WoW - BGs for Dummies?

[mouselock]

I've recently gotten into the battlegrounds in WoW, but I feel hopelessly outclassed. I'm learning the tricks of actually fighting (bleeds goooood as feral druid), but my real issue is I don't know the jargon. Some of it's not too bad, but trying to figure out what every damn TLA in AV is is driving me crazy. Also, some of the rules (bonus honor, etc..) aren't at all very clear. Is there a decent website out there with detailed information about the BG's?

(Yeah, I know, BG's aren't real PvP. Thanks, I'm fine with only getting stunlocked and chain feared when I'm up for it.)

[Funkula]

My experience in AV is doubtless useless with all the changes they've made to it since I quit, but here's some info about the others.

Common abbreviations in AB:

farm, mine: spelled out
stables: stab or sb
lumber mill: lm
blacksmith: bs
Pretty self explanatory, except maybe the stables one. People will abbreviate "4 mine" to mean 4 enemies incoming on the mine for example.

In Warsong, people will call which side they're coming out with the flag so midfielders can meet and defend them. Tunnel or tun is for coming out the center tunnel, ramp is going out the left side of the base (so right side if you're running toward it from midfield) and graveyard is the opposite side from the ramp. It took me a while to get a feel for the layout of Warsong so I had a bitch of a time with the directions.

[TheRock]

I always suck at BGs. I go in thinking I will do well and then get owned by almost everyone. Then, I get all annoyed at the twinks....BUT, I have a 19 hunter that I'm, uh, outfitting, so I can play a bit more evenly gear wise...it's kind of fun doing the, uh, gearing up thing.

[Stroker Ace]

Here's way too much about Huntering in AB: http://petattack.blogspot.com/2008/02/battleground-hero.html

I will say that if you are looking to get honor fast then avoid WSG at all costs unless you have short queues and you win every game quickly in a premade. WSG, AB, and EotS are brutal to the losers in terms of rewards. WSG gives the lowest total reward to the winners.

AV gives honor for each tower burned or boss killed, so you'll usually get *something* for playing, unless you get completely screwed. If your queue is 2 hours, avoid it and play AB or something.

In terms of actual fun, AB is the best battleground. It's science.

[Ragnar Oppedal]

Assuming equal length queues and 50% win ratio, AV is the best honor you're gonna get, at least in this patch.

Honor works like this:
Every level 70 player kill awards 20.9 honor, spread out to all nearby players. There's also a diminishing returns system so that every time you receive honor from a player's death, you get 10% less, until 0. This resets every night.

Bonus honor isn't affected by DR, and in AV rewards you with an amount of honor equal to a certain amount of kills. For example, capping a tower gives the team the equivalent of 3 kills, ie 62.7 bonus honor.

The other bonus honor rewards in AV are:

Killing the enemy general: 4 kills
Killing the enemy captain: 3 kills
Keeping your captain alive until the end of the battle: 2 kills
Keeping intact or uncontested at the end of the battle: 2 kills
Doing AV during the AV weekend: 4 kills
Getting a wing commander back to base: 1 kill


Additionally, there's a reinforcement system. You start with 500 reinforcements. If you lose a tower, or your captain is killed, you lose 100 reinforcements. If you hold a mine, you gain reinforcements slowly. 2 mines doubles the rate. If your general is killed, you lose instantly.

I think that about covers it.

For any other info WowWiki is a good bet (http://wowwiki.com/).

[Stroker Ace]

I may have forgotten to mention that if you focus your BG efforts on getting honor you will wind up hating them. There's nothing wrong with the occasional AV game for big honor, but do try and enjoy the three smaller BGs as often as possible.

[Ragnar Oppedal]

If you're a horrible person like me you can also AFK in AV to get honor with no real effort. Just open WoW in a small window or on another monitor and hide somewhere, while making sure you don't go AFK. Beware that if you get reported, you'll receive no honor until you enter PVP combat, and if you get the debuff too often Blizzard may take your shiny honor rewards away.

[Gedd]

Of course you're also taking the risk of having your account suspended and/or having honor point and rewards removed.

Link (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=3881781638&postId=38813037004&sid=1#0)

[RobotPants]

It's good to know who among us are dickish enough to be the people making BGs worse for everyone by going AFK. It's funny to me that you're willing to put in the effort to sit and tap the keyboard every few minutes instead of just playing the fucking game, Ragnar.

[Athryn]

Common abbreviations in AB:

farm, mine: spelled out
stables: stab or sb
lumber mill: lm
blacksmith: bs
Pretty self explanatory, except maybe the stables one. People will abbreviate "4 mine" to mean 4 enemies incoming on the mine for example.



