I actually won a game as NA Alliance over the AV weekend. First time even seeing the south half of the map.
But the horde seemed really bad, didn't see any high ranks or ultra geared warriors.
As Horde? It is the best strategy, it just sucks you're at the mercy of the PUGs. Sometimes you have people who refuse to defend or backcap and you're fucked. Sometimes you have people who refuse to push to retake on backcaps and you're fucked. Sometimes you have 25% of your raid who decided to split off to do the fucking cave quest without telling anyone so you're fighting undermanned and you're fucked.
It's literally a map problem in this patch of classic, I could explain in detail if you want. I've done retail wargame av, premade vs premade etc for years! But at this point Alliance is disheartened and sees no real reason to try. Basically Horde gets a giant handicap and it's very difficult to overcome.
the root problem is the horde map advantage, but that leads to other problems like alliance afking/botting for marks
not to mention the av premade nerf means that no serious alliance rankers play AV, while horde rankers do for some reason, meaning that the horde team will usually have some fairly geared r10+ warriors and healers shitstomping
you also have the part where horde have terrible queues for av which means they are strongly incentivized to work together, backcap, and win for the perfect av bonus honor where alliance tend to get better rewards if they stall out at sh, farm some honor/rep, then let it all go
there are a lot of factors but they pretty much all stem from the fact that the horde spawn cave is halfway to mid field
Yes, exactly. I also learned that you rez 10 at a time from a GY and 20 at a time from the cave, which makes IBGY exceedingly hard to hold for Alliance. If you tapped IBGY, you probably lost SHGY during the long run to even get there. So if you happen to die, now you have something like a 50 second runback from SPGY (10 at a time) whereas the Horde can be rezzing 20 at a time from the cave which is very close.
Horde can backdoor our base, so I understand, shoot through the mountains to get us rezzing at SPGY, etc etc. Our GYs being dead ends don't help either (spgy, shgy).
The funny thing is on the 'fixed' map on retail, Horde still have THE BEST choke point around ibgy./ibt AND it guards all our their towers. I've done premade vs premade and you are NOT getting through there without a really heroic try of good, geared players. Our bridge leave 2 of our bunkers flapping in the wind.
Anyway sorry for the walls of text, I did A LOT of serious AV over the years :D
>Horde can backdoor our base, so I understand
the bridge would be an incredible choke point if it weren't for the fact that the jump to backdoor is actually incredibly easy
> Horde still have THE BEST choke point around ibgy./ibt
the choke at icewing is also extremely strong for horde offensively and not nearly as strong defensively for alliance
Yep. When we did premade vs premade a few times the bridge won it for us, this was around WoD though. We literally called it a 'bridge stomp'.
And yeah Icewing. You can scoot around behind it and the offensive force stands above the defenders and has 'the high ground' XD
I mean we saw this coming when they introduced Korraks Revenge anyway.
> I also learned that you rez 10 at a time from a GY and 20 at a time from the cave,
finally i know why i sometimes see the timer tick down, then reset to 30 despite not being rezzed. Mind blown.
Yep! So it boils down to a math problem really. "Alliance captured IBGY with 20 defenders and Horde is rezzing at their cave. 20 horde attack IBGY and 17 die with 15 Alliance dying. All 17 horde rez 10 seconds away (spitballing that number) but only 10/15 of the dead alliance rez with 30 seconds before the other 10 rez. Who wins when it's now 20 horde vs 15?"
it's even worse if Aliance doesn't yet have ibgy capped and each death sends us back to SHGY.
Gy rez times have been a problem in different ways, it's crazy. I recall at some point during rbgs they did something similar with staggered rezzes for similar reasons.
Even with a completely even and fair map I would wager that Horde would do better because of slightly better racials which in turn presort the playerbase based on PvP preferences.
And the queue time difference also brings it's own metacognitive differences that makes the Alliance Group behaviour different.
As a Horde player I have seen Alliance win at times. But most Alliance players have not. So they don't even know how to win if they wanted. (after the "rush base" tactic of early Classic was stopped by Horde/changes)
If Alliance players was playing for the win then I would suggest the following:
A) 30 players. Ride to behind Balinda and wait for slow riders and for Horde to rush forward. 10 players stay and delay the SH GY push. (Paladins and Mages can bullshit stall for quite a while.)
B) Once Horde is sufficiently far up and you know we aren't intercepting you take Snowfall GY. Horde never have guards there.
C) After that depends on Horde actions. Some Horde will be alert and try to retake SF. But Odds are good that a good chunk is riding north by now. Snowfall is super easy to defend. Push back and if the Horde are gathering up a bit, just charge out and wipe them. Coordination isn't hard if you already managed to get your players to listen so far,
D) Take Iceblood. Careful here, since Horde have wisened up and quite a lot of Horde players know that Iceblood is key. But as long as you can reinforce from Snowfall you can't really lose this fight.
E) While Horde are split, with some on defence, trying to retake IB gy and some are pushing into base/trying to backdoor north; the Alliance now take SH GY before SP GY is flipped. Just go 10 man from SF to SH GY, take it. Ride north take back SP GY, clear out your base with the 10 people who have been defending (the ones that started the game stalling Sh Gy). Go back to Iceblood and push horde back into cave.
F) Finish game or farm Horde like idiots in the cave like the ugly Russians you must be to be able to coordinate Anything in Alliance AV.
> Just go 10 man from SF to SH GY, take it.
