Hi.

I know we're all excited about Season 4. Some of us are stockpiling arena points and trying to get our ratings up, while others are taking the opportunity to gear up some alts in Season 2 gear as soon as it moves to honor. And that's great, there's something for everyone. But it also seems, at least on the servers I play on, to be leading to some frayed tempers in the battlegrounds. So let's chat about what is, and what isn't, appropriate and useful for getting yourself some honor in the BG's.

First off, and I can't say this one enough as a general piece of advice for any battleground, yelling, calling people names, and spamming macros does not actually make you Sun Tzu. It can be very annoying when your WSG turns into a 45 minute turtle with no flag captures, or your AV run becomes mired down because yet again everyone rushed RH instead of taking and holding Iceblood Graveyard, but no matter how creative your insults get, the tide of battle will not turn. The other players in the battleground are not going to say "you know, Matsakillza is right, I really am a total noob" and even if they did, how would that possibly improve how the match is progressing? It won't. It just makes you look like a petulant child throwing a fit because something didn't go your way.

Now that we've gotten that bit of general advice out of the way, let's move on to specific examples from each battleground, linking to our own Zach Yonzon's thoughts on each as we do.

Alterac Valley

One of the biggest mistakes groups get into is the 'rush the end graveyard' strategy. Especially popular for the Alliance as it used to be a huge winner, back when the Horde had no idea how to counter it, it's still resurrected from the dead each and every battleground even though it has almost no chance of working unless the opposite side plays like morons who have been heavily drugged and then beaten repeatedly about the head and shoulders with inanimate carbon rods.

Yes, I know you won your last three AV's this way. How many have you lost with this strategy? How many times have you taken the Relief Hut only to look at the map and realize that there are only five Alliance players south of Iceblood, and they're all with you? How many times have you skipped Frostwolf Graveyard to cap RH and the towers, only to see wave after wave after wave of Horde players come up, recapture the towers, and keep you bogged down defending RH while their offense moves steadily north, captures each graveyard in its turn, defends them, and moves forward again? How many times have you wiped repeatedly on Drek and his warmasters while the Horde systematically annihilates the towers?

It is never a good idea to assume the enemy is stupid. If you can see a way your strategy will fail, you should assume they can too, especially one as old and hoary as this one. Likewise, killing Galv/Balinda before taking a GY is not a good idea. Not only does it give the enemy a chance to wipe you and send you back to your starting point, but it means they can rush you while doing do from their nearby, conveniently placed res spot.


Warsong Gulch

You cannot win without defending your own flag and your flag carrier.

If you have 9 people on offense going for the flag and they have five on defense, they will hold you up long enough to prevent you from taking their flag until after they've not only sent five in to kill your one defender and take your flag, but then the ones who you killed taking their flag will constantly prevent you from leaving with it while their flag carrier and his defenders run back, hit you from the other side, kill your FC and then cap right in front of you. You need enough defense to do the same back to them. Any strategy that hinges on your entire team going into their base, where they have the benefit of knowing exactly what you're trying to do and control of the line of sight, means you're going to fail unless you massively outgear/outplay them.

Now, you can count on massively outgearing/outplaying the other team if you're a premade group in full S3/Tier6 gear against a PuG group. But that's not a plan so much as it is straightforward mauling of an inferior team, and even then, if they had some defense they could at least slow you down a lot.

If you go in alone, cap the flag, run out and run into the enemy with no one anywhere near you, you're going to die. Be philosophical about this. You knew you were alone when you took the flag.


Arathi Basin

For the love of whatever you hold sacred, don't rush off and leave a node undefended to go fight on the road! Why do people do this? Why? What possible reason could you have to leave mine undefended to go attack stables and then not even go to the flag at the stables? Are you under the impression that pile of standing stones contains vast caches of riches? Did you get confused about the objective of the match, which is to take nodes and hold them? Winning the match in no way requires you to score the most KB's. No matter how many times you tell us all about how you're leading the BG in killing blows, if we're losing, no one cares how awesome you are.

If we're up three to two, this is not the time to all leave BS undefended and hit one of the two nodes the enemy has. BS is right in the middle of the map. Every node has access to it, with mine and lumber mill having the hardest of a not particularly hard time rushing it. So if you leave BS to go hit farm, expect that BS will be taken from you if you don't leave someone, anyone there to defend it, even to just yell out "BS BS BS" as the enemy slaughters him as brutally as crazed shoppers the day after Thanksgiving.

If for some reason your team decides to go as a full group and rush each base, the other team will just send five to follow after you and take everything back as you leave. You can rush one base as a mob, but then you have to leave people behind to defend what you take, or it was pointless.

And seriously, no one cares how many killing blows you got. That one dude with no KB's who helped hold stables the entire game? He did more than you did. He played with an eye towards winning.


Eye of the Storm

If you hold three bases, you win. If you hold two bases and consistently hold mid-field, you win.

Holding one base and consistently holding mid field does not win.

Holding no bases and consistently holding mid field makes no sense at all. You can't cap a flag if you don't have any place to take a flag, and furthermore, you see how fast their score is shooting up with all four bases? You see that? That means they're going to win very, very quickly. When we ask you to stop rushing mid-field and attack a tower, calling us names and ignoring us is just contributing to why we are losing. Declaiming that you enjoy running the flag is ludicrous when the only place to run it to is occupied by a bunch of Alliance players waiting to rip your head clean off, thank you for the flag, and cap it to end the game even earlier.

I'm sure you've experienced some BG fallacies of your own. Please, gentle reader, do share.

Tags: alterac valley, AlteracValley, arathi basin, ArathiBasin, battlegrounds, eye of the storm, EyeOfTheStorm, PvP, season-4, warsong gulch, WarsongGulch

Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Battlegrounds