Warsong Gulch Dream Team

[Bolty]

The current rumors flying around include one that Blizzard will attempt to "fix" everyone's favorite (haha) battleground, Warsong Gulch, by including rated team play in it. This would work in a fashion similar to arenas - the first 10-player arena based on the capture-the-flag objectives already present instead of the kill-everyone-else gameplay arenas currently use.

This would be pretty awesome, in my opinion, and I hope something like this gets done. Warsong Gulch could be taken off the general battleground circuit, where PuG WSG games are tantamount to water-boarding torture. Every other game seems to be a turtlefest where both sides hold on to the opponents' flag and nothing happens for 20 minutes at a time. But I digress.

If you could assemble a 10-player Dream Team for WSG, how would you arrange its composition and general strategy?

Obviously a Druid would be your flag carrier. Druids are the undisputed rulers of mobility and are by far the most effective flag carriers in the Gulch. They can stealth their way to the flag, grab it and run, being for the most part unfettered by any attempts to slow them down thanks to constant shapeshifting.

I can't help but feel however that there's only one true configuration that would work - 1 flag carrier and 9 "defensive" units. This is because of the basic topology limitations in WSG.

In 5-player arenas, one of the popular makeups is the 4-dps setup. 4 DPS'ers and 1 healer works fairly well because their goal is to simply blow someone up so fast, combined with quick crowd control disruption techniques on the opposing side's healers, that the first kill is won by them. The way you beat 4-dps teams is by playing defensively at the start and disrupting their burst when they try to apply it. This is facilitated in the arenas by its small size and plentiful LOS offerings. In Warsong Gulch, however, such LOS offerings don't exist and the battlefield is expansive.

Another systemic problem with Warsong Gulch is that defending your own flag by staying in your own base is counterproductive. It's almost impossible to stop a dedicated player or group of players from nabbing the flag and escaping the room successfully, and if you have chosen to try to defend the flag by doing so from inside your own base, you've just lost once they get away. Catching a flag runner at midfield is much easier, where you have the ability to mount up and the flag runner does not. Quick cooldown use for bursts of speed in and out of the flag room can be used, but those won't help you at midfield.

Most premade WSG groups I either form or run with, as a result, use the typical method of sending in a Druid to grab the flag while the other 9 players dominate midfield, crushing all opponents who enter the middle area and escorting the Druid once he makes it out of the enemy base.

Ultimately, I can't see another viable strategy. Since the best way to defend your own flag is to guard and hold midfield, having a split team makeup of "5 on offense, 5 on defense" doesn't make sense. A force of 9 players at midfield represents both your offense and your defense at the same time. If your opponent attempts to turtle in their base to catch your Druid, you send 1 or 2 more players in to sacrifice themselves to disrupt them enough for the Druid to slip away. If they chase the Druid, they're annihilated by the force at midfield.

My Dream Team makeup would be:
1 Druid - Flag Runner.
2 Hunters - Containment. Long range attacks and no LOS issues, along with snares and the like.
2 Mages - Sheepers, slowers, and nukers.
2 Warriors - Mortal Strike and Hamstring, of course.
1 Warlock - Fears, dots, curses, the usual.
1 Shaman - Earthbind Totem, nuff said, along with Windfurys, healing, and offensive dispelling.
1 Paladin - BoPs, BoFs, defensive dispelling, and healing.

Rogues? Meh. Priests? Meh. You want highly mobile classes that limit the mobility of your opponents, and neither of those two classes really fit the bill as well as the others. Rogues have stuns but need to stay stealthed a lot of the time, limiting their mobility. Priests have Mind Flay, but have to stand still to use it, and their fear is too limited by proximity requirements when you're fighting in such wide-open expanses.

Line of Sight isn't an issue in Warsong Gulch, allowing the ranged classes to have an absolute field day with the enemy. The Warriors line them up, the ranged classes knock them down.

What I imagine is if Blizzard really went the route of making WSG a competitive arena-style fight, they'd change its geography or mechanics somewhat or else every high-rated match will be a battle royale at midfield between two teams of 9 players each. Maybe that's a good thing, but the current layout of the zone provides very little LOS opportunities and thus greatly limits the strategy involved, turning it more into a zergfest.

If it were harder to grab the flag from the enemy base, then a whole bunch of defensive tactics open up in terms of defensive players vs offensive players instead of the general mish-mash of midfield fighting.

Thoughts?

-Bolty

[Sirreal]

Thoughts?

