Arathi Basin - Because it's shiney!

[Paelos]

Set foot in there in my first game ever, and we win closely. Set foot in there the next day, and we literally get beaten so badly that I think you can qualify it as a skunking. Why? Well, when you get in a PUG in AB you can get in much faster, but you don't have much time for invites. So, you end up running around like idiots with no communication while the Horde slaughters us. If you actually try and set up a group beforehand, we outnumber them so badly, we have to wait for the queue to clear 15 people to go in all at once. This typically takes twice as long, if not longer in my experience.

Am I trying to downplay the stupidity in the Alliance? Not at all, they are simply retarded. However, I think that the imbalance creating the queues incentivizes this kind of lackluster play from the majority side. If you can get in the game in half the time it takes to get organized, most people are going to do that. Top that off with the fact that someone has to take the initiative to invite every time, and you run into problems once you are inside.

I have no idea why invites aren't automatic once we enter a BG. They should be. We shouldn't have splinter groups running all over the place, or singles trying to do their own thing.

[Calantus]

I have no idea why invites aren't automatic once we enter a BG. They should be. We shouldn't have splinter groups running all over the place, or singles trying to do their own thing.

Tyren (CM) once answered that on the forums. His reply basically amounted to how the system would not know who to appoint a leader and "do you really want to be lead by a retard?". I like Tyren's style.

[HaemishM]

He should face the facts that no matter how the selection process is made, you have about a 95% chance of being led by a retard in WoW.

[Calantus]

Ya, but at least you'll be lead by a retard with initiative.

[MrHat]

http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=1698

Description :
BGinvite automatically handles raid invites for Warsong Gulch, Alterac Valley, and Arathi Basin - No more 'invite plz!11!'.

Typing '/bginvite' at any time will send an invite to everyone in your battleground instance and form the raid group if necesary.

Note: Attached, but I haven't tested it personally quite yet.

[Yoru]

I gave AB a shot last night.. or five shots, really. Alliance lost narrowly once, won narrowly once, lost badly twice and got completely reamed once (horde had all five resource points all game). Being 60, the entire game felt dominated by epic mounts, since it's centered around being able to shift forces between resource points in order to muster the appropriate numbers to attack/defend. It felt zerg-based, but that's probably due to the alliance's tactics topping out at "omfg all 2 mill".

Being a prot warrior with a 1-hander and a shield probably didn't help, either; I seemed to be pretty worthless on attack and defense aside from getting the odd hamstring on the damned bunnyhopping rogues.

[Paelos]

Yes, warriors are absolutely useless in AB. It's all about ranged attacks, ae and slows. I officially hate it.

[Fabricated]

We're on the same server, so um, I blame the aussies.

Anyway, my friend plays a pally named "Orys", and he said AB kind of sucks, but he got a shitload of kills there.

[Threash]

We're on the same server, so um, I blame the aussies.

Anyway, my friend plays a pally named "Orys", and he said AB kind of sucks, but he got a shitload of kills there.

That new hammer of wrath spell makes pallies extremely good killing blow ninjas :P

[Yoru]

I checked my honor at lunch today; 8000 honor points for 90 minutes of play. I think the honor farmers have found their new Mecca.

Yes, warriors are absolutely useless in AB. It's all about ranged attacks, ae and slows. I officially hate it.

Preach on, brother. Preach on.

What I'm going to try doing tonight is buying up a bunch of trash green cloth gear (preferably +frost resist or +sta) and seeing if I can fool the Horde into thinking I'm a priest or something.

It'll be good for a laugh at least.

[Fabricated]

I've always wanted to bang out a full set of Thorium armor, get all the resist enchants I can get, and hang around pallys with their various protection auras on. That, and my blacksmithing charm with it's +10 to all resists.

[Ironwood]

Yes, warriors are absolutely useless in AB. It's all about ranged attacks, ae and slows. I officially hate it.

I'm not convinced.  From my own experiences ( a fair few fights now, I like it...) Warriors, along with Rogues, are good at being the 'solo' defender.

