More analysis of Alterac ValleyFollow

It is ironic that the most honor can be earned in the battle ground that the horde are least proficient at winning. I used to win about 1/3 of the time, but lately that has dropped to an abysmal 10%. I am starting to feel like alliance.

I am going to give some ideas about actually winning AV, but first an analysis of earning honor. I had no trouble racking up 100 marks of honor in WSG and AV, but I only got about 13000 honor doing it. Winning (which happened about 75% of the time) got about 160 honor and 3 marks. At that rate, you will have more marks than you know what to do with in no time.

So now I am just grinding in AV. Now winning in AV gets about 300 honor and 3 marks. But you won't do that unless your guild is running a premade. But you wouldn't be reading this if you had such a good guild. Losing will get you one mark and about 150-180 honor if you can't take the stormpike graveyard, and about 220-250 honor if you get to Van but can't finish him before the alliance win.

Clearly, AV will get you more honor per hour than the other two battlegrounds. Plus, you will need to grind more to get marks. So you will spend a lot of time in AV. Unfortunately, going afk gets you almost as much honor as actually playing. I sure wish afk players got kicked, but they don't.

So you will proabably be playing with 33-35 active players. The typical strategy is for the horde to almost all go on offense. This allows the alliance to defend with 10 and send 25 on offense (they typically have a few afkers of their own). This leads to an interesting paradox...

25 players is about the number you need to win AV, give or take some based upon skill, organization, and equipment. Since the horde doesn't usually mount a defense, the alliance rush through and start working on Drek within 18 minutes. Often they will send about 5 out ahead to capture the graveyards and kill the towers while the other 20 roll up everything as they go along. If the horde does have a few defenders, then up the number to 10 and roll over them for a few minutes delay.

Meanwhile, the horde rush with 30+ towards stormpike graveyard. They easily roll over everything in their path and very often you will see the horde ahead of alliance in score about 10 minutes into the game (151-126 for example). But then they have to capture the graveyard. People say "Take the upper road!" "Come around behind!" and so on. But wave after wave of horde die trying to cap the flag. Even after capping, very often they get beaten back again.

What is happening here?

1. The alliance station ranged attackers above the flag on the hills. Horde players tend to respond slowly to this threat, allowing hunters, warlocks, and mages to rain death from safety. The alliance drop AoEs with wild abandon on bunched up waves of horde coming in from any direction. What to do? Capture the high ground yourself before rushing the flag. Then do ranged/AoE attacks of your own.

2. The horde, on the other hand, tend to go through the killing lanes. With poor line of sight, they have trouble using ranged attacks and AoEs themselves. Don't do that. Capture the hills and drop down on the alliance from high ground.

There are three hills around the flag. One between the road and the graveyard that is accessible from near the flag (and hence hard to get up), one behind the flag that can be approached from the mine, and one on the other side of the road next to the bridge that can be scaled from the lower road on the left as you approach from horde territory. You can also stand on the cliff behind their graveyard and AoE them as they rez (if a mage can freeze them all at the right moment, this can be a massacre).

3. All graveyards are close to the flags. You already know what this means--the flag owners rez close to counter-attack while the attackers rez far away and have to travel. Rez waves happen every 30 seconds, so you have to clear the flag and cap it (8 seconds) between waves. With 10 defenders, this is a very difficult task. You are not going to win with waves of 5 or 10 or even 15 people against 5 mob guards and 10 alliance players.

If your initial wave of 25 or 30 doesn't overwhelm them, then you need to group up. I have watched the horde rack up impressive honor kill counts and never actually capture the flag. If you don't group up and overwhelm them in a 20 second bloodbath, good luck.

4. Yes, they have 10 defenders who will rez over and over, but you can tilt the numbers in your favor by killing the 5 guard mobs that won't respawn quickly. If you are having trouble, kill the mobs as the priority. That will do more than anything in reduction of their defense. I have seen many fights where the alliance players got wiped time after time but the guards weren't killed. Reverse the priorities.

5. Once you clear the flag area and are trying to cap, you can gain a few seconds if people with fear abilities run to their graveyard spawn point and fear the rezzers. Typically they will move forward a few yards near the wagon before rezzing, so don't overshoot where they will appear. Mages casting freeze can help, too (note what I said above about freezing the whole group and dropping AoEs on them).

