AV Map needs changing (coming from a Horde player)

[Celldweller-heartseeker]

Good luck.

[Fearoftdark-herod]

I read this post and I scoffed hard…
you really need to make a text document yes, about personal bias

[Gythriel-windseeker]

This map was in vanilla, 1.12 is vanilla.
The game is vanilla from 1.01 to 1.12.2, after that it becomes TBC in 2.x.x
1.12 was the end of vanilla, but it is still vanilla.

Pretty sure the gear was 1.12 also.

Can not say anything of Paladins as i dont play one so have not paid any attention to that class.

[Ginóbili-emerald-dream]

I appreciate the OP’s impartial opinion. I don’t understand why people on the forums constantly have to dedicate their mindset to the faction they’re playing. I get it, it’s fun to troll at times. But a lot of Classic’s shortcomings really come from the player base and how they turn a blind eye to problems that are clear as day.

[Eristiah-ashkandi]

FWGY is also difficult to hold for the same reason and is probably the least useful GY on the map for Alliance.

[Crave-herod]

damn this guy is not too bright grasping desperately onto the idea that him and his faction are all just somehow much better players

[Zakiri-stalagg]

I play both factions and the Alliance problem is an almost complete lack of fighting spirit.

Any group who effectively has no desire to do fearless battle cannot win.

It’s difficult to stay spirited when you know both that the entire map is stacked against you, and Blizzard is siding with the other faction.

When Alliance got a brief period of OP racials, when EMFH shared a CD with the pvp trinket so humans were equipping two actual trinkets- Alliance was 90%+ of the top rated players.

It might not have always been the case because players once had other motivations than to exploit every advantage- but over time, and with more focus on esports, everyone pvp focused flocked to the best racials- which meant years of Horde dominance, a period of human dominance then once nerfed, back to Horde dominance.

It always comes to that though- people flocking to OP racials, which right now are clearly all Horde. The imbalance of the AV map, stacked numbers in pvp servers and Blizz making changes to favour Horde demands just adds fuel to the flame.

Dare I bring up the bridge? There’s no reason the alliance shouldn’t defend that damn thing, like horde defend IB choke.

There’s two reasons- first of all, Horde just ignore it and ride up behind the bunker since it’s so easy to backdoor.

Secondly- when Horde are at the bridge, they’ve already taken most of the map, and because SHGY is a choke against Alliance it’s hard to get any offense through at that point. Defending when you have no offense at all is completely pointless- and it’s very easy to deny offense when all you have to do is block the SHGY choke and send back people if anything gets assaulted since you’re blocking that choke and know any Alliance up there are going to be small groups of stealthers.

If you can get a coordinated offensive push at that point as Alliance, it comes at the cost of bringing basically everyone you can with you- which means you can’t defend. The only way to get any offense at all is to abandon defense, because if you don’t your offense will be wiped out, as Horde are more than happy to abandon SPGY and all recall even as they hold almost the entire map if they see anything has been assaulted south of the field.

I’ve seen more than enough times us getting back SPGY with a group of 5 because a strong, full Horde offense have all recalled just to make sure IBGY can’t be taken. Because to Horde, it’s more important that Alliance get nothing than Horde get something- hence the glee over people quitting in phase 2, hence the turtle meta that Horde claimed was just to handle premades yet still uses against every pug and even in 40v20 matches when it’s absolutely unnecessary, hence the multitude of actions meant to drive up your own queues at any cost if it’ll spite Alliance in any way.

[Hawne-blaumeux]

Yeah, it’s partially why the whole #nochanges brigade has been so frustrating. I think one of the realizations that we all have to have is that things are different at lvl 60 in classic than they were in vanilla.

We need some changes to make the game a more player-friendly experience.

With the horde pursuing an all out 5940-0 max honor strat in AV, it’s clear that the map is a problem.

The way gaming metas work in modern games, it’s too disastrous to have an imbalance as large as this on the only 40v40 map in the game.

[Zakiri-stalagg]

Yeah, it’s partially why the whole #nochanges brigade has been so frustrating

If we got no changes- we’d have 1.5 AV all the way to Naxx release, which’d also mean arcane crystals/thorium/black lotus spawns inside AV which would alleviate the massive problem of overstuffed servers and supply of those items.

We’d have no xserver BGs til Naxx, which would have proven a collosal incentive to not stack servers.

We’d have proper itemization making raids more challenging.

And we’d see all the exploits of layering and batching vanish.

The biggest problem with Classic is #toomanychanges

[Bellz-pagle]

At this point the only thing alliance seem to be able to do is stealthily send groups south to kill LTs/Coms while avoiding the towers for fear of bringing in 10+ horde recalls to take back towers. That is not a healthy meta because it acknowledges no realistic possibility of actually winning the game.

Thank you for being objective. IBGY is entirely too easy to defend and retake. Whereas SHGY is almost impossible to take back, if the horde still hold IBGY.

[Cheetah-azshara-896963]

Some (most) people nowadays aren’t raised by anything other than an idiot box and video games which push this toxic competitive meta
Just look at MOBAs and realize that you’re playing with people who ruin those games too

[Cheetah-azshara-896963]

Every single time i managed to convince people to actually put a fight, we’d win or at the very least drag it out into a 30-minute slog, robbing them of their 7-minute cheese. About 50% of the time we did that, the premade would AFK out rather than sit in a slog.

Do you realize at all how you sound to people trying to claim alliance have an advantage while simultaneously bragging about a 50% win rate against premades?
Yeah the average horde PUG is just that much better than the very best ally PvPers pushing rank 14
Spare me your tears when you can’t get into AV because the queue time is approaching 1 day
And if you think this is un-realistic, that’s how all of the non-cap retail brackets are for AV right now

[Sephîroth-old-blanchy]

Anyone referring to SHGY choke is OBVIOUSLY referring to the choke by IWB (which is also near SHGY). Stop being pedantic.

