How do you guys do in AV?

[cepheus]

I just have too much fun humiliating allys in AV nowadays :D I allmost never lose, and about each other games i manage to keep allys at zero (or close to) honor.

Currently I am sitting on about 60 wins in a row without one single loss (will post a screenshot of my counter when I finally lose).

It is just insane how much difference a good coordinated 5man team (or multiboxed in our case :D ) can do in a 40 man BG raid.
I've even won several times a gainst a 30+ premade AV team.

I especially enjoy those 30min+ fights where allys are getting 0 bonus honor. I wish I could have log of all those ally BG chats :)

[Dominian]

I havent done any AV myself so i cant realy say i have a clue but 5 players who play like a team can do pretty much anything in av..

Also been curiouse on how people do wsg,ab and eots?

If you hug crossroads in AB you can pretty much defend the nodes against big incs yourself and same goes for eots while wsg will be abit harder.

[ElectronDF]

What are you going to do when queue times go up to 3 hours cause they don't want to play and get 0 honor? I am not saying you can do defense, but always to shut them out makes them go away.

[Dominian]

Well i doubt it will happen since there basicly 50-60 avs up at all times in my bg and defending FW is pretty much the only way horde wins in AV in my BG... Rushing vs Rushing is lost from the start for the horde!

The way people do AV seems to be very different from BG to BG aswell!

People keep on dooing AV even if they do face skilled premades and then you REALY get 0 honor.. A good win gives horde 500-600 honor and the alliance 200-300. They never cap IB either so the run from SH to FW is very long! If you stop the first wave the alliance gives up in 90% of the cases.

[BobGnarly]

On my bg, horde (my faction) lose AV way more than they win. However, I have developed a one group strategy that I find very successful. This could be multiboxers, or just a group of 5 well-played, semi-geared pvpers.

Basically, you go to balinda with the rest of the cattle. After the kill, when most people start mewling about iwb/shgy, hang around about 30s, then mount up and head to ib tower, take it back. Then drop out and go recover tower point. Obviously, be adaptive. If the alliance is slow on taking the towers, don't just wait 30s and go. I try to give myself 2:30 from the time I leave balinda to the first tower capping.

If I manage to get both towers back, which is usually a given since only 2-3 on average will stay in the tower, if anyway, there is almost no way a pug can recover. If somebody comes and takes on the the two towers again, just go get it back. A well played group of 5 or so players can hold these two towers almost forver against and disorganized pug, which is almost always what you're facing.

Anyway, it's worked wonders for me. Try it if you're struggling on the horde side (or I imagine it'd work for the alliance side also).

[aNiMaL]

tbh,
So far I fail in PvP on the box,
I've only played 3 av's so far,
but I always ended up getting 15+hordes on me.
I'm rushing to much aswell, ending up in the middle of the enemy group isn't going to help me much.
I guess I'm still to used to being the 300+ resi warrior with a friendly healer covering health.

I've created my arena team,
but haven't started a single match due to my poor PvP performance.
I guess I'll get that started this weekend,
I've read a nice suggestion of getting drunk till you stopped caring about loosing

[Crayonbox]

animal, i suggest you start doing arenas even if you lose all 10 games. I really regretted not starting arena as soon as i hit 70 because im always 100-150 points short of whatever item i want. accumulating arena points as soon as possible is pretty important.


http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/8938/wowscrnshot081308145540js6.th.jpg (http://img182.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wowscrnshot081308145540js6.jpg)

[Icetech]

My best strat for AV was to go up and defend galv, which would usually end up with the allies leaving to move forward and galv lives:) then i watch timers and go take back IBT with like 1:30 left on the timer.. if i have time i get tower point...

Then i setup camp inside one of the towers and wait for allies to try to take it.. and 5 shamen is VERY hard to dislodge from a tower:) usually end up with liek 3 mages aoeing me:(

[Nixi]

If i successfully defend a tower by the time they kill our general will we still get honor? I hate losing over and over again to uber pre-mades. 0 honor sucks ass and the allies make sure it happens to us way more often than i would like.

Normally I try to kill Belinda, and if I fail i'll try to take one of their towers. But they always end up with like 10+ guys coming in to kill me.

[Dominian]

tbh,
So far I fail in PvP on the box,
I've only played 3 av's so far,
but I always ended up getting 15+hordes on me.
I'm rushing to much aswell, ending up in the middle of the enemy group isn't going to help me much.
I guess I'm still to used to being the 300+ resi warrior with a friendly healer covering health.

I've created my arena team,
but haven't started a single match due to my poor PvP performance.
I guess I'll get that started this weekend,
I've read a nice suggestion of getting drunk till you stopped caring about loosing

Why do you try to take 15 players alone? Why not camp a gy and use the GY guards to your advantage. At FW gy hide behinde the tree and your still in range to nuke players by the flag! Pretty fun since they are no way expecting it and they are dead before they can find you.

