"comp stomp" new pvp brawl

PVP Battlegrounds
42

i feel the same, getting some hard achivements in here ruins it for everyone, imagine if they gave spectral tigers in the next brawl, that would be fun for proud collectos haha

43

I am after “recap 50 flags” achievement and it feels like it would be easier on normal pvp AB. In the brawl seems everyone and their families are capping and defending flags. Couldn’t defend even one in three battles.

44

I gave it a little try last night and while the actual combat AI leaves a lot to be desired, I was pleasantly surprised with the complexity of the team work.

I witnessed:

  • AI teams rallying to take Blacksmith from behind while the Alliance fought on the bridge.
  • AI characters baiting the my team away from capture points so a rogue or druid could back cap.
  • AI disengaging from fights when they were not being targetted to try and steal the point.
45

well, for the moment, AI is kinda on its learning phase.
so, lets give it time.
then it murders us horribly.

perhaps it even learns to name its “players” with cyrilic alphabets to make eu gamers to drop the ball at the gate. :smiley:

clever girl…

:slight_smile:

2 Likes
46

I know some people think this is not so good (or worse)… But I’ve been playing it since Wednesday, and I must say I like it.

Sure thing at the beginning, it was like this:

  • The AI being absolutely terrible , desperately trying to take Stables, while we were all in there farming them ( and one or two of us behind capping remaining bases)

  • The AI players like rogues / druids not using interrupts / cc etc…

  • winning every game 5:0 …

Then after a few games I started noticing a difference, suddenly some AI players would split off main group, go behind our backs and start capping bases we left undefended …

Then even better things started happening…
Once we started to play more defensively, leaving someone to defend bases, things like this started happening:

  • AI players like rogue/druid, would sneak up on stealth, and try to cap flags,
  • The above players would start coming in pairs (rogue + feral) …
  • Usually having a healer or more AI players right behind them, to surprise you
  • They would start circumventing places where we fought - for example, exploiting the fact that they had Gold Mine, and none of us bothered going there to fight for it - and using it to pass safely towards the Farm, usually out of sight of us, until it was too late.
  • The HP and damage output increased as well for the AI, making it look like they geared up . Suddenly killing a healer became more problematic than it was in first few games.
  • They started to exploit our mistakes… For example:
    When fighting at a base around flag, as soon as the fight would spread (they would intentionally try to lure players away form flag), one of them would suddenly sprint towards the flag and cap it (when there was nothing interrupting it, like some AOE damage, like the one made by fire mages etc… ). This would sometimes happen during a very busy , very chaotic fights (especially at the Blacksmith base).
  • They also seem to react towards flag capping - for example:
    • you start capping a flag at let’s say Stables, suddenly a lot of them are rushing towards you, the moment you clicked the flag…

Over all it was an interesting experience, and I enjoyed it, especially the aspect of seeing the AI actually learning and mimicking the tactics it learnt from players.
I think this might also be a perfect opportunity for some players to practice tactics, as at this time , the AI is nowhere near the level you sometimes experience in battlegrounds, when you meet let’s say a Russian team.

One thing I noticed however is this:

  • whenever any of us (players) would be capping flag, it is a 5 - 6 sec cast.
  • when one of the AI players appears on the flag it usually takes significantly less (felt like half the time required for humans) for the flag to actually become capped.
  • their interrupts and cc seems to have little or not cooldowns - I fought a rogue AI that ambushed me on a way between bases (yeah I know!), and I got so many casts interrupted on my mage (I play fire, so I tried to abuse the greater pyro + combustion + meteor whenever I could) - I got kicked more times than I would get kicked by a real human playing a rogue. Same goes for stuns like kidney shot.
  • Their interrupts are ridiculously precise/fast - seen them interrupting casts that are less than 1sec.
  • They also seem to get out of CC (without damage breaking it) really often, more often than usual cooldowns would allow for (felt like a pvp trinket without a cd… )…
    Trying to sheep some of them became really pointless at one point.

