill the ones who are late to the zerg to take on galv. Those are the people who are at SP creating what looks to be a "map imbalance".

If the alliance fought like the horde and killed every horde trying to ride by IBGY they would never win. I played 4 av's last night, won 3 lost 1. I played 10 ab's won 2 lost 8. It seems we did better than normal in AB because we had about 6 core people who would defend and the rest actually got a little organized, and by that I mean the bg leader would say "zerg XXX node now" and they would zerg it. That seems to be the highest level of cooperation you can get. I've seen people try to explain to alliance a more complicated form of attack such as. Take 3 of the 5 people from LM and hit the farm as a distraction. The horde will always answer with backup from the BS which seems to be the distribution point for defense. When this happens 5-7 people from stables can zerg the mine and then have 3 nodes. After this point the alliance can turtle the horde at the mine/bs road/bridge area for the rest of the game with occasional 2-3 people focused attacks at the farm to draw attention back there. But, when you try to tell people the following--

3 from mine hit farm as a distraction, leave 2 at st and the rest of O zerg mine!! What do you think happens? 1 or 2 go to farm, about 3 go to mine and the rest keep on attacking bs and alliance loses. Once in a while people listen and it works. I convinced people to do this twice last night, and we won both games. Simply because it isn't defense its a coordinated offense.

In short, alliance does not play D thats why the BG results are the way they are. It isn't the map in av, its the playstyle.

Seeo

03-01-2007, 04:54 PM

You actually come accross as one of the people who gives alliance a bad name... claiming that you are the mastermind of your wins in a PuG. A good PuG is happenstance... there isn't some great strategy that you have that no one else has been able to come up with... it just means you were lucky enough to land in a PuG where people are willing to work together and not run off and do their own thing. Why is it that people like you always try and take the credit for a group effort just because you yell out commands in raid chat?
Me give a bad name to the Alliance? Let me correct you're very off topic low blow... I don't claim to be a mastermind, I claim to strategize. What the alliance needs is someone to take the lead, because 90% of the time, no one says a god damn word, unless it's "Let them win, just let them win" ... I on the other hand, having played in many presets, have a better understanding of how tactics work, and how to work against the horde. Sure we might not win all our battles against horde pugs, but the grand majority, we win. Why? Because instead of telling everyone to "give up" I delegate, and I couldn't give a flying **** what you think about that, it gives me wins. And yes I'm good at PvP, I use my hunter the way it's supposed to get used. And your theory about PvPing with a druid? Was that a ****ing joke? The #1 class with the best survivability is a druid. If you can't win... run away! I'm talking PvP builds here, I wouldn't consider a Balance/Resto druid, chart-topping, but a Feral druid? Man... c'mon.

And I had a whole wack load more written... but ended up deleting it, because I know it would just end up getting me banned.

But one final tip for you as well Oatmealshmuck... repeatedly making the same statement over and over will not make it any more true than the first time you said it. You have no proof... only mear opinions that others on the same faction as you are willing to disprove. Maybe you should take your own advice before giving it away.

So yes... QQ more.

Oatmealsmurf

03-01-2007, 04:57 PM

Hate to break it to you but horde don't like to defend either... we constantantly have nodes that are undefended in AB. Even in hard fought games we will inevitably have 2-3 dummies who will leave a node unguarded or will choose to go attack the stables that are being guarded when it's been called out that we need help at the BS (or something similar).

There is nothing unique to alliance about that. The problem with your supposed solution to AV is Iceblood is our choke point. That is where we HAVE to defend if anyone chooses to mount a defense. In the AV games that Horde does win it's usually because people play defense at Iceblood. Why? Because frostwolf is undefendable. Once Iceblood has been attacked (even when there are defenders) it's a matter of a few minutes before FW falls as well... and then a matter of a few more to take RH. The problem is Alliance doesn't need to hold Iceblood and what happens once they attack Iceblood they move immediately to FW and in doing so any horde defense that died at IB gets intercepted trying to get back to defend relief hut. Now they could always go and recap Iceblood and sometimes that happens... but it won't matter because 20 alliance will stand around FW until it's capped while 10 continue on to the RH and attack it. So if horde doesn't have their recall trinket or there isn't a well coordinated defense that is able to assess that IB is a lost cause and they then retreat en masse to defend the towers at the RH then there is no shot.

