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/______/ A. Warsong Gulch \______\
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*OVERVIEW*
The easiest way to get started on player versus player combat is to try
it. By far the easiest battleground to learn is Warsong Gulch, so it's a great
place to begin your military career. The goal of Warsong Gulch is essentially
to steal (right-click) the blue Alliance flag from it's pedestal inside the
Alliance base and run all the way south to the pedestal inside the Horde base.
If the red flag has also been captured, you can't capture the blue flag until
the red flag has been returned to its home in the Horde base. (So if someone is
standing on the horde pedestal with the blue flag wondering why it won't
capture, this is why.)
When you first enter the battleground, someone will most likely have
started the raid and will invite you into their group. If someone is giving out
orders and organising your raid, they probably know what they are talking about
and should be listened to. In general, when the game begins the majority of the
Horde will exit through the right doorway in the base and run or ride through
midfield into the Alliance base. Your job is to follow these people and help
them remove or avoid the Alliance in their way until they get to the Alliance's
Flag Room. Someone will run up to the pedestal and grab the blue flag by
right-clicking on it, and the Alliance will do everything in their power to
stop him from getting away by slowing him with spells and trying to kill him.
Your role in protecting the flag carrier (the Horde player who picked up the
flag) depends on your class. For example, as a priest, your job is to heal,
shield, and uncurse him to prevent him from dying. As a mage, you'll want to
frost nova the masses of Alliance who chase your flagcarrier and sheep the
especially intimidating ones. No matter what class you are, if you see the
flagcarrier dying, you'll want to right-click furiously on the spot where he's
about to fall. If you're nearby and fast enough, when he dies and drops the
flag, you will pick it up and be able to continue running it to your base.
The other role of a player in Warsong Gulch is to defend the home flag.
Your job here is to watch the red flag and make sure the Alliance doesn't pick
it up. The flag is on the south pedestal, but it's actually better to hang
around the northern side of the flag room or even outside the base when
defending, because some classes, especially mages, can be in and out of the
flag room before you can blink. If someone does manage to get away with the
flag, type onto the raid channel which exit they went out of. The left exit
leads to the "GY" (for graveyard) or the ramp and the left side leads to the
tunnel. Although it's extremely important to defend the flag, it's also
important that battles start and end in reasonable amounts of time, so there
should always be more offenders than defenders. 3 defenders and 7 offence is a
reasonable and balanced ratio.
*TIPS*
FULL-FIELD MAP: A neat trick relatively unknown to players is that
shift-clicking the red icon on the minimap will produce a small map of the
battlefield in the lower right of the screen. This map shows the position of
all your teammates and also shows topographical features on the map. It's
useful because it shows the ENTIRE field, not just a small radius around your
character.
Of course, the most useful map is the full screen map which you can see by
simply pressing the "M" key.
CATCHING A DROPPED FLAG: The best way to pick up a flag off of a dying teammate
or return a flag off of an enemy FC is to furiously click on the place where
you think the flag will drop. It can be difficult to guess exactly where it
will fall, but if you wait for the flag to actually be visible on your screen,
chances are that one of your enemies will already have grabbed it.
DEALING WITH ESCORTS: Sometimes, a huge mass of enemy players will bulldoze
into your flag room and make off with the red flag. Your first reaction may be
to kill the FC and only the FC in order to return the flag. Although this is a
good idea, you might want to first kill off healers that are escorting the FC.
If you're a hunter, mage, shaman, or have any type of slowing abilities, you
might want to drop them on the ESCORT, but not the FC. That way, you can delay
all of the flagcarriers support, and your teammates will be able to slaughter
the unaided flagcarrier as he or she runs off into midfield with the prize.
As an FC yourself, this brings you to mind of the importance of knowing
when to stick with your escort and when to make a break for it. It's
case-by-case. If you can survive, hoof it. If not, stay with your teammates so
they can heal you or retrieve your flag when you fall.
COMMUNICATION: Communication is key in Warsong Gulch. Even if you don't plan on
trying to lead your group, you should call out significant things you see. If
you see the red flagcarrier sneaking around the west side of the field unseen,
for instance, call out "Red FC west, no escort!" or something similar to alert
your fellow players to busting his tush. If you see a huge mass of enemies
running toward your tunnel "Alliance zerg, 6ish, coming our tun" will let your
side's flagcarrier know to perhaps take the ramp in.
