Why do people hate SotA?

[Direshadow]

Actually, after reading people's posts, I think I will describe how to properly play this BG in simple bullet points.

- Take bombs. Ranged Ride, Melee Drive. As soon as you reach a wall, the ranged riding drop out, lay their bombs then get back in and try their best to get dps off the tanks. Two Engineers would be ideal for riding tanks... do you research. Any ranged on the beach, TAKE DOWN THE GUNS.

(Counter)
Man the fucking guns! Aim does count! A direct hit on a tank can mean the difference between a few hundred damage and upwards of 4500 (X2 if both are manned) damage. Kill the tanks as soon as their attackable, but watch both walls. To much focus on one side will leave another side to be open. All it takes for a wall to go down is the time to get from one end of the beach to the other. That's all it takes. Divide your team up so that balance is achieved.


- Cap those flags as soon as possible. Capping a flag will open up a workshop that are closer to the relic. Capping the flag could be a ground trooper's main objective. Many will be so focused on bringing down your tank that is assaulting the second wall that it may be possible to "Ninja" a flag, but a group assault is preferred. Either way, the opposite team has to divide their troops into defending the flag, or bringing down bombers and tanks. The key is to find their weak point.

(Counter)
Use the map like a fiend. If you see troops massing on your strong side, all it takes is one or two people to ruin the tank that is assaulting an unprotected wall. Keep cappers off that flag with instant or quick attacks. All it takes is a single direct damage spell or attack to interrupt a flag capper. Manning the guns at the second point is also important as they can offer support to the flag defenders. YES they can reach the flag, and firing a single rocket can not only interrupt a capper, but it can also cause massive aoe damage and keep the pressure on.

- Capping the last (South) Gy can mean the difference between victory or death. Taking down the yellow wall's guns is probably the best thing you can do at this point. If you choose to cap the last GY, then you'll need to divide your team up into groups, one for bombings, and one for running for tanks. Keep in mind that as soon as you cap the last GY, you'll spawn at that point, making it an extra long run to get a tank. This is why some teams decide NOT to cap it, but it only usually works if you have lots of time to spare. Those who are on the bombing team will need abilities that allow them to easily get through crowd control. Dispersion, Bubble, Cloak of Shadows, etc, are preferred. Once you lay a bomb you'll need to make sure it goes off. Using AoE like Holy Nova are a perfect way to keep yourself up, and interrupt would-be disarms. Any tanks that get through is only the icing on the cake.

(Counter)
Get to yellow, and defend. Man the guns, it's important! This is where the fun begins, where you can get into various 1v1 battles, or rack up massive amounts of damage. Your main priority are to down tanks, and to down anyone who looks like they are running to bomb your wall. Disarming bombs will be important, but extremely difficult. It's really better to just kill bombers FIRST. Once your wall goes down, you could fall back, keeping two gunners active, but leaving the rest to down any tanks that get by, and to kill any potential bombers. At this point it's do or die, and if the opposite team has gotten THIS far, then it should be a challenge to hold them off.

There are a ton of more details that I could go into, but this is what I'm hoping people will learn once rated bgs come out. In fact, I'd like all of the tips I've listed above to be made obsolete by arising strategists that lead entire teams into victory.

Arenas be damned. Yeah that's right. Focusing the healer won't always work.

---------- Post added 2010-08-03 at 05:00 AM ----------

P.S.

I think that holy priests, with their reduced holy nova global cooldown and occasional fear, will be the ultimate bomb defenders.

[Deleted]

It sucks mostly because people dont understand how to win it.

[Madus]

It sucks mostly because people dont understand how to win it.

^ this

Whole BG can be won with 1 "smart" melee driver.
Ranged ignore resilience on seats (this is 20k nukes).
Most melee dont get that, so they run into field and trying kill shits there...
Then you just getting rage how they enlarge your defend time where they again dont attack demos.

[Floreon]

It sucks because it's filled with melee driving demos with two pve geared wizards sitting in their magical demolisher seats doing the absurd wizard things that anyone that has pvp'd at 2k+ ratings has experienced, but way worse because they can be doing it without worrying about sacrificing resilience, since they're unhittable. You also can't even land that occasional interrupt on their half second 15 million damage nukes, so you're just taking full "Oh god why did blizzard add haste to every piece of gear?!" damage. And that's before considering that they got back all that crit, haste, and spellpower that they gave up for resilience. I took a 7k starfire noncrit the other day from a moonkin on my DK that sits on a comfortable thousand resilience (human racial=no pvp trinket=lower than normal resi), and they weren't even in a full set of pve gear. In fact, most BGs I wind up double checking my combat log wondering how the hell some of the numbers I take are balanced (then again I'm a DK so seeing crits for over 5k blow my mind).

Also, driving vehicles isn't fun, I don't care that bombs are there as an alternative because we all know they're pretty sub optimal and by bringing up bombs as an alternative you're mostly just pulling up technicalities except for on the last gate or when a gate is about to die anyway.

[Joesgetndown]

It only pisses me off because every time I que for a random battleground I get SoTA. I got arathi basin ONCE. True story.

Queue*

Stop speaking spanglish.

[Magnett]

It sucks mostly because people dont understand how to win it.

I was going to mention all the U SAY IT SUCKS CUZ U BAD LOL people in my original post, but I guess I forgot (you'd better have at least 100 matches played if you're going to tell people they suck though!).

