Open fire! PTR 2.4 battleground changes
by Amanda Dean 
Feb 10th 2008 at 6:02PM
We've recently featured several posts about player discontent with Warsong Gulch and
It sounds like Blizzard has been listening to the back and forth debate about which faction is favored most in
Since 2.3 it seems the most common strategy for winning AV has been dashing for the generals and killing them as quickly as possible. The warmasters and marshals in 2.4 give each other buffs to damage and health. Since this buff stacks, the more generals standing, the harder they are to kill. To have a good shot at taking down the general, the team must wait for all or at least most of the towers to capture. This will definitely slow down the game, but may force some alternative strategies.
Warsong Gulch
I make it no secret that Warsong Gulch is my least favorite battleground. Matches can go on for extended periods of time with little honor reward. In an effort to stop these stalemate conditions, Blizzard has added debuff for flag carriers that increases the damage taken after the flag has been held for long periods of time. After ten minutes, the carrier will take an additional fifty percent damage and after fifteen minutes the penalty will be double.
I wish they would have been more clear on a few points. The way I read the notes suggest that the timer does not reset when the flag is passed among players. If the timer were to reset every time the flag is handed off, this change would have absolutely no effect. The notes are also unclear on what happens when one flag is returned to the base. Does the other carrier still have the debuff or do they get reset simultaneously? I may be wrong, but this change seems like it would have little effect on shortening matches or balancing honor rewards with the other battlegrounds. I hope that through testing Blizzard decides that the time for the debuff to kick in should be much shorter.
I am more excited about the ability to track the carrier 45 seconds after they have picked up the flag. I don't know how many times I've tried looking at the map to figure out where to retrieve the flag. In 2.4 it will actually work! This will be particularly helpful in the cross-field dash. No more "which way did he go?" After 45 seconds we will know if the carrier is in the tunnel, ramp, or graveyard. This will be less useful once the carrier makes it to the base. It most likely won't indicate where in the base the flag is, so you'll still have to start on top and work your way down.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, PvP, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Pzychotix Feb 10th 2008 6:39PM
It's more likely that the timer is linked to the flag itself:
At 5 (or is it 10?) minutes of not being reset/captured, who ever holds that flag will have the 50% debuff, and at 15 mins of not being reset/captured, whoever holds that flag will have the 100% debuff.
Slayblaze Feb 10th 2008 7:41PM
Yeah but they're still *holding the flag*. Granted they'll be a little easier to find if they're "trackable" after 45 seconds, but I think the main point should be to get them to stop *holding the flag*, and thereby holding up the rest of the game. The flag carrier needs to either a)perform a capture or b)get their flag back if its not at the base. How the team as a whole achieves this is up to them, but that should be the main goal.
I'd rather see something like a constant slow decrease if health of the flag carrier as long as they hold the flag. The proposed change will only make them slightly more suseptible to incoming damage, but certainly not impervious to it - plus someone has to be actually doing damage for that to have any effect.
In my opinion the flag should be like a "hot potato" and actually hurt whoever is holding it. Games would be over much quicker instead of the honor-farming-fest it will be back to now that diminishing returns on HKs have been eliminated in 2.4
Sevenfold Feb 10th 2008 8:21PM
I'm sorry, but have you ever actually *played* in either of these bg's? Many of your comments make you sound not only inexperienced but foolish.
"Since 2.3 it seems the most common strategy for winning AV has been dashing for the generals and killing them as quickly as possible." -- Completely false. You get less honor for just killing the general, more honor for capped towers. We *always* wait for towers to cap before pulling the general.
In addition, the changes to WSG are intended to prevent turtling. You do know what turtling is, right? What usually results in those marathon 2 hour WSG matches is one side all sitting in their base locked down, healing the FC. If that FC starts taking 75% more damage it won't matter how many they keep in their base, he's going down quick. This encourages both sides to focus more effort on flag retrieval.
Stop being so negative about changes you clearly don't understand and haven't even seen in play yet.
doyesac Feb 10th 2008 11:33PM
Wow, extra harsh! Careful, you might hurt someone's feelings!
In my battlegroup the the Alliance has to skip the towers and go straight for the Relief Hut, moving on to Drek as fast as possible. If they linger to cap the towers we beat them back and win decisively. By skipping the towers they have a chance -- the only Horde losses I've seen recently, we had both Ice Blood and Tower Point towers up.
