Whenever a battleground starts to go south, you’re likely to start seeing comments in the battleground chat channel like, “Mages are so cheap, WTF” or “I f*cking hate rogues” or “I’m havin’ so much lag tonight.” The one you see all the time, though, is some variation on this: “This sucks, Alliance always lose this BG.”
Being a kind of a scientific person by nature, I thought, “Is that really true?” I mean, sure, we do lose sometimes; but we also win sometimes. Also, you heard the very same complaints playing as Horde. So what does the picture really look like? Well, let’s take a look at some hard numbers.
Here are my own statistics, having levelled almost entirely in battlegrounds from level 10 to level 72. These numbers change quickly, since I play a lot of battlegrounds on this character, but they’re current as of today:
| Battleground | # Played | # Won | % Won |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alterac Valley | 21 | 12 | 57% |
| Arathi Basin | 53 | 25 | 47% |
| Eye of the Storm | 20 | 9 | 45% |
| Strand of the Ancients | 12 | 6 | 50% |
| Warsong Gulch | 91 | 40 | 44% |
| Overall total | 197 | 92 | 47% |
There aren’t enough data here to draw any really strong conclusions, but you can easily see that, at least in my experience, the percentages are generally not significantly different from a coin-flip. So, the idea that one side or another is dominant in these battlegrounds is not borne out by the evidence at hand.
I think the most interesting case is Warsong Gulch. Partly I think we’re seeing the effect of having more games: Warsong is the only battleground I’ve been continuously able to play since I began my little PvP experiment, so naturally I’ve been there more often. Also, while I used to hate the Gulch, I’ve come to actually prefer it to many of the other battlegrounds, because it’s 10v10 (I like the small group size), has a simple and clear win condition, and can be quite powerfully influenced by the actions of even just a few players playing smart and sticking together.
The other interesting thing I’ve noticed is that since I reached level 70, it seems as though the Horde teams I encounter have a higher proportion of healers, especially Paladin and Shaman healers. I do not have any data to prove out whether this is actually true, at least not yet, but I’ve noticed a lot of Alliance teams with, say, 5 Rogues, 3 Hunters, a Warrior, and a Death Knight. Most of the druids seem to be Feral (perhaps a reflection of the shiny new Worgen Feral forms). If this is really true, it may be a temporary matter: Tauren Paladins are the flavour of the month, and the combination of the Tauren racial (War Stomp) with shields, cleansing, and powerful healing spells makes a big difference. Goblin Shaman seem also to be very popular. Oddly, though, it’s rather frequent that I wind up in an Alliance team with not even one character who can cast a healing spell (even counting Shadow Priests, who can heal but often don’t).
Until I can gather a bit of data, I’m reluctant to assume too much about how true this might be, but hopefully with a little creative scribbling, I can get a few particulars down by way of experiment. Meanwhile, whether or not the Alliance Healer Deficit is real, it seems pretty clear that the Horde Always Win theory holds very little water.
Another thing that might have an impact, Lara, is that Blizz’ consolidation of Battlegroups when grouping for BGs means that you’re likely to have a more evenly distributed group than before. The Battlegroup that my Horde toons are on, A-52, was heavily skewed toward the Horde (and had several “new” servers in it), so it was much easier to find good Horde players for a BG than Alliance. Once the Battlegroups merged, however, I noticed a distinct improvement in the quality of the Alliance groups.
My personal experience is that it doesn’t seem to matter what faction you’re in, but rather the amount of healers and tanks you’ve got. A tank with a lot of Resilience is really difficult to DPS down, and if you’ve got WSG with three healers in them (ideally AOE heavy ones such as Shammys and Druids) you’ve got a much easier time of it.
I still hate Isle of Conquest, however.
I’ve read that AV used to swing strongly in favour of whichever faction was more populous in the battlegroup. I’m not sure if that’s still the case, but I could see how it might have been an issue.
From what I’ve seen on both sides of the fence the “commonly perceived wisdom” seems to be that Alliance tends to win AV and Isle of Conquest, while Horde does better in AB and Warsong. I haven’t heard a lot of comments about any of the other battlegrounds favouring one side or the other.
Regardless of how true it is, I do think that it tends to affect people in their heads at least. I know that I, playing Horde, feel much more resigned and relaxed about losing in Alterac (because that’s just the way it goes, the Alliance always wins this one, right) than I do about losing AB for example (damn it, we should be winning this one, come on).
Also, I agree with Redbeard’s comment about battlegroups. I remember doing AV as Alliance in late BC and the Horde beat us pretty much all the time – contrary to the common perception – because it was an accepted strategy in that battlegroup for them to all gather at the Iceblood bottleneck and just defend until the Alliance ran out of resources.
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There’s definitely something to your observation about the shortage of healers on the Alliance side, at least into my battlegroup. It’s not *at all* unusual for me to be ranked #2-4 for healing done in smallish BGs.
I’m a fury warrior.
Haha, that’s pretty funny, actually!
I still haven’t made any systematic effort to record class composition, and I’d be willing to count, say, Elemental shaman and Balance druids as “healers” for the purposes of PvP. But it really does seem as though the Alliance teams have fewer healers of any kind in the last couple of brackets I’ve been through (65-69 and 70-74).
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The big thing about AV re: Horde/Alliance match ups is that the layout punishes Horde for rushing but rewards Alliance. So on the Alliance end of things, you can charge into battle with a glorious battle cry of ‘Herp-a-derp!’ and zerg away and usually win. Because the Horde, being the Horde in AV, will do the exact same thing despite years of evidence to the contrary.
Low lvl Battlegrounds have a higher than average Alliance win ratio. If you check anyones lvl85 win-ratio you will realize it
WSG on Killrogg: won 2,069 out of 4,399 battles as Alliance. That’s 47%. In my experience Alliance generally has fewer healers. I’m often #1 or 2 healer on the team (as a mage).
I’ve been levelling almost solely via BGs on a European server, as Horde.
I’m 14-for-19 in AV, 14-for-22 in AB, 5-for-16 in EoTS, and 56-for-106 in WSG.
The AVs have been played very well – plenty of people defending towers/bunkers, usually winning on reinforcements, usually losing on boss-kills. The EoTS are an undisciplined nightmare of mid-fighting for the flag. I think our record in AB is mostly down to the Alliance being just as bad at trying for the 5-0 advantage.
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