The death spiral that is AV

[[Apok]]

I made it clear.

Not at all, you're attempting to counter something that wasn't stated

How much honour are you farming per week per character?

It all depends on your server as well (I don't think you understand how it works), I find it amusing you think you'd be rank 14 by now if you focused on one character (although I think you are talking about 15 years ago with your rank 10 and 12).

The people who are currently rank 11, have been playing stupid amounts.

Pretty funny when people say you needed to account share or play 16 hours a day to achieve high ranks in vanilla.

Yes you did have to consistently play due to honour decay, but taking the argumentation to such extremes is quite unneccessary.

[Noxina]

What I love about this, is that first AV was very Alliance favored with the route they had compared to Horde to rush the last boss.

Horde adapted, and we usually have 10 on attack, while the rest stands and wait for Alliance to come Galv, and then we wipe them. I never see Alliance do anything new, they just run head first into our raid, and die.

Then there is the premade Alliance AVs, those are a bit tougher, as they clearly have some communication. So they either rush stright to our base, and nuke Drek in seconds. Or wipe our defence with a coordinated attack.

So it's not like you can't win as Alliance, you just don't know how.

*edit*
However, I don't mind AV dying. I so much rather want to do WSG premades, but everyone even slightly serious about honor grinding is AFK in AV all day long. And WSG without a premade is just.. meh.

[Tekkommo]

Not at all, you're attempting to counter something that wasn't stated

If you wanted rank 14 in vanilla, yes you needed 16 hours per day. Maybe if you were on a dead realm, not as much. It's the players on your server that decide the amount of time needed.

At the end of vanilla, they changed something to make ranks far easier to get. I've forgot what it was, but plenty made rank 14 when that change was made (maybe it wasn't ranks, but just the gear).

[[Apok]]

If you wanted rank 14 in vanilla, yes you needed 16 hours per day. Maybe if you were on a dead realm, not as much. It's the players on your server that decide the amount of time needed.

At the end of vanilla, they changed something to make ranks far easier to get. I've forgot what it was, but plenty made rank 14 when that change was made.

Except for the fact that the 16 hours /day figure was simply not true, Most realms ran dedicated premades for weekly honour cap with people rotating in and out, with far less time requirements than quoted figures, i did alot of farming and raiding in vanilla and still would have achieved a higher rank had i not had to take a 4 month break. And i played far less than 16 hours a day, let alone pvping for that amount of time.

Blindly caliming that 16 hours a day was commonplace much less required is misrepresenting.

[Th3Scourge]

Alliance need to, quite literally, git gud

[Jyggalag]

You're insane, good luck!

My girlfriend definitely thinks so. Thanks!

[Mukind]

Ironically, before av launched in classic, the consensus was that Alliance had a definite advantage over horde, that it wouldn’t be a fair fight.

So now, horde players played, reviewed what was happening that made them lose, and invented a new meta.

How about the alliance does the same?

I’m an alliance player myself, saying get good, and most of all, get organized and have an actual plan.

The horde can't premade we can.

So alliance ques are split. You have very good premades and terrible pugs. While Horde have their rankers in their pugs....

No matter what with the way premades are this was gonna be the outcome. Maybe not as terrible, but we should be vastly overmatched in pug v pug. Only people left in solo que AV are the dredges and people there planning to AFK or meme

All the alliance winning is done in premades.

[Hawg]

Well the TLDR version of this thread: The current version of AV is not sustainable, and Horde do not realize that. As long as the Horde continue to deny Alliance pugs even the honor of lieutenants and commanders, less and less Alliance will que meaning the Horde will get to enjoy longer and longer ques where they face 50% Alliance pre-mades.


You can say "git gud" all you want, but when you rub your opponent's nose in the ground every-time you kick his ass, you cant be surprised when he stops playing.


