The Waiting Game.

After being spoiled from the nearly instant queues after Arathi Basin Call to Arms Weekend, I couldn’t help but feel FULL OF DREAD knowing I’d have to go back to regular queues:

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

To release some of my frustrations, I visited the curiously large, but nevertheless empty, hall in Stormwind’s Dwarven District simply to say:

Were those in battle not in need of a bubbly (pardon my pun) priest who can also pew-pew?

To make time pass, I visited old friends:

Though I found him too intimidating to ask, Why no shirt? Why the flip flops? Why is your name Woo Ping (a pun on “whooping,” perhaps)? Instead, we sat there in “comfortable” silence. I sat down so he wouldn’t feel bad, what with me being taller and all.

I took a moment to swing by the Pig and Whistle Tavern and speak with Bartleby the Drunk:

(I tried to ask him if he’d ever read the wonderful short story “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Herman Melville, but he just kept wobbling around and bursting into random fits of crying. I thought it best to leave him be.)

I made a pit stop to see my friend, Master Wood:

I donated some time at the local orphanage:

I stopped to smell some flowers:

I went for a swim:

…

I spent some time napping:

Until finally:

😀

Fun with Call to Arms.

Arathi Basin Call to Arms helped me get Emee from level 35 to 38. I know, I know: considering it was CALL TO ARMS, it wasn’t that much. Still, I like to relish in the last two levels in battlegrounds because you’re (arguably) a decently strong asset at that time. And who’s in a rush to make it back to “noob”-town at level 40, when you’ll get harassed just for queueing because “OMG WAIT UNTIL YOU LEVEL MORE, SCRUB.”

Anyway. The great thing about battlegrounds is that they’re never short on entertainment, even when they are utterly frustrating. Case in point:

Why was everyone defending that one node? Why not try to capture another node, considering that one node alone will not allow us to win? GET AWAY, HORDE! YOU CAN’T HAVE THIS NODE! WE GOT THIS ON LOCKDOWN. 😛

And then stuff like this happens:

But then sometimes bgs go exceedingly well, garnering you HALF a level of experience. And then, of course, you’ve got time to goof off like this:

Muahaha. (For the record, I am standing on top of the Gold Mine.)

Not enough players.

One of the worst things about queueing for battlegrounds at night is that hardly anyone queues. There’s this weird limbo time where it’s kind of dead. Perhaps it’s the level I’m at (32) or perhaps it’s just a weird time (just after 1 a.m. EST). But if you’re lucky enough to get a queue, then sometimes this happens:

“Not enough players. This game will end in 5 Min.”

NOOOOOOOOOO.

I admit I hadn’t waited long in the queue, but I did leave a full Arathi Basin to join Warsong Gulch just because it makes my heart swell with joy. And now I was going to be shut out because not enough Alliance queued? ROARRRR.

Nevertheless, myself and the three other people in there — all druids — buffed and waited for the game to start.

But the WoW Gods kept reminding us:

Thirty seconds passed and the battle for Warsong Gulch began! With only four, though, the game would certainly end within four minutes. However:

A mage joined the party! Hooray! We trudge triumphantly across mid-field and I wonder to myself, How many Horde are there? (There are five alliance at this point.)

Can we do it? Five against ten? If we asked a magic eight ball, they’d say, “Outlook grim.” 😦 BUT WE TRY! And miraculously, we’re able to nab the flag. But then we get to mid…

No dice. 😦 We drop the flag. They cap. This happens again, quite quickly, and they cap once more.

Then there’s a light at the end of the tunnel!

People start joining! (Except for Neigel, who immediately left. Wimp.) ZOMG! DO I SMELL A COMEBACK?

Nigel’s replacement also joins!

We can DO this!

Actually, no. No we can’t. (We lost in eight minutes. New record?)

Damn.

Ding!

With WSG as the Call to Arms battleground, I had no choice but to hit:

Level 30! Huzzah!

I ran to the SW priest trainer in the Cathedral and got shiny new abilities, like Mind Control and Prayer of Healing. And I promptly exploited the professions of my other toons to make Emee some new gear and get her her first helm (I know, I know — you can get your first helm around level 20, but I was busy pew-pewing stuffs!).

Beyond my pretty helm!

Despite my excitement at turning level 30, I knew that I would be back at the bottom of the food chain. I’d probably be yelled at for queueing (“Level up a bit before you queue again, noob!”) or one-shotted by level 39s. Most of my spells would probably miss people who were much higher than me, too. Nevertheless, I wanted to take advantage of Call to Arms and trek on.

