To follow on from my miserable BM yesterday, the BM I did today was tres excellent.
Makeup this time was druid, druid, priest, priest, lock. Druid number 1 was our tank, but had terrible lag the entire time. Luckily druid 2 was able to step up when it got unbearable. Shadow priest did a ton o' damage to the portal bosses while keeping me topped off with mana and both druids health topped up. Lock absolutely creamed the adds. Cop that BM! you got rolled.
I can't understand why Alliance are so inept at AV. You kill NPCs. You get Honor.
key points:
- theres no 'bonus' for winning other than 2 tokens you don't need (unless you spaaaaam pots)
- needless to say, they try to win every game
- I feel obligated to inform them of their stupidity every game some cheese head wants to race to win.
- skipping Galv is considered a 'good' idea because horde hit SH before they kill Balinda even though the configuration of the map makes killing Galv first more logical.
- no one defends towers or graveyards while they cap and they few that do get plowed when 2 horde show up
- theres no teamwork or communication aside from arguing with idiots who want to skip the only things that give them bonus honor (who PvPs in AV?)
- theres at least 6-7 AFKers every game, few of which get reported (if any)
It's a really simple game: Complete objectives that score bonus honor, ???, profit.
Personally, I have played maybe 2 games of AV as a horde character at 70 because it was pointless due to abundant AFkers, so I may be slightly mistaken in a few areas of reference, but from an Alliance perspective, due to the horrible positioning of GY in relation to the capture flags, I would say Horde have a much more defensive setup than Alliance even considering the downfalls of having to kill several more NPCs in Dun Baldar.
- There is an obvious choke point at IB GY where there is only 1 path in and out.
- If you die as Alliance defending Stormpike you are sent to the entry cave
- There are multiple ways into Stormpike and Stonehearth GY, all of which result in back-dooring defenders and making them fight on the flag, unlike IB GY where there is a blatant bottle neck.
- You can, in fact, cap Alliance bunkers without killing archers (no matter how many times Horde players cry about it as a 'disadvantage' on the forums)
- The configuration of the War Masters can cause you to pull a minimum of 3 based on the capture status of the towers/bunkers. From what I've seen of the Alliance base, the Marshals cannot be pulled any larger than groups of 2 due to their configuration.
- Galv fears and WWs. Balinda sheeps and casts arcane missiles. Galv's fear is not a magic effect.
Maybe Alliance are destined to suck at cooperative activities (see: the other 3 BGs), or maybe the Marshal exploit (that is, being able to skip at least 4 of them) is just an un-overcomeable pacing mechanism when combined with the complete inability to defend after losing SPGY without trinketting home.
Also, they nerfed ghost running so dying early means you get to play D permanently as Alliance. /Facepalm.
Hating: Entertaining the thought of going back to Arms to make the alliance bastards on my server leave me alone when I'm questing.
And not being able to find a decent pole-arm or axe anywhere.
Maybe Alliance are destined to suck at cooperative activities (see: the other 3 BGs), or maybe the Marshal exploit (that is, being able to skip at least 4 of them) is just an un-overcomeable pacing mechanism when combined with the complete inability to defend after losing SPGY without trinketting home.
totally not an exploit, guys
I love how alliance can only skip warmasters if tower point and icewing are dead
god I hate AV
oh well, I've been getting 501 honour games all weekend, and we've been losing most of them
Maybe Alliance are destined to suck at cooperative activities (see: the other 3 BGs), or maybe the Marshal exploit (that is, being able to skip at least 4 of them) is just an un-overcomeable pacing mechanism when combined with the complete inability to defend after losing SPGY without trinketting home.
You think it's easier for horde to defend when they get pushed to their cave?
xzzy on
0
TavIrish Minister for DefenceRegistered Userregular
edited September 2007
I went fury, and in my first instance I came top of the meters and beat a huntard who welcomed me by saying "lol dps warr nub". I happy time was had by me, not so much by the hunter
Maybe Alliance are destined to suck at cooperative activities (see: the other 3 BGs), or maybe the Marshal exploit (that is, being able to skip at least 4 of them) is just an un-overcomeable pacing mechanism when combined with the complete inability to defend after losing SPGY without trinketting home.
You think it's easier for horde to defend when they get pushed to their cave?
If horde are defending Frostwolf (which is impractical, all defense should be done at the IB bottle neck) coming from the direction of the GY and die they don't get kicked to the cave as Alliance do. They go to the RH.
You're forgetting that the "IB chokehold" is a place Horde doesn't go normally: Horde jumps off the cliff to head north, they don't go south and around the mountain. Thus it's really easy for Alliance to grab IB without any Horde noticing (after killing Galv since he's not defended by Horde for much the same reason). After that Horde's sent to their cave which if you head straight north from you never get close to FW which means Horde (yet again) has to make a conscious decision to defend their graveyard. That usally doesn't happen so FW falls. So then we're at the Hut trying to keep the Alliance from coming in, except there's two entrances into the main base AND two entrances into the upper area (which means no chokepoint in either place) AND the NPCs are way off to the side so they don't aggro anyone running in AND the archers don't do shit to help, so it's easy for a smaller group of Alliance to take the Hut. There's no NPCs in the upper area that aggro once you kill off the flag defenders, so you can dick around all you want with each Warmaster to the point GY zerging is a good strategy since as long as one person can kite the Warmaster around they don't have to worry about being aggroed on by random mobs and everyone can rez and finish it off.
On the Alliance side, though, all of their graveyards have them run by their flag (including when they own Horde graveyards: Alliance can hold IB and FW a lot easier than Horde because Alliance are heading south from there, right past the flag) so there's forced defending in that aspect. When they're kicked back to their cave they run right by SP no matter where they're heading: back to their base or down south. The natural path to SP from the south is the biggest chokepoint in the map and it takes a lot of convincing on Horde-side to get people to take the high road instead of that deathtrap. You have the bridge as a chokepoint as well, one that your archers actually help you with, as well as NPCs that are in the area that aggro when someone sneezes nearby them makes the whole base a clusterfuck.
