Warsong Gulch

[ClydeJr]

I've recently started playing WoW and I've gotten an undead warrior up to 28. I tried playing in WSG when I was around level 19 and now when I'm around 28. When I was 19, I seemed to do OK. I could chop people up decently well and I could use charge/hamstring to slow either the enemy flag carrier or people trying to intercept friendly flag carrier. I felt I was doing some good.

Now that I'm in the next level bracket, things seem to have changed. The enemy flag carriers are almost always either a druid or a paladin. The druid is constantly shifting to drop slow effect and shifting into high speed animal forms which I can't keep up with. The paladin is using shields plus it always seems to have a pocket priest dropping PW:S on it so I can't seem to do anything to stop him. Plus the pallies always seem to have some sort of speed boost besides the powerup that they can pick up.

So what am I missing? Is there anything I can do or should I just not worry about the flag carrier and just farm away?

[Bstaz]

Don't HK Farm.  Teamwork, teamwork!

You have to seperate their flag carrier from their support staff.  As a warrior you should be bouncing off as many support people as you can ham stringing them.  Slow down that pally and that priest, use that shout that makes them run around.  Don't even bother with the flag carrier 90% of the time. Once you have seperated them your team will do the rest.

I have done a lot of WSG in all 3 of the lower brackets the biggest thing that changes as you move up is that each class starts to be more  defined and the players have to figure out how to best use their characters new abilities.  A 10-19 game is different then a 30-39 game because of the character skills but the basics are still the same.

The worst things I see are "chasing"  where 5 team members run all the way across the map to chase down one of the other team.  Or the people out in the mid field  are more worried about the other team and HK'ing them then they are about support / stoping the flags. You should have a defense in place of some sort, they are the only ones that shoud worry about defending.  The defense calls for help once the flag has left the home base and at that point anyone not currently enaged with taking their flag needs to drop what ever they are doing and get the flag carrier mid field.  Everyone has to zero in on that flag asap.  Typically the longest games for us are when they actually get our flag to their base.  At that point we have to "redeploy" into a defense mode and recovery mode.  The Rogues and Hunters that are typically controling mid field now have to go into their base to recover and the healers / runners have to go into our base to defend the flag we stole.  Once the cap is done we switch back.

I guess I could give you our typicall layout...  DPS is usually mid field. ( rogues, hunters ).  Warriors usually are as well because they take a lot of damage and baiscally buy time, if we have spare healing power a healer stays there as well.   The DPS people push to the entrance of the tunnel / drop of the Grave yard and basically take out anyone that dares come their way.  They don't chase!  If a straggler gets by they just tell the defense to exepect someone, what class it is and what way it appears they are coming in.   Defense can be pretty much anyone but we try to pair them up to someone that can stun, freeze, fear and someone with DPS.  We normally only have 2 on D at most.  And most games we do not even have defense unless we know the other team is fielding good players.  We just catch anyone taking our flag coming back across mid field. Our flag grab groups varry depending on how much defense they have up but it typically is a Druid & Priest or a Mage & Priest  with  some other class running as a distraction. That other class needs to be someone that has a good potential to cap the flag otherwise their defense won't buy it.  The Druid typically carries but they may not be the first to pick up. And we sometimes hand off the flag in during a fight just to mess up the alliance.  Also a 3rd person typicall moves in to grab the flag incase the carrier does not make it.  If you can always be grabbing the flag as soon as it is returned you don't give the other team enough time to reset into a defense.   We have even held off caping until the next person is in place for the pickup. 

  We tend to have a core 3 to 5 people together in each game with the rest being "pug" we be no means run a full 10 people group. Typically if we pull ten good people together the Alliance just stops joing after a couple losses.  That is the thing with WSG you really only need 3 or so people that work well together to make a difference unlike AB and AV.  We take time to explain things to the newly joining people and nudge them into the teamwork mentality and most of the time they catch on and help out since we typically win.


We have actually won games without killing a single alliance that was not holding our flag.  We have  4 total kills for the entire game on the alliance. Granted this was a horde team that worked really well together against an Alliance pug.  But just using stuns, fears, saps ....   we neturalized them enough that we could capture the flag.  And actually it was faster then a typicall game. We didn't waste the time and effort grinding down their HP we just rendered them useless for the critical few seconds we needed to get by them.

