Another Wintergrasp Post

PVP Battlegrounds
1

Some context:
My mage is basically a new character. Prior to this expansion, it hasn’t really done any PvP at all. Looking at the numbers on my stats page, I’m seeing the following:

BGs Played: 35
BGs Won: 15

AV: 2 wins, 10 played
Gilneas: 1 win, 2 played
Silvershard: 1 win, 1 played
Kotmogu: 2 wins, 2 played
IoC: 3 wins, 5 played
Wintergrasp: 1 win, 15 played (14 offense, 1 defense)*

*WG stats calculated by taking total bg’s played and subtracting tracked BG’s on Blizzard’s stats tracker in achievements window and the 100 win achievement for WG.

BG’s not listed I haven’t played (on my mage - I have other toons with more PvP experience, WG included). Admittedly, I’ve focused on the epic bg’s because this was a new character and the impact of not having gear is diminished with 40 players. There are more things I can do as an ungeared scrub to help in a large BG like IoC than in WSG.

Wintergrasp is a different beast entirely. I know Blizzard is maintaining that they’re keeping a close eye on things and that winrates for offense and defense are within 5% of one another (Feedback: Epic Battlegrounds - #1054 by Kaivax):

We’ve been monitoring Wintergrasp closely, and have been pleased to find that win rates for defense and offense are quite even, with a less-than-5% advantage for defenders.

While I’m willing to admit that 15 games is a small sample size, if the win rate for defense is only 5% above that of attackers, the statistical likelihood of me losing 100% of my 14 attacking games is astronomically small. I’d like to propose a few tweaks based on what I’m seeing in these games:

  1. Reduce default vehicles available to defenders by 50% (2 per workshop) since these vehicles can’t be denied and a properly-executed defense already has access to wall cannons and RPGGs, in addition to whatever additional workshops they capture outside their fortress.

  2. Modify tower buffs for attackers to increase vehicle damage to structures (NOT PLAYERS) by 10% per tower still remaining. This incentivizes defending towers not just for the time extension they provide, but also gives offense an added boost that seems to be sorely needed in the wall breaking department.

  3. Decrease damage that all vehicles deal to players by 20%. Decrease damage dealt by NPCs to players (not vehicles) by 30%.

  4. After the first player on a given side (attackers or defenders) gets max rank, any new players added to the match start with rank 1 and are allowed to build catapults by default. Forcing players replacing those who afk/leave to start from ground zero only adds to the one-sided nature of the BG.

  5. Shorten the range of all wall turrets available to defenders by 10-15%. Right now, the eastern turrets on the far southeast corner can reach sunken ring, meaning defenders have a massive advantage attacking it at the beginning of the game.

  6. Introduce engineer NPC’s and an in-BG currency (looted from players and destroyed siege vehicles) that can be turned in over the course of the battle for research bonuses. This would need tweaking and testing for balance, but something like 5 from each player, 7 from catapults, 10 from demolishers, 15 from siege tanks. At 300 tokens, a team increases range and damage of vehicles by 5-10%. At 500 tokens, vehicle speed is increased 15%. At 1000 tokens, vehicles take 20% less damage from vehicles (but full damage from player abilities).

  7. Provide for the possibility of a shorter game for defense. If the defenders are capable of taking ALL workshops and holding them for 5 minutes, the game ends. This should stop the defensive steamrolls that inevitably still go the full 30 minutes and may reduce the number of people who afk/leave at 10 minutes because a game appears unwinnable.

  8. Add RPGGs and Seaforium charges to forward (SR and BT) workshops for offense - allow players to directly run bombs to the walls if vehicles aren’t available.

The goal isn’t necessarily to gimp defense, but to buff offense to a point at which they can be competitive without needing an almost inconceivable amount of coordination in a bg full of 40 random players.

Again, these are just my opinions - I’m sure there are holes/flaws, feel free to provide additional feedback. I just wanted to drop my two cents in a (hopefully) more constructive way than just whining about how it’s not fair.

2 Likes
2

When I get offense in WG I just /afk and take the deserter buff.

10 Likes
3

:rofl:

No one with a brain actually believes that WG has a 50/50 win-rate between the two sides (defense/offense).

I mean, I get that the devs have access to more information than us players, but come on - offense winning 50% of the time? Color me skeptical :woozy_face:

There’s just no way, there is too many player accounts of “always” losing on offense for their alleged 50/50 win-rate to be accurate. Perhaps their data is out-dated?

The claim that the win-rates are “quite even” directly contradicts all the WG complain threads that have been popping up left and right recently.

As for the rest of your post - you might want to consider copy-pasting it into that “official” thread you cited for a better chance of being seen. There are so many of these WG complain threads lately that I almost wonder if blues are just scrolling past/not reading them.

2 Likes
4

It’s impossible that defense and offense are within 5 percent …Blizz is just straight out lying.

3 Likes
5

Huge blizz lie woooooow, embarrassing.

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So, as a disclaimer - that’s the most recent data I could find on win rates, but it’s old. Ancient by internet standards. That post was from April 2019. I don’t know how much active tracking they’ve done since then - but I’d like to see new numbers for Shadowlands.

7

I think that this might be the meta. There’s no reason to stick it out when there’s other content to do.

2 Likes
8

Offence in late bfa was not as bad as it is now, I had a few games that ended within a few minutes. I definitely expect the current offence win ratio to be at 90% or higher.

9

yup, I afk and come check forums

2 Likes
10

I’m thinking that I’ll find a good fishing spot and /afk then fish then AH the fish.

11

The new meta…level fishing in pvp. This is my new plan when attacking because I haven’t seen a match come even close.

12

here I am again lol, I did skip one though, just grabbed food

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Wintergrasp ImBalanced - PVP / Battlegrounds - World of Warcraft Forums (blizzard.com)
Please Blizzard. Wintergrasp needs to be fixed.

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Bumping for thoughts/additional feedback on how to help WG not be dumb.

15

the 5% difference was in BFA, its only since SL that WG Offense has been basically broken.

how broken? the top end epic pvpers who used to push for winning basically every game in under 5 are now lucky to even win 1 or 2 Atk games a week. its getting better, slowly, but its def not balanced or even remotely close to 5% atm.

16

Ya horde will start to win on offense as the gear disparity between the factions start to increase . It’s what happened in BFA towards the end , Horde would just blow out Ally at SR and win game in under 10 minutes.

But for alliance , there will never be a time when they have a decent chance at offense . And I don’t think that’s a good BG situation .