and really it is the easy way (accepting the alternative is just praying that it happens), but that doesn’t make it easy.

In a sense the hardest part is getting 14 other people to start the game with the same mindset…

Aim to lose – Come back for the win.

For a while my friends and I were casually practicing that attitude, basically screwing about in the AB for a while, then going hard for a win, the problem was we never got close enough to losing (500 point behind) to “win” the achievement.

I blame all those win focused players, you know, we all hate them, some of the bastards write blogs on how to win the game quickly and efficiently.

I spit on their balding green haired heads… bloody Gnomes!

So yeah, you need to stack your team with people that are OK with a loss, a lot of loses, to achieve the goal.

Luckily I am in a guild with a lot of good losers, but beyond that, think of it as practice. Even if you don’t achieve the 500 point deficit, you still want to practice the comeback. They aren’t loses.. just practice sessions.

Stacking your team with mates is a good starting point. Even if you don’t have 15, the more the better, as that’s less you have to convince that you aren’t a horde spy in the 30 seconds you have to explain your intentions and the strategy and buy their commitment.

For some the idea of coming that close to a loss purely for the sake of the achievement isn’t worth the time, or the risk to their honor, so you have to be persuasive fast. We tried not telling people, but then we just went back to practice sessions, because no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t convince people to settle with less than 2 bases… and that’s the starting point 1 base only.

Here’s the rest…

Do this!

So here’s the strategy, clear, simple & to the point, then I will ramble later.

1. Get buy in from everyone.
2. Take 1 base and only 1 base
3. At the ~100/500-550 mark, everyone heads out to take bases
4. Take 3-4 more bases (or at least don’t let Horde have control of more than 1-2 for any period of time)
5. Steady, call incs, sweat a freakin lot, win!

See… easy!

Honestly, no matter how you dress it up, it’s as simple as that.

More words, usual Gnome rambling and tangents…

Get Everyone in there…

So normal battlegrounds allow a maximum of 5 people grouped together to “Join as a Group”, but you can get more than 5 into a BG and all you need is…

Voice comms (We used skype because it was free, clearer than vent and most importantly hands-free clear sound) allow you to group queue your groups. So we just count down from 3, and on 0 I’d call join. If all 2-3 party leaders got the BG invite pop up at the same time, we’d take it… if not, we’d queue again.

I think we had about 8 guildies the night I got the achievement.

1. get buy in from everyone

This was probably the hardest part. Asking players, even Alliance NOT TO CAP a base.. well, it’s hard.

Not sure how many times we ran the spiel, how many times we tried to get people on board, and apparently did… but then they would cap 2 bases, and it was pretty much over.

You just have to be succinct and authoritative – be clear there is a chance that it will go arse up, but that your objective is to win, you just want more challenge than usual.

Flash the achievement up in chat so people know what you are talking about. Having someone who already has the achievement adds a lot of weight to your discussion.

We followed the philosophy that if pugs didn’t let us get Resilient Victory, by capping more than 1 base from the beginning, then we would just win the bugger and hope for a better result next time (one of the videos below shows a 2 cap start and what they did about it). We weren’t there to try for the achievement and screw other people’s fun if they really didn’t want to do it. We wanted their buy in, we wanted to get it together.

Also, don’t give up too early. The time Gnomer got the achievement, what really helped was someone dropped group, and someone came in that asked what we were doing, and reinforced that our strategy would work.

Tangent – I hate Squidly

What made it harder for me, was that I got Resilient Victory on Squidly with 9 other guildies, so their desire lapsed a bit (which isn’t to say they didn’t get me over the line, but there had to be good 6 weeks of giving me shite about it).

But the fact that Squidly got the achievement 2 months before Gnomer was the lesser of my gripes. I nearly deleted Squidly after getting the achievement, because Gnome was never going to beat it.

Squidly got Resilient Victory in a Rated Battle Ground!

It was against a team we had already beaten 3 times that night, comfortably enough that when we saw them, we kinda slacked off… and they kind of fired up.

Remember at this point, Gnome only needed one achievement for Battle Master, and I had switched over to Squidly because we were short one heals for RBGs (maybe had too many people, so we were swapping about).

So we made a mess of the start of the BG… and RBG AB’s to that point had been game over once someone got a foothold.

Then someone mentioned we were 500 behind… I felt the tears start to well in my eyes.. I knew what was coming… we fought back.

and damn I hate my guildies… we won!

and I was sooo close to Squidly dealing with DELETE.

2. Take 1 base and only 1 base

You want them to get a start, but you want some points trickling through when you later take out their bases. You can start with 0, but a 5 cap against you will move fast, so you will want to be controlling the nodes… 1 cap is easier.

You are welcome to clear the Horde from bases pre caping for the comeback, but remember that because they control the node, they control the graveyard, so they will be respawning at full strength while your numbers dwindle to respawn either at your starting point or your one node.

We took the Stables, set up camp fires and umbrellas (in part as a visual clue to the pugs), then prepared for the Horde rush. We got a couple before it was time to rush their nodes and it was good that the majority of us were there to beat them off.

GM is another good base to take as you aren’t clearly visible, leading the Horde to assume you are elsewhere on the map and hiding your initial charge to the other bases.

Ultimately it is irrelevant which base you take… Take one and only one.

At the ~100/500-550 mark, everyone heads out to take bases

I can’t remember exactly what the scoreboard was at the time we started the comeback, but from memory we had about 100 points from our single node and they had around 550. We had one false start when they hit 500 points until a steadier hand reminder us we had to be behind by 500 points, not let them get to 500.