Huh. Sounds like the author kinda knew what they were talking about, huh?
DaemonRai Feb 11th 2008 2:06PM
This may help to prevent those instances where both sides have the flag at the same time, but it will do absolutely nothing to stop one side from just holding the flag so that his team mates can farm kills...in fact they've gone a step farther than doing nothing by encouraging it by removing the dimishing returns for honor up to 50 kills in a single run, which everyone knows can only be reached in WSG via that since in most turtle situations, both sides put most of their effort in heavy Defense and don't die as much.
Zazu Feb 10th 2008 7:57PM
Can someone explain to me why they are reducing the health of the Balinda and Vanndar? I don't get it!
theRaptor Feb 10th 2008 8:28PM
To balance out now that the Alliance can get there in time to defend her, and now that her damage is getting buffed.
DaemonRai Feb 11th 2008 2:05PM
A while back they increased their health in an attempt to balance, now they're just putting it back to normal as they try a different approach.
Zamboni Feb 11th 2008 11:50AM
Because their health was buffed up in the last patch to make them more difficult to kill. This "debuff" is returning them to the normal level.
Baluki Feb 10th 2008 10:37PM
TEN MINUTES for the WSG flag debuff? Jeez...WSG should take a maximum of 20 minutes if it's tuned right. Who wants to get turtled for 10 minutes between caps while waiting for the debuff?
The debuff needs to be activated no later than at the 5 minute mark, and double 2 minutes later. WSG is fun, but only when things keep moving.
It's a step in the right direction, but they shouldn't be afraid to take TWO steps.
BigBear Feb 10th 2008 11:10PM
Some comments:
@Sevenfold - That could be dependant on your battlegroup. I play in two different groups at the moment and in both cases AV is a rush to kill the general for the Aliiance. So what the OP says is entirely accurate. We as the horde generally just rush to take towers and do as you state, wait for them to cap. Alliance tend to win msot games but in general I don't think people play AV to win. Some games alliance have won with 3 towers still up and we get slightly more honour. In most cases though, we tend to get the same amount at the end.
I agree with other posters in regards to WSG that the 10 minute debuff is woeful fix. As a previous poster stated - make the flag into a DOT would make it more interesting though I personally would like to see them use the re-enforcements idea from AV. Give both sides 100 re-enforcements and make each flag cap reduce the total by 30.
That and making 3-4 maps per BG or a whole lot of new BG's!
arb Feb 11th 2008 4:08AM
I'm not sure that making the flag a DOT would help in WSG either, as the FC could simply drop it when a few k down and let someone else hold it for a while. In any WSG it should be possible for 3-4 to get close enough to start hitting the FC so making him go down quicker should work. I agree that the debuff should kick in after 5 mins, rather than 15.
The biggest issue in WSG is giving people the motiviation (or the education) to know they need to be looking for the chump with the shiny flag - so often the HK-farming goes on because the objective isn't clear enough to some people.
I'm going to wait and see how the AV changes affect us. In my Battlegroup Horde lose 70%+ of AVs already, so moving us further south doesn't seem necessary. However, if they also move our cave so that it forces us to cross the Alliance route to Drek (as the IW pass does) and also give us a new choke-point at FW to defend (yeah... right...) then great. I really don't understand why they can't make the bases mirror images of each other (as with WSG) and settle this "balance" issue once and for all.
Bart Feb 11th 2008 8:50AM
Simple solution to WSG:
- you score if you get the enemy flag into your base, regardless of your flag being captured or not....
Tank Feb 11th 2008 10:08AM
One druid on each side and it'd be over in 45 seconds flat .........
On my battlegroup the AV changes may help us a bit. We never had a chance to defend any bunkers. By the time we'd get to Belinda the Horde was already capping the first bunker. When getting to Iceblood Tower they'd already have D waiting on us. Fair? Hardly. Of course this won't stop their massive D turtle that totally wipes our O, forcing a slow painful reinforcement win that takes a minimum of a half hour.
Edgeonline Feb 11th 2008 9:28AM
I could see this working Bart if the cap was worth 1/4 to 1/2 it's value if the other side has your flag.
Bart Feb 11th 2008 10:08AM
See all other CTF games, it doesn't matter if the enemy has your flag or not.
If a capture is only worth 1/4 or 1/2, and you already have 2caps, its preferable to hold the flag until you get the enemy one.
If you don't want the enemy to get your flag, simple, kill him before he returns it...
