I'll never feel sorry for the Horde in AV again...

[PGerringer]

My first ever character was a dwarf hunter on Earthen Ring. Maxed him
out with everything except raiding gear. I retired him over a year ago
to play horde and since then have leveled 3 hordlings to 60 on Kargath.
My last 60, a tauren druid, I decided to use in BGs to try to gear him
without raiding. So, its been a happy and sad trip. He got to
999/1000 exalted with AV while only winning 4 games. I felt real bad
for Horde because of the layout of the map really does favor Alliance.
So, I reserved myself to losing AV but having a good time. It worked
and was definitely worth the trip.

Recently I've become quite bored. This always happens to me for a
couple of weeks after leveling a toon to 60. So, I decided to try my
hunter on Earthen Ring in AV just to see how Alliance does it. My
desire was not to spy but to get AV rep for my hunter for the exalted
gifts. Since Earthen Ring and Kargath are in the same battlegroup I
would be playing against some of the same friends I played with as the
druid. It should be fun right? I was to be shocked...

The FIRST reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: When I
got into AV Alliance was in the process of being rolled over. Man,
that hurt. My dwarf's first experience in AV and Alliance lost. OK,
not a good reason but it directly relates to my SECOND reason. It
wasn't a total loss though, I managed to complete some quests.

The SECOND reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: When I
queued the average wait time was 1h 22m. WOH!!! For Horde its rarely
more than 5 min. I had to wait 1h 55m til I was able to play AV. So,
IMHO, even though Alliance wins most of the time in AV, horde gets 2
games to each 1 alliance game. What this means is that in the end,
horde's 2 losses should come close to equal in rep and honor to 1
alliance win. So, it evens out in the end. Except for the case of my
FIRST reason. Once horde wins one match it skews the totals and horde
comes out ahead.

The THIRD reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: This may
be due to my FIRST reason but Alliance moan and complain just as bad as
Horde does. I had always thought that the Alliance bg chat was full of
"PWNED" and "LOLs" and great strategy. Man, it was anything but. The
chat was exactly like Horde chat with demeaning "You guys suck!"
comments. All I could say is "WoW".

And those are the reasons why I'll never feel sorry for the horde again
in AV. :)

Course, now that I think about it. What is the common denominator
between my horde druid and my dwarf hunter losing AV? Gulp, ME.
Geesh, do I really suck that bad to pull down 39 other players? hehe.

[K***@gmail.com]

I've yet to get my Horde to 60 but have an Alliance raider on Anvilmar
60 rgoue that I'm looking to fogus on nonstop to 70 (BC) and here are
some of my thoughts:

#1. Don't know on the wait times. sense they started the cross server
BG's I think wait times on both sides are roughly the same and a LOT
shorter.

#2. Although I happen to win around 1/2 or better of the AV's I am in I
seem to be very lucky in that everyone on my server is always saying
that Horde always win AV's for the following reasons: A.) Horde have
better PVP setup (racial abilities, etc.)
B.) Horde seem to have higher percentage of preform
groups (this one always makes me wonder as you can suspect this is the
case but not really know for sure unless you happen to have a Horde
player playing the same AV game at the same time as your alliance
buddies so I tend to discount this reason in favor of...
C.) Horde seem more willing to coordinate their efforts
and tactics showing unit cohesion. This may be due to the fact that
younger players could be more likely to see Alliance as the "good guys"
and want to roll a little Legolas NE to pwn those evil Orcs and trolls
ala LOTR; whereas the Horde players may be more comprised of mature
players (both in terms of tactics and mature in WoW terms ie.
percentage of players who roll Alliance first and get experience and
then reroll a Horde taking that valuable play experience with them
cross faction). I can only guess and speculate as to the reason why
Horde seem to have better grasp of tactics but I can say with absolute
certianty that I have witnessed many many occasions where BG starts and
I see 40 people scatter to the wind and watch as the game progresses
with only about 1/4th of the dots on my map showing up in the D or O
clumps and the rest of them being spread out in a fairly useless
fashion...

#3. As to the setup of AV being "Pro alliance" I'm not entirely certian
on that. granted I have never done AV as a 60 Horde so I am not saying
you are wrong merely saying that I wouldn't grant the premise without
further review. I have noticed the following things that make me
wonder about your point:

A. Alliance stormpike warp point is right in the center of Horde kill
zone in front of the bunker if things are going poorly for us wheras
the Horde warp point is farther back allowing more chance to stealth or
whatever...

B. Back door into SP GY flag...

C. Horde path into their camp allows for several staggered defensable
kill zones to slow down and harrass invaders that would provide for an
optimal defense. If horde shammys drop some totems and they stagger
defense right on the tower that you ride thru they can use pints
(1=door to Horde camp; 2=door to Horde outfitter; 3=Up the steps inside
the tower) to effectively turtle at that position while their NPC's
whack for free on the attackers. then if necessary they can fall back
to the ramp into the inner camp and turtle their again also making use
of their archers from both towers and then at the very end they have
another littlr brigded off area for their last flag along with the
ability to harass alliance in their camp until they get low HP and then
jump over the wall next to the little hill and run down to their outter
camp where their NPC's can heal em and they can come right back to
flank Alliance...

On the other side for Alliance we have 1 thing only and that is "the
bridge". Since bridge has a flag 2 feet away from it on the attackers
side that is always held by Horde by the time it becomes an issue its
actualy faster and easier for Horde to respawn and get to the battle
for the bridge than it is for the alliance. The Bridge is a DEFINITE
help for the alliance no question about it but after getting past that
1 barrier and getting into the inner alliance camp in force ther is
really no other staggered defensible position that offers terain
advantage to the defenders due to a bottleneck the way horde
have...once horde are inside inner camp and alliance no longer has that
as a defensible position it takes 2 seconds to mount up ride accross
that bridge and charge right into the side bunkers to take them out
then charge the dun flag from several directions while its right in the
center of the camp with no little bridgeded off island area...

I would say that camp wise I believe if played correctly the 2 camp's
slightly favor the Horde but would need to get some experience playing
it as Horde to comment on the middle game...

Last point... Shammy totems when placed correctly are very very very
effective and when used in conjunction with hunter traps make it
possible to use the aforementioned bottlenecks to slow down and harrass
chargers so that you can use just a few people to AOE the hell out of
attackers in the little closed areas (tower, ramp and camp minibridge)
as well as dropping some around any flag to allow a defensive force of
5 a decent chance to repell an offensive force much larger...

OK, all this is just ramblings out of my head on advanced tactics and
finer points of AV. Dont read any of this as whineing or complaining by
any means. I love AV and as I said I win a few more than I win so I
consider myself lucky. I am merely suggesting that if played by
cohesive teams of strong players of equal skill on both sides (which
will never happen making the point ENTIRELY thoretical) if I had to
gamble my harn earned money I'd put my money on the Horde side I think.

P.S. Also Shamy>PLD if both players are NOT good players because a
sucky pally is gonna try and rush out like conan and use all his skills
to keep himself alive only with no mind toward unit tactics wheras a
sucky Sham is going to drop totems that are effective to his team
whether he gives a damn about them or not.

Just my thoughts...

