The Wintergrasp BG is broken

[Torto]

I've been playing Wintergrasp all week across all my alts, and while I have really enjoyed the trip down memory lane it has a fundamental issue. Offense wins 100% of the time. Every game I've played, I've won 100% when on offense, and lost 100% defending. And it's not even close, with attackers winning with at least 15 minutes to spare.

So what can they do to balance it out a bit? Knowing blizz they will nerf stuff until it becomes a borefest and defenders always win after a slow boring 40 minute stalemate. But what should they do?

Inevitably people will reply they win as defenders all the time, great. Tell us your tactics, because I'm not seeing it ever. It's getting to the point now that when people queue and realize they are defending they quit immediately.

[AlmightyGerkin]

So for 1 and a half days

Haha got em!

[Nathasil]

Could it MAYBE be that defending in this BG is just plain boring and unrewarding so many players will not even try and just let the attacker win to get out quicker?

I mean, there is nothing you can do as a defender to actually end the BG with a win. You can just destroy the 3 towers but that only shortens the wait.

As attacker, you have a clear objective: Do X and you win and the BG ends immediately.

Or put in other words:
A strong Attacker vs a weak Defender means a very short match.
A strong Defender vs a weak Attacker means a wait-it-out not so short BG.

Maybe destroying the 3 towers should end the BG with a win for the defender? But at this point defending and attacking would basically be the same thing.

[Nellise]

Could it MAYBE be that defending in this BG is just plain boring and unrewarding so many players will not even try and just let the attacker win to get out quicker?

I have a feeling what's going to happen is it'll turn into the defenders just letting the attackers always win. The shortest time defense can win is 30 minutes I think. I won one on offense in about 8 minutes and that was with some defense trying (I also won one on defense where we only got 1 tower down and that took 40 minutes). You can get 4 games in in under 30 minutes if you just let the attackers always win, especially if you go suicide to get them vehicles faster, so unless you're pretty unlucky you'll get an attack queue before you'd get a win defending.

In old wintergrasp there at least was a reason to defend in that it let you keep the raid, vendors and quests available, but that's not the case here.

[Kagthul]

My account is currently lapsed so i haven't played it, but i'd guess the tuning is way off then.

The Defense used to be able to win because if you targeted the Offense vehicles you could implode them with the keep guns and the like. And if you captured even one place to spawn vehicles, you could use your vehicles to wipe out the Offense vehicles pretty easily.

It seems (from descriptions) that defense just cant do enough damage to slow down the enemy offense.

Maybe make the time reduction from toppling towers more severe.

Maybe give the defense side a slight buff on damage done by the defensive implements.

Maybe just do nothing. If people are getting out in 8-10 minutes, youll eventually rotate to Offense and win. And/or get a different Epic BG.

I'd also anticipate that when it becomes a staple in the Epic BG rotation and not a Brawl (like it is this week), people will take it a tad more seriously. If the D team can control both of the northern workshops, it can bog the O down immensely.

Well see, i guess. Given that it's just re-entered the game, its bound to need to tuning and updates, and you cant really test those for an Epic scale BG on the PTR, not enough people play and no one there takes it seriously. This is one thing that im willing to give Blizz some time to nail down.

Similarly, though...

If/When Tol Barad comes... Offense will never be able to win. All you have to do is stack in one keep and they can never push you out. And if they DO break you somehow, all you have to do when you respawn is go take another one, because they cant have left enough D to hold them.

So both of these are going to require further tuning and perhaps even some fundamental changes to make them work long term.

[Advo]

I've seen defense win 4 out of 4 of my matches. They just turtle up with catapults and demos supporting - no attacking siege can get even close to the walls. The handful down south eventually get a tower or two down and game is over.

[Eapoe]

I’ve done this once and I was on defense and we won.
Kill towers, get vehicles if possible and then turtle into the base. One thing I’ve noticed is Blizz fixed LoS issues favoring the defenders because you used to be able to run out on the opening of the towers and hit attackers and they weren’t able to hit you unless you stood at the very edge.
After my team turtled the attackers never got close. The only strat we had was game started, most people went to destroy the towers while maybe 5-6 stayed back to slow attackers down. When towers fell, people got vehicles, we grouped up and cleared out the attackers, and then maybe 5 people went around recapping workshops to keep attacker numbers low while everyone else fought at the keep.
Although I will say that if everyone ever organized and gave up on defending and they just let attackers win it would be a very quick BG.

[Cracked]

Got in my 1st game, on offense. Lost because people were clueless and Russians were too good at defending.

[Nakur-]

Back in the day, players of the faction that were outnumbered, would get a hp and dps buff. Is this still the case?

[Orby]

First game I played today as defence I won. Think you just might be unlucky

[Time Sage]

Back in the day, players of the faction that were outnumbered, would get a hp and dps buff. Is this still the case?

