Alterac Valley Woes

[Watto44]

Heya, I just thought I'd throw this question out to the more experienced PvPers in the Lounge.

The server I'm on (Terenas) is quite small, with an even smaller population of keep PvPers. We only manage to get AV up and running once a week. (Tuesday nights for anyone that's interested.) The scenario always seems to be the same. We (the Horde) always do quite well for the first five or six hours before fatigue kicks in and our numbers dwindle until we're pushed back to our base with maybe fifteen people left in the instance.

My question is that: how the heck do you get past that final bridge, defended by two bunkers, and into the dwarven keep? We regularly manage to take and hold that last graveyard, but have yet to neutralise one of the towers.

I was just wondering what sort of strategies people are using to get past that bridge. (Hazzah! for tonights patch. No more guard zerg at least.)

Cheers.

[Skandranon]

My question is that: how the heck do you get past that final bridge, defended by two bunkers, and into the dwarven keep?  We regularly manage to take and hold that last graveyard, but have yet to neutralise one of the towers.
Cheers.
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To my observation, from the Alliance side: it can't be done. The Alliance can hold that bridge essentially indefinitely with relatively rudimentary tactics. I'd think the Horde would need to simultaneously arrange an assault with a shredder, Lokholar, and a cavalry or commando charge to break a concerted Alliance defence.

[Watto44]

Sigh. That was kind of what I was thinking. The archer fire, narrow approach, coupled with the occasional guard attack makes this a very difficult obsticle. Given the nature of our battles, it seems unlikely that we could organise Lok, a commando and a shredder all at once.

I think if we could manage to get the towers down, things would certainly seem more doable, but just getting through the mass AoE on the bridge makes even getting into a tower tough, let alone taking it.

Ahh well, we'll see how things go tomorrow. :D

[Bob the Beholder]

Other Alterac Valley Woes, perhaps?

For one, I lag so hard it's ridiculous. Anywhere from a third to a half of my deaths are caused by a period of time in which one frame I'm staring down an enemy raid, and the next frame--about thirty seconds later--I've either auto-run into the enemy raid and died, or stood completely still as a mob of night elves all converge on me at once.

I imagine this is the fault of my mere 512 mb of RAM. Or at least, I've heard that that isn't enough to handle the heavier aspects of the game. Perhaps if I switch out one 256 stick for a 512--raising the total to 768--would it be enough to solve most of this? My friend has a gig of RAM, I know (which is nearly impossible for me at the moment) and experiences very few problems.

Of course, I can't be doing TOO bad, seeing as I spend an hour in there and score higher at level 58 with some level 39 equipment still than certain people who've been hitting MC for months.

[lemekim]

Other Alterac Valley Woes, perhaps? 

For one, I lag so hard it's ridiculous.  Anywhere from a third to a half of my deaths are caused by a period of time in which one frame I'm staring down an enemy raid, and the next frame--about thirty seconds later--I've either auto-run into the enemy raid and died, or stood completely still as a mob of night elves all converge on me at once.

I imagine this is the fault of my mere 512 mb of RAM.  Or at least, I've heard that that isn't enough to handle the heavier aspects of the game.  Perhaps if I switch out one 256 stick for a 512--raising the total to 768--would it be enough to solve most of this?  My friend has a gig of RAM, I know (which is nearly impossible for me at the moment) and experiences very few problems.

Of course, I can't be doing TOO bad, seeing as I spend an hour in there and score higher at level 58 with some level 39 equipment still than certain people who've been hitting MC for months.
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Most people in Alterac Valley are (or were) there to loot corpses and gain faction rather then actually kill people ;)

As for the topic itself, there isn't a legitimate strategy to deal with overcoming the bridge, but the new changes supposedly will make it easier. One recommendation is to take over the alliance mine behind the last graveyard, then it is possible to kite whatever NPCs come at your graveyard into the mine, and let the "miners" deal with them. Furthermore, if you can accumulate a big enough train of the said miners (for example if you are kiting one of the tougher NPCs), you can then bring those miners back onto bridge and let them help you in the assault.

[acidjax]

My question is that: how the heck do you get past that final bridge, defended by two bunkers, and into the dwarven keep?  We regularly manage to take and hold that last graveyard, but have yet to neutralise one of the towers.
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I play an Alliance character so I've seen some strats that the Horde have done that worked. On my server the horde/alliance ratio is relatively even. Firstly, any type of coordinated charge can catch the other side off guard. This is everyone knowing to charge at the same time.

