A little AB assistance please

[destroythemonkey]

Ok, it's the Basin weekend on my server (I don't know if it's the same for all servers) and I decided to go do a few queues and beat up on Alliance (I don't normally PvP and I'm Horde). Now I do ok, depending on how much crap my computer gives me I'll range from middle to top 3 in death blows and kills in general. My gear is decent too.... sorta, it's decent PvE gear (4 Dreadmist, Skullsmoke pants, Crimson hat, Lorespinner, and the Lexicon you get from the felvine shard quest) <--- I'd link them but I don't know how. Anyways my problem is:

I still lose

5 rounds and 5 loses. And they weren't even close, total spankage.

For some of the rounds we were coordinated (they were PuGs) and some we weren't (and deserved to lose) but it seems no matter what we did there were always 8 Alliance right there running around blowing things up.

Now I'd like to think there's SOME strategy to use besides sheer zerging. And as a Warlock I'm curious how I should go about helping my team. At first I used to run around and dot the hell out of everything, but I realized that Hunter place frost traps EVERYWHERE and the dots will break them, thus defeating the purpose of them. Then I started to just throw around SB's, but the cast time is so horribly long that someone finds a way to screw me up. Searing Pain just seems too weak as well, the cast time is nice, but seeing 250 flash above someone's head isn't going to kill them anytime soon.

Also, I don't know which pet to carry around. For awhile I just sacrificed (Demon specc'd) my imp to get the fire bonus and try to burn everyone up. After I was torn to pieces by a felhunter, I switched to that. But with the felhunter out I feel like I'm specifically anti-caster there are just too many melee classes running around.

Also, since I'm rambling by now, is there any fast way to kill a paladin? Their health keeps magically getting to full while I keep magically getting angry. They also spam consecrate which does such pisspoor damage that I must be missing something (around the flag I can understand, but just in general it seems like a waste of mana to spam something that does 65 damge a tick for only 8 seconds).

[Steamboat]

I'm surprised you've been losing AB. I'm alliance and I always lose. Someone has to be winning.

Anyway during the handful of AB's we won, it was because we chose 3 resources to hold at all costs, and we completely ignored the other two. I'm sure there tons of other strategies, but in my experience that's the only one I've seen work.

This quote: "Also, since I'm rambling by now, is there any fast way to kill a paladin? Their health keeps magically getting to full while I keep magically getting angry." is hilarious. I don't pvp against paladins but I have a friend I duel sometimes. You can usually control the fight with fear or seduce kiting. If it's on cool down save your DC until they are almost dead in order to finish them off and interrupt their attempt at healing. Going against pallies in AB is probably a different story though because your DC will likely be on cooldown, and there will probably be a lot more going on other than a 1v1 fight against the paladin.

I tend to use the succubus or felhunter in AB. During a larger fight it's nice to have that auto-seduce remove someone from the fight, and her DPS is pretty good. On the other hand, the felhunter does own casters - or you can sacrifice the VW for the shield while you try to ninja a flag, or use the VW on passive for the 10% reduction in physical damage. (between that and SL the melee folk will wonder why you aren't dying.) Even using the fel domination buffs is a good choice (I'm demonology as well.) I think it's just whatever you're in the mood for that day. The only worthless one to me is the imp. No one stays close enough to you for the stamina buff to really help, and even if they did they won't likely get healed to their new max HP anyway.

[Bokar]

My warlock is 57, and was over 50 when AB came out, so he's never been in. I've fought against a few warlocks, and played a lot with my Discipline priest.

As I often tell my raid group, "Spread out, and hit them where they're not." If they have 3 resources, and are assaulting a 4th, they can't defend them all. Speed helps, which limits my 39 priest and my mountless 45 warrior, but my newly-60 shaman equips the Carrot for a little extra during the initial rush.

Fear is useful in AB - not everyone has a Corporal-Grunt trinket, and only some of them affect fear. Psychic Scream has the instant cast time, but warlock fear has the range to send someone running from 30 yards. Instant cast spells are almost always to be preferred, particularly when it gets laggy and even instant spells take 20 seconds to get off.

Now, I usually seem to run into hunters the most, often 2 or 3 of them together. Their mana draining shots are a real pain for my priest, and should also bother warlocks, but when I was in WG with my warlock, we usually just exchanged attacks and pets with each other, using Life Drain to keep ahead, until a third party intervened. Rogues, only a so-so threat for my Discipline priest, but an undead rogue at max level for the instance was Kryptonite for my gnome warlock in WG. Though this was before Death Coil was changed, and SL.

One thing I've seen warlocks do in there that I think is a mistake is to open with Death Coil. True, when they do that to my warrior, then follow up with regular Fear, I don't live long enough to lay a hand on them, but I'd wait till I was hurt before using it.

