The other simple fact is that historically, during vanilla, alliance had no problems winning with the same map, patch version, and racials, as we currently have.
Personally I believe most all of this would be moot had they given us early AV, if not Korraks Revenge, the closest thing to it.
Again, while horde is doing that (I assume you mean the bulk of the horde forces), they are not south of IB. You and others focus on one aspect alone, without considering what other elements and events in the BG can drastically alter the flow.
Changing the cave isn’t a big deal. The real problem is blizzard screwed up the GY res order so alliance never spawn at the aid station as they should. In vanilla the cave was the last spawn option available.
This is why the legendary bridge defense doesn’t exist in classic, but was so prevalent in vanilla.
Vanilla also had a Rag who lived for 155 days before he died, classic is by no means the same game.
Like I said before everything you think of has been done over and over, and the simple fact is the map is so imbalanced we get to win 1% of the time. You can argue that till we are blue in the face or deny the map imbalance all day, it’s why we are having this conversation.
Horde will recall if any graveyard or tower or any objective is taken.
Horde will kill anyone trying to ride by them to go south.
Horde will Rez 20 at a time at their cave if we try to attack IBGY.
That is the entire point.If they recall, they are no longer where they were.
PVP happening in a PVP BG. You have the option of killing them as well as they ride north.
I agreed that cave respawns should not work the way they are. Scroll up.
Clearly. Alliance have made up their minds that they cannot win (without the premade exploit and race), despite the fact that history has shown that they very much can. But it is a lot easier to just put in zero collective effort, seeing as alliance easily accumulate faster marks of honor than horde, simply by nature of being able to have instant queue pops. Alliance do not NEED to win to get more MoH-per-hour than horde, they do not NEED to win to accumulate AV rep, and they do not NEED to win AV to accumulate honor, as WSG and AB are where that game is at. In fact it behooves alliance to allow horde to win a quickly as possible, so they can accumulate MoHs even faster.
On the flip side, horde HAVE to win AV to get MoH-per-hour, because of the long queues.
What it boils down to is collective motivation.
But hey, lets all keep pretending that it is the map, and that blizzard hates alliance players and actively works toward ruining their gameplay.
GY that are great for defending against a southern-attacking force rather than the other way: IB, SH
The battle line naturally forming just north of the field so horde easily get SHB and a number of LT, as well as both summoning spots.
Horde are able to get to SF first and screen it off.
The extra rezzes from holding both IB and SF, depending on where you die in the field.
If the battle goes south the horde cave gives extra rezzes very close to IBGY.
If the battle goes north horde get a great choke at IWB.
Once SPGY is taken most alliance rez at the cave, opposite the great choke at the bridge. Horde get across it first and then get to use that choke to defend.
The alliance recall spot is at the flag so horde can camp one spot to defend and don’t have to split up.
Now, alliance do have some advantages but they almost never come into play. Basically, alliance have to make big, risky moves to try to win where the horde can play conservatively to try to win. It’s not 100% the reason for the win imbalance but it’s a large factor.
This is a catch 22 as well, as any theoretical Alliance team that could push through that choke would probably have been capable enough to succeed the IBGY push into FW or even RH. That’s in part why defense is a less good strategy for Alliance (among other things).
Often we have people trying, but we can’t commit the majority of people to doing something other than defense of SHGY, and any group that tries for SFGY really can’t be reinforced. The 3 or 4 groups that go to SFGY would have to win, pretty much on their own, for over 5 minutes to cap SFGY.
The alliance base is actually far more defendable than the horde base. The horde’s ONLY effective defense area is at iceblood. Once alliance are past this, the horde base is doomed. Part of the problem is that if horde doesn’t have iceblood, then they are stupidly sent to revive at the cave. This leaves frostwolf wide open. The game thinks that because the cave is “closer”, it’s “better”. No, it’s not. We’re basically CCed by our own cave while alliance cap frostwolf. The horde cave is only useful for a boost at the start of the match. After that, the horde cave is a detriment whenever they’re forced to use it (iceblood lost).
Meanwhile the alliance actually get to revive at stormpike, right next to the next flag. The base also has a tight bridge under full line of sight of 2 bunkers with archers. The last area is full of elites that all aggro. The horde’s own flag guards aggro mobs horde doesn’t need to fight to fight, then suicides. None of this is a problem for the alliance in the horde base, lawl. All the irrelevant mobs are miles away from the objectives. Horde archers are blocked heavily by line of sight in their own base.