I have 121 victories out of 180 matches played. That's what, a 67% win rate? Yeah, I even did the maths just for you. It's the BG where I have the second largest win rate behind WSG (though to be fair they all linger around 60%). So yes, I think I know how the BG works just fine, and so do most people who hate it. I listed a shitload of reasons why I dislike it, none of which involve the so-called "complex strategy". I can queue for SotA with a premade (i.e. no idiots doing what they shouldn't), and after about three or four hours of queuing we'll join and most likely face against another premade and it'll still be a chore because all those reasons I listed will still apply except for the 5th one.

Tons of other people posted their own reasons as well. But no, I guess no one likes SotA because everyone sucks at it. Except you.

Whole BG can be won with 1 "smart" melee driver.

This is true. And that makes it good..?

Ranged ignore resilience on seats (this is 20k nukes).

See, for those of us who aren't ranged DPS, it's a perfectly valid reason to hate the BG.

[bigjenk]

I do no like vehicle bgs ie isle sota and wg. I also dislike new av as it is just a zerg fest for leaders. The other 3 are good looking for rated bgs but isle and av definitely need some work and i just don't think there will be much viability in rated 40v40 games.

[macke]

Really, SotA is one of the battlegrounds that is so complex that it actually scares pug BGers away. Think about it... the most popular BGs atm are

Warsong (Because you can cluster fuck in the middle for honor)

Arathi Basin (Because you can cluster fuck on the flag for honor.... well... mostly on the roads tbh)

Alterac Valley (Cause you can cluster fuck on towers for honor)


People don't take battlegrounds seriously, and because of this, any battleground that comes out that has any sort of complexity or multiple strategies to win the BG scares people off. I think that when rated BGs finally come to the game, this will change.

I won't go into the details of SotA, but dear lord, it's my favorite BG to date.

Or its becuse of the stupid amount of time it takes and the viecles. You can sit in them and just freecast, go in PvE gear as a caster with a friend who drives and you can basicly win the BG alone. The bombs are on bad places and the cannons dont do any damage to the sieges.

[Markluzz]

I get it almost every random, I find it the most boring battleground, there is always at least one person who leaves, its basically a loss if you are defending first because of the time loss, theres not much actual pvp involved more like throwing bombs at walls and shooting it with the demolisher, also your point at throwing bombs my point is using a demolisher works much better and its a waste of time to pick up a bomb, care for me to go on?

[Mammoth]

SotA is great. Everyone that says they don't like vehicles, learn to fight without them. With the current gear it is more efficient to attack the vehicles than use the guns - at which point you have to deal with vehicle defending players. If you're attacking you have to get the bombs to the gate and then defend it until it blows. Theres plenty of PvP in the fight, if you can't find it then you're one of the players doing it wrong.

[Stixxz]

Because your gear means crap all, get some vehicle and smash some walls down.

[Magnett]

With the current gear it is more efficient to attack the vehicles than use the guns - at which point you have to deal with vehicle defending players.

No, at which point you get crit for half your health by a full PvE Mage no matter how much resi you have. Oh, and you can't fight back! Exciting PvP fun for the whole family!

[Bobzor]

I like the damage increase you get from sitting in a demolisher. 20k lava bursts ftw.

[Shampayne1985]

No, at which point you get crit for half your health by a full PvE Mage no matter how much resi you have. Oh, and you can't fight back! Exciting PvP fun for the whole family!

I'm sorry, if you have even around 800-900 resilience there is no way a mage with 1 hit takes half your health...CRY MOAR

But yeah this BG is heavily favored toward ranged classes.

---------- Post added 2010-08-03 at 11:05 AM ----------

I like the damage increase you get from sitting in a demolisher. 20k lava bursts ftw.

Your lava bursts should be hitting higher then that lol.[COLOR="red"]

[Deleted]

It only pisses me off because every time I que for a random battleground I get SoTA.

I cannot agree more..
And almost every time I lose it.

[Medivh]

Only PvE BG is Alterac Valley. Strand of Ancients is pretty PvP.

[Shampayne1985]

Only PvE BG is Alterac Valley. Strand of Ancients is pretty PvP.

How is AV any more of a PVE BG then Strands?

[rofl]

I'm sorry, if you have even around 800-900 resilience there is no way a mage with 1 hit takes half your health...CRY MOAR

Say hi to 12k+ ffb/pyro crits. (don't forget the 40% extra damage from ignite). Last time I checked ~16k dmg is about half your hp for most players/classes.

[Shampayne1985]

Say hi to 12k+ ffb/pyro crits. (don't forget the 40% extra damage from ignite). Last time I checked ~16k dmg is about half your hp for most players/classes.

Yeah um you don't have any resilience if your being crit for that much...if you are then please feel free to post a SS

[Direshadow]

Or its becuse of the stupid amount of time it takes and the viecles. You can sit in them and just freecast, go in PvE gear as a caster with a friend who drives and you can basicly win the BG alone. The bombs are on bad places and the cannons dont do any damage to the sieges.

Actually, as I described in my earlier post, Cannons do A TON of damage, upwards of 4500 and beyond. You need to aim properly though. If you score a direct hit, you can get around 6K damage done per shot... take 2 cannons and that's 12000 damage every shot or so.

L2Aim.

This is what I mean about people not understanding battleground mechanics.