[det]

It really depends who you meet. I think I have won a little more games in AB than I lost, but Allys on Earthen Ring - when it comes to PuGs - are usually that little bit more organised, if the have a high ranking player that will shout orders. Even when Horde wins we can often not keep ppl from leaving the raids when we want to join as group. And few of our rank 10, 11, 12 take command in PuGs - they seem to usually rely on their fixed groups and are lost ina PuG.

What can you do? I have seen Warlocks own with Felhunter, for me good ole Impy works best. Indeed I usually DoT in big battles, and when I have the time single the healers out. I am surprised how many Druids, Priests and Mages (okay..not healers) will take 3 Shadowbolts before reacting.

Also I will stand close to the flag and use RoF so nobody can tag it. But sometimes I will just spend a game on flag duty. With Succy on agressive (seduce) or Imp...even if a Rogue saps you, he cannot get the flag. But I cannot defend it alone against 2 attackers.

I try to finish players on low health off with SBurn...and a DC never goes amiss. Here they have you down to 50%. DC and they run like a headless chicken. SBurn..even better with a crit...panic...

[DJammyRasta]

The alliance on Stormrage are for the most part alot more organised most of the time than the horde (and have much higher ranks)

the fellhunter and the succubus are both very good pets in 1on1 combat but in mass pvp i find them too specialised to be used... which is y i use my trusty imp.. considerin im a firelock and everyone gets CoE he does plenty of damage, never gets targeted himself, gives me and my teammates more health .. its great

i think the best tactic is to have 3 sets of 3 (9 ppl for those than cant count) holding the 3 closest points (farm/stables, lm and mine) you then have the other 6 ppl on epic mounts constantly trying to steal the other 2 points and acting as a fast reponse unit to assist in the defence of wherever ur opponent is attackin

sadly in pugs i have yet to see this work.. but the theory is sound :)

[Hrungnir]

I'm not 60 yet, but I play a lot of AB.

Unfortunately, on my server alliance less than sixty just plain... sucks.

For example: horde got 6 wins last night with an average game time of 15 minutes. We got all five nodes every match.

The important thing in a PUG (if you come in with a premade facing a pickup group, you should never lose) is to communicate what you can, and remember to leave a few people on defense. Always stay with groups, always call for help, and always send half your swarm to defend against their big attack (to slow them down) and half to take whatever they just left undefended.

You should only go massive offense if you know that you've beaten them back on all the other fronts (like when you've just taken mines and lumber mill at once, pushing to stables from two sides can be a good idea. If if you don't take it, you're keeping them fighting away from the nodes that you control). But if you just tool lumber with two or three guys, pushing to stables in going to be completely futile.

So, to sum up:
1) Always leave someone on defense, especially when a flag isn't completely claimed.
2) Stay with the group.
3) Communicate where the alliance is.
4) Answer calls for help, but check your map to make sure that the entire army isn't doing the same thing and leaving everything else undefended.
5) Strike what they've left undefended. But make sure you bring a friend, because there might be rogues (or shadow melded night elf hunters, /spit).

As a soul link build, I've had the best success with either a felhunter (if they have some good spellcasters) or a succubus against a melee-loaded team. Generally my tactic in a group is to remove as many alliance from the fight as possible, starting with the one who seems to be doing the most damage (like a rogue beating on another caster or a mage getting ready to aoe). So send your pet after the casters in the back row (since they won't be getting hit for a bit). If you can, manually use the felhunter's spell lock but if you're too busy, just leave it on autocast and trust that he's going to be making a mage very unhappy on his own. For succubus, leave her on autoseduce to just cause some sheer chaos through the fight - I like to seduce people on the fringes and then leave them alone, since they aren't a threat while they're out of the fight.

Then open with a fear and start dotin'g as many people as possible. If the group's attention is on someone else, run in an use your AoE fear. If it's on you, don't even think about that spell - you will be dead long before you get it off, and unlike your DoT's it doesn't do anything useful after you die. But in general, do your best to survive and keep people feared and seduced (or felhunter'd :) I love watch a mage with no mana running for his life from the puppy) the rest of your group will hopefully be able to win with the enemy now composed of perhaps half as many functioning characters.

But if you're in a PUG and end up facing a premade, none of this will matter because they're all epic'ed out and are on teamspeak. But good luck trying anyway.

[Happywolf]

I've played a ton of AB as well. Your going to find that every server is different. My friends played on Mannoroth and they told me the Alliance couldn't win a game of AB. On Daggerspine its the opposite, the horde can't win a game. On average I can play about 10 games and if I'm real lucky we'll win 1 game out of 10. I'm nearing exalted finally but its taken me around 10 times longer to do than the alliance on our server. After I hit exalted I doubt I'll AB for a long long time if ever.

