Battleground Win Ratios, Upcoming SoO Changes Feedback, Blue Tweets, DLC #424

[roahn the warlock]

my theory. horde is used to winning more, so the average horde player doesn't go to the big battle ground where the fight isn't decided by actual PVP.

[BobAwesome]

Seems pretty accurate to me. That's what happens when every Horde toon has a viable racial in PvP. Extra stam, reduced stun duration, AoE stun, AoE silence, WotF, in-combat health regen, touch of the grave, voodoo shuffle, blood fury, and berserking. Goblins are the only race that are really on the short end of the stick. But those racials sure beat everything the Alliance had outside of EMFH.

So you don't think Stoneform, a 20% heal, Escape Artist, a sprint or Shadowmeld have any uses in pvp? Lets not forget the weapon specializations that allow you to gem/reforge/gear for more damage...

Yeah... the people who claim Horde have superior racials are the people who shouldn't be pvping. You simply lack the intelligence to use things to your advantage...

[ApeDosMil]

I am surprised by the difference in AV still, I am currently horde and if I go in there with a 3-5 man premade I still feel like I win a fair portion of the games. Just settle with the fact that your going to back cap towers and graveyards, and call it a day. Its fairly rare to see a hunter drop a flare on the bridge anymore so its easy to stealth right on to the towers, and ther eis likely only 1 or 3 people up there. But that is simply my personal experience, I honestly don't remember the last time I won IoC as horde, I am sure I have won at least one this expansion but I can not recall when it was.

I really wish there were more horde that understand this, backcapping wins the game. That being said, as someone who right now plays mostly alliance, I will admit how easy the towers down south are to defend after being capped. One entrance, really small interior, the flag in the middle is solid so it helps a little more with preventing knock backs. Trying to defend the bunkers from backcappers is near impossible. They're much bigger than the towers, plenty of open space for knock backs to be advantageous and any alliance not noticed can retake the bunker while line of sighted from distracting players/combatants. Horde do have the advantage though if it comes to turtling with the chokepoint and highground after the first two bunkers, aside from the bridge.

[Osmeric]

Horde loses IoC and AV due to self-reinforcing effects. The good horde PvPers tend to blacklist them, which makes the horde loses, which makes the good horde players blacklist them. A feedback loop of fail.

[subanark]

That grapth shows that all bgs need to be fixed, not just av and isle of conquest...they should all be in the 10% range 0o

You can have a perfectly symmetrical BG (like Strand) and the stats can be way off. This is due to any fluctuation (luck, or some good team queueing a lot) can encourage people who are losing to try another BG, and let the winning side who has more experience continue to steamroll newbs who don't know better.

The primary way to "fix" this particular issue is to simply to add horde v horde and alliance v alliance for non-rated BGs. This will partially fix the issue, although having mixed teams or horde and alliance will fix it further.

Racial balance can be examined better at the arena level, although there might be some racials that work better in BGs (I would think goblin and worgen movement racials work better in BGs).

[Osmeric]

The primary way to "fix" this particular issue is to simply to add horde v horde and alliance v alliance for non-rated BGs. This will partially fix the issue, although having mixed teams or horde and alliance will fix it further.

Mixed teams are the only real solution.

[notorious98]

So you don't think Stoneform, a 20% heal, Escape Artist, a sprint or Shadowmeld have any uses in pvp? Lets not forget the weapon specializations that allow you to gem/reforge/gear for more damage...

Yeah... the people who claim Horde have superior racials are the people who shouldn't be pvping. You simply lack the intelligence to use things to your advantage...

GotN is garbage. If it were a flat 20% heal, then maybe. But it's not, it's over 15 seconds. And it's on a 3 minute CD. That is shit. Sprint is ok. Escape Artist is ok because it doesn't do much for real crowd control. It just fixes movement. It's not like breaking out of a REAL CC that keeps you from being able to cast or attack and there is no DR for slows or snares which reduces its effectiveness when the effect can just be reapplied almost instantly. Shadowmeld is ok because it drops you from being a target and stealths you. That's nice. Stoneform, again, is only ok. The weapon specializations? Meh. So you get a very slight increase in constant damage. Considering most PvP favors burst over sustained damage (due to healers almost always being OP), the weapon specializations are nothing great.

And, by the way, I never said they had no uses. I said they were worse than Horde racials.

[meltorefas]

Those numbers look entirely accurate from my perspective, playing 90s BGs both sides on Shadow Council. I have never lost a game in IoC on my ally hunter, and not lost more than 1/~25 games of AV on her. Whereas my horde paladin is better geared, but never sees wins in IoC and rarely in AV.

Not sure what the deal is with IoC, but AV definitely favors the Alliance by a small but significant amount when it comes to a pure race... which is all that 90% of the games there amount to. Would be nice if the horde played more defensively/smarter rather than just zerging, since alliance will pretty much always have the advantage in pure zerg AV. [That doesn't mean they will always WIN a pure zerg, just that they have the edge in it.]