Mine is referred to as GM (Gold Mine) on some servers.


Assuming equal length queues and 50% win ratio, AV is the best honor you're gonna get, at least in this patch.

Depending on your battlegroup, one side (usually horde except for one battlegroup) completely dominates AV, so unless you are horde, I would stay the hell out of AV.

[mouselock]

Depending on your battlegroup, one side (usually horde except for one battlegroup) completely dominates AV, so unless you are horde, I would stay the hell out of AV.

Heh. As far as honor running I'm on that one battlegroup. Not exactly sure why we win, but more often than not unless we hit a pre-made, we do.

The problem with AV is the best way to play (and therefore the way most folks play) involves not actually, y'know, engaging in PvP. Which sort of defeats the purpose. With the exception of a couple of pieces of S1 and the vindicator's bracers for Hydross resist gear, there's nothing in the BG's that's an ugrade for me except for the added resilience on the PvP side, so I'm playing mainly to have fun and honor accrual for gear is definitely secondary.

Though the one WSG I tried really did blow for honor. 10 people, DR, no bonus honor to speak of, and relatively long games. Just a really poorly thought out design there.

[Tankero]

I've found that generalized ganking is just as good a source of honor than BGs. If you have an epic flying mount (or form! Paratrooper druids!), you can dive in on people, pick them off and move on. Of course, that requires being geared and experienced enough to know who to mess with and beating them handily.

Battlegrounds are more about the marks and the gear from the specialized vendors, as well as the daily quest. Anecdotally, I've found that going around, killing AFK 70s, farmers and generally unpleasant individuals yields more honor than the BGs. It flies in the face of common sense, but diminishing returns and the poor win/loss ratio of PUG (Pick-up group) battlegrounds makes ganking a much more straightforward path.

See, since you're 'grouped' with the rest of the people in the battleground automatically, diminishing returns kick in almost immediately. Killing the same person after the first time yields less honor, and yields 0 honor after 5 times. Everyone in the party gets a share from a kill's honor points, as long as they're nearby, so you might get 1 point for three people killing some hapless straggler in AV. Eventually, and especially in WSG and AV games, everyone will be maxed out for everyone else. There is such a thing as bonus honor from all the battlegrounds, which usually involves winning or accomplishing objectives (capturing a flag, successfully destroying bunkers in AV, etc), but the longer these games go, the less profitable they are.

So, BGs for marks, ganking for honor, and let God sort out the rest.

[AaronSofaer]

How to PvE win AV:

It's very simple.

Group 1 - Group 6 rushes Relief Hut. Group 7 and 8 split to kill the enemy Captain and take the towers. After the captain is down, ninja bunkers.

Defend the towers till they burn, then kill the General.

This will get you very far on my BattleGroup.

[z22]

Abbreviations/acronyms for:

AB:

Farm=farm, f
Lumber mill=lm
Gold Mine=gm
Stables=st



WSG:

Tunnel=tun (tunnels leading in/out bases)
Ramp=R, rmp (same but the ramps)
Flag room=FR
Top=up, top (The upper most area of each base where the flag carrier hides most often)




EOTS:

Mage Tower=mt
Blood Elf tower=be
Dranei runes tower=dr
Fel Reaver tower=fr
middle of map=mid



AV:
Too many too list right now
:(


General:

Graveyard=gy
Flag-fl, flg
Flag carrier=fc
Defense=d
Offense=o
zerk=berserker buff
flag stand=fs
hold onto the flag=hold
turn in, or capture, the flag=cap



Hope this helps

[Hanacker]

How to PvE win AV:

It's very simple.

Group 1 - Group 6 rushes Relief Hut. Group 7 and 8 split to kill the enemy Captain and take the towers. After the captain is down, ninja bunkers.

Defend the towers till they burn, then kill the General.

This will get you very far on my BattleGroup.

Since when is it possible to get people to stick to a strategy in AV?

[zabuni]

Premades, of course.

[Hanacker]

How hard is it to get a premade into AV? I've tried it a bit and failed but we were never really that organized.

[Athryn]

How hard is it to get a premade into AV? I've tried it a bit and failed but we were never really that organized.

Stinkyqueue, or one of the Ace versions (I think Lightqueue.)

[Pogo]

If you want to PvP on your Druid, your best bet is to get into a Karazhan guild and start getting healing gear. Use this gear to do arenas as Restoration. Feral druids are awful at PvP unless you're up against specific classes. I've seen well-geared Feral do some amazing burst, but to be eligible to get that gear you'll want to do arenas every week and build up some points.