In an average pug game of AB to win its all about defense. Horde always loose on my server because nobody wants to guard a flag. Everybody wants to get killing blows. But the best way to win a pug is...

1. Hold 3 flags as close together as possible. If you can hold the Lumber Mill, Blacksmith and Farm its easy to keep people mounted up and floating between these flags for defense. As long as people keep moving fast its not hard to build up a lead. And it doesn't hurt to have someone try to ninja a flag every so often to keep the other faction from zerging you too much.

2. Communication is very helpful. Not only calling out which flag is being attacked but also how many. This helps your side to send enough people to defend a flag. A smart group wont overcompensate sending too many people at a flag just to get fast kills. Only enough to defend the flag successfully should go. (i.e. if 3 alliance attack your Blacksmith its not necessary to send 7 people to help the BS defend only to see the alliance take your Lumber Mill due to lack of help).

3. If your side is down 3 flags to 2 the best way to take a flag is to attack it in a group. This is by far where the horde struggle on my server. They go in 1 or 2 at a time and die very fast. Its usually impossible to get everybody together to take a flag.

4. Getting greedy can hurt your side. I've been in games where we took 4 flags in the beginning but the Alliance stormed back to take 4 flags and crush us due to lack of defense at any flags. Usually only organized guilds can take 4 or 5 flags and win. Pugs just dont' communicate, organize or react quickly enough to do this.


An SL build can do well in AB. Using a Felhunter an SL Lock can just own all other casters except for other Locks. Your survivability is higher but you wont be a fast killer. The bulk of your damage will come from DoTs so you'll need time for them to work. I loved the SL build for fighting shadowpriests and mages. The downside is that its a lot tougher fighting warriors and rogues.

Destruction does great in AB. I switched from 7/7/37 to 7/31/13 not too long ago. Soul Link was fun but I missed the big crits and fast damage of a destruction spec. You can't go wrong with fast kills in AB. The beauty of a destruction Lock is there is no visible trail from your casts so you can hide in a crowd or behind a hill nuking away. I only Soulfire when it makes sense to. I try not to give away my position unless its 1 vs. 1 or 1 vs. 2. :happy34:

SM/Ruin and MD/Ruin is ok for AB but casting shadowbolts leaves a very telltale trail that points right back to you. Rogues, Warriors and Feral Druids will be all over you. You can still do very respectable damage but your casting times are longer. It can be difficult to contribute to the fight if your getting interrupted a lot during a fight.

[Kyveli]

Well, I was having the same problem with the "general Arathi Basin Tactics" so, I've made this thread over here... A.B.Strategies (http://forums.worldofwar.net/showthread.php?t=358401).
You'll find all the general strategies there, categorized, just in casse you wanna organize a good raid :uhhuh: .

In Brief there are 3 tactics:
1/Zerg (stupid)
2/Defensive all
3/Hanibal (defense 2-3 people in each base, and one 6-8group attacking the enemy)

The most important for me, is having good communication, organization, not everybody telling nonsens in the "raid generall", and offcourse having a very specific tactic.

Pets
I used to have succu in AB, but it's really "grrrrr" when you resurect with the imp, so, now, I use it from the beginning! :ash: It does great damage :happy14: .

VW, well, I find him pretty useless, and never thought to shield to catch a flag, cause even shield, if they hit you the "capture flag process" gets interrupted, so why to waist a shard, and not succied? Also, VW, doesn't make great damage, the good players, come directly to you, and don't fight with your pet!(they only logical would be to sacrifice him everytime you deal with others body to body but does it worth to waist 5 even more shards in a single battle and runnng like chicken everytime you get attacked?)

Lately i see too many felhunters, so I've started thinking on him. He has good armor, the perfect resistance against casters, and he is a really pain in the...staff, if he attackes you!
If he attacks you, well, you have the wonderfull option to.. banish him :whistle:

[Tandrek]

The two largest problems in AB are defense and CC. Idiots breaking CC without checking for hearts, sheep, etc. Also, defense. Defenders try to kill the attackers. Their job is NOT to farm honor or KBs, their job is to prevent capping. Provide a distraction and hit cappers until reinforcements arrive. A rogue/druid combo is really enough to defend a flag from everything short of a zerg. If they're zerging that base, their other flags are undefended. Lose your flag and take all of theirs ;p.

*NEVER* have a single player defend a flag, particularly if he cannot stealth. I can't count how many times we've simply had a rogue sap the sole-defender, then cap ;p