Greedy Goblin

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Ignore Tol barad until patched!

Just a short extra post: don't go to Tol Barad, it's totally messed up. To understand why, let me first give altered rules:

  • One team starts at "1"
  • The other starts at "2"
  • A, B and C are neutral at start
  • The objective is to capture these positions, capturing happens EoS-style, the team with more alive people at the objective takes it
  • The battle last 30 mins, the team with more bases wins.
We can agree that the above ruleset creates a completely equal map. Now let's make some alterations:
  • The second team starts in the middle, at "3", where they can reach anything easily.
  • All bases are in the control of this team at start
  • The battle is just 15 mins long, team 1 can get 3x5 mins by sending people to the towers at the corners of the map (who will be missing from objectives)
  • Team 1 must control all bases to win. Team 2 can win by controlling just one base.
That is Tol Barad currently where "team 1" is the assault. Whoever takes TB at late night keeps it all day. Don't waste your time there. If you are attacking, you can't win. If you are defending, you'll be just zerging one point and stand there for 30 mins.

I can't imagine how could Blizzard create such a nonsense. I'm sure they will patch it soon. Until then, just ignore it.

Note: it is possible that Blizzard tested it only with full population. The attackers have one small advantage, if they capture a base, then they get a GY next to it. So their dead can faster re-join the battle. In mindless zerg battles where both sides are losing players every second, this can balance it the above out. When a few players fight at the base (like 5 v 5), losing one player is losing the battle as 4 v 5 is wipe before the dead one could re-join. However if it is the case, a base should be disabled when the population is below 20. 2 Bases would be capturable.

13 comments:

Jabriano said...

I played Tol barad last night. Was glad that our faction was defending as we just held up at one base and defended it with all we got.

I imagine that attacking will need a lot of planning and cooperation,

On last night's defensive battle the attackers were clearly disorganized, attacking from all sides of the base we were holding and ignoring me the only healer in our group. me and my guildies were at the base while the rest were pushing the rest to fight outside the base which they did most of the time and those who attacked us guildies I was there to keep them alive and when didn't attack our guildies I will throw a heal or two on them.

The attackers couldn't capture the last base since they were scattered and mostly fighting outside.

They had plenty of time since they destroyed all towers but didn't utilize the time correctly.

2 rogues were more than enough to sneak to their captured bases and making them lose the bases.

And for some odd reason some decided to capture the base riding on siege weapons, I don't know if it is useful or are they totally clueless.

Can it be won... yes it can.. i didn't participate on the attack but as soon as I hit 85 I went there to take a look and it was controlled by Alliance, When I joined the battle later that night it was already controlled by Hordes and the battle was to defend.

I would imagine that a coordinated attack will surely win the battle.

Ulv said...

Totally agree with your analysis Gevlon and my guild reached the same conclusion yesterday after making a concerted effort to take a clued-up guild group in there.

Initially, as jabrioano experienced, the attackers (us) were a little disorganised but a guildy took control of the raid group and coordinated effots. At one point we held two bases and were gaining control of a third but this lasted about 30 seconds before the horde-zerg took a lightly defended point (only 5 players where there should have been around 8-10).

It's not pssible for the attacking side to win this objective unless Bliz give them some form of magical buff to manipulate the result so that we see regular changes in TB ownership.

I'm on a 60:40 Horde:Alliance server so late ight battles almost always go in favour of the Horde.

Canttouchmé said...

@Jabriano: Yes, it is possible to win as attacker. But you really have to be a lot better then the defending side, because they just have a huge advantage

Right now you can compare Tol Barad with an EoS or AB battle. The only difference is, that you don't win the battle by reinforcements, but you can only win if you control 4 (EoS) or 5(AB) bases, with a limited time.
And let's be honest, it's not like you win AB or EoS battles like that every day. If you're lucky you have a battle like that once every 2 weeks.
The same will count for Tol Barad. Maybe every 2 weeks one team will appear to be way better, having way more healers, and eventually win the battle at the normal hours.
But don't expect this to happen more then once every 2 weeks. The problem is the balance which is just horrible right now.

I think blizzard really wasted the perfect expansion by launching Tol Barad like this, because so far I'm loving cataclysm and besides Tol Barad, I haven't really ran into any negative sides of the expansion yet.

nightgerbil said...

I have made 4 unsuccessful assaults and one successful defense. I had already come to the conclusion its basically unwinable as the attacker unless you are significantly better players then the defenders. I am however enjoying pvp again. Hunters are balanced at 85! great! Shame I had 2 months of paying to play a broken toon, which they still havent fixed for the new players leveling. Oh well, guess no one will stay 80 long anyway.

Without resilliance gear in the game yet, its left a dilema though: I have been using my medallion trinket, wrathful neck and wrathful cloak, its a dps loss but helps mitigate some damage. I murdered a warrior who tried to fight in full wrathful gear, he couldnt dent my huge hitpool when he managed to close to me with charges. Meanwhile most players seem to be in full cata pve gear and suffer damage accordingly. Maybe why I keep killing them?

