My quest for [url=http://db.mmo-champion.com/a/battlemaster/]Battlemaster[/url] has begun again. Unfortunately, I have not restarted it on my death knight**. I have worked these last two weeks getting a mage (my TBC raiding character) from 70 to 80 and ready to hit the (battle)ground running. While not on the Battlemaster pre-requisites list, I have spent a great deal of the past four days in the Isle of Conquest farming honor off the poor alliance and just having a great time with my wife and her warlock. However, like all events Warcraft, a few things stand out to me concerning strategy in the Isle of Conquest. The most concerning point is the disparity of victory between the Horde and Alliance in this particular map. Over the past weekend, I have enjoyed about fifty games of IoC (29-21). About half of those were played with my wife's warlock and so perhaps the constant presence of my arena partner has skewed my views on this particular battleground, but I think these observations have more to do with overarching strategy than two casters burning down every poor wardering solo that we come across. The first idea is pretty much the simplest: [b]unless you are specifically defending a strategic point (that needs defending), you should always be moving towards the enemy's keep with something to kill a wall[/b]. Fundamentally, IoC is about destroying a gate. [url=http://forceinbalance.blogspot.com/2009/09/somethings-rotten.html]Ihrayeep has speculated that the map is Horde bias[/url] and while I would normally defer to his experience, I must comment that all the gates have the same hitpoints (600,000) and there is a good sniping spot for both the horde and the alliance on the west side and the hanger is gate neutral as you're dropping into the courtyard and have equal access to all three gates. Killing the enemy general is a reward for destroying the gate. Once the gate is down, unless your team is full of addle brained night elves, you will win the game in about a minute. Have no doubt my friends, the team that destroys the first gate wins the game ~95% of the time. Fortunately, there is an arsenal of gate destroying weapons spread out over the Isle that have varying levels of gate destroying potential if used correctly. First, we have the docks. I mention the docks first because they are pretty much the best node on the map if you intend to finish the game in about eight minutes and leave the opposing team wondering how the hell you did it. Properly used, the glaives put out around 1700 siege DPS (3400 with x2 glaives firing) and have the longest range of anything on the Isle. Their range is so long that when properly positioned, they are immune to the defenders rocket towers. However, like all things with great power, they are incredibly delicate with only 30kHP. This means retadins dropping a golden retriever on the keyboard can kill one before the bubble wears off if the team is not actively working to keep them safe. [b]What this really means is that you need five to eight defenders for each glaive.[/b] While 18 units dedicated to firing and defending glaives may seem like a lot, be assured that once both glaives are firing the gates will fall in about 5:48 minutes and this does not scale with gear level, so putting your weakest into the glaives is advisable. Defeating an opponent using the docks as their main avenue towards your base exposes their single point of failure: kill the glaives or lose the game. While generally capped by the Horde in the Nightfall BG, unlike every other node on the map, single handedly holding the Docks and defending the glaives will win you the game in the fastest possible way. [img]http://www.phreakre.com/images/screenshots/isleofconquestmap-strategy.jpg[/img] Symmetrically opposing the docks is the hanger. The problem with the hanger which makes it less valuable than the docks is subtle, but manifold. First, you have to defend the hanger flag or the airship returns to base and leaves your paratroopers stranded inside the enemy base. Second, any enemies you kill in the first two minutes of the match will be re-spawning inside your LZ. Third, it requires a great deal of strategy and teamwork to properly coordinate a hanger victory with many moving parts and many single points of failure. Unlike the docks, if your defenders fail to hold the flag, you will lose. If the rest of the team does not concentrate on killing glaives, you will lose. If your paratroopers aren't up to snuff, they will get cut down before they can get to the bombs (and you will lose). If your team is anything like my teams, getting the prerequisite number of people (15) to hit the hanger simultaneously and properly defend/jump/bombard has about the same odds as winning the Pik-an-flik from Barkeep Morag's nose in Orgrimmar. For a proper Orcwaffe* conquering of the Isle, you need 15 people to jump into the airship and four to five left to defend the flag. Only ten need to make the actual jump, as the others should stay in the guns and bombard the little