Alliance premades lower tier strategies like "The Balinda Blender"

[garicasha]

I'm probably the only one but I've actually been having a blast playing AV the last few days. I'm usually able to get elected leader and it's probably one of the only groups where the Horde and Alliance both have a reasonable chance of winning. In the higher premade alliance tiers (knight or above I think) I'm pretty sure they just crush the game in 10-12 minutes, and the non-premades get ground to dust at Stonehearth.

Common strategies with some pros and cons:

Balinda Blender
Hide somewhere near Stonehearth bunker and graveyard, try and kill half the Horde but not all of them, then proceed to objectives.

Pros:
Stalls the Horde advance, makes it easier to backcap later as it spreads everything out

Cons:
Any Horde killed respawn at Iceblood graveyard, turning them in to defenders that have to be killed another half-dozen times at Iceblood, Frostwolf, etc.


Hard Right
Pros:
Straight to Galv, can usually get him first, and it lets the Horde go by and start doing their objectives

Cons:
Galv takes a few moments, capping a graveyard comes late, any Horde on the Field of Strife can come back in and ruin your day

Left
Pros:
Straight to IBGY, gets the timer going, gets lieutenants

Cons:
Easier for the Horde to intercept as you're running right past their preferred route to Balinda

Relief Hut Rush
Pros:
Instant win

Cons:
No lieutenants, requires an enormous amount of coordination, vulnerable to recalls.

So here's been my strategy so far:
Zone in and look at Horde opponents. If there's a half-dozen generals / lt generals, pick a conservative strat. If there's lots of grunts, a more aggressive one.
Generally go hard right and get Galv
Soft Cap IBGY, get lieutenants
Get out from IBGY ASAP to avoid Horde returning from Field of Strife
Cap FWGY and sit on it with 20

The trick is to try to never give the Horde a fight worth taking. Last night I did this and it worked well...5 Horde showed up to backcap FWGY, but because there were 15-20 of us sitting on it, they just had to sit there and look at us instead of attacking. This keeps the 15 of us alive of course, which keeps the progression going.

And it's interesting because neither side really wants to win, they both want maximum honor per hour. With the current Horde queues, this means Horde are much more willing to make a game last 20 minutes longer if it gives them the W, whereas if a game is over 30 minutes the Alliance will loudly start complaining to just let them win.

The thing I would really like to do is cap IBGY and sit on the two towers, but it causes so many problems because any Horde defenders spawn at FWGY and now they can't get out to do their objectives. Then they have to be killed a half-dozen times at Tower Point, a half-dozen times at FWGY, a half-dozen times at the FW towers, a half-dozen times at FWRH, and then a half-dozen times when they come back in from their cave. Any Horde that just leave and go on offense cuts the game time significantly, and making sure the Horde have IBGY so they can easily go on offense allows this.

So mostly I'm just here to discuss general strategies, but if there's one specific question I have it's what your opinions are about what it takes to end the game immediately? How many tanks, how many healers, how many DPS, how organized are those players, how organized are the Horde opponents, etc.

And I've had a ton of fun the last few days trying to strategize this all out. And now that I started thinking of it in terms of opponent's psychology instead of in terms of Alterac Valley, it makes a lot more sense. There's no magic combination of the above four strategies that always works, but everyone in that BG wants max honor per hour, so if you realize that and always give Horde an option of:
A. Suiciding against a chunk of Alliance that outnumbers them 3:1 or
B. Going for their own objectives
Guess which one they'll tend to choose. It's when you give them option C: "Fair fight with tons of honor to be earned" that games start turtling.

This is also why sitting on FWGY tends to work well because it doesn't cause enough alarm for people to recall, and then once it caps and 20 Alliance move in to RH, it's also more or less pointless to recall, so everyone stays on offense on both sides and the games end quickly.

I apologize for the stream of consciousness writing here (I'm in a rush for work) but I also dreamed up two other ideas:

The Mordor Strategy
A group of 20+ Alliance fight a huge battle at IB or FW specifically distracting the Horde from the 5 hobbit "burglars" sneaking in to RH.

