Smart posts here and good arguments, that’s why I actually decided to give you an opinion.
I’m a very experienced AV commander, I love this BG and I’ve seen both sides of AV, different metas, and also more recently both sides of the premade and non premade gaming.
Your points are valid to some extent, mainly the decent players not joining in AV pugs, but premades are NOT the problem. I’m mostly playing premades recently but I’ve been monitoring how pugs go, alliance loses in 100% the same way EVERY game and does NOT intend to do anything about it. Even if you mixed the premade gamers into pugs, they would not bring what it takes to win at galv. If horde is defending in a serious way.
It’s simple as that, Horde changed strats, alliance hasn’t reacted yet. Any semi-decent premade has it’s way of playing vs defense in a coordinated way, pugs just don’t have a strategy at all. Even between premades, the strats of how to win vary a lot. While stronger premades can and will steamroll almost anything you throw at them, the less strong or organized premades use different strats to play a bit slower and safer (not gonna go into that in detail).
With xrealm BGs it’s impossible for any decent AV leader to build any sort of reputation. It’s like this: Join BG, make some calls, get ignored, smartassed or outright offended (esp. if proposing unorthodox strats). I’ve literally given up even trying to teach alliance pugs anything because they just don’t care. As many have stated before, you will always be outnumbered cause about 10-30% of ur players are literally gonna be AFK, questing or just farming HKs hoping for somebody else to win the game for them.
As others have stated, doing anything about premades will make rankers swap WSG and AV will be dead soon, it’s not the solution.
The real solution for helping alliance is a meta swap to things that make sense for pugs, which you as a horde player cannot assist with in any way. Please enjoy the 80% winrate you mentioned, meanwhile I’ll enjoy my 7-8min wins.
— Off Topic —
If any frustrated alliance player reads this and wants to do something about strats, I can line out some ideas and their pros and cons shortly since its kinda offtopic, not going into strategic implication of the how and why:
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F**k Galv, rush IB GY + def it. Pros: If you lose the fight, you will have killed 3-5 extra Ltds and are likely to lose faster. If you win the fight, you get a chance at winning a slow siege game against heavy def (which would otherwise happen at IB Gy where pugs never get through). Cons: Getting a win will be way harder than with other strats
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F**k Galv, rush RH, defend horde base: Pros: Good GY, literally free take on the start. Cons: You will most likely not last 5 minutes there, in case you do you’re most likely never killing any Ltds
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Hiding/Counterpushing aka Dont attack. Pros: Horde will come out of def if they don’t see alliance for 1-3 minutes, can be done at any point of the game. Cons: Actually requires coordination, good luck getting ppl to follow such strats in pugs.
Note: It literally makes more sense to not attack for a few minutes and let horde come out rather than permanently banging your head on a brick wall at IB GY while your base is silently going down with noone caring, which brings me to the last point
- Defend correctly. Semi-Quick explanation: 100% of the time if its zerg, alliance zerg around SH gy, horde gets SHB semi-free, sneaks left to IWB with 10-15 ppl, get it for free. Some Horde sneaks and Backdoors, both is never prevented. Stop the backdooring, actually defend IWB correctly and horde will wipe just as much as alliance does on IB. Pros: You whip the horde with their owns weapons, can be combined with Counterpushing later on. Cons: Nobody gets anything out of that :3
I’m too lazy to write this stuff into a proper guide but I hope you understand that some of the things can be combined/swapped as the current game state demands. All alliance pugs need is ANY different start than wiping on galv tbh, but every pug game I join the pinnacle of strategic discussion (if any happens at all) is whether it’s better to go left or right on your way to getting rekt at galv.
To sum it up, there’s many ways for alliance to get more bang for their buck in AV, starting with not afking, botting, mindless grinding and ending with actually making strategic plays , after all alterac is like an RTS.
PS: I’ve tested some of these strats in pugs and they can work if executed correctly. But hf trying to explain somebody (lets call this person a non-premader) who’s shouting “NOOB NEVER CAP IB GY” at you why it can make sense in the current state of AV. Then I watch them go galv and the game go 100% the same way as every other game.