All you have to do is slow the enemy down, after all, and you've won.  Rogues and warriors can stay back at the flags and hold them as long as they can.  Sure, it's not about the HK's, but then no-one seems to have grasped that's not what it's all about.  It's about winning.

Watching the biggest Guild on our server trying to hold two flags and then zerging (en masse) a third last night was pitiful.  They don't realise that this particular game is about fluidity.

[Dren]

We're on the same server, so um, I blame the aussies.

Anyway, my friend plays a pally named "Orys", and he said AB kind of sucks, but he got a shitload of kills there.

That new hammer of wrath spell makes pallies extremely good killing blow ninjas :P

If I hadn't started on the new rp/pvp server, that's what I would do with my pally.  HoW is quite nice in that regard.

[Calantus]

Sometimes I think you guys know nothing at all about WoW PVP. No wait, scratch that. The majority of you know nothing about WoW PVP, and never have. Mortal Strike is still the king of group v group encounters and AB changes nothing there. Warriors with their high armor, high hp, high damage, and mortal strike (if you PVP as a warrior and don't have MS you need to GTFO) are easily one of the more powerful AB classes. If there was one class I wouldn't take it would be... oh nvm, I can't think of any. It would most certainly not be warriors, however.

PS: I love you guys and your little carebare newbie ways, you just know nothing about WoW PVP. :P

[Paelos]

Sometimes I think you guys know nothing at all about WoW PVP. No wait, scratch that. The majority of you know nothing about WoW PVP, and never have. Mortal Strike is still the king of group v group encounters and AB changes nothing there. Warriors with their high armor, high hp, high damage, and mortal strike (if you PVP as a warrior and don't have MS you need to GTFO) are easily one of the more powerful AB classes. If there was one class I wouldn't take it would be... oh nvm, I can't think of any. It would most certainly not be warriors, however.

PS: I love you guys and your little carebare newbie ways, you just know nothing about WoW PVP. :P

Yeah all that high armor does wonders against magic. Oh no wait, magic negates armor. And that mortal strike is badass, but oh no wait, you have to get remotely near someone to use it. In AB you spend most of your time as a warrior freaking rooted to the ground while shamans, mages, rogues, and hunters pick off your ass from range. Sure your trinket can break that up once in a while, but not twice in a fight, and they know that. Sure you can beat a rogue or hunter one on one, but that ain't gonna happen, since they will vanish or scamper off into friends. Sure you might get some shots off in a group v. group since they aren't targetting you first, but again, they'll just keep rooting and waiting you out while they bash you cloth guys. The point is that a bunch of classes have some form of stun that's pretty handy. Warriors have imp revenge if you put the points in it, but that's no guarantee. You can spec maces, but again, that's not fruitful. You can use intercept once, but it's not long and has a dandy cooldown. Imp hamstring might do it, but even that's only 15% at the highest to stop someone.

True if AB was just a melee fest with people bashing on each other with physical combat, warriors would be king. Unfortunately, magic classes make your points about the good aspects of warriors moot.

[Calantus]

Don't blame me if you are playing AB like it's a solo-fest. Rooted? Dispell. Or you group mates could just not suck and thus live long enough for you to come back into play before the fight is over and end it fast once you are free.

When my shaman goes into battle she puts away her 2-hander for dagger and shield unless we are stacked on healing because the armor is so frickin badass. But whatever man, you keep believing your toon sucks because omgtehmagicgothru. Also health does help against magic and I believe I mentioned HP there somewhere. Damage is also not negated by magic (read: dispell, you also have a trinket).

No stun? Poor baby. I only get a 3-minute cooldown 2 second stun and I get by just fine. But you don't lack a stun, intercept is very good if you know how to use it. Charge is also decent but it's not easy to be skilled at putting it into play all that often without giving up too much.

But I already know you are a defeatist from previous posts so I wont bother going on.

PS: Never again let the following words leave your mouth: "you can spec maces". No.

