Sami's Guide to the New Alterac Valley
Okay, so. As you may or may not be aware, semi-recent patches have drastically changed the way Alterac Valley works.
Let's start with a map of the territory.
All that is quite important, so to start with, I'm going to go over the significant points on the map, including listing the acronyms people use to refer to them. It's reasonably important to have a rough idea of these, as no-one takes the time to type them out during battle and asking looks bad.
At the top, towards the right, you see a line of dots. That's the Alliance pouring out of the entry tunnel. That's where you start.
Now, by the numbers:
[1]: This is Dun Baldar. This is the Alliance base. Significant points around there:
- The tombstone on the right is the Stormpike Graveyard (SPGY). This is usually the first point at which a major defence of Dun Baldar is mounted - to approach, the Horde must travel up the road. They can take the path that heads right, which is up a hill, and come down from above, dropping in from the east of the SPGY flag, but they MUST pass SPGY to get to Dun Baldar. There's a bridge heading west from SPGY that's often the site of fierce fighting.
- The tombstone on the left is the Stormpike Aid Station. Once this falls, the defence of Dun Baldar is generally likely to collapse. I'll go over how that works later.
- The two tower symbols are the Dun Baldar North and South Bunkers. They are our towers. Again, more detail later.
- The top left symbol is Vanndar Stormpike's bunker. (Generally called Vann.) Vanndar is the Alliance General, and he lives in there with the Marshals (which are referred to as WMs for reasons that will become clear). If fighting is fierce around the Aid Station flag, it's a semi-safe place to retreat to eat/drink/bandage/etc.
[2]: The Icewing Bunker. I'll go over bunkers/towers later. Sometimes called IW, sometimes Icewing, not that often actually discussed in /bg.
[3]: Stonehearth Graveyard (SHGY). This is the first graveyard the Horde will assault. This is the one Alliance generally let them keep. It's fine to slow them down a bit here, although you won't get much support, but if you retake it after the Horde do, the rest of the raid will object. I'll explain why when I go over graveyards.
[4]: Balinda's Room: Captain Balinda Stonehearth lives in here. The Horde will probably kill her quickly. It can be a reasonable slow point, but that's somewhat Advanced AV - I'll explain that later too.
[5]: The Stonehearth Bunker (SH). I've heard rumours that this will be changed soon, but at present the AV geography is such that the Horde can assault this bunker before Alliance can actually reach it. This makes it tricky to defend, although sometimes we manage to retake it.
[6]: The Snowfall Graveyard. This is a 'neutral' graveyard that either side can claim; usually Alliance takes it and keeps it, and Horde let us for the exact same reason we let them have SHGY.
[7]: Iceblood Garrison/Captain Galvangar's Room (Galv). This is the Horde captain. You will frequently see people saying SKIP GALV before the battle starts. You will invariably see people attacking Galv. This is reasonable - if you kill Galv, the Horde lose 100 reinforcements and they don't get his buff. (Both captains periodically throw out a 2 minute buff to the entire raid.) Plus everyone gets 62 honour. He's not that tough these days, and it only takes a few people to kill him, so it's not a big deal. It only becomes a problem if the Horde have a few people defending him - then it's best to skip him, but some people won't. How that plays out can either be a brief hassle or Alliance defeat in AV and your ability to influence this will be minimal. I personally ignore Galv in the confident knowledge that he'll die anyway and I can do more useful things.
[8]: Iceblood Tower (IB). The first of the Horde towers you can reach. I personally tend to go straight here and assault it. It has a Frostwolf Bowman (NPC defender) directly in front of the door who will shoot at you while you try to take the flag if you stand on the flag, but if you stand against the wall, out of line of sight of the bowman, you can take it fine. (Bowmen do not move.)
[9]: Iceblood Graveyard (IBGY). One of the first general targets Alliance go for. It's a graveyard. Sometimes Horde defend here too.
[10]: Tower Point (TP). A tower. Doesn't have a Bowman in front of the door. Does have Wing Commander Sligore lying at the bottom of the tower - talk to him and tell him to go and he'll be a hassle for the Horde, and might even make it back to Dun Baldar.
[11]: Frostwolf Graveyard (FWGY). The equivalent to SPGY.
