How to win in CTF

[MongoJerry]

Great guide, Brista! Here are some comments on specific items:

- the flag is more important than the players. Keep moving towards your objective at virtually any time except when you're regrouping

- killing people off is sometimes not an effective move. There are many times in battle when players would much rather respawn ahead of your flag carrier on full health and mana. A snare can be better than a kill.

Absolutely. So many people don't understand this.

Rogue - great flag carriers simply for the ability to snatch the flag at surprise moments and then Sprint. Very vulnerable to being intercepted in the middle unless you work with the team. Stun and crippling poison makes you very good at stopping or slowing other players. And killing people helps too :)

Rogues are OK flag carriers in a pinch, but shouldn't be considered primary flag carriers. It definitely helps if they are specced so that they can sprint twice quickly. However, if there's any opposition around that can snare them with anything, rogues are just too easily taken down.

Druid - the best flag carriers. Stealth, be patient and at the crucial moment (perhaps just after a recapture) grab the flag, cat form and dash out of the base, cheetah and run off home. The ability to change and use instant heals is great so don't persist being a cheetah if you look like dying. Most snares are broken by changing shape, also you can break Rogue snares with Cure Poison. If there's more than one druid have them both do the same job - one is a backup. If the role palls then you have great utility as flag carrier support with speed, heals and entangling roots. In a running fight entangling roots is a one-cast eliminator, possibly the strongest spell in the game. Please don't run around the midfield spamming Moonfire though ;)

Yep, druids are just awesomein CTF. Don't forget to mention that while they're being pummeled on, they can switch to bear form and take a real pounding like a warrior (and they can heal themselves somewhat in bear form, too!). This is good to do while your teammates are there to heal you and disrupt the opponents. Then, when the opponents are cleared, it's travel form for the win!

Hunter - natural defenders. Aspect of the Cheetah is great for chasing people but not great when you're being chased. Tracking is great if your team has lost sight of the carrier - find him and tell the raid where he is. You may need Track Beast if you're after a Druid. Feign Death is very effective in the hectic atmosphere. Freezing Trap on the flag is a great defensive move, so is Survival tree specialisation for those rare Hunters who take that path.

You forgot two of the hunter's best abilities -- scattershot and consussion shot. Those ranged stuns that hunters have are just nasty. And, yeah, hunters make fantastic defenders. Forget hanging out in the flag room (flag room defense is largely pointless). Since a hunter can track people, the hunter can join the group in the middle to help in the general fight. Then, when an opponent or group of opponents breaks off to go for the flag, the hunter can break off to defend much more effectively by hitting and slowing opponents before they get to the flag room. And if an opponent does get the flag, then the hunter can track the person and give running updates to the raid on where the flag carrier is (while at the same time slowing the flag carrier with concussion shots and scattershots -- and maybe even a freeze trap).

Priest - great in a pack of players working together. If everyone spreads out and does their own thing then Priest players tend to be especially victimised. The natural place for a Priest is in the middle of an alert aggressive group. AE fear is a very strong ability and is useful for clearing oppostion packs, notably in the flag room.

Equally important as heals is Dispel Magic. Priests can dispell a lot of crowd control items like polymorph, freezing traps, paladin stun, some fears, frost nova, entangling roots, as well as dispell dots dealt by priests and warlocks. Regarding Psychic Scream (aoe fear), it's not that great in the flag room, actually, because it has a limited range (something non-priests never appreciate). It only works at melee range, so you have to get right next to a person to get it to work and people are usually too spread out to have it work on more than one person at a time unless people are charging right at the priest. I do use it in offensive situations like in the flag room, but mostly to disrupt a single target, like the opponent's healer, while my team is focusing on someone else.

However, Psychic Scream plays a much more devastating role when the priest is escorting the flag carrier. In fact, I would say that flag carrier escort is the most powerful role a priest can play. My preferred escort position is *in front* of the flag carrier. If a teammate grabs the flag when I'm in the middle, I'll ask which direction they're leaving and meet them at that exit and run slightly ahead of him or her. If I'm in a charge into the opponents' base, I'll position myself so that when our designated flag carrier grabs the flag, I will already be in front of the direction we're going to go.

