Usually we get about 5 or 10 alliance down there to assault IBGY. About 5 or 10 horde fall back to retake it. They succeed because they rez right by at the cave whereas we have to run to reinforce. The main horde force can still camp out near SHGY and intercept reinforcements to IBGY.
If we sent more to IBGY then horde have it even easier. They soft cap SHGY and turtle at the choke at IWB. Then 15-20 head to IBGY and whittle down the alliance defenders there. Even if all 20 horde get wiped they rez 20 at a time at IBGY.
So alliance have to take a big risk and send a ton south, automatically giving up SHGY and hoping they can cap and hold a more southern GY. Itâs a very tall order to pull off.
Most of the players who got crushed by premades are no longer queuing in there, so I doubt it. The reason they crush every aspect of Alliance now is simply because thatâs how many of them have been taught to approach the BG at this point.
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I do agree with your earlier post though. I donât like how Blizzard has left this to rot.
And the reality is immediately after premading was broken alliance teams were just as good as horde teams. So while itâs fair to say the quality of alliance has steadily decreased it didnât go from premade quality to what we have now instantly.
As horde started playing scorched earth more and more the decent alliance players stopped playing AV.
I like chatting with you Graff. Usually good discussion points.
The goal isnât to take and hold IBGY though. It is to force those 10 Horde back there so you can take and hold SFGY and get a second GY close enough to get additional reinforcements on death.
That reality wasnât true though. You lost a ton of good / great players who would have normally been added to pugs. Horde still had theirs. Thatâs a massive difference in skill just up and gone.
Do I need to draw you a picture to prove how much easier it is to summon Lok compared to Ivus? If you canât visualize the travel locations between SHGY and IBGY to realize that the Druids are the dead center of that whereas the shamans summon location is off the field of strife entirely by galv then youâre still a lost cause.
The only strategies that Iâve lost against recently (mind you like 1 out of 30 or 40 games) featured superior alliance teams that were able to hold SH GY while simultaneously taking SF GY or that went with the strategy of just turtling SH GY until horde took SF GY and were split with many respawning at SF GY, then alliance rushed IB GY and left 10-15 to turtle on the bridge.
Itâs just not easy to pull off though because regardless of what alliance does in the middle of the map (either taking SF GY while holding SH GY or turtling at SH GY), at some point alliance has to take a southern GY. And once you move forces off SH GY, you open yourself up to getting soft capped and choked up north.
And thatâs where the problems start because if alliance really does have a superior team, then yes you can just take all the GYs eventually and win if you have a team thatâs good enough to hold SH GY and take SF GY at the same time.
But most alliance teams are not capable of playing at that level unless theyâre a 30+ person premade with good gear (i.e. like Incendius was running in April-June, havenât run into them recently so donât know if theyâre still around). I feel like I see this kind of alliance team only on AV weekends or maybe 1 out of 50 times outside of that.
Which brings us to the other strategy (turtle SH GY and then rush IB GY after SF GY is capped by horde). But that too relies on horde not defending IB GY effectively. Yes, horde is more likely to be split up with a half the team zug zuging towards SH GY from SF GY so it is more likely that you can capture IB GY. But if 20 horde arrive at a soft capped IB GY with 3-4 minutes left on the timer, itâs going to be somewhat likely that horde caps SH GY and starts sending your alliance respawns up to SP GY. Add the cave respawn sending waves of defenders at IB GY and itâs over.
The odds arenât great that you can hard cap IB GY before the whole team is choked north of IWB.
Iâm really not sure what the silver bullet is here, and thatâs why I think we need a map change by fixing the cave respawn.
Except this is false. Not all alliance were premading and there were plenty of games where AV was pure pugs on both sides. And in those cases alliance still did just fine. Those alliance didnât instantly stop queuing when premading was broken because they werenât premading anyways.
They slowly left because horde increasingly played more and more scorched earth.
It doesnât matter if ânot all alliance were premading.â It matters that the ones who were happened to generally be 1) good players and 2) have left so they werenât part of the player base to pug against horde.
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And you keep saying they didnât instantly stop queuing. They did. I have already told you my queue times went from 40 minutes the day before the changes went in to over an hour the day the changes went in. Thatâs a lot of Alliance no longer queuing in a single day. I have yet to hear anything refuting this from anyone. Except you who donât have anything other than ânuh uhâ as a response. I saw 20 minutes worth of Alliance leave the first day and that climbed substantially over the next few days. You say ânuh uh, we still had good players, but rankers werenât in there and they werenât all that good either.â
Your stuff about IB and SH in regard to disrupting the summon is irrelevant, as when lok is being summoned the alliance is typically pushed north already. The bulk of BOTH armies are normally elsewhere by then.