Now I've never played Alliance, let alone AV as an Alliance, so I don't see how you guys can say the Horde have it good when the map forces you to play defense properly. Your towers are shorter so your archers have longer range. For the towers that have stealth-seeing elites, it's easy for Alliance to kite that elite around while someone stealths up to grab the flag in its room safe from the archers but for Horde they have to kill an archer or two before they can start capping in that open room most of the archers can see you in (and the one tower that I know of that they can cap without being arched is one without a guard in the first place, the North DB bunker). The only advantage Horde has is when they summon NPCs for help (which doesn't happen that often): they usually go unnoticed and so summoning is easy (if you can convince everyone to get there, that is) versus the Alliance's summoners who take the path the Horde are gonna take on their way to the Alliance base so they usually die pretty quickly.
Happy: Guild-first clear of Kara. Woot! Two-shot both Netherspite and Illhoof on our first attempts.
Hate: No Capacitor.
Hope: Guild does NOT bring the noob elem shammy in our guild to Kara this week. You know, the one who just made 70, has never seen the insides of a heroic, with 200'ish +damage. Yeah, the one that would win the rolls on the only Kara gear I have left to acquire.
BTW when Arena S3 starts the S1 gear will become available for purchase with BG honor.
My only question about this is whether or not it includes the weapons, it certainly should because the only weapons available through the honor system right now are so fucking horrible.
Initially it was just going to be the armour for honour, but last I heard, it'll be the S1 weapons too.
Of course, the S2 weapons will be fairly cheap by that time, and believe me, I know how hard it sucks trying to get onto an arena team as a rogue, but with the change in the rating formulae, it really would do you a lot of good to just get into even a 2v2 with a friend (even if it's a prot warrior in greens, SOMETHING) and do your 10 games a week. If you can break even at 5/5 or do better, you'll eventually earn the points for something useful.
I think of the Arena like I think of daily quests. I don't necessarily WANT to do them, but they're a fine way to kill time, and lead to valuable resources on hand (arena points, gold, whatever).
Yeah, a couple guildies and myself started a 3v3 team this last weekend.
We really aren't balanced (Hunter, Rogue, Druid), but we actually ended up winning 3 out of our 10 games, which isn't great, but better than expected since we aren't even over vent and going against Pally/Warrior teams.
Oh, I did come up with the greatest arena name ever though, i'm pretty proud of that. I was listening to "Tenacious D" at the time.
Happy: I'm attuned to Hyjal now, slacking at work reading up on the tactics (To be fair, the electronics of the machine i'm supposed to be working on are buggered up, and someone is there doing his arcane magic to fix it, so i'm sorta expected to slack), and it's sounds like fun, although the whole mechanic of "waves, waves, waves, waves, boss" would be annoying if a lot of wipes were involved.
Hate: I sat outside of TK together with 2 others waiting for our BT raid to finish, to quickly do A'lar. This did not happen, as there were quite a few troubles in BT apparently. Pretty crummy way to spend sunday evening.
Between Hope and Fear: To get officially tagged "core" this week, at which point i can abuse the horribly broken DKP system (a selfmade one called EPGP) to pick any one epic I want, basicly. Of course, if I don't make core, i need to find another guild, which is .
You're forgetting that the "IB chokehold" is a place Horde doesn't go normally: Horde jumps off the cliff to head north, they don't go south and around the mountain. Thus it's really easy for Alliance to grab IB without any Horde noticing (after killing Galv since he's not defended by Horde for much the same reason). After that Horde's sent to their cave which if you head straight north from you never get close to FW which means Horde (yet again) has to make a conscious decision to defend their graveyard. That usally doesn't happen so FW falls. So then we're at the Hut trying to keep the Alliance from coming in, except there's two entrances into the main base AND two entrances into the upper area (which means no chokepoint in either place) AND the NPCs are way off to the side so they don't aggro anyone running in AND the archers don't do shit to help, so it's easy for a smaller group of Alliance to take the Hut. There's no NPCs in the upper area that aggro once you kill off the flag defenders, so you can dick around all you want with each Warmaster to the point GY zerging is a good strategy since as long as one person can kite the Warmaster around they don't have to worry about being aggroed on by random mobs and everyone can rez and finish it off.
On the Alliance side, though, all of their graveyards have them run by their flag (including when they own Horde graveyards: Alliance can hold IB and FW a lot easier than Horde because Alliance are heading south from there, right past the flag) so there's forced defending in that aspect. When they're kicked back to their cave they run right by SP no matter where they're heading: back to their base or down south. The natural path to SP from the south is the biggest chokepoint in the map and it takes a lot of convincing on Horde-side to get people to take the high road instead of that deathtrap. You have the bridge as a chokepoint as well, one that your archers actually help you with, as well as NPCs that are in the area that aggro when someone sneezes nearby them makes the whole base a clusterfuck.
Now I've never played Alliance, let alone AV as an Alliance, so I don't see how you guys can say the Horde have it good when the map forces you to play defense properly. Your towers are shorter so your archers have longer range. For the towers that have stealth-seeing elites, it's easy for Alliance to kite that elite around while someone stealths up to grab the flag in its room safe from the archers but for Horde they have to kill an archer or two before they can start capping in that open room most of the archers can see you in (and the one tower that I know of that they can cap without being arched is one without a guard in the first place, the North DB bunker). The only advantage Horde has is when they summon NPCs for help (which doesn't happen that often): they usually go unnoticed and so summoning is easy (if you can convince everyone to get there, that is) versus the Alliance's summoners who take the path the Horde are gonna take on their way to the Alliance base so they usually die pretty quickly.
Everything you said here is 100% true. Most games now are basically horde taking everything with the alliance taking two towers and one gy then killing drek. It's almost impossible for horde to kill Vann before alliance because there's always a few defenders who fear everyone into the marshalls. Regardless, we still get about an even amount of honor with alliance just because pf their turbo drek strategy combined with HK's.
I have both alliance and horde characters exalted in AV. 4 characters total.
The truth of the mater is that there is no real imbalance. Horde start off further ahead, galv is harder to kill than balinda, and Drek's room is easy to defend. Alliance have a better defensive position in their main base and a choke point that is more often used. The horde never actually use their choke point (Iceblood). Alliance don't want to use thiers, but they get stuck respawning at stormpike relief hut if they die in the initial rush.
The only "problem" is that some people want their side to win, so that they can get more honour, so they whine when they lose. If your side is losing, the other one either has more gladiator geared people, or less afkavers.
