Eye of the Storm Battleground

[Typhon]

Haven't played much PvP in WoW, finally after a long time we decided to do that (while we wait for Conan to come out - can't do anymore quests, don't have enough people to run non-Pug 5 mans).

So we figure out what the daily is, and run that.  It's EOTS (now I know what EOTS means, when I read the daily as "Eye of the Storm" I had to say, 'nope, I don't know what that is, I've never been in there').

Over a two hour period we played ten games and lost ten games.  Some were just spank-fests from the very start, others started out pretty even, and went that way for awhile, then we just sucked it down.  We play Alliance on Thunderlord (I don't know what battlegroup that is).  We have crap gear.  We were both frequently in the top 5 alliance death/damage dealers.

What am I not getting?  Ten out of ten games lost is not a statistical anomaly.  Character classes are exactly the same now, so it can't be a class-balance issue.  Are people playing to lose?  I refuse to believe that two newbs could have that drastic an impact on ten out of ten games, especially since we seemed to be pulling our weight from the scores given at the end.  Is there some common knowledge about battlegrounds or EOTS that I'm not aware of that says that Alliance stands little to no chance of winning?

[photek]

It's a rumor that Alliance are inferior in BG's. I play both sides, both are as organized and as disorganized as the players themselves, meaning you might get lucky and get some players who listen and might get unlucky and find people who don't. Easiest and safest way to win EOTS is cap 2 and flagrun. Meaning you get 3-4 defenders on each side, rest pendling with flag carrier. Getting everyone to listen and not screw up is the magic trick though. Unfortunately some players do play to lose at a point, if they see from start that the game is heading towards a loss you will find the BG chat with something like "Omg loos fast get 1 mark, comon!" and similiar remarks.

Really nothing you can do as two players and make a huge impact in EOTS unless you are well geared and skilled and play a DPS / Healer combo. If that's the case I'd go flagrunning in WSG, where two players can determine the game. If you insist doing EOTS, you two should pick a tower and just defend. Best thing you can do really and call for backup immediately, prolounge zergs who come to cap and hope reinforcments arrive in time or your ress timer is short to interrupt further. Good luck.

[Zetor]

EOTS is probably the battleground that's most about momentum. If it starts with uneven teams [15v7 alliance or horde, I've seen both happen], it is pretty much impossible to salvage for the disadvantaged team. If one of the teams gets a good lead, it's very hard to disrupt them without good organization (which doesn't happen in a pug).

Basically, there are two ways to win EOTS, and a lot of alliance puggies (not to mention afkers - EOTS always has a disproportionate amount of afkers, you can tell by looking at the map and checking on the people running around randomly, unmounted) become overly fixated on the flag or playing overly defensive and end up losing.

1] Get [and hold!] two nodes, pressure a 3rd (either BE or FR; announce this at the start of the BG so everyone knows where to go) with almost everyone else right away, maybe have one or two high-longevity people in the flag area to tie up horde or maybe even get the flag. Horde will have to make a choice, give up the 3rd node and run the flag (which is a loss, you can NOT win with only one tower even if you get every flag) or give up the flag and play defense. If the latter case happens, zerg the other horde node right away. It's important to attack in force, at least 5-6 people; the node needs to turn before reinforcements arrive. Once the node turns, reinforce the other two nodes (preferably the people who died in the assault), ignore the flag area completely and it's gg. Optionally harass the 4th node to completely shut horde out and force them on defense.

2] In the [rare] case that both sides are coordinated enough to fend off the zergs and keep assaulting nodes (so neither side can take a 3rd), then [and ONLY then] go for the flag, preferably a druid/shaman/hunter/rogue with a healer backup. Still need to keep up defense on both nodes and pressure a 3rd if horde are hardcore zerging one of them. Basically, the only time flag-running is a good idea if it's a stalemate situation and the flag area is "capturable".

