While admittedly relatively new to AV (I am not too far into honored at present), I haven't noticed a serious imbalance. I lose more than I win, but I put that up to generally better gear on the Alliance side, and bad Horde habits (we have months and months of considering a "victory" in AV to be killing Balinda!). The strategy used in most matches I've had is very similar to what you mention.

Back before the changes to AV, Terenas Horde would very very rarely win. We couldn't fill the raid, and the bridge was a death trap. All the Alliance had to do was delay as there were always people to back fill, and the Horde would get tired and AFK out. Most matches I were in were 37-21 or so. Things are much better now.

Don't underestimate the impact that Spangles might have in influencing the outcome of the matches you are in. Far too often in AV the Horde can be competitive, but stall out because they can't kill the marshals. Last night in a match, myself and a 59 druid were the difference makers. He was the only one dedicated to tanking marshals, and I was the only one dedicated to healing him. There were 9 warriors but so few warriors in AV want to tank, and so few healers want to heal. I honestly believe as a holy priest that every match we have taken the aid station, I have been a difference maker since I heal anyone willing to actually tank.

I've noticed several times how 3-5 people who work together can make a huge difference in there. Even without a tank on the Marshalls I've taken to simply calling out in raid chat who to focus fire on (and marking them with my hunter) and that makes a huge difference as well.

The problem though is that, as mentioned, a lot of horde come from servers where before cross server BG they were in 25-35 horde vs 30-40 alliance, they were always at a numbers disadvantage and generally a gear disadvantage as well since even if 20% of both populations were getting raid gear, when 70% of the server pop was alliance there were just more alliance in raid gear.

Last night on my warlock I made a difference by fear tanking the Arch druid. A lot of times when the druids head out horde will lose SP GY and that can be a big blow. So I DoT'd her up and ran down under the bridge and took her with me. Since there is no diminishing returns on fear on the NPC's a warlock who is given enough time can solo all of them via DoT's fears, life taps, drains/siphons. I let them know where I the druid at and after SP was secure again I got some help killing her, but I know it helped.

And finally there are many horde that just don't care about winning. Since honor and rep for losing in there is still pretty good I've seen horde in BG chat flat out say "Yeah I'd rather just lose in 25 minute than win in 35 minutes" and give flat out wrong advice.

I do think that even equal geared that alliance have a 2-5 minute Terrian/NPC advantage in an all out race. Horde do have a few good defense points, one of them being right up there by SH GY but anything that isn't a race is a slower match and when people are convinced that any 20-25 minute match is better for rep and honor per time than a 40+ minute match (and from the back of the envelop calcs I've done they are right) it's hard to get people to win and the very slight alliance advantage just makes a lot of people not care.

The other issue is that a lot of horde just don't seen to know how to get to and take SP GY. The alliance don't have to deal with taking any GY's that have choke points like SP does and too many people just get into open field combat instead of getting to the GY as a group. I see most horde losses because the O doesn't even get to the SP GY flag.

I believe the most serious imbalance to be in the location of the res cave.

For alliance this cave is right above stormpike. If they res at the cave they have to ride RIGHT BY stormpike GY to get anywhere. It's also far enough away that the only time they're res-ing in the cave and not at stormpike is when they have already lost stormpike. If alliance lose Stonehearth, the natural defensive tendency is reinforcing Stormpike and the path between Stormpike and Stonehearth.

For horde the cave is off to the side, between IB and FW. If horde lose Iceblood, there is no natural defensive tendency. You res in the cave if fighting at IB or Tower point. When you get out of the cave you are faced with 3 options of where to head... IB GY, Tower Point, or FW GY. Naturally people choose different locations to head and you have no unified force. You can even be fighting, with the intention of defending Frostwolf GY and end up res-ing in the cave if you get pulled a bit too far from FW, which adds about 1 minute latency to Frostwolf GY... similar to the latency alliance have from IB GY. For this reason, FW is virtually indefensible compared with Stormpike.