Keep this in mind before you flame me: The battle at the moment for alliance, as pugs, is not the Horde, its the afk'rs and the effect of premades making many (most?) battles start 13v40. So when you manage to find 5-10 people in a pug who are actually playing, and you manage to convince them to try and salvage some honor by tower caps and lieutenants, you have effectively done all that is possible in the current state of alliance queing. To then face 20+ hordes who are defending those lieutenants is disheartening as hell.


I'm not saying the Horde should just let Alliance have the Lt's and towers for free... I'm just saying that when you win with 4500 bonus honor to 396, after farming the 5 or so alliance trying to make the BG somewhat worth playing, then don't be surprised when your ques get longer.

[Rotted]

Ironically, before av launched in classic, the consensus was that Alliance had a definite advantage over horde, that it wouldn’t be a fair fight.

So now, horde players played, reviewed what was happening that made them lose, and invented a new meta.

How about the alliance does the same?

I’m an alliance player myself, saying get good, and most of all, get organized and have an actual plan.

100% alliance have the advantage, I used to rage about this all the time - being an alliance player myself,

1) Not by much, but the alliance have less distance to travel to key points from the starting points.
2) We have the bridge, if anyones unaware of this then a few druids can make the difference between the alliance having a spare 10 seconds to 5 minutes.
3) Our bunkers are fully open and can interrupt horde capping frequently and from multiple directions
4) Flip side of that, horde towers are closed off, you can cap a tower with two people if you do it right. Even if you're clueless you can do it with 3.
5) The horde encampment is perfectly designed. You move in, you clear NPCs. You get the RH. Our Aid Station however is directly within range of nearly every single NPC we have. Horde either need to take a large group in or wait for more people to turn up.
6) One I used to hate back then, Galv was quicker and easier with less people to take down every single time because of balindas iceblock.

I'm sure I had 10 core core points from back then but honestly can't remember the rest.

Honestly though spawn camping and gy camping is nothing new. If you're not working hard enough as a team and coordinating then thats your potential punishment. Alliance can easily win. Back then I was 60 for about 7 months and all I did was AV. I used to lead it every night for hours and I can count the number of losses on one hand.

[George Costanza]

My biggest issue with AV is that its a 40 min Wait time (38 min if you want to be specific) for a 5-15 min game, depending if you are facing premade or not.

(i almost want them to add mercenary mode for classic).

[Hawg]

Well I guess it was bound to happen... just lost one 4752 bonus honor for the Horde, 0 for Alliance.

[Battlebeard]

Yeah, Alterac Valley is hell. I win 5% at best solo queing as Alliance. Luckely I don't care about rank, I just want Exalted and then I will never touch it again.

Would have been nice to find a premade, but it seems litterally impossible, every premade there is or ever was is closed

[Shalaator]

Yeah, Alterac Valley is hell. I win 5% at best solo queing as Alliance. Luckely I don't care about rank, I just want Exalted and then I will never touch it again.

Would have been nice to find a premade, but it seems litterally impossible, every premade there is or ever was is closed

Sounds like AV 1.12 is FUN to you! (me neither!)

Wouldn't it be nice then if they gave us AV 1.5 for the pure purpose of FUN. Infinite rep-layable content? Queue into the 12+ hour ongoing bloodbath, slay two to three hundred horde and then leave the bg...meanwhile you had FUN!?!?

I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY THEY DIDN"T GIVE US AV 1.5

95% of players will NEVER step inside AV 1.12 ever AGAIN after they become exalted...because it is NOT FUN.

