is av dead for horde

[Deleted]

hava done the av bg yesterday( havend in it for atleast 2y) di it for 5h in a row in all that time horde could not win a single one of them ?????.
when i talk to my more pvp oriented friends they say to avoid av as a whole due to the fact that it is dominated by rusian teams whit an extreme amound of healers in there team and since horde hardley go in bg whit healers we lose , sad cinda loved that one.

[Romeo83x]

The latest statistics showed that alliance wins like 92% of Alterac Valley games. Pretty much all the better horde players simply ban AV and never play it, making it even more in favor for alliance (since horde only has undergeared new players in the team).

[Gigana]

Short answer: Yes, it's dead.

Long answer: Most horde pvp-ers have blacklisted it due to being imbalanced in alliance's favor, so AV horde is greatly comprised of bots and new players who don't know better. It used to still be worth it during AV weekend because you could alt-tab and watch Breaking Bad while your char sat behind a tree and racked ~300 honor per loss, but since BG weekends are a thing of the past now, Ashran is basically the same thing only with actual PvP and balanced map, and bot numbers are likely to go down - what with everyone gearing up super-fast thanks to lockboxes - I predict AV dying an ignoble death in WoD.

[Deleted]

The only time horde wins Alterac Valley is during the leveling process and it happens that you get a decent group, or if you make a premade at max level.

As others above me said, the problem lies in most of the decent skilled and informed pvp-ers from the horde side, blacklisted Alterac Valley, and most of them blacklisted Isle of Conquest as well, so whenever you join one, it's mostly new players and undergeared at the horde side vs the general decent and bad players at alliance, or lately just alliance premades of germans and russians.

So i recommend to blacklist Alterac until something changes, like disabling 40-mans premades, or rewarding the horde for actually queueing for it. Blizzard doesn't actually acknowledge that most horde players blacklist Av, so i have no hope for it.

[Gigana]

As an Alliance that wants quick honor points I only queue for Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest. 100% win ratio, fast wins.

I'm really wondering why Alliance wins those two battlegrounds constantly.

Dunno about IoC, but AV is heavily imbalanced in Alliance's favor.

Essentially, it's just much easier for alliance to cap and defend towers, and get to horde base without getting bogged down. It's also much easier for a small group of alliance to bog down the entire horde team due to several bottlenecks on the alliance (upper) half of the map.

[Magd]

Dunno about IoC, but AV is heavily imbalanced in Alliance's favor.

Essentially, it's just much easier for alliance to cap and defend towers, and get to horde base without getting bogged down. It's also much easier for a small group of alliance to bog down the entire horde team due to several bottlenecks on the alliance (upper) half of the map.

I run AV quite a bit on the Alliance side and I find the horde loses most of the time due to not defending their towers as they should. Most of the time they leave them open especially north and south on the Alliance side. I always make sure we have a back cap team for this reason which buys us the time to win. The bottleneck aspect can happen on both sides but the horde doesn't choose to defend enough from what I've seen. When they have won, it has been because they back cap the crap out of us while defending their towers. Them back capping also draws more of us away from crucial positions to return to a tower to take it back. They also have a much greater chance of winning when Alliance chooses not to back cap. I'm sure good players blacklisting AV on the horde side plays a large role but nevertheless, this is why in my experience they lose most of the time

[zoomgpally]

I run AV quite a bit on the Alliance side and I find the horde loses most of the time due to not defending their towers as they should. Most of the time they leave them open especially north and south on the Alliance side. I always make sure we have a back cap team for this reason which buys us the time to win. The bottleneck aspect can happen on both sides but the horde doesn't choose to defend enough from what I've seen. When they have won, it has been because they back cap the crap out of us while defending their towers. Them back capping also draws more of us away from crucial positions to return to a tower to take it back. They also have a much greater chance of winning when Alliance chooses not to back cap. I'm sure good players blacklisting AV on the horde side plays a large role but nevertheless, this is why in my experience they lose most of the time

That's because the good horde players have given up on AV because of the terrible balance.
Random example: Alliance can cap tower THEN kill guards, horde have to kill guards first.

As for IoC, I heard something about horde turrets not being able to hit demos at side gates, but alliance were. Haven't tested it.

[Navitas]

Dunno about IoC, but AV is heavily imbalanced in Alliance's favor.

Essentially, it's just much easier for alliance to cap and defend towers, and get to horde base without getting bogged down. It's also much easier for a small group of alliance to bog down the entire horde team due to several bottlenecks on the alliance (upper) half of the map.

Swings and roundabouts though really. Yeah it is easier in some respects for Alliance but you're bunkers are so much easier to hold down. Ours is just an AOE zergfest which we normally lose.

[rda]

As an Alliance that wants quick honor points I only queue for Alterac Valley and Isle of Conquest. 100% win ratio, fast wins.

I'm really wondering why Alliance wins those two battlegrounds constantly.

Because Horde don't queue for them (historical reasons). The only people you get to fight are new guys who don't yet know to blacklist them. Plus bots.

[gorkos]

Dont know if it is dead. For the first time in over a year I took it and Ioc off my blacklist. in Ioc half the team was afk from the beginning so alliance won with no challenge what so ever. In AV ...NO ONE back caps and most of the time the bunkers get left with no one there. its rediculas how almost the entire team runs to the alliance base and just sits there wondering why they have not taken the bunkers yet and the bosses are not being pulled. So after that experiment those to went right back on my ban list.