[Paelos]

Come play alliance for a day. Group mates coming to bail you out? Now you are the one who's fucking dellusional. It's pretty easy to set up a cogent group when you don't have to wait in line for anything. Yeah, you're a big badass in PvP because you know how to work together. Check that, you have the OPTION to work togetehr. Despite Blizzard's bumpfuzzling over their queue system, putting your own raid together does cost you lots of time. See, 25 minutes to get in compared to an Hour to get in a game. Then, once you get in that game, you have a 50/50 shot of drawing Cpt. Uber Horde, rank 14 and his band of full blue gear pvp challenge squad. Again, good luck beating that Teamspeak, better-outfitted, been working together for months group.

You play Horde, so you've never seen a queue. Like I said, come see how the other half lives. It's probably the only game I've ever seen where having more players on a side puts you at such a huge disadvantage.

[Threash]

Yeah, i don't know what you guys are smoking but warriors are pretty much the best pvp class atm.  Of course if you are prot and are using a shield for anything other than flag carrying then all i can say is wtf did you expect.  MS + Arcanite Reaper, learn to love it.

[Paelos]

Yeah, i don't know what you guys are smoking but warriors are pretty much the best pvp class atm.  Of course if you are prot and are using a shield for anything other than flag carrying then all i can say is wtf did you expect.  MS + Arcanite Reaper, learn to love it.

I should qualify my statement to reflect the fact that it is not the class itself, but the coupling of the class and the Alliance-side game. The class on Horde works fine because it has to be supported to be effective. As such, the alliance side hasn't learned how to support it's own head yet.

[Righ]

I largely agree with Calantus even though he's being deliberately inflamatory. Warriors do not suck in Arathi Basin at all, and you don't need an epic mount to be viable either. You'll probably not be top of the killing blows league table with a warrior, but if you play your class, you can be vital to success. Intercept the hunters and casters, hamstring them and remove them from combat with some big smackdown. If you stand around in melee, playing with the opposition warriors, paladins and rogues while their casters wail on you, you're going to get owned. Go for their fleshy ranged attackers. Make them rez and ride so your team has the edge.

That's really all there is too it - target selection. Fun as it might be for a couple of highly armored players to slug it out in close quarters, all they are doing is giving the ranged attackers time to kill them. Go after the ranged attackers, stop down their range with charage/intercept and they are nothing. Warriors do need some support to be truly effective, but that's true of most classes. However, even on the most worthless pickup group, focus on what your best PvP options are, and you'll produce results.

As a final note, protection warriors rock just fine in PvP, and MS is not the only viable build. You can still intercept the weak but dangerous classes, and you've got great stuns, awesome rage generation and big enough damage against ranged classes to own them nearly instantly when up close. Sure, you won't win against an MS warrior, but are really trying to? See above for your target list.

[Righ]

I should qualify my statement to reflect the fact that it is not the class itself, but the coupling of the class and the Alliance-side game. The class on Horde works fine because it has to be supported to be effective. As such, the alliance side hasn't learned how to support it's own head yet.

Nope. This is whiny warrior bitch statement #1 horde-side too. "You fuckers never heal me you useless bastards. We'd win if only you'd do your job and keep me alive." Yes, you can be more effective if you work well as a team and support one another, but the same goes for everybody. As a horde player with a 60 warrior, I can tell you that I rarely get a heal. I can still kick ass, and shred the DPS classes fine. Sometimes I die, but I kill much more than I'm being killed, so I think the class is working fine, even with minimal support.

[kaid]

For horde support of warriors one thing in hordes favors is that shaman are very popular which means that you will usually have a bunch of healers on your side and usually at least a couple in the bunch willing to um HEAL!


On the alliance side paladins in general are to busy meleeing to heal anybody and priests are very rare. So they are stuck hoping the druids will stay in caster mode to heal them.

kaid

[Righ]

Funny little subjective reality you have there. I think the Horde players will tell you that from their perspective, there appear to be many more paladins willing to heal than shaman. Paladins are in fact a more defensive class than shaman. Most of our shaman saw the windfury movie and are running around with arcanite reapers and +attack power gear.

Oh screw it. You're right. It's MUCH easier as Horde. We're playing in easy mode. You should join us since you all suck.

