Arathi Basin Strategies and Tactics

[Xame]

Having spent the weekend in AB I've come up with a few strategies from having lost and won as horde.

I've come to the realization that Alliance has some real advantages in AB:

1. Palidins are will never die. As a mage I just sheep them so we can tap the flag. A group of 6 of us took over 90secs trying to drop a single palidin. Just when you beat the life out of him, up comes the shield + heals, respawns from the graveyard and another beat down. Even zerging cann't stop a palidin determined to live with epic gear.

2. Night Elf hunters on the mine. From the roof two hunters can trap the entrance to the roof and kill most classes before then can make it to the roof top. Basicly, they are shooting fish in a barrel and with shadow meld, rogues have a hard time taking them out (plus there are lots and lots of NE hunters that love the free HKs of the mine).

Thus the basic match goes as follows:
Horde: 5 to the mill, 10 to the smith (1 from the smith team taps the farm)
Alliance: 3 to the mine, 12 to the smith (1 taps the stables)

Horde leaves 2 at mill and sends 3 to stables. Alliance wins blacksmith and presses for the farm.

Horde takes stables and Alliance takes farm.

Both sides return to defend home turf (farm/stables)

Horde is behind because they have lost smith and lose the match, because a dual palidin team will hold the smith 'til hell freezes over and all of alliance is zerging mill and farm (execpt 2 at the smith and 2 at the mine, they defend the stables from the smith).

In the early going the Horde gets a good lead (3 bases to 1) because the smith is a huge fight and remains contested for a long time. But once alliance captures the smith it is game over for the Horde since the farm/mill is so close to the smith. If the horde wins the smith and can defend it, Horde wins (Alliance will attack between smith and farm but horde roamers can cover easily because of good raid calls from the mill to direct the defense, thus the Horde's battle call for "3 and defend").

Horde's biggest problem, once Alliance captures a base, it is very hard to kick them out if Alliance puts up a defense (2 NE hunters on roof of mine, 2 palidins in smith). The delay and the call for help means that even zerging won't change the flag since Alliance roamers will cover. Thus I really like MongoJerry's idea of druids as defenders since it might even things for the Horde in defending.

Basic team/guild ideas: Kill the cloth wears / and rogues first. Ignore the hunter's pets and get the hunters. Leave the tanks to the end of the fight (CC them to buy time). If your side ends up with more cloth wears living then their side, you win the battle. Simply thats it. The tanks die really fast once the cloth wears can CC and dmg in a focused way without the distraction of other cloth wears (with the exception of epic palidins which just never die).