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by Eliah Hecht 
Feb 4th 2008 at 2:30PM
It seems like they just can't leave Alterac Valley alone. In this case, that's probably a good thing, because there is a lot of discontentment with the state of that battleground right now. Bornakk just announced (and three different people just dropped us tips to let us know) that AV will get some "very significant improvements" in the upcoming patch 2.4:- Horde starting tunnel moved back "to a more equal distance from the first objectives"
- Each faction's Generals and Warmasters will buff each other for health and damage: the more of them your side has, the stronger they all are. Hopefully this will more strongly motivate killing the Warmasters.
- Balinda Stonehearth will do more damage, but she and Stormpike will have their recent health increases repealed.
Filed under: Patches, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
David Hill Feb 5th 2008 4:13AM
The problem with AV is that it was made for level 60's.
When The Buring Crusade came along, the dynamics of the battleground were changed the moment a level 61+ entered.
I'd say, keep the battleground limit to level 60's and make a new battleground for 60's-70's
shabaz Feb 5th 2008 12:11AM
Hey on stormstrike alliance which i play loses 99.999% of the time with maybe 20 honor so those who complain about 124 honor games should be happy. bootle neck at ibgy if we go galv they meet us there.
Darkk Feb 5th 2008 12:56PM
Until they fix the Horde towers, the Alliance are always going to have an edge in AV. It doesn't take 20 seconds of narrow-ramp-walking to knock someone off the flag in an Alliance Bunker. Alliance Bunkers don't have a tiny, enclosed room that lets one cap the tower without dispatching a single Archer. And let's not even get started about the whole "Small Room + Shadowmeld = GG defenders" bit.
Until they make Horde Towers as wide open as Alliance Bunkers, the Alliance Zerg will continue to win more games than it loses. It's not about Balinda or battle masters or anything else. It's about that damned Bridge, the Thunderbrew clan camping the Alliance Aid Station, and Tower imbalance.
tchernobyl Feb 5th 2008 7:18AM
I care more about the pathetic horde towers, and godawful horde base than any of the graveyards further north. Fix that damn jumping thing into our base and being able to cap horde towers from /outside/.... and being immune to the archers when inside.
Amok2006 Feb 5th 2008 11:02AM
How about they just scrap AV altogether? All the fixes, changes, counter-changes, counter-fixes and QQing is making this thing look like Microsoft pieced it together.
Seriously, design a BG that requires at least 2 people to be in an objective defending it OR it goes over to the other team after X minutes automatically.
No chokepoints. Why? Because the lesser skilled will just give up and turtle there and claim its some form of defense. Hint: turtling is a sign of weak offense.
alrdye Feb 5th 2008 6:42PM
Not at all, while its true the horde have the ability to control the game in two spots, my battle realm does not. Who wants to sit and farm HK's for an hour rather than try to down the other general?? So in a rush, the alliance are able to get at the horde side with less npcs after them than the Horde has at the alliance base. The game is not equal, this is a bs fix. To make it truly fair, blizzard needs to alternate the sides each game. That way both factions have equal chances to win and play from the others prespective.
Loki Feb 8th 2008 9:34PM
This is irritating, considering AV is clearly biased towards Alliance they're now buffing it in favour of them. Honestly I have no idea what you people are talking about considering this so-called Iceblood bottleneck. A bottleneck is a narrow path that's the only way forward, a choke point that forces enemies to group up. Makes it easy to see what's coming and blast it down before it gets through. Iceblood is not a bottleneck, there's several paths you can take through there and it's wide enough to skirt round the Horde forces entirely. A lot of Alliance groups simply ignore IB and go straight for FW because it's so easy.
However the entire northern part of the map (ie the Alliance end) has two key chokepoints. First the Stonehearth bunker, there's only a narrow gap for Horde forces to squeeze through and if it's defended right can hold them back ages. Thankfully if the SH GY is taken it can be broken rather quickly by the quick respawns.
However Alliance have the single most powerful bottleneck on the map. I am of course talking about the bridge. A gap so narrow it can be covered by a VERY small number of Alliance. The latter half is in range of BOTH towers and it's the ONLY way across. If defended properly it's horrible to break and was even worse before the AV changes. You can argue that the hut serves a similar purpose in the Horde base but it's just no where near as good.
1) There's not the same line of sight there, on the bridge Alliance defenders can easily see what's coming and be ready as soon as they come into range. With the hut it's very easy to get into melee range before casters and such can get on you.
2) Nowhere near as good coverage from the towers.
Not to mention the fact that while Horde have to deal with all the Alliance NPC's pissing about the base, there's hardly any in the upper part of the Horde base. This really just bugs me though, the Alliance base is so much better designed than ours and now they're nerfing our tunnel placement? Really just shows the Alliance have more mouths to whine with.
Tubey Feb 17th 2008 9:05PM
Horde defend IBGY whilst capping SH bunker = win. Simple.
Anyone who doesn't agree with that are either incredibly blinkered with their view or haven't played AV before.
The amount of Horde who still moan about the SP Bridge... i've literally seen the bridge defended all of five times in two months by any meaningful Ally defence. 90% of Allies don't even have the DB trinket, let alone it equipped.
"Just run past" IBGY is, again, the comment of someone who is a) exclusively Horde or b) hasn't played AV and is chatting nonsense. You can't - the Horde bottleneck the area just west of IBGY in between IB and TP; rogues, shamans etc. make mincemeat out of you - there's no sneaking past. In fact, there's not even a chance of forcing past unless every single Ally charges, as IBGY is so close for Horde resses.
Despite all this, it's the Allies fault if they get drawn into this situation. To guarantee a win for an Ally, you:
a) Skip Galv
b) Charge IB/TP en masse.
c) A further group caps the almost 100% of the time unguarded FW graveyards and towers.
d) Defend what you have.
Conversely, there's no definite way for a Horde team to win - even if they decide to defend IBGY, if enough Allies are charging south immediately, they can't stem the tide.
The reason Horde win perpetually on some battlegroups is for this one simple reason:
Allies don't listen, learn, co-operate or respect eachother.
Boneterror Mar 17th 2008 11:43PM
I think there should be one more thing added in 2.4 to alterac valley changes....Its the fact that alliance have it way too easy to rush the horde base by line of sighting our archers at the horde base......its not the same case at the alliance base since you have to cross a bridge and get lit up by their archers. The thing that should be changed is the distance to our towers in our base......way too easy for alliance not to take damage from our archers since its just a short ditance in to our towers.