Among other things, Alliance can’t win AV because there is no point playing it if you’re decently geared (as Alliance). So the entire Alliance team is mostly fresh 60’s/level 56 alts trying to get reputation/AFKers. There IS a Horde map advantage because of how close IBGY is to your cave, but that advantage would account for a 55-45 or even 60-40 win rate, not a 99.9-0.1 spread as it is outside battleground weekends. I know that because when AV weekend comes and Alliance gets rankers on their side they win around 40% of matches.
If all horde are experiencing a 50/50 win rate during AV weekend, even with 2 hour queues, then it absolutely means that all alliance are as well.
Do the alliance lose 90% of games outside of AV weekend? Yeah, but they do it for the grind meta. The real honor grind for both alliance and horde exists in WSG and AB, but the For Great Honor turn in awards double honor compared to turning in marks separately. What’s faster, losing 3 30m AVs with instant queues, or winning after 90m against a horde team that is not going to roll over after waiting 3-5 hours to get their marks?
And here’s the issue with that logic, AV losses aren’t 10 minutes they typically take just as long as wins. So claiming alliance would rather lose given there’s no time advantage to doing so makes zero sense.
The cave rez is a big one but alliance face rez disparities at every southern GY. They rez at AS if they die at SF. They deal with horde cave respawn at both IBGY and FWGY.
It also makes the “throw bodies at SHGY” the go to horde strat because once they have that, the respawns to recap southern GYs favors them and alliance are trapped north of IWB.
It’s impossible to know how much the map contributes to alliance losses and how much player attitude contributes. We won’t know as long as we have this trash map.
Having said that, I’ve played 18 AVs over three days and won 6. If we’re to believe these forums, AV weekend brings out the best too.
I haven’t played in phase 6 yet, but in phase 5 from my experience alliance never got even close to 50% win rate even on AV weekend. At best I’ve gotten maybe 25-30% win rate playing maybe 10-15 games per day.
The games are all much closer with IBGY getting capped a majority of the time, but typically lost because of being outraced since alliance gets stuck at the IBGY-TP-IBT triangle for 5+ minutes.
I haven’t mentioned anything about the map you imbecile. All horde are not seeing a 50/50 win rate during the weekend. You literally don’t have the ability to even get an accurate sample size because of your q times.
There seems to be two things going on. Horde have gotten complacent and horde are more willing to let the game turn into a base race more like how it was played in 1.12.
The map only favors horde if alliance insist on their braindead strat of zerging IBGY. Don’t do that and virtually every other advantage - from SPGY being the easiest GY to defend, to alliance being able to solo cap horde towers, to the horde base being a joke - favors alliance.
Unfortunately alliance mentality works like this:
Try to take IBGY for some reason even though you dont have to and this strat rarely works
You do know there’s a graveyard between IB AND FWK right? It’s also the easiest GY to take on the map. If only you could muster the patience to hold that until it caps. But you dont.
I wish I could pinpoint what exactly the advantage horde has over alliance in AV, but I can’t. I refuse to believe horde are just better players overall, as that is statistically unlikely. I’ve never played AV from alliance perspective, so I have even less ability to determine where the advantages are created. I’m a little hesitant in believing the cave being close to IBGY is the sole reason for the disproportionate win rate. Once horde loses IBGY, which does happen often, it’s extremely difficult to take back. In my experience over the last month, losing IBGY usually results in a base race (possibly due to impatience from the horde), which the horde typically win anyways.
I do think this new strategy where alliance give SFGY freely, and zerg IBGY after horde control SFGY it is a +EV move. The 3 instances this was employed against my team this weekend resulted in base races, which ended up as horde wins anyways, but are much closer that I would like and also lessen the overall honor earned.
Anyways, my AV grind is over, no more wasting hours in queue for a game I’ll win just by drooling on my keyboard.