How to win in CTF

[MongoJerry]

Hidden flag carriers

If the other side has your flag and you can't see them they're almost certainly on the roof. If not they're either at the little hut at the end of the road from the ramp, on the map edge somewhere, in one of the little houses in the midfield or in their own flag room

Also, you can have your party's priest /tar the name of the flag carrier and then Mind Vision him or her. Mind Vision doesn't require line-of-sight, so the priest can instantly find exactly where the flag carrier is hiding. Hunters and druids can track humanoid, too, but sometimes that doesn't clearly tell you where the flag carrier is with the 3-dimensional maze that are the bases. If the flag carrier is a shape-shifted druid, the hunter will need to use track beasts.

Also, if you are the flag carrier who is hiding on the roof and you see that a force is coming at you that you and your escorts can't handle, drop down to the flag room and go out the exit toward your graveyard. Often, reinforcements are just one resurrection cycle away.

[DarkCrown]

Eh and what a druid can do? Unless they are a flag carrier, there are few options for them. Ok, they can heal (albeit either slower or less efficient then even paladins), and... Maybe decurse once in a while. They can root, but that usually gets dispelled fast, and the target goes immune fast anyway.

Druid healing is decent in battlegrounds. We don't have the quick reaction time of a priest. In the open we are harder to kill than a priest. If people do target fixate and try to go for the kill you can often kite them well away from the battle.

Entangling roots can be handy. So can feral charge. This one stops casting and also locks the player in place for a few seconds.

You mentioned decursing. We can also cleanse some of the hunter debuffs since they are poisons. I usually innervate myself, but I've hit a few priests with it when they were busy keeping the melee up.

And we do bring the best buff in the game.

-DC

[lemekim]

Druid healing is decent in battlegrounds. We don't have the quick reaction time of a priest. In the open we are harder to kill than a priest. If people do target fixate and try to go for the kill you can often kite them well away from the battle.

Entangling roots can be handy. So can feral charge. This one stops casting and also locks the player in place for a few seconds.

You mentioned decursing. We can also cleanse some of the hunter debuffs since they are poisons. I usually innervate myself, but I've hit a few priests with it when they were busy keeping the melee up.

And we do  bring the best buff in the game.

-DC
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You are right, clearing poisons is probably one of the most useful druid abilities that I left out. And innervate can be quite useful as well, unless the other team is on the ball at dispeling. But entangling roots in BG is not as useful, in part because they get dispeled often, and in part because half the battles take place indoor. And bear charge is somewhat situational, because stopping your own healing to prevent someone else's heals is somewhat counter productive.

But I was comparing a druid healer to a paladin. Consider the fact that you need to shift into a form that cannot heal others in order to achieve same damage mitigation that paladins have while healing. Plus, their heals are faster, and they are the only class in the game with a complete heal (LoH). NS/Healing Touch can be good, but if your tank carrier has 6k life and has MS debuff on him, that will be maybe 30% life.

I guess what I am trying to say is that in a large-scale battle, over 5 people, I think that a paladin has somewhat better healing and utility then a druid. But really, that's all they can do. Of course, for flag running druid is the best option out there.

A warrior + druid combo is quite powerful both in holding a flag and taking a flag away from similar-sized groups. For example, if they are trying to steal a flag, warrior can charge in, fear, slow everyone, while druid grabs the flag and runs away. When holding a flag, warrior should have it, while a druid stealths nearby. The "assassination" group cannot easily kill warrior first because druid will heal him, and they cannot kill druid first because he is stealthed! And in emergency, the warrior can hand the flag off to the druid who will kite it away in a travel form.

[Thawwing Light]

Aspect of the Wild

This is a Hunter skill that buffs group nature resistance. It's very good against elemental shamans: Chain Lightning and Earthshock are nature although Druid Moonfire isn't. Entangling Roots is though. Rogue poisons, Warrior's Thunderclap and Hunter's Serpent Stings are also Nature. I don't know whether it affects Scare Beasts and Hibernate

Minor and really pointless nit - Thunderclap is no longer nature damage. They changed it to physical when they gave it a duration of greater than 10 seconds. That, and its damage is still horribly pathetic. Mainly, it's all about the debuff.

[Brista]

Minor and really pointless nit - Thunderclap is no longer nature damage. They changed it to physical when they gave it a duration of greater than 10 seconds. That, and its damage is still horribly pathetic. Mainly, it's all about the debuff.
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Not pointless at all, good information

I'd assumed that more resistance gives a higher chance to resist the debuff in addition to reducing damage, I stand corrected

[MongoJerry]

Also, you can have your party's priest /tar the name of the flag carrier and then Mind Vision him or her.  Mind Vision doesn't require line-of-sight, so the priest can instantly find exactly where the flag carrier is hiding.  Hunters and druids can track humanoid, too, but sometimes that doesn't clearly tell you where the flag carrier is with the 3-dimensional maze that are the bases.  If the flag carrier is a shape-shifted druid, the hunter will need to use track beasts.

