First time in Alterac Valley...

[Fabricated]

What a fucking waste of time that was.

My friend and guildie formed a "get attuned" raid and got all the way to the last pull...and got called up in the queue. I had never done AV before, and the rest of the raid didn't really care, so I joined the battle.

Turns out we dropped in on the tail end of it. The Horde was beating down our doors right when we popped. After two hours of pushing back and forth along a small stretch of road, and 500 reamings from the completely shinied-out-the-ass horde players later, I left. How long does it take to finish a battle there anyway? I don't know if I'll ever bother with it again until I get at least my Tier 1 set and a better two-hander, because half the horde team was sporting full blue PVP sets, and at least 3 of their warriors were in High Warlord gear, including the horde's High Warlord himself.

I mostly started PVPing to get the knight's plate set. Is it worth the time, or would I be better served just hitting instances?

[Merusk]

I'm of the opinoin that the rank sets are not worth the time.  If you're doing PVP for gear, go after the faction-based (Neutral, Friendly, Honored) sets instead.  There's vendors outside of the instance entrances that will show you what's available and what faction level you need to buy it.  It's also pretty damn cheap since PVP doesn't give you a lot of gold.

As for the length of time, some servers don't get AV up too often, so it seems like they prolong the fights to get more time for faction, since there's some damn good AV equipment if you do the quests in there. 

[XMackenzie]

AV is for rep,
AB is for honour,
WSG is never up.

Far as those super duper HIgh Warlords - the gear isn't what makes those guys so fearsome - it's their backup support that's scary (The high ranking warrior types always seem to have a healer or 3 strapped to their butts).  Still though, hard to take out healers when a Tauren with a Giant freaking Orange hammer is whacking on your back.

If you're looking to get the Knight's set then you'll want to hit AB ad naseum.  The thread a little lower down goes into painstaking detail about the honor system.  Learned me that Knight's Captain was about as far as I could get comfortably semi-casually (semi-hardcore?)  Any progress in the honour system is a lot of time  I spent a good 20-30 hours the week before last doing nothing but AB (in lousy PuG's mind you) and only gained one rank from Sgt-major to Knight.  Looking at my rating for that week which was a crazy week for me and previous more sane weeks - I've lowered my expectations.

The whole thing though about the system is you need Gear to get gear and you'll do better/go farther in highly organize class optimized preset raid groups.   "60 Warrio LFG Strat / UBRS / Scholo / DM North" will probaly net you better results in the arms race of gear acquisition.

[SurfD]

AV really has a LOT of factors regarding how much time it takes to finish a game.

On average, on my server, horde will win a game in around an hour, give or take 15 minutes. (from everything i hear, unless its a coordinated alliance guild group, the alliance pugs only win about 1 game in 4  on my server)

Much of it depends on:
A) How coordinated is your team?  Bout the first thing we do is get as many people in the zone into one raid as we can.  If you can bang out some quick coordination, happen to have some healers that actually heal, and act fast to cap graveyards and the like, you can usually be knocking on their foreward bunkers in pretty short order.

B) How, for lack of a better word, "pro-active" your players are.  Too many people concerned with just killing the other side and not acchieving objectives?  Chances are the opponent might get the one up on you.  If you arent seeing an at least Moderately steady flow of Faction gain messages it means people arent turning in the good stuff that may help you win the battle in an hour instead of 4.

I always find it irritating when we have stupid people leading our raids shouting about the need to "just constantly rush the graveyard, we will eventually cap it" all the while their NPC's and PC's are killing us faster then we can get in.  In many situatiuons, successfully triggering the Wolf/Ram Rider and Bat/Gryphon assaults can make or break your graveyard / bunker assault, but some people seem to think that headlong suicide rushes without NPC support somehow win the day.

And yes, if you DO end up in an evenly balanced, well matched game, look for a LONG fight.  we still end up with 4+ hour games on our server, and those can just be really damn harsh.

[Ironwood]

Last AV I was in went on for 3 days.

Nope, there's no joke in this post.

Some people were in it from start to finish.  I was amazed.  And, of course, horrified.

[Der Helm]

Last AV I was in went on for 3 days.

Nope, there's no joke in this post.

Some people were in it from start to finish.  I was amazed.  And, of course, horrified.

There must have been more than one poopsock.

Per player.

PS: If you ever wanted to GIS poopsock. Don't.

[Fabricated]

AV is for rep,
AB is for honour,
WSG is never up.