[kaid]

Honestly in WSG if your team is playing right there probably won't be to much hacking and chopping going on. But since most people tend to forget there is actually an objective in WSG it can be a bit tricksy.

As a warrior your aoe fear and hamstring are your friends. VS a druid basically keep hitting them with hamstring. They will keep shifting but you can keep slathering on your snare over and over so eventually they will die under your normal attacks. Also one annoying thing in wsg in a lot of brackets there are people who are just twinked beyond believe. I just love seeing level 19 people with twin fiery enchanted weapons or twin crusader enchanted weapons.

In the lower level brackets druids and shaman are both pretty dirty. If they can get a lead on you its damn tough to almost impossible to stop them. In the higher brackets everybody has horses so its not as bad but still annoying.


kaid

[cevik]

You have to work as a team to win WSG.  I've found the best way to have success is to put 3 to 4 on D in mid, and the other 6 or 7 rush the flag.  Don't put any in the flag room for d.  The Flag room is to small for a good defense, and the druid will run in, quaff a fap, and run out before you can kill them.

A good combo for mid D is a mage, a warlock, and a healer (shammy or pally would be ideal.. a priest could be good too).  Stand on the far side of the field, under the opposing tunnel.  When they try to rush your base, pick them apart in mid as best you can.  Use frost nova, sheep, fear, and seduce to split them up as best you can, and keep as many as you can from crossing.  A few will always slip through, but don't worry, stay under the tunnel.

The offense team should have the beefiest tank grab the flag and run down the tunnel.  If the other team is turtled, they'll all chase the flag carrier.  Sometimes it's best, if you have a spare stealther, to leave him behind stealthed on the flag.. just in case.  Have your warlock/priest/mage combo outside ready at the tunnel exit, and just as the flag carrier exits the tunnel have them use, HoT, Pyschic Scream, and Frost Nova, plus sheeps and targeted fears if needed, to remove everyone from the flag carrier.  At the same time, have your tank drop the flag and have a druid/shammy or a rogue with sprint up pick it up for the rest of the run.  This is easiest to do if you have vent.

Now the mid d team should be directly under the opposing tunnel, you should have a fast flag carrier with your flag, and their offensive team should have been picked appart rather well.  But some people slipped through, right?  You couldn't kill all 7 of the opposing rushing team (seriously, you couldn't?  you suck! :)).  So now the mid d guys, plus one or two of the offense guys, get mounted up (if 40+) and get ready to rush the flag carrier.  One person keep their eye on the far east, one on gy, one on tunnel, one on far west.  From the far side of the field (where you should be at this point), you should be able to see the flag as they try to cross.  When you see the flag, CALL IT so everyone knows where it is going (EAST, GY, TUN, WEST) and then rush it.  Use frost nova/sheep/aoe fear, etc to clear out the support staff, use targeted fear, death coil, root, etc to stop the flag runner.  Kill the flag runner, return your flag, and ta da, you have a cap.

Do that 3 times and you win.  It's really easy, you can do it in 5-7 minutes against a PUG.  It takes a bit longer (more flag run tries) against an organized team.  You have to be willing to shift team members to d or o depending on the makeup of the other team, but it gives ya the basics.

[Kail]

You have to work as a team to win WSG. 

Cough, cough.  I understand that this helps to win matches reliably, but there have been a couple times when it was me, personally, who got all three caps, often without any kind of support, and I freely admit that I suck quite badly.  Granted, that's rarer now than it was when the BGs were new, but still... You don't have to kick ass to win, you just have to suck less than the other guys.  On our server, horde (my team) generally wins around two thirds of the games, and it's not because we're kickass commandoes, it's because the alliance turtle up in their base and only send small groups of two or three guys after our flag while we've got a team of seven or eight knocking on their flag room.  In my experience, if your enemy is heavy on defense, you want to zerg them, and if they're heavy on offense, you'll want to try to pick them off one-at-a-time midfield, so if your team is willing to listen to you, that's what I'd advise.

WSG (and all the tiered battlegrounds) can change hugely at different levels, too.  At 50, you start running into major gear imbalances between uber geared characters and more casual players.   At 40, warriors, paladins, shaman, and hunters all get armor upgrades, while rogues don't, which means rogues efficiency in melee combat drops hugely there.  At 30 (I think; is it still 30?), Druids get their travel form, which makes them the best flag runners in the game for that tier.  At 20, shaman get their travel form, which makes them pretty good runners.  At 10, you gotta start looking reeeeeal close at people's weapons so you can figure out who's twinked out to deal twice the damage they should.  Class abilities shift around a lot, and a lot of them get their major abilities at ten level intervals, so different tiers can seriously change the roles of the different classes.

