Sweetest Thing Happened in ...

... Arathi Basin a couple of days ago. I was part of a small group attacking the Lumber Mill. We had come up from the Stables and I did my usual thing. I dismounted just near the top of the hill and ran to just behind the bushes between me and the flag. I started attacking randomly but attracted the attention of an undead rogue. !@!%^$#. As he ran at me I started backing away and firing at him. When I was clear of the bushes and he was close enough I hit him with Concussive Shot. I backed away further and laid down Freezing Trap. I suspected and hoped that once the Rogue has you in his sights he will not let go. On queue he blundered straight into the trap. Woot!! So I ran off and kept attacking the flag defenders. On queue he attacked again 20 seconds later, so I repeated the procedure. Woot!!

During the next 20 seconds I moved closer to the flag and quite randomly put my back to the cliff as I pelted a resto druid. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the rogue come shambling towards me. I thought, this is it, and kept firing at the druid. The rogue came at me and went behind. Hahahahahahahaha. ROFLMAO. He fell off the cliff. I couldn't believe it. I am still giggling about it days later. All those times I have been murdered by rogues are now forgiven.

Gotta Dash ... things happening

"... Well... four things. Well... four things and a lizard." This memorable quote from the Doctor in the Blink episode sums up pretty well my feelings about Alterac Valley. The strategy for taking Alterac keeps time warping, seemingly depending on which shift is on and what day of the week it is. I have seen just about everything lately. I have seen the now obsolete strategy of holding SHGY, yes I know I made a big thing about it but with 2.4 patch it is obsolete. I keep seeing people take IBGY, and man that makes it hard to win. Taking down Galv is a good thing but it has to be timed right. Doing him first when everyone is riding past seems simple enough to do but no. No people. No. Take him out by all means but let the groups who defend Iceblood Tower and Tower Point do it once the towers are gone. Let the Horde have IBGY otherwise they get in the way of taking FWGY and Relief Hut. The latest strategy is about speed. Strategic points must be taken and taken quickly. See previous posting about the details.

Winning Strategy

Over the weekend I finally came across a strategy for Alterac Valley that was a consistent winner. In the chat bar the guy reckoned that he had won the previous 12 battlegrounds using this strategy so I thought there was nothing to lose by trying. It flew in the face of what I thought was a basic requirement but it worked a treat. So here it is:

Group 1, 2: Iceblood Tower
Group 3, 4: Tower Point
Group 5, 6: Frostwolf Graveyard (FWGY)
Group 7, 8: Frostwolf Relief Hut (RH)

That allows 10 players to take and hold each target. In reality you won't get 10 players at each target but you will get enough. For groups 3 - 6 as the target is taken you move forward and start on the East and West Frostwolf Towers, once they fall you take out Drek. When the Iceblood Tower falls groups 1 and 2 take out Galv.

Do not put any energy into Iceblood Graveyard, leave it for the Horde. However FWGY and RH are very important and must be taken. Perhaps we got lucky because there wasn't much resistance from the Horde and whatever there was we overcame it. I think the important things were that a clear strategy was applied and we had no dissenters in the chat bar.

After those two battlegrounds we had a different option put forward, an older classic strategy that included taking IBGY. We went close and neither we nor the Horde got at Drek or Stormpike, however we lost it through attrition by about 80 points.

With this new strategy I came out with zero killing blows and zero deaths but many hundred honour points. In fact I didn't see a lot of action. I was part of a team that had jobs to do, we focussed and we did them.

My advice is put the strategy into a macro and pop it into BG chat before the gates open. Once, maybe twice, then followed up with gentle chat to maintain peoples focus. Best of luck.

Communication

The number of times a battleground has been won because each individual is providing meaningful and timely feedback to rest of the team is without number. The number of times a battleground has been won where the team argues about tactics, the skill of other players or there is just plain abuse and YELLING, can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

I remember being in Warsong Gulch an age ago when my character was not x9 (substitute a number, 1 - 4, for x). I can't remember what exact level it was but I was x3, way down the food chain. This player who was x9 began harassing me from before the gates opened. What was I doing there? Get out!! You are crap noob. The torrent of abuse was substantial. I must also admit that his abuse of my character and through it me, raised my hackles and I began to bite back. I don't recommend it and now-a-days I just ignore abusers. They can't physically do anything to you so there is no need to fear pain. This particular player decided to report my character, which I suspect was after my son told him to go "piss up a flag pole", so I reported him too (the player, not my son). I actually got to chat to a Blizzard employee who assured me that "level intolerance" in a battleground was unacceptable.

Funnily enough we didn't win that BG; with two players fighting each other they are not fighting the farm animals and "scarey" creatures that make up the Horde and so reduce the effectiveness of the team.