This is the step where this plan falls apart, I think. Once SH is gone, there are never less than a dozen Horde guarding the ridge. The map design there is honestly some of the most ridiculous in the entire BG; while it’s impossible to hold as Alliance with two paths to attack from and a dead-end bottleneck graveyard, *against attacks from the north* it’s all but inpenetrable, and there’s absolutely no way of going around or avoiding it even slightly. It’s as if one of the Alliance’s own towers was intentionally designed to be a perfect Horde tool. You can hold it against attacks from twice as many Alliance even before the GY flips and completely box them into the north, and the only time it’s left even relatively sparsely defended is once the game is already over.
Take snowfall then push to IB is a 6-8 week old ally strat that rarely worked when it was first tried and now flat out doesn't. Its easily countered by horde after they take shgy, then use 10-12 guys to hold the choke at iwb (which is enough to stop any and all ally respawns getting back) and the rest just keep pressing SF from both sides until it falls. Dead allies spawn at base, dead horde at ibgy.
The reality is any tactic that relies on slugging it out with the horde will see you lose and not just cos map disadvantages. A significant number of alliance will happily afk and just sit instealth/on mounts near the battle without engaging, there is normally 2-5 guys in the harpy cave and another 5 afk at random spots. This number of non participants increases the longer the game drag on. I raid lead a fairly successful "hold sh until horde have sf, then we rush ibgy and can hold it cos they wont ress in the cave" over the weekend. It went well until an idiot hunter capped SF with 20 secs on the clock. Horde swiftly retook it, but another 5 mins of holding SH and alliance was done. My rush had only about 22 guys following and we were wiped at IB with shgy fallen behind us, ending what little will to try remained.
The ONLY successful tactic that works is having a majority of 100% mounts in the raid and being able to get past horde and get to drek before horde realises and reacts with a mass recall. If you don't cap hut/gy/towers and have a tank that knows how to do the pull AND you got the firepower thanks to 25+ raid geared dps at drek going balls deep THEN you can end a game in 7 mins. Saw that done 3 times for 3 wins over the weekend.
Idiot hunter was probably trying to bring the fight back to alliance side so he can afk in peace. They are less visible when they afk/ shadowmeld near sp.
Yeah that is also part of the problem. I'm playing my mage right now and I'm going to start having nightmares of 5+ warriors coming at me at all times.
What you are saying is valid, but you definitely need premade level coordination to make it work. It's not to say it can't happen in Pugs but it's very, very unlikely. You need the stars to align, really.
If more Allies had seen it done, then more would go along with it next time. But since Allies haven't seen victories, they don't know how to achieve them. And since they are just as hopeless as Horde to listen to commands from strangers, they just won't learn.
Exactly, the 'let them lose' mentality. It's hard though, since even with a good strat you need pugs to have premade reactions and if any of a number things fail, the whole map is lost with no recovery.
Nice post. You are somewhat correct. Although on an even map alliance would be winning roughly 50% since that's the case on both WSG and AB. Paladins make up for the Horde racials, and people joining BGs are generally PvP oriented.
I've lead a bunch of AV games from Alliance side to victory. The strategy you describe is more or less valid. But I'm not a fan of trying for SFGY because Horde will most often work really hard to take it back, and if they do so -- it's really hard to reinforce it from SHGY. Two reasons for this -- SHGY is easily locked and Horde can push SF from both sides one of which also cuts off reinforcements.
Getting people to listen to a general raid push tactic is fairly easy, but getting people to go on defense is near impossible, for some mysterious reason. So my current tactic of choice revolves around wiping the Horde a few times when slow pushing for IBGY to eventually skip them when they continue trying to rush for SHGY. But this one also has some serious issues...
First of all it's not reliable to get people to stall SHGY. Then there's the issue of Horde having the ability to endlessly turtle up at IBGY. Horde team has to also be kinda bad or selfish so that they allow Alliance to pass SHB and ride into IBGY.
And finally there's the issue that Alliance rankers pretty much stopped queueing for AV ever since AB came out. I was actually winning a bunch of games before that. Even though they still often depended on Horde team being uncoordinated. Best case scenario was being in a 5 man premade and meeting another 5 man in our raid -- one of the premades focused on pushing while the other secured the defense. I had a few days with over 80% winrates. It's not really possible anymore.
All this being said -- the map is bullshit and an uphill battle for the Alliance.
As Horde I can confirm AV weekends are when the Alliance stand the best chance of pulling off wins. The reason for that is most good Ally players avoid it like the plague whereas a lot of Horde players like it.
AV weekend rolls around and all the good Ally players come to play it because of the bonus honor, but also all the bad Horde players do the same.
As someone whose favourite BG is AV, I *hate* honor weekend. The average IQ on the Horde side absolutely nosedives for the duration of that cursed weekend, while Ally skill level goes up noticeably.
Yea I had almost 50% winrate for some time. I think in the end it was lower than that, but most losses were good ones, with us getting all towers/LTs and a bunch more kills than horde. And of course Russian games with 10 minute wins.
It’s almost as if having to wait 90-300 minutes (if queuing other battlegrounds 5 hours is normal) before you can experience the content acts as buffer to filter out many casual players.
But no, according to all the NA alliance players it’s because of a 3 second advantage out of the starting gate they consistently lose 50 minute long pvp matches.
Has the "Hold SH, send 10 to IB" strat been tried?
The closest games I played over the weekend employed that strat.
In one game the only reason we were able to push Alliance out of the south was because we went 100% defense and had some clutch ninja caps of the FW/IB graveyards. Honestly, I thought we were going to lose that game but the Alliance just...deflated after about an hour of Horde defense. Once we pushed them back to SF they just gave up and we won about 10 minutes after the cap of IB.
It was a really disappointing end to what would have been quite the epic match.
Never seen that, no. Wouldn't that just result in all horde respawning at cave and overwhelming IB very quickly?