-Bolty

Something I've become aware of since getting my resilience above 400 (418 currently) is that Warlocks are ignorable. Only a good, diligent lock is a problem if they keep me death coiled. But the damage is easy to deal with. It never comes in bursts and the DoT is minimal with 400 resil. I'm always happy to see one on the other side in Arena.

Being priest-biased I think we're pretty damn valuable in WSG. Pain suppression, PI, shield, PoM, dispels, fears, desperate prayer and the 2-min anti-stun token add up. It's rare when several of those aren't available to me at any given time. We can turn any battle around with any of those and some timely heals.

So nyah nyah. Maybe you should try rolling a priest, Bolty. You might learn a thing or two.

[Concillian]

Flag team:

Druid
Druid
Frost Mage

D team:

Rogue
Warrior
Pally
D. Priest
Ele Shaman
Marks Hunter
* (could be anything really)

I've played a LOT of warsong gulch (2 chars mid-Revered) and no flag team ever impressed me like the time I saw a druid/druid/frost mage flag running team. I cannot think of a more effective 3-man flag team.

Teams will have an answer for a single druid flag runner. About 8 times out of 10 I face a PUG team with an excellent druid flag runner I can nearly shut him down alone on my warrior. They eventually resort to cat form immediately after ressing. In organized play, if you find yourself against a single druid runner, your "D" is basically a seek and destroy one person, and this greatly simplifies strategy. If the druid has no choice but catform and stealth as soon as he resurrects, you have a huge window of opportunity with your own carrying, as you can easily get a 2 druid team across the field with the flag in the time it takes the opposing druid to get across stealthed.

I think as strategy develops you're going to need more than a single druid runner. 2 druids + mage is absolutely insane. nothing short of 2 melee + judgement of justice + 2 ranged DPS will stop them.

3 druids would be more mobile, but diminshing returns on CC with all being tied to either roots or cyclone starts really hurting, with mage you have sheep / roots / cyclone / frost nove / frostbite procs / Rank 1 frostbolts. You don't catch that team without multiple stuns and boatloads of DPS.
a pally for BoF is good for getting in and out of a flag room turtle, but you lose an incredible amount of mobility midfield with a pally. Druid HOTs are king for flag running, ProM + renew is a reasonable 2nd place, but I just don't see pallies on the flag team as something that would be very successful.

Ideally I think you have the preferred flag runner feral and the other druid resto, but both resto (+feral charge and nature's grasp) works too. Against teams that would use the above mentioned strat of "camp the druid flag runner" they have a difficult time determining which to camp if it's a team of 2. One will often get away. It greatly complicates defensive strategy because with a single druid runner you can effectively defend against just him both going into AND out of base. You can start your flag defense the moment he resses. The same is not necessarily true for a larger flag team.

Against teams that mostly leave your flag runners alone until they get your own flag int their base, you have the option of moving to a single druid runner, and putting the others on punching through their turtle. You're just more flexible than a typical 1 / 9 setup that works GREAT against PUGs, but I think will be pretty easy to handle in organized play.

With 4 healers, it's a healer heavy team for sure. You run the risk of being a little too defensive. You can probably get away with either a Pally OR a disc priest on the D team, but 2 dispels is very nice for combating CC.

I think I might choose an arcane mage for the star. Mana is a big concern for mages in arenas, but less so in a battleground, especially WSG with 2 quick respawn rejuvs on the map and at most a 30s res timer. Arcane has high burst capability with AP + Pyro + arcane blast, etc...

This has the D team focusing on the burst that would be necessary to punch someone down quick, even through healing. Though counterspell + silences should help too.

[Artega]

I'd suggest Elemental for your Shaman. Earth Shield won't bring much since your flagcarrier will be getting chain dispelled anyway. When they're left unobstructed to cast unimpeded, Elemental shammies can put out obscene amounts of damage in a short amount of time, even when you take high resilience into consideration. Sticking a hunter on one would limit the amount of damage they'll do, even with the four-piece bonus, but aside from chain interrupting them (which would leave healers uninterrupted), they'll still be able to do some serious damage.

EDIT: TeamFortress-style CTF gameplay would probably help negate some of the issues present in current WSG. In TF style CTF, the flag drops on carrier death, and remains in place for a determined amount of time (generally 60 seconds in TF games) at which point it returns to its base. Defenders cannot return the flag, so they have to form an impromptu defense around it until it returns on its own. An enemy player picking up the flag resets the timer. You may also score points regardless of whether or not your own flag is in its base. This lends itself to a more fluid CTF game where both teams need a dynamic defense and offense. If your flag is close to the enemy base, you need to worry less about scoring and more about preventing them from finishing the cap.