Post by PGerringer
My first ever character was a dwarf hunter on Earthen Ring. Maxed him
out with everything except raiding gear. I retired him over a year ago
to play horde and since then have leveled 3 hordlings to 60 on Kargath.
My last 60, a tauren druid, I decided to use in BGs to try to gear him
without raiding. So, its been a happy and sad trip. He got to
999/1000 exalted with AV while only winning 4 games. I felt real bad
for Horde because of the layout of the map really does favor Alliance.
So, I reserved myself to losing AV but having a good time. It worked
and was definitely worth the trip.
Recently I've become quite bored. This always happens to me for a
couple of weeks after leveling a toon to 60. So, I decided to try my
hunter on Earthen Ring in AV just to see how Alliance does it. My
desire was not to spy but to get AV rep for my hunter for the exalted
gifts. Since Earthen Ring and Kargath are in the same battlegroup I
would be playing against some of the same friends I played with as the
druid. It should be fun right? I was to be shocked...
The FIRST reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: When I
got into AV Alliance was in the process of being rolled over. Man,
that hurt. My dwarf's first experience in AV and Alliance lost. OK,
not a good reason but it directly relates to my SECOND reason. It
wasn't a total loss though, I managed to complete some quests.
The SECOND reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: When I
queued the average wait time was 1h 22m. WOH!!! For Horde its rarely
more than 5 min. I had to wait 1h 55m til I was able to play AV. So,
IMHO, even though Alliance wins most of the time in AV, horde gets 2
games to each 1 alliance game. What this means is that in the end,
horde's 2 losses should come close to equal in rep and honor to 1
alliance win. So, it evens out in the end. Except for the case of my
FIRST reason. Once horde wins one match it skews the totals and horde
comes out ahead.
The THIRD reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: This may
be due to my FIRST reason but Alliance moan and complain just as bad as
Horde does. I had always thought that the Alliance bg chat was full of
"PWNED" and "LOLs" and great strategy. Man, it was anything but. The
chat was exactly like Horde chat with demeaning "You guys suck!"
comments. All I could say is "WoW".
And those are the reasons why I'll never feel sorry for the horde again
in AV. :)
Course, now that I think about it. What is the common denominator
between my horde druid and my dwarf hunter losing AV? Gulp, ME.
Geesh, do I really suck that bad to pull down 39 other players? hehe.

[PGerringer]

I expect the battlegroups play out differently. I can only speak for
BG 4. But I have to disagree with your assessment.

The horde and alliance both have hearth points that are right in front
of the bosses chambers. One difference is that point happens to be the
RH for alliance where the horde's RH is a small amount away. A point
can be made that the RH at the hearth point makes it easier for
alliance to disrupt any attempt to cap the RH just by hearthing.

The bridge is not the only bottleneck. But before I go into that, the
bridge is not only a bottleneck but is a strong kill zone from the
archers that sit in the towers. Horde does not enjoy such a bottle
neck/kill zone. OK, back to bottlenecks. Obviously the bridge. Also,
to get to the northern GY (I always forget what the name is) you only
have 2 paths, high or low. This provides a strong defendable area for
alliance. Horde, again doesn't enjoy such a bottle neck. To get to
the southern GY (forgetfullness sucks) alliance has some pretty open
field.

The exploit points in the horde base are good points you make. But
those don't hold long at all. On BG4 Alliance usually rushes 30 people
into that area at a time. Sure, you may stop some of them but they
become a steady influx of people guaranteed to overwhelm horde. Why,
you may ask, does this not happen in allianceville? The bridge is the
major stumbling block. And to think totems are ignored by the enemy is
as silly as a hunter expecting Feign Death to keep the enemy from
beating on him. As a horde druid I would whack alliance banners
whenever they appeared. As a dwarf, I will be whacking banners and
totems. I learned this valuable lessing by duelling a shaman friend of
mine. Totems suck if your enemy has them. Destroying them first would
be a wise plan.

I have been in AV as horde when 10 of us in Drek's room held the
alliance for so long that horde did win. I don't think its impossible.
A few mistakes on the alliance side and it becomes a horde game. But
when you look at the layout of the map, the BG does favor alliance.
I'm sure there are other examples that are listed in the NGs but I
can't think of any right now.

BTW: In your BG does alliance actively use the SnowFall GY or does
horde?

[Peter Ellis]

Post by PGerringer
The horde and alliance both have hearth points that are right in front
of the bosses chambers. One difference is that point happens to be
the RH for alliance where the horde's RH is a small amount away. A
point can be made that the RH at the hearth point makes it easier for
alliance to disrupt any attempt to cap the RH just by hearthing.

I'd say the exact opposite. I'm Alliance, and if I ever trinket back with
the RH under attack, I'm dead before I finish zoning due to AoE. The Horde
at least arrive a little away from the fray and get a chance to finish
loading, run in and fight.

Peter

[drocket]

Post by Peter Ellis
I'd say the exact opposite. I'm Alliance, and if I ever trinket back with
the RH under attack, I'm dead before I finish zoning due to AoE. The Horde
at least arrive a little away from the fray and get a chance to finish
loading, run in and fight.

Nope, Horde has the exact same problem.

[a***@fastmail.us]

Post by PGerringer
The bridge is not the only bottleneck. But before I go into that, the
bridge is not only a bottleneck but is a strong kill zone from the
archers that sit in the towers. Horde does not enjoy such a bottle
neck/kill zone. OK, back to bottlenecks. Obviously the bridge. Also,
to get to the northern GY (I always forget what the name is) you only
have 2 paths, high or low. This provides a strong defendable area for
alliance. Horde, again doesn't enjoy such a bottle neck. To get to
the southern GY (forgetfullness sucks) alliance has some pretty open
field.

That's true about those two GYs (Frostwolf and Stormpike are the names
you're looking for). But Horde does in fact have a bottleneck; it's
just further north at Iceblood. There's only one approach to the
Iceblood flag, with a steep slope on each side, and when 10-15 Horde
decide they want to make an obstacle at Iceblood, it takes a lot of
time and effort to overcome them. The problem is that Horde almost
never does this.

Post by PGerringer
The exploit points in the horde base are good points you make. But
those don't hold long at all. On BG4 Alliance usually rushes 30 people
into that area at a time. Sure, you may stop some of them but they
become a steady influx of people guaranteed to overwhelm horde.

That's because there's rarely more than 4-5 Horde there actually
defending. The Alliance base may be better designed than the Horde
base (though I'm still skeptical on that), but either one could be
pretty easily defended by 10-15 against an attacking force twice that
size. The difference is that Alliance usually does this and Horde
doesn't.

In my experience, the real reason Alliance always wins is because of
the way the forces get allocated on each side. There are two
"imbalances" that seem like advantages for Horde, but they really
aren't: First, their start point is further forward than the Alliance
start point. Second, the Horde side fills up faster due to negligible
queue times. After waiting one hour or more, many Alliance players are
afk when they finally get in, so they get into the game late, or in
many cases they miss it entirely and Alliance has to wait two minutes
for the prompt to expire before the second round of invites goes out.

So you have a situation where Horde is much better poised for an early
strike at the forward Alliance points. Invariably they do this by
attacking Stonehearth tower and graveyard immediately, and in many
cases capturing it on the first push. Alliance knows this by now, so
they opt for the slower strategy by taking Snowfall and then pushing on
Galvanger before swinging over to attack Iceblood.

However, Alliance has further to go and trickles into the game more
slowly, so if Horde attacks Stonehearth in a timely manner, they can
take the crossroads there and force some of the slower-moving or
late-arriving Alliance to fight there. This happens well before
Alliance caps Snowfall, so when these people die (and they usually do
because 35+ Horde are hammering at Stonehearth) they rez way up north
at Stormpike. By the time they ride back down Horde is usually
assaulting Icewing Bunker, cutting off all access to points south. The
end result is that anywhere between one-fourth and one-third of the
Alliance (usually the late arrivals or those without epic mounts) is
basically forced to play defense whether they like it or not.

To make matters worse, when Horde players die on the attack, they rez
at Iceblood graveyard. The graveyard itself is north of its flag, which
means that zerg-minded horde can rez, mount up, and go back on the
attack without even seeing whether the graveyard is under attack. (In
fact there's a hill blocking the view of the flag!) So once Alliance
finishes with Galvanger and the Iceblood tower, they can usually take
the graveyard with only minimal resistance. By this point, Horde has
usually finished capping Stonehearth.

So the situation now is that the virtually the entire Horde force is on
offense, whereas Alliance has probably 10-20 on defense and 20-30 on
offense. Horde has already lost their major forward choke point
(Iceblood) while Alliance still has theirs (Stormpike). This favors
the Alliance tremendously. With virtually no opposition, they can
blitz south, storm the Frostwolf keep and capture the Relief Hut
without even needing to wait for the outside graveyard to finish
capping. Horde can still make progress, but the dozen or so Alliance
defenders are more than enough to slow them down and force them to
finish capping graveyards before pushing forward. It's a race that
Horde inevitably loses.