[heyaz]

How exactly do you make a big difference in AV? Are you in a battlegroup where horde does decent? In reckoning horde loses about 90% of AVs. I can recap a graveyard or tower with my 4, but nothing to really turn the tables. I've thought about running in and capping the db towers and maybe the aid station solo (probably suicide, but maybe would help), but I'm not sure if it would make a big difference overall

[BobGnarly]

If you successfully defend both towers, as I outlined above, the chances that they will kill your general are very low because it means they have to offtank two WMs, and your general's health and dps are VASTLY increased. I've done what I outlined about 30-40 times, and only one time have they been able to kill Drek with 2 WMs still up.

The only really valid strat to winning for them is to send a team back to get those towers. Premades will do this (and honestly, you're not going to singlehandedly beat a good premade), but pugs virtually never will, or at least not with enough people to kill you. And even if they did, if the rest of your team isn't just following you around, they have a big lead and should easily win it.

[cepheus]

Ok, I can try posting my tactics in AV (horde side). I allmost never lose in AV, but my guildmates complain on how bad horde is all the time, so I dont think that my battlegroup (EU-misery) is any better for horde than anything else. Before I logged off yesterday I counted 62 AV wins in a row without one single loss. And none of that fights was played in a premade.

So here's my little guide for multiboxing AV:

What you will need:
- A timer mod for capping
- AV trinket (the one that ports you down to FW

Before we start in the waiting area

I allways place myself in group 8 and 5 random rogues in group 1.

Then I post the following macro:

/bg Grp1(stealth):Cap+def. in DB asap
/bg Grp2+3: Cap+def. SH -THEN kill Balinda
/bg Grp4+5: Cap+def. IW -THEN kill Balinda
/bg Grp6+7: Def. Galv and recap Towers+FW when capped
/bg This is a guideline only. It is up to you to follow it or not. Dont blame me for trying.

Now, I know you guys are going to say that such macros are useless, and the first few fights is probably are too. But there are a few things to consider here:

- As you can see, I try to send two groups to each bunker. This would in most cases be overkill. However if only 20% listens, this will add two defenders in addition to whoever randoms goes to the bunkers. This is never a bad thing when you are playing defense yourself. Also getting bunkers done before Balinda is allways good. Balinda can be taken at any time. Bunkers must be taken before you can win.

- If you play late in the evening, when there is few'er AV's up, its much easyer to get people to follow your tactics after you win a few fights. Because its often many of the same people that joins, and they will see that it works. So the more AV's you do in a row, the more likly it is to win the next.

- Hopfully the macro has gotten through to a few people that actually want to try to win. If not, in worst case scenario you have just earned yourself a couple of flames because of "spamming" No big deal.

After the fight starts, I allmost never try to do any coordination or type in BG chat. After this points its just the usuall spam,flames etc and just a distraction. I highly suggest that you try to ignore everything said about you or your multiboxing. Negative or positive. Its just a distraction, and you dont need to defend yourself in chat in addition to the BG.

The first few minutes of the BG
I go and defend Galvanger. (I would only reccomend this if you are good geared and know how to play pvp good, or if you have help from 2-3 other mates. If not, go and kill Balinda instead)

After I wipe them on Galv, the tower recapping begins. Here it is absolutly crucial to have the timer mod to play a good defense. Allways go for the towers with lowest times left,unless you are too far away to reach it in time (knowing what you have a shot to recap or not commes with expiricence)

I stay and defend Tower Point,Ice bloood and Galvanger as long as possible. When I see something get capped in FW, I equipp my AV-trinket, but I do not port down right away. I stay and recap TP,IB and defend galv. This is the big reason multiboxing is abselutly played best in defence. When you are defending, you can defend a lot of nodes, but if you are attacking a bunker you will need to stay there for 4 minutes to ensure its destruction.

Now, if everything in FW get capped, I will port down when there is about 2.5mins left for destruction. This is about the time I will need to recap both towers + relief hut. If fewer things is capped, I stay and defend the forward towers longer. This also commes with exipirience, when to port down etc.

As soon as you have recapped everything in FW, run STRAIGHT to IB/TP/GALV again. Dont mind if something in FW gets capped. You still have your AV trinkets equipped and can use them again when the time runs out. Your main objective now is to recap the forward towers again.