That's the problem it usually takes at least 10-15 minutes tap the flag at SP (not factoring time it takes for it to actually cap) for horde once they have tapped SH and another 10-15 minutes to tap AS after tapping SP. Once IB has been tapped by alliance it takes about 5-10 total to tap FW and Relief hut.

I've been in several games where horde has done a really good job in taking SP... enough people actually take high road and fight on the flag and at the same time a decent defense is mounted at IB so that we have tapped SP before IB. You'd look at the map and say oh Horde has got this one won... then IB falls and within 3-4 minutes you see on your screen "Frostwolf Graveyard has been attacked alliance will control..." "Frostwolf Aidstation has been attacked alliance will control..." and horde is right back behind in the race. It's obscene at times. And these are games where people made a conscious decision to defend. In a typical game when there are only 1-2 people on defense alliance just runs roughshod over the map and has capped Aid Station before Horde can even attack SP.

Inferna

03-01-2007, 05:16 PM

I transferred servers to join my brothers the other night for BC leveling and questing. I have seen some interesting differences. My old server had 1-4 mins queue times which is awesome for alliance. Initially thats why I went there because of that, but i realized that due to the queue times alliance really didn't care if they won or lost because they could just get in another bg in a min or so.

Also it was very commonplace to see 5-10 people all of a sudden to leave ab or wsg to take the av queue wether they were winning or not. I went to the other server and queue times are much longer like 15 min for wsg and ab and 1.5 hrs for av. But alliance are trying to win because if they don't they have to wait another 15 mins to try again. I actually kind of like the longer queue times now. I have only been on this server for 2 nights but its nice seeing alliance trying to win.

rgirty

03-01-2007, 05:24 PM

The problem with your supposed solution to AV is Iceblood is our choke point. That is where we HAVE to defend if anyone chooses to mount a defense.

This line of thinking is your problem. If you leave 5-7 defending RH and take the rest directly to sh then sp gy you will win. When you are "defending" IB gy all you are doing is sending a bunch of alliance up to SP gy. When the zerg hits IB and you start killing alliance you are sending them directly to SP gy as alliance has not capped any gy's yet. You are creating your own problem. If alliance stood around defending SH and sending all the horde back to the RH they couldn't win either, but they don't they let the horde go by so they don't have to fight them at the RH. The horde create their own roadblock. If the horde would simply defend RH as much as possible sending alliance back to IB and FW they would win a lot more games.

Oatmealsmurf

03-01-2007, 05:27 PM

Me give a bad name to the Alliance? Let me correct you're very off topic low blow... I don't claim to be a mastermind, I claim to strategize. What the alliance needs is someone to take the lead, because 90% of the time, no one says a god damn word, unless it's "Let them win, just let them win" ... I on the other hand, having played in many presets, have a better understanding of how tactics work, and how to work against the horde. Sure we might not win all our battles against horde pugs, but the grand majority, we win. Why? Because instead of telling everyone to "give up" I delegate, and I couldn't give a flying **** what you think about that, it gives me wins. And yes I'm good at PvP, I use my hunter the way it's supposed to get used. And your theory about PvPing with a druid? Was that a ****ing joke? The #1 class with the best survivability is a druid. If you can't win... run away! I'm talking PvP builds here, I wouldn't consider a Balance/Resto druid, chart-topping, but a Feral druid? Man... c'mon.

And I had a whole wack load more written... but ended up deleting it, because I know it would just end up getting me banned.