I did a few battlegrounds, but something funny was happening:

I was number one for Alliance heals? As a level 30 discipline priest? Whaaaar?

I thought it was a fluke. I kept playing and I dinged. But then it happened again:

And I realized just how viable “noobs” (which low-levels are often referred to) can be in battlegrounds littered with higher level players. Yeah, being a level 39 and possessing a bigger mana pool and more health and spells that, you know, actually hit the others is helpful. But apparently, just plain being a healer who’s trying hard is damn good, too.

Not to mention, I accidentally got:

I helped kill 100 flag carriers?!

To reward myself, I decided to buy myself something useful:

WOOOOOOT! And, naturally, getting that trinket gives you this:

Hitting 30, which I thought I’d hate, was full of a whole lot of win. (And, apparently, lots of screencaps.)

Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down.

Sometimes your battleground is destined to fail. Two caps by the other team within the first 10 minutes and none by your team is one of those times. I don’t normally condoning giving up, but sometimes you’re just tired. So what should you do?

Have a dance party near the war glaives, of course! (And promptly retire to bed!)

A race against time.

I went to queue for a battleground when I saw this:

Call to Arms? On my favorite battleground?! YES PLEASE! (For the record, “Call to Arms” happens each weekend, starting midnight on Thursday and continues until Tuesday morning. “Call to Arms” increases the XP that you get from each battleground that you do. It also means that lots of people will probably be queueing for it, so you will get into one almost instantly.)

While I’m not looking to power-level my priest the same way I did with my other toons, hitting the bracket level cap is always glorious. Being level 29 in a BG means being (one of) the most powerful people in there, if you play your toon correctly. It means being able to one- or two-shot low-level players of the opposing faction without even breaking a sweat. (On the flip side, when you ding after being top dog in a battleground, you go back to being the noob. Hitting level 30 will be bittersweet because I’ll know that I need to group with others to be an asset at all and that I’ll probably die a lot. However, on the off chance that I’ll actually be able to take on someone several levels higher than I am, I’ll feel accomplished and euphoric. Like I said, bittersweet!)

I used Call to Arms to get up to level 29 and then couldn’t stop myself from continuing to queue. (We were on a losing streak, anyway, so we weren’t winning much and therefore I wasn’t getting as much XP as if we were winning.)

Two warlocks and myself decide to stay on defense. We’re doing a lovely job of defending the flag, until one warlock drops off. Then it’s just me and my level 20 warlock buddy:

We’re pretty kick-ass, to be quite honest. We can take on two people, a level 29 druid and a level 27 rogue, and be just fine. It feels lovely and — most importantly — it’s so much goddamn fun. We even have the most killing blows:

AND I’m the number one Alliance healer:

Both teams, at this point, have one flag cap and we’ve still got a good ten or so minutes left. Warlock and I get rushed, though, and both go splat! We try to tell our teammates to grab the flag carrier at mid-field, but most of them are off fighting random Hordies on the opposite side from where the FC is going. Warlock and I make a run for the FC. But we die and they cap.

So now they have two caps, we have one. Warlock and I head back to defend. It’s too much fun not to and we make an awesome team. In /bg, someone tells us to stop defending and to come cap because most of the Horde players are camping in their flag room.

Warlock and I agree that we don’t want to do that, we’d like to defend the flag (as it’s only two of us, anyway). Our decision seems validated when a sneaky rogue named McCheese runs into the FC and we kill him (or her?). But time keeps ticking and suddenly we’re down to three minutes. We NEED to cap in order to win. (Last team to cap, in the event of a tie, wins.)

“We need a group!” a druid says in chat.

“It’s too late,” replies a hunter, defeated. “Unless we do it right now.”

We crowd together like a bunch of football players getting ready for a huddle and the druid says, “We got one shot. We drop it, we lose.” (Yeah, I’m totally painting this dramatically. BUT LOOK! I HAS PROOF!

Nyah-nyah.)

And we’re off. Together we’re able to nab the flag. I’m fearing the crap out of the opposing team and bubbling the crap out of the druid who’s just nabbed the flag. Everyone’s fighting, healing, PEEING THEIR PANTS WITH ANTICIPATION! (Probably not that last one.)

Treegirl is able to pull ahead of the pack and it’s so close, we can taste it!

And then!

We ran out of time. And we lost.

So I’m not sure our decision to stay and defend was the right one, especially if I could have helped a cap sooner. 😦 But it made for a super exciting and fun battleground, up to the very last second.