As for warriors specifically, as people have said, on defense your best bet is charge and hamstring.  You'll probably want to stay with a group, though, because warriors by themselves are a lot less effective than some of the other classes (rogues solo in low battlegrounds very very well, for example).  Wariors have trouble keeping up with flag runners, so I'd say you'd be better off on offense and leaving the defense to shaman and mages and so on.  Probably the best role for a horde warrior (in my opinion) is holding the flag, once your runner is clear of enemies, if they can pass it off to you, you're harder to kill than any other horde class (as long as you have a healer supporting you).  So, if you're stuck in that damned "both flags have been taken, both runners are waiting for their flag to be returned," you might try asking the runner if he'll pass the flag to you (or not, some people like the cap credit and get all pissy when you do this).  Aside from that, I dunno.  Warriors are not the uberest class in capture the flag, in my experience (but then, neither are paladins, so I dunno).

[cevik]

Cough, cough.  I understand that this helps to win matches reliably, but there have been a couple times when it was me, personally, who got all three caps, often without any kind of support, and I freely admit that I suck quite badly.  Granted, that's rarer now than it was when the BGs were new, but still... You don't have to kick ass to win, you just have to suck less than the other guys.  On our server, horde (my team) generally wins around two thirds of the games, and it's not because we're kickass commandoes, it's because the alliance turtle up in their base and only send small groups of two or three guys after our flag while we've got a team of seven or eight knocking on their flag room.  In my experience, if your enemy is heavy on defense, you want to zerg them, and if they're heavy on offense, you'll want to try to pick them off one-at-a-time midfield, so if your team is willing to listen to you, that's what I'd advise.

This applies PUG vs. PUG, but against an organized group you will never ever get a caps this way.  My group fought against PUGs all weekend and we never had anyone even get into the base with our flag, they rarely made it half way across mid even.  We fought against an organized team 4 times, and we lost 1 and barely won the other 3.

I call it the PUG meat grinder when people try this against us.  It's like they are running into a meat grinder one at a time, if they just organized they might stand a chance, but instead they think "ohh, I can get a cap by myself, screw these guys" and they come at us in ones and twos and die.

[Calantus]

How twinked are you? Unless you're twinked pretty hardcore you can't really expect to do much on your own, and your victories will depend solely on the other people around you. With ~1600 hp, fiery enchants, speed enchant, pots, etc my 29 rogue can be a 1-man D or O machine and even then I get annoying instances where I'm stopping attempt after attempt just waiting for them to inevitably get the flag because my team is goofing off in midfield. Or where grabbing their flag means I'm stuck in our base forever asking the druids or warriors if they wanna hold the horde flag while I go get ours back, but they never take it cause they'd rather goof off in midfield. Or I get our flag back and some horde grabs it right away from our base before we can cap and I get to do it all over again. So if your team sucks, just give up and farm HKs for your own amusement.

Tips on WSG as a warrior:

1) Get minor speed on your boots. If you make any purchases all, this is where to start. Should only cost a couple gold. That speed boost paladins have? That's a talent that gives the same boost as minor speed enchant.

2) Stay on the flag carrier, keep them snared. If they are a druid save all your rage for hamstring when they shift, they won't be able to do it for long. Unless you're twinked you wont do much to their support as you can't kill em fast enough and you don't have any stuns/CCs.

3) Playing defense is the best way to win as a warrior in a PUG IMO. You can't run flags well without support, and midfield will have more than enough idiots fooling around there already. Stay back from the flag, wait for them to grab it (so someone else doesn't get it while you deal with the first person), charge in, hamstring, stay on them. Also look around to see if you are really necessary to stop the flag carrier. If you don't have to be there, go back to the flag so a 2nd, hidden person can't just freely grab it.

[cevik]

Calantus hit on it a bit with his above post, but the real key to winning any battleground in a PUG is to assume all the glamorous jobs will already have 5 people doing them.  This applies to both AB and WSG.