I have both alliance and horde character exalted in AV. 4 characters total.
The truth of the mater is that there is no real imbalance. Horde start off further ahead, galv is harder to kill than balinda, and Drek's room is easy to defend. Alliance have a better defensive position in their main base.
The only "problem" is that some people want their side to win, so that they can get more honour, so they whine when they lose. If your side is losing, the other one either has more gladiator geared people, or less afkavers.
There's no way Drek is easier to defend. Especially if we try before fully taking the hut and alliance has somehow taken SP again, which happens a lot since Horde needs everyone inside to try and battle through the marshall fears that inevitably happen combined with Alliance rezzing at basically at SP.
I have both alliance and horde character exalted in AV. 4 characters total.
The truth of the mater is that there is no real imbalance. Horde start off further ahead, galv is harder to kill than balinda, and Drek's room is easy to defend. Alliance have a better defensive position in their main base.
The only "problem" is that some people want their side to win, so that they can get more honour, so they whine when they lose. If your side is losing, the other one either has more gladiator geared people, or less afkavers.
There's no way Drek is easier to defend. Especially if we try before fully taking the hut and alliance has somehow taken SP again, which happens a lot since Horde needs everyone inside to try and battle through the marshall fears that inevitably happen combined with Alliance rezzing at basically at SP.
You can hide at the back of Drek's room and the alliance attackers can't get to you. If the alliance has an incompetent offense(more likely than you think), a few hunters and mages can hold them off forever.
You can snipe someone at the far edge of Vandar's room without aggroing his marshalls.
I have both alliance and horde character exalted in AV. 4 characters total.
The truth of the mater is that there is no real imbalance. Horde start off further ahead, galv is harder to kill than balinda, and Drek's room is easy to defend. Alliance have a better defensive position in their main base.
The only "problem" is that some people want their side to win, so that they can get more honour, so they whine when they lose. If your side is losing, the other one either has more gladiator geared people, or less afkavers.
There's no way Drek is easier to defend. Especially if we try before fully taking the hut and alliance has somehow taken SP again, which happens a lot since Horde needs everyone inside to try and battle through the marshall fears that inevitably happen combined with Alliance rezzing at basically at SP.
You can hide at the back of Drek's room and the alliance attackers can't get to you. If the alliance has an incompetent offense(more likely than you think), a few hunters and mages can hold them off forever.
You can snipe someone at the far edge of Vandar's room without aggroing his marshalls.
Yeah, a mage/rogue/hunter/whatever pure dps isn't going to stop a vann downing. But I'm specifically talking about 2-3 UA locks or priests that run in and fear bomb at a consistent rate. There's been many times where we get to Vann way before the alliance get to Drek and are just straight up unable to kill him because of fear bombs.
I have both alliance and horde character exalted in AV. 4 characters total.
The truth of the mater is that there is no real imbalance. Horde start off further ahead, galv is harder to kill than balinda, and Drek's room is easy to defend. Alliance have a better defensive position in their main base.
The only "problem" is that some people want their side to win, so that they can get more honour, so they whine when they lose. If your side is losing, the other one either has more gladiator geared people, or less afkavers.
There's no way Drek is easier to defend. Especially if we try before fully taking the hut and alliance has somehow taken SP again, which happens a lot since Horde needs everyone inside to try and battle through the marshall fears that inevitably happen combined with Alliance rezzing at basically at SP.
You can hide at the back of Drek's room and the alliance attackers can't get to you. If the alliance has an incompetent offense(more likely than you think), a few hunters and mages can hold them off forever.
You can snipe someone at the far edge of Vandar's room without aggroing his marshalls.
Yeah, a mage/rogue/hunter/whatever pure dps isn't going to stop a vann downing. But I'm specifically talking about 2-3 UA locks or priests that run in and fear bomb at a consistent rate. There's been many times where we get to Vann way before the alliance get to Drek and are just straight up unable to kill him because of fear bombs.
Horde does the same thing. Heck Alliance are more likely to cap the FW towers and then proceed to ignore them letting the Horde recap before they are destroyed and then you see alliance start pulling, kill a couple of WMs and the Wolves and then somehow pull Drek outside also which resets the entire room.
I don't think I have ever seen the Horde attempt to pull Vann before both of the Dun Baldar towers are destroyed.
Possibly because it takes so long before we can cap Aid Station, we never get around to it... I've seen people start pulling marshalls before AS caps (even SP, sometimes), and it usually ends badly.
Possibly because it takes so long before we can cap Aid Station, we never get around to it... I've seen people start pulling marshalls before AS caps (even SP, sometimes), and it usually ends badly.
At least the Aid Station flag is right infront of the Alliance building. Alliance have to go past the Horde building to cap the Aid Station.
And I still don't know what the second entrance is to the horde base.
Is there some terrain exploit that Alliance can use? Is it similar to the one that lets Horde cap Dun Baldur Bunkers before Alliance get to Tower Point?
Hate: Bringing along a new applicant who, aside from being reasonably undergeared, is being out-DPSed by the MT Warrior. Also, he is always the first to die during a boss fight. Nightbane Cleave? Dead. Enfeeble+Shadow Nova from Prince? Dead. DON'T MOVE DURING FLAME WREATH YOU FUCKO! Dead. And he's a Shadow Priest, seriously what the fuck.
Happiness: Weekend off from raiding to clock in 20hrs more into TF2. >_>
Hope: 2.3 hits soon so I don't have to delete my Shaman.
Maybe Alliance are destined to suck at cooperative activities (see: the other 3 BGs), or maybe the Marshal exploit (that is, being able to skip at least 4 of them) is just an un-overcomeable pacing mechanism when combined with the complete inability to defend after losing SPGY without trinketting home.
You think it's easier for horde to defend when they get pushed to their cave?
If horde are defending Frostwolf (which is impractical, all defense should be done at the IB bottle neck) coming from the direction of the GY and die they don't get kicked to the cave as Alliance do. They go to the RH.
It really depends how many bodies you have. Most of the games I've played, you're lucky to have 5 defending horde-side. That's not enough to hold the IB chokepoint when 30 Alliance come pouring through the far left. They make a beeline for Frostwolf, or worse, Relief Hut. In my experience the gate right at the entrance to the Frostwolf towers is the best place to make a stand. Mage/Lock + Hunter and you're gold.