The bottom line is that the horde only has ONE effective area for defense (iceblood), hence why they aggressively defend it. If the horde loses this vital graveyard, they’re then stupidly dumped into the cave. The alliance however have SEVERAL effective defense areas, 2 of which are leagues better than horde side.
Actually, it is a thing. Once SFGY is hard capped, horde are usually hitting SHGY from two directions; from the south (closer to IBGY) and from the west (closer to SFGY).
Absolutely true, which is why I’m not one of those complaining about horde cave location. Once IBGY is lost (hard capped) horde doesn’t have ANY good place to defend.
This actually isn’t as true as you would think. When alliance is fighting to defend SPGY and it gets soft capped, all those who died defending SPGY rez at the starting cave. Multiple times I’ve tried to convince people that it was time to just give up SPGY and pull back to defend the bridge. I’m not sure exactly where the breakpoint is, but it is somewhere on the bridge. What this means is that usually once SPGY is lost, we’ve got little to no defense actually in DB.
The geometry is what is so messed up about AV. It was just not designed well. Making it so that you only spawn in your starting cave once all other GYs are lost might be an improvement, but then I think horde would be kinda screwed defending IBGY.
Right. If horde have both IBGY and SFGY then they can rez at either, depending on where they die on the edge of the field. So ones dying near SHB will rez at IBGY and ones dying further north will rez at SFGY.
This means that alliance pushing south often have 10 alliance rez against 10-20 horde rezzing.
I think you may be missing his point. These points can be capped by stealthers, but Horde very easily retake them. Even if 5 stealth go and cap a GY and only 5 Horde come back to retake, ultimately the 5 alliance will lose. Every Horde killed is easily replaced. Every Alliance killed is gone for good.
Are horde actually trying to take SF? It used to be that hordies would get blasted by their teammates if they did something so boneheaded. Because guess what happens if they own SF while there are alliance near IB, and they die up north of it all?
It is actually comical that you see horde having SF as a benefit. How bizarre.
No, you are missing the point. Hard capping is icing on the cake. The main objective is to split the horde forces, and spread them across the map. It is not about alliance successfully taking them, but rather forcing horde to go and keep them from being taken. No fighting is required.
There are 5 objectives south of IB that alliance can stealth/ninja soft cap. More things you soft cap, the more horde will be required down south.
I mean it is not a complex strategy at all, doesn’t need any “strategy” beyond the ones doing the soft capping, and it can be done with a single party queue group to amazing affect. None of the folks up the north part of the map need to be included in the strategy at all, yet they benefit greatly. Alliance really need to stop being so myopic.
I feel like I might be getting suckered into a “no u” trap, so I’m going to proceed with caution here.
The crux of the matter is that, for Horde, it simply doesn’t matter what you cap. Even if you never hard cap, you’re not going to bait any meaningful amount of forces away from the front lines. Even if Alliance manage to push Horde off SHGY proximity, they lose all their advantage at IBGY.
As Drinknblink pointed out, it’s not like Alliance are always only trying the exact same thing over and over. Horde gains, and retains, a large amount of map control for relatively low effort whereas it’s a much more difficult struggle for Alliance to accomplish the same thing.
Until there is at least one other GY south of IWB pass hard capped, alliance cannot go on the offensive and leave a small force defending SHGY. Pulling a group or two of horde back from attacking SHGY doesn’t actually accomplish anything. Frankly, the reason that most games end up being a turtle at SHGY is because alliance aren’t willing to take the risk of going on the offensive and leaving SHGY lightly defended for the very small chance being able to hard cap a GY somewhere else south of IWB pass.
Horde can fail over, and over, and over again and still win the game. They just need to succeed once. If alliance fails once, it is game over. That is why they tied down at SHGY.
I don’t follow. If you are not drawing many horde from the front lines, how are you NOT hard capping?
Nobody is saying it will be easy to accomplish, but it seems every time someone advises options, the kneejerk thing seems to be to immediately discount it and return to the strategy that is clearly not working currently. Hell, I am doing horde no favors by giving advice about how to split our forces and make it a good game. Small group strategies that HAVE worked against our side when I was playing AV.
You guys really need to get past this defeatism, nut up, and think outside of the box, rather than simply blaming it all on a map that hasn’t changed since the same patch in vanilla.
I mean, dammit, if I had virtually instant queues, I would find 4 other likeminded folks on my server and group queue. A 5-man team can be YUGE, running around the enemy territory. Unfortunately since I do not have instant AV queues, having a team like that to chain run AVs isn’t happening.