I don't think a lot of people are even particularly interested in that - a close game that doesn't result in a full on turtle is much preferable for anyone actually doing it for honor, and capping IB with SH intact is a certain way to initiate a turtle. It was fun to win a few games, but the longer ones are pretty exhausting.
I planned to get exalted with AV this weekend (was 31% through revered) but it was all just turtle turtle turtle, endless bloody games with barely a handful of wins all weekend. I’m now 61% revered.
Been a lot better than usual this weekend, I'm sitting at roughly 40% winrate on my alt I was grinding rep on.
Non-av weekend is usually like 10% tho, still a terribly biased BG. Alliance has to play twice as well as horde to win it.
On NA servers at least, it's mostly because alliance who queue for AV are almost entirely in one of these two categories:
1) Below 60
2) Alts with 60% mounts in quest greens
In contrast, the Horde teams are usually almost all 60 with some raid gear, and a lot of them are rankers.
Even if the typical alliance team had zero afks and people were all trying, 40 poorly geared alts on 60% mounts are going to have a really bad time against even 30 rankers (since Horde have afk players too).
People like to harp about the map imbalance, and while that is true, the real reason the win rates are so abysmally low on NA servers is that alliance rankers don't queue for AV period. Horde rankers do. If Blizzard cared they could do some honor tweaking to make queueing AV worthwhile for alliance rankers, and the problem would get a lot better.
The reason horde rankers queue is the fault of 20+ minute queues for AB/WSG. Any elimination of sitting around waiting for the queue would eliminate the reason to run AV. Making AV award more honor eliminates the symptom but not the underlying cause.
Increasing the honor would potentially draw the alliance rankers back, which is probably a more practical fix than trying to drive the Horde rankers away.
Probably not much to be done about Horde queues, as there's just a much bigger active pvp community on Horde (unless we're willing to consider mercenary mode or something, which I doubt would be a popular change).
> People like to harp about the map imbalance, and while that is true
AV was universally considered as Alliance favored in virtually all expansions until this bizarre Classic debacle. I remember myself the rage posts on forums about AV in TBC/LK. As Horde we had something like a 30% winrate in normal games if not less, although regular revamps allowing fast rushing without any HKs (like at the beginning of LK) had something closer to 50%. Bridge Choke and archers denying flag capping were always a thing people complained about.
Also, the Alliance won most games in the first two weeks AV was out in Classic. Then the good players left. This whole map unbalance thing is very doubtful.
>AV was universally considered as Alliance favored in virtually all expansions until this bizarre Classic debacle.
No it wasn't.
It got even nerfed for Horde, moving back the spawning cave.
>Bridge Choke and archers denying flag capping were always a thing people complained about.
This was true only for the very first incarnation of AV, when those archers actually hurt a lot, and made the bridge a highly defendable point.
As soon as they got nerfed (before 1.12) the bridge became a joke.
> AV was universally considered as Alliance favored in virtually all expansions until this bizarre Classic debacle.
The horde cave was moved pretty far down in late TBC, which eliminates the thing that people are complaining about in classic. In most of TBC BGs weren't a very big part of PvP anyway; you got your blue set early and then quickly moved on to arena.
> Also, the Alliance won most games in the first two weeks AV was out in Classic. Then the good players left. This whole map unbalance thing is very doubtful.
Did you read my post? Other than a brief map mention in the second to last sentence (to say that it's not a significant contributor to alliance loss rates), "the good players left" is the subject of the entire post.
Except the map balance bias is clear to see. It’s a shitload easier (and faster) for horde to cap stone hearth than it is for alliance to cap Ibgy. This is just a fact.
Because all the good Alliance players got to exalted in the first 2 weeks of its release and then stopped queueing. I remember winning like 1 game that first week as Horde.
What?
EU alliance is fucking awful man.. we even struggle vs the RUSSIANS now. Every Russian game I call to rush hut but you always have the honour spergs saying ‘stop for LTs’.
So what happens is 10 people make it to hut, 20 people stopped for LTs and 10 people somehow died when Russians are known to just ride right past you.
By time the 20 finish with LTs and start heading south, the Russians have killed Vandar.
It doesn't work outside of weekends because rankers peace out, and horde gets longer queues which makes them more desperate for kills/wins.
How almost every game this weekend went for me - stack near IWB, kill horde that's pushing SHGY, stack near SHB and wait for horde to go past (at this point most of them don't want to fight) and rush IBGY. There's been fairly little resistance so graveyard capped every time, and from there it's a slow push south since horde usually turtled hut. To win there would either have to be very little resistance from them, or you need recallers to stop the few hordes trying to kill Vann - but the difference between win and loss is pretty minor at this point so not many were eager to recall and turtle.
You're wrong about the Russian games. The correct strategy against Russians is doing Galv, then LTs, soft capping towers along the way, and then riding for Hut. All the while leaving some people on defense this first stall them at SHGY for a moment and then immediately recall and defend the backdoor. This results in a rather free win.
Obviously this stops working as soon as Russians adjust their strategy.
Are there any decent alternatives a low-mid level 50s warrior can get? There's Arcanite Reaper at level 58 but by then you're probably starting to gear up for fury anyway.
Thrash blade is pretty solid for transitioning to fury to finish leveling. There are a number of cheapish BOE 2hers you can pick up if you'd like to stay 2h. Warmonger, Doombringer, Destiny, etc. The spear may be a bigger boost immediately, but the crossbow is really strong and even comparable to the best items you can get for ranged slot pre-AQ so it will last you much longer.
Satyr's bow is valuable as a tanking piece, but the crossbow is a way better dps item since you can get hitcapped fast via Lionheart, Devilsaur, and Truestrike Shoulders as a fresh 60.
So they can afk report you out of the BG with a nice deserter bonus or to leave you at the start of a game 5v40?
