Ihra pushed his rating to a 900 today, scoring some very pretty pants. Resilience over 800, pvp spellpower over 2k, and my partner got her 100 ranked arena match achievement on the same one. So a nice nexus of win all around :-).
Calculated out AB Holiday hpm over the weekend, came up with interesting numbers --
Winning HPM : 59.48
Losing HPM : 42.97
Overall : 51.68 (53% win ratio)
I'll repost the updated holiday chart tomorrow, because I'm tired, but for the moment suffice to make this observation on NON-holiday hpm :
Winning : 57.9
Losing : 37.32
Overall : 48.18
So the HPM is only a tiny bit better on holiday weekends than otherwise. Why is that? The answer *seems* to be, time investment. Now, it IS true that the database is in its infancy, so to speak, but the non-holiday AB takes 14 minutes on average, and the holiday is 19.5. My theory : that on the holiday you see a higher percentage of smart / serious PvPers in the BG so the matches tend to be more strategic and therefore longer? The average honor on holiday/non-holiday for a match is 1064 / 695, respectively, so you ARE getting a lot more honor on the weekend for a game...but your games are also taking, what, 33% longer? So the gain is not very big, at least for this particular BG. *shrug*.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Something's rotten
...in the state of Isle of Conquest. Before getting to the meat of holiday HPM here in this BG, I gathered data on people's win/played ratios in my battlegroup, both by virtue of asking in the BG for people to whisper me stats (which I later double-checked) and by checking stats on high-ranking arena teams on our cyclone battlegroup. And they all tell the same story, to wit when added together :
Games played : 220
Games won : 81
In other words, alliance has a 37% win ratio here, which is drastically less than all the others. I'm used to losing slightly more (anywhere from 45-49 win, usually) but this is abnormal enough to raise an eyebrow. My initial response is the default one, to claim that alliance sucks, because that's usually as good a fallback reason as any...except I can't see why they would suck so much MORE in this bg than the other ones. It's the same people playing. And it's not like IoC has any "new" concepts -- it's recycled different things from AV, AB, and SotA, all of which alliance does significantly better in. So what gives here?
I do not have an answer, only a shaky theory. The map has rotational symmetry, much like AB, but not translational(?might be the wrong word) symmetry; ie, you can rotate it 180 degrees and it's the same, but if you flip it across the x or y axis, it's not. The docks, which in most of my games uniformly went to the horde, are not symmetrically placed, they're on the west side. Both keeps have a "vulnerable" side because there's a dropoff to the beach that impedes the ability to shoot down siege vehicles. Alliance weak side is on the left (west), horde weak side is on the right (east). So horde controlling the docks, feeds straight into the vulnerable point on the alliance keep, in a way that alliance controlling the hangar fails to do for the vulnerable horde east side. Therefore I postulate that, while maintaining my view that you should not rush one node and instead try to get 2/3, docks may be more important than the others, one to one. Not because alliance derives any additional benefit from holding it, but because it's important to deny it to the horde.
What I'm not sure on is, is this really an "unfair" map design? Or is it, as I suspect, a combination of luck (after the failure of the "blitz hangar" strategy, the new one favored horde so they keep doing it and succes is reinforcing them?) and idiocy (alliance may have a similar advantage in controlling hangar, but they're just not capitalising on it as well as horde are on theirs)?
The only games that I won this weekend were when me and a few other people grabbed hangar and held it, resisting the temptation to jump on the ship and leave the flag defenseless, in order to give our allies a chance to para-jump and try to beat the horde racing from docks to gate to keep to kill. Le shrug.
In any event the data here :
HOLIDAY ISLE OF CONQUEST (Cyclone)
------------------------
Winning HPM : 63.3
Losing HPM : 43.99
Overall HPM : 51.12
Total BG Honor (HPM + mark turnin HPM) : 86.44
How does this compare to the current leaderboard?
Winning HPM : 73% of SotA (current leader for winning)
Losing HPM : 100%. If you're going to lose, best to lose here.
