"Alliance Always Wins AV"…Don’t We?
As you probably know (if you play the battlegrounds at all), this past weekend was Alterac Valley honor weekend. So, I played quite a bit of AV, mostly on Talonis, but some on Falken, and even a few games on Sparverius, my second Level 70 Beast Master. While I didn’t keep an exact count, I’d say I played at least 15-18 games. At least two-thirds and probably closer to three-quarters were Alliance wins. But the last few games definitely swung in the Horde’s direction.
Why? Because in our battlegroup (Vengeance) the Horde finally started to take advantage of the current layout of the battleground. (As you may know, with the 2.4 patch, the Horde starting point will be pushed a bit further south, to make their travel time to Balinda and Dun Baldar closer to the same as Alliance’s travel time to Galvan and Frostwolf Village.)
Alliance’s Winning Strategy
For most of the Alliance wins, we simply rushed Galvan, then took out Iceblood Tower, Tower Point, claimed Iceblood Graveyard, and rushed on to the Frostwolf Relief Hut (bypassing Frostwolf Graveyard, of course). Usually there was a token defense at the RH, but once that was eliminated, we capped the East and West Frostwolf Towers, waited for them to burn, then focus-fired on Drek for the win. In those fights, we were done in 10, 11, or 12 minutes.
There were a couple turtles, evenly split. And then there were the Horde wins when they killed Vann before we burned down Drek. And some of those weren’t even close.
When A Turtle Isn’t A Turtle
One of the turtles, wasn’t really a turtle. It just seemed that way at first. After we easily handled Galvan, our group rushed on to the RH…except the path from Iceblood Tower to Tower Point, primarily around the critical Iceblood graveyard, was filled with Horde. There were probably at least a dozen: quite a few casters, with a couple big Tauren warriors for good measure. Between AOEs and multiple-target CCs, they had us running around like idiots for more than a little while—plenty long enough for the main Horde force to take over our bunkers and get to Vann. Our defense still did an admirable job, though, because they held long enough for us to finally take out the Horde interdiction force around Iceblood GY, then move on to the RH and FW towers. However, we’d barely started on Drek when Vann went down.
A couple other times, the Horde took a page right out of the Alliance playbook. They mass-rushed Balinda and Dun Baldar: Exactly what we do to win (most of the time) when we rush Galvan and RH. Once, I was the very first Alliance player into RH, and let me tell you, it’s really eerie to see NO moving red dots as I approached the RH flag. Of course the NPC archers were in the towers, and the guards around the RH flag, but with 20 or so Allies mowing them down, it takes almost no time to get the RH and the towers.
Well let me tell you, there was a collective "WTF?" when we’re starting to enter RH and the Herald announces, "The Horde have attacked Dun Baldar North Bunker" followed immediately by "The Horde have attacked Dun Baldar South Bunker." Too late, we realized we couldn’t afford to wait for the Towers to go up in flames before we started in on Drek. As an Alliance member, it really sucks to have Drek down to 20 percent, despite having his lieutenants still up, and to suddenly have the game end.
The Shape of Things to Come?
The first time this happened, my thought was "Wow…that was interesting; I sure hope it’s a fluke." No fluke: It happened three times in four or five games. So in AV, Vengeance Battlegroup may be going the same direction as other battlegroups have reported: "The Horde always wins AV."
The changes in 2.4 should really make things very interesting. Very interesting indeed.
Final Thoughts
Finally, here’s an observation that seems to hold true more often than not: If there’s a lot of chat in /say or /bg before the gate opens to start the battle, and especially if the chat includes someone advancing a strategy (and then a few know-it-alls start arguing about said strategy), my friends and I realize we’re probably going to lose. If there’s almost no pre-game chatter or QQing, we stand a very good chance of winning. Have you noticed something similar?
(And in a similar vein, don’t you wish all the QQers would stop typing so damned much, and do more killing??)
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I have to agree on Alliance dominating AV. In my battle group at least. AV is the one BG I usually skip on daily quests because I know I’ll need to play for hours to get one win. But AB I know I’ll probably get right away. Maybe I’ll try AV again and see if it’s getting any more even. It’s a fun battleground and a great challenge.
In me battlegroup, the general consensus is that it be better to lose fast than win slow during AV weekend. Since the queue time is less than a minute, there’s a solid aruement there. So we usually have only minimals D and a big O rush to the north. Tend to lose about 2/3 of the time (I went 3-7 this weekend), but the honor still rolls in. Of course, not everybody got the memo, so you never know exactly how it’s gonna turn out.
My god, the QQing. I guess some buggers is just too dang excited by the sound of they’s own voice to shut up and fight. I particularly hates the ones what say “That’s it- we lose” every time a tower/gy gets assaulted, and the “Everyone but me is a moron” crowd.