Malachi154 Mar 25th 2008 12:37PM
Best
Plan
Yet.
doyesac Feb 11th 2008 10:00AM
I think that Blizzard is taking the wrong tack to solve the BG inequities. Instead of jigging with the mechanics of the BGs themselves, they need to look at the honor per hour ratios and balance those, because thats where the real problems arise.
As an example from my battlegroup, Retaliation: we Horde almost always win AV and consistently loose all the others. WSG, AB and EotS are all consistent wins for the Alliance. Now, is this a result of map imbalances? Unfair internal mechanics themselves? No. Other battlegroups have different consistent results — it seems likely that the results are the result of the players themselves, and the actions of the players.
We Horde win AV consistently because we play it all the time and we know what we have to do to win. All the shouting, yelling and invective thrown back and forth in /bg chat teaches (in a back-handed way) the new players what to do. We loose the other three because we don't play them — as much fun as AB is, I only play it when it's the BG daily, simply because a win (it sometimes happens!) and the extra honor rewarded will bring the time spent in AB in line with the honor I can get in an average Alterac Valley. WSG? I'm only there waiting for AV to pop, even though I play it all the time on my low-level alts. It's just not worth my time.
So why do the Alliance win the other three BGs consistently? Because that is the only way for THEM to match the honor/hour that we get in AV: well-executed, aggressive strategies can win the other 3 BGs very quickly, so (although they reward less overall honor) they give the Alliance side the chance to match our honor gains in AV.
So, what if AB gave the same amount of honor per hour as AV? What if WSG gave the same honor per hour? EotS? Well, we Horde would actually play them and we would fight as hard as we do in AV — and we would win them much more often. Rather than treating them as temporary diversions while we wait for the main show to start, we'd play them to win. And, in the long run, the players involved would LEARN the strategies required to respond to, for example, the Alliance turtling with their flag.
Oh, and since the good players wouldn't be found only in AV, but would be spending time in the other BGs, the Alliance would have a better shot at occasionally taking down Drek.
An average AV win takes 40 minutes and rewards — usually — 480 honor plus HKs. An average AB takes 30 min and usually rewards approximately... 167 honor. WSG is even worse. If Blizz just rejigs those numbers so they even out, they won't have to mess around with the internal mechanics. We players will solve the imbalances ourselves, as we teach ourselves to play the games.
And isn't that what makes a MMORPG so much fun — seeing what groups of random strangers are capable of doing?
Good_Idea Feb 11th 2008 11:23AM
>>In the past the Horde has been able to begin killing Captain Balinda Stonehearth before the Alliance can get near enough to defend her.
In my experience, Horde and Alliance get to Bal and SH at the same time. Ally a little before actually. Horde gets to IB way before Alliance though.
I don't see this making things more even at all, I just see this as giving Alliance more reason to defend SH GY+bunker and Bal. And that will force Horde to defend IB, which is exactly what Alliance doesn't want. This is going to be fun.
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WSG would be a good time if Blizz got it right. The changes they are making are absolutely useless. In 10 minutes, most AV games are finished. Should be 3 maximum before increasing damage 50%.
It doesn't really matter if they increase damage by 100% or not, it still doesn't stop the other team from camping their GY with 10 guys between me and their flag, so it won't change anything imo.
If they want to make WSG good, they need to allow the flag to be captured whether the other team has yours or not. That way there will be no benefit to holding onto flags. Sure, the game will be more run-and-gun, maybe faster (depends on the # of flag captures until game end), but imo they would also be more fun.
Epiny Feb 11th 2008 11:34AM
Balinda and Vanndar had there HP buffed in 2.3 to try and balance AV. It didn't work so they are putting it back to where it was. We will see if the AV changes work.
WSG was designed around the idea of being a FPS capture the flag style game. The problem with WSG is it just simply lasts to long. FPS capture the flag games are fast paced with lots of changes. WSG is mainly get flag and turtle. The debuff needs to occur @ 2 minutes after the flag has been picked up. That would give a flag runner enough time to cross the field and cap it if your flag is in your base. The debuff should travel WITH the flag.
Speeding WSG up would also help to bring it on par with Honor Per Hour with the rest of the BG's. Something else to consider is that most BG's take 30 minutes or more to complete now, unless you are running a Premade against pugs. WSG could be the quick "Fix" for your PvP fill. The entire game should last NO MORE than 20 minutes and that's if the game is 3/2 flag caps.