Overall HPM : 81% of SotA.
Total for IoC (HPM + Marks) : 89% of SotA, still the overall holiday lead.
I am hesitant to apply this number only because the win/loss ratio is so different from the other BGs I've looked at. In other words, take a careful look at your battlegroup's track record in IoC before taking this at face value!
In other news, me and my frost mage partner Kitykat managed to push our 2s rating to 800, thus netting my first ever rating-restricted piece of gear (gloves, and aren't they delicious!)
Games played : 220
Games won : 81
In other words, alliance has a 37% win ratio here, which is drastically less than all the others. I'm used to losing slightly more (anywhere from 45-49 win, usually) but this is abnormal enough to raise an eyebrow. My initial response is the default one, to claim that alliance sucks, because that's usually as good a fallback reason as any...except I can't see why they would suck so much MORE in this bg than the other ones. It's the same people playing. And it's not like IoC has any "new" concepts -- it's recycled different things from AV, AB, and SotA, all of which alliance does significantly better in. So what gives here?
I do not have an answer, only a shaky theory. The map has rotational symmetry, much like AB, but not translational(?might be the wrong word) symmetry; ie, you can rotate it 180 degrees and it's the same, but if you flip it across the x or y axis, it's not. The docks, which in most of my games uniformly went to the horde, are not symmetrically placed, they're on the west side. Both keeps have a "vulnerable" side because there's a dropoff to the beach that impedes the ability to shoot down siege vehicles. Alliance weak side is on the left (west), horde weak side is on the right (east). So horde controlling the docks, feeds straight into the vulnerable point on the alliance keep, in a way that alliance controlling the hangar fails to do for the vulnerable horde east side. Therefore I postulate that, while maintaining my view that you should not rush one node and instead try to get 2/3, docks may be more important than the others, one to one. Not because alliance derives any additional benefit from holding it, but because it's important to deny it to the horde.
What I'm not sure on is, is this really an "unfair" map design? Or is it, as I suspect, a combination of luck (after the failure of the "blitz hangar" strategy, the new one favored horde so they keep doing it and succes is reinforcing them?) and idiocy (alliance may have a similar advantage in controlling hangar, but they're just not capitalising on it as well as horde are on theirs)?
The only games that I won this weekend were when me and a few other people grabbed hangar and held it, resisting the temptation to jump on the ship and leave the flag defenseless, in order to give our allies a chance to para-jump and try to beat the horde racing from docks to gate to keep to kill. Le shrug.
In any event the data here :
HOLIDAY ISLE OF CONQUEST (Cyclone)
------------------------
Winning HPM : 63.3
Losing HPM : 43.99
Overall HPM : 51.12
Total BG Honor (HPM + mark turnin HPM) : 86.44
How does this compare to the current leaderboard?
Winning HPM : 73% of SotA (current leader for winning)
Losing HPM : 100%. If you're going to lose, best to lose here.
Overall HPM : 81% of SotA.
Total for IoC (HPM + Marks) : 89% of SotA, still the overall holiday lead.
I am hesitant to apply this number only because the win/loss ratio is so different from the other BGs I've looked at. In other words, take a careful look at your battlegroup's track record in IoC before taking this at face value!
In other news, me and my frost mage partner Kitykat managed to push our 2s rating to 800, thus netting my first ever rating-restricted piece of gear (gloves, and aren't they delicious!)
Monday, September 14, 2009
SotA Holiday HPM
I don't generally care much for strand of the ancients...but as it WAS the holiday weekend, and I didn't want to have to wait 6 weeks to gather the data to post here, I intrepidly charged forward and did my ten games for stats. They went 7-3, which was better than average - horde has a slight winning edge here (51-49) as just about everywhere on my battlegroup. In any event the numbers I come up with for the holiday are :
SotA Winning HPM, holiday: 86.86
SotA Losing HPM, holiday: 39.84
SotA Overall HPM, holiday, my BG: 62.8
This compares favorably to the other holiday weekend I've picked up so far, Eye of the Storm, which to refresh your memory came out with:
EotS Winning HPM, holiday: 78.22
EotS Losing HPM, holiday: 33.68
EotS Overall HPM, holiday, my BG: 55.41
I'm not sure that you could conclusively say "Strand > EotS" because I know they award holiday honor on a kill-equivalency based on the BG ("capping a flag in WSG on the holiday nets you the equivalent of 4 HKs extra honor") and so the holiday honor may be worth different amounts to those BGs than the regular one is. Still, it's a narrow lead and one that makes me cry b/c I love Eye of the Storm most of all.
