How Alliance Can Do Better At PvP

[4KhazModan]

This thread was posted on my realm forums, and I thought it made some very good points.

I'm sticking my neck out here. I'm no long-term PvPer. Heck, I still don't have 10k HKs. PvP really isn't my thing, but it's starting to become interesting.

It's no secret that the Horde are outperforming the Alliance on this server to a significant degree. My question is - why?

There are lots of reasons. I am sure this post will inspire a chorus of "b/c Alliance sux" or "qq moar noob" responses. I'll give them the appropriate attention. In the meantime, I thought I would share some of my observations during my regular trips attacking Tol Barad, comparing what I see They (the Horde) do versus what We (the Alliance) do. Yes, we need to keep people on defense at nodes we control. This isn't about strategy, per se - it's more about differences in performance and execution.


All on the same side
What They do: Group up around several healers. More times than not, I see Horde groups pack 5-6 DPS around 2-3 healers with each one taking a doberman's toy view of the healer - "MY HEALER! YOU WILL NOT KILL HIM!" And in return, the healers reward the aggressive DPS with the heals they need to keep up long enough to protect the healers. It's a beautiful symmetry.

What We do: Nothing like that. Half the time, i can't FIND the other heales in TB and it seems we are treated somewhat as lepers to the raid of 20-30 DPSers who all seem to think they are invincible enough to take a crowd of organized horde down alone. I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone dash, blink, leap, charge, etc. out of healing range to run facefirst into a pack of defending horde, only to die before I can get a heal off.

What We need to do: Fight together or die alone. Repeatedly. DPS, be aware of where your healers are. Stay near them. Protect them. Healers - uh, heal. Keep the pew-pewers alive so they can keep you alive.


All Healers Must Die, Part I

What They Do: Focus fire one healer after another until only defenseless DPS remain. Okay I usually heal. And in the 5 seconds between I go from full health to dead, what I generally notice is that every ... single ... DPS in range is hitting me - at the same time. It's as though they all somehow sensed the same target at once, and all turned their attention as one to take me out. Oh, that's because they are.

What We Do: There are other people here? Where?!? There appears to be no rhyme or reason to what we kill. If we have 5 and they have 5, chances are 4 of us are hitting different targets while all five of them are killing... me. Ouch.

What We Need to Do: SOMEHOW we have to get on the same page. Pick a person in your group and stay on them. Focus them. Have an assist macro. But whatever you do - HIT THE SAME TARGET THEY DO UNTIL IT IS DEAD. Split DPS is non-existent DPS.

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All Healers Must Die, Part II (or, a stationary healer is a dead one)

What They Do: Crowd Control the @#$% out of Healers Usually, while I'm being bombarded with raining death from 4 players, I am being peppered with so many interrupts and CCs that I can barely get off an instant cast. Smart. An immobile healer is no threat at all.

What We Do: I CANZ NUKZ THRU HIS HEALZ!!! I've seen one healer stay up while 3 people just unload and unload on him, but never intterupt a single one of his heals, causing the death to take 5 times longer, if they kill him at all.


What We Should Do: FORGET EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT DR. Even if you don't keep a healer locked up with a CC on DR, it interrupts a cast. Nukes are fine, but any interrupt, stun or other immobilizing effect should be used, on healers, basically all the time. Just hit it out of habit.

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"You Guys Fail"

I'll start with what WE do in almost every fight. Some annoying, frustrating jerk starts whining about how fail the Alliance is, or this group is, or you guys are, the first time we lose a node, and raid / general degenerates into Trade Channel with crossing insults until the jerk's self-fulfilling prophesy comes true. Seriously? You can lose, even when you're good. You can't win if you spend half your time typing about how much this or that guy "failz" or how much Alliance suxxor or whatever. Save it. If you hate the group so much, just AFK out. We promise to miss you and will regret your contribution to our inevitable defeat.

What They Do: I only know from second-hand. But from what I am told, each battle tends to have a leader who calls the shots. And pretty much everyone does what they are told. And a crazy thing happens - they move as a cooridinated unit, and are way more effective.

What We HAVE to Do: This is up to all of you - if we ever want to balance out PvP on this server, we have to leave the petty BS at the door. You are going to be in groups with people who suck. Who aren't as good as you think you are. Who want to do it the wrong way. Go with it. Offer something useful. Heck, EDUCATE the ignorant masses. Or faction transfer. Railing on your own team doesn't help you win. Maybe it will soothe your tired, broken ego to vent your frustrations on the people who are at least TRYING to win. But it doesn't help them improve, and it doesn't earn you 1 HK, HP or BG victory. It just demoralizes them, and ensures that the losing streak you endure will last longer.


Tol Barad is broken. There's no denying that. And we're facing an uphill climb against a team that is already better organized with a history of winning on its side. Whether Blizzard fixes the problems or not, makes it easier or harder to win, "balances" PvP or whatever, as long as the Horde continues to play better, they will win more. We can strive to use the same strategy, or qq forever. Your call.