You guys get to bal roughly the same time we do. Do i accept this is an advantage of sorts? Yes. We can get past FoS before you. That is it.

Look at this guy trying to downplay what a ridiculous advantage it is to start so close to Alliance objectives that you reach their Commander the same time they do.

[Mensrea-rattlegore]

Truth betold i avoid AV at all costs until the early evening when Wpvp and Horde wsg premades run supreme just to get a little more honor before bed. I wont que AV unless im dead certain all other options are null and void. Ive also seen less and less people queing on my server so the horde ques will only get longer which is a shame since i do love pvp.

[Notagin-kul-tiras (Notagin)]

The AV maps in patches prior to WoW 1.12 were even worse for Alliance in terms of distances to key NPCs and areas. So if Alliance played the same way it does now, they would still get their b***s kicked.

[Hunterx-incendius]

Yeah, we’ve all seen the alliance posts, but after running 50+ AV as horde (only losing 2 to probable premades before the latest stealth fix to queues) since the original fix was made, it’s clear to me that the horde cave needs to be moved south. It becomes more obvious every game I play as the current horde/alliance metas becomes further refined each day.

There are some other problems that the alliance faces at the moment in AV such as fewer high ranks/geared players queuing and more AFKs compared to horde, but the map is right now basically the single biggest problem.

There is no alliance meta that can counter the horde’s rush to SH GY while clearing all alliance south of Bal. Horde reinforcements arrive quicker than the alliance. Horde take initiative and attack near Bal and either wipe the alliance or slowly break them down while quickly taking SH GY.

Horde has a full 60-90 second head start on capping SH GY even if alliance makes it to IB GY. And even if the alliance grabs IB GY, horde is rezzing a bit too close for alliance to be able to hold it.

At this point the only thing alliance seem to be able to do is stealthily send groups south to kill LTs/Coms while avoiding the towers for fear of bringing in 10+ horde recalls to take back towers. That is not a healthy meta because it acknowledges no realistic possibility of actually winning the game.

None of this has anything to do with skill but rather the way the map allowed the horde to develop a dominant meta based on efficient control of SH GY. I have no idea why this meta never developed during vanilla (when horde mostly avoided taking SH GY), but the AV 1.12 map clearly lays out a blueprint that allows the horde to wipe everything south of Bal and then force the alliance to their starting cave.

I think we were all blinded by the brutal efficiency of the winning alliance premades to the fact that the rest of the map shapes up very poorly unless the alliance brings a perfect group comp (tons of paladins and mages) and just completely wipes the horde and then takes IB GY and systematically rolls to Drek (or skip IB GY and just go for a 6-7 minute Drek pull).

TL;DR: the map has to change because the meta is broken, and there’s no realistic expectation that the alliance can put together a realistic winning strategy without perfect composition.

Good post but it doesn’t matter. Blizzard heavily favours horde and anything that could reduce horde win rate to 95% instead of the current 99% is a non starter

[Kirthgersen-arugal]

Wait until it dawns on you that IB is the ultimate crutch for horde.

40v40, equally geared and equally skilled (and the cave moved back) will almost certainly be a horde win.

You’re welcome Alliance …

[Brokenwind-grobbulus]

Last night I did a wind down AV after a long day of warsongs expecting to get the standard 30 min Horde win. Instead the Alliance held their ground and continued to wipe us down the battlefield till they got to Drek and won the game.

This is how most AVs functioned back in Vanilla, whatever team was dominantly winning the PvP pushed the other team to their base till they won. If you aren’t going for some cheese meta strat where you don’t engage the other team, you can always just wipe em and control the map that way.

I suspect that to be an unattractive option, because it takes longer than they want. Fast queue addiction and all.

[Brokenwind-grobbulus]

If history repeats, you are so going to have to eat those words in later xpac remasters. Blizz moved the Horde starting cave further and further back in small increments and Horde began losing more and more. It got to the point where smart Horde players blacklisted AV because of the ‘guaranteed’ win rates for Alliance.

The horde cave was moved in tbc due to captains being worth reinforcement points.

They didn’t really start doing this style of game until sometime in TBC and Alliance began to boycott it at that point. At that point it was same map we have today.

The boycott was due to Captains giving reinforcement points. It had NOTHING to do with a strategy that could have been used in vanilla.

[Brokenwind-grobbulus]

I don’t really expect Blizzard to fix this, but I would prefer that people understand that the map really is contributing to Horde’s win rates and that it’s not just because Alliance sucks.

Half your team are either afk or leeching. Stop blaming the map that hasnt changed.

That simply isn’t going to happen today as it just does nothing for your honor. This is why you don’t see Alliance try after that initial fight.

How would it be any different if the initial fight occurred in the middle of the map, where you would have a farther gy and no NPC support?
You lot simply want quick games to go with your instant queues. Very few of you actually want to win the BG, but instead chase the dragon of hph.

Most don’t have that kind of time in 2020.

Then they should be playing retail, or not playing an mmo.

Yes Alliance has less hardcore pvpers, yes there is low moral in winning AV as Alliance, and yes there are probably more botters/afkers in AV as Alliance. But this alone is not enough for the winrates we are getting meaning that something else is at fault.

Jesus, this is some “yah, but ELSE have the romans ever done for us?” level of denial.

We don’t want long games because our hph suffers and we have instant queues, half our team is either afk or leeching from a distance, the rest give up the moment we lose the first battle with npc support, but it MUST be something else!