ants in the courtyard. You never know when a falling ball of pure liquid fire will do the 3500 damage needed to finish off a pesky healer (otherwise, they should be shooting the graveyard whenever it is in range). The reason you only need ten to jump is the rate in which huge seaforium bombs spawn: four per twenty seconds. This means you only need four dedicated bomb carriers and a group of six killing the alliance trying to defend. As stated previously, the rest of the group needs to realize you are using a hanger strategy and cap *both* refinery and quarry after killing those glaives. Capping both siege damage bonus nodes will take huge seaforium bomb DPS up to 1700 from 1300, matching the glaive dps. If you do not kill the glaives, you cannot win with just the hanger. It really is that simple. Lastly, there is the the workshop. If your battlegroup is anything like mine, the workshop is the site of the best grand melee battles available in Warcraft. No other place in the game so greatly encourages the 40 v 40 tactless zerg like a lone flag in the middle of a flood plain. Sure, AV has some good battles for the bridge or at the IBT chokepoint, but nothing compares to the huge field sitting around the workshop flag when both teams are filled with crazed berserkers who think strategy is targeting the red names and dropping a golden retriever on the keyboard. If I am not specifically farming an achievement, I will generally head straight at the workshop in the beginning of the game just to take part in the awesome battle that nets 25-30 HK's for my honor wallet. During the grand melee, a few things seem to always push the battle our way. First, I politely ask for Bloodlust about five seconds after the lines have crossed if it has not been used already since so rarely will the full power of this skill be brought to bear on the enemy outside of a raid. Second, while the alliance seem to still possess way, way more paladins than the horde, their paladins are all retardins who run directly into our lines, start hacking away, and bubble run back when their lifebar gets chopped up. Our shaman, conversely, seem to stand in the back and heal the hell out of our frontline warriors. As a mage, I pay special attention to helping our healers get out of rogue/warrior issues and everything seems to go just peachy. Once we have the flag, leveraging the demolishers is pretty cut and dry: charge the west gate of the alliance keep. I would call the workshop weaponry the potatoes side dish of the IoC dinner plate. It's nice to have, but will rarely win any games alone. Workshop's deficit comes from the fact that the siege engine does the same damage as a single glaive, has no range, and spawns two minutes after the workshop battle has been decided. The real advantage to owning the workshop is controlling the shortest path to the enemy stronghold across the field. Once secure, you can get your re-spawns back into the fight much faster via the graveyard in the middle of the map than the poor alliance spawning at the hanger. Once you have successfully leveraged the glaives or huge seaforium bombs to knock down a gate in about seven minutes, all of the defenders can conveniently pour right into the courtyard. You did have about fifteen people hanging around the glaives or deployed to the airship, right? Well that is more than enough to go stomp a mud hole in the spot where High Commander Halford Wyrmbane's testicles used to be and to do it quite fast. So, even if you are cursed with five afk'ers and another ten completely useless players in mixed quest rewards, you can still easily win IoC with 15 people working a concerted strategy to take down one target: a gate. Good luck and good hunting * "Orcwaffe" is a term coined by Ratshag, author of [url=http://needmorerage.blogspot.com/]Need More Rage[/url], for the Horde airborne. It is pretty much the best Orc blog ever written and should already be in your bookmarks. ** I have a confession to make: I have abandoned PvP on my DK. After many months of struggling to make him work, I have pretty much given up. As [url=http://criticalqq.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/pvp-an-expansion-in-ponderance-death-knights/]Euripedes has opined at great length[/url], the fundamental problem is damage. I feel like my job as a DK is to keep everyone snared and attempt to put diseases up. However, ultimately it is just too easy to shrug off diseases in this game, and thus the damage throughput of an Unholy DK is terribly neutered. It is hard enough to fight the crazy healing going on in this game with 8-10k dmg arcane blasts, but with even full powered scourge strikes doing only about half that much damage (when diseases are up), it is getting untenable to continue. Call me a social or a casual, but I feel that pvp is much more enjoyable as just about any other class.