When you have 5 guys on D, and someone grabs the flag, you can assume you will have at least 4 people chasing the flag.  YOU have to be the guy who is smart enough not to go after the flag, and stays back and provides support when the flag is returned.  Use your best judgement of course, if 2 mages and 2 druids grab the flag, it's going to take all 5 of you to get it back, but if a lone warrior grabs the flag, and you all chase him down the tunnel beating on him, then there is no one in the flag room for the inevitable second guy.

Nine times out of ten, someone else is already working on capping the other flag, but not a soul is out in mid ready to provide support (unless there is a lot of fighting in mid, then everyone is in mid providing support and no one is capping the flag).  Find the jobs that no one else "wants" to do in the BG, and then do that job.

In AB the same applies, no one wants to stand at LM all the time waiting on the occasional rogue to attack (BUT BUT BUT, I MIGHT DIESS1!!!), so you go stand up there.  If there are 5 guys standing there, go defend bs or farm.  EVERYONE thinks they are best damned assault team that god ever created, so even though you KNOW you're better, you have to suck it up and defend because those other retards are busy fighting half way between stables and mine and not doing any good at all.  If you go out running around trying to do the same shit, then you lose because if YOU aren't on D no one is on D.

Also, give orders and NEVER follow them.  When you are standing up at LM, and you yell "3 incoming to BS", you can assume at least 14 other people are madly dashing to BS to try to get that 1 kb for all the extra honor (hint:  there is no extra honor for getting a kb).  So don't make it 15 guys, you stay at LM and be prepared to hold off the other 12 allies that are floating around out there unseen.

The problem with bgs is, in everyone's mind, they are the BEST person in there.  They should be the one getting the flag caps, because if they don't do it, no one will.  They should be the one grabbing mines, because if they don't do it no one will.  They should be the one returning the flag, because if they don't do it, no one will.  Except EVERYONE ELSE THINKS THE SAME THING.  So you end up with 15 guys doing the same job and all the "everyone else should do that because I'm better than they are" jobs are not being done by anyone..

[Zetor]

Tragedy of the Commons! zomg.

Yeah, this happens a lot. Sometimes I think I'm the only person who actually looks at the combat map, because alliance frequently leaves nodes COMPLETELY undefended... nobody wants to guard the stables for 20 minutes. I don't like it either, but someone's gotta do it... and warlocks are pretty damn good defenders, even against wotf-wielding attackers. So I get 1 or 2 killing blows instead of random_uberdood_with_big_BWL_sword_01's 79, but at least I'm getting the extra honor from winning.


-- Z.

[Calantus]

I always wonder, as I stand somewhere within sight of the stables flag, why nobody else ever thinks of doing what is necessary to win. Often I think I am the ONLY person capable of coherent thought in the whole of WoW. Good to see other people think the same way. :P

[Jobu]

I always wonder, as I stand somewhere within sight of the stables flag, why nobody else ever thinks of doing what is necessary to win. Often I think I am the ONLY person capable of coherent thought in the whole of WoW. Good to see other people think the same way. :P

There's a few of us. I hate, hate, HATE being the only guy defending the mine, for example. But I'm gonna do it, because that's what it takes to win the objectives. Fuck extra honor from kills, I want the fat bonus for winning the whole thing. I wish this could be pounded into more people's heads. Cevik's recent explanations have been true for nearly every battleground I've ever been in.

[Furiously]

AV other then a few exploity parts is a ton more fun. It's amazing how many people must just hide in a corner collecting sheep or something.

[cevik]

Cevik's recent explanations have been true for nearly every battleground I've ever been in.

Thanks.. I have a lot of time to think about these things while defending otherwise undefended nodes in various PUG bg's I've been in.  I've now got my second character to almost (but not quite) exalted in both WSG and AB, so I've done a ton of BGs.

I've found the solution though.. join a pvp team.  You can all switch duties, so that everyone gets to defend/assault on occasion, and you can count on the fact that you'll have people out there doing the right things, and doing it well.. No more constantly having to look at the battlemap (though the OCD amongst us, such as myself, will still do it!)..

Also get vent (no that's not a typo).. it seriously will increase the abilities of your team.  When we go against a team that isn't on vent/teamspeak we can tell.. they just cannot react as quickly as we do.

P.S.:  Don't wait until 60 to join a pvp team, join one now.  If there aren't any on your server around your bracket (I know of at least 2 20-29, and 1 40-49 team on my server), start one.  A good pvp team/guild that goes out and blows through instances together and queues for low level bgs every night together will be well equiped (in all blues + some purples from faction if you pull it off) and much better prepared for the 60 pvp bgs than someone who just shows up and starts trying to worm their way into a team at that point..

