The two armies meet under SHGY, near Bal, on the ally side of the field of Strife.
In order to win, Horde simply need to sit there, under SH/SFGY, and farm for Lok and take nothing, offensively, before summoning him from behind a hill in a secret valley, well behind the action, while the ally summon Ivus under the horde gy in the middle of the field. ( and we all know how that goes)
It is physically impossible to get to SF before Horde. IMPOSSIBLE.
Ally HAVE to take a GY, Lets say SF. When we do, we leave SHGY open or lose SF. If we take IBGY, the Horde spawn 30 seconds away. The ally spawn a forever away from SHGY.
Blizzard is awful. I have seen Horde outplayed 20 times this weekend and yet horde wins.
I know in the pre-made era, 1hour queues and 7 min games sucked in January, but the horde trolls who believe this is a balanced map, as I once did, have no idea. Really, no idea, and Blizzard for allowing this, have even less.
They’re more biased and lazy than anything. I mean, awful applies, too. But there’s absolutely no reason to have any faith in this company at either a corporate or even personal level at this point - this is a broken institution, and the people who work for it are either powerless, or eager mindslaves, complicit in the misdeeds.
There was a time when I trusted Blizzard to try and do the right thing with their products. Now, my expectation is ALWAYS that they will take the easy way out in all circumstances. How telling - it took only 10 years for Activision to completely wreck this brand.
Yeah the Horde are already more than half way over the map before Alliance get to Snowfall.
This makes Alliance have to play harder defense and offense.
This version of AV should have never been added and Blizzard knows it. It’s the easy mode Horde biased version which is why they are getting steamrolled in all other BGs.
For the Classic event on retail, this isn’t the version they released either.
AV has never been a balanced map. The alliance have multiple geological advantages compared to the horde. There are at least 3 choke points the horde have to literally brute force their way through to win if the alliance decide to defend instead of rushing south.
Legit question, other than premades being disabled, what changed in order to keep alliance from winning in 5-10 min every av? Is it just horde playing more defense?
Both sides have pros and cons. It’s not 100% broken either way, lets be honest. Horde simply have more pros. Just thinking of a few off the top of my head.
Ally cons:
nearly all graveyards are traps with just one way out. With the limited res number it is easier to be spawn camped
can’t aoe from Van’s room like horde can from Drek’s since terrain isn’t elevated
can’t backdoor into horde base as easily
have a slower start out of the gate when meeting in fields
can’t enter Drek’s room as easily without aggro’ing warmasters
stormpike GY not as good a choke as iceblood GY (you can run under the bridge to bypass it or come over the top near mine. alliance have no way to bypass IB choke)
Horde cons:
can’t Paladin pull marshalls (although they can clean pull via prospecter)
don’t get to farm harpy cave
much longer queues (so maybe they take it more seriously than ally?)
the bridge into ally base is pretty nasty. You can be MC’ed or snowballed off which sucks
I honestly think the biggest difference is just that people rolling horde take PvP more seriously. That’s all. They are willing to wait an hour to play, which weeds out the AFK botters and casuals.
Thats just choke points on the map in general, two of those are horde. I wouldn’t even really call db bridge a choke most games. If alli die defending spgy it takes an avg of over a minute to wait on rez, run to cave exit, and recall. 30 secs more if you dont have the trinket equipped. Even assuming horde haven’t backdoored a tower or two already. I think one complaint people have is illustrated in your image. See how everything horde beneficial is shifted north? Horde starting cave… both of their chokes…
yet if alliance win the individual and team fights in AV…this doesn’t matter. many…MANY times…they have won the SFGY vicinity fights…but they don’t hold it.
And no…they’re GY at SHGY is not further or closer than IBGY. In fact…usually when allliance take SFGY by force they HOLD IT. until they give up.
so much focus on map design. the map is imbalanced…at difference points…by design.
but utlimately…it comes down to a team deciding to not give up and be skilled enough.
If the alliance start every game thnking they will lose and only 75 percent participate…ya you are going to lose 100 percent of the time because horde wait over an hour to get a game.
GET OVER IT>>> ITS NOT THE MAP. AND ITS NOT YOUR FACTION, YOU JUST ARENT TRYING
Half the Ally team in every match is PvEers that only want rep and don’t care about PvPing or winning. They will tell people in BG chat to lose the game so they can get into the next game for rep farming instead of taking an afk penalty. Unless something is changed so those sorts of people actually have to try to PvP and win the BG to get the rep, Ally PvErs will continue to queue AV to lose AV and just farm their rep no matter what is done with gys or caves or anything else in the BG.
This is VERY true. And it’s sad to say the least. I remember pvpers on pve servers that took pvp seriously. But now those numbers are in the Horde.
Another problem is that alliance really can’t even push. They have to defend “two” choke points at bal. We even give them SFGY, which horde used to let ally have from memory because horde then NEVER wanted to turtle games to be over 30+ mins from what I remember. If anything, horde would try to stall with a small number of players. Now it’s just, What alliance taking a tower? sends 10 horde team for 5 ally taking TP
Only way we could even meet them at fields instead of Bal was when we premaded and
1 we stacked riding skill gear
2 we mastered the pathing of the map to make it as efficient as possible, this meant landing some jumps in 1 attempt etc