Anyway, this is a good time to head out to bases, focus on 2, go for a 3rd only if one of the two is really undefended at this point.

Remember not to cap until the difference reaches 500, so you might need to clear the node and twiddle your fingers… intercept respawns from the GY so your capper is free to cap.

Take 3-4 more bases

At this point you will only own 1 node, with 2-3 turning in your favour, your points aren’t really increasing fast, but the Hordes points have slowed down buying you time.

Ultimately you want to maintain 3 nodes for the rest of the battle and either:

• Cap & Hold 1-2 others, or
• Constantly prevent the Horde from gaining points by capping Horde bases, even temporarily.

As such, losing one of your bases isn’t the end of the world (although it’s better to keep them).

When you take a node, the Horde stop earning points from that node, you get to earn some, and once they have capped it, they aren’t earning points from that node for another minute. Best case you recap it and you are earning points again, worst case you neutralize it once they cap it.

At some point it’s good to cap 4 or 5 nodes, for a few reasons.

• It breaks their morale while raising yours
• You get a big jump in points per minutes, giving you a buffer for error.
• It brings the game closer to a positive conclusion, reducing the time on the clock, reducing the time for a Horde comeback.
• You need it (4), if only temporarily

Still, temporarily owning only 2 bases is OK, just so long as the Horde don’t own more than 1… Hell, 1 will be good enough as long as they have 0.

Steady, call incs, sweat a freakin lot, win!

Sweat, lots of sweat. Even once you make up the 500 points (which will probably happen about the 1,200-1,300 point), and break into the (slim) lead.

Now you sweat because you have come so close, the Horde are fighting back and you aren’t sure which node needs you the most.

Sounds like a normal AB to me!

Keep 2 people (minimum) at each node, preferably a healer and a DPS. Their objective isn’t so much to clear any attacker, rather to call incs and protect that flag at all costs, for as long as possible. All being well you have some free bodies that can lend weight to the defense, but just keep that node as long as possible so the points are rolling in.

Don’t let your nodes get ninja’d!

You want your stealthies, or top ninja cappers, neutralizing Horde bases. They don’t have to keep them, just stop the flow of points and keep the Horde paranoid. One stealthy can neutralize 4 or more players via node paranoia.

If the majority of you are on voice comms, keep the chatter up. incomings, outgoings, what you had for lunch today… whatever, just talk through what you and the Horde are doing. Sometimes what you are doing is more important than what they are doing.

Make sure you have a couple of people to relay information to the PuGs via BG chat. One isn’t enough, as sometimes they will be spamming buttons to stay alive and don’t have the bandwidth to chat to the pugs.

If you are “idly” guarding a node, keep the conversation up with the PuGs so they know you are on track.

Win!

That is all you need to do really. Sometimes you will come up against a team that you can’t beat for one node, other times you will 5 cap in seconds.

You may have such a tight fight that you come out with Cough, double the achievement for the single run. Or you may have a clear victory (as we did in the end).

Remember that just as everyone has the mistaken belief that one side dominates another (numbers tend to be closer to 50/50 than you would think), a lot of people won’t believe you can come back from 500 points down.

In reality you probably do something close in most BGs, possibly multiple times in a BG. The trick is to come back from 500 behind (not 499 behind).

The 500 behind could come at any point in any game, but the objective of this strategy is to start with the deficit so you have the remainder of the game to make it up.

You are going to win, just as you have so many times before. The objective is still to win, you just want to make it a win to remember.

Buffing for the win.

Make sure you are buffing.

• Before the battle buff yourself with everything you have including Mage food and Lock rocks.
• Eat feasts for the initial punch.
• Buff when you Rez, it may be the difference between victory and loss.
• Use consumables, even things such as camo pots – no harm in the enemy only being to see you, not track you.
• Remember Heroism & Timewarp – you want to win battles fast and the debuff clears if/when you die, so use it early & often.

Other stuff

Don’t fight on roads unless there is a strategic purpose. Which may well mean leaving your mate to die on the roads if it doesn’t serve any strategic purpose.

(A strategic purpose might be to stall the Horse long enough for a node to tick over for the cap, or to allow a ninja cap… that’s about it)

Ohhh.. a small one.. when guarding a node, don’t stand on the node.  Stand a little way away, in range of an instant “cast”.  If you get stunned by a rogue/druid etc, they then have to get to the flag to cap it… by which point you are out of the stun and disrupting them.. then they have to decide whether to futility try to cap through your “interrupts”, or run back to you to stop you… you just bought time and prevented a cap.

Videos

I don’t have any of my own, but Iome that clarified the strategy in my mind. They aren’t the best quality… but then who am I to judge video quality.

One of the better ones.. more for the action and music than strategy description. Reasonable examples of fighting off the nodes to protect cappers.

Hiding in the Mine

Where two bases are capped at the start…

One for the Horde and an example of both Resilient Victory and We Had it all along *Cough*

Watch how far they come from near the end… you can do it, you don’t need 5 bases, but you want to control theirs.

Boss Kill

So if you are in a raiding guild, whether you like a bit of PvP on the side or not, this might be a challenge to inject a bit of fun and life back into life.

You will get the same buzz you get from the boss kill, knowing that you have knocked over not just one hard NPC opponent but 15 human opponents, and all being well you will come out with a difficult and treasured achievement.

If you enjoy your PvP then give this strategy a go. Get your RBG team, or grab some folks from Trade Chat and give them the run down.

There is really no reason why everyone can’t have this achievement.

Aim to lose, Play to WIN!

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2012/02/20/arathi-basin-resilient-victory-id-love-to-say-the-easy-way/