Why in front? First, when more defenders show up to intercept the flag carrier (they ran back to help or rezed at the graveyard), I can immediately run up to them and Psychic Scream to clear the way for the flag carrier. The main goal of the opponents in front of the flag carrier is to slow the flag carrier so that teammates left behind can catch up. If I can prevent them from doing that, then that's a big win. Second, being out front, I'm less in harm's way -- less likely to be stunned, frozen, or otherwise snared -- so I can stay with the flag carrier more easily. Third, if the flag-carrier is faster than me -- a druid in travel form, a rogue sprinting, a shaman in travel form, or a mage blinking -- then by starting out in front, I can escort the flag carrier longer. Finally, while I can Dispel Magic, Renew, and PW:Shield on the run, if I have to Flash Heal to keep the flag carrier alive, I have to stand still to do it. By starting off in front of the flag carrier, I won't get left behind when I have to cast a Flash Heal.

And when I'm well positioned, I can choose to use Psychic Scream at the most devastating moment. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this happen: Our druid gets the flag and is being pummeled on in bear form by a warrior and a couple of rogues, and the defenders think they just about have him killed. I run up, cast PW:Shield and renew on the druid on the run, and then cast Psychic Scream when I'm on top of them. The rogues and warrior scatter, our druid switches to travel form while I pop a flash heal on him, and the druid zips out of there free and clear. Simply put, Psychic Scream is an amazing flag escort tool, because of opponents (understandable) propensity to bunch up while they try to take out the flag carrier.

Paladin - another great pack player. Paladins are usually bottom of Horde players' priorities simply because they're so frustratingly hard to kill. Stay close to others and use your heals to keep them alive and your group will roll over anything even remotely disorganised and will beat same-sized horde groups that can't match your group's healing power. In a wierd way that fact that shamans have so many interesting things to do with their mana is a Horde disadvantage in pvp since they will often drain themselves spamming marginal damage spells. Turn the screw on any such naievity by making sure no one in your group dies.

The most devastating paladin skill is their ability to dispell just about everything while being invincible themselves (I use the word "skill" loosely here). This is a major advantage to Alliance teams. Horde teams absolutely have to have at least two priests just to make sure they can cover the dispells on various crowd control abilities. Alliance teams on the other hand can walk around with pally's and have all their healing and dispelling taken care of by players who can't be killed. Meanwhile, Horde has to protect their very fragile priests or else see themselves get decimated by all the crowd control and damage spells of the Alliance team. I'm always happy to see paladins actually trying to attack, because their damage is so feeble. If they would just step back into a priest-who-wears-plate role and throw a stun out once in a while, they would be much more effective.

Someone mentioned below that pally's make decent flag carriers. Not really, because they drop the flag when they noob bubble, so that takes away one of the critical skills that pally's use to survive. I would in fact say they are one of the worst flag carriers -- just barely above priests in the scheme of things.

Shaman - good flag carriers, good pack members, a shaman is a well rounded class which can support anywhere without being outstanding anywhere. Use your snares well and you'll win matches.

Shamans are definitely well-rounded. They can be OK flag carriers if they get out in the open. Earthbind totems and Frost-shock are certainly effective snares. Also, they have a lot of skills that are good anti-caster skills, so they're good fighters. Plus they can heal. And actually, they can deal quite a lot of damage with their various shocks. They're good all around, and I think a Horde team benefits by having one in their team -- if nothing else than to scare the Alliance, because so many Alliance players have irrational fears when it comes to shamans.

Warrior - very much a pack player. From a healer's perspective nothing keeps you safer than a Warrior because if they target you the Warrior will rip them apart while you self-heal and if they target the Warrior they will do poor damage which you can easily heal. Warriors work so much better in packs than alone, perhaps more so than any other class. Key skills are Charge Intercept and Hamstring plus Hitting Someone Very Hard ™.

I've seen warriors used as amazing flag carriers. The times I smile the most is when our team captain says, "Forget this, let's power our way through." I especially remember this time when Sabik, a defensive spec warrior who has tons of Molten Core epic items, was on our team. Sabik grabbed the flag, went defensive stance, hit shield wall every time the cooldown wore off, and marched straight from the enemy flag room, down the tunnel, across the field, and straight up our tunnel to cap the flag. Meanwhile, the whole enemy team tried desperately to pound him into submission while our whole team did everything to disrupt them with fears, snares, or just killing them. And of course, the healers on our team kept Sabik healed and dispelled. On IRC after the fight, the opposing Alliance rogues yelled, "OMG! I critted Sabik for 50!" (probably while he had shield wall up, of course). We've used this tactic several times (with other warriors, too), and seen opponents try it against us. Man, those warriors can really take a beating if they have any reasonable support.