3] The best way to get a node if there's substantial "midfield defense" [har] is to go around; flank a weakly-defended node and approach from the back, preferably with 2-3 people; gank the defender before they can react, and move out towards the edge of the capture area so even if reinforcements come, they won't be fighting inside the capture zone. (similarly, the best way to lose / fail capturing a node is by fighting outside its capture zone)


Most common mistakes I see alliance (and horde) doing:

1] AB syndrome: Over-defending nodes (more than 2) when horde are chain-capping the flag instead of pushing for a 3rd node (preferably the one their flag runner does not run towards) or disrupting their flag team (grouping up beforehand, not just running in one by one). Static defense does NOT win games. Even the best 3-man 'turtle' team will fold before a 8-man zerg simply because node captures depend on the number of horde/alliance around them; it's not like AB where a single resto shaman [with some backup] can keep an infinite number of enemies off the flag as long as they're alive. And if horde are running the flag, they probably aren't going to zerg a base (if they do, one of their bases must be almost completely undefended).

2] WSG syndrome: Running the flag with only one node. This is a guaranteed loss, as it ties up too many people to run the flag and horde can keep most of the others bottled up by zerging the last node.

3] Not reinforcing properly: There don't need to be 8 people at a node that's not being attacked; but if a node IS being pressured (and not by the entire horde team, but only 4-5 characters), it should be possible to salvage it by reinforcing and keeping the defenders alive until a resurrection wave happens (at which point the attackers will be overwhelmed). I find the minimap and a 'raid group mod' very useful to see who is under attack and by roughly how many (ie. how fast does their health drop).

4] Random HK farming midfield (between nodes, not at the flag area) ignoring everything else. Can't do much about these... just pray there aren't more on your side than the enemies'.

That said, I've been observing a surprisingly high alliance win rate since 2.4 [higher than 50%, but I can't be bothered to use a mod to track it :P] in the cyclone battlegroup. There were days when I won every single EOTS... can't say the same about WSG though. WSG can die in a fire. :p


-- Z.

[Gobbeldygook]

Speaking as Horde on Nightfall, our win/loss ratio has basically gone to shit post-2.4.2 because the games almost never start even.  It's extremely frustrating to lose matches not because your team was worse, not because you personally sucked, but because there were twice more people on the other team at the start of the game.  It afflicts us in AB and WSG, but it's the worst in EOTS because it's so momentum based.  In AB, a decent healer and I can stall out against 5+ people for a shockingly long time because the other team needs to be unmolested by the flag for 10 seconds, which can be enough time for us to get some more warm bodies into the game and even it out.  In WSG, an outnumbered team can turtle up in and around the flag room and wait for backup to spawn right on top of the flag.  EOTS?  We can be, man for man, twice as good as them and still lose every single node.

My personal favorite strat is to get 2-4 people to just rush one of their nodes at the start of the game and hope the folks on our team are sharp enough to protect OUR nodes from that sort of thing.  If you do it fast enough, you can almost immediately switch it to neutral, thus preventing the other team from rezzing at the node.

It's important to remind people that there is no candy in the middle or on the roads.  Only pedophiles.  Are you a pedophile?  No you say?  Then get off the road!

---

Typhon, you're on the Vindication battlegroup.  Glancing at warcraftrealms.com, they list you as having a 2:1 horde:alliance win:loss ratio in WSG, AB, and EOTS.  On the bright side, it's the reverse for AV.

[Typhon]

WSG was the daily last night, in the third game not only did we finally place a flag, we won!  A 30-minute long SLUG FEST that honestly would have been fun even if we lost (but was that much more sweet seeing as we got the honor rep as well).

Thanks for looking it up for me, I remember now that I can see it in the armory, I shouldn't have been so lazy/clueless.  2:1?  So I guess alliance is pretty demoralized in this battlegroup which is maybe why it seems like we suck.