But one final tip for you as well Oatmealshmuck... repeatedly making the same statement over and over will not make it any more true than the first time you said it. You have no proof... only mear opinions that others on the same faction as you are willing to disprove. Maybe you should take your own advice before giving it away.

So yes... QQ more.

Where did I say that Druids were bad at pvp? Can you find that in this thread? No... You came in here beating your chest because according to you, you are regularly in the top 5 in killing blows for your BGs thus proving you are good at pvp. I brought up Druids not because they aren't good at PvP but because they don't often top the KBs chart for various reasons. They are a direct damage class that focus on single target damage no mind boggling (equivalent to a rogue or a mage) burst damage (now don't get offended druids I know you have good damage capability especially post patch but you aren't two or three shotting anyone) and feral druids in particular have to be up close and personal to do it. In group pvp if several people are beating on a druid they will not have time to shift out of cat form to heal or shift into travel form and run away... they WILL die as a result of being on the "front lines so to speak". Not to mention they are also expected to be flag runners, node guards or node ninjas... in other words not killing people. They are a utility class not a dps class. And if you top the killing blows in a BG as a druid it MIGHT be an indication that you are pretty good at pvp at least more so than a hunter being near the top.

But a Hunter? You stand in the back and do burst damage... pick off several people at a time with multishot and are out of range of most of the people you're attacking in group pvp so they aren't attacking you... they're attacking the feral druid, warrior, rogue that's right in their face. Even good pvpers who are ignoring the front line are busy targeting the healers instead of you. A lot of times as a hunter in group pvp you're cherry picking. If you aren't near the top in KBs as a Hunter it just means you suck quite frankly.

I would never say topping KBs on my lock or my Hunter makes me good... I'm supposed to top killing blows with my lock and hunter.

And I'm sorry but considering your lack of maturity with regards to discussing a simple topic like in this thread I find it hard to believe that you possess the capabilities to actually turn a bad PuG around based on your "leadership". I stand by my assertion that you just landed in a good PuG. You seem to be laboring under the delusion that you are the only experienced player/hunter on this forum. You are not.

As far as trying to turn my own advice around on me... I've explained my POV every step of the way. It's not appicable. You're just throwing out blanket statements coupled with insults, left and right... hoping that something sticks and hoping that people are "shamed" by your leetness into ceasing to discuss their own personal observations.

Oatmealsmurf

03-01-2007, 05:37 PM

This line of thinking is your problem. If you leave 5-7 defending RH and take the rest directly to sh then sp gy you will win. When you are "defending" IB gy all you are doing is sending a bunch of alliance up to SP gy. When the zerg hits IB and you start killing alliance you are sending them directly to SP gy as alliance has not capped any gy's yet. You are creating your own problem. If alliance stood around defending SH and sending all the horde back to the RH they couldn't win either, but they don't they let the horde go by so they don't have to fight them at the RH. The horde create their own roadblock. If the horde would simply defend RH as much as possible sending alliance back to IB and FW they would win a lot more games.

No it doesn't work that way really it doesn't you cannot hold RH indefinitely with 5-7 people. They will be overwhelmed long before the offense is able to take SP AND AS... The delay will only last as long as it takes for FW to cap... once that's capped and you face the entire 25-30 man alliance zerg you get run over... It will serve as a delay but you also need to delay alliance at IB and not allow them to ninja FW while doing it. It will work if Alliance devotes absolutely nothing to defense but I find that to be rare in my Battlegroup. There are always at least a handful defending SP and often 10 or so.

And I see people saying that the problem is horde stop at SH and that's true to an extent... too many people stop at SH ... but some people actually have to... there are two lieutenants you have to deal with as well as the the NPCs guarding the flag. But we have to get SH... because even if we do ride straight to SP and attack the flag... it's hard to defend for 5 minutes when your closest GY the whole time is IB or worse in the tunnel if the Allies take IB as they would immediatley if we just defended RH as you suggest. Alliance basically gets a free GY at SF so they don't have to deal with that.