Make a 3v3 or 5v5 team and advertise that you want to play just for points, do some games (do NOT play on Sunday or Monday nights). You should get 400 points a week just from a bad 5v5, and you can get a piece of Season 2 gear in 3-4 weeks. Spend your honor on Season 1 gear before the Vindicators stuff, as the Season gear has a great 2-piece bonus to at least help a little bit against getting outright slaughtered. Make sure you gem and enchant your gear with stamina and resilience, the point being you want to survive in a big fight long enough to A)get the honor points from kills and B)be useful.

Hand down though, your most useful role in any group PvP and BG is to heal. I have a Disc priest and it's amazing how easily a good healer can turn the tide in a BG battle, since most players are bad and won't focus on a healer until their current target has been healed to full for a minute :)

[CastOutDevil]

Eye of the Storm abbreviations:
FR - Fel Reaver Ruins
MT - Mage Tower
BE- Blood Elf Tower
DR- Draenei Ruins

FR and BE are the two controllable areas on the Horde side. MT and DR are on the Alliance side. The flag area is often called Center or Middle.


In AV, I'd recommend following the zerg on offense. It's the easiest to learn and you blend in with the crowd. Your mistakes won't make a big difference. Once you understand how the offense works, then hang back for defense, if your battlegroup plays any, that is. Once you understand how O & D work, then you can move out to tower and graveyard capping.

In AB, I'd recommend playing defense first. If you're Horde, hang around the Farm. If you're Alliance hang around the Stables. You can see how the battle flows from both of those locations reasonably well. Blacksmith offers the best overall view, I think. Defending control points is most important and most Wow PvPers don't have the patience to sit in one spot for whole minutes at a time. While defending, call out enemy movements as you see them. You can save a control point by telling the raid that four enemy are moving to Blacksmith, etc. Once you get the feel for the game, start moving out and working on capping control points.

EotS - Same as AB. Start of by defending a control point. Watch how the game is played. Pass along intel as you see it. The point of this game is to control as many of the four towers as possible and then run the flag back to a control point and capping it. You can win by holding two control points and steady flag caps. Or you can win by taking three or four control points and denying flag caps to the enemy. It's somewhat chaotic at first, but you'll get it in a few games.

[Tankero]

Hand down though, your most useful role in any group PvP and BG is to heal. I have a Disc priest and it's amazing how easily a good healer can turn the tide in a BG battle, since most players are bad and won't focus on a healer until their current target has been healed to full for a minute :)

I'd argue with this, but there's nowhere near enough dedicated healers in PuG BGs already. Also, Arenas and BGs/PvP in general are completely different beasts. What's true in one is certainly not in the other. Once you hone your situational awareness, a feral druid is a force to be reckoned with, but most often ignored.

[MarinusWA]

I disagree about defense being important in AB. I used to think that as well but after spending an ungodly amount of time in there I realized it's not. While it is easier to defend a single point then to take it, holding three or more points is easier by continuous attacking then defending what you have. AB is all about time and taking flags.

So if you can make your enemy waste time by doing stuff other then attacking flags they will lose. I once spend an entire round harassing four guys at the BS with my rogue using distract, improved sap and liberal use of /cackle, /mock and /lick while telling my team to stay away from the BS. The point? I kept 4 guys locked down leaving a 14 vs 11 for the remaining four points. Even though it was a standard noob Alliance team we still won rather easily.

Other good ways to waste their time is running off into the hills (they will ALWAYS follow you, especially if you're a rogue). Capping points, causing spirits to shift to another graveyard possibly adding respawn time and adding travel time is also major. This happens the moment you make a cap so even if the flag is taken back ten seconds later it's still an advantage so attack attack attack!

Just one piece of advice regarding attacking, DON'T attack sites that have more then half the players your attacking group has. Because they will respawn before you kill them all leading to you losing time instead. If I had a nickel for the amount of times I saw 3 or 4 Horde camping the Stables with 7 or 8 alliance running to their doom over and over again (causing a 7vs11 on the rest of the map).... I would be up about 6 bucks. There is always a point with only one or two guys defending it, go after those. Ignore points with four or more guys because every second they spend standing around there is a offensive advantage for your team to take the remaining four points.

[CastOutDevil]

As Horde, I prefer to control LM, BS and Farm, with 3 or so defenders at each point and the rest of the team acting as a response force to help crush incoming attacks. Most PUG's won't siege two points at once, this setup gives you solid coverage over a very small area.