AV 1.5 is FUN

[pinkz]

i just did two months of retail Korrak AV event. blizz could move korrak to mid, and get rid of the quests that were TW token related in the BG and you have a good classic version. but that version has serious imbal problems, if it is near to what was in van wow?

i played both factions. alliance won 20% or less of the time. many alliance claimed horde starter location they had less of a chance to win. i pointed out to them that classic wow has same location and alliance are winning alot.

playing both sides, near all classes including rogues. imo the advantage horde had was the placement of elites, patrols etc, and landmines one base vs the other.

landmines
- ally base had 2 on each side and guards after the bridge you could just go thru center, with no aggro. then to the left and head to SB flag, then to NB and i had to disarm no landmines. there are landmines in areas by quartermaster, guards overlooking west cliff, wingman elites, ram stables, where horde never have a reason to go

- horde base, 10 landmines outside their gate, with 3 of those landmines after the tree cluster 40 yards past FWGY. i had to disarm 3 mines and sap right guard. many attempts could not center stealth thru them. make a immediate right go around stump head up hill avoiding 3 landmines to the left. then as you hit path to head to lower tower there are 5 landmines easy to avoid, then 9 landmines between the lower tower to gate prior to EFT/WFT i had 5 to disarm. then thru the gate 4 landmines between EFT/WFT with 2 more after, 3 also to avoid to the right at RFT. either way 3-5 to disarm. 5 more to avoid prior to RHGY.

i found on my non stealth in combat in horde base at times losing huge chunks of HP due to mine i did not experience as much when my horde attacked ally base. my rogue disarming mines, had mines respawn explode near me just disarmed and had moved past, based on players popping mines prior to horde first gate and lower part of that base.

elites
horde blew up and dealt with elites, allies tended to CC even those at flag, and when CC expired, made my job easy as a rogue/druid to recap as elite wiped guards.

SHGY to ally base end of bridge imo was seriously easy. from IBGY to horde base gate, not as easy

patrols and elite run by's
- FWGY even if allies killed elite and two sets of pats. the pats respawn and pull guards. every wingman (3) the horde release runs by FWGY and pulls guards
- SPGY. horde kill one elite/guards and we never have to worry about guards running off due to any ally respawn pats or wingman elites pulling guards

AFKs in BG, the event gave huge XP ticks thru out the BG, decent XP on losses, huge XP on wins. sadly this brought out the AFK abusers, predominately alliance which i mostly play. horde avg was around 1- 4, they were quick in flagging and reporting, but not as severe as alliance which was around 4 - 7, it was hard to get players flagged and booted solo reporting, blizzards AFK detection still broken 13 years later when a player can not move, have 0 damage/healing in a BG 43 minutes long.

horde base back door
this AV version was broken due to warlock and DHs abilities, but this tactic due to modern mechanics rarely produced wins for the alliance. not sure if this was a issue in van wow

Alliance Boss keep - bugged and terrain exploited by AFKs inside or on top of the alliance boss keep do not show on map. on horde side when players went into their keep to hide play fake defense you could see them and get them reported faster. on alliance side you had to be in the base near the keep and you would see AFKs on top right mini map. it was hard to report them solo, explain to others why they needed to be reported away. by then horde was already at SHGY and coming across the bridge with alliance still working on FWGY

[mvaliz]

I was just in an AV pug as alliance where the horde managed to take all the GY's and then bottle up the alliance in the cave, resulting in a near zero bonus honor ass kicking of the alliance (198 bonus honor for the alliance 4554 for the horde... . 110ish avg honorable kills for the horde, only 15ish for the alliance)

All of these reports of Horde "kicking ass" in Classic Server AV makes me cynically smile in contempt for all the horde jackasses for over a decade+ since AV launched (the same AV that was in Classic) where the Horde players complained for decades that AV is too biased towards the Alliance for them to win.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, Alterac Valley is hell. I win 5% at best solo queing as Alliance. Luckely I don't care about rank, I just want Exalted and then I will never touch it again.

