Armaggedon's coming!

I know, I know, another WSG post… that’s where I’m spending 99% of my time, so I guess that will be reflected in my posts.

WSG is a game about flags and the people that carry them.

It’s something you have to keep foremost in your mind when playing the game because it’s very easy to get the scent of blood and lose focus.

There are things that can easily change your focus:

• Farming
• Enemy names
• Vendettas

Farming

Farming is something I understand well, having been on the receiving end for so long. The tide has turned recently for the Alliance and more often than not now we are wielding the plows and the Horde are the freshly tilled earth.

Farming is exhilarating, the complete domination of your opponent sends chills through your spine.

I have seen many games lately start with farming (where traditionally that came when the battle was already won), 10 minutes of frenzied fireballs, arrows, heals and bladestorms.

I have been enjoying these games a lot, as I mentioned the other day I don’t mind a low scoring game and often these games reduced to a 15 minute flag chase are just that.

However the purpose of the farm needs to be understood.

It’s to completely demoralize the enemy. Make them feel like they are rezzing with their pants around their ankles.

This is particularly effective if:

• The enemy flag carrier (efc) is farmed as well, giving the impression it is pointless to attempt the flag carry.
• We aren’t going for the flag. This makes our intention loud and clear.

No, we are not struggling to grab and cap a flag, we are farming you!

Just don’t forget the flag carrier! Don’t let the scent of blood filling your senses distract you from the primary goal.

Enemy names

Enemy names can also be a distraction. Sometimes they stick in your mind as offensive or stupid and you just can’t help yourself, you start to hunt them down, consciously or unconsciously.

We had a couple of Pallies last night that just stuck with us, that became our primary targets. Loldruid and Pallymoron (not actually his name, it’s close, but we changed it because it was appropriate).

They both caught our attention initially because they were playing the game and carrying the flag.

At first Loldruid had the full support of this team. He was a healer and had two pallies and a shaman as heal support. Thus we needed to keep our attention on him while peeling (usually via death) his healers.

As the game went on, they no longer ran in packs, they were too busy dealing with our effective midfield farming.

Which left Loldruid as our plaything. Play we did, as a cat with a mouse. Whenever he exited the tunnel (always the tunnel? Don’t make life too easy for us), one of us would be waiting to tease him through the midfield, where Alliance would disengage and then destroy him.

Pallymoron… we started to drop the Pally bit as it was superfluous.

Always the GY… well nearly always, there was one attempt at the ramp, but I was waiting for him.

Running alone, dying alone.

Whole midfield to run through and he would run unsupported directly at our pack.

He would arrive at the scene of a battle after 4-5 of us had dispatched his team mates… riding right to us, only realizing that he needed to run when he was at 20% health… dead.

It got to the point where with 5 minutes left on the clock he tried to snatch a dropped Alliance flag from his teammates dying fingers.

Dragons Breath prevented that and then he felt the full weight of our wrath while he futilely struggled towards our flag room.

At 20% health he disappeared… poof… gone… My guess is his final keyboard shortcut was Alt-F4.

/salute Loldruid and Pallymoron

Yes, you got our attention because you tried. You became our primary targets. As much as we constantly destroyed you and mocked you (if only on voice chat), you were our focus because you were the only threats in those BGs.

When I grow up I want to be a priority kill

I often wonder (OK, fantasize) that I am a Horde team’s primary kill target.

No matter what happens in a game you will always find me close to one of two things and both are flags.

I’m either running the flag (or protecting our flag carrier), or chasing down the efc.

It is not unusual for me to chase an efc from our flag room to theirs. I may not kill them (although I often do), but I hinder their run with Blastwaves, Dragons Breaths, Frost Novas, Polymorphs and Cone of Colds… As well as the obligatory Ring of Frost in their tunnel.

I wish I could see Horde chat, as I am confident that (assuming they are communicating at all), it would be filled with:

Kill that Gnome!

Stop the Mage!

Everyone kill that f’n Gnomeaggedon!

I am reasonably confident of this, because usually at some point, I become the focus of the Horde’s attention… sometimes the flag carrier’s too… idiot, my intention is to slow you, so why do you turn around to smash ineffectually against my Iceblock?

Chasing enemy names is all well and good as long as it serves the end goal and doesn’t just become a vendetta.

Vendettas

Vendettas normally commence when a particular player hurts you… hurts you bad. More often than not the damage done is to your ego.

• One shot?
• CC’d
• Unkillable healer?

Whatever the case, they become your focus, complete and utter focus.

You are chasing the flag carrier when out of the corner of your eye you spot your vendetta target.

You veer from the flag carrier and start chasing the vendetta target.

You would follow that player right down his Internet cable and wrap your hands around his throat and bang his head on his desk until he was at the very least unconscious, if not a bloody pulp in your hands.

If you could…

The next best option is to follow him around the battleground, at any cost, death not being a deterrent. When you Rez, you run straight past the efc to track him down.

If the vendetta target could, they would take you and 3 of your team mates to some remote corner of the map and laugh at you while you futilely waste your life and the battleground clock in your vendetta.

Don’t chase Gnomeaggedon to the exclusion of all other objectives!

I can live without the flag if I can take 3 of you out of the battle.

To be able to “CC” more than one enemy player purely by running away from the battle, for minutes at a time.

My work is done!

Maintain your rage, but put it in a box to unleash at the right time.

We were in a WSG the other night and found ourselves facing an Enhancement Shaman that made ALL of our lives difficult.

Several people expressed their wish to kill that shaman before the end of the game. The same was expressed multiple times on our voice chat as well.

We carried out this vendetta correctly. We never lost focus of our primary objectives.

Return our flag, cap theirs.

Seconds before the BG ended, 3-5 seconds (I know I only managed to get off a couple of casts), we all found him midfield at 40% health.

He died.

Scoreboard popped up.

We successfully accomplished two goals.

We won the game.

We killed the shaman.

Don’t get dragged away from the primary goal for the sake of a vendetta. What do you think will hurt them more:

• Giving them honor kills, or
• Letting them, as best on field, watch the game slip out of their grasp.

That’s the time to kill them!

When you play BGs like WSG, you need the lust for blood and at times a frenzy is appropriate, just make sure it is the appropriate time and not just the scent of blood filling your senses!

Gnomer and Out!

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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2011/05/20/warsong-gulch-the-scent-of-blood/