Far as those super duper HIgh Warlords - the gear isn't what makes those guys so fearsome - it's their backup support that's scary (The high ranking warrior types always seem to have a healer or 3 strapped to their butts).  Still though, hard to take out healers when a Tauren with a Giant freaking Orange hammer is whacking on your back.

If you're looking to get the Knight's set then you'll want to hit AB ad naseum.  The thread a little lower down goes into painstaking detail about the honor system.  Learned me that Knight's Captain was about as far as I could get comfortably semi-casually (semi-hardcore?)  Any progress in the honour system is a lot of time  I spent a good 20-30 hours the week before last doing nothing but AB (in lousy PuG's mind you) and only gained one rank from Sgt-major to Knight.  Looking at my rating for that week which was a crazy week for me and previous more sane weeks - I've lowered my expectations.

The whole thing though about the system is you need Gear to get gear and you'll do better/go farther in highly organize class optimized preset raid groups.   "60 Warrio LFG Strat / UBRS / Scholo / DM North" will probaly net you better results in the arms race of gear acquisition.

I think I'll stick with instances for now. Maybe when I'm actually capable of doing more than single digit damage to people in PVP I'll try it again. The thing is, I didn't really find any of the PVP stuff fun.

[kaid]

You don't go into AV for honor. The rate you gain rep in there is fucking insane compared to the other battlegrounds. I have played ab since it came out and I am barely into friendly. I play AV 1 time and I am friendly. My friend got in for one long long one over the holidays. He played about 20 hours over two days in that one instance. He made about 15k honor and went from neutral to halfway through honored.

Another good run like that and he likely would get the next step up. There are some damn good rewards and instead of having to grind for months and months it just takes a bit of luck and maybe 4 or 5 good matchs to attain them.

Unless you wish to never leave your room again for the next 6 months forget about the pvp honor sets if you get them spiffy but you will go insane if you actually try to get them.


Kaid

[Fabricated]

You don't go into AV for honor. The rate you gain rep in there is fucking insane compared to the other battlegrounds. I have played ab since it came out and I am barely into friendly. I play AV 1 time and I am friendly. My friend got in for one long long one over the holidays. He played about 20 hours over two days in that one instance. He made about 15k honor and went from neutral to halfway through honored.

Another good run like that and he likely would get the next step up. There are some damn good rewards and instead of having to grind for months and months it just takes a bit of luck and maybe 4 or 5 good matchs to attain them.

Unless you wish to never leave your room again for the next 6 months forget about the pvp honor sets if you get them spiffy but you will go insane if you actually try to get them.

Kaid

What generates the most rep? Murdering other players and yanking armor pieces, body parts, and medals off of people? Or questing? I was confused as hell going into the place since it's so HUGE. My friend said it was "really big", but it was a bit of an understatement, since it's easily bigger than most PvE zones.

Edit: And I think I'll correct myself. I do have fun PvPing...when I can PvP. 90% of the time I'm in AB though, I get told by whatever High Marshal/Field Marshal that's leading to "guard stables" or whatever point that never ever gets attacked the whole game, unless I step away out of boredom of course.

AV was horribly UNfun for me yesterday since I just could NOT compete, until I decided fuckall to honor/rep/everything, and made my goal to be as annoying as possible. Then I had a LOT of fun. Jumping off of cliffs into the gigantic horde clusterfuck and using Intimidating Shout (and then dying 2 seconds later since that REALLY pisses people off), disarming the High Warlord so he has to run around in his big pointy armor punching people, using my Linken's Boomerang to get the killing blows or disarms/stuns on people (I got one of my two killing blows on the High Warlord with it, HAH), and using my Chained Essence of Eranikus (sp, whatever. It poisons everyone in a radius around you) at every opportunity.

[Threash]

Just being in the instance is enough to get rep, you don't have to actually do anything.  Finishing the quests and winning are nice bonuses.

[Yegolev]

PS: If you ever wanted to GIS poopsock. Don't.

Thanks for taking a bullet for the team.

[kaid]

Basically to get lots of rep in av do all the initial quests for their blasts of rep. Then its pretty much just playing remember to loot any and all body you get for the body giblet turn ins and then just play the game. If you turn your combat logs on you will see an insane spam of faction hits.

Killing certain NPC's also gives you a large ammount of rep boost such as killing the big spawned attack bosses. My friend killed that horde big end guy 6 times in one long lasting game and was getting some huge chunks of rep each time. Actually winning AV is worth a HUGE ammount of rep.