Oh, and of course if I’m that disappointed, I can just queue again. 😉

Battleground Basics, Part 1: Warsong Gulch

Going into battlegrounds and not having a clue what to do is discouraging. I remember queueing up for Alterac Valley and wanting to punch a baby because I didn’t know what I was doing.

“Just follow the crowd,” the boyfriend urged calmly.

“BUT WHY? WHAT AM I DOING? I’M LOST! I’M GONNA DIE! AHHHHH!” I responded, completely irrationally. And I was lost. I spent a lot of my time running in circles or going off the path and ending up next to really strange fairy-esque creatures called harpies and wanting to leave the battleground all together because I was so! frustrated!

Moral of the story? It’s always better to know what’s going on than to go into PvP battlegrounds blindly. (Besides, going in blindly will totally make you run into the opposing faction and get squished. Har-har.)

OLD WORLD BATTLEGROUNDS

There are six battlegrounds in total that you can queue for, not counting Wintergrasp at level 80: Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley, Eye of the Storm, Strand of the Ancients and Isle of Conquest. We’ll first focus on the Old World bgs.

WARSONG GULCH

Background: You can queue for Warsong Gulch at level 10. You will be competing against other players who range from level 10 to level 19. These level restrictions are called “brackets.” The brackets continue as follows: 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79 and 80.

The object: The easiest way to explain Warsong Gulch is that it’s a huge game of “Capture the Flag.” The first team to capture the flag three times wins. (The game ends after 25 minutes, even if no one has captured a flag. If it’s a tie, then the team who capped the flag last wins.)

Here’s a diagram from the map of what must be done:

This is what “base” looks like from an Alliance perspective:

To get to the second floor, there is a ramp just outside of each flag room. To get to the roof, both areas have ramp-hills that lead up.

This is what everything looks like from the Alli graveyard:

Sound confusing? It’s not. You’ll get the hang of it super quickly. It’s just a bit difficult to illustrate without actually being in the battleground.

To keep track of where you and your teammates are in the game, there is a counter on the top of your screen:

This tells you how many times your team and the opposing team has captured each other’s flags as well as the time left on the battleground. It will also tell you if anyone has a flag and what their name is:

This means that an alliance teammate has the horde flag.

Strategies:

Defense and Offense

Each team should have a group of defense and offense. The defense team can stay in their designated flag room — usually staying stealthed or hiding is your best bet — in order to help make it so that the opposite team can’t nab your flag. You can hide in the corners of the room or on the second floor or the roof.

If the other team sees no one in the flag room, they are more likely to try to cap it on their own without calling for back-up. That’s when you and the other defense can pounce and, hopefully, return the flag to its base.

Defending can be slow. You have to have patience and wait for the excitement to come to you rather than seeking the excitement on your own. However, defense can certainly contribute to winning the battleground. Without a few players defending, both teams can end up with the flag in a turtle, where both teams have the other’s flag in their room but neither can cap it. (You can’t capture a flag, ever, if the other team is holding onto your flag. Therefore, it is important to make sure that the other teams flag-carrier goes down as quickly as possible to maximize your win.)

If you’re playing offense, then, your role is mostly to help the person who will capture the other teams flag or to be that person. Each offensive group must charge across the field and capture the other team’s flag and then safely return it to your flag room. You are the ones who will be bombarded first, most likely, as you may encountering the opposing faction at mid-field, where much of the fighting takes place:

Some offense should probably battle it out at mid-field while two or three attempt to grab the other team’s flag. Killing in mid-field means that you’ll be ready when the flag carrier leaves the other team’s building and can help them successfully travel across mid-field toward your flag room or base.

You can find out where the flag-holder is by pressing “m” and bringing up your map. They will show up as a small flag icon. If you see that they are alone, be sure to try to help them in any way that you can (by trying to distract the other team if you’re tanky, dps the opponents down or heal the flag carrier if you can).

If YOU want to capture a flag, a few things to remember: picking up a flag breaks stealth. You can use travel form/ghost wolf/rocket boots, but you cannot mount. Mounting will make you drop the flag. There are power-ups that you can pick up in houses along the path from horde-base to alliance-base and vice versa. Use these to your advantage (some heal, some give a speed boost). If you’re killed, you’ll drop the flag. You also can’t use Divine Shield if your a paladin, Ice Block if you’re a mage, Vanish if you’re  a rogue or be given Hand of Protection by a paladin. These things will all make you drop the flag!

Dropping the flag means that a nearby enemy can click it and return it to base. (Returning the flag to base happens automatically when a dropped flag is clicked.) However, friendly players can also pick up the flag and try to continue where you left off.

