A Beginner’s Warsong Gulch Guide

Introduction

Warsong Gulch is a World of Warcraft battleground based on the game ”capture the flag”. This battleground can be very confusing for new players, particularly because the rules for the game are located on the web, and most players do not review them before playing (I read them for the first time just now). Warsong Gulch is also the lowest level battleground, and thus is usually the first group pvp experience for new players. All of this contributes to a high learning curve, which I’m hoping to make easier.

This guide includes both an overview of the rules of the game and a discussion of strategy.

The Rules

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds/info-warsong.html
1.	You capture a flag by carrying your opponent's flag back to your flag’s spawn point, while your flag is still there. You win the game by capturing three flags before your opponent does.
2.	Any character can carry the opponents flag by right clicking on it. You can pick up the flag at the opponent’s flag spawn point, or if it is dropped on the ground, you may pick it up off the ground.
3.	You drop the flag if you a) Die, b) Stealth, c) Right click the flag buff off, d) Mount or e) Bubble (Pallies only)

The Map

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/images/warsong-gulch/ss06.jpg

The area is roughly bisymmetric, with the horde base at the south end
and the alliance base at the north end. There is a straight tunnel
from each flag room to the middle of the board. There is a side exit
from this tunnel that leads back around to the roof of the flag room.
Additionally there is another exit from the flag room that leads to
the graveyard and up to the second floor of the base.

Powerups

There are three types of power ups:
1.	Berserking - Increases all damage caused by 30%, all damage taken by 10% and increases your size by 10%. Lasts 1 min. - found in the southwest and northeast huts.
2.	Restoration - Restores 10% of your health, mana and pet's happiness every second for 10 seconds. Attacking or being attacked will cancel the effect. - found in the southeast and northwest huts.
3.	Speed - Increases movement speed by 100% for 10 seconds. - found in a
side room of each tunnel.

Basic Group PvP Tactics.

PvP is very dynamic, so there is no substitute for battle experience. These tips are good general pvp tips (not specific to warsong) that can help you win a battle.
1.	Focus Fire: Just about everyone should attack (deal damage to) the same person until they are dead, and then move on to the next target. Good inital targets are healers and other casters, to prevent them from using healing and crowd control spells.
2.	Run away. If you are getting focus fired, you can break up the opponent’s targeting by running out of line of sight or range of casters/hunters. If you are not snared, and can create some space with snares or stuns of your own, you can also do this to stop melees from focus firing on you. Because focus fire will kill almost anyone quickly, you need to react quickly if you’re going to run away.
3.	Crowd Control. These abilities removes someone’s ability to focus fire, and are thus very good. Fear (and Fear animal, especially on bear form druids), Root, Frost Nova, Polymorph, Snares, Stomp, Sap, Gouge, Stuns, Bombs, Sticky Glue, Sleeping Powder and even Shield Bash can be used as crowd control abilities. Many of these are situational, or require cooperation (stop breaking my sheep!), but they can all turn the tide of a close battle.
4.	Heal. Focus fire can reduce a target’s health quickly, so you will need to heal targets who are being focus fired as early as possible. It can often be difficult to heal in pvp, due to crowd control abilities, so don’t blame your healer if he is unable to heal you – he was likely trying. Related to this is try to stay in range and line of sight of healers, if you expect to be healed.

With good use of crowd control, focus fire, healing, and knowing when to run away you can greatly improve the chances that your group will win in a group pvp situation. This will give your team the best chance to win your warsong game.

Basic Class Tactics

In this section I will outline some of the basic strengths of specific classes in low level pvp.

Warrior
•	Strengths: Very tough. Getting focus fired actually gives them more potential (rage).
•	Weaknesses: Can't break snares, but needs to melee to deal damage
•	Tricks: charge stun, repeatable instant snare, shield bash.

Strategy: Try to take focus fire by being first into combat. Hamstring
all the melees (and anyone else you can). Try to watch shield bash
healers casting big heals, warlocks casting fear, mages casting
polymorph, etc.

Mage
•	Strengths: good range damage
•	Weaknesses: extra squishy, most spells have longish casting time
•	Tricks: frost nova, polymorph, frost bolt snare (eventually blink, counterspell)

Strategy: Sheep Casters, or whoever the raid agrees on before hand
(sheeping a skilled rogue with good gear could be better than sheeping an unskilled priest). Frost Nova melees or people trying to escape your melees.

Priest
•	Strengths: best instant heals, good heals in general
•	Weaknesses: squishy, can't break snares/etc
•	Tricks: ae fear

Strategy: Dot everything, run up and ae fear when possible, otherwise
hang back and heal if needed or wand.

Warlock
•	Strengths: massive dot damage, good range, good pet range damage
•	Weaknesses: squishy, can't break snare, etc
•	Tricks: fear
Strategy: Hang back and dot everything, cast fear whenever it is up. Wand

Rogue
•	Strengths; best melee damage
•	Weaknesses, semi-squishy, can't break snare at low levels (vanish)
•	Tricks: stealth, sap, gouge, sprint, (higher level - snare poison)

Strategy: Kill anything that doesn't bother to kite you.  Possibly
sneak up and sap casters, but that can be very slow, and is usually
obvious.

