Warsong Gulch 101

[Houk]

Background

I hit Rank 14 on my first character a long time ago. The Horde never queued Basin and the queue times on Valley was upward of 8 hours. This was before x-realm BG's and what not. I lead my honor grinding group for 3.5 months and helped 3 others hit Grand Marshal and made a number of Marshal/Field Marshals along the way. Due to the horrible queue times for Alliance we never had the option of AFK'ing out for instant games - we played every single game to win.

When a new Oceania server was released I rerolled for better playing times. We were going up against well organised and T2.5+ geared teams from BG9 and at the time we had only started clearing Blackwing Lair. There was a large gear disparity. I think in the 3 months we had before TBC came out we only last a handful of games. We knew our stuff.

Now onto the juicy details.

Basics

Warsong Gulch is all about midfield control. It allows your flag carrier safe passage from their base to yours. It stops their offense going for the flag. It is probably the single most important aspect of controlled games. EVERYTHING else is secondary - yes even killing Horde.

The Start

Defense - 1 Hunter or Rogue. They are mainly there to kill the solo flag runner that might sneak past (he should be on low health) or to at least give your midfield an idea of where he is heading out of the base.

Midfield - You win games. You have to be on the ball and working together. The healers need to keep the DPS up and the DPS need to be aware of rogues/hunters going for cloth healers. You want to be pushing forward to the enemy graveyard and looking for containment.

Offense - Ideally a Druid but not always required. We find a Druid/Paladin team works extremely well here but if your Druid is good enough he should be able to get in/out by himself 95% of the time.

So lets put this into practice.

The game starts. Everyone buff up. Mages don't be lazy and not conjure a table. It's your job.

The above three groups need to get to their positions. Defense needs to find a place to watch the room and if it's a hunter lay down traps. Midfield need to move to your ramp and start pushing out from there. Remember the enemy can only enter the base via tunnel/ramp. There's no reason to be spread out halfway across the map. Let THEM COME TO YOU. Offense need to sneak up the right hand side of the map and into the base.

During the time midfield should be pushing toward the enemy graveyard.

Now since I play midfield these days here is what we do. We look for potential enemy flag carriers - Druid/BT geared protection warriors. ZERG THEM DOWN. 99% of teams we go up against have their sole strategy focused around them. When you kill their flag carrier once or twice it breaks their plan and they become unstuck. Easy win.

Midfield will also need to support the flag carrier when he exits the base. You're not aiming to kill the Horde but control them. Mage's polymorph and frost nova, warriors hamstring everything, Warlocks CoX/fear spam. Everything. You want to kill control Paladins/Shamans particularly (JoJ/Frostshock).

Flag carrier - you need to talk to your midfield and vise versa. They need to let you know if there is a clear path up left/right/mid. Things both of you need to take into consideration are:

- Has midfield just killed the Horde in the middle? If so there is going to be a rez wave so going for a graveyard exit might not be a good idea.

- Communication with midfield and vise versa. I can't stress how important this is.

In the event that an enemy does sneak past can get the flag the defense needs to let midfield know what is happening - they need to try their best to slow/kill whoever has it. Midfields response needs to be measured - don't send everyone there you need to keep the pressure on pushing them/containing them in their graveyard.

Your flag carrier needs to be aware of where your flag is going at the same time. Usually the premade you are up against will rush to defend their flag carrier as it crosses the midfield so it's a good opportunity for you to sneak past.

I'll tidy this up more later and add some "what if" situations to it and cover specs.

Oh I'd also like to add. There's no ideal group makeup. None. We run some pretty unorthodox teams when gearing up alts (5 Druid for a few days as we needed to gear them up) and we haven't lost a match in about 3 months. It's more important you find people who know how to play then who meet some moronic resilience requirement.

[shindaustin]

Great ima fix this up.
Start a twink guild
* i have best twink on my server*
And ***MAKE*** Everyone read this.