Real Time Strategy

So at Blizzcon this year, Blizzard finally announced something that will likely cause me to buy their upcoming expansion. I am, of course, talking about the rated battleground system that is set to be one of the main features of Cataclysm. Since early TBC, Blizzard has been promising that this would happen; and only two years later, it finally will happen. I’m not sure how many people actually played competitive BGs back in the day, but I for one can tell you competitive WSG back pre 2.0 was the most fun I have ever had playing WoW.

Every night after a raid, our team would queue WSG on the super competitive battlegroup: Reckoning(lol). A lot of people complain that WSG was all about who could cheese the other team the hardest by GY camping. However, fortunately that was rarely an issue, as most of the competitive teams never resorted to such cheesy tactics. And while we might have spent 10 games stomping pugs, every time we ran into another organized team it got our blood pumping. Over the span of about a year, my team only ever lost once when we ran full 10 players(props to team Fusion with their hunter Plopz, for showing us how cheesy a Horde team could be with entrapment <3). But anyways, this post was not meant to reminisce about the old days.

And now, after all these years, competitive BGs(namely: WSG) is making a comeback. But! As the title suggests, this is about my thoughts & ideas for the rated BG system.

The rating system: Probably the one issue I am torn about. I would like to see something other than the way arena ratings work, so that rated BGs does not become a “grab 9 other people and grind rating so we can get gear.” But I am unsure of how the best way to do that would be. Right now the current arena system is just ridiculous. Any team can get top ratings, despite having horrible W/L ratios, simply because they had a high MMR in a previous season(if you want proof of this, just look at how many bad DK/Pallies are still getting gladiator after S5). One idea I have come up with for this is simply to put a much higher penalty on losing. Getting a high rating should be based on how many games you play without losing–not how many games you play. But like I said, this is one issue that I am having trouble coming up with a solution.

Casuals: Simply put–this should not be made for casuals. Blizzard has done so much this expansion to make arenas more appealing to casuals, such as VoA, more specs being made viable(lolprot), and even being able to buy 1-season-behind-gear with badges. This is all fine to me, but I sincerely hope they keep rated BGs for the more hardcore crowd. Getting 9 other players together to queue at the same time will be a hard enough job–please make it enticing enough for the hardcore crowd.

Match-making system: Perhaps this could have been stated in the rating system section. Anyways, I would like to see an MMS more like that of WC3. To somewhat go along with what I stated earlier, I would like to see matching based off of your W/L ratio. This way new teams that start out beating a bunch of noobs, will soon enough find themselves facing other undefeated teams.

Restrictions: Probably the biggest issue I could see with rated BGs are cheese teams. An example of that would be a team of 9 healers and 1 Prot warrior. Sure they could never kill you, but you for damn sure will never get your flag back if they do get it to their graveyard. I think there should be spec restrictions set in place for each team. Say, if you wanted to queue for WSG it would check the specs of everyone on the team, and prevent you from queuing with more than, say, 4 healers(just throwing that out there), or no more than 1 tank, etc. And then, once the team has the green light to queue, it locks everyone from being able to do a talent respec while they are in queue.

Consumables: This is an area where a lot of people will likely disagree with me, but I stand strong behind this, and that is that I think all professions, and all consumables should be allowed(with the exception of things like MC cap). This will do two things. Add a much more room for tactics. And even more important(to me) keep the casuals away. As I said before, I would really like rated BGs to appeal to the hardcore PvPers, rather than casual players. I don’t know about anyone else who used to play competitive WSG back in the day, but whenever WSG weekend rolled around, I would spend usually an entire day farming for flasks, and several hundred free action/living action potions. I really think consumables/professions would make things a lot more interesting, so each game is not played just like a 10v10 death match.

Time limit: Another issue that I am a little unsure of. To be honest, the 25 minute time limit would have to go. I’m sure most people would hate such a thing, but I think the longest WSG I was ever in lasted about 6 hours, and while that is a little absurd, the point is that 25 minute just is not enough time to decide a game of WSG. I would say that there should be no time limit, but place in certain rules that prevent people from turtling. Ex: team A caps team Bs flag, team B then decides to turtle all 10 players inside their base just to annoy the other team. One way to prevent this would be to have inactive penalties. Say, if your whole team stays inside your base for x amount of time, each player will receive a 5 minute debuff that increases their damage taken by x%. The same would go for GY campers. I would even say anytime you hold the enemies flag at your own GY, you take 50% more damage.

Anyways, that is all I have for now. Feel free to provide your own ideas, or point out flaws in my ideas(I’m sure they are not perfect). But I would really like to see everyone’s opinion on this!

Well, it has been a long three months since I quit playing World of Warcraft–or, I should say since I took a 3 month break from World of Warcraft. Anyways, I am back! This time I am going to *try* and keep myself from getting back into raiding, as that is one reason I became so burned out last time. So this time around, I am trying to make PvP my main focus, and would really like to get back into competitive arena. I have not been Gladiator since season two, as it has been that long since I have really wanted to put forth the effort, and had the team capable of making it to the top. Anyways, when I was last playing arena, I was rated 2350 in 2s on my Death Knight(big accomplishment, I know!), and 2200 in 3s on my Resto Shaman. I will say, playing those two classes was not really fun at all. Shamans took a lot of work, and totem management was just not fun at all(talking pre 3.2). And my Death Knight was fun for about, oh, I would say maybe 15 games, then it became boring.