Then I usually just repeat theese steps until we win. Sometimes it takes 10 mins, sometimes it takes 40 mins. Personally I dont care as long as allys get 0 (or close to) honor :)

If you find running up towers difficult, here's a few tips
- Allways ensure your followers are close to you when you start running up the stairs.
- Allways keep right at the stairs, since your followers fill cut the curve a bit. If you stay too far left (inner side of the curve) they will fall down while running up. This takes a little practice, but when you get it right, running up towers is no problem.
- Drop totems while you run up. Especially tremor totems. Aoe fear inside tower can be devestating
- Also use a pvp trinket in case your tremor isnt up/fails/out of range

If a lot of hordes is defending too
Then I would equip my AV-trinket (because you ALLWAYS need to prioritize defense) and run to the most forward enemy rez point. Blow up everyone ressing there as long as possible. This will make it easyer for people to get north to attack DB, and you will also keep attackers from getting to your towers. However this strategy is only when none of your towers are capped. As soon as something gets capped I either die on purpose,trinket back or run back. Wichever gets you fastest back to your defensive possition.

Hope this guide helps some winning more in AV. At least it will give you plenty of things to do, and keep you insanly busy.

[Memn]

....

Excellent writeup Cepheus. The setup macro and directions make alot of sense too. I' might have to steal that from you.

[Mudd]

Haven't played AV in a while, but this is my normal strat with my locks (horde).
- SoC spam at Galv. Hide at side of building until wave of allies go in. Go in behind them and SoC WTF spam. Results like this. ('http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/301/wowscrnshot033008073127js7.jpg')
- Skip balinda, someone else will get her. Get ready to face the group wiped at Galv.
- SoC spam through the hill at SP.
- SoC spam at bridge.
- SoC spam at aid station.
- Win.

I do galv first to sort of force a turtle because it makes SoC spamming more fun and you do get extra HKs. If they set up defenses they don't last long and we just plow through them with mass AOE, otherwise this would just cause a long turtle. When done right, and having the advantage of people 'following the boxer zomg', you have a strong first rush and just mow everything down. No need to worry about defense if most allies are between your offence and Vanndar.

[cepheus]

Haven't played AV in a while, but this is my normal strat with my locks (horde).
- SoC spam at Galv. Hide at side of building until wave of allies go in. Go in behind them and SoC WTF spam. Results like this. ('http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/301/wowscrnshot033008073127js7.jpg')
- Skip balinda, someone else will get her. Get ready to face the group wiped at Galv.
- SoC spam through the hill at SP.
- SoC spam at bridge.
- SoC spam at aid station.
- Win.

I do galv first to sort of force a turtle because it makes SoC spamming more fun and you do get extra HKs. If they set up defenses they don't last long and we just plow through them with mass AOE, otherwise this would just cause a long turtle. When done right, and having the advantage of people 'following the boxer zomg', you have a strong first rush and just mow everything down. No need to worry about defense if most allies are between your offence and Vanndar.

You forget that the best part of AV is denying your opponent to gain any honor :)

I rather play 30+ min games that end with allys getting 0 or close to honor than get quick honor myself. And anyway, as a boxer you will get alot of honorable kills if you play defensive + you can in most cases get 500+ bonus honor each game, so the honor / hour played is quite good anyway since you wont be using so much time in que, waiting for battle to start etc.

But ofcoarse this is up to personal preferences :)

Btw, I still havent lost AV. Closing in on about 70 wins in a row now.

[Yagamoth]

As an undead warlock (single boxing) the horde nearly always lost the AVs. The alliance always rushes with 25+ ppl through and simply caps the towers on the run. Since the main strategy was by then simply defending with 15 ppl and attacking with about 20, we couldn't do anything against that. The defenders were overrun and the attackers could barely break through.
Then ppl slowly started posting a strategy macro. At first there were MANY doubter. But as soon as they realized, that the defending strategy simply won't work anymore, we won again. Rushing through with 20 ppl without hesitation, 10 killing balinda, 10 capping the ally towers. After killing balinda the 10 ppl started recapping our towers. It was awesome to see, 30+ allys standing in our base, having destroyed the towers and taken the GY and unable to kill drek cause of 2 masters by his side. By now the alliance started making a bigger defense - our rush simply collapses on their bridge. By that time it's simply about, who is faster? Ally at killing drek with 2 masters or horde breaking through their defense. The ally had the advantage, until I had the idea of porting back with 1-2 healers and stay with drek. Fearing the waiting alliances into drek, spamming SoC - we won even though we were about 100 points in disadvantage, since we could only destroy one ally tower. 2h BG, yeah... It was fun.

But why I'm saying that? Simply to subscribe the idea with the tactical macro. At first it won't work, but then you start succeeding. The only thing you have to keep in mind is, that it deponds from pool to pool how your macro has to look. Ours is by now looks like that:

1 & 2 Group: North & South
3 Group: Icewing
4 Group: Stone
5 & 6 Group: Balinda
7 & 8 Group: GYs

[Spynx]

I'm the healer for a boxing team, and we win AV almost all of the time.

