Horde has ~37% win rate

[Xucuroz]

I feel like the best thing Blizzard can possible do, rather than buff/nerf racials, is to just flat out not have them work in PvP at all. There you go. I've no idea how the Legion PvP system works with the talent system but it seems like the best solution for everyone to just not have them work at all.

But then we'll just move onto the next reason why one faction is performing worse than the other.

This is something I've noticed a lot in bg's most alliance teams only have 1-3 people people that are there for gear most horde teams you see 70-80% of the team needs honor gear. And that's probably why horde gets wrecked so much on top of the other issues.

And yet i see the opposite, where most Alliance are either PvE geared or have barely any PvP gear. Maybe that's due to the faction number imbalance but you can't say one side has this problem and the other doesn't, because when it comes to the issue of gear, both sides experience it. Just like both sides experience defeatist attitude right off the bat before a game even plays itself out.

[bloodrunner]

Looks like the devs that ACTUALLY work on PvP are aware of the problem.

They may be aware of the situation, but I don't believe they feel this is a "problem" that needs to be addressed (at least not yet.) Once the statement came out that the "best players went to the Alliance", I knew they would do nothing in WoD. The racial changes would not be reviewed and modified until Legion comes out. We are stuck with long queues on the ally side and mostly losses on the horde side. Such is PvP in WoD.

[Wow]

And yet i see the opposite, where most Alliance are either PvE geared or have barely any PvP gear. Maybe that's due to the faction number imbalance but you can't say one side has this problem and the other doesn't, because when it comes to the issue of gear, both sides experience it. Just like both sides experience defeatist attitude right off the bat before a game even plays itself out.

I bet you have lot of losses as alliance too right...

On my allie I rarely ever see a losing bg much less one that "defeatist attitude right off the bat". Unless we're now talking about non lvl 100 bg's for some reason.

Personal exps aside the numbers show horde suck ass and alliance win most of the time at everything unrated and horde basically don't even exist in rated pvp lol.

[Ol Scratch]

Blizzard needs to remove EMFH and the way I'd balance it, is make each side have comparable racials.

No, what they need to do is grow the balls to just remove all racial abilities -- active and passive -- and just let them be aesthetic choices. Which they should have been since day one. The hilarious bit about this is how they're now claiming they like active racial abilities, whereas several years ago (around the creation of Wrath of the Lich King if memory serves) they said the exact opposite thing, but were too scared to get rid of them for whatever ridiculous reason they had.

That, or everyone should have the exact same racial modifiers just with different flavors. ie, everyone gets a X% reduction against one type of energy damage (Arcane for Blood Elves, Nature for Night Elves, etc.), a X% bonus (or maybe -- maybe -- as an active ability) to some secondary stat (Versatility for Humans, Bonus Armor for Dwarves, Crit for Worgen, etc.). Though making it active is silly since most people will just macro it into one or more of their most oft-used abilities anyway. And that would be it, period. The only thing they'd need to watch out for then is to make sure that if their secondary bonus is relatively more versatile (based upon how many classes and specs rely on it), their energy resistance should be equally reflective. For instance, with dwarves and Bonus Armor, most specs won't benefit much from that. Therefore, giving them something like Poison Resistance makes sense.

But game balance is harddddddddd. Blizzard told me so.

[Sorthalis]

Just got an alli to 100 a couple days ago. The only BGs I have lost have been due to not having healers while the horde had two or three.

Also haven't lost an AV yet.

[Deleted]

thats gonna change in sept 1.

[Feel The Power]

While I believe what the Op says about Horde's overall win rate, it certainly has never been my experience in my 10 years playing. Pre-battlegroups...Horde always dominated my server, post-battlegroups and CRS...Horde just dominated harder and it has never changed. Regardless if it's bg's or Ashran or whatever outdoor pvp zone a current expansion has, the Alliance in MY own experience are usually always beaten into the ground. The main thing I've always done in WoW was pvp, and until I gave up on bg's a year or so ago I still was yet to get even over 50 wins in WSG since they started keeping track of wins around Wrath, and nowhere near close to getting exalted with them even though I have played that bg hundreds of times since the day it came out. It took me years to even get exalted with AB because Alliance is just nonstop stomped. The worst threat in WoW over the years hasn't been the Horde to me, it's fellow Alliance players.

[rojavin]

You are not the most intelligent one I see. The human racial is more than just 1 ability. The vast majority of top PvPers are now human. If you think the slight buffs that were shown are going to do counteract the free trinket and versatility buff that the human racial has, you are quite deluded.

You hit the nail on the head. 120% correct.

[Deleted]

So, I just stumbled across this. You can see some biases due to bans, like AV and Strand of the Ancients, but even SOTA only has a 47% win rate for EU, and 48% for US for horde.

Interestingly enough, if you look at Arena teams, you find most of the top 200 teams to be Alliance. At one point it was 98 out of 100 teams in EU were Alliance.

I have to assume Blizzard has these numbers, and they've been consistently trending this way. I'm pretty sure most people are aware, now, how strong EMFH and Shadowmeld are, now. I have to wonder, do the devs just not care about pvp balance, at all? I get making a few classes stand out above the rest, but making an entire faction objectively better? Just seems..wrong.

When best players play alliance and only noobs play horde, alliance will win

[Daerio]

The problem isn't with EMFH but rather bandwagoners and defeatist attitudes. Remove the incentive to play the FoM race and shit will even out over time as players go back to playing what they like and not what's best.

When every criticism of the design of the game is met with, "How can we blame the players for this?"

- it's time to pack it in.

No, players switching factions to take advantage of the racial imbalances is not the players' fault, sorry. It's Blizzard's, for making zero attempt to actually balance the factions, and throwing bandaid after bandaid on it, while absolutely refusing to do what reasonable players keep fucking asking for: REMOVE RACIALS. (or make them cosmetic only) Mercenary mode is the last bandaid, Blizzard's way of letting everyone know they have no intention of ever fixing it.

And the reason they're never going to fix it is because it continues boosting revenue from faction/race changes. If anything, they'll continue pushing changes that encourage people to pay for these micro-transactions even more. Once they feel enough horde have switched over to alliance, it would not surprise me in the slightest if they over-buffed horde just to make more money on the transfers back. Of course, fanboys will accept their reasoning that, "We finally decided to address the issue, but we let it go on so long we have to over-compensate just to make it work!" and gladly shell out more money.

And then the alliance tears will flood the world as the population imbalance shifts back.

[Sorthalis]

When every criticism of the design of the game is met with, "How can we blame the players for this?"

- it's time to pack it in.

No, players switching factions to take advantage of the racial imbalances is not the players' fault, sorry. It's Blizzard's, for making zero attempt to actually balance the factions, and throwing bandaid after bandaid on it, while absolutely refusing to do what reasonable players keep fucking asking for: REMOVE RACIALS. (or make them cosmetic only) Mercenary mode is the last bandaid, Blizzard's way of letting everyone know they have no intention of ever fixing it.

And the reason they're never going to fix it is because it continues boosting revenue from faction/race changes. If anything, they'll continue pushing changes that encourage people to pay for these micro-transactions even more. Once they feel enough horde have switched over to alliance, it would not surprise me in the slightest if they over-buffed horde just to make more money on the transfers back. Of course, fanboys will accept their reasoning that, "We finally decided to address the issue, but we let it go on so long we have to over-compensate just to make it work!" and gladly shell out more money.

And then the alliance tears will flood the world as the population imbalance shifts back.

And this is pretty much 100% accurate. The best way to fight this problem is to simply stop giving them money.

Also note the Dwarf racial is actually quite OP as well, it is basically a free dispell against melee comps.