DEFENCE

Everyone says don't defend, and to a degree they are right. If you play like the alliance, you can probably hold them at Iceblood Graveyard for a long time using the same tactics. And the game will drag on for an hour or more as a stalemate. Frankly, if your goal is maximum honor, that is inefficient.

But some defence can be good. I like a five man defence that is only intended to slow the alliance down. And I really only care about defending in Drek's castle when the time comes.

The five man defence I have seen work well is a healer, 3 casters, and a rogue. The idea is for the casters to use fear/freeze to break up pulling while the healer keeps them alive and the rogue handles problem people (like rogues and hunters).

Every time you die, you come back and try to get into the base. You will die a lot and have to be tenacious. They will be waiting for you with traps, stuns, and other nasty things. But just having to deal with you causes trouble. Casting freeze or fear when you recall in sometimes breaks up a pull or helps you get inside.

When someone comes in to pull, you freeze them or fear them and let the mobs mow them down. They will likely try to group assault your casters, so expect to be short-handed a lot while the clothies rez and try to run in. That's why it is useful to have a stealthy rogue who can't be eliminated easily. Of course, if the alliance run in en masse, fear bomb them so they can't do anything.

Hunters with increased range talents can attack you anywhere inside without aggroing, so the rogue can be helpful to kill them. If they send in rogues of their own, the rogue can also break up a stun lock on a caster while Drek and friends get a chance to pulverize them. Another problem the rogue (or someone) may need to deal with is an alliance who stands just outside the wall at the entrance to keep your casters in combat so they can't drink to regen mana.

The whole point of the 5 man defence is to buy time for your team to beat Van. You really don't want to beat back the alliance and make them turtle. Ideally, you want more alliance to go on offense and make it easier on your side. You want them to think they are almost going to win up to the last minute.

THE WHEN AND WHY TO DEFEND

If you team is bogged down at stormpike graveyard or can't seem to take the aid station, I wouldn't recommend defending. Sure you have your pride, but there is going to be another game 1 minute after this one ends. Defend when your team is making steady progress but not as fast as the alliance.

I used to advocate no defence, but that was when the horde won a fair amount of the time. I think the alliance has developed a better strategy lately, so I have been thinking about counters to it.

The first time we did the five man defence, it was an informal thing. I showed up with my priest to help a warlock to harrass the alliance because we couldn't get past Iceblood graveyard and felt like causing trouble. I noted that the alliance was facing only two extra guards with Drek while they had all four with Van because we hadn't killed the towers in their base, but they had in ours.

So we worked to buy time for the horde to get those towers and even up the challenge. That was the key to winning--getting the two extra guards made it much harder for the alliance. That is your goal with the delaying defence: knock down the alliance towers and get all four guards to Drek before the alliance get their pulling organized.

Edited, Jan 3rd 2007 6:16pm by AddictedFanatic

The reason you take SHGY before Balinda is because if the Alliance has defense on SHGY and Balinda yells that she's being attacked, the SHGY defenders head to Balinda and stop the Horde. In the meantime Galv is dead, IBGY is tagged and Horde is now rezzing in the cave. It's much more important to get the forward GY and then worry about killing Balinda.

Well, to make sure I sort of know what is going on, I dusted my Alliance 60 off last night and ran battlegrounds. It mirrored my horde experience just like I remember--20% wins in WSG, 10% in AB, and 100% in AV.

I played 3 AVs. In one I ran with the forward group (my personal specialty). We captured the frostwolf graveyard, the base towers and aid station while the main group mopped up behind us. We pulled and everything was over in about 18 minutes.

I ran another with the main group. We killed everything that moved from Galv to Drek. Another quick and efficient victory. The horde were pulling in our base, but a day late and a dollar short.

I stayed behind and played defence. The horde battled up to Stormpike graveyard and overran it. They left a few defenders and crossed the bridge and captured the aid station. While they were trying to set up a pull, we captured Stormpike, rushed the bridge, broke up their pull, capped the aid station back, and cleared our base. A couple of minutes later Drek was down.

Frankly, there was nothing magic about it. AV is weighted against the horde. But I suppose it is good that the alliance have somewhere to win. It would be pretty discouraging otherwise.

im an alliance player grinding all BG's except WSG done that from lvl 50+, but AV is nearly always a horde win even if we kill Galv first about 20-30 alliance players will sit outside Drek'y for 10mins before going in and by that time horde have already started to toast vaan,But if your horde and you really want to win then do AB almost instant win for horde there.


P.s. why am i telling you stuff to help you?:P