Alliance die at Stonehearth, they res at Stormpike, there is one clear path to head. Horde die at Iceblood, they res in the cave, they have three paths to head and don't all choose the same path. The terrain + human nature creates the teamwork for the alliance. The horde have to actually decide as a group and intentionally act together... and coordination like that in a PUG BG is akin to herding cats.

Another situation this creates is the inertia for getting on offense/defense. If an alliance character dies before SF caps, they res at stormpike. They now have a very considerable choke point to head through in the Icewing through Stonehearth area to head through before they end up on offense. Again... natural tendency will be to just engage and defend. Because SH is extremely easy to take, and most alliance head all out O early, and hit SF / Galv before Iceblood, there is generally very little "high inertia defense" for the horde, semi-forced defending, if you will. If they do end up res-ing in the cave, they are doing so after they already lost their primary defensive point, and they start scattering between IB, Tower point and FW.

Because of the GY arrangement issues, I am of the opinion that if horde is to have a shot at winning a game, they must flip Stormpike before alliance flip Iceblood. Most race games are horde losses. Most horde wins I've seen are 45-90 minutes and are of the 'cap SF, summon Lok, and use Lok to push through the whole alliance force' variety.

Yes the NPCs in the base are an issue, but I think the GY arrangement is a more signficant issue. It forces the issue of teamwork in a rather chaotic envoriment. Alliance can easily push on offense early, then if they die, they can sit back and defend. Horde have to push defense right from the beginning, because if they lose IB, they lose their primary defensive point. This also weakens the initial offense compared with the alliance ability to go all out on O from the very beginning.

The cave used to be a much bigger issue. I don't know about the allies, but the horde used to start way back in theirs, leading to a 15-20 second run before you could mount up. Also you are much more likely to res in your cave as a horde.

That said, I don't think that it is a big deal in the latest version of AV. Defense is a pretty losing proposition for either side.

Lok moves so slowly he is probably more of a liability then an asset.

1. There is always someone in AV yelling "don't loot the dogs!" The point being, the dogs in Drek's bastion will reset when looted.

From what I've seen and read, the dogs respawn on a timer, or when Drek is reset by pulling him outside the bastion. Looting them does not affect the respawn time.

2. The dogs are thought to drop epics more frequently than other NPCs.

Any observations about these issues? Is looting/resetting in AV different than anywhere else?

3. I constantly am advised to wait for the towers to cap before pulling warmasters from Drek's bastion. The point being, there will be two fewer warmasters to pull after the towers are capped.

I ignore this advice, and pull the warmasters as soon as we have cleared the nearest graveyard. Killing warmasters takes less time than waiting for towers to cap. Waiting for towers to cap gives defenders more time to regroup. Any thoughts on this point?

1) This reeks like "don't talke to the student's in the viewing room" or "don't talk to the bar patrons in BRD". Myth and legend. I haven't played alliance, but this is superstition with no factual basis.

2) see #1. Doesn't make any sense.

3) I agree with you as long as the group has capable tanking and healing, which is not always a given. I've been in at least 1 AV where the alliance had to deal with 6 warmasters (we downed 4 towers, they downed only 2 as we kept re-capping IB tower and Tower point). They were hopelessly stuck on the warmasters because they had no organization. I've seen more though where a warrior steps up and tanks, a healer heals and they down each warmaster in 30 seconds flat.

1) It's not about the run out the cave so much as the decision once you reach the mouth of the cave. Alliance have no decision, the terrain makes the decision for them

2) defense is still key... slow down opposition just long enough for you to hold an advantage in the race.

3) The games I'm referring to are long games. He is the key to victory in these particular games, but it involves a 20+ minute stalemate between SH and SP. They are worse honor per unit time and probably on a par in terms of rep per unit time, but I was mainly talking about win:loss ratio. Horde don't do so well in races on win:loss ration in my experience, but when they cap SF early, they win a much higher percentage.

My thoughts exactly on 1 & 2. I have no time to loot anyway, much less find the NPCs to turn in.

On 3: After the last graveyard is taken, people tend to mill around outside Drek's bastion, waiting for something, I'm not sure what. There is no point in discussing things in chat, I just run in and pull as few NPCs as possible and start tanking outside. Usually, the healers will take the cue and we whittle them down before the final encounter.