TEAMWORK: When possible, stick close to your fellow battlers. We're the Horde,
we stick together and move as groups. Forming a concerted effort will keep you
all alive and allow you to move through contention that may have otherwise
slain you.
There are times when you'll need to work alone. Sometimes you're the only
person in position to catch the enemy flag carrier, or perhaps your team is too
busy defending their own base to capture the blue flag, and you'll have to get
it yourself. Still, communicate your intentions and help everyone know what's
going on and what you're planning.
DYING IS NO BIG DEAL: Death and resurrection is a fact in the battlegrounds.
Just get used to it. As a mage, I die so often that my death counts rack up
into the thirties and forties. But because I make influential moves returning
flags and catching them from our own fallen FCs, I make a fair impact on the
game anyway. In fact, once you die, you'll be resurrected with full mana and
health, so it may be advantageous to run into a zerg of Alliance throwing out
Arcane Explosions until they slaughter you. Keep mental track of the
resurrection timer or put a stopwatch on your desk, and try to die within ten
seconds of the resurrection time. (Cut it any closer and lag may deny you a
revival.)
DISTRACTION AND DELAYS: Knowing that death is no big deal, what do you do when
you're trying to clear an enemy's home FR, or are running through an enemy
graveyard? If you kill them, they may respawn within seconds of their death.
Sheeping, slowing, or otherwise delaying the Alliance is far better than
killing them in instances when you're nearer to their base than yours. A good
high level sheep spell can keep an Ally out of combat for over thirty seconds
and has the bonus of being disorienting for the player.
If you've become notorious in your bracket, it may come to the point that
a contingent of the Alliance will track and slay you on sight. Instead of being
irritated by this, use it to your advantage. Distract them from your troops'
movements by running them into unimportant areas of the map. If five Alliance
players are chasing you around the field while your team rushes into your base,
you've done a greater service to your team than by killing them or by joining
the attack.
HONORABLE KILLS: Simply put, honorable kills mean nothing. Just don't bother.
"Kill-farming" is pointless, because once you've killed a player four times, he
or she stops giving you honor. Even when players do give you honor, the amount
you can get during a battle is piffle compared to the 1000 honor you get for
winning a game. Just don't bother. Play the game like it's meant to be played.
In Warsong this is especially true, because there are only ten players on
each side. You'll shoot through the honor boosts of the ten players in no time,
and in any case the most honor you can really make off of them is around 400,
as the same team will be queuing up over and over.
GRAVEYARD CAMPING: This is probably the single most dishonorable thing you can
do in the game. Although there is no in-game penalty for it, it is such a
despised tactic that groups that have been GY-camped will boycott the
battlegrounds to avoid you. Anyone I catch doing this in one of my matches, I
warn, then kick, then blacklist on the forums, and apologize to the enemy
general for the offending combatant. Just make our lives easier and don't do it.
In Warsong Gulch, graveyard camping is a little hazy to define. There's
only one GY for each side, and they are elevated on a ledge. My rule is that
it's perfectly all right to loiter below the opposing side's graveyard, because
if they drop down it's their choice to fight you. It's also OK to fight in
their graveyard if the flag carrier is hiding there. So GY-camping is a little
fuzzy in Warsong. If your team has an obvious numbers or level advantage,
though, and you decide to start killing players before they can leave the
graveyard, this is obviously a dishonorable and illicit tactic.
*COMMON WARSONG ABBREVIATIONS*
"tun" - tunnel
"ped" - flag pedestal
"FC" - flag carrier
"FR" - flag room
"GY" - graveyard
"catch" - the FC is dying and needs someone to right-click the flag when he/she
dies in order to keep it running
"zerg" - massive group of attackers
"cap" - capture
"MT" - mistell
"turtling" - keeping all or most of your players in your base, protecting a
captured or home flag. Generally causes long, boring games.
