01-02-2008, 08:55 PM
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
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
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.