Battleground stories

[NotSoDarklord]

I would call the tactic of attacking with all ten at the start of the match a zerg
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Yes. That's exactly what I meant.

[Metrocube]

Battlegrounds is like Butt Whoopie.

Butt whoopie is not much fun unless you properly prep for it. Even then, some people are just not going to be interested. And of the people that are, one bad experience at the beginning is going to be traumatic and shape their opinion of it for a long time.

To sum up, while there are many couples out there who enjoy butt whoopie and rave about its merits, there are some people who have given it a shot, but because their first experience was painful and messy, have lost all interest in it.

BG is exactly like that.

It's all good. I aint' gonna force my girlfriend into butt whoopie even though I *know* there are gals out there who love it, and I ain't gonna force anyone here to enjoy BG either. If someone who has soured on it wants to give it a try again later, I'll make sure to have teamspeak/ventrilo prepped.

[Gurnsey]

All ten?!?  Oh, my God.  Our team eats up groups that try to do that.  It's my basic contention that the flag rooms are indefensible against anything but a small one or two person attacking party.  The simple way to mess a group like that up is with a series of aoe fears and snares.  The typical thing would be to have a warrior charge into the flag room and intimidating shout.  A mage improved Blizzards and/or Frost Novas to snare more people.  I as the priest fear anyone else who's still active and picks a caster to Silence, while the druid snags the flag and books it out of there with me right on top of him giving him heals, dispelling magic snares, and fearing any enemies who catch up.  Once the druid's out in the open field, it's travel form and cap the flag for the win.  Sure, a team that holes up in the flag room has plenty of firepower to kill an attacking party, but we don't stick around long enough to let them do that.

It is far more important to control the middle of the field and the proper way to defend the flag against an assault is in front of the base.  You can fight them there and kill, slow down, or at least use up their mana there.  Then, if you die, you can rez at your graveyard with full health and mana and go again.  The nearness of the graveyard is the greatest advantage defenders have.  A team that defends the flag in the flag room itself loses this advantage.  Yes, it's occationally helpful to have one or two people go back to the flag room to guard against solo or duo attackers who try to steal the flag, but having more than two people stay in the flag room itself is counterproductive.
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I got into a group that had just finished a match and had immediately gone in again, with many familiar names that worked well together. I have to agree in your analysis of flag defense - we had 2 in the flag room to slow and confuse the attackers, and one on the roof (rogue) to pick off those trying to sneak in up top. We had a 4-man attacking group: me, another shaman, a druid, and a warlock. The other three played 'midfield' and did it well - they picked off as many attackers as they could but let those that made it past go, but tightened into a wall on the rare occaision that our flag made it out into the field. That position also let them help us bring the flag out.

Our attack plan was to Fear one of the priests out (they had 2 priests, a rogue, a hunter, and a paladin IN the flag room), have a Shaman (usually me) on the other priest, and have the druid or the other shaman pick up the flag. Some people seem to forget that you can heal the flag-carrier even in pickup groups :) Our carrier (druid this time) had 4 on him leaving the flag room and hit another rogue and a warrior coming out of the tunnel, yet still survived with his Renew (he'd pop in and out of Bear while inside to Renew) and my and the other Shaman's Lesser Heals. He then survived being rooted by an opposing druid several times, being Concussed by a Hunter, and being chased down near our base by straggling enemy attackers. Druids FTW!

Something else that most people don't realize: Druids in Bear or Cat form (don't know about travel, or Shaman's Travel form) are Beasts - Hunters can scare them, and more importantly, Druids can put them to sleep :) On our last capture, there was a Druid in Cat form (Grrrr, +30% speed outdoors!) ripping our carrier in the back. 2 secs later, Zzzzzzzz sleepy time!

[lemekim]

I would call the tactic of attacking with all ten at the start of the match a zerg
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Yea! I agree! It's not like you have 10 people to compete against that...




Seriously though, a lot of tactics have a weakness, including this one. But you can't simply do same thing over and over (e.g. leave 5 on defense and take 5 on offense) and expect to win against any combo. There is no single winning strategy.