[kaid]

Hell one day in av I did nothing but do the mine quests and keep the mines under control the whole time. Do to this we managed to send in I think 4 or 5 waves of our really good foot troopers. This helped us plow Ice blood and frost wolf and then clear out the enemy base pretty easily.

Hell somebody doing nothing but goat farming with a budy getting the wolf hides can help your cause a TON. A well timed goat rider wave can really help drive home an attack especially on places like Ice blood if its getting log jammed.

My friend yesterday finally got high enough rank to give the griffons more specific orders. The second of the there can be ordered basically to do strafing runs on the lower part of the horde base. Man that thing lasted forever and between nuking for about 1 k damage and doing a huge aoe knock back rendered their counter attacks while we were in there very ineffective.

I really enjoy AV. Its nice sometimes to have rapid moshing kill fests but its also nice there are things you can do to be useful that are not quit so intense so you can take a break from the action and still help your team.

And the rewards for ranking up are not only about as good or better than a lot of the normal PVP rankings but they are MUCH easier to get hell I am already at revered and chugging along towards exhalted.


kaid

[Endie]

On 20-29 the level 29 druids have, you are right, big advantages against teams that play as chasers.  You get one druid to go in for the flag with a good regrowth and rejuv on him and swap to bear form.  Then they go down the *tunnel* (ie the bad way), dragging *every* defender with them, usually.  Another druid can lurk on the shelf invisible in cat form.  The first druid will die, almost certainly, and the opposition will return the flag.  This is good.

Then the feral druid runs down, grabs the flag whie all the defenders are just turning to run up the tunnel again, goes cat (you did spend those two talent points getting 30% extra speed in cat form, yes?) and is gone out and over the cliff (ie the short way).  It is unlikely that the opposition have anyone in sight to slow the druid down at this point, and they probably run *up* the tunnel towards the flag!

As soon as any start to chase, the druid uses sprint, which makes him almost uncatchable if he has a headstart.

What can you do?  The druid has only got so much mana, so you don't try to kill him at first, just force him to swap forms until he is out.  Your druids repeatedly entangle him to use up his mana.  You charge and hamstring his support runners so that he gets separated from healing.  Use your rage-base group buffs and debuffs to up your attacks and lower their attack speeds.  Think as a team. If they have a priest, killl them first.  Then their other druids.  Use your shield to stop spellcasters healing the runner.

None of this works if you are the only sane member of your team.  If your side are running around in ones or twos instead of supporting each other, just farm and forget.

[Endie]

Oh, and there are enchants for your boots that give you a speed increase.  It's not huge, but it will make the difference in a chase down the tunnel.

[TheWall]

Here is a little trick i used with my warrior to keep the druids down. Standard issue charge and hamstring. As soon as they shift to animal and get out of my damage range I turn off my auto attack. This allows me to go out of combat and get charge up before they are out of its range. Then I charge and hamstring again. Works like a charm if no one else is keeping you in combat. You can do this trick forever with the rage charge gives you. But they will run out of mana shape shifting rather quickly.

[bhodi]

Here's how I used to run the flag as a druid.

If you really get pissed, you can just free action, there is simply no way to stop a free action'd druid without burning him down... and that's nigh impossible to do. If they've got the pvp set with the speed increase it's game over.

if you can get outside, you've basically won... the key is to get out of that room. The best thing to do is have a partner to do either what the first poster said (lure down the hallway) but alternatively I like to have them jump down on the flag to eat the trap and all the nova and cooldown spells that are hurled at him.. then simply jump down, grab, cat and sprint out, switching to travel form when outside. If you're quick, you can get out the door and around the bend before they know what happened. Sometimes smart mages are fast enough to blink, they can be tricky.

Full nature's grasp makes it easy to get away from warriors that try the intercept trick, and if you're alliance all you have to do is have a pally wait outside and cleanse you across the field.. it's an auto-win.

[Strazos]

Fucking pussy ass paladins, how I loathe them...

[Jobu]

Fucking pussy ass paladins, how I loathe them...

The Alliance "A-Team" on my server is *all* Paladins and Druids. Fuck is that annoying.