The other interesting thing that I found going on here was that I have to hand it to Horde people complaining about how the Alliance always used to go first. I had initially passed that off as QQing, except for maybe a small psychological advantage, but the numbers do not indicate that to be true. I think this is significantly because Strand awards you bonus honor the more gates you have intact at the end of a defensive battle (or, for that matter, destroy in an offensive one), so if you go first and can make a good race to the relic, the next team to go has much less time to destroy gates. By way of comparison, on two of my winning strand battles where we speed-capped the relic (about 3 minutes) our HPM rate was well over 100 (120 and 163). But when I had similarly awesome teams who capped in three minutes, but were forced to go on the defensive first, the HPM dropped significantly. Even though I tended to have a *lot* more honorable kills (because we outclassed the horde so badly), our HPM floated instead around the 75 marker. So kudos to blizzard on implementing a coin-flip over that one; for once the complainers look to have had a legitimate grievance.
SotA Winning HPM, holiday: 86.86
SotA Losing HPM, holiday: 39.84
SotA Overall HPM, holiday, my BG: 62.8
This compares favorably to the other holiday weekend I've picked up so far, Eye of the Storm, which to refresh your memory came out with:
EotS Winning HPM, holiday: 78.22
EotS Losing HPM, holiday: 33.68
EotS Overall HPM, holiday, my BG: 55.41
I'm not sure that you could conclusively say "Strand > EotS" because I know they award holiday honor on a kill-equivalency based on the BG ("capping a flag in WSG on the holiday nets you the equivalent of 4 HKs extra honor") and so the holiday honor may be worth different amounts to those BGs than the regular one is. Still, it's a narrow lead and one that makes me cry b/c I love Eye of the Storm most of all.
The other interesting thing that I found going on here was that I have to hand it to Horde people complaining about how the Alliance always used to go first. I had initially passed that off as QQing, except for maybe a small psychological advantage, but the numbers do not indicate that to be true. I think this is significantly because Strand awards you bonus honor the more gates you have intact at the end of a defensive battle (or, for that matter, destroy in an offensive one), so if you go first and can make a good race to the relic, the next team to go has much less time to destroy gates. By way of comparison, on two of my winning strand battles where we speed-capped the relic (about 3 minutes) our HPM rate was well over 100 (120 and 163). But when I had similarly awesome teams who capped in three minutes, but were forced to go on the defensive first, the HPM dropped significantly. Even though I tended to have a *lot* more honorable kills (because we outclassed the horde so badly), our HPM floated instead around the 75 marker. So kudos to blizzard on implementing a coin-flip over that one; for once the complainers look to have had a legitimate grievance.
Thoughts on WG Zerging
So as I've been trying to record numbers for Wintergrasp I've begun noticing a trend. Simple, deadly trend. It goes something like this:
When we attack in two places, we win.
When we try to keep forcing through one path to the keep, we lose.
I think that there's a certain merit in the One Path, One Win mentality, in that it groups up your force for maximum effort in the smallest space. I think it's also worth considering that WG changed a while back with the addition of the southern towers actually meaning something, and that the corresponding point to our maximum effort in one spot, is that it makes it really easy for the horde to figure out where to put *their* maximum effort. Almost every offensive game I've been in recently, even the ones we won, resulted in the loss of our southern towers, to the point where I think you can almost say that it's axiomatic that you have 20 minutes, not 30, to capture the keep. And whereas before you could overcome horde defenses by hard-pushing through two walls and getting to the keep, I am not sure that that remains a viable alternative. Time favors the defense.