The Galvangar Grinder:
For when the group barely makes it to Galvangar and is pursued hard...instead of killing Galvangar, you run in to the room like you’re going to but then reset him and smash the players that chased the death ball. (I did do this strategy once tonight and it worked well, we smashed quite a few Horde trying to jump us from behind and still finished Balinda before the Horde, go go 40 people with epic mounts.)

The Snowfall Snooze:
Group sits on top of Snowfall for 2-3 minutes giving the Horde no chance to fight the deathball so they continue to objectives. A strategy more designed for a quick loss than a W. Probably better late at night when the high-ranking Horde are on and won't let the deathball through easily.

The Stonehearth Shuffle:
Group piles in to SH bunker. The Horde, as of Jan 12, aren't used to this and just run past. If they did get organized enough to push the door, you just jump out the window and head south. Horde also cannot mount to pursue due to riflemen. I did this in three games with varying degrees of success. All three times it was successful at causing the Horde to just leave and go north, however:
--one game we held on to IBGY, IBT, and TP on our first attempt and wound up winning despite starting the match outnumbered 30 to 40.
--one game we held on to IBGY but not IBT or TP on the first attempt, which meant it was the 15-minute mark or so we headed south.
--one game we held on to IBGY but never fully finished TP and it was a slog

The problem with holding IBGY in most any game is that the Horde get stuck in the south and that is NOT what you want for fast games. And if you cap IBGY before they have a forward graveyard any Horde dying anywhere on the map come back to FW, the cave, or RH, all of which are bad.

So the opening works pretty well as it doesn't take long for the Horde to run by. However, there's some serious pros and cons to your next step of choosing IBGY or FWGY. [Rushing RH I personally don't advise; the whole point of this is to let the Horde just leave the south, if you go to RH they recall and the whole point of the thing is moot.] If a group really had people following directions you could probably stay in the bunker for 10-15 seconds, then do lieutenants WITHOUT capping IBGY (again, no deaths = no horde respawning there so no real reason to soft cap it), then go to FW and set up a perimeter...half the group at the FWGY, half the group at TP, and then just forgetting about IBT and killing the warmaster when FWGY ticks over.


The Killing Fields:
Turtle hard in the middle, cap Snowfall, and recall and get the druids going. 5-10 minutes in to the game you’re basically at the beginning again except with Snowfall and druids.

Hold IB while Ivus walks in circles around the middle, then IBT and TP go down about the time he's ready to start walking south.

A strategy designed for a long win, I doubt you could get many premades to do it.

Thundercloud Formation
For a Hard Right strategy, the group lines up like a thundercloud. The edges of a thundercloud are where the lightning comes from, so that's where all the ranged shoot from. The dark, swirling center of the cloud is where the melee are, and anyone foolish enough to enter does not return. And above the clouds is the sun, where the healing Light shines down on the rest. And yes, I've spent WAY too much time thinking about this.

[WashedUpRaider]

These strats are bad.

Grab all lt's, pull em to IB tower - dont cap IBGY - kill all lt's. Go to relief hut, soft cap it, have a pally/mage pull the entire room of warmasters, and kite them out, rest of raid walks in room and kills drek after reset before warmasters get back.

If no turtle, 6 minute 3000 honor win. If turtle, wait for RH to cap and same deal except its about 10 minute 3k honor.

[Classy]

These strats are bad.

Grab all lt's, pull em to IB tower - dont cap IBGY - kill all lt's. Go to relief hut, soft cap it, have a pally/mage pull the entire room of warmasters, and kite them out, rest of raid walks in room and kills drek after reset before warmasters get back.

If no turtle, 6 minute 3000 honor win. If turtle, wait for RH to cap and same deal except its about 10 minute 3k honor.

Well, tbf, the thread is called "Alliance premades lower tier strategies." Any Drek rush strategy is mostly effective with the better premades nowadays, and hit or miss with lesser premades, depending on the quality of the Horde pug.

[garicasha]

These strats are bad.

Grab all lt's, pull em to IB tower - dont cap IBGY - kill all lt's. Go to relief hut, soft cap it, have a pally/mage pull the entire room of warmasters, and kite them out, rest of raid walks in room and kills drek after reset before warmasters get back.

If no turtle, 6 minute 3000 honor win. If turtle, wait for RH to cap and same deal except its about 10 minute 3k honor.