*WINNING AN UNBALANCED GAME*
Sometimes you're just doomed from the start, it seems. The first game of
the day on the Scarlet Crusade server, for example, is almost always a 4 Horde
versus 8 Alliance game. (A couple times I've even had to fight all of them
alone!) What to do under these conditions? A few rules specific to unbalanced
games: If, after the two minute period before the battle starts, the number of
players is less than five on one side or the other, the game will begin a
five-minute timer to end the battle. Every minute you'll see it counting down
in yellow text (like a server shutdown) until the battle ends. When the battle
does end, the winner is determined by who has the most capped flags. If neither
side has capped a flag, the side that's carrying a flag wins. If both sides are
carrying a flag, or if no one has one, the game is a draw. A draw game is the
worst possible outcome of a Gulch run. It's worse than losing, in terms of game
logistics. You gain no honor. You don't get a mark. And to add insult to
injury, you get a deserter flag. So sometimes it's better to surrender one of
these broken little games at the end, if you're after the honor and feeling
generous to your opponent.
So, onto strategy. The first game of the day is one situation in which I
would actually recommend turtling. If you can hold on for awhile, other
soldiers may trickle in. Say you have four players. Figure out who your most
professional flagcapper is. Is it a shaman who can ghost wolf in seconds? A
rogue who's so sneaky that he can hide the flag for hours on end? A frost mage
who is out of the FR so fast no one can tell which exit he used? This player
should fly solo out of the FR at the start of the battle and try to make it to
the enemy base to capture the flag. If he can just pick up the blue flag and
hide with it, for example inside the crook of the door in the Alliance base,
then the defenders can protect the red flag for the next five minutes. If the
blue flag is being held and the red is on the pedestal when five minutes are
up, Horde wins.
How to play the ninja flagcarrier: If you want something done right, you
have to do it yourself. When the battle starts, the Alliance is going to
immediately ride out to your base to slaughter your teammates. You want to get
to their base without being seen. The east side of the field is best for this.
You can hide behind stumps and terrain features in order to avoid being spotted
on the way. Enter the base off the side, using the secret entrance up the east
side of the ramp. Go in and hide on the balcony, scouting out the room. If you
encounter an enemy, things are going to be more interesting. If you can
incapacitate or confuse them somehow, go for it. If their alone and you can
kill them quickly, do that. The most important thing is that they don't know
your position. If it's empty, grab the blue flag, and break for it.
Now that you have the flag, the question is what to do with it. If you
have five grumpy dwarves chasing after you trying to remove your kneecaps, the
obvious answer is to run like hell out of the base (you might want to do the
tunnel-roof-fr circuit once to throw them off you). You're going to need all of
your cooldowns, potions, and fancy gadgets to get the flag back, so use them
wisely. Try to avoid huge groups of alliance players on the way back. There's
no one to save you this time, so be careful. If you make it to midfield, call
for one of the defenders (a spawner from the doomed battle to save the home FR,
most likely) to come meet you so she can either pick the flag off your corpse
or give you a hand.
If you've managed to grab the flag without being seen, you have a few more
decisions to make. If you know you won't make it back to the base, find a place
to hide and sit tight until the field clears up. The Alliance roof is a good
place, as are the little crannies inside the doors or the far east crook
outside the Alliance ramp. This can be an especially good idea if the Alliance
has your flag, and you end up being the last line of defense. If you can return
the Horde flag and still be holding the Alliance flag when the battle ends, you
win.
Use your best judgement here. It's always better to cap the flag than be
trying to hold the accursed thing; the reason I suggest it here is that it's an
unexpected strategy that could throw your enemies off, and because time is so
tight in these battles.
Another strategy: You can also try to have a pure zerg run. A zerg of...
four players. Sounds silly, but if the Alliance is overconfident they may be
scattered and disorganized. The four of you can steal the blue flag quickly and
maybe kill the red FC on the way out and back to home base.
One last strategy: Cross-faction dance party! Stretch it, Galandrial! A
little bit of goofing off and emote tossing can lighten the mood here. After
all, it's a five minute nub game. Does it really matter who wins? Be chill mons!
______ ______
\GUEST\ /GUIDE/
\_____\ /_____/
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| KHALUA'S ADVANCED |
|WARSONG GULCH GUIDE |
|____________________|
By the wild hearted and fiery-haired Khalua of The Darkspear
"Warsong gulch can play out several different ways. Reading through the guide
provided by Aster, the standard Warsong Gultch Strategies for the Horde are
present to get familiar with the game. Advanced Horde tactics tend to revolve
around minimal or no Defence strategies. This is a game of capture the flag..
you can't win if you don't take the flag, right? Now this advanced strategy
does apply more to the 40's + bracket as mounts are now in the picture. Form
two groups one primarily rogues or DPS classes and the other with alternate
travel forms, Druid/Shaman and priests. Move as distinct Groups and stick
together. The DPS group charges ahead, mounted and engages opposition
immediately. Thus keeping them stuck mid field or at the foot of their base.