I prefer UT style CTF, which is what WSG is, but without translocators it does turn into a turtlefest pretty easy:P

[NiteFox]

EDIT: TeamFortress-style CTF gameplay would probably help negate some of the issues present in current WSG. In TF style CTF, the flag drops on carrier death, and remains in place for a determined amount of time (generally 60 seconds in TF games) at which point it returns to its base. Defenders cannot return the flag, so they have to form an impromptu defense around it until it returns on its own. An enemy player picking up the flag resets the timer. You may also score points regardless of whether or not your own flag is in its base. This lends itself to a more fluid CTF game where both teams need a dynamic defense and offense. If your flag is close to the enemy base, you need to worry less about scoring and more about preventing them from finishing the cap.

That's about the worst thing about CTI in TF2, mainly due to the fact that if an opposing player just touches the intel for one second before being blown away by the defense, the timer resets. This causes a fair amount of stalemates on public servers as much as anything, and there have been numerous petitions begging for some diminishing returns on the timer reset (First drop means 60s reset, second 50, etc.).

The big problems, and I mean really big problems with WSG as it stands are as follows:

1) Flag carrier mortality, or rather the lack of it. The reason why CTF works in FPSes is because the team chasing the flag carrier can kill it in a relatively short amount of time. Even supported by their team, I know that in TF2 or UT I can kill the flag carrier with a directed assault. What I don't have is warlocks, priests, or warriors nailing me with their various forms of scatter. What I don't have is an effectively-short effective combat range (Even if they hit rarely, most FPS weapons have a range greater than 41 yards). What I don't have to do is stop to fire most worthwhile weapons. If I meet the flag carrier in the midfield of an FPS, I have a good chance of killing it before they get out of range. If I am the FC, I know my best chance is to engage any interceptors in combat, rather than just carry on running and laugh the moment I leave their effective combat range while only suffering some damage. This is a huge problem in WSG, as in most cases unless the midfield coordinates and aren't interfered with the FC support, that runner will make it by pretty much unmolested.

2) Flag carrier speed. Often in FPSes, the FC has the same top running speed as the rest of the players on the field. If they have means of boosting their speed, then it's only for a short duration (Speed Adrenaline in UT200X) or is otherwise balanced with lower health (Scout class in TF/2, Scout relic in Q3TA). What they can't do is, say, pop Travel Form and make it back to the home base before the defending team can react.

The above leads to the situation where both flags are in the other base, and both teams must simultaneously defend their FC and assault the enemy base. This situation also turns up in an FPS as well (Aside from TF2, since your intel doesn't need to be in the base to capture the enemy intel. This works a lot better than many would thing). However, since neither of the above problems exist in an FPS, this is not the daunting problem as it is in WSG. Fight your way through the crowd, frag the flag carrier (Who, unlike WSG, is not usually cowering in the corner relying solely on the defense) and reset your flag. Big weapons help. Being able to kill opponents in a few number of trigger pulls also helps. Being able to kill (Not injure, but kill) a number of opponents at the same time helps. You simply can't do this in WoW.

Third problem:

3) There is no incentive to defend. I disagree with Bolty's comment about defending being a waste of time. I've been part of many spirited defenses that have turned away larger, some may say even more determined, assaulting forces. Mainly through luck, but through sheer will. I've been in groups of two or three defenders take out groups of five players plus. A Hunter on defence is a great asset, as they can quickly and easily prepare the defenders for an upcoming assault, give accurate numbers, lay down traps, and even have a extra pocket rogue in the form of the eponymous PvP cat pet.

But the point is, we've defended the flag - What do we get for it? A handful of honor from the assaulters, subject to diminish returns? That's it. In an FPS, defenders get extra points for close-flag defenses, they even get ego-stroking announcements of "S1c|<B0y defended the flag!" that makes everyone in the game know they're not just sitting in their hienies doing nothing. Flag planters get bonus honor for doing so, so flag defenders should have something tangible for their effort. At 60 (WoWWiki hasn't got any details for 70), planting the flag gains the capper 40 extra honor, defending should reward about 10~20, because defenses win matches in avoiding the "swapped flags" scenario above. You could argue that rewarding defence promotes turtlefests, but I disagree: Most turtles come about during "swapped flags", where neither team can effectively penetrate the FC's defenders for any short amount of time. String this situation over 10 or so minutes, for 3 or even 5 caps, and it's no wonder why a lot of WSG matches run for hours. Which brings us to the next point:

4) All matches should end. CTF in every other game has a time limit of some description, be it an in-game limit (Usually 30 minutes, even though the UT minute is shorter than the real world minute) or a sever map rotation limit (Like TF2, where CTI maps have no visible time limit, but servers rotate away from the map in due time, regardless of the score). WSG could benefit from a time limit, or it could benefit from a system like AV's resources.