[12]: Frostwolf Keep. The Horde base. Key points:
- The two towers. East and West Frostwolf Towers. They're towers.
- The Frostwolf Relief Hut (RH) - the key graveyard. You'll generally see people calling to RUSH RH at the start of the battle - it is possible to get to RH fast and assault it early, and can make for a quick and comprehensive victory if successful.
- Drek's Room. Drek'thar is the Horde General, and he lives in his bunker with his Warmasters, the reason Alliance call the tower dudes WMs.
Yep, all that detail and I've pretty much just explained the map. I promise, it's simple once you get used to it. Now let me explain how these things function, and then I'll give a rough overview of tactical suggestions.
Each team starts with 600 reinforcements. These are lost in batches when a tower burns or a captain dies, singly whenever a player dies, and completely when the General is killed.
Graveyards
Graveyards are important, because graveyards are where you res when you die - and you will die. A lot. When you die, you res at the nearest Alliance-owned graveyard to the point where you died. If Alliance have no controlled graveyards, you come back in the entry tunnel.
A graveyard is Alliance-controlled if it shows as a solid blue tombstone on the map. If it's half-blue, half-white, Alliance have attacked it, but it hasn't "capped" - which is to say, the timer hasn't completed on conversion, and it's still contested. If it's half-white, half-red, the Horde have attacked it. If it's red, the Horde control it.
The reason we never touch SHGY is that if we do, the Horde, who can be presumed not to have SPGY yet if they're losing SHGY, will then be resurrecting further back - at FWGY or RH, most likely. This is bad because it means that our Offensive team (referred to as O) will now be wading through their entire raid to try and reach their objectives, and it gets ugly and messy and slow and difficult for everyone. People get very upset about this.
If you die before one of the more southern graveyards caps, you'll find yourself back at Dun Baldar or SPGY, and you'll be on Defence (D) from there unless you find a way past the Horde, who at that point will probably be locking up the choke point at Stonehearth.
To assault a graveyard, find the flag - a sort of tower thing with the flags of the controlling faction hanging on it. Get close to it and right-click it. You will begin opening it. It is distinctly possible that the Horde will attack you, when you try this. An assaulted flag gets a black-and-white version of the flag it's changing to.
To defend, again, get close, right-click, hope you stay long enough to complete it.
Towers
Taking the towers out/defending them is an important part of the Alterac Valley process. Two reasons: first, you get honour for every Horde tower you destroy, and for every Alliance bunker intact when the battle ends. The second reason is warmasters.
Each general starts out with four WMs, one for each of the towers that faction controls. When a tower is destroyed, two things happen:
1) That faction loses reinforcements.
2) The WM associated with the tower disappears.
If you don't get the towers before you attack the general, you have warmasters live when you attack him, and they get involved in the fight and it's all just nasty and ugly.
To attack a tower, go up to the top, go around until you find the doorway, step inside, and right-click on the flag. To defend a bunker, you go inside and run up the stairs, then find the flag, which is on the top floor on the other side from the stairs.
You have four minutes to defend a bunker that's been assaulted. Once the bunker is destroyed, that's it, it's out of the game.
The Generals
The ultimate objective of the game is to kill the opposing team's general. Because we're Alliance, let's talk about Drek.
He has four Warmasters and two dogs. You want to take out the towers to get rid of the WMs - it's generally possible to take Drek out with one or two WMs live, but more than that and they'll probably wipe your raid. The WMs bounce around hitting people and whirlwinding them.
Drek's dogs are ordinary, not-that-tough elites. You can more-or-less ignore them, these days.
Drek himself hits fairly hard, whirlwinds, and bounces around if he's not getting tanked. He needs to be tanked, and the tank needs to be healed. If you're a healer, heal the tank; if you ARE a tank, take tankish gear into AV with you. He's not the toughest boss in the world but he does require genuine tanking. If you're going to die, just die, then run back in - usually the Alliance doesn't attack Drek without having RH, which means you're a five-second run away.
This is important: If anyone on Drek's threat table leaves the bunker, he resets completely. Do NOT reset him when the raid is actually trying to kill him. Doing this can lose the battle for your side. (Note: Galv also resets if someone on his aggro list leaves the bunker, but that happens very rarely.)