[Endie]

Here is a little trick i used with my warrior to keep the druids down. Standard issue charge and hamstring. As soon as they shift to animal and get out of my damage range I turn off my auto attack. This allows me to go out of combat and get charge up before they are out of its range. Then I charge and hamstring again. Works like a charm if no one else is keeping you in combat. You can do this trick forever with the rage charge gives you. But they will run out of mana shape shifting rather quickly.

Yeah, that works pretty well against druid who're not specced for PvP, but by mid-20 a PvP druid will probably have nature's grasp, which means they run off into the sunset while the warrior fumes in the roots.  Only works, of course, after they turn into caster form.  As a Tauren, I find that my war stomp will very often get me time to get away from that tactic as well, if I run towards the buildings on the right on my way out and time it so I get round a corner of one ("No direct path to target" or something appears for charge - I've been on both ends of that one :) )

Free action will always win it for a druid, bhodi, you're right, but I don't use potions myself in the battlefields: I love to see an opponent reduced to spending his money to stay alive, though: nothing like getting a second to (for free) heal myself while he stands there drinking, then killing him anyway.

[Kenrick]

I would just like to say that I have now played over twenty matches at WSG with my 48-49 human warrior, and not only has my side never won... we have never captured even one flag.  It's gotten utterly comedic.  This isn't PVP, this is PVghey. 

[fatboy]

I would just like to say that I have now played over twenty matches at WSG with my 48-49 human warrior, and not only has my side never won... we have never captured even one flag.  It's gotten utterly comedic.  This isn't PVP, this is PVghey. 

It is that way too on my server, Kendrick......Fortunately for me, I play a Horde, so we nearly always win WSG matches.

I don't understand why the Alliance do not understand it is not "Let's get a bunch of HKs" ....  it's Capture the Flag ....  well, their loss is my gain in Honor Points   

[Endie]

I would just like to say that I have now played over twenty matches at WSG with my 48-49 human warrior, and not only has my side never won... we have never captured even one flag.  It's gotten utterly comedic.  This isn't PVP, this is PVghey. 

It is that way too on my server, Kendrick......Fortunately for me, I play a Horde, so we nearly always win WSG matches.

I don't understand why the Alliance do not understand it is not "Let's get a bunch of HKs" ....  it's Capture the Flag ....  well, their loss is my gain in Honor Points   

I've played WSG on several servers (altoholic), and it's been the same in each of them.  Luckily, like fatboy, I'm always Horde.  I wonder if PvPers tend to be more likely to play horde?  If achievers are slightly more horder-oriented?  Or simply if Sunday after Sunday defending against 2-to-1 odds in the Barrens, from level 10 upwards, facing masses of mounted ally-pallies, really has honed us into something more efficient?  Of course, shammies also matter more until 29 or so, due to them and druids being the sprinters without the chance to be stunned or the need for potions.

A bit of each, perhaps.  But fatboy is also right to point out that I see big groups of allies running around WSG ganking for HKs, while we die a lot and win the flags despite 10-8 or even 10-7 splits.

[Xanthippe]

It has something to do with being underpopulated, I think, but I don't think it comes from being ganked a lot.  Horde on my server is outnumbered, and tend to win the smaller BGs - although maybe not the 60s BGs, I'm not sure.

One problem is the queue.  Individual horde players get to play in the BG far more often than alliance. So they are more experienced.

[Merusk]

It's smaller pops and more experience.   Smaller pops means you have a reduced # of asshats, even if you have the same % of them.  It also means that blacklisting or banning folks is more likely to make a difference.

  Reduced pops also means a LOT more experience, which means that you lose your 'green' players quicker.  Most folks realize after about 10-12 matches that winning is more fun than just going in and being the big-killer, or the glamor of being the big-killer wears off.  10-12 matches Alliance side means at least a week, if you're in there every day and join the queue as soon as you're out of the previous BG.  Horde takes a few days.

[SurfD]

10 to 12 matches a WEEK!?!?   Holy fuck, does alliance never queue up for WSG on your server or something?  I think people on my server would hang themselves if our queues got that bad.

Best record i can recall on our server was one of my guildies who did honored to exalted in 1 weekend when we had some kind of blitz going, 200+ games or some shit over the course of 2 and a half days.

