Alliance suck at PvP in WoW, news at 11

[Yoru]

Back into the WoW bin wi' ye.

[Cadaverine]

Hey, a Sargeras alliance alum like me!

Seriously though.  On that server, alliance side, I can count the number of heals I got in PvP on one hand.  Ever.

For what it's worth, I initially tried healing people with my Priest.  But I generally got off one heal before getting steamrolled by the melee assist train.  That or the tank would charge into the thick of 20 plus Horde, and bitch that I didn't keep him up.  After a few rounds of that, I just stopped doing BGs with my Priest, and switched to a Hunter.  A lot more fun to kill Horde Priests, than to be an Alliance Priest. 

[Xanthippe]

Alliance pugs are simply unable or unwilling to protect healers, period.  Consequently, most healers in bg pugs go offense.

[Zetor]

I play a resto shaman, and I gauge the 'goodness' / 'badness' of a particular BG by how much damage I've done by the end. In a good BG (where there are competent alliance DPSers who actually try to accomplish some goals instead of farming midfield), I'll be near the bottom; in a bad BG (where everyone constantly fights on the road, doesn't know how to interrupt flag caps, leaves me as the only person to guard a node, etc) I'll be in the middle of the damage scoreboard. Basically, for me as a healer, the most important question is: is the person I'm healing worth the effort? It also doesn't help if someone with 6k hp and 0 resilience decides to AOE about 3-4 horde, no amount of heal spamming will save them.

Amusingly enough, I've been winning most of my BGs since 2.4 (except for WSG, I avoid that place like the plague) as alliance in the Cyclone battlegroup. Last week I played about 10 EOTS altogether and won 8 of them... and this was all in pugs, too. Alliance realizing that the secret is to capture-and-hold 3 nodes instead of endlessly zerging the flag worked wonders!

AB seems like the most even split atm, I win about as much as I lose (I should probably get a mod to track it, but cbf :P). AV is an alliance win most of the time, too. Now all I need to do is make up some statistics and post on the WOW forums about it...


-- Z.

[Nebu]

You're giving me the will to play my resto shaman more.  Thanks for that.

[Dren]

Alliance pugs are simply unable or unwilling to protect healers, period.  Consequently, most healers in bg pugs go offense.

So, so true.  I even had a guy bitching at me for not healing him as he died.  It was just me and him against 3+.  They had me as main target so I was healing myself and doing everything I could to get them off the flag (AB.)  A few others finally showed up and we cleared the area.  This guy resses at the same place and continues to tell everyone I'm a terrible healer.

It didn't matter that I basically saved the flag.  It only mattered that he died in the process.  He did nothing to protect me either.

I find this mentality very very common doing PUG BGs as a healer.  I do get into groups that just magically "know what to do."  The diffrence is night and day.  Those battles end very quickly with a win.

A lot of the time I'll see cries for better healing without a though even given to the fact that the other side just might be smart enough to keep all the healers CC'ed, healing themselves from an onslaught, or plain dead.  You can just go to the stats screen to figure out just what's up.

The one biggest issue I see from Alliance is that they never learn to do this themselves.  Kill the healers and the clothies first.  Stop trying to take down all those plates/chains first.  That makes no sense. 

I swear agro actually does work on alliance players.

[K9]

My strategy to enjoy BGs as an Alliance priest is to impose an incredibly stringent "you are bad" filter. This basically excludes anyone with less than 110% of my buffed HP, anyone with an obviously inefficient spec (with a few exceptions). Then pick the best looking of those and pet heal them. It's not failsafe, some people are retarded regardless of their gear, but I'd say about 80% recognise this and of those about 80% are most welcome to have some healing and return the favour. Then once ensconced with a pet, BGs become quite enjoyable; since horde seem to rely on alliance showing zero coordination. A coordinated pair of alliance players can roflstomp on horde, the harde thing is just finding someone who's willing to work with you. Although, for all their failings, arenas do seem to have increased the awareness of many players with regards to looking after healers. Having rogues blind people who are on me, or having warriors intercept and hamstring them makes my day so much.

That said, there are so, so many poor players on the ally side. Anyone who's played a healer will have had numerous situations where another player in a BG seems to draw a line between themselves and some tempting looking target and will make a beeline for them regardless of all the other enemies surrounding their target. "Thanks for the heals" chat soon follows, and yet they never seem to learn. On the whole I'd say the horde as a group don't have any greater coordination than the alliance; what I see far more often on the horde side is small coordinated groups, 3-5 players, who combined are so much more efficient that they mask the overall equally bad quality of a lot of horde players. After that it's just a matter of breaking the will of the alliance.

There are odd days when being a healer is just ludicrously fun. I did a couple of WSG some months back, before S3 while BT was still in the preserve of the the true hardcores and found myself running the BGs alongside a full T6, dual warglaives fury Warr from some top-10 world guild. Watching him melt more or less the entire horde team solo was a beautiful sight.

[Dren]

Yes, there are just enough times that being an alliance healer is really fun that I keep going after it.

I'll have to use your technique in the future.  It makes a lot of sense.

[Fordel]

The largest difference between the Alliance and Horde, is the whining. The Crying. The Idea that 'you personally, are being screwed'.


The Alliance has WAY more of it. The Horde will just shut up and play. The Alliance must verbally defend every actions made and/or assault the actions of "every other idiot" in the BG. The Horde will continue doing 'whats proper' even when it doesn't seem like it will work. The Alliance will bitch that everyone isn't doing 'whats proper' while simultaneously not doing it themselves.


The player skill isn't different, the way its focused is. The Alliance is very quick to go "fuck this, there all idiots, I'm going to farm HKs", while spending any time not in combat, to tell everyone they suck some more.

You didn't heal me, You didn't protect me, You didn't CC this, You broke CC on that etc etc etc.


Those games where the alliance 'magically' wins, are the games where you get enough people in the same BG, who just want to shut up and play. The issue is usually you only need one or two jackasses to either cause everyone else to go apathetic or retaliate. It's hard to give a shit about anyone else, when no one else seemingly gives a shit about you.


Compare that to the average Horde BG channel, where the only messages are "Going Ramp Side" or "Inc 6 LM" and no, it isn't any great mystery why the alliance seemingly 'sucks'.



Of course the aside to all that, is depending on which BG group you play in, statistically, the win/loss ratios are probably fairly even, and most of the suck is perception and bias. Even when the alliance wins, they bitch up a storm about it.