Soo.. Why can we still not 'join as grp' AV?

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Wodin

AV went from fun to miserable with the advent of cross-server battlegrounds for us. Mal'ganis had never done the "PVE Race" style of AV - it was naturally assumed that you took the Conan approach and crushed your enemies and heard the lamentations of their women. Yeah, it still sorta sucks sometimes, but it was a hell of a lot more fun than this race nonsense where you completely ignore the other team. I can understand the motivation behind the race, particularly when facing better-geared opposition, but it's still disheartening.

On BDF the only alliance that would put up with the 3 hour queues on the alliance side were either pvp hardcores and uber guilders while on the Horde side our teams were usually at least 15~25 people who were lvl 59 and under.

This led to super groups of 10 people or being able to cockblock the bridge forever while the rest of the alliance stomped the lower AV.

While WSG is a pain in the fucking ass now (seriously, why are pugs matched up against premades ever? Fucking retarded. 47 out of my last 70 matches I ended up running in circles waiting for the match to end as quickly as possible)....AV is actually, well, somewhat fun again.

Sure the 5 hour FoS slug matches are gone. In it's place is like two mirrors 5 10 vs. 30 matches. Whichever teams 10 man defense can delay the other teams longest wins. Won 5 out of the last 8 matches, which is impressive considering the ridiculous advantages the alliance have in AV.

Joined a premade or AB though last night and just stomped pugs left and right. Didn't face a single pre-made. Was sad. 8(

[Grimmlokk]

You tend to split up more in AB. And 20+ mages spamming Explosion is > 15. AV blinksquads were nuts.

No reason no one can do it in AB now, it's just not as effective. You don't all stick together in AB. Old AV was just squishing them back into their GY til you cap'd it, then repeat. Not a lot of way around it. And if 5 mages stay back to stop ninjasquads you still have 15+ mages AEing.

[Quineloe]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

They nerfed them because blizzard couldn't figure out how to prevent lvl 10's from getting into AV's.

Speaking of levels, why the fuck are level 59 and lower still allowed in AV

[Digits]

bullshit, 5 hour matches in the field of strife were never fun.

That must mean 15 minute matches where you purposefully ignore the other team is always fun!

I think Dunemaul had a similar server as Wodins, you had a very strong offense with a 10 man defense saying 'Fuck y'all' on both sides. The better defense won the game, and in my opinion it was really fun unless you were stuck on offense that had been put on hold. It wasn't as good as vanilla AV, but it was also a lot less retarded.

[Quineloe]

That must mean 15 minute matches where you purposefully ignore the other team is always fun!

At least it was progression, even if you killed mostly NPC.

[Biodome]

Just make it so you have to take all the bases before Drek to be able to attack him.

[Quineloe]

All the "whats"?

[Zehn - Vhex]

If they dropped it to a 20 man bg and implement latice's, then maybe it might make it more of the slug fest I imagine it was supposed to be. Drop tower/gy capture times to roughly 90 seconds. Remove NPC health regeneration entirely as well. Capping a tower flips it rather then destroys it.

Tweak it as needed and I think it wouldn't be half bad. No more 2 druids ninja-ganking, no more 10 man super-squads exploiting into the fw relief hut. Just carnage back and forth.

[boy-]

Well wouldn't doing any of that just make AV way worse?

The problem I have with AV atm isn't really the race-strat (I honestly have only experienced that once), but that when not using the race strat the entire game consists of various level 54 players yelling stupid directions in caps to help them get the rank 1 trinket, or capture the mine, or fishing or whatever.

Making the game more complicated than a 'race to otherside' just exacerbates the problem, that it's unpossible to get 25 or 40 people on the same page when you've never heard of 24-39 of them, and will never see them again.

Basically right now AV is about as fun as running an absolute PUG on AQ -- players who have no clue what they're doing wasting your time. Is this fun? No. If it was then we'd be pugging AQ. The difference is that we have guilds for AQ, and thus can 'join as group'. No such luck with AV.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Well, dropping it down to 20 would allow for a little bit of accountability. It really depends on what you want.

Half the people want a slugfest, the other half just want to rep it as fast as possible. Chances are, the people who want the slugfest are the people who fondly recall 5-8 hour FoS grudge matches followed by some kind of amazing push to the enemy base and a glorious win.

Me? I'm far more used to the stonehearth-stormpike cockblock (seriously, could you make SP any fucking harder to take with a pug?) that goes on for about 30 minutes, then the alliance gets ramriders/druids/whatever and from then on it's a downward spiral where the Horde just kinda gives up.

The reality of the situation is nobody wants a slugfest unless it's a near even fight. Would I like a struggle if we had an equal chance of winning or losing? Sure. Why not.

But when you enter an AV and see the other team sporting tier2+ gear...well, let's just put it this way, I afk'd out of an AV about 3 weeks ago when I got wafflestomped by -3- people using thunderfuries. I mean...fuck that. That's when you'd much rather just race it. When after 10 minutes the entire top half of the scoreboard is blue? No thanks.