[pxib]

Yarr, when I was playing this back in the day we always said "ignore the flag until we've got three towers". Flags are worth more the more towers you control... a two tower flagrunning game is the EotS equivalent of a hold three nodes game in AB. Long, slow, tedious, and risky. Easier to maintain heavy pressure on any enemy controlled tower point... if it turns gray they can't resurrect and they can't cap the flag there -- and since flags are worth more points the more towers are controlled, if they choose to cap at the other spot they're getting minimal benefit from it.

Wasting too much time outside of tower-cap range, even to chase or run flags, isn't worth the loss of control.

[Typhon]

It was WSG again today, we won on the third try, so then we tried a couple other BGs (Arathi Basin and EOTS again).  Seems like alliance just doesn't work together in independent groups of 3-5.  They are either solo chasing shit around, or all clumped up at one base.  It's like they don't understand or don't care about winning strategies, which makes no sense to me as I assume that you get far more honor via winning then killing.

[K9]

Getting three towers is the most important thing. The flag inexorably draws people who aren't aware that if you cap and hold three towers, your point accumulation is faster than one or two towers + every flag.

That said, I still hold out faint hope for a BG that is just a 15v15 deathmatch.

[justdave]

...
That said, I still hold out faint hope for a BG that is meaningfully rewarded for being an XvX deathmatch, since that's what happens anyway.

FIFY. 

[Fordel]

Speaking as Horde on Nightfall, our win/loss ratio has basically gone to shit post-2.4.2 because the games almost never start even.  It's extremely frustrating to lose matches not because your team was worse, not because you personally sucked, but because there were twice more people on the other team at the start of the game.

I have to admit this amuses me a great deal as Alliance on Nightfall, since we've had to deal with that particular issue since the battle groups were first formed. Now for whatever reason, the Horde are the ones on the receiving end of it these days and it makes my badge farming a whole bunch easier (doubly so now that it's only PuG vs. PuG 95% of the time).


Let me tell you, the classic 2 vs 14 AB games, those were a hoot!

[Phred]

Getting three towers is the most important thing. The flag inexorably draws people who aren't aware that if you cap and hold three towers, your point accumulation is faster than one or two towers + every flag.

That said, I still hold out faint hope for a BG that is just a 15v15 deathmatch.

The only thing that makes me want to AFK in EOTS is half a dozen people fighting over the flag while our side has one tower. :(

[Fordel]

Would you prefer they fight over the flag with no towers? 

[Phred]

Would you prefer they fight over the flag with no towers? 

Typically they do.

[Threash]

I always have fun coming up with creative places for them to plant the flag when we lose all towers while 12 people are fighting for it in the middle.

[Dren]

Getting three towers is the most important thing. The flag inexorably draws people who aren't aware that if you cap and hold three towers, your point accumulation is faster than one or two towers + every flag.

That said, I still hold out faint hope for a BG that is just a 15v15 deathmatch.

The only thing that makes me want to AFK in EOTS is half a dozen people fighting over the flag while our side has one tower. :(

Naw, it is the act of capping a flag when we only have one tower.

They.Just.Don't.Get.It!

/afk

[Adam Tiler]

Getting three towers is the most important thing. The flag inexorably draws people who aren't aware that if you cap and hold three towers, your point accumulation is faster than one or two towers + every flag.

That said, I still hold out faint hope for a BG that is just a 15v15 deathmatch.

See, many people say this, but it is exceedingly difficult to pull off in a PuG because with 5 defenders to a base, all the other team needs to do is gather at their base and zerg randomly. The easiest way to win is to hold the two towers closest to your starting point and the middle, and just flag run. Point accumulation is very fast if the flag is run with no interruption.

[Fordel]

See, many people say this, but it is exceedingly difficult to pull off in a PuG because with 5 defenders to a base, all the other team needs to do is gather at their base and zerg randomly. The easiest way to win is to hold the two towers closest to your starting point and the middle, and just flag run. Point accumulation is very fast if the flag is run with no interruption.

If you are capping 3 towers and ignoring the flag, YOUR side is the zergy side, with the enemy trying to split itself between defense and flag capping. You want to keep a constant pressure and pen the enemy into their one node and their one open path (to the flag of uselessness). If you are leaving 5 people to a base, something went wrong :p.