After being inspired by Cynwise's expert work with posts like [url=http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/fight-at-the-flag/]"Fight at the Flag"[/url], I realized there is a hole in the public battleground information that needs to be filled. I will attempt to fill that hole by outlining some general strategy for Arathi Basin. I am sure that a quick google search will reveal that many others have attempted to do this same exercise, but I believe that doing so will aid my fellow Horde in conquering the Basin and perhaps carve a few more notches in my gun .. err, wand. So, we will begin at the very basics and hopefully by the end, some enlightenment will have been gleaned from these pictures and helpful descriptors. First, we must analyze the field as a whole in order to wrap our minds around the chaotic environment in which we are about to plunge. The goal of Arathi Basin is to take nodes which give points over time for being held by one team or the other. I feel the need to repeat this many, many times when I am in the Basin, but here I will let my kind readers let that sink in on their own. There are five nodes in Arathi Basin available for capture. Your goal is to hold at least three of them for a majority of the engagement. There is a disparity of points allocated towards teams with more than three flags. Holding four flags is worth twice as many points as holding three flags (1.7 points/sec [pps] vs 3.3 pps). Needless to say, holding five flags is worth 20 times more than holding three flags (30 pps vs 1.7 pps). If the game is in a defensive tie (3-2), the winning team is gaining 0.6 pps over the losing team. This means that holding four flags for one minute is worth more than holding three flags for three minutes. I interpret this scoring differential to mean one thing: he who dares, wins ("qui audet adipiscitur"). That is not to say, however, that holding four flags should be your goal, it is not. Less dying and more defensive play at the beginning will keep the initiative for your team. Your first job is to gauge the strength of your opposition and look for opportunities to steal a flag that your opponent is not adequately defending. You want to twist the map, taking advantage of the pathing and opportunistic choke points to make their reinforcements and defensive line be at the same point. You want to leverage your full team against their full team while you have the score differential on your side. In a majority of AB engagements, you will find your opponents to be equal to your strength. They have the same number of bots, afk'ers, 2700 GS tards, and road warriors as you do. Your team will suck at communicating. So will theirs. Your team will be slow to call incomings and slow to respond, so will theirs. Eventually, the smart players will see a hole in the enemy's defensive line and burst through it like Emmitt Smith in the 1994 Super Bowl. The winners will be the people who accept these weaknesses and play to their strengths using communication, good teamwork, and a bit of strategy. [i]* Aside: I will be referring to nodes by their abbreviations throughout this post. So, as a quick note: BS = Blacksmith, FR = Farm, GM = Goldmine, LM = Lumbermill, ST = Stables, AGY = Alliance Start Graveyard, HGY = Horde Start Graveyard. Learn these, they will help you communicate quickly. [/i] [i]* Second aside: A common saying in American baseball states (paraphrasing) "You're gonna win 54 games and lose 54 games, it's what you do with the other 54 games that determines how good your team is", these strategies will not work in every single match. You are going to get lots of bad players and lots of good players, it's what you do with the games that are on tilt with even match ups where these techniques will help.[/i] [b]Defensive Triangles[/b] [img]http://phreakre.com/images/screenshots/arathi-basin-strategy/defensive-triangles.gif[/img] You will notice, after careful examination, that while the flags are all relatively equidistant to one another, there are really only five paths between Trollbane Hall (Alliance Start Point) and Defiler's Den (Horde Start Point). Across the center square, BS, there are two roads which connect from specific paths which creates a situation where fast defensive reactions can only happen from certain positions. Using these paths to your team's advantage requires capturing flags that support each other's defense (FR/LM/BS vs ST/GM/BS) and allow you to collect spare defenders in the flat where the three flag approaches connect for fast reactions to incoming attackers. All strategies in AB rely on this bulwark of defense to leverage wins. Every strategy I will outline covers going into, attaining, and attacking out of your defensive triangle. Your #1 goal in AB is to keep that triangle strong. However, there are some inequities of starting disposition which adversely affect the Alliance triangle. I hate to say this, but Arathi Basin is a Horde map. The disparities of position are almost all Horde aligned. The BS access ramp is near our defensive flag (FR). The BS access ramp is near LM (the second best node), allowing LM defenders to watch all three flags simultaneously and call