So I guess my suggestion would require that they first make sure the ilvl of both teams stays relatively constant, and for fucks sake, make a 50-59 AV already. Getting a little sick of seeing lvl 51 mages sporting the very best in Scarlet Monastary gear and warriors dual-wielding a thrash blade and sword of omen.

[Kasonic]

Apparently there was an alliance mage from Dalaran in AV last night with roughly 300 points worth of Arcane Wrath gear who was specced 47/2/2.

Whoever you are I hope you accidentally end your life in some gruesome way.

[Torrid]

I LIKED AV GOD DAMNIT.

I liked it more than raiding, I liked it more than WSG/AB, I liked it more than anything else in this fucking game. I have four exalted characters, and one of them would have been exalted many times over.

Patch 1.12 ruined it. Racing is HOMOSEXUALY COCK-IN-ASS GAY. Fuck you Cad. Battlegrounds are for PvPing you jackass. AV was the last place in WoW you could actually "massively multiplayer" PvP. I DON'T WANT TO PLAY GUILD WARS BLIZZARD, THANKS.

As if racing wasn't ridiculously retarded enough, the map HEAVILY favors Alliance so badly in this regard, that I've won ONE game (barely) out of the dozen+ I've joined since 1.12. Pre-1.12 my server's horde usually did not race simply because racing = Alliance winning, and the Horde won the vast majority of the time otherwise.

In the off chance a Blizzard employee reads this: I want you to do something. Observe a few AVs. Watch how many NPCs the Alliance has to deal with to secure the Relief hut vs. how many NPCs the Horde will get when they go for the Aid station.

Oh gee, let me count the advantages those manginas have...

- You can still jump over the Frostwolf base fence at two locations, one of which is right next to the central building, bypassing half the base. Which I suppose doesn't matter all that much when all the NPCs down there are avoidable regardless
- Frostwolf base archers don't reach the Relief hut, but the Alliance bunkers cover their GY quite nicely
- Horde towers base towers are EXTREMELY trivial to ninja, as there is no NPC in the banner room and archers can't shoot people in the banner room. Meanwhile Alliance archers can shoot inside their bunker
- ZERO NPCs ANYWHERE NEAR the Relief hut other than the standard graveyard NPCs vs. shit loads of Alliance NPCs near their Aid station
- Tons of kiting room and places to hide around the Relief hut make for extremely easy ninjaing
- It is possible for somebody-- without stealth-- to run through the Frostwolf base and reach the Relief hut and only aggro one mob on the way (aside from archers)... and that mob will LEASH BEFORE YOU GET THERE.
- You cannot see the banner from the res-point at Iceblood graveyard-- nor do Horde run past it when they res there (because they go north or west), making it much more vulnerable
- Dead Alliance will respawn at Stormpike when they die after the Horde puts Stonehearth in conflict. Meanwhile, Horde will respawn at the cave when Iceblood is in conlfict. This means Stormpike will have a constant stream of defenders while Frostwolf GY will see none unless those Horde specifically decide to defend it. (which very rarely happens now) The Horde will not even see Frostwolf appear in their AoI after they run out the cave to even know it is under attack.

I'm sure I missed some. Should I mention that queue times tend to filter out some of the shitier players, and that the Alliance have a gear advantage as well? Fuck Alliance players. If you EVER lose an AV, then you were outplayed signifficantly.

It may take some of the strategy out of the map, but the easiest solution to end this racing gayness would be to disable the ability to click a graveyard unless you have the one before it.

and for fucks sake, make a 50-59 AV already.

This needs to be done, BADLY.

P.S. the summoning circles still bug out if the NPC is aggroed after it appears.

[Quineloe]

As if racing wasn't ridiculously retarded enough, the map HEAVILY favors Alliance so badly in this regard, that I've won ONE game (barely) out of the dozen+ I've joined since 1.12. Pre-1.12 my server's horde usually did not race simply because racing = Alliance winning, and the Horde won the vast majority of the time otherwise.

The map heavily favors horde. it starts with snowfall GY being tagged before even the fastest alliance riders can reach it and ends with Marshalls being far easier to pull than warmasters.

[Ravensign]

Originally Posted by Torrid

It may take some of the strategy out of the map, but the easiest solution to end this racing gayness would be to disable the ability to click a graveyard unless you have the one before it.

I think that's great, and I believe that when Planetside went live, you could skip their points of control, until they re-did it as linked.

I have seen several solutions floating around:

• Drops from killing PC's needed to open access to areas
• Linked GY/Objective at a time, ala Onslaught in UT
• Buff on Boss/Mini Boss until certain conditions met
• Changes to spawns/zone geometry

The running comment out there is its a PvE raid now, that 40 players from the other faction just happen to be in at the other end.

Winning AV needs to be changed to be about being better at killing other PC's, which is what PvP should be about in general, shouldn't it?

[frott]

Require all of the targets leading up to the endboss to be killed: end of zerg. The losing team team will be forced to play defense to some degree as well as the one in control. No more leaving shit unguarded, etc.

Maybe it is wise to not allow "join as massive raid" but at least allow joining as 5 man squads.