But if you mount a secondary attack, even if that's only a diversion, you force the horde to split their defenses -- and if you THEN mount a concerted effort on one side, you may be able to break through before they can switch people back over off the diversionary side.
It's interesting that that seems to be at such a complete contradiction to strand of the ancients, the BG most like WG, where you *do* want to mass everyone at one place. I think that may be b/c the map is smaller on SOTA, and so it's easier for the defense to switch from one side to the next and cover a split-attack. I find that a good way to win strand against a split attack is to pile your defense on one side and wipe out the tanks there; you'll lose the other front-gate, but with only two tanks (and damaged ones at that) you can regroup and stop them at the second gate (or lolth forbid, the yellow gate) and the loss of momentum is often irretrievable.
Thoughts to think on *shrug*
When we attack in two places, we win.
When we try to keep forcing through one path to the keep, we lose.
I think that there's a certain merit in the One Path, One Win mentality, in that it groups up your force for maximum effort in the smallest space. I think it's also worth considering that WG changed a while back with the addition of the southern towers actually meaning something, and that the corresponding point to our maximum effort in one spot, is that it makes it really easy for the horde to figure out where to put *their* maximum effort. Almost every offensive game I've been in recently, even the ones we won, resulted in the loss of our southern towers, to the point where I think you can almost say that it's axiomatic that you have 20 minutes, not 30, to capture the keep. And whereas before you could overcome horde defenses by hard-pushing through two walls and getting to the keep, I am not sure that that remains a viable alternative. Time favors the defense.
But if you mount a secondary attack, even if that's only a diversion, you force the horde to split their defenses -- and if you THEN mount a concerted effort on one side, you may be able to break through before they can switch people back over off the diversionary side.
It's interesting that that seems to be at such a complete contradiction to strand of the ancients, the BG most like WG, where you *do* want to mass everyone at one place. I think that may be b/c the map is smaller on SOTA, and so it's easier for the defense to switch from one side to the next and cover a split-attack. I find that a good way to win strand against a split attack is to pile your defense on one side and wipe out the tanks there; you'll lose the other front-gate, but with only two tanks (and damaged ones at that) you can regroup and stop them at the second gate (or lolth forbid, the yellow gate) and the loss of momentum is often irretrievable.
Thoughts to think on *shrug*
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
All of which means what?
So now there are two battlegrounds to compare, Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin. Comparatively, and hoping my table-making skills are up to par :
Now that is, as previously mentioned, specific to my battlegroup, and further, to resto druids on the alliance side, and we could throw tons and tons of caveats into that if we wanted to. My solution is to reduce this to a percentage; I am the same across all battlegrounds I do, and presumably you are as well. So I think if we put this in ratios that should be serviceable for anybody, at least for winning & losing. Your overall HPM will vary, because different battlegroups have different win/loss percentages. In any event,
So the current Leader then is Arathi Basin...ie that it is better in Arathi Basin than Warsong Gulch for HPM; I suspected that might be the case, not least because there are more people in AB and therefore more potentials for killing. One might also observe that in overall HPM (which category is specific to my battlegroup, at pains to remind) WSG is about 2/3 of AB. Conveniently, say, the ratio of 10:15, the number of players. I may be leaping to conclusions here, with only two things to judge off of. Just an interesting hypothesis, for now...we'll see if that holds up on further study.
