Alterac Valley balance changes, patch 8.1

PVP Battlegrounds
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Alterac Valley

  • The relentless snow in Alterac Valley has raised the height of Stonehearth graveyard, making it more challenging for the Horde to assault.
  • Lokholar the Ice Lord and Ivus the Forest Lord are now eager for immediate battle, and no longer linger in the Field of Strife for 15 minutes after summoned.

Looking forward to seeing these changes. Wonder if we’ll see this bring Stonehearth more in line with Iceblood. Roll on tomorrow!

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Wow! An AV change!

It should be interesting to see how this can help a SHGY turtle

I think the strength of IBGY is that the choke is in archer distance from IBT. SHGY won’t be equal to IBGY, but the bridge is stronger than the horde keep entrance.

I’m very surprised by this

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Finally! The Alliance will have a chance to win Alterac Valley!

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I wish there were pictures of this change.

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If you ask nicely they might do it using paint.

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Same, the change is not really descriptive, feel like it is going to be a minor change that will ignore the larger issue with the alliance defense.

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I’m hoping that it’s a wall that blocks the high path and forces Horde to pass Belinda’s bunker and up the path towards IWB.

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But…win rates are “shockingly even” and “the other battleground that Alliance more frequently win is AV, Alterac Valley”.

If Alliance win AV more frequently, why is AV being balanced to make the map harder for Horde?

Something’s not quite right…

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It could be, the only issue would be that it would cut off alliance from SHB making the process of defending the bunker harder. As horde could easily defend the gap between balinda’s bunker and the wall forcing alliance players to jump down and then fight them.

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They could enable you to jump down from shgy to shb but not back up

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Similar to how you jump down from IB GY.

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That would make it harder for horde, for range aoe targeting and melee. Guess we’ll just have to see the changes tommorow and how the horde reacts to it to understand it’s effectiveness.

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New patch note added. Yaaasss :smile:

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This is my guess and something I’ve advocated for in the past. Having a faster path to the first objective as well as a choice of attack routes has always been a major difference between the two defensive positions off the field of strife

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As a guildie pointed out, ivus spends 10 minutes in the field of strife not 15. Not even blizzard knows the secrets of the frost and Ice lord.

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Blizzard bows to the alliance privilege even though alliance already has an edge in AV, as stated by its game director.

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Oh man, didn’t realize Horde racials are getting nerfed more:

  • Troll Berserking reduced to 10% Haste for 12 seconds (was 15% Haste for 10 seconds).
  • Blood Elf Arcane Torrent cooldown increased to 2 minutes (was 1.5 minutes).

We’re really gonna need to start finding some new excuses!

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Looks like I got at least 1 of my wishes granted, I been harping on ^ this particular issue all throughout that one “feedback” thread :grinning: Now if only they would buff their health and damage output, then we could have some really epic encounters.

Tomorrow is going to be an interesting day for sure…

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In the past every time they mess with AV, they make it worse, so I’m not sanguine. If it’s a single direction jump from SHGY to SHB, that could actually make the SH defense strategy more difficult for Alliance, since once they’re at SHB, they can’t get back to defend SHG quickly.

The map was balanced, it was just the interaction of the map with the reinforcements that was not. Now the map will be unbalance toward the Alliance (except for the glass walls and stuff at Frostwolf, which most people don’t even know abourt), and the reinforcements will be unbalanced toward Horde, because the Alliance central objectives will be more exposed. That’s not an improvement.

I hope they let him gather his energy for 5 minutes at least. Otherwise he’s going to set off before the rest of his team is gathered to help him, which will mean he’ll just be kited and killed.

It did need to be nerfed, but this isn’t the right way to do it, since it’s still overpowered in larger battles due to being an AOE. It should have been changed to be single target, and the cooldown left alone or even lowered to 1 minute.

(Yarrow)

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Eh, used to be. I’d argue the Horde keep is stronger since they have patched any way Alliance used to be able to sneak in the back way. Now all you have to do as Horde is hold on top of the hill, between the tow towers since the only entrance is through the hut. With the bridge, you can still sneak in behind South bunker

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