Often there is no healing, or there is opposition from Horde camping with Drek. Since there is no penalty for dying, and the graveyard is right at hand, repeated pulling and chipping away at the defense seems the best tactic until help arrives. I haven't seen a better method than this rather mindless approach.

4. A bit off topic: I know rank and honor will be reset with the expansion. Has there been blue confirmation of reputation reset also? Reputation reset seems problematical, since BG rep and Alliance/Horde (faction) rep are gained simultaneously. It seems strange that BG rep would be reset while faction rep gained on BGs would not.

Read what I said - it USED to be about that run. That was when battles were longer and more defensive. A 30 second run there makes taking IB back very hard once it has been tapped, compared to mounting up at SP and riding all the way to SH.



We'll have to agree to disagree. Offense = everything now. With or without confusing tunnels, a disorgainzed defense only has a chance against a poor offense, and even then only under their own towers.



If you play with people who are minimally competent, Lok is going to be kited to death, if they don't kill Drek while you are watching him mill about the FOS. If you really must dork around with NPC's, the riders and reavers are much better - faster and harder to kite. If there is a 20+ min stalemate between SH and SP, you are doing it wrong. And the allies are doing it wrong if they don't win while you are messing around. SF is a distraction. If you can't grab SH in the 5 min it would take it to turn, you probably woln't win.

All I can say is that it is very clear that your battlegroup has evolved to a VERY different type of game from the battlegroup that Terenas (BG1) and apparently Stormrage (BG?) tend to see.

A typical game in my battlegroup will sometimes have the alliance winning before horde flip SP, and usually before horde flip the aid station. They have learned what SP and the bridge has to offer in terms of stalling the horde offense and use a 10-15 man defense to stall horde there long enough for their 25 man offense. With no defense at all from the horde side, they pretty much steamroll through in a similar time as with a 40 man offense, but they end up with more bonus because the horde generally doesn't cap the 2 Dun Baldar towers.

Our alliance is not so willing to concede their base as yours appear to be.

The stall between SH and SH involves pushing the entire alliance force and keeping them from any graveyards at all. Lok is milling around the field of strife while ~5 people sit at IB and SF and the other ~30 keep the alliance stalled on the road. With so many people, it's generally quite difficult for them to kite Lok, especially since Lok no longer interacts with NPCs and it doesn't do them all that much good to kite him anyway. If they do kite them to the general's room, inevitably the kiter gets killed when he gets there and finds out the general no longer attacks Lok, then he resets and continues his killing spree.

The fact that your alliance seem to present zero defense appears to be the disconnect we have here. I'm guessing your alliance will eventually learn. It didn't take ours more than about a week after X-server BGs to wise up and deny the horde Dun Baldar with reasonable consistency.

Well we can't play each other, much less play each other on arrainged teams that would allow us to put the offense versus defense thing to rest. That's why I said "agree to disagree".

However,



While I think your typical Pug is a bunch of mouthbreathing morons, the idea that your bunch of slackjaws are much better at AV then mine I find amusing. I also find it amusing that, atleast in my battle group, these racing techniques were developed by PvP pros on a very competitive PvP server inbetween the AV nerf and Xserver BGs. They then spread to the rest of the battlegroup, games got progressivly more racelike over the first month of Xserver.



Maybe your allies will wise up. It's not tough to kite Lok. I don't know the exact mechanics of it, but it is possible for him to be killed once he is in the base. And the general will engage him, unless they changed that very recently (like 1.12.1). I've definatly seen that in 1.12.... the pack followed the kite too closely, we were able to land some heals on lok and won.



Who said zero defense?

Here is the thing about defense - Even if you win, you lose. You are better of in terms of honor and rep with losing in 25 min then winning in 50. All of the better players know that. I'm pretty sure the percentage of good players who are there to win and not for honor/rep is pretty small. So if a lot of people are playing defensive, chances are alot of them are bad, and you are probably not going to win anyways.