Wow, I never realized just how powerful Mind Vision was as a flag defensive ability until recently. It's totally revamped our strategy -- or at least made our team's strategy that much more viable. I'm in a group of about 20 people who rotate into a semi-regular CTF team. Our basic strategy is to meet the other team in the middle and send one or two people up to the opponent's flag. We leave no one back guarding the flag. If one or two opponents slip by to our own flag, we don't bother to chase. We just take advantage of our numerical and often skill superiority in the middle to smash up the bulk of the opponent's team. Then, when an opponent picks up the flag, I Mind Vision the carrier to find out which direction he or she is headed. You can Mind Vision someone from half the zone away, you see, so I can do this out in the open field. Once I report what direction the person is headed ("tunnel!" "West side!" "Graveyard side!"), a small force goes to meet that person and take the flag carrier down who has little or no support because we've already smashed his or her support in the middle. Meanwhile, the rest of the team goes forward to create a screen to support our own flag carrier who now has mostly open field in front of him to get back to our base. We've use this tactic over and over and we're 50-0 over the last three days, including matches against some very tough organized opponents (4-0 against Exiled, baby!). Mind Vision makes things so much easier, because you don't have to waste resources running around trying to figure out where the flag carrier is going and you can meet the carrier before the carrier is able to get support. Plus we don't have to leave anyone back in the flag room, so our force in the middle is that much stronger.

[Skandranon]

Mind Vision makes things so much easier, because you don't have to waste resources running around trying to figure out where the flag carrier is going and you can meet the carrier before the carrier is able to get support.  Plus we don't have to leave anyone back in the flag room, so our force in the middle is that much stronger.
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Yep, very very true. It's so powerful that I should hope Blizzard will disable Mind Vision in Warsong in a future patch. Any team with a priest will beat any team without a priest, solely due to use of this spell. As in many battles, recon is key in WSG, and MV allows penalty free infinite range recon.

[MongoJerry]

Yep, very very true.  It's so powerful that I should hope Blizzard will disable Mind Vision in Warsong in a future patch.  Any team with a priest will beat any team without a priest, solely due to use of this spell.  As in many battles, recon is key in WSG, and MV allows penalty free infinite range recon.

Oh, I wouldn't go that far. I would disable a number of druid abilities before I would do that. Anyway, to me, the Mind Vision thing makes matches better and faster paced. I remember the matches soon after the release of battlegrounds, before people realized how good Mind Vision was, and skirmishes lasted a long time as people scrambled just to figure out where the heck the flag carrier was. Now, matches are much faster paced. You just have to assume that the other opponent knows exactly where your flag carrier is at all times.

Besides, your statement that "Any team with a priest will beat any team without a priest, solely due to use of this spell" is a bit of an exaggeration, since hunter and druid tracking abilities can also be quite handy when tracking down a flag carrier.

[Skandranon]

Besides, your statement that "Any team with a priest will beat any team without a priest, solely due to use of this spell" is a bit of an exaggeration, since hunter and druid tracking abilities can also be quite handy when tracking down a flag carrier.
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The thing is that hunters and druids need to move close to the possible location of the flag carrier in order to detect it. They can be intercepted and killed long before that. Priests can MV the flag carrier from the safety of their own base or the middle of their own group.

[lemekim]

The thing is that hunters and druids need to move close to the possible location of the flag carrier in order to detect it.  They can be intercepted and killed long before that.  Priests can MV the flag carrier from the safety of their own base or the middle of their own group.
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Well technically there is a limit on the Mindvision, about half the map size (It will say "out of range" even though you have the target). Also, the priest has to let people know that they are doing this, because there is nothing worse then priest stopping to Mindvision something while the group leaves them behind to die to some rogue =)

Also, at least on the Horde side, groups with priests have huge advantage over groups with no priests - not really because of Mindvision, but moreso because they are the only dispeler on Horde side.

[Megwynne]

This cracks me up.  Play with Sharanna, Triarius, Megwynne, Katrin, or Altrius at your back when you're a healer and then tell me how noobish they are.  They'll save a priests ass - this priest's ass, at least - every time.

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Hey thanks for the props!