I’m quite interested to see what the AI will be like today in the evening (I usually play after work in the evenings). I was even joking yesterday, that at this rate, byt the same time tomorrow, the AI players should have Russian names and should be speaking fluent Russian, and will start farming us players :wink:

ps. I did witness one or two groups that were thinking that they can still just farm the AI at stables, and it turned into loosing against bots… It can happen!
Luckily out of the 30 - 40 games I played since Wednesday evening, the loosing occurred once or twice, and mostly due to overconfidence, and underestimating the AI opponent, than due to lack of skills…

ps2. The reputation gain with Defilers is nice. But once I reach exalted I will be taking a very long break from Arathi Basin for sure !

ps3. for some bizarre reason I was unable to post form the character on which I actually played this brawl on.

2 Likes
48

You have written all my thoughts about the AI.

As a mage I had to iceblock (IB) surrounded by 5-7 bots. It was my plan to 2xblink/invis when the IB weared off. The same 1/1000 second my IB vanished I was insta-killed despite I had +100k health. I have never tried that against real opponents. :slight_smile:

Also. The AI has become good at swarming in 1-2 groups between bases and also go for new bases.

I was sure the bots were in 415+'ish gear until I was ganked by the same bot with ~140k health. The interrupts (a lot of them!) were ultra-precise and I kept recieving big chunks of damage despite I used all my defensives.

My destro warlock (solo-defended GM) died 2 times to a single “low-geared” bot (prolly the monk) yesterday despite I spammed stuns and fears between my chaos bolts. The third time I attacked the bot while the bot had like 30-40% health and wasnt fully healed up I managed to kill the bot. I had like 10% health left when that fight was over. Other times the bots are walk in a park.

I have seen druid+rogue teaming up and stealth-capturing farm a few times while it was defended by only a single player. The druid captured farm while the rogue kept sapping the lonely player.

Et cetera.

I haven’t had any easy wins like 5-0 bases or 1500-100 score since wednesday. :slight_smile:

1 Like
49

I have been enjoying this a lot. Sure, it might not be “too difficult” but the AI sure seem to be learning; I can sense a lot higher damage input and counter attacks than just a few days ago.

But for a time poor player, being able to just do a little “pretend PvP”, getting a little rep, and a few Marks of Honor is very welcoming. I have not done PvP in quite a while, because it can result in nothing. I just do not enough time to pour into “none-guaranteed” content.

It´s just a week at the time too, is that not so?

50

My main problem with this brawl is none of my pvp addons work.

1 Like
51

I did try it too, its actually challenging because when AI focuses you then you are pretty much dead since they all attack you at once.

1 Like
52

I’m very glad this appears to be progressing. By this i mean the AI.

I think people right now see it as watered down bg, while i think it’s actually the future of WoW after they manage to write good enough code to implement this AI throughout the game world.

It’s probably a dry run with players as guinea pigs. In this case i don’t even think i mind, because i believe the world should be and feel much more alive after implementation. Of course assuming that what will be implemented will be up to some standards.

1 Like
53

Thing is, even if it comes to a point where it plays as good as most teams, whats the point in it?

I play to face off against other players, seek out other mages to see if i can learn something or completely lock them down with stuff i’ve picked up as i’ve played bgs.

Facing off against johhny awesome the npc for some pointless win, doesnt seem appealing to me.

1 Like
54

It’s not about AI pvp. It’s about what they learn from this implementation of it that would be transplanted to npc’s. Every npc, having some sort of AI, i think the engagement and immersion the player would feel would increase quite a lot.

But again, if it’s done good.

#edit: to further expand…if this goes through, killing 10 of x mobs for a single quest might become a tedious undertaking if they cover their heals by stunning you, baiting interupt etc etc…

end result would be, hopefully more engaging leveling and end game content, but leveling in particular would just take longer under the same parameters as it is now, just going by logic, fights would take longer. So, not exactly a step in the right direction is it?