[Paelos]

Funny little subjective reality you have there. I think the Horde players will tell you that from their perspective, there appear to be many more paladins willing to heal than shaman. Paladins are in fact a more defensive class than shaman. Most of our shaman saw the windfury movie and are running around with arcanite reapers and +attack power gear.

Oh screw it. You're right. It's MUCH easier as Horde. We're playing in easy mode. You should join us since you all suck.

I'm not looking for heals as a warrior, I'm looking for coordinated attacks. Most times the alliance clothies are oblivious to what you are attacking, and they are attacking different guys. That just means the horde can focus and kill one by one. Heals are largely irrelevant to me.

[Calantus]

On my server horde used to outnumber alliance, now it is pretty even all the way up to 60, but there we still have a slight number advantage. Oh, but we have many more people who PVP. Alliance que is around 10 seconds, our que is around 20 minutes. 1/2 of all the BGs pitches a horde PUG against an alliance pre-made, the rest of the alliance groups are mostly made up of the same people over and over again but there are still people I don't recognize on horde-side when I join up.

Also, if I had to point a finger towards advantage to one side I would say alliance have the advantage in AB. Nothing defends a node like a paladin.

[Righ]

I'm not looking for heals as a warrior, I'm looking for coordinated attacks. Most times the alliance clothies are oblivious to what you are attacking, and they are attacking different guys. That just means the horde can focus and kill one by one. Heals are largely irrelevant to me.

There's a pretty simple soulution to these problems. Go into the instance with just two other people to provide you with support fire. Queues take a long time if you try and take a full party in. If you enter as a group with just a couple of people, it is just as fast as on your own. I usually don't see much focused fire Horde side at all. All we're saying here is pickup groups are bad, PvP ones doubly so. Horde or Alliance doesn't really come into it. Being in the larger server population will make it take longer to get a pre-arranged group through the queue. That's all.

[Fabricated]

Calantus instantly fails for being a MS + Arcanite Reaper warrior anyway.

[Yoru]

As a final note, protection warriors rock just fine in PvP, and MS is not the only viable build. You can still intercept the weak but dangerous classes, and you've got great stuns, awesome rage generation and big enough damage against ranged classes to own them nearly instantly when up close. Sure, you won't win against an MS warrior, but are really trying to? See above for your target list.

 I'm willing to believe I blow, skill-wise, at PvP - I do it once a week, maybe, and only for a few hours at best. I'm extremely heavily prot-specced (40+ points), with mostly crappy gear - greens and some leftover blues from my early 50s; 1h-axe and shield until last night, when I got a very lucky roll on a nice 2h-sword off Balnazzar. I did AB twice after getting it, won once (by a large margin) and lost once (by a large margin), with the win clearly determined by the 10-man raid group from a single guild coordinating the entire thing.

Intercept is valid; +10ish rage and a 1-sec stun. I tend to try to pick out and harass their healer, which usually means a shaman. This is probably a mistake, given the shaman's earthbind/self-heal/mail armor combo. I try to follow it up with a hamstring to keep the little kneebiters nearby.

For stuns, I've got revenge and concussion blow. Revenge mostly only works against rogues, since most other classes use attacks that I can't dodge/block/parry, and it's a 40% chance on an 8-second-cooldown ability for a 3-sec stun. Concussion blow is 15 rage, 30 or 45 sec cooldown, and stuns for 6 seconds. Mages tend to blink directly out of it (bastards), whereas it does screw over priests, warlocks and rogues pretty well. (Ignoring WotF and trinkets, that is.) Am I missing or ignoring some stun abilities here?

Rage generation I just don't see. Most of my rage stems from getting hit, since I deal pretty pitiful damage. With the 2-hander, this improved a little, but not by much.

Big damage, only with the 2-hander. My axe did about 80-100 damage per hit every 2.2 seconds, the 2-hander is doing around 120-160 per hit every 2.3 seconds. Impressive numbers to me, but not compared to what I've seen most dps classes dump out at 60.