Anonymous said...

This design has to be intentional, as the outcome of the battle is way to obvious for it to be an error. Maybe blizzard was displeased with how often WG changed owners? Maybe they wanted it to feel less random for people who dont think too much about it? Or maybe they have some insight into the dynamics of large masses of players of which most dont know what the word strategy means, that changes the "obvious" result into something different?

Regardless of what it is, this design is interesting and i would love to hear an insightfull explanation of why it was designed this way.

Cyrell said...

The answer is simple. The attacking team can win any match of Tol Barad, like mine did last night, if you organize yourselves. Make lots of diversionary attacks and feints. A small team of players (like your guild) can do this very effectively. Ride around confusing the enemy so they split up their defenses and eventually you'll get a couple of towers down. Do the same with the three bases near the end of the battle and you're bound to capture at least one.

Kelindria said...

I haven't reached lvl 85 yet so I'm yet to try Tol Barad but from the what I just read here it seems to be hardly a battle really. The one main thing that makes this awful for me is you need to control all of the bases to win.

Personally rules where the defending team is split evenly among fortress' and the assaulting team in the center would be fine. with the win objectives being at the end of the 15 mins whoever controls the most bases wins would win and controlling all 3 for the assaulting team would force an automatic win.

This battle seems to be like a very off balanced eots game...perhaps what would make it more interesting was a flag spawned in between the baradin hold and a random fortress that would buff the corresponding side when captured. This would at the very least force them out of the keep where it would be easier to capture or would give you a buff when fighting if they don't go after the flag.

Grim said...

@Nightgerbil
There is resilience gear in the game from day 1. Its crafted.
@Cyrell
You must capture ALL bases not just one. Feinting won't help much.

Still, I must say that if you are slightly more skilled than the opposing team, Tol Barad can be quite thrilling. I won a battle yesterday with something like 20v20. The whole 26 minutes it was capturing 2 bases, then throwing alliance out of the third and missing the cap by 5 seconds because they could move to another base faster than the attacking horde.

Until finally we managed to shift enough of our force fast enough to hold until the third cap. It felt awesome.
Of course, just because overcoming ridiculous odds with time running out always feels awesome.

thehampster said...

@cyrell and jabriano:

It's very difficult for 40 random players w/o any voice chat or hierarchy to be remotely organized or coordinated. Right now most level 85's are hardcore players. Imagine how difficult coordination will be when arthrasdklol makes up half of the raid?

Of course there should be some level of strategy and coordination required. However, both sides should require the same amount of strategy and coordination. If you make it so one side requires lots of organization and coordination, meanwhile the other side can just win by zergin . . .

Anonymous said...

In this thread: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1406727064 one helpful poster stated the reason Tol Barad was poorly tested in Beta:

--

Yes, it was tested in beta. Unfortunately beta testing had the following issues (some google archvie could probably find the threads for you):

1) For a long time tenacity was in place instead of the 1:1 matching system.

2) Spawn camping became the dominant method of play because 1:1 wasn't enforced, so development time was spent on that.

3) There was no portal out of Tol Barad for a long time, so people avoided testing it because once you were there you were stuck if you didn't have a secondary hearth stone.

4) During the TB beta testing event, at least the one that I tried to attend, they had to shut it down because of bugs just a little while into it.

And, let's face it, why would people really want to spend a lot of time testing "yet another vehicle/siege battleground". I had a lot more fun and feedback to give based on playing WSG in beta as opposed to the new Vehicle vs Wall battleground.

Anonymous said...

Tol Barad works because attackers have one advantage when taking positions.

If they can turn a base neutral, their graveyard is much closer to it then that of the defenders, who revive in the middle.

Wyrmrider said...

I borrowed from your analysis (credited of course!) and elaborated in a different direction here: http://gamingbyear.com/2010/12/13/nerd-rage-in-tol-barad/

I wrote it because I was really interested in something that you glossed over: when attackers die, they respawn right next to an enemy base, giving them an advantage in reinforcements. That particular advantage almost always goes to the defender (in many games, not just WoW) -- it feels a bit backwards in Tol Barad and leads people to pursue strategies that actually aren't sound at all, like turtling on only one base.

@Anonymous above me -- vehicles in Tol Barad are basically an afterthought now, it's all about killing enemy players and keeping yourself alive within the walls (which are NOT destructible). Was it so much different in Beta?

Suicidal Zebra said...

Seems like a sensible compromise would be the following -

* All three capped at a time = instant win (as now) and bonus honour/marks

* Owning a majority of Bases when the timer runs out grants the win (2 of 3, 1 of three if 2 others are 'contested')

Additionally, make downing Towers buff your damage/HP so defending them becomes a necessity.

Of three battles I've participated in a successful offense and defense, but I can see it needs a few tweaks.