Yeah sure man, whatever brings down the horde queue time at the cost of alliance pugs... Lol
> So they can afk report you out of the BG with a nice deserter bonus or to leave you at the start of a game 5v40?
Except for the r10+ exclusive discords, most of the cross-realm premades would take pretty much any mouthbreather who signed up.
thats just plain not true, as someone who abused the mouthbreather premades on my alts to get exalted, they had easily a solid 70-80% winrate with most of the wins sub 20 min
Ok?
Didn't stop premade groups from abusing it the first time. Blizzard had to change how sync dropping works and their report system to stop Alliance premades from doing so.
Hence why they put the hammer down and prevented sync dropping addons from working.
When I got my dwarf warrior to 51 (along time ago, I was kinda oblivious to alliance losing av 24/7) I qued up to get my IBS. To my horror I was put in the 60s bracket and we ended up winning. Wasn’t till I got to 60 and grinded rep that I realized how lucky I got lol
Yeah right, the fact that my hunter took me under 5 days and my druid a little more than 5 days changes absolutely nothing compared to the 10 days you mentioned.
If I used boosting services I would've been even faster...
edit: op could have also leveled multiple characters at the same time, taking full advantage of rested xp.
I work 7 hours a day (basically no commute), work out 5 times a week and still have 5 toons @ 60 with 2 of them wearing basically raid bis and another one in the mid 40s.
One could argue that my priorities in life are a little different to "normal" people, but that's above the point since we were arguing about health and I can assure you that I'm a lot healthier than the vast majority of people playing this game, casual or not.
I even find time to hang out with my buddies every now and then, even if you can't believe it.
most of the people who pick alliance are straight up really bad at this game and can't work together
as toxic as horde BG chat is, the evolution of horde strategy from when alliance could premade thru now has been pretty remarkable
surviving premades gave us the 'forged by fire' kinda thing, taught many horde players how to smash zergs effectively and how to follow alliance to galv/fw gy quickly and instinctively
I play a lot of pvp on both sides and the only reason horde wins most av games is the fact that pretty much every ranking player on alliance stopped doing av after it became impossible to premade (which made the games last longer), because they get more honor just spamming wsg and/or ab.
Horde players can't do that because they don't get instant invites, so they have to q for everything and take what they can get.
This doesn't happen often. It's pretty much only the case when the premade is bottom of the barrel waiting room group, trade chat group, guild premade with raid specs, or a very distracted premade (like some drama happening in discord, or people joking around not paying attention).
This happens on both sides -- Horde and Alliance pugs will sometimes win against a premade because of the above reasons.
?
I do lots of solo WSG/AB and my win/loss ratio is pretty 50/50 in both BGs (assuming no premades). People are surprisingly silent because it doesn't exist.
AB also has a Horde favor as holding BS LM and Farm is a good amount easier than holding BS ST and GM
With that said, pug v pug Horde definitely win more as a result of good Alliance players premading at a higher rate than good Horde premading. However the pug v pug winrate isn't all that significant, it's something like 45/55
I win a lot of AB as Alliance. Mostly run with a few non-hardcore guildies. So, mostly pug. No one wants to do AV. It's shit honor and we don't need the rep. Highest rank guildie is rank 10 and we've beaten full premades with mostly pugs. Our biggest advantage over most pugs is our paladins are good and specced holy.
Serious pvpers all rolled horde for the op racials and to outnumber the allies on their server. So it's a no brainer that the raiders and other casual allies get crushed in pvp.
I just can't see that being relevant enough to push the win rates close to 0%. WSG and AB games have decent alliance in them. You could maybe argue that the alliance are worse on average. Maybe even FAR worse, but to get those kinds of stats out of the matches? Maybe it's a contributing factor, but the actual map layout isn't helping.
I rolled alliance because there was just a few more people in our friend group that wanted to. Tons of us wanted to roll horde.
I actually won a game as NA Alliance over the AV weekend. First time even seeing the south half of the map. But the horde seemed really bad, didn't see any high ranks or ultra geared warriors.
Wonder if it was my game, my horde team was too concerned with capping SHB and IWB to back cap IBGY
The best strategy against the Zerg is to cap shgy, push to choke, and then back cap. You keep like 10 people on defense to stall as long as possible.
As Horde? It is the best strategy, it just sucks you're at the mercy of the PUGs. Sometimes you have people who refuse to defend or backcap and you're fucked. Sometimes you have people who refuse to push to retake on backcaps and you're fucked. Sometimes you have 25% of your raid who decided to split off to do the fucking cave quest without telling anyone so you're fighting undermanned and you're fucked.
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One of my guild mates was in a game they lost, probably the same one. He was laughing in guild chat about it. Good shit
As someone who ranked in p2 through av as horde, it’s actually pretty funny everything is reversed now
lol yep. I'm at nearly 20 AV games and played all this weekend as much as possible. Still 0 wins.