I may as well throw my 2 cents in on the whole mess as well. Personally, I love playing my paladin, but am embarrassed by a good 75% of the class. To be honest, there really are way too many completely clueless people playing paladins. The obvious reason is that with the wide mess of defensivefe extending abilities they have (Diving Shield, BoProtection, cleanses, heals, etc.) it gives people a lot of room for error. So people become one-trick ponies hitting shield and running for it when they can't kill something. A good pally should be able to BoProt the healer/caster about to get whaled on (gnomes are hard to target :D ), cast their cleanses as soon as they see the need, back up heal as necessary, off tank as necessary, consecrate/holy wrath to draw aggro, put out some melee damage, etc, etc, etc.

For me though, I always tried to explore all the aspects of this hybrid class. Instead of just assuming that it meant we werent very good at healing/tanking/damage, I tried to see what I could do to maximize each of those areas.

In MC/Onyxia stuff a pally becomes a secondary healer/cleanser for the most part. For healing, the biggest problem is a limited mana pool, so in a healing role, I wear most of my LF set, +int items, +heal items, and carry the Hammer of the Grand Crusader which has +26 int and +22 healing. If you can spring for the +int enchants and librams of rumination, you should be in good shape. Without even having sprung for these yet, I hover close to 5k mana when buffed in a normal MC/Onyxia raid. Also, its important to be mana efficient, there is no excuse for a pally not to have CastParty or some other intellegent healing mod, we dont want to overheal because we have less room for error in that area.

For tanking I always hear we cannot hold aggro well, but what people should say is that we cannot steal aggro well. So just make sure you are doing good crowd control pulls and you get the first few licks in. If I make sure my 5 man group is sporting BoSalv and I'm sporting Seal of Fury (not even improved), I have had no trouble being MT for 5-mans in LBRS, DM (N, E, W), BRD (easy one i know). And the last time I did UBRS without a lock, I offtanked one of the general's adds, I had it down to 9% health by the time the whole rest of the party managed to kill the first add and come over to help finish mine off. If i crit on something a couple of times with my Skullforge Reaver, its not going anywhere, and if a mob does get loose for whatever reason, I keep my stun in reserve and use it at that point. The other thing to remember is that tanking is very gear dependent. I dont wear my LF for tanking, and as warriors know, even Valor is junk for tanking. The biggest thing to be aware of is +def when tanking. The higher defense stat you can get, the better you will do at not getting crit on by mobs and being able to dodge/parry/block. To that end I can now get up to 383 defense. Not ideal yet, but I'm working on it.

My favorite is the pallies dont do damage statement. True, our base stats are mainly stamina and strength focused. So the question is, we can carry some heavy duty weapons, but how do we hit hard with them? Mainly we lack in agility and crit chance. I think a full retribution build with 5 talents in +crit get you to about 10% crit chance and thats about the end of it for most paladins. I now have every blue +crit plate item. Together with some agility enchants I have a 20% rate to crit unbuffed and a fairly high attackpower which I can augment with BoMight. So basically at this point with my Doomsaw against a plate-wearing target, I can crit for over 1000 damage with Blessing of Might and possibly over 2000 if Seal of Command procs and crits (stop laughing you rogues). Is this better than the best a mage or rogue can do on a regular basis over the long haul? No, but at the same time its not negligible either. Take this together with an undead instance where I can use Exorcism and Holy Wrath (Baron/Scholo), I can usually make 1st or 2nd in damage on most pickup raids. I tend to drop to 4th, 5th, 6th in damage on UBRS runs though. Is this amazing, heart-stopping damage? No, of course not, but it doesn't suck either.

So I guess what I'm trying to show is that while it may be easy to play a pally in a mediocre fashion, a lot of thought, planning, raiding, etc. go into really maximizing what a pally can do for themselves and better yet, what they can do for their group/raid.

On the other hand maybe its good most pallies don't do this... The nerfs would come fast and furious!


Raj

[Cryptic]

So with mind vision you’re 50-0, it doesn’t need changing, and druids need to be nerfed. Did I miss anything?

[MongoJerry]

So with mind vision you’re 50-0, it doesn’t need changing, and druids need to be nerfed.  Did I miss anything?

We're 50-0, because we have a good well balanced and organized team that regularly plays together. And, yes, we have a druid as our primary flag carrier (and a shaman as our backup). Mind Vision is a very useful skill that helps our strategy, but it alone is not the reason we win. Most of our opponents use Mind Vision as well.

If anything, Mind Vision is the one anti-druid skill in CTF, because it allows us to see what direction a druid flag carrier is going so we can head him or her off before he or she gets into the open field where he or she can get support. Without it, druids would have a complete field day -- even more of one than they already have.