Compounding this are the mentalities the players take on both sides.
Horde have nearly instant queues. Spending an hour to win an AV isn't
worth it when three 20-minute losses gets you the same number of tokens
and vastly more rep/honor. So Horde has no interest in teleporting
back to Frostwolf to defend against an Alliance blitz. At the first
sign of a slowdown, the attitude becomes "let them win so we can get
another game going". Alliance, by contrast, spend well over an hour
waiting in queue (in most battlegroups), so securing a win is far more
important to them. If the situation arises where Horde have an
unobstructed route to blitz Dun Baldur, it's usually not hard to
convince 10-15 Alliance to trinket back and defend it.

The matches I've seen Alliance lose have almost always been the ones
where Horde didn't follow the usual script. I remember one match where
I was riding to Snowfall at the start for the routine cap, and just as
I reached the flag I realized there were two dozen Horde there. That
just completely surprised the entire Alliance force. We really just
had no clue what to do, and the Horde ended up steamrolling us.
Unfortunately, that kind of thing is very rare because most players
aren't interested in anything other than a mindless zerg.

[PGerringer]

Post by Peter Ellis
I'd say the exact opposite. I'm Alliance, and if I ever trinket back with
the RH under attack, I'm dead before I finish zoning due to AoE. The Horde
at least arrive a little away from the fray and get a chance to finish
loading, run in and fight.

After trinketing a ton as horde I can definitely tell you that you pop
right at the foot of the ramp going into Drek's room. If there is any
alliance standing in that area you will get attacked and there is
nothing you can do without 20 alliance beating on you. If you are
lucky you can run into the room with half health left. Now, as a horde
defending the Alliance RH it seems Alliance trinketers pop right
between the entrance to their boss's chambers and the RH flag. It
seems to be the same distance for either faction. So, either you are
wrong or I don't understand your statement.

Post by Peter Ellis
That's true about those two GYs (Frostwolf and Stormpike are the names
you're looking for). But Horde does in fact have a bottleneck; it's
just further north at Iceblood. There's only one approach to the
Iceblood flag, with a steep slope on each side, and when 10-15 Horde
decide they want to make an obstacle at Iceblood, it takes a lot of
time and effort to overcome them. The problem is that Horde almost
never does this.

Actually IceBlood is accessable through the bottleneck you are talking
about and from Galv's side. So, just like SP GY, there are 2 entrances
but unlike SP GY the one entrance is basically an open area with trees
and stuff. Frostwolf OTOH is out in the middle attackable from all
sides. SP and FW are integral parts of a storm strategy as you try to
overtake the other factions base.

Otherwise, Adam, I agree with everything else you've said. One of the
big problems I see with the horde is there is never a good D to O
ratio. Everyone either goes full O with 5 D or full D with 0 O. I
know this probably also exists on the Alliance side but based on the
points you raised the horde weeknesses are easily exploited and thus
crushed.

[a***@fastmail.us]

Post by PGerringer

Post by a***@fastmail.us
That's true about those two GYs (Frostwolf and Stormpike are the names
you're looking for). But Horde does in fact have a bottleneck; it's
just further north at Iceblood. There's only one approach to the
Iceblood flag, with a steep slope on each side, and when 10-15 Horde
decide they want to make an obstacle at Iceblood, it takes a lot of
time and effort to overcome them. The problem is that Horde almost
never does this.

Actually IceBlood is accessable through the bottleneck you are talking
about and from Galv's side. So, just like SP GY, there are 2 entrances
but unlike SP GY the one entrance is basically an open area with trees
and stuff.

Actually, the one I was referring to is the one from Galv's side.
Unless I'm mistaken (which is always a possibility) there's no way for
Alliance to climb up into the graveyard area and approach the flag from
the north.

Post by PGerringer
Frostwolf OTOH is out in the middle attackable from all
sides. SP and FW are integral parts of a storm strategy as you try to
overtake the other factions base.

Right, but my argument there is that Horde has a much better
opportunity to slow Alliance at IB than Alliance does at SH, so the two
even out a bit.

But anyway, that's all minor stuff; my point really is that the
distribution of forces is by far the dominant factor in how the match
unfolds. There might be imbalances in the defensibility of certain
points, but even at their worst I think Horde would still be winning
25% of games if things like base defenses and graveyard choke points
were the only imbalances. But in our BG (I'm on Earthen Ring too) it
feels like Horde wins less than 10% of the time, and in my opinion the

Post by PGerringer
Otherwise, Adam, I agree with everything else you've said. One of the
big problems I see with the horde is there is never a good D to O
ratio. Everyone either goes full O with 5 D or full D with 0 O. I
know this probably also exists on the Alliance side but based on the
points you raised the horde weeknesses are easily exploited and thus
crushed.

[Babe Bridou]

Post by a***@fastmail.us
But anyway, that's all minor stuff; my point really is that the
distribution of forces is by far the dominant factor in how the match
unfolds. There might be imbalances in the defensibility of certain
points, but even at their worst I think Horde would still be winning
25% of games if things like base defenses and graveyard choke points
were the only imbalances. But in our BG (I'm on Earthen Ring too) it
feels like Horde wins less than 10% of the time, and in my opinion the

About the relief hut/aid station imbalance, the main problem for the
horde is not to pop back and get defending drek - that is always
manageable, just coordinate 10 people to stone back at the same time,
and you'll have at least 8 inside the bunker. Same goes with the
alliance.

The difference here between the two sides (not saying it's a game
breaking imbalance, it's just "one of the differences") is that in
order to disrupt the attack once the RH/AS graveyards are assaulted,
you have two choices basically:
1) camp inside the bunker and protect drek'thar/Vanndar from being
pulled outside (really hard for both side from what I hear).
2) assault/defend the RH/AS graveyard.

Problem is, 2) is impossible without consumables for the Horde, because
you have to get past:
_30 alliance
_a bridge
_5 NPCs to pull away
_20 alliance that have resurrected

2) is possible for the Alliance (not saying it's easy), because you
have:
_30 stacked up hordies and 5 NPCs, prone for AOE crowd control on
porting in (frost trap+entrapment, frost nova, psychic scream, howl of
terror, intimidating shout, whatever)
_Stormpike and his generals cleaving around, ready to grab the
graveyard guard's aggro
_paladins (bubble-tanking for 12 seconds)

Soooo... considering 2) is super effective, especially when combined
with a ninja-capture of the hard to defend stormpike GY (here here,
acknowledging differences here, not imbalances), the alliance can
actually hope to negate the horde attack and push them back to the
other side of their bridge.

The horde, on the other side, unless 20-30 of them teleport home at the
same time and take the alliance by surprise, hoping for a stalemate
between FW towers and back to - hopefully - FW graveyard, cannot hope
to put their best defense, the IB garrison/graveyard/bunker/Tower point
bottleneck back to use once the alliance has assaulted the relief hut.

So in the end the best strategy is to play on a gamble, bottleneck vs
bottleneck, SP bridge vs IB graveyard, and if IB Graveyard is *taken*
before the Aid Station is *taken*, then the Alliance becomes in a
really good position to win. Otherwise, the Horde is in the lead, and
needs to push harder. Whoever wins first, alliance on IB or horde at
AS, gets a serious option for victory.

Recoveries exist on both side, but after a while, the Horde has little
options other than an all-out attack gamble. The alliance still can
manage to reverse the situation with a 30 attack/10 teleport strategy.
That option - among other factors - leads to 90% of the AVs alliance
wins in my group.

The problem with that difference is that people tend to mimick the
strategy they see on the other side - people see a "rush for the
general" strategy that works fine the first time the horde does it
(because allies are noobs), works extremely well the first time the
alliance does it (because hordies think they are better than allies,
but they're obviously not), and then keeps working for the alliance,
and fails routinely for the horde - who still can't adapt to a new
setup.

