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<< Life is Cheap #4: Your First Alterac Valley as PvE player

OK, so AB and AV have been covered previously. Time for pain – WSG.

You can enter WSG early, in your teens in fact. So if you are leveling a new toon, maybe a Lock, you can try this out early.

Warning, this is I’m many ways the hardest battleground to fight in and at early levels WSG will be overrun with Twinks – a world of pain for the undergeared and inexperienced.

Preparation.

Preparation is pretty much the same as the covered in the other BG guides.

There are only 10 per side in WSG, so buffing will be quick.

Starting point.

Your starting point is inside your base or Flag Room (FR), behind locked doors.

Have a look around.

• Behind you is your flag.
• To the left of you is a little killing room. While you can’t see in through the window into this little room you can both see and cast out of it.
• Front right is a gate leading outside to the surface side.
• Front left is a tunnel leading down to another gate. This gate blocks the underground tunnel to the mid field.

The opposition base is the same layout, so once you know your layout, you know theirs.

Exits

A little more about the exits. There are 3 primary ways out of your base plus one other surprise exit.

GY Exit:

This is the gated exit to the right. Once past the gate run straight ahead until you are outside. To your right is the GY (thus why I call it the GY exit).

If you run through the GY and over the cliff you are mid field – probably the fastest way to reach mid field as you can mount as soon as you are outside.

Warning – if you are flag running through the enemy GY you risk running into a bunch of respawned opponents at full health and mana.

Tip: If you are the friendly flag carrier, there are worse places to hide than your GY – it’s less expected and you will be getting respawned assistance

To the right is the path to the ramp, which I will come back to in one moment.

Ramp exit: (told you I would come to it in one moment).

As you run out the right exit you will notice a ramp to your left – go up, then right and to the end of the tunnel – outside.

From here you can run right to the GY or left down the ramp and onto the midfield.

Taking a step back, and not really about exits, but if you turned left rather than right you would have reached a platform at mid level (not on the roof) that overlooks the flag room. This is a common staging point for a flag theft, hiding your flag or flag protection

Tunnel exit:

The 3rd and probably most common flag running exit is the tunnel. If you run all the way to the end (you can’t mount) you will be mid field.

If, partway down the tunnel, you turn left out an exit and up the ramp, you will end up on the roof overlooking your flag room. This is a pretty large area and is another common location for a stolen flag.

4th exit:

While we are up on the roof, we might as well talk about the 4th exit. If you mount up and ride towards the midfield, jumping the fortifications, you can land on top of the tunnel exit roof (a common ranged defense point)

Entrances

Entrances are nearly the same as exits but there are only two access points to the base entrances: the tunnel and the ramp.

However once you have reached those points you have more options for infiltration.

Tunnel
When you run up the tunnel decide whether you will run straight into the flag room, or hang a right and head up to the roof. If you are chasing a flag carrier the decision may have already been made for you.

Ramp
In through the ramp entrance and either straight to the mid level platform, or hang a left and down to the GY entrance.

Or just run on to the GY entrance.

Goals

There is one goal in WSG.

Capture (cap) the enemies flag 3 times while preventing them from doing the same thing.

Simple right?
The complication is that while one side holds a flag, the other side can’t cap – neither side can cap.

So the extended goal is steal the enemies flag run back to your base ensuring your flag is safe so your flag can be capped.

Tactics

Too much for me to go into, so check out wowwiki.com or another blogger’s site, like Out of Mana, or one of the other myriad of guides out there.

Do’s
Some basic things to make sure you do.

• Protect or return your flag
• Support your flag carrier in capturing the enemy’s flag.
• Protect your flag carrier while they return to your base.
• Harry, slow, stop, kill enemies mid field that are engaged in attacking your flag, running your flag or attacking your flag carrier.

Communicate, communicate, communicate.

• Communicate your flag carrier’s movements.
• Communicate the enemy flag carrier’s movements
• Communicate incomings and out comings to/from your flag room

Don’ts

• Don’t engage in meaningless fights, anywhere, anytime.
• If you are wasting time on someone while the (potential) enemy flag carrier runs past, you have failed your team. If your flag carrier dies, you have failed.
• Only engage those enemies that are actively preventing you from achieving the primary goal.

Death

Death as usual isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Full mana and health and overlooking the midfield ready to rejoin the battle.

The only other tip here is if you are witnessing an important event (flag theft, incomings), don’t release immediately.

Watch and call out the movements. Tell your team which exit the flag carrier is using so they can greet them with sharpened arms.

BG Buffs

No, not your personal class buffs, rather power ups.

There are some in the 4 huts on the midfield, and a speed buff in each tunnel near the flag room, opposite the ramp to the roof.

This speed buff should only be used by.

• Your flag carrier, or
• Someone chasing the enemy flag carrier.

If it’s the difference between wasting the speed buff or letting the enemy use it, then take it.

So what to do the first few times you hit WSG?

Remember that there are at max 10 of you, so you can’t bunk off too much.

So to begin with, explore your base, run in, out, all around. Get to know your base because you need to know it well to defend it, and while your are getting to know it, defend it!

Once you know your base, you know your enemy’s, so head in that direction. Explore the middleld, entrances exits, sides of the map. While out there stop the enemies flag carrier and protect your own.

Finally, help with a flag theft. Try different entrances, try distracting the enemy, supporting your flag carrier.

Reputation

As in faction rep, we already know you are über 1337 killing machine!

Basically you only get it for flag caps. Not impossible as a Mage but unlikely to be frequent enough to hit exalted by expansion.

The flag

Ohhhh, last but not least, the last thing everyone learns in WSG, and only after a heap of abuse and L2P taunts.

Stealing the flag.
Usual cog mechanism.  Click and you have A big flag with a colored smoke trail sticking out of your… Pants. Run little gnome, run!

Capping the flag
Run to your flag in your base. It is still in the right place, right? If not hide until your flag is returned and prepare to be ganked.

Dropping the flag.
There are occasions where you need to drop the flag you are holding.

Maybe you grabbed it from the enemy flag room because you could, but now you want to hand it off or your flag runner just died and you are as desperate for the flag as Carlton is for the 1st draft pick.

Whatever the reason, if you need to pass it to a nearby and ready team mate, right click on the buff icon (you didn’t notice that did you?), or iceblock or pally bubble (if you have a spare one) which will also drop the flag faster than you can say.

Oh sh$t, I didn’t mean to do that

Picking up a dropped flag just requires a quick right click.

Gnome and Out!