So, I decided I would make the comeback on my fresh level 80 Mage that I achieved level 80 on about 2 weeks before quitting. So, I am starting over completely void of any PvP gear, so I decided it was time to start the dreaded honor grind that we all know and love. I decided I was going to do it as quickly as possible, so that means actually participating in every game(ugh). Now, after playing hundreds of BGs, I have learned little tips here and there that I decided I would share with the community. This little guide will be about getting the absolute max honor per game, which(usually) means you want to get as many HKs as possible(not killing blows). So, here we go.

NOTE: I play Alliance, but the ideas should work for either faction.

Eye of the Storm: this BG can be really situational in terms of which way you should go every time. I generally go DR -> BET, as Horde will often leave it lightly defended, and as long as a couple other Alliance follow you, you should be able to score 3-4 kills easily. From here, your next move is entirely reliant on what your team is doing. If the Alliance are all downies and send 7-8 people straight to the flag, the Horde will likely attack one of your nodes–that is where you want to be. In 3.2, Blizzard added a bonus honor gain as long as you are standing near a node that your team controls. So think of it like this: if Horde attack DR, and there are a few Alliance there, you want to head that way. Basically, the objective here is to be near any battle that is taking place near a node you control. Now, there are exceptions to this. If you control only two nodes, it is usually more effective to try and muster up a group of Alliance to follow you and take try to take a node. This all seems rather “no-brainer,” but a lot of people fail to realize how useless fighting in the middle near the flag really is. When you are standing at a node, you are already in range to get HKs from the center of the map, and when you are standing at a node you control, you will gain the 15% honor increase from every kill the Alliance scores in the middle.

Warsong Gulch: this is still my favorite BG in the game, and the idea for maximizing honor is really fun. For this BG, you want to be a roamer. Be the guy who stays outside of the bases, but just close enough to whichever one has battles taking place. Play power-up control! If you run back and forth between the berserk huts, you can keep it going nonstop. I usually just roam around picking off stragglers, and waiting for the Horde to bring our flag out of base, then I make sure I have berserk up, and pop cooldowns to kill the FC, or his healer(depending on the situation). A lot of people may view this as being useless to the team in the long run, but as long as you participate in battles that take place outside the bases, you are still bringing plenty of help to the team(especially if you always arrive with berserk up). It is also important to remember that you should put surviving ahead of getting killing blows. If you are being focused in a big battle, just do whatever you can to escape, whilst staying close enough to the battle to keep getting honor from any kills that the Alliance makes.

Stand of the Ancients: short and simple. This is one of two BGs where your job is to make sure your team wins as fast as possible, instead of running around collecting kills. For offense, if you are ranged DPS you should always be in the passenger seat of a Demolisher. Whenever the Demolisher is being focused, use whatever snares/CCs to keep the Horde away. As a Mage this is extremely easy as you can Frost Nova any melee that get in range of your Demolisher. For defense it’s basically the opposite. Try to be sneaky and position yourself away from the infantry battles, but still where you can snipe Demolishers as they go by. Your job is ALWAYS to kill Demolishers instead of Horde.

Isle of Conquest: while I absolutely hate this BG, it is usually over quick, and can net a good amount of honor each game. Another “no-brainer” perhaps, but you should always go for Docks first. If you manage to take it, then there are basically two ways you can go. I would try and defend it for a bit first, as it is probably the most contested position in the whole BG. If you choose not to defend, then you will either want to get in a Catapult, and launch yourself onto one of the Horde towers. From here, you want to try and lure the defending Horde little by little of the tower where you can kill them. Perhaps it is only my Battlegroup, but almost every time I play this BG, there are usually only 10 or so Horde that stay back to defend. If you can get a small group to go in, you can get quite a bit of honor from farming the horde in there. Or, you can go from Docks back to your base and defend. Usually(once again, this is speaking from the way it goes on my BG) Horde will get the workshop, and begin pounding on the front gates of the Alliance keep. If there is a large enough group of Alliance defending, you can get quite a bit of honor by staying in the back and sniping Horde(just remember, staying alive is more important than getting killing blows). I do suggest that you avoid fighting at the other nodes, as from my experience, I have been pretty unsuccessful in generating much honor from doing so.

Arathi Basin: quite possibly the most simple of all. Defend the Blacksmith! One thing a lot of people do not know, is that in 3.2 Blizzard also increased the range at which you gain honor from HKs. So, if you stand at the Blacksmith, you will gain honor from EVERY killing blow around the map(except each teams base, of course). This change turned AB into one of the best BGs for generating large amounts of honor per game, as you will often get 100+ HKs each game, and that is with having the 15% honor gain buff the whole time(assuming you actually succeed in defending the Blacksmith).

Alterac Valley: not much to say about this. Like SotA, your best bet is to try and do whatever helps your team win as quickly as possible. I will often just defend the towers that the Alliance take until they are destroyed, as preventing back-caps is probably the best way to assure victory.

Anyways, I am sure most of these tips are widely known, but perhaps there is information in here that will help many people who are not familiar with how to generate the max honor per game. Part 2 will be coming some time in the near future, and it will have to do with more detailed tips on how to get the max number of HKs, other than just where to be each game. Hope you have all enjoyed it!