It makes me think about the old beta shaman telling the beta paladin,
nerf you, give me plate and bubble so I can tank in instances, and the
paladin replying nerf you, give me earthshock and rockbiter so I can
get aggro in the first place.

The alliance has found the tips & tricks
The horde is still looking for a way to understand when they are
actually not really to their advantage.
Maybe they would be required to have 10 peeps leave the offense *now*
and prepare to defend the keep (not frostwolf graveyard, but the
frostwolf village entrance and towers): right after Iceblood graveyard
is taken.

Just maybe.

That said wait times on my battlegroup, horde side, is about 14-15
seconds at any hour of the day and night
Wait times on my brother's battlegroup, alliance side, is about 30
minutes on average.

do the maths: if the alliance wins in 15 mins everytime, then both
sides are individually balanced (4 marks per hour per player).

[pv+ (PV)]

Post by Babe Bridou
1) camp inside the bunker and protect drek'thar/Vanndar from being
pulled outside (really hard for both side from what I hear).

If Drek or Vann gets pulled outside the door, they reset to full health.
Fearing tanks and hoping they take a misstep when they release from fear is
a good tactic for disrupting the takedown.

Post by Babe Bridou
Problem is, 2) is impossible without consumables for the Horde, because
_30 alliance

One thing that never seems to happen is that the graveyard isn't assaulted
after the all-in call. If you see everyone on the other side run inside,
TAKE THE GRAVEYARD you ninnies! And while they're fighting warmasters, take
the OTHER graveyards, so when you pull this stunt, all of the sudden all
the reinforcements are halfway across the map. *

[pv+ (PV)]

Post by a***@fastmail.us
queue times. After waiting one hour or more, many Alliance players are
afk when they finally get in, so they get into the game late, or in
many cases they miss it entirely and Alliance has to wait two minutes
for the prompt to expire before the second round of invites goes out.

That's certainly not true anymore - on most servers the AV queue time is
15 minutes or less. I've gotten in as quickly as 30 seconds after queuing.
It averages about 4 minutes.

Post by a***@fastmail.us
cases capturing it on the first push. Alliance knows this by now, so
they opt for the slower strategy by taking Snowfall and then pushing on
Galvanger before swinging over to attack Iceblood.

Oh no they don't. Most Alliance wins are when Galv is skipped altogether,
and fighting immediately commences on the iceblood graveyard flag. If Galv
is ever killed these days, it's by a small team on their own late in the
battle. Or, when it's a total rout and it's the only objective the alliance
has any chance of gaining. 198 bonus honor is better than nothing.

Post by a***@fastmail.us
However, Alliance has further to go and trickles into the game more
slowly, so if Horde attacks Stonehearth in a timely manner, they can
take the crossroads there and force some of the slower-moving or
late-arriving Alliance to fight there. This happens well before

The only way that happens is if there's no forward graveyard. Even snowfall
ends the possibility of a blockade. It's in the horde's best interest to
let the alliance through. If they don't, they're not going to be able to
capture and hold anything.

Post by a***@fastmail.us
end result is that anywhere between one-fourth and one-third of the
Alliance (usually the late arrivals or those without epic mounts) is
basically forced to play defense whether they like it or not.

This never holds for very long, unless you have a totally brain-dead
alliance team. It's not uncommon for half the alliance team to be out paste
the field of strife waiting for snowfall to turn. You can corpse walk,
you can sneak by surprisingly often, and in some cases the horde is SMART
and lets riders go right on through, since that's one less Alliance
member they have to fight.

Post by a***@fastmail.us
To make matters worse, when Horde players die on the attack, they rez
at Iceblood graveyard. The graveyard itself is north of its flag, which

Assuming that they TAKE iceblood. This rarely happens - if there's any sort
of battle there, it's right at the beginning and neutral. Any sensible
horde team takes stonehearth as their main graveyard push. The best horde
strategy is to let iceblood be taken, so the alliance have an incentive to
push forward, and defense drains out of Stormpike. No iceblood, and it's
turtle time. The alliance will simply stop anything at all from happening
until the horde comes to their senses.

Post by a***@fastmail.us
fact there's a hill blocking the view of the flag!) So once Alliance
finishes with Galvanger and the Iceblood tower, they can usually take
the graveyard with only minimal resistance. By this point, Horde has
usually finished capping Stonehearth.

As noted, this almost never happens. Galv before iceblood = loss for the
alliance. The iceblood graveyard is the most critical alliance target in
the early game. Galv is a distraction.

Post by a***@fastmail.us
Compounding this are the mentalities the players take on both sides.
Horde have nearly instant queues. Spending an hour to win an AV isn't
worth it when three 20-minute losses gets you the same number of tokens
and vastly more rep/honor. So Horde has no interest in teleporting

Have you played recently? A lot of this sounds like strategies from before
cross-realm battlegrounds. Even on turtle matches these days it doesn't go
like you describe anymore. AVs almost never last more than an hour, and
often go half that.

Post by a***@fastmail.us
The matches I've seen Alliance lose have almost always been the ones
where Horde didn't follow the usual script. I remember one match where
I was riding to Snowfall at the start for the routine cap, and just as
I reached the flag I realized there were two dozen Horde there. That

Wow, what a dumb strategy. *

[a***@fastmail.us]

Post by pv+ (PV)

Post by a***@fastmail.us
queue times. After waiting one hour or more, many Alliance players are
afk when they finally get in, so they get into the game late, or in
many cases they miss it entirely and Alliance has to wait two minutes
for the prompt to expire before the second round of invites goes out.

That's certainly not true anymore - on most servers the AV queue time is
15 minutes or less. I've gotten in as quickly as 30 seconds after queuing.
It averages about 4 minutes.

Your battlegroup is apparently very different from mine. In mine,
Alliance getting into AV in less than an hour is unheard of. And it
only approaches an hour on AV weekends when more Horde come to play.
Given the rather large population imbalance on most servers, I'd guess
mine is closer to the norm than yours.

Post by pv+ (PV)

Post by a***@fastmail.us
cases capturing it on the first push. Alliance knows this by now, so
they opt for the slower strategy by taking Snowfall and then pushing on
Galvanger before swinging over to attack Iceblood.

Oh no they don't. Most Alliance wins are when Galv is skipped altogether,
and fighting immediately commences on the iceblood graveyard flag. If Galv
is ever killed these days, it's by a small team on their own late in the
battle. Or, when it's a total rout and it's the only objective the alliance
has any chance of gaining. 198 bonus honor is better than nothing.

I don't remember a match when we didn't kill Galv first before pushing
south. Literally. I'd conservatively estimate that I've been in 50 AV
matches, and I can't think of a single one where we didn't kill Galv.
Again, your battlegroup is very different from mine.

Post by pv+ (PV)

Post by a***@fastmail.us
However, Alliance has further to go and trickles into the game more
slowly, so if Horde attacks Stonehearth in a timely manner, they can
take the crossroads there and force some of the slower-moving or
late-arriving Alliance to fight there. This happens well before

The only way that happens is if there's no forward graveyard. Even snowfall
ends the possibility of a blockade.

If Horde is fighting at Icewing and has SH, the only way for Alliance
to get past is to do a suicide run straight through the Horde and hope
they're closer to SF than SP when they die.

Post by pv+ (PV)
It's in the horde's best interest to
let the alliance through. If they don't, they're not going to be able to
capture and hold anything.

Of course, but in my battlegroup they're never in a position to bottle
the entire Alliance force inside. They usually manage something like a
third.

Post by pv+ (PV)

Post by a***@fastmail.us
end result is that anywhere between one-fourth and one-third of the
Alliance (usually the late arrivals or those without epic mounts) is
basically forced to play defense whether they like it or not.