Flag Carrier Group rushes roughly 30 sec. after the initial wave of DPS
group... staying mounted, they blow right by the mid-field into the opponent
Flag room. DPS group calls out in raid chat the best possible exit based on
which side of the field they have migrated the front lines. It is best for the
DPS group to pull the opposition to one side or the other instead of hanging
out in the middle.
As the flag is being carried back all folks who resurect and DPS group meet up
midfield... with the exception of the flag carrier and priest escort. Their
job is to slow the opponents chasing the flag, or to recapture their flag if
any opponents were able to sneak through. Once re-caputred, the Flag Carrier/
priest will post the flag and meet up with their group to begin the cycle
again. This advanced approach requires teamwork and is hard to execute in a
Pick up Group where others may not listen to coordinated leadership.
Remember.. Offence wins games.. Working together wins many!
Oh, and a tip/tactic for certain Shaman builds. If you have Natures
Swiftness... Ghost Wolf is a qualifiying nature spell for instant cast. For
flag running... Earthbind totem in their base when you have the flag, Natures
Swiftness in the short span to the area outside their base and 'Insta-Wolf'
(patent pending) once outside. That will give you a head start on any
opposition that wishes to chase after you." -Khalua
*IMPORTANT TRINKETS AND GEAR*
As a Horde flagcarrier, two particular trinkets come to mind here. The
[Insignia of the Horde] and the [Defiler's Talisman].
The [Insignia of the Horde] is an amazing little doodad that removes
certain stun and sheep effects, especially ones that reduce your speed. A must
for a flagcarrier. You obtain it from the true entrance of Warsong Gulch, for
having freindly reputation.
The [Defiler's Talisman] absorbs damage on the order of a couple hundred
HP, depending on the level you purchase it at. This is an excellent item for
cloth wearers and will save your rear-end both in and out of the Gulch. One
thing to note is that you can have more than one Talisman, as long as they're
from different levels, so you can double your damage absorb. The [Defiler's
Talisman] is obtained by being friendly with the Defiler's and purchasing it
from the true entrance to Arathi Basin.
As a low-level spellcaster in your bracket, the [Rune of Perfection] might
also be handy. It drastically reduces resistances against your spells. Consider
it if you're being resisted left and right. Two [Rune of Perfection] of
different levels stack.
Handy potions to keep an eye out for are the [Swiftness Potion], [Free
Action Potion], and any healing or mana regen potions.
The [Swiftness Potion] is made from the relatively low level herbs
[Briarthorn] and [Swiftthistle] which, fittingly, can be found right outside
the true entrance to Warsong Gulch. It drastically increases your speed and is
best used in a close battle when you need to break away from your pursuers.
Using Alliance speed boots, [Swiftness Potion], and Horde speed boots will take
you all the way from the Alliance base to home before anyone can blink.
[Free Action Potion]s are harder to come by. You need to catch [Oily
Blackmouth] fish to make them and convert them into oil to use as a reagent.
The [Free Action Potion] prevents any spell or effect from slowing you down,
although the effect can be dispelled. A player who quaffs one is surrounded by
a glowing halo at her feet.
[Invisibility Potion]s can also be a hoot. Just remember that turning
invisible whilst holding the flag will force you to drop it.
General healing potions are also good stuff. You can obtain very nice
potions from vendors near any of the Battleground entrances, although the
potions are only useable inside the PvP matches. Weaker potions that can be
used anywhere can be found inside the officers' barracks once you make Stone
Guard. Of course, the best potions are made with the Alchemy skill.
One item I've used before is the [Spider Belt]. I have to say that it
appears to be singularly useless. It's supposed to prevent movement altering
spells, but it doesn't seem to work reliably or, in fact, ever.
[Slumber Sand] is a pretty good item. It freezes an enemy in place for
20ish seconds. You only find it once, from a special quest, and I think it has
been discontinued and made soulbound for those who have it, but if any is left
lying around in your bank it's great for classes with no sheep/charm abilities.
Shame you only get five.
I'll add more items here as I find them.
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