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

AV is too rushy which makes it boring, but you can simply change that for yourself by not joining in the rush. I love AV because when I defend on either side I get some really fun pvp going on. The people saying there's no pvp just park their fat asses in the middle of Field of Strife and then start whining. I really want the old AV back though.
I still don't understand why Blizzard isn't adding a bg with no objective so those people can stop whining.

[Deleted]

so at the end of the days conclusion:

Alliance is the faction with most players using bots / Honorbuddy - Have a nice day everyone

[Mormolyce]

Those win/loss stats are incredibly skewed since they introduced blacklisting. Pre-blacklist I saw 50/50 win loss in AV and IoC, or at worst maybe 60/40. But now every Horde player with a brain blacklists them, which means the average skill/gear level of Horde players in AV and IoC is vastly lower, which causes more Horde players to blacklist them, which causes more Alliance players to not blacklist them as they become easier and easier wins, which causes more Horde to blacklist them...

The spillover of "better" (on average) Horde players into non-AV/IoC BGs is what causes the Horde win/loss ratios to be a bit higher there.

As someone with 80/100 wins in the IoC achievement on a Horde toon, man is this frustrating.

[Salech]

Horde winning everything except 2 Battlegrounds, better make it so Horde win them ALL instead with shitty balance!

[subanark]

For me, warstomp has never worked out well (as a elemental shaman). If I'm in range against a single person I usually spend a full 1.5 seconds getting off a 2 second stun due to push back (its rare to be to get into melee as a spell caster if you are also one). If I'm up against multiple alliance I'm dead anyways. If its the "mob" situation, it has no effect or worse due to stun DR (not to mention the 5 man limit). I haven't really done arena, so with proper coordination it may work well.

[Salech]

So you don't think Stoneform, a 20% heal, Escape Artist, a sprint or Shadowmeld have any uses in pvp? Lets not forget the weapon specializations that allow you to gem/reforge/gear for more damage...

Yeah... the people who claim Horde have superior racials are the people who shouldn't be pvping. You simply lack the intelligence to use things to your advantage...

Yeah stoneform is soooooooooooo good and escape artist is probably the most insane skill in the game, there is 1 good racials for PvP on alliance, 1, unless you are totally out of this world crazy ofcourse, and that's Every man for himself.

[NorthWay]

The primary way to "fix" this particular issue is to simply to add horde v horde and alliance v alliance for non-rated BGs.

Disagree.

A better fix would be to randomize starting points. I mean, the SotA statistics should leave any ally in here speechless. As much as I hate SotA for its utter randomness, it is in many ways the most fairly designed bg (apart from not being very good).
Perhaps all BGs should be played twice over, once from each starting point?

I have another fix I'd like to suggest: The PvE bosses in AV and IoC needs at least 3x as much hp. Have you looked at the scoreboard at the end of an ally IoC rush? The amount of healing being dished out is pathetic. The boss goes down so fast that I can get killed inside the hold and have the game over signal go while I'm still waiting for the hold gy ress to complete. Any defense play goes straight out the window with this idiocy.

[MightyWombat]

Are this stats from EU or US???
(Even if the horde win in 10-15 BG, the alliance still won more than lose in the total recount of bgs played, because alterac and IOC are played with much more frequently than 10/15 Bg's)

well the info says the data was gathered from around 7mill subs wich means EU and US.and in total alliance might have the higher win ratio but per player that wouldnt be true...due to them losing 9 other bgs ^^ while hordes changes of winning are higher on 9 and low 2 that they can B-List thats what i think some people want to show here.When you see it from 1 players view.Thats IF this data is anywere near accurate...

[Constraint]

bg blacklisting was a great idea in principle, but turned out disastrous. it is also the main reason queue times are horrible.

That, my friend, is nonsense. If BG blacklisting was the main reason why queue times are horrible, then, logically speaking, as soon as a Horde player queues for AV or IoC, their queue should be instant. Think about it. If that's what Alliance queue for and Horde don't.

That's impossible for a number of reasons. Firstly, although it's possible for Horde to blacklist both AV and IoC, it CERTAINLY isn't possible for Alliance to blacklist every other BG in the game besides AV and IoC, unless you're suggesting that Alliance as a whole simply don't queue for randoms, they just queue for specific BGs, forgoing the extra CP/HP for randoms.

As soon as Alliance hits "queue" when they join a random BG, the game doesn't just think, "I'll only allow these guys to queue for AV and IoC, since, they win more here." And equally, when Horde hit "queue", they game doesn't think, "Fuck these guys. Instead of giving them a magical instant queue for AV and IoC (lol) I'm going to force them to wait 12 minutes in the OTHER bg queues, since they win more over there."

Secondly, how is it even remotely difficult to ascertain that the reason for horrible queue times is simply because of faction imbalance..? We all know it's the case. It's been the case for some time now. The ratio is simply too heavily skewed in favor of Horde. For a tiny example, say 50k Horde players are actively queueing, and 30k Alliance players actively queueing. The Alliance players are close-to-instantly matchmade with 30 horde players (who've been in queue for ~12 minutes). The Horde players who can't queue instantly are forced to wait until either Alliance players finish their BGs or new Alliance players are queueing. It's not a difficult concept to work out. The "snowball effect" is only kept under control by the fact that there's a limited number of Horde players queueing, and the fact that people are increasingly put off queueing the longer the queue is (simple logic).

