48 minutes to Fail

[Kail]

(...I have a Paladin and a Warrior, both, and running AV prot spec with them is just painful....)

Why is running AV prot spec painful?  If your answer is "Because other players waste me" you're doing AV wrong, sorry.  Any AV where I have more than 3-5 player kills is a failure and time is better served /afking and waiting out the 15 min debuff.

Actually, it is more or less "because other players waste me" (in addition to "trying to seriously tank something with a random cross section of 70s is an exercise in frustration").  How is that "doing it wrong"?  I do AV because I hope to get some PvP gear, and I want PvP gear because it'll hopefully let me PvP at a decent level.  If the Horde is stuck in a fourty minute turtle, that's more fun to me than three "Cap Tower, sit at top of stairs until you see fire, run to Van, win or loose, collect points" style matches, because it means more actual fighting and less staring at a gray flag waiting for it to cap.  Might be not worth as much honor (though since diminishing retuns was removed, it's still pretty nice), but it's way more entertaining.

There are some BGs I cannot stand (like Warsong fucking Gulch), and in there, yeah, I don't care.  If I'm there, I'm just there for the marks.  If we can win, great, if not, hurry the hell up so I can get my marks and get out of there.  But if someone else wants to play "hamstring the druid" for an hour trying to defend our flag, fine, more power to him.  It might cramp my rate of return, but whatever, it's not like I'm in some sort of race to get an S2 set or anything.  What am I going to do once I get it?  More AV, probably.  So I might as well have fun while I'm there.

[Fordel]

I'm on Nightfall, horde on The Venture Co. 

I hate you alliance bastids!  When did you learn how to play AV!?!

I'm on Doomhammer, we've known how to play AV since it first came out. The BG Clusters only lowered our old win rate, of like 98%. 


I haven't played much on other Battlegroups, but the defining difference between Nightfall alliance and other groups alliance, is sheer stubbornness. Back during that stint where on all the other Battlegroups, the horde was turtling the fuck out of the IB/Galv Area and winning 600-20 Honor games over 30 minutes. On our Battlegroup, two things would possibly happen in that same situation.

1) We would just break the initial turtle attempt and play as normal.
or
2) We would fail to break the attempt, and the Horde would end up with 40 of the most stubborn, dug in and annoying alliance you have ever seen.

The horde would win... eventually, but eventually was well into the hour+ range of time. Sure you'd get one or two alliance whining the ENTIRE time "OMG LET THEM WIN FUUUUCK" but the rest of us would be like "lol shut it, ZERG ON BROTHERS" or a few of us would explain why these horrifying turtle games are required. "If you make the prospect of a turtle so damn horrible, the Horde will just go back to racing, where win or lose, they get way more honor and can go on with their lives in 10-15 minutes."

Suffice it to say, the Horde rarely attempt to all out turtle like that. The only times I've seen it happen, are when you face a Horde Pre-Made AV squad. BWL and one of the 'A' realms on nightfall, Altar of Storms I think, are pretty nasty when they bring in 35 of 40 from their server. There still far more content to just out race us though, with some strong coordinated back capping. What's probably way more demoralizing for them then us, is we still win maybe 30-40% of those PuG vs Pre-made AVs. Or the ones we lose, we still burn 3-4 towers most of the time. Half the time, we don't even know we are fighting a pre-made until the end of the game.


What are the Horde Queue times on Nightfall anyways? For Alliance, anything over 2 minutes is considered 'long', some days its pretty much instant games.

[Xanthippe]

What are the Horde Queue times on Nightfall anyways? For Alliance, anything over 2 minutes is considered 'long', some days its pretty much instant games.

Instant AV.  Other battlegrounds are 3-4 minutes tops, I think.  Can't remember the last time I didn't have an instant AV.

What I've noticed is that the morning non-AV-weekend games are the best for horde.  I don't know why, but my stats for AV are better in the mornings than later in the day.  And I just hate AV weekend, because that's when the people who don't usually play get in there and fuck everything up.

What's your toon's name?  I'm on Merri and Laleche (usually the latter).

[Fordel]

Most likely to run across Sturmvogel my Druid. Laser Turkey 
My Paladin, Seraphia, only shows up when she needs a new weapon/shield.


All the BattleGrounds on Nightfall have 'windows' of awesome and suck for both sides. I find if you do EoTS During the afternoon, it's just non-stop wins for Alliance. Like, 4 cap steamroll wins. The horde don't even get a full compliment of players half the time and its just a massacre.