Tell us more about the magical âsecret valleyâ that the lok summon point is hidden in.
How odd, I thought that according to you horde simply zugzugged north? Pick a hill to die on already.
Do I have to go back and again dig up your advising of that very strategy when folks were saying 1.12 AV would be a race?
Same, I welcome constructive and civil discussion.
This kind of feint is just a waste of time. I agree that SFGY is a better place to assault but to do all this you need to have organization and thatâs difficult in a pug environment.
So forget the whole IBGY thing since it just devolves down to taking SFGY. Itâs really a waste of time to go IBGY unless itâs a full rush strat. And, honestly, Iâd rather take 30+ people straight to the Relief Hut for that.
So we instead go for SFGY if thatâs the whole goal. But horde get there first and screen off the east ramp. They can get a hard cap on it unless a lot of alliance split off to take SFGY, in which case the defense at SHGY is compromised.
Once enough alliance split off to take and hold SFGY the horde can take SHGY and then choke at IWB. Then itâs a mop-up action of anything south of IWB while they turtle there.
Sure, alliance can do some very clever things like 5-man groups of stealthers creating distractions but thatâs organization in a pug again.
The issue is the horde donât need to do much but pressure SHGY to do well in AV. Alliance need to get clever and organize and such. Itâs a higher bar to win. Can it work? Sure, but itâs much more complicated and the win rate reflects that. Perhaps not all of the win rate is directly due to these issues but indirectly they have contributed to the overall apathy on the alliance side.
What matters is that alliance in full pug teams did just fine against horde. And they did not instantly stop queuing when premading was broken because those people werenât impacted by that as they guess what werenât premading.
So no, the average alliance player was not any worse than the average horde player. Whether they are now is irrelevant to what the situation was then.
No they didnât. We crushed those pug teams literally every time I saw them. They were literally why I didnât have a 90% loss rate while premades happened. Also, I donât recall saying the average alliance player is worse at pvping. I am saying there were fewer good alliance players queuing right after the premade changes happened and that it exacerbated the map advantage. Then months of inaction by Blizzard led us to this terrible place we are at now.
Who do you think my alt is? I never post on an alt.
Why are you so hung up on thinking I post on an alt?
I never said Valley i just said itâs not in the field of strife like the Druid location is.
I asked before do you need a picture drawn for you if youâre incapable of visualizing the difference?
I completely agree with this btw. It does seem like it takes a lot more actual tactics for the alliance to achieve what horde can by simply zerging at SHGY repeatedly until Alliance give up, lose it, or let us summon Ice Dad.
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As for why I am pushing the IBGY as a feint so hard, I have lost to this exact strategy 3 times now. You see something multiple times and it kinda sticks with you. Especially since Horde loses so infrequently now. I do understand exactly what you are saying, but it isnât like Horde is exactly bringing it on the always organized front either lol. We are generally a very reactionary faction strategy wise which is why something like this has been so effective.
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Generally speaking though, you are definitely correct about this though. There is a lot of risk in losing SHGY and once lost it is likely game unless intentional with the let them have it, hold the bridge and 25-30 are south strategy. I will admit, I only remember seeing this particular approach working in Vanilla (hold the bridge). I havenât seen this approach work in Classic.
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This is actually why I think the feint has proven effective. It is done early. It throws Horde off its game right away. It keeps Horde from being able to focus on SHGY while also preventing a hard cap on SFGY. If you are just blitzing SFGY, Horde is still in the phase of âwe can react to this because we are all running in thereâ from the initial gates being opened. We are naturally grouped up. Once a few of us die at SHGY though, things start to get more and more wave like allowing more flexibility with shot calling. I think that aspect needs to be considered regardless of using IBGY as a feint or going for SFGY early without a feint. No matter which you do, you need to get Horde out of its full on mob.
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I am probably a bit rambly now lol. But long story short, everything I have seen in losses all come down to surviving the first blob attack, getting horde into waves, then targeting an objective with a sub group.
Selection bias, most likely. A very good pug might hold IBGY and defend SHGY long enough to take IBGY. Then that good pug can continue to hold IBGY and farm the incoming horde while taking towers and such. When they win you notice that they took and held IBGY as opposed to the bad pugs that fail to do much.
So it might not be that itâs a superior strat, rather itâs a superior group that youâre facing.