How to win in CTF

[BoddoZerg]

All very good tips. In my experience (Horde), the 7/3 O/D ratio works the best. The job of 3 people on defense is not to stop an incoming 7-10 man zerg, it is to prevent a single person from getting the flag, and to wound an incoming 3-5 man offense force.

When it comes down to it, Attack vs. Defense is basically a matter of managing attacking healers. An attack force without healers is screwed; a much smaller number of players can easily suicide the flag carrier and get the flag back. As long as an attack force contains several healers with adequate mana supply, it is very difficult to kill the flag carrier. Once their healers die or run out of mana, the flag carrier dies in short order.

So the job of a defensive force isn't really to kill all the attackers, just to kill or run OOM all their healers. Rogues, Mages, and Warriors are great at dumping DPS on healers and killing them quickly. Whereas Hunters and Priests are very good at mana draining healers, particularly Pallys/Shamans that don't have a huge mana pool.

It is very important to note that, when in an attacking group, crippling a defending player is much better than killing him. Kill him and he will respawn within seconds with full HP and Mana. Sheep or freeze him somewhere where there's no one to dispel it, and he is taken out of the battle for much longer. Drain a spellcaster's mana and he is out of the battle for an extremely long time. (granted, it is rather difficult to actually drain a defender's mana)

Although Alliance players often complain about the Horde shaman imbalance (which is indeed a -terrible- imbalance at lower levels, when ghost wolf > all), in games between well organized teams, Paladins really give the Alliance a slight edge. It is awfully hard to kill a flag carrier when there is an army of invulnerable healers keeping him alive.