[Righ]

I hate you alliance bastids!  When did you learn how to play AV!?!

SRSLY.  Actually it depends on the battlegroup. But Nightfall and Vindication suck for Horde if AV is your thing.

I just recently moved my level 62 PVE druid off Steamwheedle Cartel (Stormstrike) to Earthen Ring (Vindication) and rushed him up to 70 for BG purple collection. Mistake. Should leveled to 70 on Steamwheedle and done the AV weekend there. BG weekend does exaggerate the deficiencies in a faction, and the listed 2-1 victory rate for alliance on Vindication is at 3-1 this weekend. Its making it slow to grind my welfare epics. Meanwhile, over on Stormstrike, its practically reversed.

Still, hadn't done any BGs before this weekend on that character - now have done over 100, have the 27,000 honor kitty mace, and the 14,500 honor hat (and burned some 80 marks on the wolf and the standard).  Might be able to pull out the gloves before the evening is over, provided I don't get another long chain of losses.

On the plus side, it seems like Alliance are hopeless at AB & EotS on Vindication. So that'll make life easier for other stuff.

[Dren]

I had not played in BGs for about 3 months now.  A bunch of my guildies were hitting AV hard this weekend, so I decided to go along.  A group of 5 or less of us would wait anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes to get in.  Most of the time we would win and it would be around 20 minutes.  A few times a turtle happened, which made it go to like 45 minutes, but the honor farming was substantial so it was all good.  It was fun overall.

[Ingmar]

My queues on Nightfall/Alliance for AV were slow all weekend. 3-4 minutes! 

[Soln]

queues seem better for me now, played too much over weekend

people still largely retarded.  We kept winning just on numbers


there really needs to be more awareness of the tactics.  I tell the chat for people if unsure to visit the wowwiki AV tactics page -- several people thanked me.  Odd.

[Fordel]

I'd be content if people would just watch flags without me babysitting 3 nodes at once.

The only other thing I would ask of them, is to understand WHY we don't cap FWGY right away, and when it becomes irrelevant if we do. They just parrot back the 'talking point' blindly, without any comprehension at all.


Like, if 25 Horde have parked their asses inside FW Keep/Towers, the time for not taking FWGY to prevent a turtle has LONG PASSED.   


I don't even care if they manage to execute the strategy properly or not, as long as they get the base idea of WHY we do it.

[Righ]

Yeah, I have no problem with the folks who rant on and on about not capturing SHGY during the initial rush. It makes sense not to because of the rez mechanism. However, once you have a heavy Alliance defense, and you've got Horde rezzing in the tunnel, it's time to get some graveyards. And when somebody does, you're guaranteed to hear:

[Battleground] [Leetzorz-Some PVP Server]: lol u nubs captured shgy this si why we always lose

[Ingmar]

I don't know if I've ever even seen Nightfall Horde *not* cap SHGY. Both sides have taken to riding past and ignoring Snowfall lately, too, which just makes me go  . I can't stop myself to get it, I'm needed to tank Galv! 

[K9]

Yeah, I have no problem with the folks who rant on and on about not capturing SHGY during the initial rush. It makes sense not to because of the rez mechanism. However, once you have a heavy Alliance defense, and you've got Horde rezzing in the tunnel, it's time to get some graveyards.

In the modern AV, if you're back to rezzing in the tunnel it's game over pretty much. The reinforcements system means you're probably already getting curbstomped and there's no time to turn things around.

I've really grown to dislike the most current incarnation of AV. I wish they would make the honour/hr equivalent in all BGs so I could just do AB and WSG for honour now.

[Fordel]

I don't know if I've ever even seen Nightfall Horde *not* cap SHGY. Both sides have taken to riding past and ignoring Snowfall lately, too, which just makes me go  . I can't stop myself to get it, I'm needed to tank Galv! 

Snowfall is a moot point in 95% of the games. We cap IBGY and engage Galv nearly simultaneously and if we fail so badly at the IB area that we wipe, its better for us to rez at SP/Baldar so we can backcap and turtle the fuck out of everything. A Total failure at the IB Area (complete wipe) means we retake the entire SH Area and the game has a soft reset.

A Partial failure means we hold IBGY and people rez closer regardless. The change to not rezzing in the starting caves till you own NO GY's, lets a handful of knowledgeable players really manipulate their entire side. 

