You're probably not good enough to triple cap the enemy.

[Astarica]

I really don't get the psychology stuff, it's as if you assume the enemy is going to play totally different from how you'd play just because they're the opposing team. There are 2 likely scenario against a good team when they're behind:

 

1. They put their best guy defending solo and hope that guy can fend off whatever attack while they make an all out attack to win.

 

2. They don't defend the node at all and hope the other side won't notice (this is a perfectly valid tactic if the score is say, 450-300 because you're less than 2 minutes away from the point of no return).

 

That said most teams do have some pride and don't like to get 3 capped so #1 is far more likely than #2. You can also confirm this by noticing it's very rare to walk into a node with no defender whatsoever.

 

When you add PUGs in there's now a new, rather popular option:

 

3. Give up and farm defender medals.

 

Generally #2 is only chosen when the game is about to get out of reach (typically a 400-200 score in ACW). It's basically the same as the a team behind by one pull their goalie in the last minute because at that point it doesn't matter if you end up losing by 1 or 5 goals. Even if you read that correctly, the game was about to be over anyway and you can also put it away by simply continue to defend, since it clearly worked up until this point.

 

Against #1 your sneak attack will be against their best defender.

 

Against #3 your sneak attack gets hard countered because you just turned yourself into a useless guy by fighting a bunch of guys who are otherwise completely useless on the offense and thus were never a threat to your team.

 

Yes a team that employs the #3 strat is probably so bad that it won't hurt you to fight those 3 guys who would otherwise be AFK, but in that case why do you need to 'draw their attention' against a team that only had 5 guys on the offensive?

 

Here's something else to think about. Against a good team, whoever they use to defend is presumably done as a calcualted risk. They won't respond to it because they already accepted that risk as an attempt to turn around an otherwise losing game. So even if you beat their best defender 1on1, it won't really draw any attention off the main assault force because they knew this was a very real possibilty when they picked that strat.

 

And against a bad team? They'd usually be too stupid to know that they're supposed to respond.

 

Sneak attack only draws the attention of medal farmers. From their point of view, they were going to stand there until the game ends but now you showed up. They almost always have a huge number advantage, and by killing you, they get to:

 

1. Pretend they're contributing to the team, thus making it less likely for the rest of team to yell at them for being useless.

2. Possibly earn medals from action done toward killing you (AFK farming isn't enough for 8 medals).

3. And still farm their defender medals since they're by their node.

 

But drawing the attention of 3 guys who were never going to attack isn't helping your team any, because those guys were never going to be a threat.

Edited August 11, 2012 by Astarica

[Zenates]

The problem with saying things like this is: you are both right and wrong at the same time.

 

Each match is an individual situation, with different players, gear, abilities, and skill level. Change only 1 of those, on one individual character, and it could change the outcome significantly.

 

I will agree that there are starting strategies with high success rates at initial spawn times, but as soon as it is clear the plan is working or failing it must be changed, or updated.