Concentrate on looting horde bodies if you can, then use the stormpike insignia to turn all the armor scraps in. Look for a mod that auto-turns them all in. Best way to farm rep from back in my day. Got to exalted with Exodar weeks before Burning Crusade was even released thanks to that. ;P

[pinkz]

All of these reports of Horde "kicking ass" in Classic Server AV makes me cynically smile in contempt for all the horde jackasses for over a decade+ since AV launched (the same AV that was in Classic) where the Horde players complained for decades that AV is too biased towards the Alliance for them to win.

agree, premades always tend to come out ahead. hard to judge on pugs.

premade vs premade AV is still not horde owned with original starter location. see it on streams, asmon was bragging when he was winning AV as alliance because it was 40 vs 40 fair, but if they lost in AV it was claimed due to stream sniping not a horde advantage. dropped in on swity's stream yesterday alliance was 14 wins 0 losses, dropped in today, 8 wins 1 losses. something top alliance streamers point out, even when they do premade speed wins, horde gets just as much honor or more killing elites. burning towers, doing objectives. probably a youtube or VOD cut where asmon was shocked about this

[Kagthul]

100% alliance have the advantage, I used to rage about this all the time - being an alliance player myself,

1) Not by much, but the alliance have less distance to travel to key points from the starting points.
2) We have the bridge, if anyones unaware of this then a few druids can make the difference between the alliance having a spare 10 seconds to 5 minutes.
3) Our bunkers are fully open and can interrupt horde capping frequently and from multiple directions
4) Flip side of that, horde towers are closed off, you can cap a tower with two people if you do it right. Even if you're clueless you can do it with 3.
5) The horde encampment is perfectly designed. You move in, you clear NPCs. You get the RH. Our Aid Station however is directly within range of nearly every single NPC we have. Horde either need to take a large group in or wait for more people to turn up.

Dont forget that if you aggro them, the Archers from Dun Baldar South Bunker can fire on people trying to cap the Aid Station flag. And they will continue to re-target if the person they are aggroed on moves to the flag, but then dies. One archer can prevent 5-6 people from capping.

6) One I used to hate back then, Galv was quicker and easier with less people to take down every single time because of balindas iceblock.

I'm sure I had 10 core core points from back then but honestly can't remember the rest.

Honestly though spawn camping and gy camping is nothing new. If you're not working hard enough as a team and coordinating then thats your potential punishment. Alliance can easily win. Back then I was 60 for about 7 months and all I did was AV. I used to lead it every night for hours and I can count the number of losses on one hand.

The "choke" at Iceblood can be avoided more easily compared to the choke-point at Icewing Bunker. For one, the archers at IBT wont shoot people riding through the choke unless they ride directly under the tower first to aggro them. If you stick to the far side of the choke from IBT, they wont aggro. Secondly, the path as it passes Icewing Bunker is so narrow that not only can the archers hit everyone riding past (and they will aggro on you the moment you ride past SHGY), two mages can stop an entire 40 man raid there with a pair of frost novas.

SHGY is much harder to cap (rezzers are closer to the flag, which is also out in the open right on the road so any Alliance that happen to be travelling south can see it, and defend it) than IBGY. Its also got huge packs of NPCs you drag along with you if you try to just ride up to it (no matter which side you come from); IBGY has next to none. You can hug the mountain, ride right up to the flag and only have to deal with the 4 guards + LT.

After you get past the Iceblood "Choke", the entire map opens back up, allowing Allies to head to the outsides of the map and avoid TP completely if they want, as well as avoid most Horde who are just going to come up the path. The archers from TP wont aggro on anyone not near the road/path. Conversely, the equivalent area in the Ally side of the map leads you into one of two confined paths: either the super narrow direct road to Stormpike, where a single mage can freeze the entire raid on the road, which funnels you through a narrow canyon before you get to the flag.... Or down in the valley where any Ally can see you, and your only way up forces you to go under the bridge, where you will find Allies waiting for you en masse.

Frostwolf GY, on the other hand, is just sitting out in the open in the middle of nowhere and can be approached easily from any direction as this entire area of the map is just one big open area. Rezzers also spawn about 5 yards further away than SPGY.

After you deal with SPGY, the Horde has to funnel across the bridge; where the archers from Dun Baldar North will aggro you the moment you get past about the 1/3 mark. There are also a fuckload of NPCs just scattered all over the place inside Dun Baldar.