incomings from relative immunity not to, mention parachute cloak/levitate/slow fall allows LM defenders to become BS defenders in five to seven seconds. The BS flag is on our side of the BS island. Our defensive flag (FR) is away from the enemies main artery of attack (from GM), their defensive flag (ST) is towards our main artery of attack (LM). The distance between ST and GM flags is gigantic (almost 30 seconds), whereas the same defensive line between FR and LM is almost half that length. The only advantage Alliance seems to possess is their starting node (ST) is about four seconds closer to AGY than FR is to HGY. Alliance will start every game with a four second lead (3.2 points) that Horde must overcome to win. The lines of defense are much tighter on the Horde side of the map and I considered writing a strategy for alliance that said "just follow the Horde strategy, accept that you start every match on the wrong side of the map". Instead, I will rely on Alliance generals (like Cynwise) to correct/enlighten me as to alliance benefits, if there are any. [b]Strategy Signatures[/b] When you look at a picture of the Arathi Basin map during the middle of a game, it has a certain signature. If you could pretend, for a moment, that you knew exactly where the enemy was positioned and you already know where your troops are (on the road, battling one druid running away), then you can take a snapshot of that moment and analyze it to see what needs to be done to win the game. Arathi Basin is a great place for doing this, since the positions are static and the tactics pretty standard. Much like Chess, Arathi Basin starts out sublime and simple, three or four moves are the most popular and almost everyone uses them. However, what separates [url=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?pid=52948&playercomp=black&opening=B34-B39+B70-B79&title=Magnus%20Carlsen%20playing%20the%20Sicilian%20Dragon%20as%20Black]Magnus Carlsen's Sicilian Dragon[/url] opening from the Black and my inept play of "flail until you lose", is [url=http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/simple-battleground-strategies/]execution[/url]. As Cynwise so succinctly put it, "Execution > Strategy". However, I posit a corollary to this is "Strategy > No Strategy". So, I will now outline some basic strategies, starting with the most common. (Finally!) [i]* Last aside, I promise: I outline almost all of these strategies from the Horde prospective, you can just as easily flip them around for the Alliance prospective with some thinking. [/i] [b]3/2 Standard Opening[/b] [img]http://phreakre.com/images/screenshots/arathi-basin-strategy/3-2-Standard-Horde.gif[/img] This is the common opening in 90% of the games I have played on Nightfall. Horde opens with 771: 7 to BS, 7 to LM, 1 roamer who tags FR and heads towards GM to prevent "Farmer's Gambit". Alliance opens with 555: 5 to LM, 5 to BS, 5 to GM. As a result, they lose the battles at LM and BS due to Horde having 1-3 more bodies at both nodes. So long as the FR roamer does his best not to die, they have a good vantage point of where the Alliance is currently deployed. This ends up with Horde controlling LM, BS, and FR (their defensive triangle). Alliance controlling ST and GM while wondering why they suck so much. The fallacy of this opening, though it is most common, is that the Alliance never decide what flags they are going after. They see a lot of people going after GM, a lot more going after BS, and the rest going after LM. All three opening nodes are covered, right? Wrong. They have split their team and are not wisely deploying resources to the field. Countering this style of play happens in two ways: veterans hang back at the start of AB and head where their extra weight will guarantee a node win knowing that Horde rarely assault GM with more than 1 (and relying on the 1-2 going to GM for alliance to win that battle) or the team agrees on which nodes they are taking (ST, GM and BS are the best) before the game starts. Once established, the Horde now have the initiative and can work on attaining a 4/1 Pin (see "Attacking out of the Triangle") against the GM when Alliance respawn permits. Once the game is put into this posture, it becomes increasingly hard for the Alliance to move the Horde out of their defensive triangle, especially if none of the Horde attack ST before GM. However, there are two weaknesses while the flags are being captured that the Alliance can take advantage of here: both AGY and HGY are the only active graveyards and AGY is closer to LM than HGY and the Horde rarely guards FR with more than one person (if at all). [img]http://phreakre.com/images/screenshots/arathi-basin-strategy/3-2-Counterattack-Horde.gif[/img] The first counterattack, which happens while respawn has not yet occurred, is the GM flag team moving on FR and killing the defenders there to easily take the FR flag. The Alliance respawn moves en masse to LM. Their numbers should be around nine considering the two failed attack thrusts