Tactics
So, now you have a rough idea of where things are and what they do, you're wondering what you're supposed to do about it.
For your first couple of forays into AV, you have two primary options:
1) Hang back with the defence, kill the Horde (or heal the people who are killing the Horde), slow them down while O does its job. Advantages: fairly simple. Disadvantages: You don't get that familiar with the rest of the map.
2) Follow the crowd. Go where a bunch of other people seem to be going, kill what they kill, get used to the lay of the land. Advantages: You get used to the terrain. Disadvantages: Can be confusing.
There's nothing wrong with it, though. I'd done a LOT of AV before I ever assaulted my first tower or graveyard - I left that to other people, mostly, and just killed the NPCs and Horde that got in our way. Eventually you'll get used to it all and things will come naturally.
Once you get used to the terrain and aren't getting lost as much as you used to, you'll start getting some ideas about what you should be doing when, that suits your class, playstyle, talents, etc.
One final section:
Turnins
When a Horde player dies, their corpse will, until they res at the graveyard, stay where it fell, and if you mouse over it you get a little insignia symbol. Loot it, and you'll "remove insignia". This means they can only res at the graveyard (no sneaking back into the bunker for them!) and you'll get some loot: a couple of silver, some armor scraps, and maybe Storm Crystals, Medallions, and occasionally an amusing grey item. The white items are the turnins. They'll disappear from your inventory as soon as the battle finishes.
Most of the time the game is over too fast to worry, but sometimes it'll pan out such that people will be going for handing them in. Especially the Storm Crystals. Turnins give you rep with both the Stormpike Guard and Ironforge.
Destinations:
Armor Scraps: A dwarf standing in front of the forge in the middle of Dun Baldar. Hand in in groups of 20. He'll give you a "Polished Armor" buff that increases your armor value.
Storm Crystals: There's a little path that heads off behind the North Bunker. There are some druids there. Hand in in groups of 5 or singly.
Medallions: Hand in to the Wing Commanders if they're up - they appear by the hippogriffs near the vendors.
Since all of these people are at Dun Baldar, it's definitely not worth worrying about looting Horde unless you're on Defence or you want to prevent a Horde player from returning to the place they died.
All this was just written off-the-cuff, so: any questions?
Let's start with a map of the territory.
All that is quite important, so to start with, I'm going to go over the significant points on the map, including listing the acronyms people use to refer to them. It's reasonably important to have a rough idea of these, as no-one takes the time to type them out during battle and asking looks bad.
At the top, towards the right, you see a line of dots. That's the Alliance pouring out of the entry tunnel. That's where you start.
Now, by the numbers:
[1]: This is Dun Baldar. This is the Alliance base. Significant points around there:
- The tombstone on the right is the Stormpike Graveyard (SPGY). This is usually the first point at which a major defence of Dun Baldar is mounted - to approach, the Horde must travel up the road. They can take the path that heads right, which is up a hill, and come down from above, dropping in from the east of the SPGY flag, but they MUST pass SPGY to get to Dun Baldar. There's a bridge heading west from SPGY that's often the site of fierce fighting.
- The tombstone on the left is the Stormpike Aid Station. Once this falls, the defence of Dun Baldar is generally likely to collapse. I'll go over how that works later.
- The two tower symbols are the Dun Baldar North and South Bunkers. They are our towers. Again, more detail later.
- The top left symbol is Vanndar Stormpike's bunker. (Generally called Vann.) Vanndar is the Alliance General, and he lives in there with the Marshals (which are referred to as WMs for reasons that will become clear). If fighting is fierce around the Aid Station flag, it's a semi-safe place to retreat to eat/drink/bandage/etc.
[2]: The Icewing Bunker. I'll go over bunkers/towers later. Sometimes called IW, sometimes Icewing, not that often actually discussed in /bg.
[3]: Stonehearth Graveyard (SHGY). This is the first graveyard the Horde will assault. This is the one Alliance generally let them keep. It's fine to slow them down a bit here, although you won't get much support, but if you retake it after the Horde do, the rest of the raid will object. I'll explain why when I go over graveyards.
[4]: Balinda's Room: Captain Balinda Stonehearth lives in here. The Horde will probably kill her quickly. It can be a reasonable slow point, but that's somewhat Advanced AV - I'll explain that later too.