If you've got 7-10 you can hold IB. Then the honor whores QQ they're forced to actually take objectives cuz the game isn't ending in 10 minutes. :P
Asuma on
"Extremism is so easy. You've got your position, and that's it. It doesn't take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right, you meet the same idiots coming around from the left." -- Clint Eastwood ***
Possibly because it takes so long before we can cap Aid Station, we never get around to it... I've seen people start pulling marshalls before AS caps (even SP, sometimes), and it usually ends badly.
Right before the expac hit, we were playing the 5 minute AV game. We'd run past every GY, straight into Vann's room. A hunter would kite away the marshalls and we'd burn down Vann on the opposite side of the room. 5 minutes.
Of course, we were consistently getting the same 35 people all on Vent knowing exactly what the strategy was.
And oh, how the tokens flowed like wine.
The key difference that makes AV biased for the Alliance is placement of the bottleneck. Horde has one at IB, yeah, but it's the 3rd GY from Drek. SPGY is the 2nd GY from Vann. This is the vital difference. Alliance can run right by IBGY and take FW without having to worry about any NPCs. Once FW falls, part of the IB defending force has to fall back and reclaim it, leaving IB open to fall. Horde trying to run right by the defenders of SPGY are immediately met by arrows on the bridge (an arguable second bottleneck) which leaves them mortally weakened to any random defender (nay we forget the massive amounts of NPCs). This is the difference that makes AV imbalanced.
I was privileged enough to witness one of those 5 minute AV's... it was beautiful... guild must have used some sort of mod to get all their guys into the BG (was about 20 of them).
I never saw them again... damn you cross-realm servers, damn you!!
I was privileged enough to witness one of those 5 minute AV's... it was beautiful... guild must have used some sort of mod to get all their guys into the BG (was about 20 of them).
I never saw them again... damn you cross-realm servers, damn you!!
Back when the honor patch first hit and I was running those we would just get like 40 or 50 people to queue at one time and we're pretty much guaranteed to get enough people in the same av to be able to do it. I personally prefer the 10 minute avs where we get all the names, bal, at least 2 gys and a win.
I was privileged enough to witness one of those 5 minute AV's... it was beautiful... guild must have used some sort of mod to get all their guys into the BG (was about 20 of them).
I never saw them again... damn you cross-realm servers, damn you!!
Back when the honor patch first hit and I was running those we would just get like 40 or 50 people to queue at one time and we're pretty much guaranteed to get enough people in the same av to be able to do it. I personally prefer the 10 minute avs where we get all the names, bal, at least 2 gys and a win.
This is how the group I was with ran it most of the time. We had 40-50 people on vent, from all different servers but the same battlegroup (Rampage). They'd count down and we'd all queue. People would call out when they got one to pop. The leader of the group would watch which numbers were missing from the list. Eventually the majority would call out the same number, likely one of those that was missing from the active list, indicating that a new AV had started. Everyone that didn't get that number would leave queue and then re-queue for just that new AV instance. After 30-45 seconds, the leader would ask people to silently Push To Talk if they hadn't gotten the queue. If we were missing less than 10 people, we went ahead and accepted. If not, we all left queue and tried again.
Once we were in, the leader would take volunteers to take and guard bunkers/GYs. Eventually we'd have 20-30 grouped up in the mountains just above SPGY as well as stealthers positioned at both towers and the Relief Hut. He'd count it down and we'd all move in. The defense of SPGY was overwhelmed everytime. The main group and stealthers capped both towers, SPGY, and the Relief Hut within 10 seconds of each other, sending the alliance to their cave.
Then we moved in, killed all the marshalls, waited for the bunkers/towers to roll over if they were within a minute or two of capping, and then polished off Vann.
I'm still baffled that the coder went to so much trouble to make it horde only. I recall a discusson on the mod's code leading to some hillarity a while back.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I'm still baffled that the coder went to so much trouble to make it horde only. I recall a discusson on the mod's code leading to some hillarity a while back.
Some people get way, WAY too into Horde/Alliance opposition. Way. O_o
I'm still baffled that the coder went to so much trouble to make it horde only. I recall a discusson on the mod's code leading to some hillarity a while back.
Some people get way, WAY too into Horde/Alliance opposition. Way. O_o
I can honestly say that if I had written that mod, I would've done the exact same thing. Fuck the Alliance. Sooo hard.
If I have to listen to one more retarded guildy talk about how the patch broke their addons I swear I will scream. Just get the newest versions, fucktards.
I've been pissed off about this all week. I can understand addons being a little weird, but Ace mods are updated constantly, and most non-Ace mods that I still use also receive updates by the time I get home from work on patch days. It's not difficult to make sure your UI doesn't get raped when you log in.
And yet a week later we still have people asking why they can't see the MT on Omen or why something or other is acting weird. "Have you updated?" "Oh, not yet." OH HEY MAYBE THAT'S WHY YOU CAN'T SEE HER YOU FUCKING IDIOTSJDGKSLHL
Also re: the arena discussion a few pages back. What I find the most frustrating about 5v5 is that other teams always seem to learn and adapt their strategies and we do not. Basically anytime we come up against the same team twice, no matter how easy we put them down the first time, they kick our asses the second (and third, if applicable, before we get pissed off and stop queuing for a bit). I know it probably doesn't help that we usually just get our 10-15 games in per week and don't really discuss strategies beyond one guy bitching at everyone else for what they did wrong. >.<
Between Hope and Fear: To get officially tagged "core" this week, at which point i can abuse the horribly broken DKP system (a selfmade one called EPGP) to pick any one epic I want, basicly. Of course, if I don't make core, i need to find another guild, which is .
EPGP, at least in its basic implementation, isn't horribly broken at all. What I've read about it makes it seem very fair. Just really annoying to do the book-keeping.
Between Hope and Fear: To get officially tagged "core" this week, at which point i can abuse the horribly broken DKP system (a selfmade one called EPGP) to pick any one epic I want, basicly. Of course, if I don't make core, i need to find another guild, which is .