The problems that I tend to have are as follows.

Against mages, they'll blink the first time I get in their face, then frost-nova if I manage to get close a second time (e.g. I Charge, they Blink, I  switch to Angry Dwarf Stance and Intercept, they Frost-nova.). At that point, I get kited with frostbolts. I'm thinking I need some +frost resist gear for this situation. Also, is there some kind of auto-blinking interface mod? A lot of the blinks seem to occur as soon as I connect on the charge. If things seem to be going south for the mage, they fairly often substitute sheeping for frost-kiting, using the time to heal/drink up, run away, broadcast for reinforcements or something similar.

Against rogues, things are a bit better if I'm not alone or already in battle. I hamstring and proceed to beat away with dps abilities, being particularly sure to keep rend on (to break vanish). Overpower as much as possible, try to stun with concussion blow when they get down to the low 20s in health. However, a fair amount of the time, they vanish and/or sprint, and I just can't switch stances and intercept fast enough to catch up. If not in battle, I just get sapped.

Against priests, I try to keep the shield on so I can shield-slam and try to dispel their Shields and Forts. I don't fight enough of them to really have developed decent tactics beyond 'smash head in, stun when health low'. When going after a priest, I tend to set my mind to harassing them to keep them from healing their teammates. As a solo defender, I get mind controlled and thrown off a cliff or into a lake.

Warlocks, I've not fought one in a small-group environment like AB yet. If their DoTs aren't dispelled when they die, I imagine it'll be a mutual-kill scenario.

Against shamans, the only thing I've found effective is ganging up. One-on-one, we tend to pace each other for damage, but then they use some instant (or at least un-shieldbash-able) heal ability, and my life is forfeit.

Solo defenders in AB just seem to not work, for the above reasons - sheep, sap, mindcontrol. I doubt it's a class-specific thing. Since I'm fairly weak alone, I tend to try to stick with my group, which doesn't work when they (at least half the time) scatter themselves all over the map like idiots.

And for those of you saying "omfg respec 2 arms n' get MS or no pvp 4 u noob", die in a car fire. I'm not blowing 50 gold every time I feel like PvPing; there must be a way for other specs to fit in. Being a one-trick pony with MS is just asking to get trivialized if someone figures out a counter-tactic or Blizzard nerfs MS.

[Pococurante]

Why is speccing a rogue for maces bad?  Seems to me stunning several squishies incredibly quickly would be useful.  But then I've never tried it...

[Threash]

Why is speccing a rogue for maces bad?  Seems to me stunning several squishies incredibly quickly would be useful.  But then I've never tried it...

Random stuns are really not all that usefull, specially for rogues who already have plenty of stuns to choose from. 

[Lantien]

Oh ho, Warrior PVP talk. SPEAK OF IT AND I SHALL BE SUMMONED.

From my very limited experience (5 games), some thoughts:

1. The Blacksmith is a good place to take.  From spawning in the center, you can hit a lot of places easily.  If you can take the Blacksmith and either the Farm and the Stables, you can have a lot of striking range.

2. That being said, the Blacksmith isn't automatic victory. That's because....

3. The key so far appears to be to take 3 points and hold them, any 3 points.  When your opponent takes 1, you take his least defended point down.  The best way to do this is as your one point is going down, you send out 2+ units out around to the Horde's spots.  Generally speaking, the Horde is well disciplined, so they've send out like 10 guys to beat down a place with 1-2 alliance guards.  This also means they have like 1-2 defenders themselves.  2 smart guys can easily scout, and wreak havoc on poorly defended points.

4. The Alliance will actually do better in AB, until the Horde compensates. Because the alliance does whatever they want, they're better at moving as this unpredictable wave.  Defend the blacksmith, because that's the best place to hold?  One solo rogue will crush your defender and take the stable. Bring guys in to defend the stable?  3 guys who just ressed on the Alliance side will wander around and take your gold mine instead. Unless you're very well disciplined, this "attack in random bunches" style can pay dividends in the short term, ESPECIALLY if they're attacking at the same time, which a undisciplined alliance team tends to do.  The horde will have to learn to not send in 12 guys to attack one point, when 6 can do the job if you scout it right.  Vice versa for the Alliance.

