AV already">Learn to play AV already



Yep, it’s that time again. Time to rant and bitch because I like it oh, I like it so much.

Since my early days on the Karazhan server, play­ing AV was not so fun because we, Allies, always lost. Not because we were out­num­bered, not because we were out­geared, just because we were out­played. And why were we out­played? Because peo­ple seem not to agree on the same tac­tic. And we all know what that brings to the /bg chat, right? Right now I’m sorry that I didn’t print screen some of the epic con­ver­sa­tions dur­ing AV matches. It seems to me some think that if you type a lot and not move a mus­cle to actu­ally be use­ful, you gain more instead of just shut­ting the hell up, let­ting oth­ers to con­cen­trate on the play and not drag­ging them into your pathetic and piti­ful attempts to be some­one over the Inter­net just because life treats you unfairly.

Mov­ing to Dag­ger­spine some­how improved this, mean­ing the same thing hap­pens only on some matches instead of all the matches. It’s almost a 50–50 chance to run into pizza-boys (if you play on Dag­ger­spine, you know what I mean). Peo­ple here seem a bit more smart in their play and more will­ing to play as a team. But in the end it all comes down to luck and time you play AV. I tend to play in the morn­ing until 14:00 game time, when school is over and AV gets a bit… crowded. Then I resume my honor farm­ing at around 22:00 but we only start to really win around 23:00 when bed time is up for the ones that crowded AV.

But all trou­bles aside, AV is still the best honor resource and after 2.4 it’s actu­ally one of the fastest bat­tle­grounds if played wise. What do I mean by wise? Just read these easy-to-understand tips and you’ll see what I mean.

Tips for play­ing Alterac Val­ley as Alliance

• Don’t fight in the mid­dle — although being fun, it’s the most stu­pid thing to do. Look­ing at the honor you gain by doing this, just stick­y­ing to nor­mal tac­tics is more reward­ing. Not to men­tion that by doing this, AV gets too long and boring;
• Try not to run/get feared out when killing enemy gen­er­als — noth­ing is more annoy­ing then a reset at 10%, is there? Also, if you are the one tank­ing, do it in the back of the room. It’s safer;
• Skip Galv if he is heav­ily defended (more than 5) — every time you wipe at Galv, God kills a kitten;
• Don’t cap IB GY while rush­ing towards the Relief Hut — this is really impor­tant and you need to think about it for a sec­ond: you just killed Drek, horde killed Balinda and are going for tow­ers, cap­ping Stone­heart GY on the way. Only GY you have right now are the Aid Sta­tion and Stormpike, along with Snow­fall being Con­tested. They only have the Relief Hut and Frost­wolf, along with Stone­heart being Con­tested. If you take Ice­blood GY, they will be left to respawn at FW and thus bring­ing a lot of them to defense. And you don’t want that. If instead you just ignore it and only take IB and TP tow­ers (very impor­tant to also defend them) and rush­ing towards FW GY to cap it, horde that respawn at IB will just rush for­ward. Later in the game when they have a more advanced GY, IB can be capped, but not sooner;
• Stay and defend Frost­wolf GY with a rea­son­able amount of peo­ple — that means 5 but no more than 10. Cry for help if you get crowded. Rest of the attack­ing peo­ple should rush the Relief Hut;
• Don’t fight if you get bot­tle­necked — just gather around, mount and run pass them. If you die, try again until you suc­ceed or find an alter­nate route. Fight­ing will just mean less time spent in offense;
• If the game is close, tak­ing both mines puts a bit of pres­sure on your enemies;

An uncon­ven­tional tac­tic I saw work many times was to heavy defend (also called to tur­tle). This requires you to:

• Defend Balinda;
• Defend Icewing and Stone­heart Bunkers;
• Form a defense line between the three of the above points;

This type of game would bring a nice amount of honor (maybe even more than a rush game) and is based on mak­ing the oppos­ing fac­tion run out of resources. It’s impor­tant to move back and recap bunkers in Dun Bal­tar if any get pass you or they stealth. Also hav­ing a group stealth to the Relief Hut and try to ninja the tow­ers puts lots of pres­sure. Hell, might even be lucky and destroy them if defense is really weak.

These being said and my anger hav­ing went away after this post, I leave you with Alterac Val­ley — New­bie Guide and Alterac Val­ley — Stan­dard Bat­tle Strat­egy over at wowwiki.

I salute you.

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