It’s not just that the rankers left. Alliance AV wins were heavily supported by the organization which came with premades. They turned a tough situation into a tolerable one because of organization. Even if you didn’t have highly-geared and skilled players the simple fact you had a good mix of healers and organized groups meant you could hold your own.
The minute this was removed you ended with random groups with little organization. Even if you had some great players with great gear and knowledge scattered in there you still had an immediate negative effect on the game. So the win percentage dropped suddenly. Over the course of a few days or weeks those top-end players did leave and the percentages dropped further.
So it was a combination of factors for sure, both random pugginess and the rankers leaving.
Yes. The average Alliance player is not as PvP focused as the average Horde player. In general, Alliance players are not specced for PvP, geared for PvP, or willing to spend the consumes on PvP to the same degree that the average Horde player. In addition to that, the AV map requires the Alliance team to be substantially better than the Horde team to win. The combination of the two means that Alliance very, very rarely wins AV.
I would also plug backdoors into bases and move things a bit so that it’s easier to respawn and defend your own end of the battle.
For example:
Get rid of the current SHB and make a new one closer to where SHGY is at, blocking the eastern path to SHGY. Allow an escape drop down from SHGY to behind that, similar to what happens at IBGY.
Make a path up near the lumber mill which leads to a short drop down to the back of SHGY so that people can come from north and drop down to defend/take the new SHB/SHGY.
Narrow the road leading up to IWB a little bit so people have to come closer to SHGY and people defending there can more easily cover both.
Now SHGY goes from being a death area for the alliance to a jump-off and defensive point like what happens at IBGY.
Both the horde and the alliance would then have areas which are easier for them to defend and take back the first GY between them and the Field of Strife. It would mean that a good team would have a chance to turn the battle around and there’d be less reason to just give up when you lose that GY.
It’s not huge changes, just adjustments that would copy some of the advantages of IBGY to SHGY.
Alliance aren’t passing on AV because of the map, theyre passing on it because they cant premade. So yeah, changing the map will give the alliance one more win a week but that’s about it.
They have zero disadvantages. The issue they have is alliance bridge which is a non issue because they exploit the two back entrances to our base every match
The rankers left because the HPH needed to support the ridiculous amount of games and honor alliance side rankers need to maintain wasn’t there with 30 minute games. Shoot, I don’t think it was there with 15 minute games. It wasn’t a coordination thing that overcame the map’s obstacles as much as they were coordinated so they could crush pugs and win within 8 minutes. That was always the goal for the rankers. Not coincidentally, it still is just on other BGs.
But once they leave, who carries team fights? That’s really what I see. Horde side, I see 6-8 people who carry team fights, a few healers that support correctly, and a bunch of people who really kinda suck that get carried (me on my hunter = one of these people, so not calling anyone out lol). Once the rankers left, I don’t see carries alliance side much.
I guess I don’t think that needs coordination so much as the good players getting supported by the bad players. Which is an informal form of coordination, but nothing as grand as a premade.
Again, all of that is still within the context of “I don’t think the map is fair.” I just think that pug on pug with an evenly distributed amount of talent on both factions, the ratio would be much much better.
Totally agree here. All things being equal the win percentage over a long enough time should approach 50%. If it even got to 40% it would be an amazing improvement alliance-side.
I don’t have any issues with these changes. I am just really hyper focused on things that they have 1) done in other iterations of the map or 2) require them to alter basic pathing for some NPCs and laying down a new “click here” circle lol.
Once they start having to go in and tweak the map features is where I worry they will just ignore any requests (let’s be real, they gonna do that anyway lol). All that said, I would also be ok with the changes you suggested.
Right, it’s a good goal to keep changes to a minimum. However, horde on the US battlegroups have definitely found an optimal playstyle for the BG. Not to mention many good alliance have left the BG and the resulting long queues rewards the horde team for their turtling up. It’s a perfect storm to foster this current, terrible AV environment on the US servers.
Other regions have other factors so they may not get to the same point. However, it’s easy to see that it might flip and a similar environment might come about if horde there start following the same strategy.
I like how you strawman me and then take me to task like I said it. Classy stuff.
Im all in favor of pushing the cave back, I could really care less. Not really gonna do a whole hell of a lot. AV is dead, no one really cares, a map change cant save you.
AV has the potential to be a really fun pvp map but no one is really interested in realizing that potential so Im not going to waste any time worrying about it.
Classic as a whole could go the way of the dinosaur tomorrow and I wouldn’t have any you know whats to give.