[Gigana]

I run AV quite a bit on the Alliance side and I find the horde loses most of the time due to not defending their towers as they should. Most of the time they leave them open especially north and south on the Alliance side. I always make sure we have a back cap team for this reason which buys us the time to win. The bottleneck aspect can happen on both sides but the horde doesn't choose to defend enough from what I've seen. When they have won, it has been because they back cap the crap out of us while defending their towers. Them back capping also draws more of us away from crucial positions to return to a tower to take it back. They also have a much greater chance of winning when Alliance chooses not to back cap. I'm sure good players blacklisting AV on the horde side plays a large role but nevertheless, this is why in my experience they lose most of the time

Naw, doesn't work that way, here's a little breakdown:

- SH bunker is out of the way of horde moving north, meaning the defenders will have fewer horde to deal with.

- Compare Iceblood tower, which is right in the path of the alliance army, meaning that even with 10+ defenders they'll get zerged by 30+ alliance, making it impossible to hold.

- Bunkers can be ninja-defended because there are a couple spots around the flag where a sneaky stealther can stand and cap without being noticed or taking aoe dmg.

- Towers can't be ninja-defended because the ninja would have to stand right in the little flag room, where he'd be spotted or just hit by aoe.

- Towers can be capped while all the NPCs are still alive. In bunkers you gotta take out the NPCs first before capping.

- The east & west frostwolf tower are much closer to each other than the two bunkers in alliance base. With no need to kill NPCs, a single player can quickly cap them with no trouble.

- The bottlenecks are a lot more prevalent on alliance side. Basically, starting with IW bunker, the entire alliance side is one long bottleneck that also has cliffs on all sides so injured players can be pushed off en-masse by a single shaman or druid. Horde has only three small bottlenecks (IB tower passage, and the two gates in the frostwolf keep), and the rest is all open ground, and you can even jump over frostwolf keep wall without going through the gate.

- Galvangar dies faster than Balinda because Balinda uses undispellable iceblock.

TLDR: Horde don't defend because our towers & side of the map are exceedingly difficult to defend. Alliance can cap towers & kill bosses faster than horde can due to map imbalances.

EDIT: Before your pride drives you to argue these points, ask yourself this: why is AV the only BG where alliance has such a massively higher win ratio, when every other BG is like 50-60% in one side's favor? Obviously, if it was just strategy and player skill, alliance would be winning a lot more in other BGs, as well, right?

But they don't. Which indicates the map is the problem, which it is. If you still don't believe me, roll a horde toon and give it a shot yourself.

[Cute Chen]

When I occasionally do battlegrounds, I'd say my win/lose ratio for AV is about 40/60, I don't understand. Maybe if I did PVP more regularly I'd see more Alliance wins? Usually Horde loses AV because they've decided to lose right from the beginning, so they don't even try. The other half of the groups I get that do try, usually win, or at least come very close.

[Captainn]

On horde I've been unblack listing av for the last few days since it's the only viable way to get honor now ... even losing it's around 150-200

[Deleted]

Alliance generally wins AV and IoC. Horde wins everything else and still whines about the Alliance winning AV.

[Arrashi]

Alliance generally wins AV and IoC. Horde wins everything else and still whines about the Alliance winning AV.

Its probably because AV is perfectly balanced and all other BG's favor horde

[Deleted]

Everytime i play AV against a russian server with my alliance character, i lose. The problem here is the complete different tactic compared to the european hordeplayers.

EU-Horde try to rush and can be easily stoped at balinda or an other bottleneck while the alliance split in two groups, one for Galvar and one to rush into the hordebase. The russian-server-players dont rush, they defend with 40 man and kill the first rush-group. Now they have to kill the second group 20vs40 and camp the GY and you will never get all 40 people back into one zerg to face the russian-server-players.

[Deleted]

Problem with AV is, Horde has to defend to win, Alliance has to rush. Sadly most people aren't much for defending. Couple that with HK farm groups having run wild there in the past and you can easily see why the mayority of Horde eventually took to black listing it. Thus a statistic slightly in favor of Alliance became a ridiculous one.

Also this problem is self perpetuing. Lose AV? Black List it. That way eventually you only end up with AFK people, Bots and the likes and it becomes even worse thus black list AV.

@Laterne, European Horde has mostly black listed it. So it's really mostly bots you face. Those Russian groups you're describing btw are premade farm groups and not random groups. They're one of the reasons why Horde stopped playing the 40 man battlegrounds. Alliance has short queues even with such groups, so it's easy for them to queue for those two BGs and you'll face them pretty often. There really isn't a way a random group of 40 people will beat a HK farm group.

[Lanthanum]

I blacklisted AV and IoC as soon as the feature became available on all of my Horde characters. I grew to hate both of those battlegrounds. Wouldn't shed a tear if they removed them from the game.

[Prag]

Fuck AV. That crappy battleground will stay blacklisted until it's finally deactivated.

[Gentlepenguin]

I think people have things out of order. People didn't stop queuing first, it was botters that increased losses and thus led to blacklisting of AV/IoC. Botters are a massive problem, and it's not your typical "farmer" bots in here. It's regular players, probably even your guildmates, running bots 24/7 to gear their characters and farm for them. Late at night it gets worse. There may only be 3-5 legit players in the entire BG. That's my experience on Ruin at least.

It's not a problem that can simply be solved by less people blacklisting, and for sure Alliance has bots as well, but they're not complaining about free wins. Horde like to tell themselves "Well, at least they deal with massive queue times, that's why they try harder!" Nope. Not the case. I've seen several groups of Alliance back to back in AV. Most of them find joy in denying bunkers too instead of zerging out a fast win, so you spend more time for a pitiful amount of honor.

Blizzard are the only ones who can solve the problem but most people don't care. Either because they benefit from botters across the entire game for cheap crafting materials to probably even running their own guild bank for raid consumables, or they plain don't even know botters exist. In Cata it wasn't until somewhere mid-Firelands that the first ban waves hit. The time between detecting hacks/bots is too long to ever get rid of issue.