Both sides start with 300 resources. Death reduces resources by 1, having your flag captured reduces by 100. This means that matches will still end on three caps, but can also be won through attrition. Diminishing returns have no effect on midground honor farming, since those so inclined would continue killing even after every opposing team member has been drained, but knowing that the map will be over in 300 kills (Spartaaaaaa!) might motivate them into realising that, y'know, the base across the map has a pretty flag that would look good in their home base. This would also open the way to rewarding defence, since a defender's death impacts the team slightly.

And finally...

5) Close down the damn midfield. Name one good CTF map that has a wide open midfield like WSG has. You can't, can you? CTF-Face is narrow in most of it's incarnations (Face3, in UT2003, was more open, but less popular than Face and Face][). 2Fort has the narrow bridge, narrow sewer pipes, and only the (small) open pool in the middle which is detrimental to all Pyros but the smart ones (Shottie ftw). Chokepoints are essential in killing flag carriers, short of actually "piling on" (And hoping that the pries doesn't barge in with their scream, or the warrior with their shout). Most FCs are killed in the tunnel, which is one huge chokepoint. There's some furniture in the midfield that acts as natural barriers, but not enough to make it actually useful. Throw in a few gulches that players can only climb out of at certain points. Add bridges. More tree stumps! It's a damn logging camp, for crying out loud. A decent assault shouldn't have to wait until the flag runner makes it to their tunnel to be able to effectively kill them.

I know this is a long and slightly off-topic rant, but fixed teams and ratings won't fix WSG itself. It needs a near rewrite to be worthwhile these days. Most PvP sets rely on WSG marks the least, and even the 30 you need can take longer to attain than any number of marks from other battlegrounds (Anyone want a dozen AV tokens? I've got loads, and AV used to be the big daunting prospect of token grinding).

In short, honor gains in WSG are too little to make it preferable over AB or AV, even when WSG is on holiday weekends. Token grinding is also a lot harder than any other battleground. WSG needs fixing, but not with rated teams.

The players aren't broken, which is what rated teams attempt to fix. The battleground itself is broken, mainly due to game mechanics.

[lorecraft]

I'll respec!

[oldmandennis]

I agree with Bolty - priests are pretty easy to pop. Especially if you are facing his squad - two (unfearable) warriors and two hunters hitting cloth are going to make things pretty miserable midfield.

I would say if you are going to have 2 warriors you probably need a second pally - 1 to play midfield and one to run with the flag carrier. I prefer pally to druid for flag escort mainly because I think the main job of the flag escort is to quickly get the carrier out of the base - once he is at midfield it is less important because the rest of the team can snare or CC the other side, and the other healer can pick up some of the slack. Pally's can clear priest and lock fears, which is a big gap in resto druids abilities.

As far as the map itself goes, I don't think there are that many actual problems. It doesn't need to be a total copy of other CTF games to be fun. The one big thing I think is needed is something to break up stalemates. It's not my idea, but I think after 3 min of the flag being taken, every 30s a 10% stacking -heal debuff should be applied. After 8 min, the flag carrier would be unhealable.

As far as these rated games are concerned... I think it's mostly a pipe dream at this point. It would take a (second) total revamp of the honor system for it to make any real sense. Not that I'm saying it doesn't need to be done, because I think it does. They do need to sit down and totally think through what they want the pvp system to be, what they want players to do, and how to properly motivate them to do it. It seems like the pvp team is probably spending most of their time on the (probably disastrous) outdoor pvp area.

[Crusader]

My dreamteam?

10 druids. I've been part of one, we played for 3 hours, we never lost, even against other premades. I was resto, we had 2 oomkin, and 7 ferals. the ferals rip everything to shreds and one takes the flag, to run back and then go bearform (with insane armor/hp). I, as the resto, just kept healing him while some others helped when needed. In the meanwhile a few ferals would kill the opposing FC. When 3 catform druids stealth in and simontaneously attack the enemy FC, the battle is already decided.

Hard to beat this setup as long as all the druids remember to heal each other. Sure, there's probably better ideas then using 10 hybrids, but the psychological effect on the enemy is enormous when they see they face 10 druids from the same server. ^^