EPGP, at least in its basic implementation, isn't horribly broken at all. What I've read about it makes it seem very fair. Just really annoying to do the book-keeping.
I'm still baffled that the coder went to so much trouble to make it horde only. I recall a discusson on the mod's code leading to some hillarity a while back.
Some people get way, WAY too into Horde/Alliance opposition. Way. O_o
I can honestly say that if I had written that mod, I would've done the exact same thing. Fuck the Alliance. Sooo hard.
I don't think it was hatred for the alliance that did it. I heard it had something to do with queue times and wouldn't work for Alliance as well. Might never be true, but that's what I heard.
Between Hope and Fear: To get officially tagged "core" this week, at which point i can abuse the horribly broken DKP system (a selfmade one called EPGP) to pick any one epic I want, basicly. Of course, if I don't make core, i need to find another guild, which is .
EPGP, at least in its basic implementation, isn't horribly broken at all. What I've read about it makes it seem very fair. Just really annoying to do the book-keeping.
There are mods that make it pretty easy.
We've been using it for the past 2 months and I've yet to hear a complaint about it. While we do override the priority on extremely rare occasions (aka - MT stuff, we've done it twice so far), the GP is still factored in so the MT's aren't getting more zomg purplez than anyone else.
Also re: the arena discussion a few pages back. What I find the most frustrating about 5v5 is that other teams always seem to learn and adapt their strategies and we do not. Basically anytime we come up against the same team twice, no matter how easy we put them down the first time, they kick our asses the second (and third, if applicable, before we get pissed off and stop queuing for a bit). I know it probably doesn't help that we usually just get our 10-15 games in per week and don't really discuss strategies beyond one guy bitching at everyone else for what they did wrong. >.<
Related story of happiness;
On the weekend, my group was having a really shitty string of luck in the arenas. As noted, I run with a priest and a shaman (and I'm a rogue). Thus, paladin teams are trouble; I can't do shit to the paladin when they shield themselves/others (aside from blinding BoPs of course), the whole opposing team usually works hard on violating my priest, so she's rarely free to dispell it, and BoP and Blessing of Freedom often make my life very, very difficult.
We were on a slump of like 2 wins and 4 losses, and things were looking grim. We came up against a Paladin/Shaman/Mage (as I recall) who just mounted, ran out the game and RAPED my shaman. Not even enough time for the priest to flash heal him, must've been a PoM -> face own + elemental crits and the Paladin delivered the coup de gras with a Divine Favour'd Holy Shock for nearly 2k. It was just dumb.
Paladin Team to Forar's Team: Fuck you.
So we queue back up, and lo and behold, it's them again. Except this time, we play it safe, hiding back in the room we start in (Loredon). Eventually after showing a little more caution they come in at us. I'm hiding in back for my moment to strike, and once all three are in, I unload on the paladin. As with many teams in close quarters, blade flurry and adrenaline rush do most of the work for me, so the Paladin shields. So I turn and VIOLATE the shaman. Our priest goes down, and the paladin's bubble wears out. The shaman and I lay into him and he goes down like a drunk prom date. The mage does not survive our wrath.
Forar's Team to Paladin Team: No no! Fuck YOU!
We queue again, and it's a rematch once more! Same arena, and we hold back. They hmmm and haw outside for a while, but decide that coming in again will be fine. I jump the paladin again and this time he goes down pretty easily. I don't know if he wasn't fast enough, or I just didn't notice my priest on her game in the heat of combat, but he dies. In a fire. The glorious parts to this match were two fold. The mage (ice of course) hides in his iceblock after I violate his elemental in 3 shots and come for him. He and my shaman dance for a bit as I focus on their shaman. And realize he's a keyboard turner! He starts casting a lightning bolt at me as I beat him down, so I run behind him. He sssslllllooooowwwwllllyyy turns to me, begins another cast... as I run behind him again. He dies without putting up much of a fight at all.
The mage remains a thorn in our side, but I flind him, back off, stealth and cheapshot him. He blinks out of it... and moves about 4ft due to being in a room. The ensuing kidney shot + violation end it for them.
Forar's Team to Paladin Team: Well fought, but Owned.
As noted before, I'm not much of a pvp'er, and while I don't have to win to have fun, being raped 3-4 games in a row by teams with paladins is no fun. Turning the tables, if only for a few fights, was glorious, and it went from looking like our shittiest week ever, to a 5-5 split where we lost only 12 points. It could've gone better, but it could've gone a lot worse too.
(note: stories may not be 100% accurate. The first game was literally over in seconds, but the other two were fun and awesome, and not just because we won. I didn't feel like dead weight, and attribute that at least partially to spending all damned Saturday in Alterac Valley)
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Between Hope and Fear: To get officially tagged "core" this week, at which point i can abuse the horribly broken DKP system (a selfmade one called EPGP) to pick any one epic I want, basicly. Of course, if I don't make core, i need to find another guild, which is .
EPGP, at least in its basic implementation, isn't horribly broken at all. What I've read about it makes it seem very fair. Just really annoying to do the book-keeping.
There are mods that make it pretty easy.
We've been using it for the past 2 months and I've yet to hear a complaint about it. While we do override the priority on extremely rare occasions (aka - MT stuff, we've done it twice so far), the GP is still factored in so the MT's aren't getting more zomg purplez than anyone else.
Well what has happened with us is that the (old) core has acquired mass amounts of GP, while all the new people have not. The core is hovering around a prio of 1.5-5, while, the second I am core, I'll have 1600 points or so, which means that when I get a t6 weapon.... i'll still have a rating of 4.x. Meaning I get my first item after core with 100% certainty, and my second item probably too, and then i will start to integrate into the system.
For a guild plowing through BT like hot butter, this is not something they're overjoyed about, seeing all the best loot going to those who are new/play least. I'm guessing it has something to do with the high amount of epics/week we take in, it might be messing up the decay system, I dunno. There will be a change just before sunwell.
Happy: Guild-first clear of Kara. Woot! Two-shot both Netherspite and Illhoof on our first attempts.
Hate: No Capacitor.