and should easily overrun LM's defenders even if all seven Horde stayed there to guard (highly unlikely). These two attacks rely on the respawn coordinating while dead on their targets and relaying this information to their colleagues at GM. This also relies on the Horde assuming a "hold 3" defensive posture and sitting in their triangle. The Horde commonly sit in a "hold 3" at this point, as they have (presumably) fought hard for the BS and the LM and two-thirds of their team is also resurrecting at HGY. Resurrecting Horde will flood FR, where the GM team will try to delay them as long as possible before dying and respawning, ironically enough, at GM to defend. These captures will push the game towards a 3/2 non-Triangle (alliance) signature where Alliance must find a way to trade LM for BS. Possible reaction variants of this include: - Horde BS capture team moving on ST, which results in a slower Alliance attack on LM as AGY respawns retake ST. After which, the Alliance ST team should move on BS instead of LM to establish the Alliance Triangle. - 4/1 Farmer's Gambit (Alliance) signature, which is covered later. - 4/1 Horde Triangle + GM, which is also covered later. [b]Tactical Standoff[/b] [img]http://phreakre.com/images/screenshots/arathi-basin-strategy/tactical-standoff.gif[/img] Sometimes both teams are so equal that they open the match with good planning and simple directions. Both teams deploy 771 to their strongpoints in the triangle and the battle for the BS determines the outcome of the opening round. The key to this matchup is winning the BS and winning it decisively. This is where the Horde have an advantage. LM has a sightline to BS at the flag and GM does not. Once the Horde arrives at LM's flag, they can see a protracted battle occurring at BS and those with parachutes/slow fall/levitate/safe fall can jump into the battle at the BS flag within 5-10 seconds, swinging the opening battle their way and establishing an early triangle. [img]http://phreakre.com/images/screenshots/arathi-basin-strategy/tactical-standoff-counterattack.gif[/img] Once this is done, the rest of the Horde LM team can storm undefended ST and pin the Alliance respawns at AGY back into their gate while the BS team can split to defend Farm while 1-2 of them take GM. Alliance counterattacks consist of GM team taking FR and trading FR for ST eventually and the resurrecting Alliance at AGY winning their battle with Horde's LM team to re-establish control of ST and make another move on BS. Lots of trades need to take place once the Horde have their triangle and are on this type of offense. Alliance should be looking to trade FR for GM and LM for ST or vice versa. Establishing a triangle will slow the pace of the game down, almost a reset if it happens fast enough, and there are lots of opportunities while the Horde is spread across five nodes to take what you need with seven dedicated people knowing where to go. The key to the tactical standoff is engaging in decisive battles, win or lose. If you lose fast enough, all your dead players res on the same timer and can come out as a rampaging gang ready to take any node you need (which is BS in this case). Winning fast enough opens the opportunity for a quick 5-cap that keeps the opposing team inside their starting graveyard and the game is over in under a minute. [b]Farmer's Gambit[/b] [img]http://phreakre.com/images/screenshots/arathi-basin-strategy/Farmers-Gambit.gif[/img] The second most common opening attack in the Nightfall BG and the one which most often results in Alliance victories is "Farmer's Gambit". Basically the Alliance runs a 951 strategy that deploys nine against the Horde's seven, winning BS. A lone Alliance hits GM, capping the flag and sticking around to defend against errant rogues and druids. The remaining five slide along the road beside BS straight to FR which causes them to arrive in the Horde's backfield 10-15 seconds earlier than the Horde anticipate them being there, causing a quick 4/1 since the FR flag does not even have time to go Horde before being flipped. There is also an opportunity to pin the Horde in HGY if the BS team can successfully split between LM and FR resulting in an LM capture. In order for the Horde to continue the game once this has occurred, they must win both the battle at LM, keeping their presence there and the battle for FR with their respawns. This is hard to do once the Alliance have had time to get their BS assault team split correctly since no reinforcements will be coming to help the LM defenders throw off overwhelming Alliance numbers. [img]http://phreakre.com/images/screenshots/arathi-basin-strategy/farmers-gambit-counterattack.gif[/img] [i]*Advanced Strategy*[/i] : Why doesn't the Alliance do this every time? Because it is highly visible. The Alliance running down the road by BS are clearly visible the entire trip and can be noticed by the FR roamer. Once Alliance are spotted by the roamer, the BS crew should break off their attack and cede the central node to the alliance