I have touched on Battleground (BG) communications before. I would suggest it is hard to find any blogger talking about any BG strat with out mentioning communications.
The same goes with raiding of course, which is the reason Vent is often required.
The same goes with Arenas, silence is deadly.
Even PuG 5 mans benefit from communication. Sure you don’t need it so much these days, but it never hurts.
In an ideal world when you enter a BG you are in a premade using vent. Maybe you have the WoW BG voice option on, so at least you can quickly hear, maybe even respond to peoples observations.
Most BGs aren’t ideal of course. More likely than not you are there solo, playing for the team, but without communication you probably feel like an island.
Who likes to chat?
It might surprise you to know I talk a lot. In RL, in blog posts, in guild chat, trade chat, Vent and even (most importantly for this post) in BGs.
No?
I don’t think most people are like me. I’m not sure why, maybe they are afraid to stick their heads out. Maybe the don’t talk much in RL either.
In BGs I think they are less likely to talk, rather fume in silence at the lack of support, the lack of direction.
So today I’m going to share a proven winning strategy for BGs, one that works in any BG, for anyone, for everyone. It will help to turn a rout into a victory and a victory into domination.
The strategy is...
Communication.
Lots of it!
Communicate when:
- There are incomings to your node
- There are incomings to other nodes
- When your node is clear
- When you see someone idle that could go somewhere else
- When it’s time to push
- When it’s time to retreat
- When your happy
- When your sad
- When you are about to win
- When you are about to lose
- To thank people for helping
- To thank people for communicating
As I say, I communicate a lot and I started to notice a few things.
Not talking.
As a general rule, if I wasn’t talking and neither was anyone else – we lost.
Those days I came home from work exhausted from meetings, those days when I would pick Odin up from childcare and he would pop Heroism and talk non-stop for the next 2 hours, those days are the days I often find myself silent for the first BG or two.
Unless someone was talking, you could bet your mortgage that we would lose. Even Strand of the Ancients, which most people now seem to understand, would be a miserable defeat. We’d take ten minutes to not capture the relic, the Horde would take 2 unopposed minutes.
However, if someone was talking, once someone broke the ice, even if I didn’t feel like it, I was soon talking.
Popping Heroism on the vocal chords
If there was some good talking going on, it breed more talking, people paid attention to chat and there was a good chance of victory.
One of many examples (of me not shutting up in a BG) was in an AB a while back. I have seen this repeated time after time.
The first few minutes was just Gnomer chat.. there wasn’t a strat, people just went to their favorite conflict point.
I went to LM (my favorite conflict point).
As soon as I got there I called out the numbers (4 inc LM), once it was clear I called LM clear, then I’ve got LM, push farm.
from then on, I called everything.
3 Inc BS, 1 inc LM, LM clear – thanks for the help, Looks like 1 at Farm, Farm lost etc…
What I noticed then was that others were calling their positions, the numbers, the dangers, the opportunities.
Not only that, but people were reading.
Not only were they reading , but people were responding.
Not only were they reading & responding, but they were expecting, relying on the chat feedback.
At one point I headed to Farm to help out, it was in trouble, I called it, we cleared it, I called that too. Then it was in trouble again… then the penny dropped.
You see we cleared Farm, but I slipped up.. I forgot to mention it was clear! (Shame, Gnomer, Shame!)
So someone ASKED!
Gnome, how’s Farm?
People weren’t just reading chat, or just responding to chat, they were relying on chat to help form their decisions.
- Where do I attack?
- Where do I defend?
- Which base should I just stay at and protect?
People love to talk and listen
It all became clear then. People love to talk, they love to listen. They love to be useful – which means having the right data to make the right decision. People love the news, and how it effects them. People will respond to a call to arms once they are aware of it and constructive chat will get everyone’s attention in the end.
So next time you head to a BG prepare yourself to talk.
I use a chat tab addon called Prat. One of the things I love about it is that it remembers your last used chat channel. So as soon as I enter a BG I type:
/bg Hey everyone, let’s kick their butts!
I do this cause I want to kick their butts, but also so my BG chat channel is primed and ready.
As I race to the 1st node, I type out *space* at *intended node*. eg: *space* at LM. I then hit the Home key, which takes me back to the space and as I approach the node I quickly type in the quantity where the space is, hit enter and it’s KILLING TIME!
If I die, I quickly type in how many are left. (3 still at LM)
If we win the node, I will call it as clear LM Clear
If I decide to hold the node I /say I’ve got this, you guys push on (I say this in /SAY as it’s really only important to those in my area)
Then, the next thing I do is prepare an incoming message eg: *space* inc LM. That way, as soon as I see the inc, I can shoot of a message and get down to defending.
An important thing to remember is that you can scroll back through your old messages, you you only need to create these messages once, then reuse them. In my case I just have to press Enter & UP/DOWN arrow to scroll through them. Quick, efficient information to your team.
Engage your team mates before you engage the enemy
Give it a go. It wont work every BG, but you will find those BGs were useful communication is flowing are the ones with the wins or the near wins. They will be the good -> great BG encounters, where even if you lose, you know you worked as a team.
Remember that even if the game appears to be lost 1/2 way through, good communications can still win it (this happened big time over the weekend). Just because the opposition takes an early lead, just because 1/3 of them are from the same server, doesn’t make them a premade – they may have just gotten lucky!
This is the perfect opportunity to use your superior communications against their brute force… what was that saying.. the Quill is mightier than the sword?
Gnomer and Out!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/06/18/inc-lm-4-lm-clear-good-job-folks-great-teamwork/
I am one of those low functioning dolts that can’t function in a BG and still be able to read. I can do one or the other, but not both.