[kandrathe]

:w00t:

All I can say is... :lol:

How many flasks of oil from Westfall would I need?

[Tal]

Not exactly the best or most charming metaphor there Leeah - lets try to keep the discussion on a PG rating. :)

[NotSoDarklord]

Yea! I agree! It's not like you have 10 people to compete against that...
Seriously though, a lot of tactics have a weakness, including this one. But you can't simply do same thing over and over (e.g. leave 5 on defense and take 5 on offense) and expect to win against any combo. There is no single winning strategy.
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Fair 'nuff. I have yet to see an effective counter that's not just zerging in return. What would you do?

[Metrocube]

After a few of these matches, I've come to believe the best defense is an overwhelming offense.

Stage 1: everyone captures enemy flag
Stage 2: everyone recaptures friendly flag
Stage 3: post flag and profit!

Whichever team puts forward the best offense (in numbers, clue, epic equipment and communication) wins the game every time.

The tactics for accomplishing stage 2 vary with every game, but the strategy, as a whole, is sound.

Edit: Oh yeah, and apologies for the parents out there who have had to explain to their kids what whoopie is. The only other analogy I could think of involved the Japanese sea-urchin sushi called "Uni", and the mere memory of it mades me dizzy.

[JustAGuy]

Both are very fun and each are very different from one another.  The Warsong Gulch capture-the-flag battleground is fast paced and intense.  Matches last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and half depending on how evenly matched and well coordinated the opposing sides are.  Matches are 10-on-10, so every player matters, and it's important that everyone knows what to do and where to go.  There's no relaxing even for a minute in these matches.

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I just played my first game of BG today, and I have to completely agree with your statement. I made a couple of noob mistakes, as in, killing when I was protecting, and protecting when I was supposed to be killing, or wasting my stun -- but all-in-all, it was good fun. That said, we lost.

So, here's the game story:

This game was very close. 3-2 for the Horde. The difference was their priest. We had a disorganized alliance side: only two pallies, and a bunch of hunters, rogues, and mages. I was the offense pally, and I did pretty well for my first time out. I was responsible for protecting the flag carriers, buffing and debuffing as required, firing off needed heals and what-not, and getting those kills in mid-field. They had a priest, and every time, he killed my mage partner before I could get to him, either because he had a warrior and rogue protecting him, or he healed himself before I could finish him. That mind control is a real pain too, I tells ya.

There were two crucial moments in this game. One where we had the flag with the score 1-1, entering our base no less, and the horde was tailing us. Our flag carrier was a rogue, taking a good beating on his back. I was casting a heal, I was ALMOST finished, when the other Paladin cast "Blessing of Protection" on the flag carrier. Well, no one knew that this would cause the flag carrier to drop the flag. Of course, the horde snatched it right away, and we lost our opportunity to clinch the game. They scored shortly after that because our team was a bit scattered and the other Paladin was creamed shortly after his protection cast. They basically had an easy walk to the flag.

The second crucial moment in the game was when both flags were out and it was 2-2. I had instructed our mage flag carrier to hide in the corner (I found a sweet-spot for hiding, which we used earlier to get a safe score). It was a few minutes before we finally found and killed their flag carrier, at which point the mage was given the "all-clear" to score the flag. She runs out, with me right behind her, heading toward our cash-in point. Little did we know, there was that priest again, in our hallway with his rogue and warrior buddies. Of course, my mage was killed promptly despite my best effort to take that priest out, with a rogue and warrior beating me unmercifully. No surprise, though, I survived the encounter... A lot of good it does me to survive when they can get the flag back so easily.

Despite our frustrating loss (our team was very disorganized, despite getting our act together later with a newly designated team leader) it was still a lot of fun. Being a 48 Paladin in a 41-50 instance, I was surprisingly able kill at will. I was no where near as powerful as my mage friend, but that's the trade-off now isn't it? I was practically unkillable. In an instance that took a good hour and a half, I died a total of nine-times -- two of those kills I just gave away because I knew the situation was hopeless (at the end, they were cashing the final flag, and I was heavily outnumbered, and in mid-field, with my divine shield/noob button cooling down).

