Ramp! Tunnel! The life of a flagrunner
by Jennie Lees 
Aug 4th 2006 at 8:00PM
I've recently started spending much of my day in that eternal WoW timesink -- the battleground queue. Fed up of terrible random groups, I've joined a casual PvP team in search of honour, glory and extreme violence towards the Horde. With something of a druid shortage on my server, I'm often the only one in the group, and thus the chief flagrunner.Having partaken of the odd PvP game since I was in my mid-forties (not to mention playing games other than WoW which involve flags, teams and death) I'm no stranger to the concept of flag running, but I've found my ability as a flag carrier has vastly increased since getting into a good group. Not only have I become much faster at shifting between shapeshift forms in PvP, setting up easily-accessible keybinds for the various forms has helped me in PvE as well -- I'm developing a reflex for shifting into bearform when I start taking damage, which is useful in tricky aggro situations.
However, there's one common theme to my flag carrying; one thing I spend most of my time doing, and I'm not ashamed of the fact. My chief activity is running away, and staying alive. I make a lot of mistakes -- I run away from healers, I hit Dash and sprint off into the middle of several cows with big pointy swords -- but I'm learning, and enjoying it. The druid class makes a perfect flag runner in my (extremely biased) opinion, and with the right support a match can be over in a few minutes. Here's to more victories, and losses that help me learn.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sacri Aug 5th 2006 11:43AM
There are many classes that can be used as effective runners. Speed is often the main choice in a flag runner though. This limits things down to a few choices. Rogues (with sprint, speed pots, their high dodge, and hopefully some free action pots), druids (cat/travel form with dash, plus self-healing and bear-tank in sticky situations like flag guarding), shaman (self-healing, totems, ghost-wolf form), and Mages (Blink is an utter hell for those who would snare them and a good instant distance boost).
Other classes can do well also, priests and pallies can bubble and heal themselves till the shammies come by and purge the living snot out of them. Warriors have their inborn hardiness and warshout. Gnome racial abilities are a complete bane to people who would hinder their movement. If sneaky, a hunter can use their cheetah aspect as well.
While I have no doubt Warlocks could do well if planned and supported, they have less built in abilities to help with flag running. I personally have an especial hatred of twinked gnome mages who run flags. PvP trinket, gnome racial, movement speed enchants, speed, invisibility and free action pots, engineering gadgets and bombs, along with blink make it _VERY_ difficult to pin these little buggers down to rip their legs off. I would rather deal with a druid runner any day. At least then I know they have a smaller bag of tricks to get out of dodge.
Molnek Aug 6th 2006 11:59AM
I completely agree druids are good for running flags they are hard to kill but not frustrating they provide an enjoyable hunt and sometimes they get away however as as mentioned above a twinked out gnome mage can kick ass as a flag carrier many times have i been in WSG just yelling at my team to get to the mage when they insist upon running behind our FC doing nothing.
Keeper of the Dumplings Aug 14th 2006 10:18PM
I'm a warrior, and I can't tell you how much I loathe druid flag runners! I can charge, hamstring, and you've already swapped forms to drop the snare and go running off again, intercept and hamstring, and same deal.
It doesn't help that you can root me too with natures grasp!
Which is why I try to stop druids before they get out in the open, cuz once they can do that cheetah form spam, I can't stop em :/
Don't touch my dumplings!
http://murlocdumplings.com/
Donner Oct 31st 2006 12:35PM
THere are a bunch of good runners and really you dont even get travel form until 30s and there are other classes that get stuff like that when they hit their 20s. Im not being biased Im justy say that there are classes that work just as well in those situtations if not better. Trust me Ive seen a mage that runs flags better then any other class Ive seen.