You do not know the meaning of pain. I've been killing Illhoof since April, attending about 20 kills. Never, ever seen the damn thing drop (let alone had a chance to lose the roll). The other two main raiding mages got theirs finally (I was always in the other group) so it is mine when it finally drops... but it won't. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
I wouldn't care if there were better options to look forward to, but with the new Mystical Skyfire Diamond/Arcane Missiles interaction, a freaking Illhoof drop is the best available trinket in the game for an Arcane Mage. We're working on Kael at the moment, and my biggest possible upgrade is from Kara.... /hate /hate /hate
Edit - did I say April? I just checked and our first Illhoof kill was in February. So closer to 25-28 kills....
Posts
A full 1/2 of the helms that have dropped have been the shmmy/pali/rogue we have yet to see the priest/warr/duid drop after about 10 prince kills.
Makeup this time was druid, druid, priest, priest, lock. Druid number 1 was our tank, but had terrible lag the entire time. Luckily druid 2 was able to step up when it got unbearable. Shadow priest did a ton o' damage to the portal bosses while keeping me topped off with mana and both druids health topped up. Lock absolutely creamed the adds. Cop that BM! you got rolled.
key points:
- theres no 'bonus' for winning other than 2 tokens you don't need (unless you spaaaaam pots)
- needless to say, they try to win every game
- I feel obligated to inform them of their stupidity every game some cheese head wants to race to win.
- skipping Galv is considered a 'good' idea because horde hit SH before they kill Balinda even though the configuration of the map makes killing Galv first more logical.
- no one defends towers or graveyards while they cap and they few that do get plowed when 2 horde show up
- theres no teamwork or communication aside from arguing with idiots who want to skip the only things that give them bonus honor (who PvPs in AV?)
- theres at least 6-7 AFKers every game, few of which get reported (if any)
It's a really simple game: Complete objectives that score bonus honor, ???, profit.
Personally, I have played maybe 2 games of AV as a horde character at 70 because it was pointless due to abundant AFkers, so I may be slightly mistaken in a few areas of reference, but from an Alliance perspective, due to the horrible positioning of GY in relation to the capture flags, I would say Horde have a much more defensive setup than Alliance even considering the downfalls of having to kill several more NPCs in Dun Baldar.
- There is an obvious choke point at IB GY where there is only 1 path in and out.
- If you die as Alliance defending Stormpike you are sent to the entry cave
- There are multiple ways into Stormpike and Stonehearth GY, all of which result in back-dooring defenders and making them fight on the flag, unlike IB GY where there is a blatant bottle neck.
- You can, in fact, cap Alliance bunkers without killing archers (no matter how many times Horde players cry about it as a 'disadvantage' on the forums)
- The configuration of the War Masters can cause you to pull a minimum of 3 based on the capture status of the towers/bunkers. From what I've seen of the Alliance base, the Marshals cannot be pulled any larger than groups of 2 due to their configuration.
- Galv fears and WWs. Balinda sheeps and casts arcane missiles. Galv's fear is not a magic effect.
Maybe Alliance are destined to suck at cooperative activities (see: the other 3 BGs), or maybe the Marshal exploit (that is, being able to skip at least 4 of them) is just an un-overcomeable pacing mechanism when combined with the complete inability to defend after losing SPGY without trinketting home.
Also, they nerfed ghost running so dying early means you get to play D permanently as Alliance. /Facepalm.
And not being able to find a decent pole-arm or axe anywhere.
Sad: Still need to farm primals and get 75 more levels.
XBL
totally not an exploit, guys
I love how alliance can only skip warmasters if tower point and icewing are dead
god I hate AV
oh well, I've been getting 501 honour games all weekend, and we've been losing most of them
When did that happen?
You think it's easier for horde to defend when they get pushed to their cave?
If horde are defending Frostwolf (which is impractical, all defense should be done at the IB bottle neck) coming from the direction of the GY and die they don't get kicked to the cave as Alliance do. They go to the RH.
You're forgetting that the "IB chokehold" is a place Horde doesn't go normally: Horde jumps off the cliff to head north, they don't go south and around the mountain. Thus it's really easy for Alliance to grab IB without any Horde noticing (after killing Galv since he's not defended by Horde for much the same reason). After that Horde's sent to their cave which if you head straight north from you never get close to FW which means Horde (yet again) has to make a conscious decision to defend their graveyard. That usally doesn't happen so FW falls. So then we're at the Hut trying to keep the Alliance from coming in, except there's two entrances into the main base AND two entrances into the upper area (which means no chokepoint in either place) AND the NPCs are way off to the side so they don't aggro anyone running in AND the archers don't do shit to help, so it's easy for a smaller group of Alliance to take the Hut. There's no NPCs in the upper area that aggro once you kill off the flag defenders, so you can dick around all you want with each Warmaster to the point GY zerging is a good strategy since as long as one person can kite the Warmaster around they don't have to worry about being aggroed on by random mobs and everyone can rez and finish it off.
On the Alliance side, though, all of their graveyards have them run by their flag (including when they own Horde graveyards: Alliance can hold IB and FW a lot easier than Horde because Alliance are heading south from there, right past the flag) so there's forced defending in that aspect. When they're kicked back to their cave they run right by SP no matter where they're heading: back to their base or down south. The natural path to SP from the south is the biggest chokepoint in the map and it takes a lot of convincing on Horde-side to get people to take the high road instead of that deathtrap. You have the bridge as a chokepoint as well, one that your archers actually help you with, as well as NPCs that are in the area that aggro when someone sneezes nearby them makes the whole base a clusterfuck.
Now I've never played Alliance, let alone AV as an Alliance, so I don't see how you guys can say the Horde have it good when the map forces you to play defense properly. Your towers are shorter so your archers have longer range. For the towers that have stealth-seeing elites, it's easy for Alliance to kite that elite around while someone stealths up to grab the flag in its room safe from the archers but for Horde they have to kill an archer or two before they can start capping in that open room most of the archers can see you in (and the one tower that I know of that they can cap without being arched is one without a guard in the first place, the North DB bunker). The only advantage Horde has is when they summon NPCs for help (which doesn't happen that often): they usually go unnoticed and so summoning is easy (if you can convince everyone to get there, that is) versus the Alliance's summoners who take the path the Horde are gonna take on their way to the Alliance base so they usually die pretty quickly.
Hate: No Capacitor.