So, that's my story. I had a lot of fun. Every man is important. I knew we had two weak links, and I could only spot one for the horde side. And then there was that damn priest... That damn priest...

[Watto44]

Some thoughts on pick-up groups. (This applies, in my experience, to BGs and PvE instancing.)

I've found that the trick to getting some enjoyment out of pick-up groups is patience. It take time for a group of strangers - or even a group of friends who have never played together - to gell and get a cohesive group strategy working. In the warsong BG, this usually means that we get a whomping the first time, loosing very quickly. The sceond run is better, we grab a flag and manage to eek it out for more than five minutes. :P By the third run, things have been worked out well enough that we can last - win or loose - in one of those epic battles that go for an hour or more. The trick is to keep most of the group together if you can, and that's the hard part. Most people, particularily if they aren't used to PvP, get really frustraited and quit after the first match. Hang on in there and try running through a couple of times with the same pick-up group.

Cheers. :)

PS. On the PvE side...I've noticed that most pick-up wipes happen before the group gets to the first boss. Once everyone has had time to see how the others play things usually go a lot smoother. I was once in a group that wiped 4 times (count them) in LBRS before getting to the first boss. Given how quickly our gear wore out on us after that, I think we did really well to get through two bosses. We managed to get Shadowhunter whatshername down to 50% with about 70% of our tanks gear red to boot. Ah, the memories. B) Anyways, [/random]

edit: bleh, speeling, readababability...and it still doesn't make any sense. It's late and I'm drunk. :rolleyes:

[lemekim]

Fair 'nuff.  I have yet to see an effective counter that's not just zerging in return.  What would you do?
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Brista posted some good tips in the other forum:

http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/index...topic=6098

A good approach to this fight would be:

"9 defend one stealths. 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."

In order for this to work, you preferrably need a druid, but sometimes a rogue, a shaman or a hunter will work (increased speed on foot). 9 of your teammates defend by your graveyard, while the 10th person in the very beginning captures the flag and hides, often close by your graveyard or flag room, since it's the best place to defend the flag and is close to the flag room for a quick score.

So what ends up usually happening is that 9 of your members are fighting by the graveyard, while the opponent 10 members are trying to kill you. Since you res up with full life/mana, while the opponent depletes theirs, you can simply wear them down and then kill the flag carrier. Often the opponents team will make a mistake, such as letting flag runner get too far from the core group, or key members getting split and killed, then you can capitalize very quickly.

Note: If the other 10 man group can crush your 9 people by your own graveyard and keep you down until they get to flag carrier, then you probably should have lost in the first place.



Also, if you think that you can beat their 10 people with your 10 people in a head-to-head fight, you can simply go into their base and capture it with your 10 people, and then defeat them head to head (preferrably closer to your own graveyard/base), and take their flag.

[TaiDaishar]

What a fight I just had!

After 4 minutes of waiting (Gasp!) I entered the Battleground with a bunch of other random players and we immediately all entered a raid.

The start was painful, the horde managed to get 2 flags within the first 20 minutes of the match due to disorganization on our part, which ended as soon as they got the second flag to their base.

Despite the fact we had a mage who thought he's a druid in disguise the group worked incredibly well for a pick up group at the first match.

It was long hard fight, we both had each other's flag and even though we managed to kill the horde flag carrier a couple of times they were always quick enough to snatch before we managed to return it to the base, back and forth across the battlefield, each attacked at his turn after the other's attack failed and this went for more than an hour until our flag carrier probably got bored and thus reckless, they killed him and soon thereafter the loss to our team.

Excellent fight that was evenly matched and although I did die quite a lot (around 38) I had the most kills in the match (138) while I was only 32 in level.

God I love battlegrounds, if only my computer was a little stronger...

[towelrod]

I hit the battlegrounds last night for the first time, with my 47 mage. I entered into a game where we were already up 2-1, and started looking around. I asked in /1 to be invited to the raid, but no one said anything. I ran around our base for a few minutes, until I got the hang of it, and then ran over to the horde base. Everyone was fighting in the middle, so I just went around and walked into the base. The flag was there, so I picked it up and ran off. I made it back to our base with no problems -- I think no one knew where the "new guy" was. After about 5 tense minutes of hiding in our base, my team returned the flag and I captured it.