| Battleground | Winning HPM | Losing HPM | Overall HPM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warsong Gulch | 47.8 | 22.73 | 34.05 |
| Arathi Basin | 57.9 | 37.32 | 49.67 |
Now that is, as previously mentioned, specific to my battlegroup, and further, to resto druids on the alliance side, and we could throw tons and tons of caveats into that if we wanted to. My solution is to reduce this to a percentage; I am the same across all battlegrounds I do, and presumably you are as well. So I think if we put this in ratios that should be serviceable for anybody, at least for winning & losing. Your overall HPM will vary, because different battlegroups have different win/loss percentages. In any event,
| Battleground | Winning HPM (%) | Losing HPM (%) | Overall HPM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warsong Gulch | 83 | 61 | 69 |
| Arathi Basin | 100 | 100 | 100 |
So the current Leader then is Arathi Basin...ie that it is better in Arathi Basin than Warsong Gulch for HPM; I suspected that might be the case, not least because there are more people in AB and therefore more potentials for killing. One might also observe that in overall HPM (which category is specific to my battlegroup, at pains to remind) WSG is about 2/3 of AB. Conveniently, say, the ratio of 10:15, the number of players. I may be leaping to conclusions here, with only two things to judge off of. Just an interesting hypothesis, for now...we'll see if that holds up on further study.
Arathi Basin HPM
I'm about as sick of cut and pasting as you are of reading it, so we're shortcutting this week. For references on the math that I use to come up with these numbers, please see my earlier post, Warsong HPM.
My ten games for AB came out 6-4, which fits since AB is a game that my battlegroup is apparently decently good at, though I am somewhat skeptical of the numbers. I had three five-caps in my six wins, which I suspect may skew the numbers. At any rate I do keep the spreadsheets updated so hopefully over time that will even out any potential irregularities.
The nuts and bolts:
Winning HPM : 57.9
Losing HPM : 37.32
Overall HPM, accounting for my BG's win percentage (54%) : 48.46
Adding the mark turn-in honor (36.91) nets a total honor for AB of 85.37.
My ten games for AB came out 6-4, which fits since AB is a game that my battlegroup is apparently decently good at, though I am somewhat skeptical of the numbers. I had three five-caps in my six wins, which I suspect may skew the numbers. At any rate I do keep the spreadsheets updated so hopefully over time that will even out any potential irregularities.
The nuts and bolts:
Winning HPM : 57.9
Losing HPM : 37.32
Overall HPM, accounting for my BG's win percentage (54%) : 48.46
Adding the mark turn-in honor (36.91) nets a total honor for AB of 85.37.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Happy Season 7!
And what a delicious season it is too. I got three new pieces straight off the bat, including an IDOL, which I didn't even know was an option, and which pretty much doubles the effect of my old idol. Hmmm lifebloom spellpower by 125...or 246...think think. These are the hard decisions, folks.
Spent most of the day trying to herd my stray cats of arena partner(s!) into play, but once I did my 2s went 5-2 to start the season, and I actually managed to find a 3s team, with a survival hunter and a frost DK that went 1-1...but the loss was a bogus lag loss where we couldn't get past the loading screen until we were dead. Frankly I'm just happy to HAVE a threes team, which I don't think I've ever had before.
And capitalising on the enthusiasm, I scheduled two days of battleground premade within my guild...and actually had people *sign up*! Hopefully those will go well, reports to follow.
A very good day yesterday, though like cyn I was unimpressed by the style of the outfits. I was very pro-druid-pvp outfits when they first came out but they're starting to wear on me how only the shoulders change and the rest of them just recolor the same thing (and sometimes just the little gem on it, not even the whole piece). Ihra wants something new!
Spent most of the day trying to herd my stray cats of arena partner(s!) into play, but once I did my 2s went 5-2 to start the season, and I actually managed to find a 3s team, with a survival hunter and a frost DK that went 1-1...but the loss was a bogus lag loss where we couldn't get past the loading screen until we were dead. Frankly I'm just happy to HAVE a threes team, which I don't think I've ever had before.
And capitalising on the enthusiasm, I scheduled two days of battleground premade within my guild...and actually had people *sign up*! Hopefully those will go well, reports to follow.
A very good day yesterday, though like cyn I was unimpressed by the style of the outfits. I was very pro-druid-pvp outfits when they first came out but they're starting to wear on me how only the shoulders change and the rest of them just recolor the same thing (and sometimes just the little gem on it, not even the whole piece). Ihra wants something new!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
