AV Problem

[Zarathustra]

This video pretty much illustrates the problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR2n4XhRQ58

Watch at 3:14 and see the Warmasters standing and watching the fight.

[Ashock]

This video pretty much illustrates the problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR2n4XhRQ58

Watch at 3:14 and see the Warmasters standing and watching the fight.

This has been discussed on the PVP Blizzard forums ad nauseum for about 3 months now. It is a bug that is by now pretty much known everywhere and especially in my Bgroup where even non-premades have perfected it. It's a very easy pull. As far as the premades, forget it. It's automatic. As a NE Warrior, I have on numerous occasions SMd inside Van's room and seen this. The only way to counter this is to Fear/IS the Horde into the Marshals, but this often does not work as the Marshals run to the feared Horde but reset after several hits. It is also very difficult to run into Van's room since the Horde NPCs standing next to the AS flag aggro as soon as you trinket in, so a couple of players and the NPCs make it very problematic to run in and fear them. A good premade will not even wait for the AS flag to cap to exploit Van.

Actually, this exploit is not as bad as the terrain bug exploit was, where the Horde was able to scale the mountain to DB and emerge next to Aid Station without ever having to fight not just NPCs, but the Ally players themselves, and we'd never see them coming. Every 2nd game I'd play I'd see that, and the Van pull exploit, so like 5-6 games/day. This thankfully has been fixed with 2.0.

Many on the Horde side try to justify this exploit by saying that it just makes up for the Allies being able to not fight any of their NPCs coming over to RH, but really it's like comparing an elephant with a fly. An elite Horde non-WM NPC takes about 5-6 sec to kill with 10 ppl, whereas the Marshals are the most powerful NPCs in the game not counting Van/Drek and they are also chain linked. So, whatever.

Interestingly enough, in my Bgroup Horde actually wins > 60% of the games even where they don't cheat. They simply defend IBGY with 10, which is as good a choke as any the Allies have. However, our Bgroup seems to be the exception and not the rule. Before the patch, with all the premades I saw every day (10-12 games), with all the exploits, I won maybe 20% of all games.

It's gotten better now. However yes, this is a known exploit. Oh and btw, I have also been in 2 games where the Alliance did a similar thing to Drek, but this is very difficult to pull off, due to the placement of the WMs.

This naturally needs to be fixed. My suggestion is simple. Blizzard does not even have to change any of the mechanics. All they have to do is give Bonus Honor to killing the Marshals/WMs and noone will ever exploit again.


-A

[Arnulf]

As Alliance you can easily counter this. Simply defend!

Horde tried this several times in our Battlegroup. We countered it several times.

Also there are no premades with Alterac Valley.

Besides, this is only a very unsatisfying way for Horde to get three winning marks.

[Ashock]

As Alliance you can easily counter this. Simply defend!

Horde tried this several times in our Battlegroup. We countered it several times.

Also there are no premades with Alterac Valley.

Besides, this is only a very unsatisfying way for Horde to get three winning marks.

1. There is a simple way to make a premade in AV. All hit join at the same time and all point to the same AV. Done and done. Easy as pie. You've never seen a team of 40 ppl..... all rank 10 or above, with at least 15 rank 12 and above. I see it 5 times/day. Well, up until the patch that is. With the terrain exploit gone, I only see them twice/day, since now instead of 10 min, it takes them 20.

2. Defend what? Once Horde just puts the flag in conflict, there is no way to defend. They simply leave 10 outside and go work on Van.... solo. Defending against a good premade before they get the flag requires at least 20 ppl on D. That is called a turtle and while I've been in 2-3 games like this where we actually were able to defend, it took 1.5 hours to win and that is not worth it. This is prepatch naturally.

As far as this being unsatisfiying for the Horde... Tell it to all the rank 12+ on those teams. They are pretty happy with their ranks gotten through purely AV exploiting. I'll take my rank 12 over that any time, but they also seem to be happy. I remember one of them telling me on the forums about 2 months ago how I should keep quiet, since they get 200k+/day with this tactic.

Look, unlike most Alliance on the LL, my server has very fast Alliance queues, and I get to play 10-12 AVs/day. I've pugged to rank 12 in almost exclusively AV (without AFKing) and I've pretty much seen it all.
No offense, but you need to play AV more, and then you can comment.



-A

[Arnulf]

I've pugged to rank 12 in almost exclusively AV (without AFKing) and I've pretty much seen it all.
No offense, but you need to play AV more, and then you can comment.
-A

Don't come and tell me about Alterac Valley. While this is small consolation to your plight, I made exalted with Stormpike back when

- Alterac Valley was a lot more complicated than today, with lots of distractions
- our server (PVP) had a Horde to Alliance ratio of 2:1, and Horde was BIG in PVP
- there were no cross-server battlegrounds
- it was possible to join as group (and I witnessed the queue clear exploit)

I've never won an AV in that time. And I've seen many AVs that lasted more than 3 hours. You see, when someone has to wait in queue for hours you're really eager to win! And Horde made damn sure that was the case. And if it took them 4 hours to do so, then they did!

