Yes, if both sides zerg, then alliance would probably win a majority or virtually all games (especially before the pally pull was nerfed) because horde spends more time killing Bal and capping towers/objectives and gets stalled cleaning up LTs.
We saw that for like a few weeks during the premade era of AV in classic.
But as soon as horde starts using the IB GY-cave defense and goes scorched earth not allowing alliance to cap anything in the south, then the defensive advantages for the horde come into play and the win rate flips on its head and horde should win every game in an equal matchup.
That’s sort of my point. The strategy (meta) changed, not the map.
Therefore, the issue is strategy
What is “Scorched earth”? Defending your base? That’s not scorched earth; that’s playing the game normally.
The reason why Horde killed LTs and Bal for the past 15 years is because it was almost an assured loss so might as well get as much bonus honor as you can.
Not using the map effectively doesn’t make the map not a problem, it makes the people not using a better strategy idiots. Horde stopped being idiots, countered the zerg, and also countered the slow push as well doing the exact same strategy, and have now locked up the Alliance entirely.
Even the “hold FoS, SHGY, SFGY and wait for Ivus” strategy just doesn’t work here, notably because you have to defend the Druids so far advanced into the Horde side of FoS and you have to cover two graveyards. If the Alliance are strong enough and coordinated enough to hold the game for 20+ min in such a state, chances are they’d be better off zerging and actually being the 1 out of 500 team capable of ignoring the Horde defense and racing for a win.
Couldnt the same be said about Alliance then? They arent using the map to their own advantage.
15 years ago, Alliance knew their bridge, base, SP >> FWGY and the horde base. they just straight up skipped IBGY some of the time, or they took SF GY and just zerged from there.
Not really. We don’t have a grand strategy to use. During the zerg meta you’d still have people on defense on Horde that could wipe us and send us alllllll back north. The game would drag on, but the Horde would win.
We don’t have an alternate route to go, we just lose.
Can’t zerg from SF if any number of Horde defend. That’s the problem with the cave. 20 from the cave beats 10 from SF, especially when SF is no closer to IB and beyond than SH is.
Whoa. I was looking for a TLDR, but my finger started hurting with all the scrolling I had to do before I could get down far enough to possibly see one.
Thats actually wrong. SF is much closer than SHGY is. It’s close enoough where you can reinforce IBGY if hardcapped. That’s why Horde actually tries to defend SF when 15 years ago, they just let allaince take it.
SF also puts the Primalists in danger since she’s right under SFGY and it’s on the way to IBGY and Galv.
But the good thing is that AFTER IBGY is hardcapped, however hard the feat is, it’s pretty much a breeze to Drek. That’s why zergs skip right to FWGY.
It really isn’t, saves about 6 sec of time coming from SF to reinforce taking IB against reinforcing Horde coming in twice as many at a time, from a closer location. This is especially useless as a GY as Horde get there in advance of Alliance so we start out trying to reverse a soft-cap.
Hence the massive gamble for trying it. If we can take and hold FWGY, yes it is easy-breezy, but that requires a large and coordinated team of Alliance to zip past everyone, on epic mounts, with a competent and balanced group of classes and roles, and a load of Horde too stupid or too weak to jump back on defense and stop it. Any deaths on such a zerg put you at SHGY at best, but most likely at SPGY due to Horde arrival at SHGY seconds after Alliance do, but now with far fewer defenders to hold off the initial murder ball of 30+ Horde.
Thats flat out wrong. The distance to SF from IBGY and SHGY are practically the same. Just draw a line and measure it. And the distance from Horde cave to SFGY isnt short enoguh where the alliance can’t interrupt a cap either.
Alliance have been zerging for 15 years. The whole premade scene lasted about a patch in classic. You dont “need” exceptional amounts of coordination/comps that a regular pug cant do. That’s why the Alliance were able to do it for 15 years straight.
In fact, I remember threads where the horde called alliance players mindless zergs because of how “easy and braindead” defending the bridge was while the alliance offense just mindlessly walked right to horde’s base.
Man use some reading comprehension. The og post is from 9 months ago before av released. It was bumped to show how people thought of the map before it was released. He was honestly still probably lvling to 60.