I’ve had terrible luck with that, and all it takes is a couple Horde in the door to really make the pulls tough. And it doesn’t take that many recalls to ruin a loose group dealing with 4 accidentally pulled Warmasters.

IMO you need all the following things to make that work:
~3 tanks
~4 healers
~25-30 people total
—All of those people really on board with the plan and working well together (ie a leader doing healing assignments)


You have to have so many that Horde recalling is pointless, and it’s hard to reach that point with no graveyard.

Even though fighting against premades is probably not all that much fun for the Horde, it’s not all roses for us either. The higher tier premades have all the best players so even though we’re organized we technically are the B squad.

And at this current level those A list players are the ones with 2 T2, 6/8 T1, pre-raid BiS, etc, which greatly increases their ability to control Drek, heal through the warmasters, and DPS them all so fast the Horde can’t respond.

Also I don’t think it’ll be fast but I think blizz will break premades in some way. The current system is too broken.

[Shalaator]

Although the Belinda Blender is least optimal, it's also the most fun.

I prefer winning AV this way, since it involves a PvP battle from IBGY to FWGY. I then hearth to DB and play defense (while doing my turnsins). I will not hearth to DB until FWGY is secured.

The "Belinda blender" usually results in the playstyle that was intended by Blizzard.

[garicasha]

It kinda depends if it stalls out to a turtle or continues to a W.

I’ll tell yah one thing though, the hide strat was probably brilliant the first time people used it, and a week later there is no surprise at all.

I mean if you’re a Horde and you get to Balinda without seeing a single Ally, you obviously know they’re around the corner.

[Shalaator]

It kinda depends if it stalls out to a turtle or continues to a W.

I’ll tell yah one thing though, the hide strat was probably brilliant the first time people used it, and a week later there is no surprise at all.

I mean if you’re a Horde and you get to Balinda without seeing a single Ally, you obviously know they’re around the corner.

You forgot the fine print:

The "Hide Strat" at SHGY means the Alliance is GOING TO FIGHT!

Which means about 10-15horde afk in response, and we eventually win against the remaining 25-30 defenders, with all 40 alliance players active and in high spirits/morale.

[WashedUpRaider]

Well, tbf, the thread is called "Alliance premades lower tier strategies." Any Drek rush strategy is mostly effective with the better premades nowadays, and hit or miss with lesser premades, depending on the quality of the Horde pug.

Lower tier strats is just code word for "stupid inefficient awful strats that shouldn't be used" - if you take the RIGHT strat, and make it main stream... then problem solved.

[garicasha]

I just played a few matches this morning where the Horde actually recalled 10+ people when only the FWGY went, which I hadn't seen before.

[Kralljin]

Which means about 10-15horde afk in response, and we eventually win against the remaining 25-30 defenders, with all 40 alliance players active and in high spirits/morale.

If your strat relies on the enemy instantly going AFK and that all 40 people actually play, then it's not a good strat.

I've been in games like these before, where Alliance turtled around Stonehearth, the result was basically a 30-40 minute match where the Alliance didn't claim anything (because they had no offense) and basically guarded Stonehearth bunker like some sort of holy relic.
Meanwhile, Horde tapped all of Dun Baldar after enough people slipped through, then Alliance slowly started to give up.

If you want to win games like these as Allliance, you need 10+ people going for offense, tap FW GY, guard for 5min straight, then tap rest of the base.
But that also only works if Horde stops giving a shit, which they aren't always doing because people slowly caught on that defending objectives means more honor.

[Shalaator]

If your strat relies on the enemy instantly going AFK and that all 40 people actually play, then it's not a good strat.

I've been in games like these before, where Alliance turtled around Stonehearth, the result was basically a 30-40 minute match where the Alliance didn't claim anything (because they had no offense) and basically guarded Stonehearth bunker like some sort of holy relic.
Meanwhile, Horde tapped all of Dun Baldar after enough people slipped through, then Alliance slowly started to give up.

If you want to win games like these as Allliance, you need 10+ people going for offense, tap FW GY, guard for 5min straight, then tap rest of the base.
But that also only works if Horde stops giving a shit, which they aren't always doing because people slowly caught on that defending objectives means more honor.