The only REAL difficulty with 3 towers is that initial "Ignore the thrice damned flag already!" . If you can get through the first like, minute of the game with no one on your side hitting the flag, the 500-1000 point lead usually clues everyone in that the 3 Tower offense is working.

[Zetor]

Yup, the entire idea about getting 3 towers is keeping heavy pressure on the enemy; once that's accomplished, a PUG can't hope to turn the tide. Sure, the 3 towers are going to have very light defense [typically one-two people each], but there's no way the losing team can get an overwhelming force to one of the towers without jeopardizing their last base.

The way to fight a 3-cap is to either not let it happen in the first place (the first 3-4 minutes of any EOTS game basically decide the outcome in most PUGvPUG situations), or by superior organization -- send a smaller / stealthy team to ninja a tower, then reinforce them just when they're about to cap and send most of the the attackers to a 3rd tower right away. The idea is to cap a tower and contest a 3rd before the enemy zerg can retake them. At that point, THEY will have to make a choice.


-- Z.

[TheWall]

Haven't played much PvP in WoW, finally after a long time we decided to do that (while we wait for Conan to come out - can't do anymore quests, don't have enough people to run non-Pug 5 mans).

So we figure out what the daily is, and run that.  It's EOTS (now I know what EOTS means, when I read the daily as "Eye of the Storm" I had to say, 'nope, I don't know what that is, I've never been in there').

Over a two hour period we played ten games and lost ten games.  Some were just spank-fests from the very start, others started out pretty even, and went that way for awhile, then we just sucked it down.  We play Alliance on Thunderlord (I don't know what battlegroup that is).  We have crap gear.  We were both frequently in the top 5 alliance death/damage dealers.

What am I not getting?  Ten out of ten games lost is not a statistical anomaly.  Character classes are exactly the same now, so it can't be a class-balance issue.  Are people playing to lose?  I refuse to believe that two newbs could have that drastic an impact on ten out of ten games, especially since we seemed to be pulling our weight from the scores given at the end.  Is there some common knowledge about battlegrounds or EOTS that I'm not aware of that says that Alliance stands little to no chance of winning?

I actually play Horde on Thunderlord and I run battlegrounds A LOT. You experienced something very rare as our battleground seems to favor Home schooled Horde kiddies who's parents forgot the lessons for the day. We go in, we drag out a loss for as long as possible and then we do it again. If you try to provide instructions, tactics, or any kinds of organization you are told to quit whining. I just wish I had been on the horde teams that were winning. It takes me like 8 tries to win in EOTS these days if I even try for that long.

[Typhon]

[stuff]

I actually play Horde on Thunderlord and I run battlegrounds A LOT. You experienced something very rare as our battleground seems to favor Home schooled Horde kiddies who's parents forgot the lessons for the day. We go in, we drag out a loss for as long as possible and then we do it again. If you try to provide instructions, tactics, or any kinds of organization you are told to quit whining. I just wish I had been on the horde teams that were winning. It takes me like 8 tries to win in EOTS these days if I even try for that long.

Been a bit since I came here, cause I've been playing Conan.  I read your reply, then I read my quote, and I thought - what bullshit, you lost 10 in a row?  Then I remember that night, first time we play EOTS and we got spanked each time, we weren't able to hand in the "daily" until the next day.   From your post it seems that clearly I was wrong, ten games isn't enough to rule out a statistical anomaly.  given your post it seems like it's too bad I stopped playing, sounds like it was our side's turn to win a bit.

[slog]

I have some addon that tracks everyone win/loss in BGs.  amazingly, each BG is almost exactly at 50% loss, and more amazingly, I've played almost 600 BG's.

[Adam Tiler]

I have some addon that tracks everyone win/loss in BGs.  amazingly, each BG is almost exactly at 50% loss, and more amazingly, I've played almost 600 BG's.

If you're Alliance, congrats.

If you're Horde... maybe you should stick with heroics.