Conversely, there's no bridge or its equivalent (riding through the tower below the upper Frostwolf Keep actually PROTECTS YOU from the Frostwolf Towers for fucks sake), and you can avoid the entire lower bailey by simply riding over the wall, and can avoid having to try to funnel through the narrow door at the Frostwolf towers by simply riding around the Righthand tower (as you approach) because of the hole in the fence. If you know the right method, you can also skip every NPC and go straight for the Relief Hut (there's a way, no, i wont mention it here, more people dont need to abuse it) without aggroing any NPCs other than the RH guards. And since the FW Tower Archers are all faced outward (where they can only fire on Allies for the ... 12 yards of open space between the tower-tunnel below the FW Towers) they cant and wont attack or aggro people trying to cap the RH, unlike Dun Baldar South archers, which can and will aggro on and shoot people trying to cap the Aid Station flag if any of the NPCs near them are aggroed or anyone who has their aggro rides near the flag.

There's also a "bug" (is it a bug? Blizzard has never said and hasn't fixed it..) where the Allies can pull Drek solo even if all 8 Marshals are up, and he wont reset unless someone catastrophically fucks up and body-pulls the Marshals. Ive seen as few as 12-15 Allies down Drek in less than 90 seconds by simply pulling him out to the doorway and soloing him.

The horde CAN solo-pull Van.. theoretically. IF a certain NPC in the outer courtyard isn't killed. But since she's right in the path to the Aid Station she's almost always dead by the time anyone can get there to maybe pull Van.

And thats not even a comprehensive list.

Honestly, the "solo pull Drek" thing has lost me my last 20 of my last 22 games. Even if we pile on the Defense, if/when they finally get the Relief Hut, its over. They can put most of their people back on D and stop even the biggest zerg O and down Drek in seconds. If we DONT put 25+ on Defense immediately, its over in less than 10 minutes. Even if we do, its almost always a loss because we cant move forward without more than 8-10 on O, and we cant hold them with less on D.

So...

When Alliance whine about AV, i kinda laugh.

[Tekkommo]

The "choke" at Iceblood can be avoided more easily compared to the choke-point at Icewing Bunker. For one, the archers at IBT wont shoot people riding through the choke unless they ride directly under the tower first to aggro them. If you stick to the far side of the choke from IBT, they wont aggro.

That's just not true.

At least in the Classic version, can't remember from vanilla.

Alliance that pug AV have every right to complain atm, but the problem is the player base.

[Kralljin]

since AV launched (the same AV that was in Classic) where the Horde players complained for decades that AV is too biased towards the Alliance for them to win.

The issue is, Alliance is favored for a rush strat, if the Horde refuses to defend, the Alliance will win most of the time.
We saw that during the first days, Horde didn't defend and Alliance won basically 80% of all games, Horde didn't care because short queues and they also got nice rep and honor.

Now, Horde has 20-30min+ queues, depending on your region, so you want to make those AV count.
Add in the fact that Alliance pugs are devoid of Rankers (the ones who really try hard) whereas any Horde group has multiple people at or above Rank 10.

Horde always was able to win, but in a way most people simply didn't want to play (=Turtle).

[Hawg]

I think there is also a cultural bias at work here. For some reason, the horde has become the "cool" faction to belong to if you are into PVP. Even discounting some actual advantages the horde might have in pvp (debatable, but racials, map layout, etc), the people who want to focus on pvp seem to be gravitating towards the horde. (Not all, but a majority.) Meaning the "best" pvp'rs generally rolled horde.

Yes that is a gross over-simplification, but I see it playing alliance over and over. Take dps warriors for example, comparatively very few alliance warriors in AV are spec'd as arms compared to fury (arms is widely agreed to be superior for pvp while fury is better for pve).

Many (most?) of the Horde do PVE as a means to get better gear for PVP while many (most?) Alliance do PVP as a means to get better gear for PVE.

There really is no fix to this that I can think of.