while 1-2 of them split to take ST while the rest reinforce FR. Coordination is the key to turning this battle around. Winning the defense of FR turns the map into 3/2 Non-Triangle (Horde) with a really heavy battle at Horde Crossroads (center of their normal triangle). At some point in the near future, Horde should look to trade ST for BS to take advantage of differential in resurrection vectors with dying Alliance returning to AGY while dying Horde go to the much closer HGY. This resurrection vector differential allows Horde to press the attack on BS during a transition (remember I said FR flag was closer to BS?). Possible reactions to this variant: - Non-Triangle Situation (covered next) where the Horde lose the battle for FR anyways and must recover minus two of their triangle nodes. - 3/2 Standard Opening (Alliance) with a well established Alliance Triangle due to a catastrophic loss at the BS by Horde who failed to divert. Horde have little to no chance to counterattack due to overcommitting to a failed assault on BS. - 4/1 Farmer's Gambit Pin where Horde are left with only LM and Alliance runs them over with the 10 from BS who kill LM while the rest get pinned back in HGY. (Horde Loss) [b]Non-Triangle Situation[/b] [img]http://phreakre.com/images/screenshots/arathi-basin-strategy/Horde_trades_stables.gif[/img] Alternately, the non-triangle situation occurs when forces are relatively balanced, are working hard to avoid committing to battles they cannot win, and are playing conservatively. Horde have opened with 771, Alliance have opened with 951, taking BS and Horde have reacted appropriately to take ST. Unfortunately, Horde lost their defense of FR and must now recover. Horde respawn from HGY paired with the LM team (minus one defender) should assault FR, LM team should feel free to butcher any Alliance they encounter along the road on the way since they left only one defender at LM and the Alliance BS team will be gunning in that direction. This may result in a huge battle at the Horde triangle centerpoint, but the Horde respawn is 15 seconds closer and will generally win a protracted battle at that location. (This is the only permissible time to be fighting on the road, btw.) ST Horde team should now attempt to take BS, leaving no defenders, since the BS Alliance team will be attempting to steamroll through LM and possibly FR. This should trade ST for BS, and FR should be taken out right, establishing a Horde Triangle. If undisciplined Horde move past ST to camp the AGY gate, they are not working to capture a flag, the Horde is in a vulnerable position to an Alliance trade for Triangle, and this will lose the map. The only time the AGY gate should be camped is in a 4/1 Pin position where all of the nodes south of ST are in Horde control and the defensive line has moved to the ST flag. [b]Attacking into an established Triangle[/b] [img]http://phreakre.com/images/screenshots/arathi-basin-strategy/attacking-into-the-triangle.gif[/img] If Horde are allowed a 3/2 Standard opening and have had time to reinforce their position, then there is only one real option: assault the BS and establish an Alliance Triangle. Since Alliance are now losing, they can afford to take on more risk and should crash BS with 10-12 people (GM Gambit) intending to capture the flag and roll 6-8 right through it towards FR within 3-5 GCD's. Rolling towards FR instead of LM allows dead attackers to become live defenders at the point of counterattack. Fighting a protracted battle at any node gives the advantage to the defenders. A long battle at BS will allow the Horde to reinforce their position and will result in a failed assault, padding their points lead. If the assault does not roll the Horde quickly, those not committed to the battle should push LM hoping to draw defenders out of position while reinforcements spawn at ST. At this point, a failed assault on BS will result in a 300+ point advantage for Horde, which is almost insurmountable once they have established a defensive posture that quickly responds to incoming. Alternately, a second assault using 7 to LM, 7 to BS could occur, hoping to draw a disproportionate Horde response due to multiple incoming alerts. One team will get crushed, probably BS, while the other will take the node, probably LM. Trading LM for BS will result in an Alliance Triangle and can push the game back in their favor. The downfall of this assault versus the BS crash is it is slower, you can lose both assaults due to proportionate response, the LM strike team is not in a position to react to a call to defend GM, and your resurrection point is now at risk. [b]Attacking from a the Defensive Triangle[/b] [img]http://phreakre.com/images/screenshots/arathi-basin-strategy/attacking-from-the-triangle.gif[/img] Once Horde has established their triangle, there are opportunities to attack amidst the storm of Alliance onslaught. The windows of opportunity occur when a decisive battle is won quickly and with minimal losses. Defending BS against an onslaught