I’m the OP, this is my ally.
Yes I made my horde mage first but I spend an equal time on both, more on my ally mage if I’m honest.
Horde do not need to have a dynamic strategy. Slam SHGY and backcap. After SHGY is taken it’s easy. Backcap anything hold the choke. Alliance need to come up with a plan and one false move it’s very hard to recover. If Alliance can somehow take IBGY and have enough healers to counter the lopsided gy spawns then maybe they can win.
4 Likes
Sums it up pretty well. Alliance do not have a go to win strat and even if it wins them a couple of games, it will not have the success rate of “zerg SHGY til it caps”. This map requires a lot more coordination from alliance than horde. Lose a vital GY and it’s game over alliance. Horde lose a gy and they can reset the match.
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Key is to not play Horde’s game.
Alliance should either wait together at SH until they are all grouped before they attack or…
Send waves in to attack IBGY and Snowfall while having a few defend SH.
Key is to not let the Horde have SHGY or Snowfall until you at least have IBGY.
It’s much easier for them to defend IBGY without having it than it is for Alliance to defend SHGY.
You don’t want Horde to have Snowfall at anytime during the fight for IBGY/SHGY either way.
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don’t post if you’re just trying to rile people up… that’s really stupid.
The horde dont have an advantage at IBGY because of IBGY. The horde have an advantage in mid because of the stupid spawn mechanics that have alliance rezzing in DB after dying anywhere south that isnt in a straight line from SHGY.
IBGY is a death trap. It’s the easiest to defend GY in AV(as Horde due to cave spawn and backcap) and the hardest to capture GY in AV and also happens to be Horde’s first forward GY which makes it even more ridiculous.
It’s almost always better to skip IBGY entirely and rush Frostwolf Graveyard if your team is coordinated enough. The fact that Ally have to thrust so deep into Horde territory so early should make it obvious how skewed the map is.
I main Horde too and used to be a denier but it’s quite clear that there are glaring balance issues with the map in a pug vs pug situation. Premades that are coordinated enough can generally do much better.
To me, all GYs play pretty much the same and the horde caves proximity to IBGY is offset by the alliance cave location to SPGY. These things are touted as being radically different due to location, how the games play out and the eventual outcomes of games.
If horde dying in mid off center of IBGY spawned back in their base or alliance dying in mid all went to SHGY it would be a different story.
I feel like this would be so hard to accomplish.
You would almost certainly need your entire team on board for this without a doubt.
Even if you split 20 to sf and 20 to sh right at the start and managed to wipe the horde what happens next? You push for ib and have to clear them all again?
Idk, sounds really tough, I’ll suggest it my next av though!!
From Sun Tzu’s Art of War - Horse Race Stratagem
Sun Tzu was advising his master how to win a horse racing tournament against the king’s horses. The rules are as follows:
- Must categorize your horses Fast, Medium, Slow and have at least one in each tier
- Best of 3 one v. one rounds wins the tournament
- Any given horse may only race one round
Sun Tzu’s master was losing consistently to the king because the king’s horses were overall just a bit better than his. So the king’s fastest horse is a little faster than Sun Tzu’s master’s fastest horse, etc.
Sun Tzu advised his master to put his Slow horse against the King’s Fast one and just give that one up. Then put his Medium horse against the King’s Slow one. Then put his Fast horse against the King’s Medium one.
Thus Sun Tzu’s master was able to take 2 rounds out of 3 and win the tournament.
In Alterac Valley Alliance is at a disadvantage. We have 3 possible objectives at the beginning of the game: SH gy (keep), SF gy (take), IB gy (take). To attempt to win all 3 is likely not feasible, just as Sun Tzu’s master was trying to win all 3 rounds in the race against the king and could not. Thus we employ Sun Tzu’s horse-race stratagem and apply our strongest team to IB gy, second strongest team to SH gy, and mostly distraction at SF gy. Of course adjust accordingly.
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And if you fail to reach those objectives, you can /afk and be back in action within 20 minutes 
I feel like this isn’t really a good compromise though. Wouldn’t you rather have shorter queues even if it meant a 50% win chance compared to the 99 were seeing currently?
The entire reason I even made my gnome mage was because bg queues were 20+ minutes long
I wasn’t making any kind of judgment on this. Have had all these conversations in a different thread. That was really just a poor attempt at being funny lol.
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The good thing is that the AB and WSG queue times for horde have gone up from instant like they were weekdays and jumped back up (I’ve heard 20 mins or so on the weekends, those in my rankers discord are complaining about it), so at least there’s that. Secondly, when pugging as alliance you go up against fewer AB/WSG premades than horde tends to for whatever reason.
AV for the alliance is pretty rough, especially on non-AV weekends. I won’t play it on my alliance characters if it’s not AV weekend and I’m not rep grinding.
I’ve faced roughly the same amount of premades on both my alliance and on my horde characters.
I think the biggest indicator of whether you go up against a premade or not isn’t what faction you’re playing as but rather what times of the day you’re playing at.
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Agreed 110% about the times and days you play regardless of faction and the chances of facing a premade.
The chance of facing a premade on horde vs alliance overall could be a personal experience thing. I’ve heard it on the forums here too but I won’t argue that the chances could be the same.
And day of the week as well. I did wsg most of the day Sunday/Monday and only saw one ~7m premade. Tuesday -> Friday though dream on lol
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“Cobra strat is best strat. Become like the Cobra, strike fast and sudden from the shadows” - Cobra Commander AV weekend 10/18/20
That explanation tho…
Horde can have sf. It doesnt matter. In fact, you want Horde spawning at SF so there is less resistance at IBGY.