I've won more then one game because the only GY we've held onto was the Relief Hut, so when our Turtle Broke at Baldar, everyone rezzed at the Hut and zerged Drek down to beat the Horde who were still waiting on Towers and Dealing with Marshals. I imagine those games really piss them off. It's also why once the IB/TP Towers Burn and we have the RH taken/contested, we basically abandon IBGY to the Horde stragglers.

No, it isn't terribly surprising no one gives a shit about Snowfall anymore. It's for solo people to cap so they can feel useful. 



K9, that isn't strictly true. If everyone in the tunnel zergs their main base to defend, they can hold onto those last two towers for a long, long time... and since your enemy was so successful at kicking your ass to begin with, they'll have almost all pushed their way to the front. Which means a much smaller offense can take and hold enemy towers and cherry pick a useful Graveyard to shift your Turtle Defense into all out suicide Offense.

The game will take 2-4x's longer then the 'norm' doubtlessly, but it IS entirely winnable. Don't need super co-ordination either, just a willingness to Shit up Towers for an hour 

The reinforcement loss form actual deaths is pretty damn slow, it's almost all tied up into Galv/Balinda and the towers.



I've spent way to much time in AV. 


PS. As to why our Nightfall horde cap SHGY? That may be something a anomaly with our battlegroup, since if Alliance actually rez at that GY, we immediately backcap SH/IW Bunkers, instead of trying to rejoin the offense right away. We'll also make an effort to NOT cap the GY itself, since it's a convenient place to farm rezzing Horde. (With the Bonus side effect of keeping them away from Dun Baldar)

Yes, the Alliance on Nightfall have killed the guards, not capped the flag, and farmed the horde as they respawned in small bunches every 30 seconds. The Record is something like 35 respawns before the Horde figured to NOT rez until another wave or two had died to join them. The Average is only like 5-10 respawn waves.

We also gleefully gank the Horde as they ride past the IBGY Ledge while the towers are still being burned. That is a personal favorite of mine.

[Shrike]

Horde ganking at SHGY/IBGY is what makes AV fun. Really fun.

A five man premade camping either of these two areas can make hordies' lives a living hell for the duration of the BG. At least until they finally get a real zerg together somewhere and have a serious go at it--which doesn't happen too often. The downside on Rampage is that Alliance defense is often so incompetent that they continually fail to recap DB bunkers, much less SH and IW. There're a couple of reasons for this, but regardless of why you see it over and over again.

Interestingly enough, after AV weekend was over, Rampage Alliance was on a real winning streak in AV. It was curious since the teams I was in seemed very undergeared, yet almost flawless rush/Drek kills were the rule. All I can surmise is Horde was fielding simillar teams with even less experience than we were.

[Ingmar]

The reason to cap Snowfall is because it usually caps a minute or two before IBGY, and it provides a rez point for the people who manage to die from whatever defense the horde mounts down by RH. Heck about 2/3 of the time, when I leave Galv's room after killing him, we haven't even clicked the IBGY flag yet. Every extra body down there helps when we go to fight Drek; I've had at least 3 losses over the last few days where Drek was under 10% health when we lost the race; if we hadn't had 2-3 people stuck rezzing at DB in the early going, the difference in DPS could have been made up and we win those games. Snowfall is anything but pointless.

[Soln]

We're constantly telling young Hordies not to cap SF so Alliance can spawn mid point and not zerg us from the North.  Surprising how they rarely listen.

[Fordel]

The reason to cap Snowfall is because it usually caps a minute or two before IBGY, and it provides a rez point for the people who manage to die from whatever defense the horde mounts down by RH. Heck about 2/3 of the time, when I leave Galv's room after killing him, we haven't even clicked the IBGY flag yet. Every extra body down there helps when we go to fight Drek; I've had at least 3 losses over the last few days where Drek was under 10% health when we lost the race; if we hadn't had 2-3 people stuck rezzing at DB in the early going, the difference in DPS could have been made up and we win those games. Snowfall is anything but pointless.

Except now those people rez in the middle of no where and don't contribute to they delaying defense at Baldar and you would've lost at 15% instead of 10% since the horde would've gone faster. The horde want us to Rez at SF, so we are out of their way. If you are losing so many people as to hamper the over all offense, then you don't want them streaming in from SF in a congo line, feeding the wipe machine 1 NE Hunter at at time.

Either they Rez at IBGY+ and are immediately useful, or they Rez at Baldar and are immediately annoying for the Horde.

The only truly advantageous thing about SF for us on our Battlegroup, is its pretty close to SH Bunker. It's still maybe a minute out from anything though. Having it capped also means when defense fails, it rezzes in the middle instead of up near FW Keep.