This never holds for very long, unless you have a totally brain-dead
alliance team. It's not uncommon for half the alliance team to be out paste
the field of strife waiting for snowfall to turn. You can corpse walk,
you can sneak by surprisingly often, and in some cases the horde is SMART
and lets riders go right on through, since that's one less Alliance
member they have to fight.

Different battlegroups.

Post by pv+ (PV)

Post by a***@fastmail.us
To make matters worse, when Horde players die on the attack, they rez
at Iceblood graveyard. The graveyard itself is north of its flag, which

Assuming that they TAKE iceblood. This rarely happens - if there's any sort
of battle there, it's right at the beginning and neutral.

Iceblood starts Horde. It mirrors Stonehearth. You're thinking of
Snowfall.

Post by pv+ (PV)

Post by a***@fastmail.us
fact there's a hill blocking the view of the flag!) So once Alliance
finishes with Galvanger and the Iceblood tower, they can usually take
the graveyard with only minimal resistance. By this point, Horde has
usually finished capping Stonehearth.

As noted, this almost never happens. Galv before iceblood = loss for the
alliance. The iceblood graveyard is the most critical alliance target in
the early game. Galv is a distraction.

I don't know which one you're referring to here, but the order in my
battlegroup is always Snowfall -> Galv -> Iceblood tower -> Iceblood
graveyard.

Post by pv+ (PV)

Post by a***@fastmail.us
Compounding this are the mentalities the players take on both sides.
Horde have nearly instant queues. Spending an hour to win an AV isn't
worth it when three 20-minute losses gets you the same number of tokens
and vastly more rep/honor. So Horde has no interest in teleporting

Have you played recently? A lot of this sounds like strategies from before
cross-realm battlegrounds. Even on turtle matches these days it doesn't go
like you describe anymore. AVs almost never last more than an hour, and
often go half that.

I generally play 5-10 times a week, and while the script I describe
doesn't get played out exactly the same every time, the general theme
is almost always present. Again, we're playing different battlegroups.

Post by pv+ (PV)

Post by a***@fastmail.us
The matches I've seen Alliance lose have almost always been the ones
where Horde didn't follow the usual script. I remember one match where
I was riding to Snowfall at the start for the routine cap, and just as
I reached the flag I realized there were two dozen Horde there. That

Wow, what a dumb strategy.

How so? They were taking the strategy that Alliance always uses to win
and putting it to work themselves, and they won. Their success rate
with the standard Stonehearth-first strategy is less than 10%.

[Azzy]

The best way for the Horde to throw a game in battlegroup 9 is to
let the Alliance take Iceblood. The only strategy people bandy
around in battlegroup 9 is 'let them take IB GY, O will have less
to deal with!'.

Stupid.

The horde *never* has enough defence to make this strategy work,
and then gets bottlenecked at the SP pass. Every time.

The wins I have been involved with have all followed roughly the
same formula:
The Horde always caps Snowfall at the same time as Stonehearth is
taken, and the SF team acts as a running defence between SF and
IB. An extremely effective tactic if the Horde can hold onto IB
and at least keep SF in a state of contention. This means the
alliance has to bypass SH in order to initiate any sort of
offence, and they tend to trickle through the west side of the map
to do this. It also makes Lok a hell of a lot easier to summon,
and the Alliance have lost the art of kiting him up to Vandar. A
Lok summon in XRBGs is a fairly good indication that the Horde is
going to win.

The key to victory in AV (for the Horde at least) is patience, and
the problem with XRBGs is a lack of cohesion. A win is usually
about 2 hours work, but is *so* much more satisfying then opening
the gates and letting the Alliance trundle down to FW because it
makes it easier for a poorly co-ordinated Horde offence to get
plugged at the SP pass.

I get frustrated by the honour grind that AV has become, and the
fact that the Lobotomiser and the Unstoppable Force have become
such white epics. Bring back the good ol' days of actual fighting,
instead of impatience and concession :)

[ASKF]

Post by a***@fastmail.us

Post by pv+ (PV)

Post by a***@fastmail.us
queue times. After waiting one hour or more, many Alliance players are
afk when they finally get in, so they get into the game late, or in
many cases they miss it entirely and Alliance has to wait two minutes
for the prompt to expire before the second round of invites goes out.

That's certainly not true anymore - on most servers the AV queue time is
15 minutes or less. I've gotten in as quickly as 30 seconds after queuing.
It averages about 4 minutes.

Your battlegroup is apparently very different from mine. In mine,
Alliance getting into AV in less than an hour is unheard of. And it
only approaches an hour on AV weekends when more Horde come to play.
Given the rather large population imbalance on most servers, I'd guess
mine is closer to the norm than yours.

The imbalance are only at non PvP servers, most PvP servers are nicely
balanced <http://www.warcraftrealms.com/activity.php?serverid=-5>.

Your server cluster must consist of a lot of PvE and RP servers, since
you have those queue problems.

[PGerringer]

From what I can tell BG4 is non-PvP servers.

Well, as a follow on I figured I'd share last nights experience. My
dwarf finally won an AV. Nay, not 1 but 2. Total wait time in queue
3h 10m. Total game time 55m. Total horde kills: 4. LOL, yeah 4.
The first game was 15m and I saw exactly 0 horde. That was amazing.
The second game was rougly 40m and I saw 3 at IB and they died. The
4th was in the mine while I was trying to cap it. Other than that....
BTW: Each game I made it to Drek's chambers before the game ended.

It struck me as strange yesterday though at how quick the Horde
marshalls dropped verses the Alliance marshalls. For all my horde
games, the exact same pull (2 marshalls), they procede to mow horde
down. As Alliance (2 marshall pulls) they seemed to not be hitting
hard at all. Very, very strange. Any ideas? Do turnins affect the
power of the marshalls?

Geesh, I feel like such a noob. :)

[pv+ (PV)]

Post by PGerringer
games, the exact same pull (2 marshalls), they procede to mow horde
down. As Alliance (2 marshall pulls) they seemed to not be hitting
hard at all. Very, very strange. Any ideas? Do turnins affect the
power of the marshalls?

I don't think so, but the enemy does get a periodic buff if Galv/Belinda
stays alive. In my experience, horde warmasters hit VERY hard, and have a
cleave that will decimate healers if the tanks decide to fight in a stupid
place. *

[Simon Nejmann]

Post by pv+ (PV)

Post by PGerringer
games, the exact same pull (2 marshalls), they procede to mow horde
down. As Alliance (2 marshall pulls) they seemed to not be hitting
hard at all. Very, very strange. Any ideas? Do turnins affect the
power of the marshalls?

I don't think so, but the enemy does get a periodic buff if Galv/Belinda
stays alive. In my experience, horde warmasters hit VERY hard, and have a
cleave that will decimate healers if the tanks decide to fight in a stupid
place. *

The one thing that will make a difference with the warmasters is a
good PvE tank - go there with a bunch of dps'ers, none of whom wants
or is able to tank, and you will have a hellish time - add one tank in
good gear, who does not mind pulling out a shield and doing some PvE
tanking and it will be easy (unless he is very undergeared or lacks a
healer).

[Romuald Brunet]

In my experience, horde warmasters hit VERY hard, and have a cleave that
will decimate healers if the tanks decide to fight in a stupid place

Not to mention that they will run to the "rear" of the team from time to
time to cleave those poor cloth wearers :p

[Brian Westley]

One thing I thought would be useful would be to swap the AV
starting positions every 3 or 6 months. Same for the other
BGs.

---
Merlyn LeRoy

[PGerringer]

Post by Brian Westley
One thing I thought would be useful would be to swap the AV
starting positions every 3 or 6 months. Same for the other
BGs.
---
Merlyn LeRoy

That would be a great idea. Or just make the map exactly the same for
both sides. Boring you say? The looks of the 2 areas would be
radically different but the access would be the same. If Alliance gets
a bridge with bow turrets, so does horde, etc.