[5]: The Stonehearth Bunker (SH). I've heard rumours that this will be changed soon, but at present the AV geography is such that the Horde can assault this bunker before Alliance can actually reach it. This makes it tricky to defend, although sometimes we manage to retake it.
[6]: The Snowfall Graveyard. This is a 'neutral' graveyard that either side can claim; usually Alliance takes it and keeps it, and Horde let us for the exact same reason we let them have SHGY.
[7]: Iceblood Garrison/Captain Galvangar's Room (Galv). This is the Horde captain. You will frequently see people saying SKIP GALV before the battle starts. You will invariably see people attacking Galv. This is reasonable - if you kill Galv, the Horde lose 100 reinforcements and they don't get his buff. (Both captains periodically throw out a 2 minute buff to the entire raid.) Plus everyone gets 62 honour. He's not that tough these days, and it only takes a few people to kill him, so it's not a big deal. It only becomes a problem if the Horde have a few people defending him - then it's best to skip him, but some people won't. How that plays out can either be a brief hassle or Alliance defeat in AV and your ability to influence this will be minimal. I personally ignore Galv in the confident knowledge that he'll die anyway and I can do more useful things.
[8]: Iceblood Tower (IB). The first of the Horde towers you can reach. I personally tend to go straight here and assault it. It has a Frostwolf Bowman (NPC defender) directly in front of the door who will shoot at you while you try to take the flag if you stand on the flag, but if you stand against the wall, out of line of sight of the bowman, you can take it fine. (Bowmen do not move.)
[9]: Iceblood Graveyard (IBGY). One of the first general targets Alliance go for. It's a graveyard. Sometimes Horde defend here too.
[10]: Tower Point (TP). A tower. Doesn't have a Bowman in front of the door. Does have Wing Commander Sligore lying at the bottom of the tower - talk to him and tell him to go and he'll be a hassle for the Horde, and might even make it back to Dun Baldar.
[11]: Frostwolf Graveyard (FWGY). The equivalent to SPGY.
[12]: Frostwolf Keep. The Horde base. Key points:
- The two towers. East and West Frostwolf Towers. They're towers.
- The Frostwolf Relief Hut (RH) - the key graveyard. You'll generally see people calling to RUSH RH at the start of the battle - it is possible to get to RH fast and assault it early, and can make for a quick and comprehensive victory if successful.
- Drek's Room. Drek'thar is the Horde General, and he lives in his bunker with his Warmasters, the reason Alliance call the tower dudes WMs.
Yep, all that detail and I've pretty much just explained the map. I promise, it's simple once you get used to it. Now let me explain how these things function, and then I'll give a rough overview of tactical suggestions.
Each team starts with 600 reinforcements. These are lost in batches when a tower burns or a captain dies, singly whenever a player dies, and completely when the General is killed.
Graveyards
Graveyards are important, because graveyards are where you res when you die - and you will die. A lot. When you die, you res at the nearest Alliance-owned graveyard to the point where you died. If Alliance have no controlled graveyards, you come back in the entry tunnel.
A graveyard is Alliance-controlled if it shows as a solid blue tombstone on the map. If it's half-blue, half-white, Alliance have attacked it, but it hasn't "capped" - which is to say, the timer hasn't completed on conversion, and it's still contested. If it's half-white, half-red, the Horde have attacked it. If it's red, the Horde control it.
The reason we never touch SHGY is that if we do, the Horde, who can be presumed not to have SPGY yet if they're losing SHGY, will then be resurrecting further back - at FWGY or RH, most likely. This is bad because it means that our Offensive team (referred to as O) will now be wading through their entire raid to try and reach their objectives, and it gets ugly and messy and slow and difficult for everyone. People get very upset about this.
If you die before one of the more southern graveyards caps, you'll find yourself back at Dun Baldar or SPGY, and you'll be on Defence (D) from there unless you find a way past the Horde, who at that point will probably be locking up the choke point at Stonehearth.
To assault a graveyard, find the flag - a sort of tower thing with the flags of the controlling faction hanging on it. Get close to it and right-click it. You will begin opening it. It is distinctly possible that the Horde will attack you, when you try this. An assaulted flag gets a black-and-white version of the flag it's changing to.
