Alterac Valley Primer

[Kevin]

While admittedly relatively new to AV (I am not too far into honored at present), I haven't noticed a serious imbalance. I lose more than I win, but I put that up to generally better gear on the Alliance side, and bad Horde habits (we have months and months of considering a "victory" in AV to be killing Balinda!). The strategy used in most matches I've had is very similar to what you mention.

Back before the changes to AV, Terenas Horde would very very rarely win. We couldn't fill the raid, and the bridge was a death trap. All the Alliance had to do was delay as there were always people to back fill, and the Horde would get tired and AFK out. Most matches I were in were 37-21 or so. Things are much better now.

Don't underestimate the impact that Spangles might have in influencing the outcome of the matches you are in. Far too often in AV the Horde can be competitive, but stall out because they can't kill the marshals. Last night in a match, myself and a 59 druid were the difference makers. He was the only one dedicated to tanking marshals, and I was the only one dedicated to healing him. There were 9 warriors but so few warriors in AV want to tank, and so few healers want to heal. I honestly believe as a holy priest that every match we have taken the aid station, I have been a difference maker since I heal anyone willing to actually tank.

I've noticed several times how 3-5 people who work together can make a huge difference in there. Even without a tank on the Marshalls I've taken to simply calling out in raid chat who to focus fire on (and marking them with my hunter) and that makes a huge difference as well.

The problem though is that, as mentioned, a lot of horde come from servers where before cross server BG they were in 25-35 horde vs 30-40 alliance, they were always at a numbers disadvantage and generally a gear disadvantage as well since even if 20% of both populations were getting raid gear, when 70% of the server pop was alliance there were just more alliance in raid gear.

Last night on my warlock I made a difference by fear tanking the Arch druid. A lot of times when the druids head out horde will lose SP GY and that can be a big blow. So I DoT'd her up and ran down under the bridge and took her with me. Since there is no diminishing returns on fear on the NPC's a warlock who is given enough time can solo all of them via DoT's fears, life taps, drains/siphons. I let them know where I the druid at and after SP was secure again I got some help killing her, but I know it helped.

And finally there are many horde that just don't care about winning. Since honor and rep for losing in there is still pretty good I've seen horde in BG chat flat out say "Yeah I'd rather just lose in 25 minute than win in 35 minutes" and give flat out wrong advice.

I do think that even equal geared that alliance have a 2-5 minute Terrian/NPC advantage in an all out race. Horde do have a few good defense points, one of them being right up there by SH GY but anything that isn't a race is a slower match and when people are convinced that any 20-25 minute match is better for rep and honor per time than a 40+ minute match (and from the back of the envelop calcs I've done they are right) it's hard to get people to win and the very slight alliance advantage just makes a lot of people not care.

The other issue is that a lot of horde just don't seen to know how to get to and take SP GY. The alliance don't have to deal with taking any GY's that have choke points like SP does and too many people just get into open field combat instead of getting to the GY as a group. I see most horde losses because the O doesn't even get to the SP GY flag.