Greedy Goblin

Monday, July 4, 2011

The curse of Slagworks

TB is a great place to observe the lack of strategical sense of people. They either don't understand what's going on, or they don't recognize that speaking up and organizing the battle is much more important than just fighting

Now a dilemma came up, which exist only because of the mentioned lack of thinking: the "crazy Slag" defense. It involves everyone, except maybe a rogue or druid to be at Slag. The point is simple: the attackers come alone and unbuffed, we are in a zerg, buffed. They res unbuffed and die again. They also have people in other bases spamming "take Slag FFS", so for 15 minutes we just grind them at Slag and they kill nobody. Since they have no kills, they have no promotes, so they can't drive sieges and we win in 15 mins with around 100HKs, no deaths and all towers up (which provides 200 extra honor). The lone stealther caps bases that they abandon when they finally spam "all to slag ffs" enough times, just to annoy them more and make them yell "ffs we shudnt have left ww", which leads to 4-5 of them being AFK at WV.

No doubt that the Crazy Slag is preferred in every possible way: more honor, more honorkills and much more annoyment to the horde, making their more intelligent players abandon TB (they get practically no honor), leaving only the mindless lolkids on horde side.

However there is a catch: between two equally strong teams a defender using Crazy Slag always loses as the attackers have GY closer and they have capture speed bonus. So Crazy Slag strongly depend on us being superior than the horde. What makes one superior? Better gear and PvP skills, having enough healers and being organized. So the leader of TB must be able to guess these values before calling "all to slag". He also has to be fast. Can't inspect everyone one by one as the attention span of the lolkids is measured in seconds, if the leader waits a minute, they will be everywhere and most probably already dead, promoting the horde. So practically he can do a role check and look out for names of exceptional players and also known idiots who must run to the enemy GY LOSing the healers.

This makes leading TB pretty difficult. The people know and want Crazy Slag. But they are unable to see if the circumstances are bad and also completely unable to notice their own shortcomings. Arthasdklol can't understand that him standing at the door in 0 resi gear is the reason for calling for normal defense (rotate the map).

Since the leader is mostly selected random, there is a risk of some clueless guy getting lead and calling for Crazy Slag without thinking, losing TB. In this case the intelligent players inside must recognize the situation and be vocal about defending WV too and also doing it, as lolkids will surely run for the "omgipwnthemalllol" Slag.


Before Crazy Slag, TB was a simple "follow the protocol and collect bonus honor". Unless we had an unusual concentration of morons, we never lost. However Crazy Slag put a "you must stand up and lead or lose" to the table. If a guildy simply does his job, he will probably lose. He must take initiative and lead if he wants to win. Must sabotate the decision of the stupid leader to go for Slag, taking all the crap for "ffs we could win if u wudnt go ww". He also must do the Crazy Slag when available, whispering and yelling to lost newbies to come Slag fast.

Since Crazy Slag, there is no peaceful playing. You must lead or go down!


Finally a corresponding moron, with clear evidence, that The PuG made a difference in the norm of being nice with "casuals" and "new players":

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

That "moron" post was stupid. I can't believe you condone that type of behaviour. Do you always make fun of kids?

Anissa said...

I totally agree with this post. I must add that being vocal isn't enough, you MUST ask the current leader to give you the lead if he doesn't do his job. People listen to you a lot more when you /rw.

Anonymous said...

They weren't making fun of anyone. The moron was acting like a moron. They were simply stating the truth.

Lyxi said...

@ Anonymous

A snippet from the moron's armory:

"9 empty glyph slots"

Why exactly should we not make fun of him/her again?

Bobbins said...

I think a reason for the success of crazy slag may be that the alliance are generating more honor at the moment through keeping tb and thus are gearing up faster.

If this is correct then the slag defence will stop being as reliable as the other side gears up from other sources.

Anonymous said...

Bobbins, I have inspected several Horde players who participate in PvP (world, TB, and BG if they are from my realm). They are not bad geared; often full Vicious S9.

Bobbins said...

@Anon 11.57
People who participate in pvp are probably geared well already where as casual pvpers will be upgrading to the vicious gear when they obtain the honor.

I do not accept your statement that the majority of people in tb have full vicious gear already.

Ðesolate said...

2 Days to get a bit of relaxation from my current exam-phase and all I got? 22k Honor. Mixing AV & TB at a 90% win ratio in AV and a 100% win ratio in TB got me full s9 in two days.

@Moron: He did not get "stay at slag". Roams along alone. Promoted our enemys and expanded our fighting time.

And nobody knows if he is a kid. I observed this behaviour also on players beeing far over 21.

Glyph, the Architect said...

@Bobbins

I think the whole point of these TB posts is to demonstrate one thing.

The Horde on Gevlon's server is full of retards with no strategic leader.

With that fact in mind, they could probably win in full PvE gear.

The point here is that gear is not important. Strategy is what is winning these battles. The win comes from Greater team organization (the Horde has none), having a team of competent healers (Horde has few/none), and the other team being full of retards.

It probably also helps that whatever morons are on the Alliance team will easily back the "Everyone Zerg Somewhere" plan.

Anonymous said...

What I fail to understand is why noone from Gevlons team has tried to rally the other side by being a leader there?

What would be impressive is if Gevlon switched sides and led the other side to victory?

If his theory is correct enough people on his side now should be able to lead in his absence.

Would Gevlon be able to raise awareness on the other side or is it completly filled with incompatance?

Anonymous said...

Regarding the idiot that roams free and dies, this could simply be an alliance griefer who has a horde as their main and wants alliance to lose so they can relog as horde after the fight is over. This could be especially true where they die near the start of the match.