If Alliance wipes first and ends up at SHGY...they (as in 5-7 players) afk and let horde win.

If Horde wipes first at Belinda and all end up back at IBGY...tyeh (also 5-7 players) also afk and let alliance win.

A deli doesn't know how many slices of turkey it needs each day, but it knows how many it needs for the entire month, based on the Law of Large Numbers and averages.

When the Horde sees 40 Alliance unified wiping them at Belinda, it causes 5-7 horde to afk EVERYTIME (as in STATISTICALLY EVERYTIME, 90%+ reliability), not literally. This gives Alliance a 90% chance to win the BG when this strat is executed, even though it takes 25-30 minutes.

Have a good day.

Btw, even if the strat had a low success rate, it's the only enjoyable strat that alliance utilizes from time to time.

[Kralljin]

When the Horde sees 40 Alliance unified wiping them at Belinda, it causes 5-7 horde to afk EVERYTIME (as in STATISTICALLY EVERYTIME, 90%+ reliability), not literally. This gives Alliance a 90% chance to win the BG when this strat is executed, even though it takes 25-30 minutes.

You know, i've been playing a classic AV for weeks now, talking about like 5-8h+ per day.
This "90%" scenario, hasn't happened. Once.
It's already rare enough to find a game where Alliance are 40 people at the beginning and then goes full def.

And if Alliance decides to def Balinda, Horde sooner or later just moves on and takes other objectives, i never saw that mass exodus of Horde player going AFK.
As Horde, you're pretty fine with longer matches, but as Alliance, those matches just ruin your honor efficiency.

From my experience, you don't win AV games by defending the enemy "to death", that only works if you're Horde and make an Alliance Pre made tilt to the point where they decide to leave (and that has actually happened to me).

[Shalaator]

You know, i've been playing a classic AV for weeks now, talking about like 5-8h+ per day.
This "90%" scenario, hasn't happened. Once.
It's already rare enough to find a game where Alliance are 40 people at the beginning and then goes full def.

And if Alliance decides to def Balinda, Horde sooner or later just moves on and takes other objectives, i never saw that mass exodus of Horde player going AFK.
As Horde, you're pretty fine with longer matches, but as Alliance, those matches just ruin your honor efficiency.

From my experience, you don't win AV games by defending the enemy "to death", that only works if you're Horde and make an Alliance Pre made tilt to the point where they decide to leave (and that has actually happened to me).

Your side tilts just as fast.

People are people. The law of averages affects average groups of average players evenly.

If 30+ horde hit the GY while at Belinda a good handful (5-7) go straight afk; same for alliance if they insta wipe Galv.


And just because their "appearing to play" doesn't mean they actually are. You'll notice someone will jsut mount up and charge in and die fast (over and over). They are doing this to avoid be noticed/flagged for afk. You have em on your side too, I see them charge in and just autoswing on me. As a healer, you know which horde players are hitting and which are fake hitting (virtually afking)!

[Kralljin]

-snip-

I'm not really bothering to argue this further out with you.
I'll leave it at that: I've been playing a lot of AV over the past weeks, what you describe simply hasn't happened to me - not once.

If Alliance is not a pre made, they are mostly going to lose, simply because Horde has generally better players because they don't have any pre mades like Alliance has where all of the highrankers are.
Whereas on Alliance side, the highest rank you see among a pug is Rank 6-7, meanwhile on Horde side, you have a couple of Rank 10-12 hopping around.

PvP is not a problem to these guys, they generally are the ones who want to collect additional honor from HK's, rather leave the objectives to other players where you might not even run into Alliance.
Sitting in a Dun Baldar bunker for 5min w/o any Alliance isn't efficient, killing people at Stonehearth Bunker / GY is (at least until you killed them four times).

[Marc2001]

I got called a "noob idiot" for suggesting on the horde side that the "Balinda Blender" strat was going to be used against us. Since the meta has been the relief hut rush, however I had the Balinda strat used against me by really strong teams that can camp iceblood after wiping us.