[Merusk]

The Horde: Alliance Ratio on Alleria before they allowed the transfers to Thrall was around 3:1 or 4:1.  The shortest wait time Alliance  side for a WSG on the WSG holiday is about 15mins. The average is about 30 mins.   To get 10 matches, that's a minimum of 2 1/2 hours of wait time alone, not including the time for the matches.. something around 10-15 mins per unless you hit a group that turtles.  (I had an hour and a half WSG one weekend.. I stopped doing WSG after that unless it's on holiday, as it wasn't worth the time.)

Now, if you're catassing and only PvPing (i.e. not running instances so you can gear-up) you could get that 10-15 matches on the holiday weekend no problem, sure.  However, during the week I'm lucky if I get 3 matches in the hours between 6pm and 10pm.

[jpark]

Haven't had a chance to read all the posts above but if you really like WSG as a warrior make sure you have piercing howl if you don't already.  It can deal with some flag runners - but also provide cover for cloth based casters seeking to evade melees who are closing in.

[Zetor]

The problem in wsg (and AB) is that in pug vs pug, the racial abilities and class skills favor the horde. Pickups will be hard pressed to kill earthbind totems, not die to undead rogues after they WOTF out of a fear and survive shaman burst dps (since nobody heals in pickup groups, usually). And on alliance side I've found that players don't really group up, and even if they do, there's so many of them overall that they aren't used to fighting together anyway.
F'rex, on my server at level 60 AB there are 60-70 alliance regulars that play pickups, but only 30-40 horde; and the horde seem better geared overall, as well. (again, due to population differences.. epiced-out folks from the alliance run with guild groups, but on the horde side there just isn't enough of them to have consistent guild groups going all the time, so they do pickups)

In organized groups however, alliance comes up ahead; shaman damage is easily healed through by efficient paladin heals, proper crowd control is used (did that UD rogue just break a fear? Sheep 'em!), etcetera. I was invited into one of my server's WSG A-teams last weekend, and the flags were pretty much captured as fast as they popped up. 4 druids, 2 pallies, 2 warlocks, 1 protection-spec (!) warrior, 1 rogue.

(btw, if anyone seriously believes that one faction has inherently superior players than the other... )


-- Z.

[Strazos]

The pussy nature of Paladins annoy my warrior to no end.

At least on my server, Horde is usually outnumbered, and a good portion of the time I see the entire alliance team move as one....not sure how to counter that, especially since Alliance seems to field so many newb auto-shot hunters.

[Zetor]

Paladins are a support class in a game without any concept of "support classes". It's amusing.

Zerging is universal... just about every second game I'm in (AB or WSG) the horde will run around in a massive 10- (WSG) or 13- (AB) man zerg, just slaughtering everything. It also makes for annoying WSG games that last two hours due to neither team supporting their flag carrier, so nobody actually manages to cap a flag. Those games usually come down to "which side has more epix" or "which side has more druids".

On a sidenote, I friggin' hate pickup WSG. Pickup AB is ok...


-- Z.

[ClydeJr]

Most of the time when I've played WSG with my Horde characters, we've done really well. Most of my games have been 3-0 due to outnumbering the Alliance and having some really good players (not me). I've fought in a few WSG matches where it was down to the wire where the Allies had a few twinks on their team which really turned the tide for them. But last night was the first time I felt completely helpless. The other team was a full 10-man guild group full of twinks. They seemed to react perfectly to everything we did. Their flag runner would have 3 people supporting him. Everyone else would slow the Horde down. As soon as the flags were reset, they'd grab our flag again. The few times we'd get their flag, 2 hunters would split off and take out whoever had the flag. We pretty much had no chance whatsoever against those guys.

[Xanthippe]

But last night was the first time I felt completely helpless. The other team was a full 10-man guild group full of twinks. They seemed to react perfectly to everything we did.

This is how the horde in the younger BGs is on my server.  Pretty sure they are BG twinks who do nothing but BG, judging from their ranks and how well coordinated they are.

I don't even play BG anymore other than the level 60 ones.  Not much fun to get smooshed time after time.

[jpark]

Given the topic of this thread I thought I would ask this here than start a new thread.

What determined "bonus honour" in WSG?

Ya I know the obvious ones - returning the flag or running with your enemies' flag back to your base.  But I have had WSG where Everyone gets bonus honour -  I don't understand why.

Also, seems my 60 warrior (protection spec - not a damage dealer) been getting massive bonus honour per kill?  He is racking up - if I recall correctly - over 1000 honour per kill?  How is that possible?  (Yes I have made successful runs with the enemy flag - but only about 4 times - in the course of 200 kills).