[K***@gmail.com]

Wow, excellent point and I tip my hat to you. I always click "First
available" and just take whatever I can get but I'm SERIOUSLY thinking
now of trying BG4 specificaly a few times because if we could actually
get some unit cohesion and had 30 people charging on Offense on both
sides then the bridge could very well be a greater advantage than the
tower and ramp and internal bridge combined. What I am used to is
having 10-15 people on O and sometimes people will wait to rush a point
mounted and take it in a blitz but just as often they try to just spawn
and rush in so that the horde turtles at each defensible point are only
facing even numbers as their people on D just deal with a fairly
continuous stream of attackers coming in groups of 5-10. Now with 5-10
by the time you waddle thru traps and totems (and yes you always kill
totems/banners ASAP) and thru the AOE kill zone you are now facing a
group of fresh troops with 1/3rd of your HP and they just mowe thru you
and heal waiting for the next waive. If they should die then they
respawn 20 yards away while you respawn 100 yards away. Those are the
times that we lose. Other times when we run it correctly and blitz en
masse we do normaly roll right thru. I'm fairly used to playing O and
seeing several people (including myself) try and explain to people to
blitz a flag for a few runs before people actually get it. Really I
can tell if we are going to win a BG 90% of the time by IB. If I see a
large cohesive group of people charge mounted and not dismount until
they get to the flag at IB then it's one that we have a high
probability of winning. If I see 10 people rush up to take SF (i think
thats the name for it. the one in the middle that starts off neutral
on the right hand side of the left side of the map) and the remainder
of the people dismount early and spread out in every direction heading
off on their own. Some to suicide charge the flag in a completely
useless gesture some to attack the fatboy and others to charge the
tower and bring down the NPC boss without even getting the GY than I
know I'm in for a long AV that will almost certianly end in a Horde
win.

Idealy I would arrange Allience AV BG strat as follows:

Opening-
15 people on quest/D
25 people on O

D rotates a few lookouts and pure D early on with people doing quests
to get NPC help while being ready to collapse back to D when needed.

1 pally with the trinkets rides up caps SF and just mounts up and rides
off (I have capped it and stood there for the entire time its waiting
to solidify and not had a single Hordy show up so long as there is a
battle raging at IB more than once so I just started capping it and
heading right to IB and found that it still came to us without a
problem) anyways its not really important for anything other than it
will pop a good 2 minutes before IG so its a good spot to spawn to if
you die in the latter part of IG or after IG is capped but not yet
solidified while dealing with oncoming Horde.) That Pally can cap the
flag and mount up and get catch upto O right as they are getting to IB
anyway so he's not lost from O for more than a few seconds.

all stealthers get stealthed pop their sprint and rush in to get
positioned while your mounted guys give them a 10 second head start and
then charge in en masse and DO NOT dismount until they are right on the
flag and just focus 100% on grabbing that flag. That means do NOT get
caught up in skirmishes down the road from the flag where even if you
trade deaths 1 for 1 you have to respawn all they way back a few
minutes away while they get to repop 10 feet behind where you are
fighting and just hop down the hill and be back into the fight in 2
seconds...
2 people break off and head up the tower to just take out the NPC
archers to minimize their effect on your O group below 1 Rogue stealths
uptop that steep hill right next to the flag between it and the GY
where any good horde group will place 1-2 ranged people to have a good
command of the entire battle and just stuns one kills the other and
then comes back to either finnish of the second or just keep them
harassed so that they are useless during the fight. I normally do this
myself and found it VERY effective in aiding the offensive effort. So
you cap the flag ASAP and have some people flush out and burn any Horde
that had popped at the GY. everyone heal/bandage up and burn the
fatboy while someone pulls the tower commander to the group to get
tanked and burned while another caps the tower flag.

While this is happening a 2 man team stay right on IG (2 stealthed) and
a fear bomb are ideal to comliment the NPC's who will soon spawn.
while the rest of the raid force moves 20 feet up the road to the other
side of the pickets closer to the next tower so that they can catch and
burn the Hord that will any second now come thru mounted looking to
jump the pickets to the left or skirt the right trench and hop thru the
GY as they try and race past and ignore IB on their attempt to rush
onto the next Alliance GY. Moving up to this position allows you to
burn a lot of them which causes them to repsawn far back and have to
mount up and ride up that long bit all over again which will buy D some
time.

While doing this you make sure that the forward fatboy, pats of orc+
2xdogs and the forward tower boss are all pulled to the group and
burned while forward tower is captured.


Middle Game:

As the IG-fwd tower fights detailed above are being done 3 stealthers
advance to next GY flag and sneak in to recon and report back to O. if
at all possible to ninja it you advise O --BEFORE-- you make your move
so that 1/3 of O can stay behind and acomplish all of that listed above
while 2/3 rushes in so that they are there to hold the ninja'd flag
just about the time its capping... more often it will not be ninja'able
and you will just accomplish all listed above for IG and then have 5
people stay to hold everyone else again blitz right to next flag again
take it fast with overwhelming force use your stealthers to take out
their clothies while 1 charger kites their NPC's away mounted. and you
burn thru what should be a smaller force on D.

5 people hold this GY until it caps then get replaced by people coming
from IB. leave 1 guy on IB stealthed to just harass any 2 man teams who
attempt to ninja it by having having 1 guy pull our NPC flag guards
while another grabs flagged unchallanged.

1 rogue stealths in and grabs vipore in 2nd hut in outer camp then
stealths out so that you dont waste resources fighing avoidable NPC's
and then charge into the heart of Horde camp.

D- a lookoout that can call out incoming Horde taking the high/low
while a minimal force compliments our NPC's at SP the majority of D
stays on our FWD GY to harrass hold and stall their O as much as
possible once lost they fall back and do the same at SP and if/when
that fails again fall back to defend the bridge and then use the best
defensible point you have the bridge to stall as long as you can...
All along turn in as much as possible. get your druids, riders, all
Wing commanders and armor turnins up and running... turtle like hell on
the bridge... Keep an eye out for Hord taking the back door to SP to
sneak blitz it and call out when D needs to shift. also keep a lookout
fwd to call out because after a few failed attempts to backdoor SP they
will normaly just mount up and charge in force when this happens you
want to be ready for it...


endgame:

D- Turtle and hold that damn bridge for as long as humanly possible...
range the hell out of em... AOE the hell out of em... hunter trap
banner whatever... Most of the time I would advise to just hold your
side of the bridge. If you have a really strong group you can
sometimes push and retake that SP GY. if this happens than they are
totally screwed. I've done it a few times and its AWESOME but unless
you can pull it off to blitz all the way to their flag and grab it
fighting on their end of the bridge does nothing but lengthen your
lines to GY while shortening theirs and giving up your ranged
advantage. Call for reinforcements if needed... turning as much as you
can and just do anything possible to hold that damn bridge. If the
bridge is lost than fall back to turtle on the flag and hold it at all
costs. so long as you have a grasp on the flag you can send out
raiders to harrass them while they try and take the bunkers but if you
lose that flag all is lost... while sending raiders out to harrass and
consolidating on the flag call for reinforcement and use this
opportunity to spread out a line that they will have to run to get to
the flag. just burn thru em grinding that honor and using your NPC's as
much as possible (the armor dude and his little group will get right
into the fight) keep in mind that this is so costly for them that if
you time it correctly you can even blitz back to the bridge (I have
been in several groups that have done this) and re establish your
turtle point their. If possible recap your bunkers fast with 2 small
groups and hunker down so that you can get your NPC's to repop. If you
can pull this off it (along with the aforementioned recapping their
flag on other side of the bridge) are VERY demoralizing to them and can
take the will to fight right out of them hordies...

