The NPCs are not intended to be wins in and of themselves. You’re supposed to accompany Lokh and Ivus and help them, and that includes preventing people from kiting them. I was in an AV last week which used Ivus to capture Iceblood and eventually to win because we were able to prevent anyone from kiting him until we got to Iceblood and started fighting.
Really, though, in the original design the cavalry was intended to get past Iceblood or Stonehearth, and Ivus and Lokh were for storming the enemy base after you were already at their gates, which is why you need control of the center to summon them. Unfortunately it’s now very difficult to prevent the cavalry from being kited because only druids have the sustained high speeds to be effective at preventing it any more.
I dunno, that’s kind of a tough one for me to get behind. I’ve won many a game coming back from a tremendous deficit and those never would have happened if everyone could vote to abandon the match the moment it looked like a wash.
On the other hand, I can’t stand those protracted losses.
I made a frustrated post here about cheating in IoC, (Can we please stop ally from Isle of Conquest cheating?)
not sure what else to say, it’s a very hard BG for horde, there’s no real sweet glaive spot like ally, couple other things
it’s insult to injury though to allow alliance players to range our boss with demos, if they happen to have 3 demos up when they take our keep the boss pretty much insta-dies
There are good glaive spots for Horde just as there are for Alliance. However, as with Alliance, these spots are on the west side, and are thus incompatible with the Horde’s normal east gate strategies.
I think switching the starts is a fantastic idea. It completely evens the playing field when you may start in either base. It would also make the bg fresher.
Ally have to deal with bridge, horde the IB choke point.
Delete the bosses. It creates hive mentality . Put the emphasis on tower burning so it increases their importance. Loss is from losing the battlefield and reinforcements .
IoC
yes the siege damage to the boss needs to be fixed.
the random start positions would also help alleviate problems.
General
A new epic BG. AV is by far my favorite BG regardless of rewards . We need more like it with the lessons we’ve learned from it well integrated.
Naaa, even with the changes people are already killing the boss with one tower up, the next raid is going to totally obliterate the npc all over again. Another buff will be needed very soon.
I like this. I’d even add on get rid of the reinforcements at that point but add a timer (ex maybe 1 hour). Basically, kill 4 towers, win the game. Also maybe even this too; destroying a tower subtracts 10 min from the timer.
In case of a draw or time over then honor gained is awarded proportionate to the towers burned. Summoning Ivus/Lok, ram riders/wolf riders, upgrading armor scarps etc would give bonus honor, or even Conquest.
! can’t remember the last AV I won as alliance now.
I do not agree with switching starts for the factions - why treat the symptom and not the cause
The most significant issue is the IB bottleneck. It is far too easy for 20 horde to camp it and send teams to take back the occasional tower behind their lines. Meanwhile the other 20 can avoid SHB defence, if need be, and then start taking a tower at a time. By then it’s game over unless horde get too greedy (which they can be these days … they are getting pvp/WM on a platter and expect to win everything now)
I like the strong NPC’s and they should scale with our ivl’s etc.
Perhaps the opposition NPC’s could scale even higher if your team has more healers… ?
But in reality the choke is the issue… i am at the point of not bothering to queue Epic (I really like AV but don’t like IOC)
The choke at the bridge for Alliance is inconsequential. If we are battling there, the game has already been lost. And horde can gate etc into our base with ease
The Hord analog to the Iceblood choke point is the Stonehearth choke point, not the bridge.
There is one “neutral” grave yard between, one tower and one boss (Balinda/Gaalv) before each. The only imbalance being that the Stoneheartth GY is just before, and Iceblood GY just after the center of the choke point. The analog of the bridge choke point is the one you go through to get to the last two towers.
I have thought that switching ends was a great idea since long before they moved the Hord starting point, it’s still a great idea if only because it invalidates the complaints (excuses) from both sides that the map favors the other faction.
I’m well aware that coding that would not be as trivial as it may at first seem, but still believe it would be worth it.
SH is not a choke point. IB choke is a choke because the only way to go is through the path before IBT. We could argue we can use a gateway leading up to IBGY though. SHGY is set in a spot where there are three ways to it, but can be completely avoided by riding your mount behind Balindas building and going to IWB or beyond.
The choke point is by the tower after SHGY, not at the GY, the whole map is symmetrical with minor exceptions, those exceptions being the cause of much complaint from both sides over the years.
The asymmetry that hurts the Aliance is the fact that SHGY is just before the choke point and IBGY just after. The asymmetry that causes Horde complaints when we’re losing is the fact that the bridge is a much better choke point than the tower room on the horde side.
Regardless of my opinion of the map, or yours, swapping ends randomly eliminates any issue of bias (intentional or otherwise) with the map.
Yes, that choke that in thousands of AV games is used more by Horde players to block off the map to Alliance… it’s not comparable because it still leaves SHB and Balinda wide open (and requires you to run out of the graveyard and north to use!)
You’re correct, and when Horde are losing the choke point at Iceblood GY is sometimes used to keep Horde from going north, other times the choke point after (north of) SHGY and the GY are held by Alliance. As I said, it’s those few asymmetries that cause all the problems with perceived bias.