World of Warcraft

Alterac Valley 2.4 Changes

" Alterac Valley will see a few very significant improvements in the next patch and we wanted to share the details of what we have planned.

The first change will be to move the Horde's starting tunnel back to a more equal distance from the first objectives, which will help evenly distance the starting points for each side across the terrain when the battle commences.

In addition, the General and Warmasters for each faction will receive a stacking buff from each other that boosts their health and damage. The more of them that are still in the battleground, the more dangerous they will all be. This will put a greater focus on destroying (and defending!) the towers that remove the Warmasters as players work toward defeating the appropriate General and conquering the land.

Also Balinda Stonehearth has been studying her spellbooks to become a more challenging opponent to the Horde and will do more damage with her spells. The additional health we recently added to Balinda and General Vanndar Stormpike will no longer be needed with these improvements and will be changed back to their previous amounts with the patch.

With these improvements teamwork and strategy will be more important than ever from beginning to end as the Alliance and Horde battle for victory in Alterac Valley. We'll see you on the battlefield."

Hopefully this will help some battlegroups out.

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  • aikouka said 
    Fri, Feb 8 2008 12:41 AM ()

    There's actually some issues on both sides that I've seen as I play Horde and Alliance in AV.

    1) Chokepoints are not equivalent:
    There's not denying this fact. When you look at a chokepoint, certain factors are required to make it a *good* chokepoint. One of these is obviously a tight space to enter from and no where to go around. The other is the ability to feed the point from behind with fresh defenders. Excluding the bases, there are two chokepoints in the game: Icewing Bunker and Iceblood Graveyard. Yet, both of these fail for Alliance and are excellent chokepoints that meet both requirements for Horde. Alliance could attempt to hold Horde back at Icewing, but the problem is that the closest GY (what would be Stormpike at this time) is too far away to be a good GY to feed a chokepoint. Once Horde take Stonehearth GY, they now have the perfect chokepoint to keep Alliance from advancing down further as it has a single small entrance with a GY (SH) feeding from behind. The IB chokepoint is a bit better for Alliance when they capture it but it still has two exits which means that it's a better chokepoint when you're stopping flow from the north, not the south.

    2) Dun'Baldar and Frostwolf are too different
    The biggest problem here is that DB is simply squished together too much where FW is more spread out which leads to problems mentioned by other users below. When Horde enter DB, they must fight the Bounty Hunters (why are they still here anyway?), Murgot Deepforge (71 elite) and then once the Horde take the Aid Station, the guards immediately go for the Stable Master (71 elite) and he must be killed. Also, the bunkers are closer to the AS banner than the towers are to the RH banner in Frostwolf, which leads to the archers being able to shoot people taking the banner unless you're on the NW corner of it. The towers start losing their effectiveness once your cross the bridge in FW. Now, there's also the fact that Alliance do not have to fight any NPCs in FW except Yurga Bloodsnarl (non-elite) as they can simply run up the side.

    Let's talk about the base chokepoints now. The bridge (brings shudders to the Horde whenever you utter it) isn't as bad as most may put it. As Horde, we do have a fairly decent point in the final gate leading into Frostwolf Keep, the only problem is, it isn't as good. The long sight distance of the bridge is where the advantage lies which leads to alliance being able to AoE, ranged attack and have their archers attack as you try to cross. Also, the chokepoint at the FW Keep isn't as good because you can simply jump over beside the West tower and get into the base. This works well if Horde are turtling there and you get some rogues to go in and kill the healers :P.

    3) Bunkers and Towers are too different
    Man, let me tell you.... on my Undead Rogue the one thing I hate doing is taking those bunkers. It's a precise action that requires sapping the correct archer and hoping they don't see you (not an easy task if you're a combat rogue doing PVP) just so you can get the banner. Yeah, towers are much easier to steal, especially since once you're in the top room, you can't be hit by archers. This may seem like a complaint geared toward rogues having a harder time stealing bunkers rather than towers, but it also refers to any class going up a tower and as long as they make it to the top of a defenseless tower, they can take it. This is not true of a bunker unless that specific archer is dead.

    4) Balinda vs Galvangar
    It looks like Blizzard is attempting to fix this one (and not the others? >_>) as the biggest issue is the fact that unless you use a lot of rogues (Galv is not immune to stuns), Galvangar can be a royal pain without some competent people. Whirlwind does some fairly serious damage, especially if you're hit by more than one. Balinda's AoE is fairly weak. The intimidating shout can remove a fairly decent chunk from the battle where as Balinda only polymorphs one person.