@Tsukikoh: AB seems to be a challenge for Alliance in Vengeance, too. We win maybe a quarter to a third of the time. I tend to play there only for the daily or if I need the marks. Those battles seem to be too long for not much honor–even when we win.
@Ratshag: Pretty insightful about losing fast vs. winning slow. Hadn’t thought about it that way; I simply prefer to win.
But OMG yeah, I agree with the QQers comments. I think that’s a rant that’s building, but I’d really need to get screenies or chat-window copies to do it justice.
Thanks for the nice article. I have not been doing much in the way of PvP lately so I can not say what is going on in our Battlegroup.
Usually there is very very little talk in chat before the BG starts. Mostly “can someone please provide some cookies”. Sometimes a “oh hi nice to see you again” if people meet up accidentally.
Sadly this is not true for the chat later in the game. Especially not if we are on the losing side (50:50 chance of that). I’ve sometimes quit a BG with /afk in disgust. It rarely happens but sometimes enough is enough. Can’t always ignore BG chat.
I did about 75 AV’s this weekend and we lost about 55 of them. I couldn’t get into a premade for AV this time because I had only limited time. With our server’s premade we never lose though, and the strategy is:
15 defend the pass and retake the towers, no one taps SP or snow GY, and in no circumstance are we to lose IB GY (in case the off gets whacked). Us rogues take the North and South bunkers ASAP and the offense all meets under the bridge. We usually win in ten minutes or 15 tops.
With pugs I don’t bother giving advice, no one listens anyway, and I am for fast ten minute losses which give the same honor as long 45 minute turtle losses.
I don’t like the new changes to be honest, as they don’t come close to addressing the problems with AV as they are at the moment. I think we will see more Alliance wins and much longer games. Good for you elven folks I guess, maybe a bit more fun, but definitely another Horde nerf when they really needed help there.
The flaming usually starts after about five minutes and at that point I usually just switch the chat off.
The one point I do hate about PUG’s though is the kack noobs who tap snow GY. It just sends all the alliance right back to defend and prolongs the game, and we still lose anyway.
@Yashima: Sounds like everyone’s BG chat is about the same. We were really encouraged early last night when there was zero pre-start chat. But as my guildmate mentioned, it was still early: The kiddies were still doing homework. She was right: It got stupid a little while later.
@Luke: Heheh…We cap IBGY almost as soon as Galvan is dead, most of the time. But half the time, we fail to guard it.
However, we’ve gotten much better about NOT capping the Frostwolf GY until the RH is capped. But even last night with an early cap of FWGY, we were able to overpower the Horde defenders and get RH. Unfortunately, we wasted a LOT of time doing that…for a loss.
I wish I was in your battlegroup. I can count the number of times I’ve won “New AV” on one hand and I’m nearly exalted with Stormpike.
It seems nobody can decide on a strategy. Pre-BG chat is filled with about four or five different people talking about their completely different “surefire strategy to win” and then the rest of the BG turns into a big jumble of people trying to do all those four or five different strategies at once, and failing miserably.
Oddly enough we do pretty dang well in AB, EotS, and WSG, so long as we’re not up against a premade. But AV… I can hardly bring myself to play it anymore. I’ve had an AV daily sitting in my quest log for over a month. And I can’t win it so I can’t turn it in. (Guess I should probably go get a different daily, huh?)
When I feel like winning AV I head over to my horde character. It’s a completely different battlegroup and yet as horde I win AV some 80-90% of the time and I have no idea how we do it. My big guess is defense; it seems like when horde sends stealthers up ahead they’re met with little to no resistance, but when alliance sends stealthers up ahead they’re met with a bunch of defense who destroys them and halts that plan.
@Pike: Obviously, an Alliance win depends on the Horde strategy: If they are defending against the RH rush (as they did over the weekend), then we get the turtle and a long, drawn-out war of attrition.
But if the Horde are trying to get to Vanndar as quickly as possible, then the “rush RH” strategy has legs. So if that’s what the Horde do in your BG, try this at the 30 sec mark:
“GP 1 & 2, take Galvan & IBGY then rush to RH; Group 3 – Iceblood Garrison & Tower Point; 4-6 rush RH; 7&8 – Hold the Bunkers. DO NOT TAKE FWGY UNTIL RH IS CAPPED.”
Now that’s a bit more specific than we generally get, because people are used to our strategy (for the most part). In fact, what we see sometimes is “1&2 – Galv, everyone else RH.” Of course the intermediate targets are seized, and we usually have people on defense.
Good luck!
The problem I’ve seen is if the 1st or even second RH attempt fails and the overall strategy does not change to be flexible the turle kills Alliance. The only way to beat this is to get the mines, get FW (I know, I know) and actually have a Defense to watch for Bunker caps. If RH works great , we win. If it fails you have to take FW to cut the time from IB to RH and load up on kills. If we persist we RH we end up going single file through their gauntlet trying to get to a well guarded RH.
Try RH, but be flexible if it doesn’t.