We start by rushing into Galv's room and nuking the first wave of ally's as they come in (we're s3/4 gear atm so this helps, used to be less successful in blues)

Now, we normally have about 5 fan-boys following us in there which can help, but is not necessary. Once we've defended Galv we'll recapp IB and TP....then basically set up a totem farm next to the 'bottleneck' near TP and kill the alliance until they cap something else.

From then it's just running between Galv, TP, IB and our base if needed. It slows the opposition down that much that even if the random's are completely useless, they should have plenty of time to kill vanndar.

The only time this falls down a bit is when you have the entire battleground following you, whispering 'wow that's so cool......how do you do that.......is that fun......can i have one.......' oh, and ofc "Reported!" (and since i'm the one with the different name, they assume i'm the leader) ?(

When this happens, no matter how much you spam /bg chat to tell them to do something, they generally just follow you around cheering and flirting....(/sigh) Even when this happens though, we have about a 50-50 chance of winning on reinforcements. It just takes a lot longer.

It's all good though as we can end up with 100-200 bonus honour kills :D

[Dominian]

Haven't played AV in a while, but this is my normal strat with my locks (horde).
- SoC spam at Galv. Hide at side of building until wave of allies go in. Go in behind them and SoC WTF spam. Results like this. ('http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/301/wowscrnshot033008073127js7.jpg')
- Skip balinda, someone else will get her. Get ready to face the group wiped at Galv.
- SoC spam through the hill at SP.
- SoC spam at bridge.
- SoC spam at aid station.
- Win.

I do galv first to sort of force a turtle because it makes SoC spamming more fun and you do get extra HKs. If they set up defenses they don't last long and we just plow through them with mass AOE, otherwise this would just cause a long turtle. When done right, and having the advantage of people 'following the boxer zomg', you have a strong first rush and just mow everything down. No need to worry about defense if most allies are between your offence and Vanndar.

You forget that the best part of AV is denying your opponent to gain any honor :)

I rather play 30+ min games that end with allys getting 0 or close to honor than get quick honor myself. And anyway, as a boxer you will get alot of honorable kills if you play defensive + you can in most cases get 500+ bonus honor each game, so the honor / hour played is quite good anyway since you wont be using so much time in que, waiting for battle to start etc.

But ofcoarse this is up to personal preferences :)

Btw, I still havent lost AV. Closing in on about 70 wins in a row now.

Hey what server do you play on and your toons names?? Were on Kazzak.

Me and a mate just started multiboxing(5x shamans both) and hope to see you in AV in the futher ;)

[magwo]

In my experience (estimated 1400-1500 AV games), the only defense worth doing is a few tower recaps. You need to make sure that the random crap players don't fail in the offense at the enemy's keep, or you will be in for a long and very improductive game.

If all you want is some fun pvp.. sure, go ahead and defend. If you're in it for the honor, never defend on large scale.. at most you should do a few tower recaps. Establishing a strong presence in the enemy keep is key to quick and efficient honor grind.


Remember, winning or losing does not have much to do with honor per time unit. Winning 1 game per hour is a lot worse than almost winning 4 games per hour.

[Crayonbox]

But if youre playing, you might as well have fun while doing it ^_~

Took me a little longer to grind out my honor for my shamans because i tend to protect belinda and play permanent defense in av. I wipe the horde group at belinda and push out the horde and they tend to go and recap the towers alliance o capped and left undefended or overrun lightly defended towers. Sure the games take longer, but its alot of fun holding off 20+ horde by yourself :)

yes I am cynical and yes i make the av games a bit of a pain for other alliance, but meh~ its fun :)

[pinotnoir]

Pugging totally sucks on Ruin for horde. I try to get about 10 people to come defend east and west frostwolf tower choke. If I can get some people there with me we can lock ally out of our base the entire match while the other 30 people go offense. Games take 20-30 min with nice honor from all the hk's. If we just try to out rush ally its a loss because ally have it to easy with no defense to hold them up. Premades we can do a rush tactic but it can be countered very easy if ally put some on defense.

[shockernub]

Pugging totally sucks on Ruin for horde. I try to get about 10 people to come defend east and west frostwolf tower choke. If I can get some people there with me we can lock ally out of our base the entire match while the other 30 people go offense. Games take 20-30 min with nice honor from all the hk's. If we just try to out rush ally its a loss because ally have it to easy with no defense to hold them up. Premades we can do a rush tactic but it can be countered very easy if ally put some on defense.

I'm on Cyclone battle group and I find that if the Horde turtle, they win, if the alliance tries to turtle, it is just a slow loss for them.

Personally, I've been doing a lot of what others mention on here, rushing to galv, then back tracking to recap the two middle towers. It usually results in a nice win if the horde dont go heavy D.

[cepheus]

Hey what server do you play on and your toons names?? Were on Kazzak.

Me and a mate just started multiboxing(5x shamans both) and hope to see you in AV in the futher ;)

I am on EU-Frostmane (MiseryBG)