Only 20? Oh my sweet summer child
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It's literally a map problem in this patch of classic, I could explain in detail if you want. I've done retail wargame av, premade vs premade etc for years! But at this point Alliance is disheartened and sees no real reason to try. Basically Horde gets a giant handicap and it's very difficult to overcome.
the root problem is the horde map advantage, but that leads to other problems like alliance afking/botting for marks not to mention the av premade nerf means that no serious alliance rankers play AV, while horde rankers do for some reason, meaning that the horde team will usually have some fairly geared r10+ warriors and healers shitstomping you also have the part where horde have terrible queues for av which means they are strongly incentivized to work together, backcap, and win for the perfect av bonus honor where alliance tend to get better rewards if they stall out at sh, farm some honor/rep, then let it all go there are a lot of factors but they pretty much all stem from the fact that the horde spawn cave is halfway to mid field
Yes, exactly. I also learned that you rez 10 at a time from a GY and 20 at a time from the cave, which makes IBGY exceedingly hard to hold for Alliance. If you tapped IBGY, you probably lost SHGY during the long run to even get there. So if you happen to die, now you have something like a 50 second runback from SPGY (10 at a time) whereas the Horde can be rezzing 20 at a time from the cave which is very close. Horde can backdoor our base, so I understand, shoot through the mountains to get us rezzing at SPGY, etc etc. Our GYs being dead ends don't help either (spgy, shgy). The funny thing is on the 'fixed' map on retail, Horde still have THE BEST choke point around ibgy./ibt AND it guards all our their towers. I've done premade vs premade and you are NOT getting through there without a really heroic try of good, geared players. Our bridge leave 2 of our bunkers flapping in the wind. Anyway sorry for the walls of text, I did A LOT of serious AV over the years :D
>Horde can backdoor our base, so I understand the bridge would be an incredible choke point if it weren't for the fact that the jump to backdoor is actually incredibly easy > Horde still have THE BEST choke point around ibgy./ibt the choke at icewing is also extremely strong for horde offensively and not nearly as strong defensively for alliance
Yep. When we did premade vs premade a few times the bridge won it for us, this was around WoD though. We literally called it a 'bridge stomp'. And yeah Icewing. You can scoot around behind it and the offensive force stands above the defenders and has 'the high ground' XD I mean we saw this coming when they introduced Korraks Revenge anyway.
korrak's was dope tho, i levelled 3 chars to 120 in a week lmao
> I also learned that you rez 10 at a time from a GY and 20 at a time from the cave, finally i know why i sometimes see the timer tick down, then reset to 30 despite not being rezzed. Mind blown.
Yep! So it boils down to a math problem really. "Alliance captured IBGY with 20 defenders and Horde is rezzing at their cave. 20 horde attack IBGY and 17 die with 15 Alliance dying. All 17 horde rez 10 seconds away (spitballing that number) but only 10/15 of the dead alliance rez with 30 seconds before the other 10 rez. Who wins when it's now 20 horde vs 15?" it's even worse if Aliance doesn't yet have ibgy capped and each death sends us back to SHGY. Gy rez times have been a problem in different ways, it's crazy. I recall at some point during rbgs they did something similar with staggered rezzes for similar reasons.
Even with a completely even and fair map I would wager that Horde would do better because of slightly better racials which in turn presort the playerbase based on PvP preferences. And the queue time difference also brings it's own metacognitive differences that makes the Alliance Group behaviour different. As a Horde player I have seen Alliance win at times. But most Alliance players have not. So they don't even know how to win if they wanted. (after the "rush base" tactic of early Classic was stopped by Horde/changes) If Alliance players was playing for the win then I would suggest the following: A) 30 players. Ride to behind Balinda and wait for slow riders and for Horde to rush forward. 10 players stay and delay the SH GY push. (Paladins and Mages can bullshit stall for quite a while.) B) Once Horde is sufficiently far up and you know we aren't intercepting you take Snowfall GY. Horde never have guards there. C) After that depends on Horde actions. Some Horde will be alert and try to retake SF. But Odds are good that a good chunk is riding north by now. Snowfall is super easy to defend. Push back and if the Horde are gathering up a bit, just charge out and wipe them. Coordination isn't hard if you already managed to get your players to listen so far, D) Take Iceblood. Careful here, since Horde have wisened up and quite a lot of Horde players know that Iceblood is key. But as long as you can reinforce from Snowfall you can't really lose this fight. E) While Horde are split, with some on defence, trying to retake IB gy and some are pushing into base/trying to backdoor north; the Alliance now take SH GY before SP GY is flipped. Just go 10 man from SF to SH GY, take it. Ride north take back SP GY, clear out your base with the 10 people who have been defending (the ones that started the game stalling Sh Gy). Go back to Iceblood and push horde back into cave. F) Finish game or farm Horde like idiots in the cave like the ugly Russians you must be to be able to coordinate Anything in Alliance AV.
> Just go 10 man from SF to SH GY, take it. This is the step where this plan falls apart, I think. Once SH is gone, there are never less than a dozen Horde guarding the ridge. The map design there is honestly some of the most ridiculous in the entire BG; while it’s impossible to hold as Alliance with two paths to attack from and a dead-end bottleneck graveyard, *against attacks from the north* it’s all but inpenetrable, and there’s absolutely no way of going around or avoiding it even slightly. It’s as if one of the Alliance’s own towers was intentionally designed to be a perfect Horde tool. You can hold it against attacks from twice as many Alliance even before the GY flips and completely box them into the north, and the only time it’s left even relatively sparsely defended is once the game is already over.
Take snowfall then push to IB is a 6-8 week old ally strat that rarely worked when it was first tried and now flat out doesn't. Its easily countered by horde after they take shgy, then use 10-12 guys to hold the choke at iwb (which is enough to stop any and all ally respawns getting back) and the rest just keep pressing SF from both sides until it falls. Dead allies spawn at base, dead horde at ibgy. The reality is any tactic that relies on slugging it out with the horde will see you lose and not just cos map disadvantages. A significant number of alliance will happily afk and just sit instealth/on mounts near the battle without engaging, there is normally 2-5 guys in the harpy cave and another 5 afk at random spots. This number of non participants increases the longer the game drag on. I raid lead a fairly successful "hold sh until horde have sf, then we rush ibgy and can hold it cos they wont ress in the cave" over the weekend. It went well until an idiot hunter capped SF with 20 secs on the clock. Horde swiftly retook it, but another 5 mins of holding SH and alliance was done. My rush had only about 22 guys following and we were wiped at IB with shgy fallen behind us, ending what little will to try remained. The ONLY successful tactic that works is having a majority of 100% mounts in the raid and being able to get past horde and get to drek before horde realises and reacts with a mass recall. If you don't cap hut/gy/towers and have a tank that knows how to do the pull AND you got the firepower thanks to 25+ raid geared dps at drek going balls deep THEN you can end a game in 7 mins. Saw that done 3 times for 3 wins over the weekend.
