Undocumented 2.2 Features

[Artega]

And it also allows people who don't want to do heavy Arena play a shot at getting decent PvP gear over time. It's the same concept behind placing season 1 gear under Honor instead of Arena Points in 2.3.

The Honor System is basically the PvP equivalent of Heroic instances (and when season 1 falls under the Honor portfolio, tier4 instances.)

[oldmandennis]

Since this has turned into yet another honor/arena/pvp thread:

I think it's worth pointing out that generally speaking the win/loss percentages for WSG, AB, EotS generally fall somewhere around 55% to 45% on any given day (with Alliance also represented on the higher side). For example, on North American servers yesterday Alliance won more AB battles than the Horde.

AV has gone through greater swings, with alliance winning as much as 75 to 80% of battles (NA servers again as an example) before patch 2.2 and horde winning about 60% so far after 2.2. That being said, there are a bunch of substantive AV changes going into patch 2.3 that will probably shake things up some more (more details on that sometime this week).

link

I'm interested in how far they are going to take these changes. Are they willing to take bold steps to make it an actual pvp experience worth playing? Or more baby steps through mediocrity. I'm surprised they want to try and fix this one, if I was calling the shots I'd just shut AV all togeather, then take the lessons learned and apply them to a map that isn't tainted in the players eyes. Half way through WotLK, you could have the grand reopening (with siege engines please).

[Delc]

I am amazed to see blizzard admit that alliance was winning most of the AV games pre-2.2

[Swiss Mercenary]

Since this has turned into yet another honor/arena/pvp thread:
link

The reason for why the allies are winning AB so much seem to be due to the part where by the time the game starts, there are usually 15 allies, and ~10 horde playing. Allies tend to get a big head start by the time the teams even out.

[Tal]

The reason for why the allies are winning AB so much seem to be due to the part where by the time the game starts, there are usually 15 allies, and ~10 horde playing. Allies tend to get a big head start by the time the teams even out.

And I've had the opposite experience on Ruin.

[oldmandennis]

The reason for why the allies are winning AB so much seem to be due to the part where by the time the game starts, there are usually 15 allies, and ~10 horde playing. Allies tend to get a big head start by the time the teams even out.

I think it's the horde being tourists. There's no incentive not to queue for 3 bg's, whatever your objective is. By the time your queue pops for AB, you may already be in a better BG, but the game will not drop you from AB and invite the next player until 2 min are up - the same amount of time as the prep period. And there is no guarantee that the next player is really looking for AB either. Allies, with their slower queues, are less likely to run into this.

It's only going to get worse if they go the way they say they want to - just queue for a certain size BG and get a random map. There's a lot of people who wouldn't accept a queue to EotS if they were hoping for AB.

[Concillian]

By the time your queue pops for AB, you may already be in a better BG, but the game will not drop you from AB and invite the next player until 2 min are up - the same amount of time as the prep period. And there is no guarantee that the next player is really looking for AB either. Allies, with their slower queues, are less likely to run into this.

Well you CAN leave queue. It's just not one of the immediate button options. If you leave queue, you will be replaced quickly, but people don't go to the hassle of leaving queue. There should be 3 buttons on the pop-up
<Accept> <Hide> <Leave Queue>

[Lissa]

I am amazed to see blizzard admit that alliance was winning most of the AV games pre-2.2

That has more to do with the fact that Horde were just sitting in the AFKave. Blizzard now says that since the punt feature has been added, Horde won 60% of the games over the weekend. I'm betting that the reason it was so lop-sided was because of afkers (Alliance had much less afkers to Horde, usually 5 total Alliance would afk whlile 15 to 25 depending on the game would be afk for horde).

Now what I would like to see is Blizzard giving us a break down on battle group by battle group statistics for win/loss ratios for each side as I find there numbers to be skewed when they listed for all US servers. I, like a few others that looked at Kalgon's comment on the BGs, find his numbers to be distrubing from what we've observed on a battle group by battle group basis as I find it hard to believe that Ruin would have Alliance winning AB, WSG, and EotS roughly 55% of the time considering I've seen probably closer to 30 to 35% Alliance winning.

[Artega]

I rarely saw more than five people afkaving, and five people will not make or break an AV unless they're very well geared and working on objectives as a team.

I'd say it's more to the lack of symmetrical bases and the various problems they create than afkaving, but that's been beaten into the ground already.

[oldmandennis]

Well if you don't roll with premades much, your numbers will skew down. A premade can tear through at least 5 games an hour.

[Quark]

Never understood this. Over time I had about a half and half success rate for WSG and AB, and slightly lower for EotS. Much higher for AV. The problem was, the losses were that much more noticeable because of how bad they could be.

[Lissa]

I rarely saw more than five people afkaving, and five people will not make or break an AV unless they're very well geared and working on objectives as a team.

I'd say it's more to the lack of symmetrical bases and the various problems they create than afkaving, but that's been beaten into the ground already.

In the case of Ruin AVs, it was always 15 to 25 Horde sitting there in the cave doing nothing. You could tell by pulling up the BG info and see how many of them has zeros straight across the board.

[Tal]

In the case of Ruin AVs, it was always 15 to 25 Horde sitting there in the cave doing nothing. You could tell by pulling up the BG info and see how many of them has zeros straight across the board.