Druid
•	Strengths: break snares like no other, decent heals, moonfire
•	Weaknesses: low dps, fairly squishy in caster form.
•	Tricks: roots and instant root outdoors

Strategy: Root every melee you see, heal those in need.

Paladin
•	Strengths: Hard-to-kill healer
•	Weaknesses: Can’t bubble flag carriers
•	Tricks: blessing of freedom breaks snares, lay on hands, bubble self, bubble other. Stun

Strategy: Blessing of freedom constantly, stun kiters, heal where needed, bubble to escape / get to their flag.

Shaman
•	Strengths: Decent heals, good burst damage (shock)
•	Weaknesses: totems can be bonked, non-totem spells are slow
•	Tricks: ae snare totem, bomb totem, shooting totem, purge.

Strategy: Snare totem at all times, heal when needed, shock to kill runners. Purge everyone (especially blessing of freedomed flag carriers)

Hunter
•	Strengths: tracking, massive ranged damage, pet
•	Weaknesses: can't break snare
•	Tricks: snare shot, instant cast repeatable melee snare, fear animal (druid, pet)

Strategy: Multi-Shot whenever it is up, Sick pet on warriors so they
can't charge, and casters to delay spell casting. Wingclip melees/flag carriers.


Warsong Gulch (Capture the Flag) Strategy

Ok, that was all easy stuff compared to actually trying to come up with a winning strategy for warsong.

Warsong is a game of dynamic resource management; you need to allocate enough resources to stop people from taking your flag while also having enough resources to take their flag. The amount of resources needed for each of these tasks, however, varies depending on how your opponent is allocating their resources.

One thing that people often assume is that you need to stop them from picking your flag up entirely. This is usually a waste of resources, since you don't care if they pick it up, you only care if they bring it back to their base. It often takes less resources to regain a flag that is being carried back to your opponent’s base, than it takes to guard the flag from being picked up.

A basic strategy that many good teams use to accomplish these goals is to have all but one or two people fight in the middle. This stops most (if not all) of the opponents from progressing towards the other side. Even if one or two opponents get through and pick up your flag, you have significant resources in the middle to return it. Meanwhile, one or two of your team members try and obtain the opponent’s flag. One interesting dynamic that comes into play is that as one side pushes closer to the opponent’s base, their opponents benefit from shorter trips back from the graveyard, giving them an advantage.

You will need to adapt this strategy to match your opponent’s strategy. For example, if your opponent goes heavy defense (many people defending the flag so you can not pick it up), then the main group will need to assault the flag room directly, but return to the middle once the flag has been picked up. This assault usually has many casualties, resulting in a short term loss of control of the middle, so it's important to regroup as soon as possible.

This is a simple strategy but it may need refinement, or a complete change depending on the strength/strategy of the opponents, but it is a good start.

When Things Go Wrong

There are times when executing this strategy will fail, usually when the opponents have higher levels/better twinking/more experience. It is still possible to win in these situations, but a different strategy must be employed. In general you want to avoid fair fights, and resort to guerrilla warfare. Sniping and running away, trying to get the opponents to follow you. If they all follow you, you want to kite them as far away from your flag as you can. If only one or two follow you, you want to kite them to your friends, so you outnumber them and can kill them more easily.

If our opponent gets our flag while we do not have theirs, getting their flag becomes the immediate priority for anyone that can get to their flag room. Ideally no more than one hunter should go back to retrieve the flag, if the carrier is solo. If they have too large an escort everyone should focus on offense, and worry about returning later. If there is to much defense for those who can make it, try to have one range person go to either the second level or the roof and snipe them to try to get them to follow up.

Another thing that can go wrong is your opponent getting your flag into their base, while we have their flag. In this situation, the stakes are even higher, as losing their flag is usually an instant cap. My preferred strategy is to either have a hunter as the carrier, or a hunter with the carrier, who watches tracking for incoming hostiles, with everyone else on offense (ideally with a hunter to track their carrier). If there are ever so many hostiles that the carrier and/or the hunter cannot take them out, the hunter should let the raid know asap, and people who are dying on offense should go to help the carrier.

Do's and Don'ts

Do: Stick together – for the benefits of focus fire, etc.
Do: Read raid chat for warnings, cries for help, etc
Do: Tell the raid channel if you need help, and where (mostly for flag
assaults and retrievals)
Do: Wait for backup if you are even close to needing it.
Do: Check the map to see where you can go to help or be helped.
Do: Keep moving – usually toward their base.
Do: Have one person in the opponent’s flag room in case they return ours.

Don't: Stand still unless you have a very good reason to.
Don't: Chase people who are not the flag carrier around if it will
take you more than 10 seconds to catch them.
Don't: Solo Pallies. it's not worth the time
Don't: Follow our flag carrier all the way back to our fla