And we have to let Alliance have SF for two reasons... you guys get to it faster ... and even if we decide to take SF and win it taking SF will just turn the game into a giant turtle. We have to give you SF for the same reason you have to give us SH.

Like I said there isn't an overwhelming advantage... but there are a lot of little things that wind up making a difference as far as I can tell.

rgirty

03-01-2007, 05:56 PM

you cannot hold RH indefinitely with 5-7 people I've seen it held by 7 horde for over an hour.

you also need to delay alliance at IB This is why you lose. You send a bunch alliance to defend SP when you kill them at IB.

There are always at least a handful defending SP and often 10 or so. Because you sent them there when you killed them at IB. Also you won't let them run by you, for some reason you keep killing them when they try to run by to join the zerg. This forces them to fight you at SP as they have no other choice. The alliance lets all the horde run by at IB because they don't want to fight them at RH.

You are proving my point for me the reason the horde zerg is slowed is because you defend IB which creates a defense for alliance at SP.

There is always 5-10 people spirit walking to RH and 5+ people who are too lazy to do it begging for a summon to the RH. The alliance does NOT want to defend SP they are forced to by your line of thinking here- you also need to delay alliance at IB

If you wouldn't kill alliance at IB you would win a lot more games, don't believe me just try it. The games I lose on alliance have 3 main factors.

1. 5-7 defending RH

2. Horde does not try and turtle IB

3. Horde caps asap as they don't have to fight sp defense due to #2.

Oatmealsmurf

03-01-2007, 06:15 PM

AHHHHH I see what your saying. Wasn't taking into account that you give us SH so you're rezzing in the tunnel. Good point. I may stand corrected here. Plus this thread has given me some ideas for trying a few things in AV... I think I'll do it tonight. It'll just take some convincing of other people to pull it off.

Only one problem... In almost every single game we win in AV (at least in my battlegroup) there was a staunch defense at Iceblood. I'll go back and do some investigating.

rgirty

03-01-2007, 07:00 PM

In almost every single game we win in AV (at least in my battlegroup) there was a staunch defense at Iceblood. Because alliance realizes that the horde are turtling and start /afk'ing out of the bg taking the deserter buff and getting in another av. The new people that come in either immediately afk out or just hang in the tunnel until horde wins.

If horde is turtling IB I can /afk out of AV then go farm, hearth back when buff is off and que for ab/av again. Play an entire AB and run an entire AV before the initial AV ends.

Oatmealsmurf

03-01-2007, 07:19 PM

But we aren't turtling... there are never more than 10-12 on defense for horde LOL... and 90% of the time it's more like 5-7. A turtle is basically zero offense. We'll see though... if I can convince enough to come along with me I'll test your theory.

rgirty

03-01-2007, 07:35 PM

A turtle is basically zero offense

Again, your line of thought here is part of why the horde have problems.

A turtle = slowdown of what should be fast.

Commonly brought over from WoW to Real life... if someone in front of you in traffic is going slower than you are hence slowing you down they are turtling you.

It does not take the entire team to turtle the game, only a few. Some call it defense, but in reality its a turtle.

Oatmealsmurf

03-01-2007, 07:45 PM

The turtle analogy that I came away with is retreating into your shell where you can't be defeated but you aren't doing anything productive yourself.

The Wow equivalent is often in WSG when a team is outclassed they will no long mount an offense. They'll just retreat into the flag room and defend their flag. Or in AV on the odd occassion that Alliance is clearly losing you'll see a lot of them recall and all offense save for ninja teams ceases... they just make it impossible to kill Van... 30 people at the Aid Station GY. And this is after SF has capped so they aren't rezzing at the tunnel anymore and end up trapped rather they are choosing to no longer play offense and recalling.

10 people playing strategic defense is just playing defense.... contrary to the way it's played AV is not supposed to be an all out pve zerg just to see who can get to the Marshals the fastest. You are supposed to defend your territory.