Everyone helps the Flag Carrier

This time, defense is completely scrapped and everyone goes with the FC to the enemy’s base to help capture the flag. Then they assist the FC back to base. Once back at base, a few will venture out and try to kill the other team’s FC (because, without defense, they probably will have taken your flag, too!) in hopes that it’ll be successful enough for your team to win.

Zerging

This requires the least coordination and usually just means a bunch of people are trying to cap the flag for their own benefit. Nearly everyone tries to cap the flag on their own or with one or two others by running straight for the other team’s flag without really having a plan. If you make it out of the flag room, this sometimes leads to you getting caught mid-field with no back-up and consequently dying. However, sometimes you might get lucky and navigate around everyone!

Fighting in the middle

In this strategy, most people are sent to the center of the field to fight opposing team. The thought is that this will keep the enemy from reaching your base and grabbing your flag. If they happen to, though, then it’s believed that you will then have the manpower to kill them before they can return to their base.

Abbreviations/terms:

FC: Flag carrier, meaning person who is carrying the flag.

FR: Flag room, meaning the room where your flag is kept and where the opposing flag must be taken in order to cap it (zomg no wai!).

INC: Incoming, meaning a group of the opposing faction are coming your way.

Mid: Mid-field, meaning the main fighting area in the center of the field.

Cap: Capture, ie: capturing the flag.

Turtle: In regards to WSG, when both teams have the flag and neither can/is willing to DPS down the other team’s FC. (Turtle means other things in other bgs.)

Defense: People who stay to defend the flag.

Offense: People who actively attempt to capture the flag or assist the flag carrier in his/her capture.

CONCLUSION

This probably sounds like information overload and I’m sure I missed some stuff. But this is enough information to get you going into WSG without being called a ZOMG NOOB! You’ll certainly learn as you go — what strategy you prefer, whether you enjoy capping the flag, which tools work for you, how to navigate the field efficiently, etc. Keep these things in mind from a prior post and you should do just fine!

GOOD LUCK!

Don’t feed the trolls.

I don’t go into battlegrounds expecting much besides getting a giggle here and there. I keep my expectations low so that if anything good happens, I can feel pleasantly surprised. So when I zoned into Warsong Gulch and saw this:

I thought, “Dis gon’ be good.” (And yes, yes he did say “Redrick” instead of “Redridge.”)

“What do you mean you’re stuck?” I ask. Could he be stuck enough that a GM needs to be ticketed to get him out? Is he lost inside of a cave? Did he fall off of a cliff?

No. None of that.

I’m not too sure what “suuronded” means, but I make an educated guess and assume he means surrounded. To which I can’t help but giggle about the cute/pathetic-ness that is this tiny rogue, overpowered in Redridge. I explain to him that his options are limited, such as getting someone in his guild to help him OR to run like help and hope he doesn’t die (though he probably will).

I then calmly explain that none of us can help him because we aren’t on the same server.

Lo and behold, my comments to the rogue garner a “Rofl” from someone from my server — a warrior! ZOMG SOMEONE TO FOLLOW AROUND AND HEAL!

And a friendship is formed! (Why yes, I did leave in that comment from Hotsfromhell because it is too awesome not to share. Perhaps we can try to find ways to add “Let’s steam roll those turds” into our repertoire of phrases to say, yes?)

We easily plow through that battleground and New Friend asks me to queue with them again:

Yay, we’re in a party! We chit-chat a bit and then this happens:

I can change! Really, I can! I’m sorry for whatever I– oh, there you are. Musta got DC’d.

Ahem.

Anyway. We decide to queue for AB and WSG simultaneously but both agree that WSG is far superior. We enter WSG. A rogue, who I apparently missed while buffing, asks for Fort. I happily oblige.

Then, high off our win, New Friend establishes a plan and calls out the three who should defend (me, him and a rogue) and three who should play offense.

Cue rogue freak-out.

“UM, no,” says the bitchy rogue. “Excuse me?”

And rogue continues:

And then:

But we drop it. And then, out of nowhere:

The bickering continues for a few more minutes (I know, I know — I should have slapped them on ignore! But I must admit, it was kind of funny, and I was kind of amused.) but before long, New Friend has capped the final flag and we’ve won. We leave the battleground giggling about the silliness that just took place in WSG and queue again.

Arathi Basin pops. We zone in. In sunshine-yellow text, we see:

[Beaches-Bleeding Hollow] has joined the battle.

Moral of the story: Don’t feed the trolls. 😦 The WoW Gods will group you in your next battleground with them!

NEED MOAR DEFENSE!