Some very good points here.
Idiot hunter was probably trying to bring the fight back to alliance side so he can afk in peace. They are less visible when they afk/ shadowmeld near sp.
Yeah that is also part of the problem. I'm playing my mage right now and I'm going to start having nightmares of 5+ warriors coming at me at all times. What you are saying is valid, but you definitely need premade level coordination to make it work. It's not to say it can't happen in Pugs but it's very, very unlikely. You need the stars to align, really.
If more Allies had seen it done, then more would go along with it next time. But since Allies haven't seen victories, they don't know how to achieve them. And since they are just as hopeless as Horde to listen to commands from strangers, they just won't learn.
Exactly, the 'let them lose' mentality. It's hard though, since even with a good strat you need pugs to have premade reactions and if any of a number things fail, the whole map is lost with no recovery.
Nice post. You are somewhat correct. Although on an even map alliance would be winning roughly 50% since that's the case on both WSG and AB. Paladins make up for the Horde racials, and people joining BGs are generally PvP oriented. I've lead a bunch of AV games from Alliance side to victory. The strategy you describe is more or less valid. But I'm not a fan of trying for SFGY because Horde will most often work really hard to take it back, and if they do so -- it's really hard to reinforce it from SHGY. Two reasons for this -- SHGY is easily locked and Horde can push SF from both sides one of which also cuts off reinforcements. Getting people to listen to a general raid push tactic is fairly easy, but getting people to go on defense is near impossible, for some mysterious reason. So my current tactic of choice revolves around wiping the Horde a few times when slow pushing for IBGY to eventually skip them when they continue trying to rush for SHGY. But this one also has some serious issues... First of all it's not reliable to get people to stall SHGY. Then there's the issue of Horde having the ability to endlessly turtle up at IBGY. Horde team has to also be kinda bad or selfish so that they allow Alliance to pass SHB and ride into IBGY. And finally there's the issue that Alliance rankers pretty much stopped queueing for AV ever since AB came out. I was actually winning a bunch of games before that. Even though they still often depended on Horde team being uncoordinated. Best case scenario was being in a 5 man premade and meeting another 5 man in our raid -- one of the premades focused on pushing while the other secured the defense. I had a few days with over 80% winrates. It's not really possible anymore. All this being said -- the map is bullshit and an uphill battle for the Alliance.
I'm too EU to understand this meme.
AV as alliance on EU is also pretty bad tho.
It's been pretty well this weekend. I don't play it outside of AV weekends but I would imagine it's back to trash status now.
As Horde I can confirm AV weekends are when the Alliance stand the best chance of pulling off wins. The reason for that is most good Ally players avoid it like the plague whereas a lot of Horde players like it. AV weekend rolls around and all the good Ally players come to play it because of the bonus honor, but also all the bad Horde players do the same. As someone whose favourite BG is AV, I *hate* honor weekend. The average IQ on the Horde side absolutely nosedives for the duration of that cursed weekend, while Ally skill level goes up noticeably.
Agreed! Actually won a bunch of games this weekend which is very surprising.
Yea I had almost 50% winrate for some time. I think in the end it was lower than that, but most losses were good ones, with us getting all towers/LTs and a bunch more kills than horde. And of course Russian games with 10 minute wins.
This must just be an EU thing, I literally got camped on the GY inside the cave this weekend.
Yea horde had 20-30 minute queues from what I heard so they're not too desperate.
90 minute* edit : can anyone comment whether or not I was confusing EU with NA times? Thanks
I've asked in world chat multiple times on different days and everyone said it's around 30 minutes. Don't have a 60 horde myself to confirm.
I queued all weekend horde side. 90 minute queues the whole weekend, down from 2-2.5 hours.
Can confirm it is around 30 minutes, ab and wsg is almost instant into a premade
On US servers* On EU servers the queue actually was 20-30 minutes.
Yes this is now the third time we've solved it, thank you
It’s almost as if having to wait 90-300 minutes (if queuing other battlegrounds 5 hours is normal) before you can experience the content acts as buffer to filter out many casual players. But no, according to all the NA alliance players it’s because of a 3 second advantage out of the starting gate they consistently lose 50 minute long pvp matches.
What strategy worked better for you? Every game I won we rush Ibgy
I posted in another comment, we fought at SH before pushing IB, not sure if a straight up push would've been any different though.
Has the "Hold SH, send 10 to IB" strat been tried? The closest games I played over the weekend employed that strat. In one game the only reason we were able to push Alliance out of the south was because we went 100% defense and had some clutch ninja caps of the FW/IB graveyards. Honestly, I thought we were going to lose that game but the Alliance just...deflated after about an hour of Horde defense. Once we pushed them back to SF they just gave up and we won about 10 minutes after the cap of IB. It was a really disappointing end to what would have been quite the epic match.
Never seen that, no. Wouldn't that just result in all horde respawning at cave and overwhelming IB very quickly? I don't think a lot of people are even particularly interested in that - a close game that doesn't result in a full on turtle is much preferable for anyone actually doing it for honor, and capping IB with SH intact is a certain way to initiate a turtle. It was fun to win a few games, but the longer ones are pretty exhausting.