[Ingmar]

The reason to cap Snowfall is because it usually caps a minute or two before IBGY, and it provides a rez point for the people who manage to die from whatever defense the horde mounts down by RH. Heck about 2/3 of the time, when I leave Galv's room after killing him, we haven't even clicked the IBGY flag yet. Every extra body down there helps when we go to fight Drek; I've had at least 3 losses over the last few days where Drek was under 10% health when we lost the race; if we hadn't had 2-3 people stuck rezzing at DB in the early going, the difference in DPS could have been made up and we win those games. Snowfall is anything but pointless.

Except now those people rez in the middle of no where and don't contribute to they delaying defense at Baldar and you would've lost at 15% instead of 10% since the horde would've gone faster. The horde want us to Rez at SF, so we are out of their way. If you are losing so many people as to hamper the over all offense, then you don't want them streaming in from SF in a congo line, feeding the wipe machine 1 NE Hunter at at time.

Either they Rez at IBGY+ and are immediately useful, or they Rez at Baldar and are immediately annoying for the Horde.

The only truly advantageous thing about SF for us on our Battlegroup, is its pretty close to SH Bunker. It's still maybe a minute out from anything though. Having it capped also means when defense fails, it rezzes in the middle instead of up near FW Keep.

A lot of those people who rez up at DB don't really contribute to defense though, they just ride on south anyway. They're just doing it from twice as far away and have to go through a zerg to do it.

[Fordel]

A lot of people also just stand in the cave or don't watch the flag or attack the warrior while ignoring the druid healing him etc... At least at Dun Baldar, they're speed bumps. 

They'll also rez much closer if/when all our home GY's are gone and they get sent to a front line GY.



It's not like SF is capped when people die to the initial RH rust to begin with, contested yes, but not capped.

[Ingmar]

I think you're underestimating the difference even one DPS more on Drek makes.

[Fordel]

Not at all, I'm just discounting the amount of relevance Snowfall provides in terms of getting that extra DPS to Drek.

[K9]

K9, that isn't strictly true. If everyone in the tunnel zergs their main base to defend, they can hold onto those last two towers for a long, long time... and since your enemy was so successful at kicking your ass to begin with, they'll have almost all pushed their way to the front. Which means a much smaller offense can take and hold enemy towers and cherry pick a useful Graveyard to shift your Turtle Defense into all out suicide Offense.

The game will take 2-4x's longer then the 'norm' doubtlessly, but it IS entirely winnable. Don't need super co-ordination either, just a willingness to Shit up Towers for an hour 

The reinforcement loss form actual deaths is pretty damn slow, it's almost all tied up into Galv/Balinda and the towers.

Maybe in the past, but if you've been forced back to the tunnel odds are you're down on towers too, which means you're down on reinforcements. Now while death through reinforcements is slow, its really impossible to make up any deficit. There isn't enough time in the current incarnation of AV to turn things around as you say, if you shift people to zerg offense you'll loose Drek, if you turtle you'll die on Reinforcements. Basically getting sent back to the tunnel is game over these days.

This does of course require some idiot to cap IB or SH GY (from both sides perspective) :p

Snowfall has been pointless for ages now. There was a time when having that extra foothold on the field of strife was useful, now not so much.

As a final point, Horde on Misery have really got their shit together and are using protadins well. I guess Van having two less adds than Drek helps, but in most AVs I do the horde starts on Van when they only have 2/4 or 3/4 towers down and they're winning constantly because of it. For some reason allies cannot pull this together :(

[Ingmar]

When I'm tanking there I typically will start with 1 warmaster left precisely because Horde is jumping in earlier and earlier. I'm a prot warrior though, so if there are more than 2 I can't really hold them effectively with the kind of PUG dps you get in AV. As it is I'm already usually using my taunt every cooldown in there if I have to tank Drek and a warmaster by myself.

There's another hidden disadvantage for the Alliance there, too, actually - Drek now resets if someone runs the damn dogs out the front door, which happens a lot. Vanndar needs to get over his fear of birds and get some pets or something, so we can all have the joy of some idiot hunter who can't find his feign death button kiting a wolf out the door when the lord is at 50%. 

[Shrike]

The wolves are bloody annoying. In a successful Drek engagement, usually one of two things happen: a feral druid gets with the program and tanks the wolves, or a well-geared dps type like a rogue, fury warrior or enhance shaman (that's me) steps in and tears the miserable curs up.