But over there, there’s some ruckus about a level squish. These two things might be connected and the end result of both would be shorter, more engaging gameplay to reach max lvl and hopefully more of the same beyond.

My 2 cents…nay 2 nuggets of friday evening weed wisdom. :laughing:

3 Likes
55

They got stronger. Wednesday they were just standing in the center. Now they are running everywhere. 1500 - 1200 my last battle.

1 Like
56

I just played two games for the first time.

First game we roflstomped them, 5:0, but i did notice that they fight good. They didn’t do or couldn’t do the strategy required to win the game, but when actually playing against them, they fought good, like you have to be on point.

Second game, they got to a very respectable 1100 i think, with 3 bases at the end.

Some things i noticed which i couldn’t in the first game:

-they had a zerg turned defense team at stables, holding mill and attacking bs (we never did win that stable back)
-fighting on roads and someone stealth capping
-not being lured away from the flag when defense of it is needed even if it means a sure kill. Now this has two sides of the coin, i was literally dead meat, escaping from stables towards bs. Any human druid would have separated from the group and finished me off, but this AI turned back to stables 20 meters from the stables fence on the road to bs. But the other side is, bases are sure to be defended, a quality lacking in many human teams.
-rogue opened up on me at lm, we were 4, i was full hp, he was alone and couldn’t stop the cap (he opened a few secs after someone assaulted the flag) no human rogue would do this.
-On the second game, the group assaulting bs, had a priest healer, so they fought there for a while, we slowly killed them and after all were dead, in comes another priest healer (idk if it was the same). Any human would turn around, although it’s possible we triggered some AI algorhythm by attacking it…ie when attacked, they try to fight/outheal not run away…but if the Ai would recognize not to go across the water towards bs two seconds earlier it would be very lifelike as we wouldn’t even be able to reach it. It was happening on the spot where the crates in the water are.
-otherwise healer positioning was also good, inside the wrecking ball, hard to reach, idk if that is scripted or just somehow happens unintentionally but it looked good.
-oh i almost forgot. ret pala bubbled at 10k 1v1. Very lifelike! :joy:

1 Like
57

Brawls are suppose to be about pvp. This is pve.

I saw that on Wednesday. Rogue sapped someone at bs and capped the flag.

I also had a warlock coming to bs while I was guarding it on rogue (was bored so couldn’t be bothered to zerg at stables). He didn’t do anything though apart from trying to cap flag.

58

played against the ai as eu horde earlier we won 1500-200 then queued random bg got ab and won the eu alliance 1500-0…

1 Like
59

yeah they are “somehow” better than some rly bad teams, but if u find a good team ur gonna 1500-0 them, curious i decided to stay and defnd farm and see if by not hypercarrying or rushing stable things would have been different, we won 1500-1200… lol… at some point thy even had 4 bases, but i guess its because its so easy some ppl are just gonna afk though it to farm.

1 Like
60

The only time it’s been a bit more challenging is when we have no healers (which seems to be happening all the time).

61

Exactly.

Still a lot of work to be done with them though. They’re very predictable and buggy. The same bots tend to go to the same places most matches - druid and rogue try to ninja farm. Shaman, mage and SP go LM. The rest spread out between BS and GM allowing for easy countering/funnelling.

They’re also completely trainable when they’re not riding back and forth bugged between two objectives, which I saw a lot between stables and GM/LM. A wee moonfire here and there and I could make them follow me wherever I wanted them to go.

Their ability to focus is immediate. I’d jump into a fray and be targeted for destruction by most the team despite other targets being there almost immediately. Got to the point where I was literally bouncing in and out.

And as someone else mentioned above they trinket immediately regardless of the CC. Root spam was easily abused.

A lot of work still to be done with them but it was interesting to work out the patterns. Gave me a chance to tidy up some weakauras and TelMeWhens and easy, “practically assured” CPs too :smiley:

62

If these style of events help people get the difficult achievements, I’m game <3