I figure the Alliance to milk this for only a short amount of time before the Horde compensates and starts whooping up again; I think the key will be well disciplined 5 man groups that capture 3 out of the 5 points; when one node goes down, the group splits up to take down the weakest node that they can find and keep the 3-2 edge.

5. As for a warrior's role?  Harrassment. You wander in, and give the opponent a boner to kill you.  Most pubbie groups on both sides are HK whores, so they'll gang up 6 on 1 to kill you, or better yet, toy with you.  Guess what the rest of my team is doing while you're wasting your time dropping 2 people?

I've done (unintentionally, mind) some feints into the Blacksmithery, where I've been taken to school vs 4+ melee horde, while my team sneaks and takes the stables, or another spot.

As for defense, you need to get out there and throw out whirlwind, go into battle stance and hamstring everyone, and generally get aggro from being a nuisance. If you're lucky and your enemies are stupid enough to do that, then if you have some healing that's paying attention (HINT: BRING HEALER FRIENDS TO AB AND TALK ABOUT HEALING STRATS), you will never die.  I've personally held off literally 4 horde that were (stupidly, true) only hitting me, letting my guild priest heal me to full until help came.

(as a hint to all you warriors out there, if someone is healing your target, probably it's time to split off and start harassing the healer, yes?)

Honestly, we probably need to do a "Warrior PVP tips in group PVP" thread.  We're messing up the thread on AB, and I could literally post pages upon pages of observations.

6. Sadly, the biggest failing of AB is that at this time, using the current tactics, the best players are doing what it takes to win: Harass, defend flags (and getting no HK), etc.  As a result, you're going to see 10+ ganksquad guys who are racking up huge HK, and 5 people who are trying to win, with substantially fewer Kills.  C'est La Vie. I imagine this balances out in theory when you get solo, or duo HK kills, and bonus CP for assaulting flags.  I honestly don't think so though.

7. And unless you get fatty CP for a killing blow, I don't care if the Paladin is getting more Killing blows.  I'd honestly prefer the Paladin to be a f'ing heal bot, but if he's going to be a crappy hitterdin, at least let him be the best Hitterdin he can be.

[Train Wreck]

From what I've seen on ER AB, the alliance suffers from having a much higher learning curve.  From what I've heard, the horde can jump right back into a new battle instance like being the only person riding a waterslide.  This means they can do the battleground much more often than alliance can.  With Alliance, we almost always have a significant number of people that are doing it for their first time, often with no leader to take charge.  The leaders that usually do rise up -- and I applaud their initiative -- are stuck on tactics that worked the first two days, but now we consistantly get whomped.

They break into three groups of five and try to hold three bases.  By the third day, the horde learned to break into two large groups that can steamroll over any one of the alliance groups, making their turtle defense strategy totally worthless.  Lantien has it right on the money that you have to hold *any* three bases, not the *same* three bases.  The alliance has not caught on to this yet.  They will often go all out to try to retake a base that was recently overrun by 9 horde, and might as well try breaking down a wall with a water hose for all the good it does.

Regarding warriors, I have found them to be a very big pain in the ass for consistantly hiding behind hills at passes and charging my horse after I pass them.

Has anybody tried controling chocking points instead of bases?  Granted, you should have at least one defender so they can't just walk up and take it, but you can keep an eye on more than one base by staging at the crossroads just north and south of the bridges to the blacksmith.  I would try it myself but nobody is yet willing to abandon their losing strategy of stables, mill, and mine come hell or high water.

[Lantien]

From what I've seen on ER AB, the alliance suffers from having a much higher learning curve.  From what I've heard, the horde can jump right back into a new battle instance like being the only person riding a waterslide.  This means they can do the battleground much more often than alliance can.  With Alliance, we almost always have a significant number of people that are doing it for their first time, often with no leader to take charge.  The leaders that usually do rise up -- and I applaud their initiative -- are stuck on tactics that worked the first two days, but now we consistantly get whomped.