It is quite amusing to read that Horde has that disadvantage and that Alliance is favoured by this terrain, when I've witnessed these advantages turned against us time and again. I know now what an uphill battle is (more like a slaughter really) from my experience in front of the Icewing bunker. I've seen many a times how Horde had rained on us hail and brimstone, literally, in the gorge before the Stormpike graveyard. I learned to hate bunny-hopping undead mages who arcane bombed us while healed from behind. I've learned to accept that Horde could (and still can) jump into the Dun Baldar north bunker from the outside rock wall.

It wasn't made any easier that we had on our server three big Horde guilds who had quite a good assortment of Molten Core and Blackwing Lair gear while we had not even Molten Core stuff. Of course our big guilds on Alliance side did Alterace as premades.

Fast forward to today.

I've visited AV on and off in the meantime, and yes I traded long wait times in queue for more wins. I think I'm one of the few who has both the ice barbed spear (quest reward from killing Korrak) and the cold forged hammer for defeating Drek'thar.

Things have changed. Now if we meet Horde from our server they have of course AQ40 and Naxxramas gear. Of course I've been in AVs where stampeding Tauren in complete Dreadnaught took Dun Baldar in record time. The 5 minute win by Horde is possible; guild mates have witnessed it. But they only get more than 100 bonus honour if they really make an effort in destroying bunkers, and capturing graveyards, and killing Lieutenants/Commanders/Captains on the way. But then you can defend.

I've been in AVs that were short, but I've also been in AVs where both sides were defending and pulling out every stop. Where wind riders and Lokholar were summoned etc.

I also know about the join as group. Only it requires that everyone presses on the join battle button at the same time. Everyone has to be on the ball for that one, you cannot synchronize via teamspeak. And if they can pull this off, so can you! I've done it several times, albeit with only ten people max. Sometimes we got into the same instance, sometimes we didn't.

[lemekim]

1. There is a simple way to make a premade in AV. All hit join at the same time and all point to the same AV. Done and done. Easy as pie. You've never seen a team of 40 ppl..... all rank 10 or above, with at least 15 rank 12 and above. I see it 5 times/day. Well, up until the patch that is. With the terrain exploit gone, I only see them twice/day, since now instead of 10 min, it takes them 20.

Getting 40 people into the same AV is probably equivalent to hitting the jackpot on your local state lottery. Having said that, what do you expect when you fight 30+ coordinated people versus an unorganized mass?

2. Defend what? Once Horde just puts the flag in conflict, there is no way to defend. They simply leave 10 outside and go work on Van.... solo. Defending against a good premade before they get the flag requires at least 20 ppl on D. That is called a turtle and while I've been in 2-3 games like this where we actually were able to defend, it took 1.5 hours to win and that is not worth it. This is prepatch naturally.

It will work against a pug. Against a group, I think the outcome is fairly obvious even without any exploits.

As far as this being unsatisfiying for the Horde... Tell it to all the rank 12+ on those teams. They are pretty happy with their ranks gotten through purely AV exploiting. I'll take my rank 12 over that any time, but they also seem to be happy. I remember one of them telling me on the forums about 2 months ago how I should keep quiet, since they get 200k+/day with this tactic.

Do you honestly think Blizzard cares? There are both horde and alliance exploits that are still unfixed from the beginning of the AV. Truly balancing AV would probably require complete redesign of terrain, bases, and NPC interactions, otherwise one side will always have one large advantage or another.

Look, unlike most Alliance on the LL, my server has very fast Alliance queues, and I get to play 10-12 AVs/day. I've pugged to rank 12 in almost exclusively AV (without AFKing) and I've pretty much seen it all.
No offense, but you need to play AV more, and then you can comment.
-A

Again, what in 2 years of playing this game gave you an impression that Blizzard cares about PvP balance? Especially in pretty much designer-abandoned AV.

[MongoJerry]

I also know about the join as group. Only it requires that everyone presses on the join battle button at the same time. Everyone has to be on the ball for that one, you cannot synchronize via teamspeak. And if they can pull this off, so can you! I've done it several times, albeit with only ten people max. Sometimes we got into the same instance, sometimes we didn't.

Get Stinkyqueue. It automatically queues everyone in the raid at the same time and reports what AV they got into. If people get into too many different queues, the leader can automatically remove everyone from the queue, wait 30 seconds, and then queue everyone up again. We regularly get teams of 20-30 in AV's without much difficulty. The games are usually 10-12 minutes long, as we like to get the bonus honor from taking towers.