TL;DR - blacklisting has absolutely nothing to do with queue times, as clearly proven by the fact that Horde, the most populous faction, do not have instant queues when they specific queue for AV or IoC. Faction imbalance is the sole reason for long queue times for Horde.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Disagree.

A better fix would be to randomize starting points. I mean, the SotA statistics should leave any ally in here speechless. As much as I hate SotA for its utter randomness, it is in many ways the most fairly designed bg (apart from not being very good).
Perhaps all BGs should be played twice over, once from each starting point?

I have another fix I'd like to suggest: The PvE bosses in AV and IoC needs at least 3x as much hp. Have you looked at the scoreboard at the end of an ally IoC rush? The amount of healing being dished out is pathetic. The boss goes down so fast that I can get killed inside the hold and have the game over signal go while I'm still waiting for the hold gy ress to complete. Any defense play goes straight out the window with this idiocy.

The focus of those BGs aren't actually killing the commanders though. They aren't very hard to kill for a reason. Originally AV was about a push war. Not its become a commander zerg, nothing more.

[Constraint]

Disagree.

A better fix would be to randomize starting points. I mean, the SotA statistics should leave any ally in here speechless. As much as I hate SotA for its utter randomness, it is in many ways the most fairly designed bg (apart from not being very good).
Perhaps all BGs should be played twice over, once from each starting point?

I have another fix I'd like to suggest: The PvE bosses in AV and IoC needs at least 3x as much hp. Have you looked at the scoreboard at the end of an ally IoC rush? The amount of healing being dished out is pathetic. The boss goes down so fast that I can get killed inside the hold and have the game over signal go while I'm still waiting for the hold gy ress to complete. Any defense play goes straight out the window with this idiocy.

I don't understand what you're trying to say. You say a better fix would be to randomize start points, then you clearly prove that the only BG which DOES randomize start points (SotA) has the BIGGEST Horde victory percentage..?

I think there are a few reasons why Horde's dominating most BGs, and I don't think it has too much to do with start points.

Yeah, Horde racials are effortlessly stronger than Alliance's. Hopefully this'll be changed soon.

Also, Horde, sitting in queue for a lot longer, would, I imagine, be more determined to make the most out of their more limited BG time than an Alliance player, who can get instant queues whenever and wherever they like. No-one likes sitting through a 12 minute queue just to lose over and over. Of course, no-one likes to sit through an instant queue just to lose over and over either, but it's still a factor. This doesn't solve the mystery that Horde have longer queue times to begin with, it might simply help explain why Horde win more often than Alliance.

Thirdly, perhaps the age-old adage is correct - more PvPers choose Horde because they look more "badass", or "warlike". This is obviously completely subjective, but it's been going around since Vanilla, and I certainly haven't seen any evidence to the contrary.

IoC was always a completely flawed BG. There's simply no mechanic WHATSOEVER to force or guide players into mass PvP conflict. It almost ENCOURAGES you to avoid the other faction, which is retarded. Sure, there are exceptions, but there always are.

As for AV - anyone who's played in the old days weeps for what once was. Sure, it's faster now, but who fucking cares? I wouldn't trade fun for speed any day, month or year. It's no longer a battle of push and shove, it's just a rush to the end hoping that your towers stay capped and theirs don't. Where do I sign up!

[illumnat]

I strongly argue with a lot of those percentages given how long I've been playing this game. If anything, those percentages should either be
in favor of the alliance over Horde, or have the margins shorter. I don't recall Horde winning more, even by a little bit than the other side.

AV though, that I will contest is primarily won by Alliance. Rightfully so, the landscape is tailor made for them. Horde have to cross a bridge
for crying out loud, its the best chokepoint for people to play defensively. There's a lot more landscape for them to travel to our base than
vice versa, superior towers and a helluva lot less defense at the base compared to Alliance (all those cluttered enemy NPCs that players pull)
and its skewed in their favor.

As a Horde player... we have 2 really good choke points. The choke point at Iceblood GY and the choke point on the hill leading up to our base. It's just a question of if enough Horde are willing to play defensively for it to matter.

There is only one way past Iceblood. You need to have a stacked defense there though. Some up front towards where the roads come together just past IB tower and some a little further back by Tower Point to catch the stragglers that make it through.

We can hold off the Alliance indefinitely at our gate if we're willing to do it. I've played in some Horde AV premades where we have a strat called "Sweaty Armpits." Basically, we let the Alliance take all of our towers and wait for them at our base. We then hold them off at our gate and whittle them down until they run out of reinforcements. Yeah... it takes quite a while, but it is doable... even with as few as 20 in the premade.

The bridge is a great chokepoint as well, but it's not insurmountable. Horde has to make a concerted group push across the bridge and through the Alliance that are fighting at the end of it. Too often, Horde stops on the bridge and doesn't push through. In order to succeed on the bridge, they need to rush as a group straight through to the aid station and cap it to keep the Alliance from rezzing back there.