[garicasha]

I want to try these three strats tonight as I round out my Stormpike rep:

The Galvangar Whirlwind:
For when the group barely makes it to Galvangar and is pursued hard...instead of killing Galvangar, you run in to the room like you’re going to but then reset him and smash the players that chased the death ball. (I did do this strategy once tonight and it worked well, we smashed quite a few Horde trying to jump us from behind and still finished Balinda before the Horde, go go 40 people with epic mounts.)

The Snowfall Snooze:
Group sits on top of Snowfall for 2-3 minutes giving the Horde no chance to fight the deathball so they continue to objectives. A strategy more designed for a quick loss than a W. Probably better late at night when the high-ranking Horde are on and won't let the deathball through easily.

The Stonehearth Shuffle:
Group piles in to SH bunker. The Horde, as of Jan 12, aren't used to this and just run past. If they did get organized enough to push the door, you just jump out the window and head south. Horde also cannot mount to pursue due to riflemen. I did this in three games with varying degrees of success. All three times it was successful at causing the Horde to just leave and go north, however:
--one game we held on to IBGY, IBT, and TP on our first attempt and wound up winning despite starting the match outnumbered 30 to 40.
--one game we held on to IBGY but not IBT or TP on the first attempt, which meant it was the 15-minute mark or so we headed south.
--one game we held on to IBGY but never fully finished TP and it was a slog

The problem with holding IBGY in most any game is that the Horde get stuck in the south and that is NOT what you want for fast games. And if you cap IBGY before they have a forward graveyard any Horde dying anywhere on the map come back to FW, the cave, or RH, all of which are bad.

So the opening works pretty well as it doesn't take long for the Horde to run by. However, there's some serious pros and cons to your next step of choosing IBGY or FWGY. [Rushing RH I personally don't advise; the whole point of this is to let the Horde just leave the south, if you go to RH they recall and the whole point of the thing is moot.] If a group really had people following directions you could probably stay in the bunker for 10-15 seconds, then do lieutenants WITHOUT capping IBGY (again, no deaths = no horde respawning there so no real reason to soft cap it), then go to FW and set up a perimeter...half the group at the FWGY, half the group at TP, and then just forgetting about IBT and killing the warmaster when FWGY ticks over.


The Killing Fields:
Turtle hard in the middle, cap Snowfall, and recall and get the druids going. 5-10 minutes in to the game you’re basically at the beginning again except with Snowfall and druids.

Hold IB while Ivus walks in circles around the middle, then IBT and TP go down about the time he's ready to start walking south.

A strategy designed for a long win, I doubt you could get many premades to do it.

The devious one:
Holding this one for myself ;-)

[Shalaator]

I got called a "noob idiot" for suggesting on the horde side that the "Balinda Blender" strat was going to be used against us. Since the meta has been the relief hut rush, however I had the Balinda strat used against me by really strong teams that can camp iceblood after wiping us.

The teams doing the Belinda Blender are not premades, it's done by pug alliance groups. They seem as strong (or stronger than a premade), because 40 alliance all choose to PvP, and then many horde afk in response (about 5-7 off the rip). As horde gets camped harder at IBGY, several more afk (grand total of 10-12 combined) and the alliance remains unified with 35+ players in a giant deathball, slowly pushing to FWGY.

Active horde players finally run around alliance once Ally secures FWGY, but their active players split evenly between O and D. Ally deathball keeps marching forward (ever so slowly). Me and a handful of alliance will communicate in chat and form a small 4-5 man defense team at SPGY (we let them take SHGY on purpose), which is more than enough to delay the 15-20 horde that managed to get to offense, while the 30+ ally team rolls their few and demoralized non-afk defenders.

Am I correct in how that game went?

[Battlebeard]

Just rush down to Drek, don't cap anything, don't bother with anything else, just get to Drek. You can pull him without pulling any warmasters. Eazy GG. But obviously need coordination.

[Shalaator]

Just rush down to Drek, don't cap anything, don't bother with anything else, just get to Drek. You can pull him without pulling any warmasters. Eazy GG. But obviously need coordination.

Some people prefer inefficient games where PvP occurs.

[Battlebeard]

Some people prefer inefficient games where PvP occurs.

True, but I would still guess the majority of people do AV for Honor and Reputation, where effieciency is all that counts