If someone is spending most of their time yelling and abusing they are not attending to the game as well as they should. Some of the quickest and best wins were either virtually silent or filled only with status reports, requests for assistance, and praise for jobs well done.

Eye of the Storm

I know this battleground is not helping me become a Conqueror but the tokens are helping me get epic kit from the Champion's Hall. However that is not what I am hear to write about. Initially when I tried this BG out I didn't like it, I felt like a fish out of water and I didn't understand it. I left it alone for a very long time. Well, stupid me is all I can say now. Not really, I didn't waste my time by not being there. There is no reputation to be had but there is Honour, and tokens, and now there is a daily quest called Concerted Efforts which will give you Honour in return for a token from each of the BGs. Handy I can tell you, especially when you are max'ed out on tokens and need Honour pts.

Anyway, back to it. Eye of the Storm. It's a mix of Arathi Basin (AB) and Warsong Gulch (WSG). There are four bases. Mage Tower (MT), Drenai Ruins (DR), Blood Elf Tower (BET) and Fel Reaver Ruins (FRR). These are basically the corners of an imaginary square. The Alliance enter on one side of the field of battle and are able to take MT and DR straight off. To take a Tower all you need to do is occupy it for a few seconds; not sure how many but not that many. If the Horde come to take it from you they need to completely evict Alliance forces from the Tower before it is theirs. The General chat log will tell you what's happening. Occupying Towers will generate points for your side. Generating 2000 points first wins your side the game. I have been in a game that the Alliance won 2000 - 1998. That was as close as I have ever seen it.

In the centre of the battlefield is a Flag plinth. Click on the flag and carry it to an identical plinth at a Tower belonging to the Alliance and you will get points. I believe it to be 100 points. This is handy but the real points lay in ownership of Towers. I should say that the rate of generating points is higher the more Towers you occupy. Like AB the more bases you occupy the faster you get points, so if you cap (occupy all available bases) then you win quick as.

So what is the strategy here? Keep the Horde busy defending their bases, take them off them is the goal, own as many bases as you can - preferably four. Keep running the flag, it keeps a hundred points away from Horde. You don't have to plant it, just own it. Bases are the thing. If you do plant it, then it's nice to have Alliance at the flag plinth in the centre to pick it up again when it respawns there. The battle for the centre can get pretty hectic at times; a study in fire works.

Once last tip. Try and get the flag in the last quarter of the game and hold it till the points hit 1900, then plant it. Win. All over red rover.

The New Alterac

With Patch 2.4 and moving the Horde entry point further to the rear, basically bringing the travel distances for both teams into line appears to have made a big difference to the outcomes for the Alliance. It seems that now the Horde are more actively defending Ice Blood Graveyard. It is the point which if well defended creates a geographic bottleneck and is difficult to get past. It hasn't meant that the Alliance will defend Stonehearth Graveyard any better but has made it's defence a little less necessary. The team still rides off in bulk and runs straight past SHGY. Ho hum. I am much less concerned about it now with the changes.

The latest strategies seem to revolve around either going straight for the Relief Hut (RH) then taking out Drek or going straight for Frostwolf Graveyard (FWGY), then the Towers (East and West) then Drek. Either way it pains me to see so many people going straight past Galv when so many would take him down in seconds. The body of opinion, if you can suspend credulity and call battleground chat opinion, is that it takes too long and we don't have time to waste. I just weep at so much honour being left behind. There is bonus honour for "map completion", which I understand to mean that all the Towers, Graveyards and Bosses are destroyed or controlled. Drek, of course, must be the last because his death will end the game and win for the Alliance.

I believe there must be a better balance between speed and map completion. Further observations will come.

Outstanding

I thought this worthy of a report. We won Arathi Basin 2000 - 0. The horde never stood a chance, perhaps there weren't enough of them to play the game initially and that helped us do it. Whatever. One person took the Stables and the remaining three groups went GM, BS, and LM. Each one claimed. From each claiming team a few then converged on the Farm. A couple of defenders were overwhelmed and we 5 capped in the first 60 seconds. Game over not long after. Outstanding humiliation for the Horde team and nice to be doing it to them for once.

Although. Out the last ten ABs I have been on 8 winning teams. Each and every one we controlled the Blacksmith. The two losses - no Blacksmith; in fact we followed the strategy of hold 3 and win. Apologies to the Battleground Leader who wanted us to do that but we lost, it's in your record. Never be satisfied with holding 3 and winning, it rarely works.

By the way. Also won an Eye of the Storm 2000 - 1. Almost as good and we capped all towers soon as.