Trying to ype myself is recipe for disaster, since byt the time I am halfway through, I will need to fight.
And won’t have hit [enter] so I will get all pissed that I am not moving/casting/etc, because the chat window is till open.
(I have strafe left/right and backup “keybound” on my mouse : push wheel left = “q” push mousewheel right = “e” Click mousewheel = “s”)
so my chat window will look a lot like-
[ we are at eqeqessssse67896789678967896966666666] as I try my rotation, then keep pounding my “judge” and get all confused/pissed.
and gets longer until I realize my mistake.
Voice chat in WoW needs to be “standard”, and should need to be manually turned off (as opposed to manualy turned on). At last in raids & BGs.
Your advice is 110% correct, but I am unable to comply
It’s one of the advantages of (mentally & physically) preparing your short messages & getting into the habit of using them.
4 Inc LM
LM clear
Etc are short quick messages on the fly… But if prepared only take one keypress – Enter.
In theory you should never be surprised by incs (even if you can’t see them hopefully someone noticed), which means you fire off that message before your foe is in range of your abilities.
Which is good anyway… That is 10 more seconds for support to arrive, or to decide not to leave your GY.
Of course there are rogues, Druids and other sneaky buggers around, but once conditioned to hit enter 1st your Inc message is out there. Of course once you are stunned, or are stunned, you can be a little clearer.
Like all things “spontaneous” a little prep and a good muscle memory go a long way
I cal out too. But I tell where they are coming from. Inc lm from st or inc gm from farm.
Yep, I do the same. It’s easier if you are minding another node and there is less pressure, but always good to know which direction the attack is coming from.
Where I can, I mention class as well.
Last thing you want is to be caught on the cliff edge at LM, or EotS by some classes.
I call out too, and give praise! Praising the ones that move to or report an incoming attack usually works wonders. And also, I’ve been trying to make everyone i meet download the incoming addon. It’s sweet for those times when you get a slowfalling mage in your head in mine and you don’t have time to report it.
But theres a backside here. What do you guys do when there’s someone very vocal with the wrong ideas? You know the “Get the flag ffs!” in EotS, “Get farm and let’s push them back” in AB and “hold them back at the beach” in SotA. In these cases I usually find the bg chat swamped with raging at the morons at farm, the vocal guy and some trying to report incoming attacks.
In EotS I quickly respond with “3 bases > 1 Flag,” which lately has gotten a chorus of approval. Even if you’re going for 2/2 flag win, pressuring one of their bases is a very good thing.
But for the others? It depends. If they’re politely pushing a bad strat, I’ll sometimes go along with it. Group cohesion often trumps strategy.
If they’re dicks, though, I’ll tell them to shape up. If not, there’s the ignore button.
If all else fails, start reciting Lady Gaga lyrics in /bg. “Lok’tar Ogar” got nothin on “Bad Romance”.
I always give an upfront plan in BGs. In AB I send whichever group I’m in to LM and send the other two groups to BS. I know I’m healing at LM and hopefully there will be another healer or two at BS. Defend what we take and extras move to farm.
When folks are paying attention and communicate well about their node status, BGs become easy. Extras move from node to node to help with INCs and defenders stand strong.
It can be issue if the the opposing team is totally out gearing and dpsing us OR if we only have one healer etc. Circumstances can change things but overall just a plan and communication is essential. There are often BGs with people who just don’t want to follow the plan and will go mine on their own and try to bring others with them /slap.
I do the same thing when defending my node and asking about other nodes. “how are things at St? Any inc at Mine”?” just to get the communication going.
At the end of the day, the kids are finally asleep, and I settle in for some nice BG action.
Often, the last thing I want to do is talk to people. I’ve been talking all day! Let me be quiet and get to work!
On those nights, it takes me a game or two to shake it off and remember the points in this post. Talking wins. It doesn’t have to be fancy or witty – but a consistent stream of status lets everyone do the right thing.
Nice post!
[...] there’s a bossy person who takes charge of a BG pug. Or even if people are just talking like Gnomeaggeddon was saying the other day. I tend to freeze up a little when it comes time to decide where I would be best employed, and [...]
and they all lurvvvve our Aussie accent.
But I do agree – communication is a make or breaker in a lot of things. Just because there is no other quicker way of herding sheep, then telling them in their ears what to do – or not to do. ( or being told)
If BG’s had a voice chat to use – I would use it.
They do have voice chat (there is a check box in the chat window you get to when defining channels – from “O”).
I have my vent mapped to one key, and wow chat to another… don’t want to bag out pugs in vent, only to discover those same pugs are listening in wow chat.
Though I have enjoyed similar conversations when they didn’t realize I could hear them
I love listening to people in WG when they don’t realize it. It still amazes me how many new people come to WG, and how their guides actually know very little about the place themselves.
Occasionally I warn people that “everyone” can hear them… occasionally
Btw, there’s one thing I hate more than anything else that can be uttered in /BG, and that is “Lol, alliance always loose this BG”. Those guys are a fucking cancer, and yes, I was just subject to 3 of those asscocks in a row, and NOTHING kills morale as hard as wankers that don’t even try and want everyone else to give up too. (sorry to whine on your blog gnome, I had to scream at the internet)
No need to apologize.. I had the same thing the other night.
I just laughed at the guy and said…
[...] teamed up, communicated (as Gnome points out is the way to go), and co-ordinated in ways I’ve only ever seen a [...]
Breaking the ice in a BG is like attacking a trash mob in ICC and hoping that your ice block lasts long enough for the tank to get there. Most of the time it will, but sometimes you need to pop out some mad tricks to keep from getting brutally murdered. In essence, you can’t lose as long as you try. Downers can only last so long to mud…. kip! over and over again during preparation.