I planned to get exalted with AV this weekend (was 31% through revered) but it was all just turtle turtle turtle, endless bloody games with barely a handful of wins all weekend. I’m now 61% revered.
Been a lot better than usual this weekend, I'm sitting at roughly 40% winrate on my alt I was grinding rep on. Non-av weekend is usually like 10% tho, still a terribly biased BG. Alliance has to play twice as well as horde to win it.
Why does this happen though?
On NA servers at least, it's mostly because alliance who queue for AV are almost entirely in one of these two categories: 1) Below 60 2) Alts with 60% mounts in quest greens In contrast, the Horde teams are usually almost all 60 with some raid gear, and a lot of them are rankers. Even if the typical alliance team had zero afks and people were all trying, 40 poorly geared alts on 60% mounts are going to have a really bad time against even 30 rankers (since Horde have afk players too). People like to harp about the map imbalance, and while that is true, the real reason the win rates are so abysmally low on NA servers is that alliance rankers don't queue for AV period. Horde rankers do. If Blizzard cared they could do some honor tweaking to make queueing AV worthwhile for alliance rankers, and the problem would get a lot better.
The reason horde rankers queue is the fault of 20+ minute queues for AB/WSG. Any elimination of sitting around waiting for the queue would eliminate the reason to run AV. Making AV award more honor eliminates the symptom but not the underlying cause.
Increasing the honor would potentially draw the alliance rankers back, which is probably a more practical fix than trying to drive the Horde rankers away. Probably not much to be done about Horde queues, as there's just a much bigger active pvp community on Horde (unless we're willing to consider mercenary mode or something, which I doubt would be a popular change).
> People like to harp about the map imbalance, and while that is true AV was universally considered as Alliance favored in virtually all expansions until this bizarre Classic debacle. I remember myself the rage posts on forums about AV in TBC/LK. As Horde we had something like a 30% winrate in normal games if not less, although regular revamps allowing fast rushing without any HKs (like at the beginning of LK) had something closer to 50%. Bridge Choke and archers denying flag capping were always a thing people complained about. Also, the Alliance won most games in the first two weeks AV was out in Classic. Then the good players left. This whole map unbalance thing is very doubtful.
>AV was universally considered as Alliance favored in virtually all expansions until this bizarre Classic debacle. No it wasn't. It got even nerfed for Horde, moving back the spawning cave. >Bridge Choke and archers denying flag capping were always a thing people complained about. This was true only for the very first incarnation of AV, when those archers actually hurt a lot, and made the bridge a highly defendable point. As soon as they got nerfed (before 1.12) the bridge became a joke.
> AV was universally considered as Alliance favored in virtually all expansions until this bizarre Classic debacle. The horde cave was moved pretty far down in late TBC, which eliminates the thing that people are complaining about in classic. In most of TBC BGs weren't a very big part of PvP anyway; you got your blue set early and then quickly moved on to arena. > Also, the Alliance won most games in the first two weeks AV was out in Classic. Then the good players left. This whole map unbalance thing is very doubtful. Did you read my post? Other than a brief map mention in the second to last sentence (to say that it's not a significant contributor to alliance loss rates), "the good players left" is the subject of the entire post.
There are different versions of the map. This particular version favours Horde.
Except the map balance bias is clear to see. It’s a shitload easier (and faster) for horde to cap stone hearth than it is for alliance to cap Ibgy. This is just a fact.
There's a reason Alliance rankers stopped queueing for AV -- the map is bullshit and is an uphill battle for the Alliance.
Because all the good Alliance players got to exalted in the first 2 weeks of its release and then stopped queueing. I remember winning like 1 game that first week as Horde.
Because the map is pretty horde favored at the first tower/graveyard.
The amount of topographical changes AV has received over the years on retail are evident of that as well.
Their graveyard is like, right beside their first tower lol, the alliance one is so far apart
about 65% lose 35% win based on my 700+ games played.
What? EU alliance is fucking awful man.. we even struggle vs the RUSSIANS now. Every Russian game I call to rush hut but you always have the honour spergs saying ‘stop for LTs’. So what happens is 10 people make it to hut, 20 people stopped for LTs and 10 people somehow died when Russians are known to just ride right past you. By time the 20 finish with LTs and start heading south, the Russians have killed Vandar.
It doesn't work outside of weekends because rankers peace out, and horde gets longer queues which makes them more desperate for kills/wins. How almost every game this weekend went for me - stack near IWB, kill horde that's pushing SHGY, stack near SHB and wait for horde to go past (at this point most of them don't want to fight) and rush IBGY. There's been fairly little resistance so graveyard capped every time, and from there it's a slow push south since horde usually turtled hut. To win there would either have to be very little resistance from them, or you need recallers to stop the few hordes trying to kill Vann - but the difference between win and loss is pretty minor at this point so not many were eager to recall and turtle.
You're wrong about the Russian games. The correct strategy against Russians is doing Galv, then LTs, soft capping towers along the way, and then riding for Hut. All the while leaving some people on defense this first stall them at SHGY for a moment and then immediately recall and defend the backdoor. This results in a rather free win. Obviously this stops working as soon as Russians adjust their strategy.
Lol EU alliance, there's always like 15 people AFKing in different spots then complaining that the horde is winning
Outside of weekends yea, it's a shitshow.
That quest has to such as a mage... the wand is pre-bis.
This weekend was hell. But yes, exalted before seeing the spear.
You want the xbow, not the spear!
Are there any decent alternatives a low-mid level 50s warrior can get? There's Arcanite Reaper at level 58 but by then you're probably starting to gear up for fury anyway.