Here is the link to the original thread: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1965988376


What do you guys think on the matter?


*** I did not write the original thread, I simply reposted it here because it makes some valid points and sheds some light on some problems we have. ***

[wicker]

not a clue im x horde now playing ally and yea it seems winning a battle ground now is a pain

lvling a alt atm try crossing the field in wsg u get zerged ur team is off turtleing with no flag caps while ur trying to get the flag alone

my way around this gear the hell up here is the pally im working on http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...3%AAr/advanced

its not 2 bad at lvl 85 for me i run bg's with 3-4 buddys so i know i can count on a few people

[4KhazModan]

I was in a WSG the other day, healing. Me and the other healer in the BG, a shammy, protected you FC. in our flag room. Unfortunately, so did our entire team. We had no pressure to kill their FC, and eventually, after the other healer and I convinced our team to go get their FC, The horde sent their entire team to kills us. They were able to do that because we were all defending, so they didn't need to. Thus, zerg rushing me, the other healer and our FC. We stood no chance.

[wicker]

I was in a WSG the other day, healing. Me and the other healer in the BG, a shammy, protected you FC. in our flag room. Unfortunately, so did our entire team. We had no pressure to kill their FC, and eventually, after the other healer and I convinced our team to go get their FC, The horde sent their entire team to kills us. They were able to do that because we were all defending, so they didn't need to. Thus, zerg rushing me, the other healer and our FC. We stood no chance.

i feel u on that 1 been many times iv had 2 try and solo the other teams fc/turtle

u win some u lose some in that case mostly lose

[Darkdruidelf]

Umm, I wasnt keen on your idea of 'Kill the healer'. I play a healer and can take 3+ dps on me at once and generally be okay (not in arena when they co-ordinate). Its actually far more efficient and better to CC the healers (not too hard with so much CC these days).

But the main problem alliance have, is we argue with eachother far too much. Dont hate eachother, hate the horde. I think this is not helped by the lack of a unifying phrase. Horde can rally eachother by yelling FOR THE HORDE!, while we are left with AT LEAST WE HAVE STABLES!

[talitu]

its blizzards fault entirely , it may make sense in an rts to haev 2 factions but in a persisntant world pvp mmo its nuts.

back in the early days when wsg and av were released when all we had before was those truly epic TM/SS zerg fests it was actually pretty even but as rewards were added people obviously started to min max. will of the foraken was stupidly op and let rogues rape face freely, shamans were gods with there wf proc insta gib, paladins bom was considered op for raiding , dwarves fear ward was to.

caused a polar shift, anyone who wanted pvp to be their main focus went over to hoard and alliance took on most of the pve'ers

now a lot of these things have changed over the years but theres still a clear population bias re pvp numbers , alliance tend to get instant ques horde times are mental my lock has 40 min ques still.

its better than it was thans to balance changes, blood elfs and the que times etc.

but take any battle ground add up teh arena ratings and ilvl of pvp ear and horde will spank alliance just about every time. because most of the horde are thier to pvp , most of the alliance are just in it for the gear

blizzard could fix it over night by making the teams red vs blue and both teams made up of either faction , but thats against the vision TM so we have to sit and endure this shit or not bother.

[Garkanh]

this is probably the best topic this month.

it doesnt only helps alliance, horde have it the same way on some servers. i think both teams on every server is like this. you may see it as: they work together way better than us, there is a lot more of them than there is of us, and they got 10 healers, we got none.

but even that nonamed random guy who yell in /bg "go for the LM now!" can be the reason your team wins the battle, because if he didn't, 1-2 people would most certainly spend the entire bg just running up, dieing, ress and repeat. with that little note in /bg, those 2 guys gets help from 4 others, resulting in a capture.

it doesn't matter who calls the shots, if just someone do. on the other hand, if people start arguring about witch base to take, it can have a negative effect, as it may split up the group, resulting in posibly being unable to assault those bases, but also loosing the ones you have.



but the key to victory is teamwork, not the so-called "BG Heroes" who think they are a 1 man army of awesomeness

[Deleted]

alliance are kids, horde teh pwnz0rer!1one!

just kidding, this thread really hit a good topic, this is something every battlegroup experiences, be it that alliance or horde is the "underdog-faction". In my battlegroup (blackout EU), it's sort of balanced, but alliance almost always wins in certain bg's, while horde wins others. Tol'barad though, changes sometimes: some days in a row alliance really kicks our horde butts, and some days we kick theirs, it depends on the players themselves, not the faction.

[iwco]

alliance sux on my server (burning blade eu)
for example tol barad.. im pve player.. when im doing dailies and see a horde player i just try to kill him... but most of the time there someone get and help him.. when the same thing happens to me... nobody cares ...and it happened lot of times that when i was trying to save someone and the horde focused on me that the one just ran away and let them kill me ... thats what i hate the most

[Drakoes]

wait wait wait, aren't alliance pretty much owning it up atm? They seem to always win at AV/SOTA/Isle here....