Well it's a BG now, so the system fills it like any BG and there isn't an imbalance.

[Dartz1979]

Wintergrasp is a sh$% show it's impossible to even defend towers and fortress when it takes like 20 or so kills just to get rank 2 also the mobs hit like a steroided brock lesnar.

[Lenarific]

Could it MAYBE be that defending in this BG is just plain boring and unrewarding so many players will not even try and just let the attacker win to get out quicker?

I mean, there is nothing you can do as a defender to actually end the BG with a win. You can just destroy the 3 towers but that only shortens the wait.

As attacker, you have a clear objective: Do X and you win and the BG ends immediately.

Or put in other words:
A strong Attacker vs a weak Defender means a very short match.
A strong Defender vs a weak Attacker means a wait-it-out not so short BG.

Maybe destroying the 3 towers should end the BG with a win for the defender? But at this point defending and attacking would basically be the same thing.

What drugs are you on my group night one won as defence Retype this as YOU cant win unless on offence...

[Thelxi]

Honestly it is such a noob fest on both sides that I don't agree at all that one side wins more than the other. I've seen handfuls of people try to run straight past a cannon with 300k health, ignoring it and then of course dying to it over and over again. I've seen entire teams where not a single person has the brain to do 300k damage to one of those cannons that is wiping their entire team, literally not one person notices the tower cannon that is wiping their team.

So basically, in a BG where 40 people can be completely clueless to the point of blindness, there really isn't much benefit to theorycrafting or going into the minutia of attack vs. defense map advantages. It's a noobfest and whoever has the least noobs on their team will probably win.

I'll mention though that if the stars align and an attacking team has a dozen or so demos/siege up at the same time, and they all push at the same time, there is a good chance you can very quickly finish the game, especially if half the defending team is still killing towers.

[TheVaryag]

I've been playing Wintergrasp all week across all my alts, and while I have really enjoyed the trip down memory lane it has a fundamental issue. Offense wins 100% of the time. Every game I've played, I've won 100% when on offense, and lost 100% defending. And it's not even close, with attackers winning with at least 15 minutes to spare.

So what can they do to balance it out a bit? Knowing blizz they will nerf stuff until it becomes a borefest and defenders always win after a slow boring 40 minute stalemate. But what should they do?

Inevitably people will reply they win as defenders all the time, great. Tell us your tactics, because I'm not seeing it ever. It's getting to the point now that when people queue and realize they are defending they quit immediately.

I don't think Wintergrasp should've returned at this point. Not only do people just not know how It used to work, the people who do have left 10 years ago. This Is a 10 year old "Battleground" and most people wouldn't have done It, definitely not with my estimated 2 mil WoW playerbase In total and even that seems genereous these days.

I only did the one and won on offensive, with just pure Demos and a few Sieges rushing the gates. Although... I think It's bugged? Because as I remember when you destroy attacker towers as a defender you reduce their timer only, I think that should change cause I never liked that. That should be an Instant Win for Defenders, If the attackers cant defend their 3 towers placed West, Mid, East then they should lose.

I do however want Ashran back... If for no other biased reason than doing the achivements as I couldn't do them before when WoD was out.

[khazlol]

managed to win a defense once, it was quite fun when people worked togheter and actually responded to calls. the trick was really just taking workshops back and having more vehicles than the attackers.

especially the catapult with that flamethrower could cremate other players fast

[Drynix]

Back in wotlk I won the defence often. It boiled down to tackling the towers fast and making sure the others couldn't get the bases to make vehicles. Then you start pushing em back and camp them bigtime near the graveyard on the left side of the map.

Had some of the best and biggest fights ever on that graveyard.

Havn't done the current version though.

[szandos]

Just played one, won on defence. Managed to stop their first zerg, then turtling in the keep with a small group downing towers.

[Sliske]

Inevitably people will reply they win as defenders all the time, great. Tell us your tactics, because I'm not seeing it ever. It's getting to the point now that when people queue and realize they are defending they quit immediately.

Split the raid 50/50 (i.e, grps 1-4 , 5-8) and send half to the east workshop, half to the west workshop.

Hold them while killing the attackers, then get maximum amount of catapults.

Proceed to grind the enemy into the dust. Good luck fighting against catapults aoeing your raid down at 44k dps / sec per target.

If you wanna speed it up a bit, you can send a few of the catapults on to the towers. By this time you'll have 20 vehicles available, so quite easy to spare a few.

Walls have so much health you can sweep the map, cap all the workshops and return with your own vehicles to kill them while they wail away on the walls for that entire time.

Defending is by far way more stronger than offensive.

[faithbane]

Just played one, won on defence. Managed to stop their first zerg, then turtling in the keep with a small group downing towers.

I honestly dunno what the OP is talking about, I won all 4 games I played on defense just because how overtuned the turret damage was. We were melting down attackers with it. they barely got past the first wall on both sides