Hope: Guild does NOT bring the noob elem shammy in our guild to Kara this week. You know, the one who just made 70, has never seen the insides of a heroic, with 200'ish +damage. Yeah, the one that would win the rolls on the only Kara gear I have left to acquire.
Yeah, a couple guildies and myself started a 3v3 team this last weekend.
We really aren't balanced (Hunter, Rogue, Druid), but we actually ended up winning 3 out of our 10 games, which isn't great, but better than expected since we aren't even over vent and going against Pally/Warrior teams.
Oh, I did come up with the greatest arena name ever though, i'm pretty proud of that. I was listening to "Tenacious D" at the time.
Hate: I sat outside of TK together with 2 others waiting for our BT raid to finish, to quickly do A'lar. This did not happen, as there were quite a few troubles in BT apparently. Pretty crummy way to spend sunday evening.
Between Hope and Fear: To get officially tagged "core" this week, at which point i can abuse the horribly broken DKP system (a selfmade one called EPGP) to pick any one epic I want, basicly. Of course, if I don't make core, i need to find another guild, which is
Everything you said here is 100% true. Most games now are basically horde taking everything with the alliance taking two towers and one gy then killing drek. It's almost impossible for horde to kill Vann before alliance because there's always a few defenders who fear everyone into the marshalls. Regardless, we still get about an even amount of honor with alliance just because pf their turbo drek strategy combined with HK's.
The truth of the mater is that there is no real imbalance. Horde start off further ahead, galv is harder to kill than balinda, and Drek's room is easy to defend. Alliance have a better defensive position in their main base and a choke point that is more often used. The horde never actually use their choke point (Iceblood). Alliance don't want to use thiers, but they get stuck respawning at stormpike relief hut if they die in the initial rush.
The only "problem" is that some people want their side to win, so that they can get more honour, so they whine when they lose. If your side is losing, the other one either has more gladiator geared people, or less afkavers.
There's no way Drek is easier to defend. Especially if we try before fully taking the hut and alliance has somehow taken SP again, which happens a lot since Horde needs everyone inside to try and battle through the marshall fears that inevitably happen combined with Alliance rezzing at basically at SP.
You can hide at the back of Drek's room and the alliance attackers can't get to you. If the alliance has an incompetent offense(more likely than you think), a few hunters and mages can hold them off forever.
You can snipe someone at the far edge of Vandar's room without aggroing his marshalls.
Yeah, a mage/rogue/hunter/whatever pure dps isn't going to stop a vann downing. But I'm specifically talking about 2-3 UA locks or priests that run in and fear bomb at a consistent rate. There's been many times where we get to Vann way before the alliance get to Drek and are just straight up unable to kill him because of fear bombs.
Horde does the same thing. Heck Alliance are more likely to cap the FW towers and then proceed to ignore them letting the Horde recap before they are destroyed and then you see alliance start pulling, kill a couple of WMs and the Wolves and then somehow pull Drek outside also which resets the entire room.
I don't think I have ever seen the Horde attempt to pull Vann before both of the Dun Baldar towers are destroyed.
At least the Aid Station flag is right infront of the Alliance building. Alliance have to go past the Horde building to cap the Aid Station.
And I still don't know what the second entrance is to the horde base.
Is there some terrain exploit that Alliance can use? Is it similar to the one that lets Horde cap Dun Baldur Bunkers before Alliance get to Tower Point?
Happiness: Weekend off from raiding to clock in 20hrs more into TF2. >_>
Hope: 2.3 hits soon so I don't have to delete my Shaman.
It really depends how many bodies you have. Most of the games I've played, you're lucky to have 5 defending horde-side. That's not enough to hold the IB chokepoint when 30 Alliance come pouring through the far left. They make a beeline for Frostwolf, or worse, Relief Hut. In my experience the gate right at the entrance to the Frostwolf towers is the best place to make a stand. Mage/Lock + Hunter and you're gold.
If you've got 7-10 you can hold IB. Then the honor whores QQ they're forced to actually take objectives cuz the game isn't ending in 10 minutes. :P
Right before the expac hit, we were playing the 5 minute AV game. We'd run past every GY, straight into Vann's room. A hunter would kite away the marshalls and we'd burn down Vann on the opposite side of the room. 5 minutes.
Of course, we were consistently getting the same 35 people all on Vent knowing exactly what the strategy was.
And oh, how the tokens flowed like wine.
The key difference that makes AV biased for the Alliance is placement of the bottleneck. Horde has one at IB, yeah, but it's the 3rd GY from Drek. SPGY is the 2nd GY from Vann. This is the vital difference. Alliance can run right by IBGY and take FW without having to worry about any NPCs. Once FW falls, part of the IB defending force has to fall back and reclaim it, leaving IB open to fall. Horde trying to run right by the defenders of SPGY are immediately met by arrows on the bridge (an arguable second bottleneck) which leaves them mortally weakened to any random defender (nay we forget the massive amounts of NPCs). This is the difference that makes AV imbalanced.
I never saw them again... damn you cross-realm servers, damn you!!
Back when the honor patch first hit and I was running those we would just get like 40 or 50 people to queue at one time and we're pretty much guaranteed to get enough people in the same av to be able to do it. I personally prefer the 10 minute avs where we get all the names, bal, at least 2 gys and a win.
This is how the group I was with ran it most of the time. We had 40-50 people on vent, from all different servers but the same battlegroup (Rampage). They'd count down and we'd all queue. People would call out when they got one to pop. The leader of the group would watch which numbers were missing from the list. Eventually the majority would call out the same number, likely one of those that was missing from the active list, indicating that a new AV had started. Everyone that didn't get that number would leave queue and then re-queue for just that new AV instance. After 30-45 seconds, the leader would ask people to silently Push To Talk if they hadn't gotten the queue. If we were missing less than 10 people, we went ahead and accepted. If not, we all left queue and tried again.
Once we were in, the leader would take volunteers to take and guard bunkers/GYs. Eventually we'd have 20-30 grouped up in the mountains just above SPGY as well as stealthers positioned at both towers and the Relief Hut. He'd count it down and we'd all move in. The defense of SPGY was overwhelmed everytime. The main group and stealthers capped both towers, SPGY, and the Relief Hut within 10 seconds of each other, sending the alliance to their cave.