Aye. The one day a rogue and I decided to clear the cave out we had 30 kills a piece.

[Artega]

Well if you don't roll with premades much, your numbers will skew down. A premade can tear through at least 5 games an hour.

Yeah, we did that on Bloodscalp one night. Those of us that were in it from start to finish (I came in about halfway through when one of their tanks had to cut out) earned something on the order of nearly 30,000 honor in a single night.

[Monkey]

Now what I would like to see is Blizzard giving us a break down on battle group by battle group statistics for win/loss ratios for each side as I find there numbers to be skewed when they listed for all US servers. I, like a few others that looked at Kalgon's comment on the BGs, find his numbers to be distrubing from what we've observed on a battle group by battle group basis as I find it hard to believe that Ruin would have Alliance winning AB, WSG, and EotS roughly 55% of the time considering I've seen probably closer to 30 to 35% Alliance winning.

Yeah, Kalgan's numbers aren't that surprising (or interesting) to me. I'd prefer to see win/loss numbers by battlegroup without any games involving pre-made teams (or fractional pre-mades above a certain cutoff). And then I'd like to see what the total population of unique players is for each side in those PUG win/loss numbers. 10,000 Alliance players cycling through games against 5,000 Horde players would produce a situation with skewed levels of practice for each side.

Synthesize that data and you might actually begin to know if there are discrepancies in a battleground.

The only data I'm inclined to believe is the AV numbers because of the lack of pre-mades. But even those aren't by battlegroup.

[TheDragoon]

I rarely saw more than five people afkaving, and five people will not make or break an AV unless they're very well geared and working on objectives as a team.

I'd say it's more to the lack of symmetrical bases and the various problems they create than afkaving, but that's been beaten into the ground already.

But that would not really explain why I have won about 80% of AV's since the last patch went in and AFKers are getting the no-honor debuff compared to 0% before. I generally saw quite a few more AFKers than you seem to (at least 10) so perhaps that's the difference.

That said, the losses that I have seen since the patch are usually the result of the terrain allowing a small alliance defense group to have a large effect on defense, but that often also has to do with a lack of healers on the horde side or just a lack of quality DPS players.

[oldmandennis]

I, like a few others that looked at Kalgon's comment on the BGs, find his numbers to be distrubing from what we've observed on a battle group by battle group basis as I find it hard to believe that Ruin would have Alliance winning AB, WSG, and EotS roughly 55% of the time considering I've seen probably closer to 30 to 35% Alliance winning.

Expanding on this - assuming my algebra is ok - it would only take 15% of the population in a premade to have a pug experience 35% wins. This assumes 2 games/hr for pug and 5/hr for premade, and the premades winning every game. Of course, there always exists the possibility that you are terrible at pvp and drag the percentages down;)

[Kevin]

But that would not really explain why I have won about 80% of AV's since the last patch went in and AFKers are getting the no-honor debuff compared to 0% before. I generally saw quite a few more AFKers than you seem to (at least 10) so perhaps that's the difference.

That said, the losses that I have seen since the patch are usually the result of the terrain allowing a small alliance defense group to have a large effect on defense, but that often also has to do with a lack of healers on the horde side or just a lack of quality DPS players.

Horde side in Reckoning before the changes to the honor system tended to win 60%+ of the AV's as there were not a lot of AFK folks and playing defense would get you lots of honor kills and hence big honor which would let you climb rank. It wasn't until after they put in the honor system that horde started to lose AV all the time as the honor farmers learned that it was just easier/faster to get honor that way.

Part of the problem on Reckoning is that I saw folks that were in some of the top arena teams (rankings over 2K in some cases) that were doing the AFKaving. Many of the horde folks that weren't even trying in AV were decked out in gladiator gear and had 1800+ arena rankings. So good horde players were playing. I usually say 10-20 afk, and 4-8 of them were generally very well geared and many a few of those were skilled players.

Horde also never got partial premades in AV in Reckoning before the change. I think you were there for some of the matches where we got 5-10 Lurkers in an AV on AV weekend and even with 5-15 AFK folks (less AFK with getting 25% of the horde side for one group) we ended up going like 5 and 3. And the losses were generally closer.

Well that's happening again. I've seen bonechewer and dragonmaw partial premades several times.

The number of people not playing is down to 1-5 now as well, so you have 5-15 more people that are playing at least half heartedly and you have a much higher chance of getting into an AV with 5-10 people that are coordinating. Then you add onto that, that alliance is not used to horde even trying and the shock factor messed some of them up.

The wins are coming less frequently than they were at first for me but the honor is way better since we generally at least get most of the bonus honor objectives now. But yeah I'm still at 70% clip right now.

[Lissa]

Well if you don't roll with premades much, your numbers will skew down. A premade can tear through at least 5 games an hour.

One other issue to look at too is that Alliance has queues while Horde does not on most BGs. So most Alliance BGs with queues tend to not get as many games in per night.

[Concillian]

One other issue to look at too is that Alliance has queues while Horde does not on most BGs. So most Alliance BGs with queues tend to not get as many games in per night.

But statistically the more populous side will also have larger numbers of premades doing this. Assuming the sample population is not significantly different between Alliance and horde, the overall percentage of 'premade games' should be pretty similar faction to faction.