Now onto some strategies:

1) The first thing that can be done is to pull/kill the base mine layer. After that rogues will essentially be "suicide disarming" landmines all over the base.

2) To the right of the Dun Baldar North Bunker you can ride up on a mount and there is a spot where you can jump right into the bunker from the hill outside. Getting a sizeable force there to actually take over the bunker is tough because the Alliance see you when you're doing it. However, you can use the opportunity to kill off all archers in range.

3) After several North Bunker archers are dead the South Bunker archers are easier to take down. The main thing to get here is that killing NPC archers can be more important then killing players since they don't come back with full health after 30 seconds.

4) The bottom level NPC guards inside the bunkers can be pulled back to the bridge by druids/rogues where they are killed. Increased guard respawn time in 1.6 would give you a larger window of time to charge into the Bunker after taking out the bottom level guards.

5) When you charge, a couple people need to be distractions. This could be a couple warriors intercepting (combat bug makes charge sketchy) to the west and using intimidating shout while other Horde charge NW into the North bunker. It could even be some cannon fodder on mounts riding towards the South Bunker. Several mages and warlocks are using ranged AoE to discourage enemy melee. Improved Blizzard is great here and cheap junky totems should be placed everywhere to screw up tab targetting a bit.

6) If a sizeable Horde force make it in alive into the same Bunker it's almost as good as destroyed, they need only to stay and defend the single ground entrance as their choke point. Unless Alliance organize and charge in together they will trickle in by 2's and 3's and be obliterated with low or no casualties to the Horde.

7) Horde that died are trying to rejoin the bunker defense by riding directly inside while mounted.

8) Destroying Bunkers can be more important then keeping Stormpike graveyard.

[Watto44]

Thanks for the response all. :) We actually managed it yesterday, using a combination of stealth, deception and main force. Our tactic was to use Lokholar as a distraction, coupled with repeated suicide heal runs at him to tie down as many alliance players as we could with as few people as possible. During this time, about half the raid group ran for the groud floor of the north bunker. The remainder took the top floor and captured the bunker.

Repeated pushes at the south bunker (even involving the majority of our raid) failed. Putting even 10 people in one of those bunkers makes it very difficult to capture. However, we did manage to kill enough of the archers to force our way to the graveyard and capture that.

Unfortunately too many people got too greedy at this point and rushed straight for Vandar, allowing the alliance to undercut our graveyards and force us back to Snowfall with one swift blow. ::cry::

I was so shellshocked when this happened. We were that close to winning and it all fell apart on us. I honestly just couldn't think for about twenty minutes.

It was a great battle though. Our Alterac Valley battles are growing in complexity and strategic depth each week as we understand more and more about the instance and its mechanics.

I am totally addicted to it now, to the point where I've been turning down UBRS groups on tuesdays. (I still desperately want my chest piece. But hey, AV only happens once a week, UBRS happens all the time....yay for being a healer on a low pop server.)

[Trien]

I've never been around long enough for a proper horde or alliance victory in Alterac, but the big bottlenecks for both sides... the bridge for alliance, and the ramp going up with the two towers on either side for horde, seem to be total nightmares to storm. Typically the only way I've seen someone get past them is throw the elemental along with a commando and/or cavalry charge, and have the massed players charge along with them.

Unfortunately on my server, there never seems to be an Alterac instance up now... haven't been able to get in for 2 weeks...

[Watto44]

Unfortunately on my server, there never seems to be an Alterac instance up now... haven't been able to get in for 2 weeks...
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Terenas certainly has the same difficulties with numbers. The way it was overcome was to organise one night a week to head on in there and have some fun. You can do this pretty easily through the official realm boards and by contacting the guild masters of large raiding guilds to see if they're interested. (Despite the general dislike some players have for these guilds, it's a great way to get a decent number of people in the queue.)

Definately worth doing if you're even slightly interested in PvP. Alterac is a gentler introduction to it than Warsong, and certainly a nice change of pace. I've found Warsong is getting repetitive lately and I'm starting to loose interest.

Interestingly, I've noticed that on PvP servers it's warsong that hardly every runs, with people camping AV for the huge honor and rep bonuses. I'm curious as to why this is, so if you have a wild conspiracy theory...please post! :D

[Concillian]

Thenk you for bringing the AV night on Terenas to my attention. If there's room next week you will have another priest.