When you join a battleground, one of the first things your chat says is “You have joined a raid group.” Tonight, what it should have said is the following:

Before the battleground starts, a kind hunter says, “I’m gonna stay on defense. Anyone want to help?” I think, “Excellent! I love defending!” and decide to stay.

This is also, apparently, what went through everyone else’s head. Nobody wanted to be on the offense. The battleground started and here we were. Nine of us were sitting in the flag room.

“I’d like to see them just TRY to cap our flag!” the hunter says jokingly. Haha. I politely explain in /bg that having EVERYONE on defense is redundant, so a few of us should hop to offense instead.

I scoot out into the scary, open battlefield, knowing full well how squishy I am, but confident that a few people will follow my advice and head to try to nab the horde flag. I make it all the way into the horde building without a single attack. I pause and look around. There’s no one. I wait a moment and then check the map. I’m alone! Ack! And then I notice that — despite all of our people “defending” — someone’s managed to grab our flag. So I do the only thing that makes sense: I grab theirs.

I bubble and start heading out of the building. No horde in sight. No allies, though, either. At this point, it feels like I’m just playing by myself.

I easily make it up the hill and start to run toward our building. Weeeeeee!

I get inside the building. But wait… where’s the defense? D: I see no one. So I hide alone in the corner. But then a shaman comes! OMG YAY! Someone to heal  me like I diligently heal other flag carriers! Until:

(Evidence of the shaman can be seen in the lower right-hand corner. If you resize the picture, you can distinctly see a draenei tail!)

And the shaman leaves. AMG SHAMAN NOOOO. STAY WITH ME! I’M FRAGILE! I’m alone again, but this time not alone-alone. I’ve got no allies, but I can see the horde making their way up the ramp. I jump off the ledge, bubble, and start running around like a madwoman. WHERE IS EVERYONE? I check the map. They’re outside fighting.

Oh. Playing offense now.

I keep running around trying to avoid the horde until this conversation unravels:

The best is always when someone says, “I got you!” and then you die and drop the flag. Now, this hasn’t ever happened to me before (this is, after all, a battleground that is unlike any other, created from the confused tears of unicorns) but I imagine it’s a lot like being on a baseball field, looking at the ball and announcing to everyone “I GOT IT!” only to have it drop right next to you and you lose the game.

Yeah, that’s sorta what this was like. Only I couldn’t stay mad at him because his intentions were totally legit (plus he DID manage to get IN MY GENERAL VICINITY at the time of my death and was able to get the flag) and two seconds later, after dropping the flag, he said the cutest thing ever:

So now I’m full of mixed emotions. How can this group be full of such carebears but yet still make me want to rage? NO ONE will play offense! And no one will help the flag carrier! And yet they say cute things like they’re “too nervous” to carry the flag! It’s too adorable for me to be ANGRY about. And it seems that the cuteness has the same affect on others who know that we have no chance of winning by playing like this. Skywave, a hunter in the group, is desperate for us to split offense/defense instead of focusing solely on defense. But he (or she?) is no match for the logic of Eatarrows.

No one’s yelling at each other (despite the horde now capping 2 flags). No one’s being mean. And yet, no one will help with offense, either. Everyone just wants to stay together in a beautiful little cluster of lovenuggets. Cute. But:

We lost. Sigh.

The epic warlock.

Whenever I zone into a battleground, I immediately start buffing people. This gives me a chance to simaltaneously be kind (MOAR STAM FOR YOU!) and check out people’s gear. I’d like to say one thing: I’m not huge on gearscore. But I do have the add-on because I like to know what I’m getting into, particularly when I’m healing heroics and pug-raids on my druid. (IE: Do I have to really focus to heal this tank or can I flail my branch arms, toss a few HoTs and then DPS the rest of the time?)

So anyway, yes, I’m buffing. Power Word: Fortitude for me! Power Word: Fortitude for the rogue! Power Word: Fortitude for the shaman! Power Word: Fortitude for the warlock!

Except the warlock looks funny. They’re not wearing stuff that looks like gear; it looks like roleplay clothing. More specifically, it looks like the clothing you get when you roll a level 1. Yeah, the white garbage that you replace with greys that drop off of dead wolves after you kill them.

So I inspect her. And she’s wearing two greens and the rest of the “gear” is white. I check her gearscore:

(Name erased to protect the innocent!)

She had about 400 health and probably wondered why she kept getting one-shotted. I tried to help her out — toss her a bubble and heal her — but most of the time she was dead before I could do much of anything.

But at least she looked damn good while eating floor.