    Essentially all this needs is to make the AoE stronger and put an uninterruptible cast timer on it (but still allow her to be stunned, which is how you can stop Galv's whirlwind). Let her polymorph be a mass polymorph that will do x (I don't know what'd be fair) number of people but never the top threat target (Galv's Int shout only freezes the top target in place just like the warrior version).

    EDIT:

    Also, Alliance need to take all that effort that they put into whining and put it into something creative... like I don't know... a new strategy that doesn't involve 100% of offense going to Galvangar where Horde systematically wipe them out?

  • Fri, Feb 8 2008 12:41 AM ()

    It's quite funny how Blizzard looks on AV from a PvE perspective.

    Yes Balinda aint very dangerous, deals quite low damage and easilly interrupted, But whats the major difference between galv and Balinda?

    Yes you are right, it's the aoe slow spell!

    10 alliance defenders can wipe out around 30 horde due to the aoe slow, healers got a hard time heal and will most likely get counterspelled while doing so, you will get kited while mages run around with full speed spamming aoe damage.

    The water elemental goes frost nova also, wich improves the effect of aoe even more due to ppl can't move.

    On Galv it's just to spam some chain heals into middle and the dmg from got both WW is nothing, or just stun with one of your 36 paladins while he goes WW.

    Another thing to balance AV is to drill some holes in the walls of horde towers, so the archers can nail the capturer just like they can in alliance bunkers.

    I got both horde and alliance chars at 70 and been doing AV for quite a few years now, but nowadays Alliance got around 80% win ratio, might differ between battlegroups, but in general if both sides got equal gear and skills, then Alliance got the upper hand wihtout doubt.

  • Tagnaar said 
    Fri, Feb 8 2008 12:41 AM ()

    alliance is getting better... roflamao

  • Fri, Feb 8 2008 12:41 AM ()

    Right, b/c Rank 1 Frostbolts take down BC raid bosses. amirite?

  • Fri, Feb 8 2008 12:41 AM ()

    I think you need to check that attitude of yours :-)

  • Roeland said 
    Fri, Feb 8 2008 12:41 AM ()

    Nice with this chance we horde probably go from 10% to a 5% chance of winning AV. This is not the way to balance AV I think. In the Blackout battlegroup where I play in horde almost never wins. And the time we do win we still get less honor then Ally's.

    I see people talking about horde always winning and others always saying ally's are always winning. So I think blizzard should look at what is needed per battlegroup and not to AV as a whole.

    I also don't like the idea of balinda doing more damage I always have aggro of here and I play mage. I still have aggro from here with that very annoying Slow spell and a feral druid on here. I can just survive here spells, but if somebody silences here she kills me with melee, cause here melee does more damage then here spells.
    And if blizzard increase here spell damage I have to get a threat reduction trinket cause otherwise I will probalby die.

  • zild86 said 
    Fri, Feb 8 2008 12:41 AM ()

    Lets just take it back to the epic 24 hour AV battles, summon Icy and wolf riders, bang our heads in the middle, make it a battle like it's ment to be, not a 5 min hurry up and get my honor so i can get my welfare epics faster. How much more dumbing down of this game is there gonna be? used to have to bust your ass to get top end pvp gear, now ya just log in, move once and awhile so your not afk, and eventually your as geared as everyone else..way to make pvp pointless and boring as hell.

  • nubeen said 
    Fri, Feb 8 2008 12:41 AM ()

    Let's sit back and wait for the changes to be implemented, and then go about flaming what is going to be done. If Blizzard can do what they are saying, then it might present more of an objective based (RAID WIDE) instance. Hopefully it won't be a big zerg to see who gets to the opposing factions end boss.

    Although I do miss the 12 hour long AV's from back in the day, it would be nice to see more than 1/100 AV's actually putting use to the summonable NPC's and other parts of AV. Killing Bal, mounting to Stormpike, taking that and then pushing to Vandy gets really REALLY repetitive, and you end up with one of two situations per run, Alliance will tap Drek WAY before Horde can even down the multiple guard npc's that sit outside Vandy OR It ends up in a dead lock between both factions due to equal O and D. very rarely can you find a AV run where people are focused on getting more honor through capping and downing. It's all annoying.

    WoW has been very PvE oriented (as I have seen) ever since TBC released. Blizzard has tried to equal out PvP but it is and always WILL amount to one faction being OP per battlegroup.

    I'm anxious to see what all 2.4 is going to actually roll out and how it will affect both PvE and PvP play.

  • Fri, Feb 8 2008 12:41 AM ()

    is this supposed to appease the alliance or something so we don't have to wait over an hour to get into each AV? i've heard the queue times aren't nearly as bad on other servers/battlegroups, and frankly, i don't understand why they're so bad on mine (Greymane).

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