Then we moved in, killed all the marshalls, waited for the bunkers/towers to roll over if they were within a minute or two of capping, and then polished off Vann.
It was mechanical and, oh, so beautiful.
I'm still baffled that the coder went to so much trouble to make it horde only. I recall a discusson on the mod's code leading to some hillarity a while back.
Some people get way, WAY too into Horde/Alliance opposition. Way. O_o
I can honestly say that if I had written that mod, I would've done the exact same thing. Fuck the Alliance. Sooo hard.
I've been pissed off about this all week. I can understand addons being a little weird, but Ace mods are updated constantly, and most non-Ace mods that I still use also receive updates by the time I get home from work on patch days. It's not difficult to make sure your UI doesn't get raped when you log in.
And yet a week later we still have people asking why they can't see the MT on Omen or why something or other is acting weird. "Have you updated?" "Oh, not yet." OH HEY MAYBE THAT'S WHY YOU CAN'T SEE HER YOU FUCKING IDIOTSJDGKSLHL
Also re: the arena discussion a few pages back. What I find the most frustrating about 5v5 is that other teams always seem to learn and adapt their strategies and we do not. Basically anytime we come up against the same team twice, no matter how easy we put them down the first time, they kick our asses the second (and third, if applicable, before we get pissed off and stop queuing for a bit). I know it probably doesn't help that we usually just get our 10-15 games in per week and don't really discuss strategies beyond one guy bitching at everyone else for what they did wrong. >.<
EPGP, at least in its basic implementation, isn't horribly broken at all. What I've read about it makes it seem very fair. Just really annoying to do the book-keeping.
There are mods that make it pretty easy.
I don't think it was hatred for the alliance that did it. I heard it had something to do with queue times and wouldn't work for Alliance as well. Might never be true, but that's what I heard.
We've been using it for the past 2 months and I've yet to hear a complaint about it. While we do override the priority on extremely rare occasions (aka - MT stuff, we've done it twice so far), the GP is still factored in so the MT's aren't getting more zomg purplez than anyone else.
Related story of happiness;
On the weekend, my group was having a really shitty string of luck in the arenas. As noted, I run with a priest and a shaman (and I'm a rogue). Thus, paladin teams are trouble; I can't do shit to the paladin when they shield themselves/others (aside from blinding BoPs of course), the whole opposing team usually works hard on violating my priest, so she's rarely free to dispell it, and BoP and Blessing of Freedom often make my life very, very difficult.
We were on a slump of like 2 wins and 4 losses, and things were looking grim. We came up against a Paladin/Shaman/Mage (as I recall) who just mounted, ran out the game and RAPED my shaman. Not even enough time for the priest to flash heal him, must've been a PoM -> face own + elemental crits and the Paladin delivered the coup de gras with a Divine Favour'd Holy Shock for nearly 2k. It was just dumb.
Paladin Team to Forar's Team: Fuck you.
So we queue back up, and lo and behold, it's them again. Except this time, we play it safe, hiding back in the room we start in (Loredon). Eventually after showing a little more caution they come in at us. I'm hiding in back for my moment to strike, and once all three are in, I unload on the paladin. As with many teams in close quarters, blade flurry and adrenaline rush do most of the work for me, so the Paladin shields. So I turn and VIOLATE the shaman. Our priest goes down, and the paladin's bubble wears out. The shaman and I lay into him and he goes down like a drunk prom date. The mage does not survive our wrath.
Forar's Team to Paladin Team: No no! Fuck YOU!
We queue again, and it's a rematch once more! Same arena, and we hold back. They hmmm and haw outside for a while, but decide that coming in again will be fine. I jump the paladin again and this time he goes down pretty easily. I don't know if he wasn't fast enough, or I just didn't notice my priest on her game in the heat of combat, but he dies. In a fire. The glorious parts to this match were two fold. The mage (ice of course) hides in his iceblock after I violate his elemental in 3 shots and come for him. He and my shaman dance for a bit as I focus on their shaman. And realize he's a keyboard turner! He starts casting a lightning bolt at me as I beat him down, so I run behind him. He sssslllllooooowwwwllllyyy turns to me, begins another cast... as I run behind him again. He dies without putting up much of a fight at all.
The mage remains a thorn in our side, but I flind him, back off, stealth and cheapshot him. He blinks out of it... and moves about 4ft due to being in a room. The ensuing kidney shot + violation end it for them.
Forar's Team to Paladin Team: Well fought, but Owned.
As noted before, I'm not much of a pvp'er, and while I don't have to win to have fun, being raped 3-4 games in a row by teams with paladins is no fun. Turning the tables, if only for a few fights, was glorious, and it went from looking like our shittiest week ever, to a 5-5 split where we lost only 12 points. It could've gone better, but it could've gone a lot worse too.
(note: stories may not be 100% accurate. The first game was literally over in seconds, but the other two were fun and awesome, and not just because we won. I didn't feel like dead weight, and attribute that at least partially to spending all damned Saturday in Alterac Valley)
Well what has happened with us is that the (old) core has acquired mass amounts of GP, while all the new people have not. The core is hovering around a prio of 1.5-5, while, the second I am core, I'll have 1600 points or so, which means that when I get a t6 weapon.... i'll still have a rating of 4.x. Meaning I get my first item after core with 100% certainty, and my second item probably too, and then i will start to integrate into the system.
For a guild plowing through BT like hot butter, this is not something they're overjoyed about, seeing all the best loot going to those who are new/play least. I'm guessing it has something to do with the high amount of epics/week we take in, it might be messing up the decay system, I dunno. There will be a change just before sunwell.
You do not know the meaning of pain. I've been killing Illhoof since April, attending about 20 kills. Never, ever seen the damn thing drop (let alone had a chance to lose the roll). The other two main raiding mages got theirs finally (I was always in the other group) so it is mine when it finally drops... but it won't. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
I wouldn't care if there were better options to look forward to, but with the new Mystical Skyfire Diamond/Arcane Missiles interaction, a freaking Illhoof drop is the best available trinket in the game for an Arcane Mage. We're working on Kael at the moment, and my biggest possible upgrade is from Kara.... /hate /hate /hate
Edit - did I say April? I just checked and our first Illhoof kill was in February. So closer to 25-28 kills....