O- Again have a small group take out the NPC archers in the towers
inside their camp so they cant add to the harrasment of O while you get
the body of Offense atleast to the hill right outside Dreks bunker. if
Horde try's to turtle right on their last GY flag let them for a minute
while you just harrass to keep em occupied but more importantly stay
alive so that you have time for your last captured GY to solidify and
become usable and for your people to take out the archers and NPC's in
those towers along with any NPC's in the area upto the minibridge.
Once this is accomplished then charge en masse and take that last flag.
as soon as you die respawn and get back their to keep up constant kill
level and try to grind em down thru attrition. And I cant stress this
enough... DONT have 10 people trying to be the one to grab the flag
allowing 1 AOE'r to run in and knock em all off wasting the effort... 1
person grabs flag everyone else clear immediate are as much as possible
and then charge their GY. yes its suicide but if you can harrass them
just enough to buy those precious seconds while flag is being grabbed
than we will have the flag and its a hell of a lot easier to hold it
than grab it... respawn and get right back into holdng it

Once this flag is cap's you abandon IB and bring that guy upto the flag
just outside their camp to hold it stealthed along with 1 other of the
guys guarding it and our NPC flag guards. the rest of the forces
guarding that flag head in and stake out a position on the ramp just
outside of their inner camp picket (just after the tower).

That would mean that Offense now consists of
2 people stealthed on their flag just outside of camp
2 people on ramp to catch any Horde attempting to sneak in to turtle
inside Drek bunker or recap flag. From this position they can stand
ontop of ramp and see any Horde riding up from some distance and then
get into position to catch em right as they are coming out of tower.
This also gives them a good 20 seconds to notify O of incoming horde
and numbers... normaly it will be 1 or 2 to be easily picked off but
sometimes it can be a large enough group that the group on the hill
will need to shift to turtle themselves right inside ramparts at the
ramp... normaly if this happens it will be after they whipe your guys
at the GY so you will have plenty of notice...

1 person right on their camps flag stealthed just to make sure youc an
harrass any ninjas long enough for your raid force 20 yards away to
come in and whipe em that way you dont lose out on a GY while waiting
precious minutes for it to re-solidify...

20 people camped out on the hill and stealthed on the ramp into Drek
bunker. Hunter pulls and you burn the WC's and dogs in as controlled a
fashion as possible... your rogues attempt to pick off any horde
players turtling and attempting to harrass our Offense... let them come
out on the ramp chasing out puller and once they are far enough out
burn em. stunlock as much as possible and CC do whatever you have to
to stop em from turning tail and running back inside to safety for
healing/bandaging... its tough if they are good but you only have kill
em once to take em out of the game... if they are almost dead and make
it back inside suicide it and get the kill to take em out of the game
just dont pull the entire bunker out take the death and respawn 20 feet
away to get back into the game.

You make at this point need to have some O warp back to help turtle if
so turnin as much as possible and get to turtling.

burn thru the WM's until ready for the final push and then call ALL IN.
at which point you have 2 people stay on the outer ramp and another 2
stay on the bunker ramp to Drek and 2 people stay on the flag just to
grab incoming Horde. all others get inside and first clear out any
lingering Horde player turtles then burn down Drek. Call out Dreks
health level. At the all incall the lone guy on the outer flag comes
up to the ramp group and you just abandon the flag outside their camp.
thruought the entire Drek bunker phase you use hunter traps/banners to
delay incoming turtles long enough to burn em down so they DONT get
inside... Once Drek is at 45% all outside people collapse to the ramp
to Dreks bunker and leave 2 people on that ramp the rest head in to
burn. those 2 outside stay stealthed ready to stop any incoming turtles
to the bunker. Once Drek is at 15% those people get inside to help and
to insure that as many people as possible are in bunker for Drek death
for the added Stormpike Rep.

Thats how I would want to do a preform BG if I had the chance but I
have only been doing PVP for 3 weeks and even then only occasionaly as
my guild 40 man raids every night of the week and inbetween that farms
Ony every 3 days, Kazak whenever he is up (I think our record so far is
killed him in like 40 seconds) Azuregos whenever we can be the first to
get it and ZG+AQ20 in shifts whenever they pop but in working around
the 40 man raids. So I only get to PVP inbetween all of this (I'm only
Knight Rank and just got exaulted stormpike) so I would love for anyone
to advise me of anything I have wrong so I could better the strat.

Post by PGerringer
I expect the battlegroups play out differently. I can only speak for
BG 4. But I have to disagree with your assessment.
The horde and alliance both have hearth points that are right in front
of the bosses chambers. One difference is that point happens to be the
RH for alliance where the horde's RH is a small amount away. A point
can be made that the RH at the hearth point makes it easier for
alliance to disrupt any attempt to cap the RH just by hearthing.
The bridge is not the only bottleneck. But before I go into that, the
bridge is not only a bottleneck but is a strong kill zone from the
archers that sit in the towers. Horde does not enjoy such a bottle
neck/kill zone. OK, back to bottlenecks. Obviously the bridge. Also,
to get to the northern GY (I always forget what the name is) you only
have 2 paths, high or low. This provides a strong defendable area for
alliance. Horde, again doesn't enjoy such a bottle neck. To get to
the southern GY (forgetfullness sucks) alliance has some pretty open
field.
The exploit points in the horde base are good points you make. But
those don't hold long at all. On BG4 Alliance usually rushes 30 people
into that area at a time. Sure, you may stop some of them but they
become a steady influx of people guaranteed to overwhelm horde. Why,
you may ask, does this not happen in allianceville? The bridge is the
major stumbling block. And to think totems are ignored by the enemy is
as silly as a hunter expecting Feign Death to keep the enemy from
beating on him. As a horde druid I would whack alliance banners
whenever they appeared. As a dwarf, I will be whacking banners and
totems. I learned this valuable lessing by duelling a shaman friend of
mine. Totems suck if your enemy has them. Destroying them first would
be a wise plan.
I have been in AV as horde when 10 of us in Drek's room held the
alliance for so long that horde did win. I don't think its impossible.
A few mistakes on the alliance side and it becomes a horde game. But
when you look at the layout of the map, the BG does favor alliance.
I'm sure there are other examples that are listed in the NGs but I
can't think of any right now.
BTW: In your BG does alliance actively use the SnowFall GY or does
horde?

[pv+ (PV)]

Post by K***@gmail.com
Wow, excellent point and I tip my hat to you. I always click "First
available" and just take whatever I can get but I'm SERIOUSLY thinking
now of trying BG4 specificaly a few times because if we could actually
get some unit cohesion and had 30 people charging on Offense on both

When the OP was talking about BG4, he meant 'battlegroup 4', not
'battleground 4'. If you're not in his battlegroup, you can't choose to
fight there. The only reason to pick anything other than 'first available'
is if friends are in one already and you want to join them.

The rest of your post is classic alliance strategy, and I can't see
anything wrong with it, other than getting all the cats herded into doing
it, which is the REAL battle in AV. *

[drocket]

Post by K***@gmail.com
C. Horde path into their camp allows for several staggered defensable
kill zones to slow down and harrass invaders that would provide for an
optimal defense.

I've seen it tried, but it really doesn't work. You may take out a
couple of Alliance invaders, but most of them will still be able to
run right by you (and since you've now left the relief hut flag
undefended...)

I've played AV both sides, and can definitely say that the Alliance
base is MUCH easier to defend than the Horde base. Because the
Alliance base is smaller, you have to defeat way more stuff all at
once (which then tends to respawn. Repeatedly), whereas you can ride
past most of the the Horde's NPCs. Its MASSIVELY disruptive to have
several merchants and quest NPCs respawn while you're trying to kill
marshals, and that happens often in the Alliance base.

