Alterac Valley Primer

[Concillian]

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.

I believe the most serious imbalance to be in the location of the res cave.

For alliance this cave is right above stormpike. If they res at the cave they have to ride RIGHT BY stormpike GY to get anywhere. It's also far enough away that the only time they're res-ing in the cave and not at stormpike is when they have already lost stormpike. If alliance lose Stonehearth, the natural defensive tendency is reinforcing Stormpike and the path between Stormpike and Stonehearth.

For horde the cave is off to the side, between IB and FW. If horde lose Iceblood, there is no natural defensive tendency. You res in the cave if fighting at IB or Tower point. When you get out of the cave you are faced with 3 options of where to head... IB GY, Tower Point, or FW GY. Naturally people choose different locations to head and you have no unified force. You can even be fighting, with the intention of defending Frostwolf GY and end up res-ing in the cave if you get pulled a bit too far from FW, which adds about 1 minute latency to Frostwolf GY... similar to the latency alliance have from IB GY. For this reason, FW is virtually indefensible compared with Stormpike.

Alliance die at Stonehearth, they res at Stormpike, there is one clear path to head. Horde die at Iceblood, they res in the cave, they have three paths to head and don't all choose the same path. The terrain + human nature creates the teamwork for the alliance. The horde have to actually decide as a group and intentionally act together... and coordination like that in a PUG BG is akin to herding cats.

Another situation this creates is the inertia for getting on offense/defense. If an alliance character dies before SF caps, they res at stormpike. They now have a very considerable choke point to head through in the Icewing through Stonehearth area to head through before they end up on offense. Again... natural tendency will be to just engage and defend. Because SH is extremely easy to take, and most alliance head all out O early, and hit SF / Galv before Iceblood, there is generally very little "high inertia defense" for the horde, semi-forced defending, if you will. If they do end up res-ing in the cave, they are doing so after they already lost their primary defensive point, and they start scattering between IB, Tower point and FW.

Because of the GY arrangement issues, I am of the opinion that if horde is to have a shot at winning a game, they must flip Stormpike before alliance flip Iceblood. Most race games are horde losses. Most horde wins I've seen are 45-90 minutes and are of the 'cap SF, summon Lok, and use Lok to push through the whole alliance force' variety.

Yes the NPCs in the base are an issue, but I think the GY arrangement is a more signficant issue. It forces the issue of teamwork in a rather chaotic envoriment. Alliance can easily push on offense early, then if they die, they can sit back and defend. Horde have to push defense right from the beginning, because if they lose IB, they lose their primary defensive point. This also weakens the initial offense compared with the alliance ability to go all out on O from the very beginning.