Defending as a new player gives you insight as to how the game works. If you just run off on your own or follow a couple of players, you don't get a good feel for what's happening on the rest of the map.

[Greg Williams]

BG really depends on your battlegroup. Mine (Horde: Arathor) pretty much steamrolls any BG on any given night (AV is the worst). Not much you can do with AV but follow the crowd.

WSG: I hate the middle ground group. Either be defending or attacking (flag cap). If you are the flag carrier and your flag is gone, best advise is to hang out at the graveyard. Have to be a bit more on your toes just due to the small group. I only play WSG if I need markers or it is the daily quest.

AB: What Marinus said. Cap 3 of 5 and defend is the name of the game. If you have the lead and can tie up the otehr side even better. Defense is huge, the "zerg" and move on is a quick way to lose (unless you freak out the other side I guess)

EoS: Flag cap really is secondary. My battlegroup normally charges the MT or DR right off the bat and get a 3 cap going. Played last night and won 2000 to 115. 3 points MUCH more important than flag running.

AV: good fun with the huge battles that can form. THe charge the other home base it the best tactic, and normally leads to quick games. Hard part is getting 40 people to do what they are meant to do. I also only play this for daily or marks.

Best way to really learn is just go out there and see what happens. I play the daily BG every day (free honor and gold), and will hit up EoS or AB when I feel like some pvp fun.

[Pogo]

I'd argue with this, but there's nowhere near enough dedicated healers in PuG BGs already. Also, Arenas and BGs/PvP in general are completely different beasts. What's true in one is certainly not in the other. Once you hone your situational awareness, a feral druid is a force to be reckoned with, but most often ignored.

I'm not sure which parts of your post are referring to what. I'm going to assume you would like to argue that healers get focused first in most situations, and I don't think that's true (I PvP with my priest fairly extensively). It does change depending on tactics though. Sometimes you'll get a smart group of people in a BG that will focus down the healers first while ignoring any DPS classes. In arenas it's a crapshoot, good teams that are DPS heavy will silence/sheep/mana burn the healer because attempting to kill him only allows his team to DPS theirs.

As for feral druids being a force, this is laughable at best. I mentioned that yes the burst damage can be sick, but taking down any well-geared healer is nearly impossible unless there's other DPS involved. In arenas I sit there and /laugh at feral druids trying to do damage to me while I sit there and heal both myself and my teammates. It's a wasted spot, and if they're the same faction as me I even have time to tell them *while healing* that they should've gone Resto.

[Fooey]

I agree with always staying predominantly on offense in AB. There's always people in there trying to order around the rest of the team to just sit and defend when you've capped three nodes, and that never works. If you're just sitting there on d, it's very easy for the other team to send most of their team to one of the three you're sitting on (since they don't need any d at all if you're not attacking) and overwhelm it, and once they've done that quickly swing the zerg to a second node and cap that too.

[mouselock]

I'd argue with this, but there's nowhere near enough dedicated healers in PuG BGs already. Also, Arenas and BGs/PvP in general are completely different beasts. What's true in one is certainly not in the other. Once you hone your situational awareness, a feral druid is a force to be reckoned with, but most often ignored.

As a feral druid I can last a long time in a 1-2 on 1 fight at a lightly defended node. More importantly, I'm enough of a threat and hard enough to kill (depending on class composition.. damn warlocks..) that I draw reinforcements. Which means my teammates are suddenly free to do other stuff while horde are racing back to get me to quit harassing the silly stealther they left thinking that'd guard their flag.

There is certainly a healer shortage to worry about, but IMO even as full resto I wouldn't be able to outheal the focus fire, and if I'm grouped with folks who are actually team-minded enough to protect their healer, I can generally do fine healing feral with Kara level purples anyway.

[Tankero]

As for feral druids being a force, this is laughable at best. I mentioned that yes the burst damage can be sick, but taking down any well-geared healer is nearly impossible unless there's other DPS involved. In arenas I sit there and /laugh at feral druids trying to do damage to me while I sit there and heal both myself and my teammates. It's a wasted spot, and if they're the same faction as me I even have time to tell them *while healing* that they should've gone Resto.

Playing resto is just easier because of the inherent mechanics, so people do that instead. However, in Battlegrounds? Forget it; a feral druid'll ruin your day by getting the jump on you, something which rarely happens in arenas. A feral druid, under optimal conditions, can lock even a resto druid down to the last of his health. The problem, of course, is all the insta-cast macros a restoration druid has at his disposal. Given that arenas are focused and closed in, the feral druid is in a bad situation, especially since everyone is going to have resilience too.