You really won't need to go out of your way to gain rep in av it is super duper easy and it just occurs if you are in there and just playing normally.

kaid

[XMackenzie]

Don't do the quests until you're further along the rep path.  Early on you can get rep just for killing regular guards.  Once that dries up then it's time to start doing all the quests.

[Train Wreck]

I just do AV for the pvp.  As long as it's not too laggy, I have a good time.  I don't expect to get anything else out of it, being an ultra-casual player.  I'm alliance on ER and we usually lose, though last time there were a lot of KoK members and we won pretty easily.

When you're outclassed by most of the competition, making a nuissance of yourself actually is the way to go in wide-scale pvp (doing turn-in quest would possibly be more useful; I'm not very savy on those mechanics).  My first time there, I was a 51 mage and most of the other side were 60s, presumably with some nice gear.  If I managed to dump my entire mana pool on a warrior he would likely still have more than half is hp left.  Instead, I used rank 1 frostbolt for the chill effect, especially on players trying to disengage, often freezing them in place, and watching the other players chew them up.  Polymorph was another good one.  Frequently when somebody 9 levels over me got the jump on me and didn't manage to one-shot me, I would sheep and watch him get methodically surrounded and taken out.  I'm not as familiar with other classes but there are probably creative ways to play a more non-traditional supporting role when you can't dish out the damage by yourself.

BTW, does anybody know of any good sources that describe the mechanics and strategies of AV, like a FAQ or something?

[Paelos]

AV is generally won or lost in the first 30 minutes. After that it becomes a battle of wills. The key now that Snowfall GY has Korrak raging around at the top of it, is basically to ignore it right off the bat and charge straight towards Stonehearth or Iceblood GY. If you can capture either early, the game is in your hands. If not, you can revert to ninjaing Snowfall while you kite Korrak and friends, and build up from there. The key is to get the riders done quickly and use them as a push. If everyone rides with them, you will have great success. Also, mines are terribly underrated and should have people working on them for the commandoes. A coordinated, Commando, Rider, Lord push into a main base is a stunning thing to behold.

[XMackenzie]

I actually found the Commandos the most useful of the NPC attack options.  They went straight to where they were supposed to taking out Lt's etc.  Just great pushing power.  Specially if you can get the far mine for 5-turn-in goodness.  Rams can be decent enough, but seemed like some yokel always sent them way to soon.  Then Ivus, christ that guy was absolutely useless.  He'd wander around field of strife for a while then just get himself killed.  Not sure if Lok is just better, or what.

[Hoax]

Lok just owns Ivus, Ivus is useless because you can't get him if you are loosing and if you have the horde pushed to where the druids might actually make it to the summon area alive he's just going to get kited to their general and owned in short order.

I have found the wing commanders to be the best npc, because the ground assaults are very easily handled by 1-2 organized groups.  The only time they are really worth it is if you have the enemy pinned inside the base.  Otherwise they are just mage rep fodder.  Not to say they can't be helpfull but it really takes great great timing (if you can get the rams to hit IB with your forces its an auto win) but usually they arrive too early or too late.  Without players right along with them they are weaksauce.  Wing Commanders though are rarely targeted and can just generally fuck people up with the massive knockback and 1k ranged damage.

[Driakos]

Lok just owns Ivus, Ivus is useless because you can't get him if you are loosing and if you have the horde pushed to where the druids might actually make it to the summon area alive he's just going to get kited to their general and owned in short order.

I have found the wing commanders to be the best npc, because the ground assaults are very easily handled by 1-2 organized groups.  The only time they are really worth it is if you have the enemy pinned inside the base.  Otherwise they are just mage rep fodder.  Not to say they can't be helpfull but it really takes great great timing (if you can get the rams to hit IB with your forces its an auto win) but usually they arrive too early or too late.  Without players right along with them they are weaksauce.  Wing Commanders though are rarely targeted and can just generally fuck people up with the massive knockback and 1k ranged damage.

Wing commanders are hands down the best graveyard disruptors.  If the Alliance gets a gryphon to camp Frostwolf Graveyard... Horde aint getting out of Frostwolf Village for a  good while.

Ivus is useless, I agree.  We just kite him to our general and watch him die.  Lokholar is hard to get out, but once he is, he seems to wreak more havoc.  You want the rush to be at least Stormpike though before you summon him.  Otherwise Alliance can mess up the summon ceremony and waste all that time and blood.