Oh, they invited me to the raid right after the guy started shouting "The Horde flag was picked up by Lopt!"

In the second game, we got into a stalemate after about 90 minutes. We were up 2-0. We had their flag, and the flag carrier was hiding on the roof of our house. They had our flag, and their flag carrier was on the roof of their house. I was on defense mostly, but after 20 minutes of that the leader shifted me to offense.

I tried to get everyone together at the mouth of the horde tunnel. Twice we rushed in with about 4 guys; each time they beat us back. They were defending with a druid, 2 rogues, and a shaman flag carrier.

On the third run, we had 5 guys. A hunter was about 10 yards ahead of me running up the tunnel, and the other 3 were a little bit behind me. I said "wait, lets group up at door". The hunter grabbed the boots, and ran up the ramp as fast as he could. By the time I made it to the door, he was already dead at the top of the ramp. Next thing in /raid:

[Hunter] : OMG Why didn't you guys follow me

Then he starts complaining about how we are newbs, and this is his first day in BG and already he knows more than any of us. Sigh.

After we rez, I say again, "all offense to mouth of tunnel, lets group up". I am mounted, and ride past that hunter fighting against horde in the middle of the map. Why do people do this? Who cares about guys in the middle of the map? The situation is very simple: we kill shaman, we win.

After about 15 more minutes of hopeless attacks, they eventually kill our flag carrier, and capture the flag. Everything goes back to normal, and we win about 10 minutes later 3-1.

I really like warsong guich. It is so much more fun than any other pvp I've had in this game, and I play on one of the big pvp servers.

[Aalardin]

I had a rather epic match last night in Warsong.

It started out as 4v10. With that few people, the game is supposed to end in 5 minutes. Upon seeing that message, my team decided to just rack up the HK's, since there was no way the 4 of us could defend against 10 alliance. Just before the BG was set to close (after the 15 sec warning), more people joined, and it was about 8v10. We all set to defend to see how long we could last.

One lone rogue got their flag and turned it in, bringing much joy to our side. We defended a while longer. I ended up outside about halfway across, so I decided to take a stab at the flag. It was lightly defended, so I shielded, screamed, and renewed my way across the battlefield. The score is now 2 to 2.

By this time our team had finally filled, just in time. We organized groups, with most people defending. A shaman and I went for the flag, he grabbed it and I shielded and healed him until he could Ghost Wolf away. In the meantime our flag had been taken, so we ended up in one of those stalemates. After hiding for a while under the sawmill, we were discovered, and I ended up with the flag.

I ran to the to to the east(?) of the Horde base. There is a tree there that you can climb that is hidden from the path. The other team has to specifically look for you off the path to see if you are hiding there. At this point our team was tired, and some people had logged. Eventually I was found and no one could come to my rescue. I dropped the flag, and it looked like they were going to win. Fortunately someone was in the base and managed to sneak out before dying.

This went back and forth for quite a while, with several close calls on both sides. Finally, it looks as though the Alliance are going to win. A rogue's got the flag and our entire team is chasing him. He hits sprint and is very close to their flag. Fortunately, the 100% speed buff respawns right then, and someone manages to grab the flag milliseconds before he gets credit.

Or so we thought.

I heard the "Alliance flag taken" noise before I heard/saw the "end of game" message. Looking at the shouts, the game ended, and then our man grabbed their flag. It was still such a great battle with two fairly evenly matched teams.

On another note, hunters, rogues, druids, and to a lesser extent mages, rule the field. Hunters can harass me so much, with traps, stuns/snares, DoT's, and the pet that will follow you anywhere. Rogues and Druids can sneak in after a distraction and stealth behind a flag, wait for it to be turned in, then go. Mages can grab the speed boost, Frost Nova the defenders, and blink out before anyone can respond. As a priest, I find defending or protecting the flag carrier the most effective job, but I can be very effective as a decoy flag carrier to let a rogue get in position, as PW:S, Scream, and Renew make me very durable as long as I don't have the entire team attacking me.