They break into three groups of five and try to hold three bases.  By the third day, the horde learned to break into two large groups that can steamroll over any one of the alliance groups, making their turtle defense strategy totally worthless.  Lantien has it right on the money that you have to hold *any* three bases, not the *same* three bases.  The alliance has not caught on to this yet.  They will often go all out to try to retake a base that was recently overrun by 9 horde, and might as well try breaking down a wall with a water hose for all the good it does.

Regarding warriors, I have found them to be a very big pain in the ass for consistantly hiding behind hills at passes and charging my horse after I pass them.

Has anybody tried controling chocking points instead of bases?  Granted, you should have at least one defender so they can't just walk up and take it, but you can keep an eye on more than one base by staging at the crossroads just north and south of the bridges to the blacksmith.  I would try it myself but nobody is yet willing to abandon their losing strategy of stables, mill, and mine come hell or high water.

Yeah, that's why I'm loathe to say that the Alliance will have the edge forever.  As the horde fights more, they'll learn what works and what doesn't.  Only a matter of time.  I also expect that the Horde will step their game up and be able to fight that "random strikes" system that the Alliance tends to do with tight communication. The Alliance on the other hand... won't.

If anything Train Wreck, that's what I see the HORDE doing.  They're so big on working as a group, they'll bumrush 12 guys on the Lumbermill.  If we're lucky, someone's there to yell "lumbermill going down, someone jack one of the Horde's spots", and people compensate.  Naturally, some Alliance try to be heros and take back the Mill, we call them martyrs, and more importantly, they hold up 12 guys from taking something else, while a disorganized group of alliance attack the other horde spots.  One usually fails, but one ends up succeeding. I think this sort of "every man for himself" psychology, with a little bit of /raid prodding/information sharing results in the Alliance doing MUCH better in pick up than in WSG, at least from what I've seen so far.  Again, when the Horde "learn", this will sadly change.

And you forgot, Charge, hamstring, rend.  Not necessarily in that order.

As for choke points, I think that would work as a harassment/delay tactic.  I presume you're talking about South of the Blacksmith, and then the east and west bridges, making them unable to go any farther north. However, without good communication, the opponent could just load up 12 guys to break one wall, and then spider out.  So I'm not sure if it would work in the long term.  However, it would let people know way ahead of time that some group is coming.

[Flood]

I played 56 levels guildless as an Alliance Priest on a PvP server.  I never made the 60/epic scene, nor do I think I'm more than an average PvP player skill-wise.  Still  sometimes I read the posts here about PvP issues and think the guys (and gals) are not familiar with the current situation. 

But... after playing with them some, and spending some time on a PvE server myself, I can see why some people might not agree with x or y about WoW's PvP landscape.  Everyone that posts here is pretty sharp no matter the rhetoric they use.


Err anyway on topic: as I have mentioned before when not solo my RL friend would play his Warrior with me.  My off the cuff impression was that he was a whirling Dwarven tickcan of asskickery when we played.  Especially post 50 and the "love" four or so props back for Warriors. 

Admittedly not every Warrior has the perk of a same level Dwarf Priest (me!) as his wingman, meh.   

[Train Wreck]

The Alliance has tight communication?  Heh, not on Earthen Ring.  In my last pickup AB, we lost before we had 1,000 resources.  The person that passed for a commander kept sending people to try to retake the mill even though it had a large horde pressence (and their other bases were more than likely poorly defended).  By the time I got them to understand what went wrong, the game was already lost.  Much of this is because many of the Alliance have little experience with battlegrounds, usually having to spend over an hour in the queue per pop.

Yeah, we got the mill back... and by then, we were so far behind in resources that it didn't matter.  The unique thing about AB is that it is more about maneuvers than PvP.  Instead of crushing their main attack group, you would do well to avoid it and take advantage the fact that the rest of their force is spread out over their bases.  Even if you did manage to destroy their main group, they will be back in 30 seconds anyway.

By the way, what are the best strategies/class combinations for a two or three man base defense team?