To defend, again, get close, right-click, hope you stay long enough to complete it.
Towers
Taking the towers out/defending them is an important part of the Alterac Valley process. Two reasons: first, you get honour for every Horde tower you destroy, and for every Alliance bunker intact when the battle ends. The second reason is warmasters.
Each general starts out with four WMs, one for each of the towers that faction controls. When a tower is destroyed, two things happen:
1) That faction loses reinforcements.
2) The WM associated with the tower disappears.
If you don't get the towers before you attack the general, you have warmasters live when you attack him, and they get involved in the fight and it's all just nasty and ugly.
To attack a tower, go up to the top, go around until you find the doorway, step inside, and right-click on the flag. To defend a bunker, you go inside and run up the stairs, then find the flag, which is on the top floor on the other side from the stairs.
You have four minutes to defend a bunker that's been assaulted. Once the bunker is destroyed, that's it, it's out of the game.
The Generals
The ultimate objective of the game is to kill the opposing team's general. Because we're Alliance, let's talk about Drek.
He has four Warmasters and two dogs. You want to take out the towers to get rid of the WMs - it's generally possible to take Drek out with one or two WMs live, but more than that and they'll probably wipe your raid. The WMs bounce around hitting people and whirlwinding them.
Drek's dogs are ordinary, not-that-tough elites. You can more-or-less ignore them, these days.
Drek himself hits fairly hard, whirlwinds, and bounces around if he's not getting tanked. He needs to be tanked, and the tank needs to be healed. If you're a healer, heal the tank; if you ARE a tank, take tankish gear into AV with you. He's not the toughest boss in the world but he does require genuine tanking. If you're going to die, just die, then run back in - usually the Alliance doesn't attack Drek without having RH, which means you're a five-second run away.
This is important: If anyone on Drek's threat table leaves the bunker, he resets completely. Do NOT reset him when the raid is actually trying to kill him. Doing this can lose the battle for your side. (Note: Galv also resets if someone on his aggro list leaves the bunker, but that happens very rarely.)
Tactics
So, now you have a rough idea of where things are and what they do, you're wondering what you're supposed to do about it.
For your first couple of forays into AV, you have two primary options:
1) Hang back with the defence, kill the Horde (or heal the people who are killing the Horde), slow them down while O does its job. Advantages: fairly simple. Disadvantages: You don't get that familiar with the rest of the map.
2) Follow the crowd. Go where a bunch of other people seem to be going, kill what they kill, get used to the lay of the land. Advantages: You get used to the terrain. Disadvantages: Can be confusing.
There's nothing wrong with it, though. I'd done a LOT of AV before I ever assaulted my first tower or graveyard - I left that to other people, mostly, and just killed the NPCs and Horde that got in our way. Eventually you'll get used to it all and things will come naturally.
Once you get used to the terrain and aren't getting lost as much as you used to, you'll start getting some ideas about what you should be doing when, that suits your class, playstyle, talents, etc.
One final section:
Turnins
When a Horde player dies, their corpse will, until they res at the graveyard, stay where it fell, and if you mouse over it you get a little insignia symbol. Loot it, and you'll "remove insignia". This means they can only res at the graveyard (no sneaking back into the bunker for them!) and you'll get some loot: a couple of silver, some armor scraps, and maybe Storm Crystals, Medallions, and occasionally an amusing grey item. The white items are the turnins. They'll disappear from your inventory as soon as the battle finishes.
Most of the time the game is over too fast to worry, but sometimes it'll pan out such that people will be going for handing them in. Especially the Storm Crystals. Turnins give you rep with both the Stormpike Guard and Ironforge.
Destinations:
Armor Scraps: A dwarf standing in front of the forge in the middle of Dun Baldar. Hand in in groups of 20. He'll give you a "Polished Armor" buff that increases your armor value.
Storm Crystals: There's a little path that heads off behind the North Bunker. There are some druids there. Hand in in groups of 5 or singly.
Medallions: Hand in to the Wing Commanders if they're up - they appear by the hippogriffs near the vendors.
Since all of these people are at Dun Baldar, it's definitely not worth worrying about looting Horde unless you're on Defence or you want to prevent a Horde player from returning to the place they died.
All this was just written off-the-cuff, so: any questions?