Isle of Conquest

[Soaps20]

So i got my 2k rating and time to start farmig honor... got 60+ of every mark except isle, and to my surprise every time i enter find at least 25 players who can not learn this BG. Sure it hasn't been out too long, but how can it take more than two games to figure out Docks + one resource and good protection of glaives = win? Sorry for the QQ but i just played about 30 games today with maybe two wins and it's tiring and discouraging to say the least. Every game half the team will charge workshop, take demos and sit in front of horde keep getting mowed down by keep cannons as if they're actually helping.

So has anyone found a succesful strat to win when more than half the team only wants to ride airships/fight each other to ride the siege?

[speedymonkey]

I use to get really annoyed aswell when i would get teams that were insanely bad, but when it gets to the point were you know whatever you do you cant possibly win. Thats the point i go around having fun pretending its world pvp just killing random people until its finished.

[Soaps20]

i end up in the same situation most of the time, except it doesn't really work when most of the horde team is located at horde west gate, protecting glaives, unchallenged and all the alliance are confused at the horde's front gates confused with no nodes

[Garrazo]

its a really ez bg yet some people just cant get that " rush front gate mentality" out of their heads. ???

[Eroginous]

its a really ez bg yet some people just cant get that " rush front gate mentality" out of their heads. ???

IoC is actually much more balanced than AV, and my BG picked it up pretty well. First day I played probably half a dozen games and we won every time. None of them were quick wins, but people in my BG are pretty good at securing the right locations right off the bat, then pushing the gate.


But I understand what you mean. I think most people who queue for BGs are in the mindset that honor > marks, so that is what they farm.

[Taleas]

Be glad you got 40 players on your team all (most?) of the time, morons or not. On my battle group, alliance has rarely more than 20-25 players. 9 out of 10 games are like this, outcome of those battles is .. predictable.

Problem is apparently a population imbalance and the too-short waiting queues/prep time for battles. New BGs already getting started before previous ones have filled up in time on alliance side. I'd take 15-20 more morons on our team any day. Just keep some macros handy, education takes time .... :

[Gunjniir]

A large issue I have with IoC are the cannons and the way they are placed. If horde assault the Alliance West gate, the cannons on the side of the keep are placed such that if you are trying to aim down at vehicles/players right on the gate, you simply can't hit them and it takes twice or three times as long to kill anything there, all simply due to the "bounce" / rebound the turrets have when they fire. Only 1/2 of your shots actually fly where you want them to, the other half hit the floor of the tower you're shooting from. This makes a West gate rush highly effective and pretty much a sure fire win for the Horde if the utilize this weakness.

Also, glaive throwers can be set in certain positions (wish I had a screenshot) across the river to the west of the Alliance west gate, completely out of range of cannons, and just sit there and pummel away at the West gate. That on top of the surprisingly poorly placed/designed cannons on the side of the keep mean that as long as Horde get glaives and/OR demolishers, taking down the west gate is simple.

The only counter being strong ground forces, and that simply doesn't happen in Alliance Whirlwind battlegroup. Most ground forces are scattered or confused so, like I said, west gate just falls within minutes.

I've tried to see if there's a comparable spot for glaive throwers while attacking the horde east gate and haven't found one. The river/bridge near the alliance keep gives them this advantage. The Alliance can park siege vehicles right under the horde keep towers and negate the cannons while still using battering rams, but that leaves them susceptible to ground forces.

Also, a winning tactic most alliance completely ignore... if you go up to the cannon towers with a healer and a few dps via the catapults and take them all out, that leaves HUGE gaps in a respective keeps' defense. Horde always utilize this against us and their siege vehicles roll right in and knock on our door. Using a good compliment of ground forces with our cannons down, their siege vehicles pretty much do what they want. Defense around workshop/docks is negligible, so horde always end up utilizing glaives and demolisher each match to our destruction.

Only counter to all this is a quick and dirty zerg of the docks and/or hangar, glaive throwers and take out their eastern tower cannon defense with some geared players fighting up in the towers. Just sit there and defend your demolishers/glaives. So far though for me, 50 IoC battles with only 15 wins, pretty much the worst ratio of wins/losses of any BG I've experienced. It's been out long enough that Ally would have at least picked up on a successful counter/attack strategy for most horde attacks, but personally I think bad design (namely the cannon placement) isn't helping one bit. But we simply ARE getting out-played to a large degree (also namely horde catapulting into our towers and killing tower cannons..it's a bigger deal than you might think).

Edit: Oh yes and one thing ally ALWAYS fail at...the Siege Tank. As soon as the Siege tank is built, they roll into the front gate and starting hitting it....for 5 seconds, until all 6 or so Horde tower cannons are brought to bear and the tank (which takes 3 minutes to build) is destroyed/wasted. Using the siege tank on a well defended (read: destroying tower cannons) wall the most simple yet stupid mistake I see repeated by Alliance over and over again. The Siege tank is Anti-personell. That's why it has frickin flame throwers. Prime Example: Horde broke into our keep. I FINALLY managed to get control of the Siege tank after numerous idiots drove the thing into the crosshairs of 6 cannons at the front gate. I drove the Siege tank to OUR OWN BASE (!) and sat inside with a full crew and we won the battle via reinforcements because the Siege Tank just annihilated everything that walked through our open gate. The horde had the hangar, so every time the airship passed by, I just drove outside the gate (west gate of course) and waited along side the wall where the airship cannons would not hit me. Proper use of that beast can be devastating in the right hands.

Good luck, you'll need it in there. :/

Sleiphnir

[Apocalyptic]

PUG's can be an annoying issue when it comes to BG's yes. But i always just lead by example. If you just do the proper thing (goes for any BG really), sometimes, people do what you do. Sometimes another player or two follows you around.

Also helps to give small orders in the chat. Half the battleground follows them from time to time, and while not enough, it helps.

[Bakis]

Yes IoC is way more balanced than AV. It got one major big flaw tho, lets think of usefullness of the offensive nodes on a scale from 1-10 (10 being the best)
Docks 10
Hangar ~6,5
Workshop 2
All of these if played correctly on their own.

The big flaw is that the workshop is so stupidly useless. Only time its remotely usefull is if,
A: other team dont use turrets
B: team got hangar and parachute ppl to clear the turrets in advance
C: you got docks and lob ppl up to clear the turrets in advance (which means they got glaives as well and will win)

There is simply no way in hell that a team with protected glaives that shoot beyond turret range can lose.

[Joe Christ]

This is how IoC works on Horde side in my battlegroup:

1.) Rush Docks, except forget that because the Alliance zerg gets there first
2.) Lose Docks
3.) Return to keep and go AFK
4.) Lose

[Snorri]

Blizzard could help speeding up the rounds of the battleground by reducing the reinforcements down to 150 or 200.

[Soaps20]

thanks for the responses, the anti-personal feature of the siege tank is not something i'd considered and i've effectively been able to put that to use. Isle of conquest is actually my favorite BG now. Granted i take 6-8 friends with me every time, but Winning docks with 6 full furious/relentlesswpn players and giving glaives full immunity makes for the quickest and best honor ive ever encountered. I win about 1.6k-2.2k honor in a winning game of 5-7minutes, honor paradise. I've even brought my shammy alt and got full relentless non set pieces for resto and enhance. Take a few people that know what they're doing and hop on vent, it's more than worth it. Even though it's a 40-man BG, you can make a huge difference