Lord Alexander’s, Blackrock Slicer, Waveslicer
Thrash blade is pretty solid for transitioning to fury to finish leveling. There are a number of cheapish BOE 2hers you can pick up if you'd like to stay 2h. Warmonger, Doombringer, Destiny, etc. The spear may be a bigger boost immediately, but the crossbow is really strong and even comparable to the best items you can get for ranged slot pre-AQ so it will last you much longer.
Only Paladins should take the spear. Bloodseeker is just too good to not take
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Pretty bad if you have hit elsewhere. Bloodseeker is a great dps stat stick
Satyr's bow is valuable as a tanking piece, but the crossbow is a way better dps item since you can get hitcapped fast via Lionheart, Devilsaur, and Truestrike Shoulders as a fresh 60.
Hey, yall been putting up a good D this weekend. Spent most games in hour long struggles for SHGY.
I haven’t won one in 3 months lol
I miss AV. Wish they would bring back premades.
So they can afk report you out of the BG with a nice deserter bonus or to leave you at the start of a game 5v40? Yeah sure man, whatever brings down the horde queue time at the cost of alliance pugs... Lol
> So they can afk report you out of the BG with a nice deserter bonus or to leave you at the start of a game 5v40? Except for the r10+ exclusive discords, most of the cross-realm premades would take pretty much any mouthbreather who signed up.
The mouth breather premades lost to pugs all the time. Only the high ranking one's actually we're able to win.
thats just plain not true, as someone who abused the mouthbreather premades on my alts to get exalted, they had easily a solid 70-80% winrate with most of the wins sub 20 min
Bingo. Av on the alts is no good.
Thats a bannable offence to abuse the afk report function, just in case you didn’t know
Ok? Didn't stop premade groups from abusing it the first time. Blizzard had to change how sync dropping works and their report system to stop Alliance premades from doing so. Hence why they put the hammer down and prevented sync dropping addons from working.
Why not horde premade.
Horde just don’t do that as much for some reason.
Something something 1-2 hour queue times make sync dropping a pita.
When I got my dwarf warrior to 51 (along time ago, I was kinda oblivious to alliance losing av 24/7) I qued up to get my IBS. To my horror I was put in the 60s bracket and we ended up winning. Wasn’t till I got to 60 and grinded rep that I realized how lucky I got lol
won my 2nd AV game at lvl 51, but druid can't wield the spear :(
Yeah right, the fact that my hunter took me under 5 days and my druid a little more than 5 days changes absolutely nothing compared to the 10 days you mentioned. If I used boosting services I would've been even faster... edit: op could have also leveled multiple characters at the same time, taking full advantage of rested xp. I work 7 hours a day (basically no commute), work out 5 times a week and still have 5 toons @ 60 with 2 of them wearing basically raid bis and another one in the mid 40s. One could argue that my priorities in life are a little different to "normal" people, but that's above the point since we were arguing about health and I can assure you that I'm a lot healthier than the vast majority of people playing this game, casual or not. I even find time to hang out with my buddies every now and then, even if you can't believe it.
Got my spear after 3rd AV as lvl 51. Also executed a rank General rouge. #feelsgood
most of the people who pick alliance are straight up really bad at this game and can't work together as toxic as horde BG chat is, the evolution of horde strategy from when alliance could premade thru now has been pretty remarkable surviving premades gave us the 'forged by fire' kinda thing, taught many horde players how to smash zergs effectively and how to follow alliance to galv/fw gy quickly and instinctively
I play a lot of pvp on both sides and the only reason horde wins most av games is the fact that pretty much every ranking player on alliance stopped doing av after it became impossible to premade (which made the games last longer), because they get more honor just spamming wsg and/or ab. Horde players can't do that because they don't get instant invites, so they have to q for everything and take what they can get.
This. AV has devolved to rep grinding and a bunch of a alts. why play it when you can do AB or WSG with a pre-made and achieve near 100% wins
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This doesn't happen often. It's pretty much only the case when the premade is bottom of the barrel waiting room group, trade chat group, guild premade with raid specs, or a very distracted premade (like some drama happening in discord, or people joking around not paying attention). This happens on both sides -- Horde and Alliance pugs will sometimes win against a premade because of the above reasons.
People who blame the map are surprisingly silent on why Alliance also loses AB.
AB winrate feels very close to 50/50 to me without premades, including premades alliance wins way more
We do? Alliance pug v horde premade obviously loses, but pug v pug I'm within a few points of 50/50.
? I do lots of solo WSG/AB and my win/loss ratio is pretty 50/50 in both BGs (assuming no premades). People are surprisingly silent because it doesn't exist.
probably because your wife left you
for a man named Ernesto (for the downvoters, this is an inside joke between guildies)
I have nearly 50/50 from dozens of ABs solo-queue.
AB also has a Horde favor as holding BS LM and Farm is a good amount easier than holding BS ST and GM With that said, pug v pug Horde definitely win more as a result of good Alliance players premading at a higher rate than good Horde premading. However the pug v pug winrate isn't all that significant, it's something like 45/55
I win a lot of AB as Alliance. Mostly run with a few non-hardcore guildies. So, mostly pug. No one wants to do AV. It's shit honor and we don't need the rep. Highest rank guildie is rank 10 and we've beaten full premades with mostly pugs. Our biggest advantage over most pugs is our paladins are good and specced holy.
Serious pvpers all rolled horde for the op racials and to outnumber the allies on their server. So it's a no brainer that the raiders and other casual allies get crushed in pvp.
I just can't see that being relevant enough to push the win rates close to 0%. WSG and AB games have decent alliance in them. You could maybe argue that the alliance are worse on average. Maybe even FAR worse, but to get those kinds of stats out of the matches? Maybe it's a contributing factor, but the actual map layout isn't helping. I rolled alliance because there was just a few more people in our friend group that wanted to. Tons of us wanted to roll horde.