The main thing is to keep an eye on them and prevent them from getting on the healers. Hunter pets or strong dps should be able to handle them with little trouble. If they can be tanked, great. If not, kill them pronto.

[Fordel]

A hunter pet on each deals with wolves no problem. They don't actually hit all that hard and they are pretty easy to kill. My Moonkin will chew through one in seconds.


It is purely the fact they will reset Drek if taken outside. Non-Paladin tank begins on Drek, wolves be line to priest, priest reflexively AE Fear, wolves get sent outside, everything resets, half the raid yells at the non-existent noob that took Drek outside the other half dies to Drek running free while the Non-Paladin tank tries to regain agro.

[Xanthippe]

I'm pretty much hating AV these days.  This is the worst incarnation yet.  I really wish Blizzard would bring back original AV as an option, so that people could choose to play current AV, original AV, WSG, AB or EOTS.

That way, the honor farmers get their honor, nothing is taken from them and those of us who actually enjoyed original AV could still play it.

[Ironwood]

All 10 of you.

The path of least resistance for honor, alas.

[Koyasha]

Yeah, as much as I would like that, it just wouldn't work.  I doubt there'd be enough people in an entire battlegroup that want to do oldschool AV 1.0 to keep it running regularly.

[Xanthippe]

I'd do it even if it meant a 2 hour queue.

There are more people than you think who would play.  Some of us actually play battlegrounds for the fun of it.

The secret to doing this is to never grind honor and to not treat it like a job, but like a past time for fun.

On second thought, you're right, maybe there are only 10 of us.

[Shrike]

Maybe Blizz should make the Azshara Crater (assuming they ever get to it) into a PvE-race type BG like the present AV. Then AV could be reverted to the Good Old Days for something different to ward off boredom. Or vice-versa. I wouldn't much care, but more options is more better.

At the moment, I'm mostly out of things I need from PvP honor. I'm also a little tired of PvP (honor farming) in general and I rip through the dailys in about an hour or a bit more (depending how much fiddling around I do). I could use something else to fill the wee hours I typically play in. I'd like more badge runs, but at 3am that sort of thing is hard to come by. World PvP is pretty dead on Whisperwind, so anything new would be good.

[Righ]

On second thought, you're right, maybe there are only 10 of us.

Back in the day, Alterac Valley only used to open up on Earthen Ring US on Friday nights. Sometimes the battle would last all weekend and the victory would only be achieved by player attrition. In fact the bulk of AVs were won when the other side had too few people still awake. Unfortunately, before Blood Elves, this meant Horde victories were the stuff of legend, since they would run out of players much quicker. Role-players like to play humans and elves and to a limited extent, undead. So if even ER could manage to start up AV before battle groups and Horde elves, there's probably enough people who would play.

If the 'old school' AV battle grounds were to be be comprised of players from all servers in the US, there would easily be sufficient interest for regular games.

[Dren]

I'd be interested in old school AV, but those queue times of old kept me way out of them.  Good or bad, it isn't even possible for me to wait 2 hours, let alone play in them for hours.

[cevik]

I'd be interested in old school AV, but those queue times of old kept me way out of them.  Good or bad, it isn't even possible for me to wait 2 hours, let alone play in them for hours.

In "old AV" 2 hours would have been an incredibly short game.  Like Righ said above, I've seen many an AV that lasted an entire weekend.  As in, Play for 8 hours, go sleep for 8 hours, come back and the same game is still going so you play it for 8 more hours.  And that goes on all weekend.

[Koyasha]

Yep.  The longest AV I ever participated in from beginning to end was 27 hours, and I know some went on longer than that.  I heard of a 40-something hour one.  That's one even I wouldn't have been able to stubbornly fight through the entire time.  But that's the problem with bringing back oldschool AV.  Even if you liked it back then, the people that will actually queue these days for the 2-6 hours it might take to have it come up, then play for the 20+ hours it might take to achieve victory or defeat are almost nonexistent.  There's probably all of ten of us who both would jump at the idea of going in there and fighting for a full day or more, AND are actually able to.

[Righ]

No, there are enough people. There are even enough people who want it back and are prepared to whine on the boards about it recently:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=7903583043&sid=1&pageNo=1

Its really a matter of whether there are enough people to make it worthwhile for Blizzard's developers to pull the old AV out of the source code archive and compile it up. And when half the planet is prepared to keep paying you not to do anything new, it really isn't. :)