can be leveraged into a GM capture by shedding all but three defenders at each node and pushing six offensively into GM, going for the 4/1 Pin against ST/AGY. During this time, Alliance will be attacking a node, all but one defender should respond to the incoming alerts. In the event of multiple incoming alerts, GM attack team should abort towards FR, with the remaining defenders responding to the secondary alert. The attack occurs on the secondary node instead of the primary defensive node (GM in this case) because splitting the Alliance's team by causing an incoming alert pushes the defensive line back to ST. If the assault on ST occurs, the defensive front for Horde is split in two, with enemies able to assault FR, BS and ST from GM, and ST and LM from AGY. This means you have two groups trying to capture graveyards while defending all five flags. It is impossible with only 15 personnel to accomplish this task, resulting in a lost opportunity to pin the Alliance in ST/AGY. [b]4/1 Pin[/b] [img]http://phreakre.com/images/screenshots/arathi-basin-strategy/4-1-pin.gif[/img] For demonstration purposes, this is the 4/1 Pin (Horde) position where all of the nodes south of ST are captured and the Horde has leveraged their entire team against Stables, resulting in a protracted battle between ST and AGY. In almost every case, the Alliance has lost this game and frequently this results in a 5-cap Horde Victory. [b]Conclusion[/b] In almost every game, the dynamics of combat and the tactical deployments are fluid. People are fighting on the road and flags are being flipped by errant rogues and druids causing trouble. Frequently, no one is listening to Cynwise's advice to Fight at the Flag and everyone is arguing about who sucks more on this particular day. However, with a little bit of insight and understanding as to the pressures which cause AB flags to change color, you alone can shift the battle to victory for your side (hopefully Horde). These are my strategies, developed from my own observations and after lots and lots of Arathi Basin from both sides of the map. I am by no means a strategic genius. If you spot a hole in my strategy, please feel free to outline it in comments and I will respond and update this post when appropriate. Good luck and good hunting.

I have to politely disagree with [url=http://cynwise.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/the-school-of-hard-knocks/]Cynwise's attempt to lure more people into the battlegrounds by placating the PvE Achievement Hunters[/url]. I think the battlegrounds are already weighed down by the inept socials who fancy themselves warlords. Children's Week has only exacerbated this situation by flooding Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm with cross-faction communicated treaties and a weird form of flag detente. Needless to say, this week has been a real blast for me and I cannot help but think that it is because I am such an asshole. However, I would not want this to become the normal state of things. We already have 10-20% AFKers dragging the team down, people who fight away from the flag when they should fight on it, people who fight at the flag when they should be taking towers, people who fight in the middle of the field of strife when they should be fighting on the road, people who fight on the road when they should be fighting at the flag, and now you want to add warriors running the dragon slayer rotation wearing quest gear and heirlooms to the mix. My point is, we don't need to lure the PvE crowd into the Battlegrounds: Cataclysm will do this for us with Rated BG's. So, what has made this week so much fun? A few things that I have gotten kicks out of and a few easy achievements that have helped: - Killing Flag Carriers in WSG has gotten me a lot of the way toward [url=http://db.mmo-champion.com/a/persistent_defender/][Persistent Defender][/url] and [url=http://db.mmo-champion.com/a/Supreme_Defender/][Supreme Defender][/url]. - [url=http://db.mmo-champion.com/a/frenzied_defender/][Frenzied Defender][/url] was also attained while pissing off pretty much every PvE achievement whore in the Horde Flag Room. - Set up detente in Tower Point spamming /wait to get my [url=http://db.mmo-champion.com/a/tower_defense/][Tower Defense][/url] achievement. - After finding the detente in AV around the towers, I have spent many games this week wandering tower to tower killing the lone red spamming /wait at me. - I have spent no fewer than 11 EotS games grabbing the flag as fast as possible and wandering around the whole game without capping it. What are the fun things you guys have been doing this week? Surely I am not alone in abusing the achievement hunters. Enjoy your saturday! * the observant amongst you would note that I have not posted in a while, unfortunately that is likely to continue through at least next week as my CISSP exam is a week from tomorrow and it requires much prep. Hopefully abusing carebears tomorrow in BG's courtesy of some nasty intentions will hold you over until then.