Mage - a devastating class. First you have a great ability to control movement, accelerating your own with Blink and slowing others with Frost Nova and chill effects. Next you do good damage. And finally area effect is fantastic against clumped players. Played with agility a mage often attracts people to try for a kill without them being able to quite kill you. Make sure everyone has drink at the start or before, people get a lot of chances to drink during these matches.

Definitely, frost mages in particular are just devastating. You forgot to mention polymorph, which is incredibly powerful. The best team on Tichondrius is the notorius "frost mage team" from Exiled that uses three frost mages who rotate their frost novas to root all melee opponents and also keep three opponents polymorphed, while the rest of the team kills the opponents' healers. That team always plays together and just has the system down. They're really amazing to watch.

Warlock - The main things I found to do with my warlock on the test server were running around dotting people, disrupting people with Fear and Seduce, hitting the flag room with area effect just as our flag carriers go in (they will all focus on you) and sending pets off to harass distant players from a position of safety.

I see most hardcore warlocks using felhunter to attack spellcasters -- priests, in particular -- and they can be quite annoying. Obviously, a warlock should use fears as often as possible. Know when to use your dots. If your opponent dispells dots quickly, then don't bother. In fact, I think that's why Alliance warlocks focus on priests so much -- so that after the priest dies, he or she can actually use his or her dots. Until the opposing priests die, do other things to disrupt the other team like using curse of tongues and fear -- and send your felhunter after an opposing priest.

Code:

[i][b]5 attack 5 defend [/b][/i]One of the simplest, 5 of you wait to mob whoever comes into the flag room, 5 of you run up the side of the map, avoiding fights and burst into the enemy flag room as a unit. This is the quickest way to beat disorganised opposition. From the Horde perspective I'd suggest running up along the east edge of the map since the ramp up is that side. Defenders, if overwhelmed, usually respawn soon enough and far enough ahead that they get a second bite. Remember to run towards the middle when you respawn though!

5/5 is OK to use when you're in a pickup raid, because it has the advantage of being easy to organize and understand. Hopefully, the defenders start their defense in front of the base and not in the flag room, or else they'll be in trouble. However, against a well coordinated raid, 5/5 will be run over by larger groups using 10/0 or 8/2.

Code:

[i][b]10 attack[/b][/i] I've seen this a lot in 51-60 battles. I think the idea is that this strategy beats the very common 5/5 formation - you will easily grab the opposition flag and you may be able to meet a 5 strong flag carrying group with your 10. In practice it always seems to result in both sides getting the opponents flags and then a long drawn out hunt for the flag carrier (who is always very near their own flag room waiting to drop in and win). I'm unconvinced that this beats 5/5 but it's very popular with high level players so I guess people feel it does

It will always beat 5/5, because the 10 will always quickly roll any 5. However, I prefer an 8/2 strategy.

Code:

[i][b]9 defend one stealths[/b][/i]. Boring but very effective. Your 9 back at base will marmalise the opponents until they get frustrated enough to attack with everything. I've only actually seen this done a couple of times and it's worked both times.

Depends on where they're defending. If they're defending the flag room, a team like this can be destroyed quickly. (An aoe fear from a warrior combined with snares from other people holds the defenders down a few seconds. A druid then picks up the flag and is gone before the defence can do anything). If they're defending in front of the base, then, yeah, this could work, although it'd be very boring.

My preferred tactic is:

8/2 Control the Middle

In this configuration, it at first looks like 10/0 in that all ten players quickly run up to the middle to engage the enemy. The difference is that if the opponent has a small group break off to go after your flag, then two people are assigned to pull back and defend, delay, and track the flag, while the other eight people continue with what they're doing. What the other eight people do depends on the situation and what the opponents do. If they opponents are using a 5/5 tactic, then we quickly roll their offensive team and charge their flag (maybe including the two defenders, although they might hang out in the middle just in case an opponent tries to do something funny) to get the quick flag capture and the win. If the opponent is coming with 10/0, then we might send a small one or two person force to capture their flag while the rest fights in the middle and tries to slow down and bust up the oncoming charge.

Basically, the tactic is one of flexibility. In general, the default is to control the middle and take advantage of opportunities that the opponent gives us by either being too aggressive or not aggressive enough. The tactic also has the advantage of keeping an opponent guessing as to what we're going to do. Sometimes, we're only attacking with one or two players. Sometimes, we're charging in with 6-8 players. Sometimes, we have a strong defence. Other times, we chuck it all and brute force take their flag with the intention of meeting and taking down their flag carrier on our return trip. It works very well, but of course, it has a big disadvantage in that it requires quick communication. It's pretty much one that requires most of the team to be on teamspeak.