State of Isle of Conquest BG balance right now

[Axi]

So, it seems as though by design the following is true of this BG(welcome to debate it).

Hangar+Workshop is the same speed as Docks alone, assuming each team holds 1 of either refinery or quarry.

However, to win with Hangar+Workshop requires much greater co-ordination of who is doing what OR to kill the glaives from docks.

Glaives now seem proportionally much harder to kill at 90 cap than they used to previously, which leads to a situation where to have a reasonable chance of winning, a team that does not take docks has to play almost perfectly, balancing defending demos, driving demos, airship gunnery, bomb running, and attempting to kill glaives, which with 40 random strangers is somewhat tricky.

Meanwhile, the team that owns docks only needs to defend glaives, or catapault and run bombs, or simply wait around until the gates drop and rush in to boss.

Thoughts? Should Workshop+Hangar be buffed to compensate for those issues?

[Feral Camel]

I think the main issue with this battle ground is how it is played. Everybody wants to play offensive.

For example. Both teams go for Docks.
The Alliance win.
The Horde then goes for the workshop.
The Alliance plow through the gates using the glaives.
Alliance win.

While I do think the Glaives are too strong, all that needs to be done is to rethink tactics.. and convincing 39 other people you have a clue.
That's the hard part.

On a side note.
I have long thought this battle ground would be far more interesting if it randomly removed either the Hanger, Workshop or Docks at the start of the match.

[Axi]

Well like I said, I believe that if both teams play offensively then WS+Hangar is exactly the same speed as Docks alone, but the problem is that WS+Hangar requires much more co-ordination from the team to achieve maximum efficiency, where as Docks you are pretty much set so long as the Glaive drivers are not idiots.

I'd sooner see each of the three totally normalized against each other so that it didn't matter which you took, but any combination of 2 bases would be faster than just 1.

[loki504]

but with a small group you could easly take out the glaives.

dock is like las vegas. if luck is on your side(aka non goes after the glaives). then you will win. but if a small group knows how to kill your out of luck fast.

[Kaleredar]

I play on Alliance... our strategy is almost always "gogo docks," but people have started to see that hangar is a way to an easy win as well. Back in cataclysm, docks was only EVER useful if no one decided to go after the glaives, as a rogue could pop evasion+smoke bomb and kill them in about a second and a half before anyone could do anything. And without glaives, docks is nearly useless, as the catapults are usually much too slow to fling people into the base effectively, or are usually parked in turret fire.

Really, if you nab hangar and both refinery and mines, you're basically set for the rest of the match... if enough people drop down into the enemy keep, the occasional rezzers can't do anything to oust them, effectively giving you a permanent leg up in the match... both the workshop and docks become useless in that regard when you lose the vehicles.

Now, as for the "workshop+Hangar" argument... I don't believe that workshop pulls that much weight. Like I said, I play ally, and horde usually have workshop almost the entire time in about 85% of the matches I've played. Now, maybe this is just the matches I've been in, but... I've noticed that the horde rarely seem to have a specific gate they go to. Honestly, they seem to attack either the front, west, or east gates almost with the same frequency, and on some occasions, try and take down two gates at once... usually resulting in very little damage done to gates and lots of demolishers falling to turret fire. This being the case, it's the players that consistently run bombs to one gate, after having dropped in from hangar, that seem to do much of anything.

[Axi]

One more thing I should add, I believe Demolishers are currently bugged where by the battering ram ability is only usable on very small parts of each gate, this leads to a pretty big loss for whoever has workshop as most people don't seem to realize this.

Bombs from inside keep is definitely stronger than workshop though, because the siege takes forever and demos even when used properly can barely match that.

Glaives are most certainly not easy to kill right now, at 85 cap yes you could kill them in a smoke bomb, but now with the amount of CC everyone has and the increased HP glaives have, you need to dedicate too high a number of people to take them down frequently with any degree of success.

[Deleted]

glaives can't be one-shotted any more, but they still only have 1.2m HP, which a lot of classes can chew through in less than 10 seconds. If you get at least 2 people with a brain attacking them, they will die quickly.

[Naxere]

Yeah Glaives + Refinery/Quarry is the easiest way to get in now I think. Pity the Horde in my battlegroup tend to zerg Workshop and half the raid stands around at whatever gate's being attacked while the Alliance win easily.

[Cairhiin]

Yeah Glaives + Refinery/Quarry is the easiest way to get in now I think. Pity the Horde in my battlegroup tend to zerg Workshop and half the raid stands around at whatever gate's being attacked while the Alliance win easily.

Winning at Docks at the start as Horde is near impossible though, but yea this is what always happens. Half the Horde raid standing in front of the gate doing nothing. 1-2 Demos bombing the wrong gate. In Cata we could win because we could kill Glaives (if you could find a couple people willing to do that).

[Deleted]

Winning at Docks at the start as Horde is near impossible though, but yea this is what always happens. Half the Horde raid standing in front of the gate doing nothing. 1-2 Demos bombing the wrong gate. In Cata we could win because we could kill Glaives (if you could find a couple people willing to do that).

Its funny. Every ioc starts with ppl spamming "Glaives is key", "kill glaives", "go docks" etc etc - and every time the result is 3-5 horde going docks, and no one trying to kill the glaives. And maybe Glaives is slightly to strong - maybe they should nerf the range a little bit so you at least could go at them with keep cannons.

[Saisen]

I agree that glaives are overpowered and really they make it way too easy to get into the keep. Any change is pretty pointless right now though. Every isle I have played since mop released has been overrun with bots. Literally the last game I did was 3/4ths bots, we had 3 people to kill the general...

[Axi]

Just had a few games, every time Horde won Docks at start, they won easily before Alliance even had Horde gate below 75%.

Horde are pretty good at WS+Hangar because its what they have done for so long, but still even playing almost perfectly the Alliance keep gate is at 15% when the Horde Keep is already getting overrun by Alliance.

[Norzuk]

The way AV and IoC are designed people will tend to go Offense, most want.

IMO these 2 Bgs should assign 20 players to go O and 20 to go D.