[s***@gmail.com]

Have you tried some of these.Unification wars is one of the best games
I have played to date:

<a href=http://www.gamestotal.com/>Multiplayer Online Games</a> <a
href=http://www.gamestotal.com/>Strategy Games</a><br><a
href=http://uc.gamestotal.com/>Unification Wars</a> - <a
href=http://uc.gamestotal.com/>Massive Multiplayer Online
Games</a><br><a href=http://gc.gamestotal.com/>Galactic Conquest</a> -
<a href=http://gc.gamestotal.com/>Strategy Games</a><br><a
href=http://www.stephenyong.com/runescape.htm>Runescape</a><br><a
href=http://www.stephenyong.com/kingsofchaos.htm>Kings of chaos</a><br>

Saiye46 + 2wahhucu

Post by PGerringer
My first ever character was a dwarf hunter on Earthen Ring. Maxed him
out with everything except raiding gear. I retired him over a year ago
to play horde and since then have leveled 3 hordlings to 60 on Kargath.
My last 60, a tauren druid, I decided to use in BGs to try to gear him
without raiding. So, its been a happy and sad trip. He got to
999/1000 exalted with AV while only winning 4 games. I felt real bad
for Horde because of the layout of the map really does favor Alliance.
So, I reserved myself to losing AV but having a good time. It worked
and was definitely worth the trip.
Recently I've become quite bored. This always happens to me for a
couple of weeks after leveling a toon to 60. So, I decided to try my
hunter on Earthen Ring in AV just to see how Alliance does it. My
desire was not to spy but to get AV rep for my hunter for the exalted
gifts. Since Earthen Ring and Kargath are in the same battlegroup I
would be playing against some of the same friends I played with as the
druid. It should be fun right? I was to be shocked...
The FIRST reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: When I
got into AV Alliance was in the process of being rolled over. Man,
that hurt. My dwarf's first experience in AV and Alliance lost. OK,
not a good reason but it directly relates to my SECOND reason. It
wasn't a total loss though, I managed to complete some quests.
The SECOND reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: When I
queued the average wait time was 1h 22m. WOH!!! For Horde its rarely
more than 5 min. I had to wait 1h 55m til I was able to play AV. So,
IMHO, even though Alliance wins most of the time in AV, horde gets 2
games to each 1 alliance game. What this means is that in the end,
horde's 2 losses should come close to equal in rep and honor to 1
alliance win. So, it evens out in the end. Except for the case of my
FIRST reason. Once horde wins one match it skews the totals and horde
comes out ahead.
The THIRD reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: This may
be due to my FIRST reason but Alliance moan and complain just as bad as
Horde does. I had always thought that the Alliance bg chat was full of
"PWNED" and "LOLs" and great strategy. Man, it was anything but. The
chat was exactly like Horde chat with demeaning "You guys suck!"
comments. All I could say is "WoW".
And those are the reasons why I'll never feel sorry for the horde again
in AV. :)
Course, now that I think about it. What is the common denominator
between my horde druid and my dwarf hunter losing AV? Gulp, ME.
Geesh, do I really suck that bad to pull down 39 other players? hehe.

[s***@gmail.com]

I feel sorry for those who havn't tried:

<a href=http://www.gamestotal.com/>Multiplayer Online Games</a> <a
href=http://www.gamestotal.com/>Strategy Games</a><br><a
href=http://uc.gamestotal.com/>Unification Wars</a> - <a
href=http://uc.gamestotal.com/>Massive Multiplayer Online
Games</a><br><a href=http://gc.gamestotal.com/>Galactic Conquest</a> -
<a href=http://gc.gamestotal.com/>Strategy Games</a><br><a
href=http://www.stephenyong.com/runescape.htm>Runescape</a><br><a
href=http://www.stephenyong.com/kingsofchaos.htm>Kings of chaos</a><br>

Saiye46 + 2wahhucu

Post by PGerringer
My first ever character was a dwarf hunter on Earthen Ring. Maxed him
out with everything except raiding gear. I retired him over a year ago
to play horde and since then have leveled 3 hordlings to 60 on Kargath.
My last 60, a tauren druid, I decided to use in BGs to try to gear him
without raiding. So, its been a happy and sad trip. He got to
999/1000 exalted with AV while only winning 4 games. I felt real bad
for Horde because of the layout of the map really does favor Alliance.
So, I reserved myself to losing AV but having a good time. It worked
and was definitely worth the trip.
Recently I've become quite bored. This always happens to me for a
couple of weeks after leveling a toon to 60. So, I decided to try my
hunter on Earthen Ring in AV just to see how Alliance does it. My
desire was not to spy but to get AV rep for my hunter for the exalted
gifts. Since Earthen Ring and Kargath are in the same battlegroup I
would be playing against some of the same friends I played with as the
druid. It should be fun right? I was to be shocked...
The FIRST reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: When I
got into AV Alliance was in the process of being rolled over. Man,
that hurt. My dwarf's first experience in AV and Alliance lost. OK,
not a good reason but it directly relates to my SECOND reason. It
wasn't a total loss though, I managed to complete some quests.
The SECOND reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: When I
queued the average wait time was 1h 22m. WOH!!! For Horde its rarely
more than 5 min. I had to wait 1h 55m til I was able to play AV. So,
IMHO, even though Alliance wins most of the time in AV, horde gets 2
games to each 1 alliance game. What this means is that in the end,
horde's 2 losses should come close to equal in rep and honor to 1
alliance win. So, it evens out in the end. Except for the case of my
FIRST reason. Once horde wins one match it skews the totals and horde
comes out ahead.
The THIRD reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: This may
be due to my FIRST reason but Alliance moan and complain just as bad as
Horde does. I had always thought that the Alliance bg chat was full of
"PWNED" and "LOLs" and great strategy. Man, it was anything but. The
chat was exactly like Horde chat with demeaning "You guys suck!"
comments. All I could say is "WoW".
And those are the reasons why I'll never feel sorry for the horde again
in AV. :)
Course, now that I think about it. What is the common denominator
between my horde druid and my dwarf hunter losing AV? Gulp, ME.
Geesh, do I really suck that bad to pull down 39 other players? hehe.

[Spud Unger]

Post by PGerringer
My first ever character was a dwarf hunter on Earthen Ring. Maxed him
out with everything except raiding gear. I retired him over a year ago
to play horde and since then have leveled 3 hordlings to 60 on Kargath.
My last 60, a tauren druid, I decided to use in BGs to try to gear him
without raiding. So, its been a happy and sad trip. He got to
999/1000 exalted with AV while only winning 4 games. I felt real bad
for Horde because of the layout of the map really does favor Alliance.
So, I reserved myself to losing AV but having a good time. It worked
and was definitely worth the trip.
Recently I've become quite bored. This always happens to me for a
couple of weeks after leveling a toon to 60. So, I decided to try my
hunter on Earthen Ring in AV just to see how Alliance does it. My
desire was not to spy but to get AV rep for my hunter for the exalted
gifts. Since Earthen Ring and Kargath are in the same battlegroup I
would be playing against some of the same friends I played with as the
druid. It should be fun right? I was to be shocked...
The FIRST reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: When I
got into AV Alliance was in the process of being rolled over. Man,
that hurt. My dwarf's first experience in AV and Alliance lost. OK,
not a good reason but it directly relates to my SECOND reason. It
wasn't a total loss though, I managed to complete some quests.
The SECOND reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: When I
queued the average wait time was 1h 22m. WOH!!! For Horde its rarely
more than 5 min. I had to wait 1h 55m til I was able to play AV. So,
IMHO, even though Alliance wins most of the time in AV, horde gets 2
games to each 1 alliance game. What this means is that in the end,
horde's 2 losses should come close to equal in rep and honor to 1
alliance win. So, it evens out in the end. Except for the case of my
FIRST reason. Once horde wins one match it skews the totals and horde
comes out ahead.
The THIRD reason I won't ever feel sorry for the Horde in AV: This may
be due to my FIRST reason but Alliance moan and complain just as bad as
Horde does. I had always thought that the Alliance bg chat was full of
"PWNED" and "LOLs" and great strategy. Man, it was anything but. The
chat was exactly like Horde chat with demeaning "You guys suck!"
comments. All I could say is "WoW".
And those are the reasons why I'll never feel sorry for the horde again
in AV. :)
Course, now that I think about it. What is the common denominator
between my horde druid and my dwarf hunter losing AV? Gulp, ME.
Geesh, do I really suck that bad to pull down 39 other players? hehe.

lol. everything that horde has to defend is uphill and has shitty line
of sight. it's also a well known fact that GMs are gay for horde.