Horde Strats against Alliance pre-mades in AB

[Seldom]

From my experience: Whenever I go up against 95% of alliance pre-mades, the horde will lose. Perhaps it's because in my battlegroup, the alliance pre-mades are sporting T2.5/T3 gear. I guess they stopped raiding (like most raiders) and are just farming.

But I'm not here to complain, I'm here to share some strategies that have worked out really well for me and my PUG horde teams when faced with a wave of glowing purple allies.

Since I'm usually in a PUG for AB, I have to accept the fact that some people are going to want to win. After playing eleventy billion AB's, you'll see Soandso guild from Dunemaul and you know you're going to lose. But some people won't know this and they want to win.

Okay, first thing I'll do is let everyone know that we have no chance of winning. Then I tell them that knowing we are going to lose, the BEST thing we can do is hold farm and farm HK's. Sure, I'll get a few responses about wanting to win and I'll tell them that I respect their opinion but after they respawn from getting owned by an organized T3 guild on vent, please come to farm and help defend. If they want to walk away with some HK's, they will want to defend farm.

Holding 1 node will extend AB to about 15 min games. 15 mins is a LOT of time to farm alliance. And to be honest, it's kinda fun to not have to worry about winning and just go out and kill alliance. It brings out my inner horde and harkens back to when we were tained by Mannaroth's blood.

Okay, strats:

The greatest strength of a T3 alliance pre-made is also their greatest weakness. One word: specialization. Thier tanks tank really well, their healers heal really well and thier support and dps actually support and dps. They know how to CC and they use assist to focus fire. They will have their tanks in front, healers in the back and support dps somewhere in between. If you are the target ... You're going to get pwn'd before you can write pw.

So I mentioned that their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. Pre-mades are weak against experienced PvP'ers because they are so specialized. The best tank in WoW won't be able to keep his healer alive if his healer gets swarmed. Lord Nef was right when he's yelling about killing the one in the dress in the Rend event.

As an added bonus, nothing upsets a warrior more than watching his healer die. It makes him want to run back after he respawns at BS to exact revenge on targets that refuse to act like mobs. He will rush farm before he's buffed (oh yeah, they buff each other too) and get killed even faster.

So there you have it. If you know you're going to get rolled, stay at farm and farm purple HK's. In this 2.0 world, tokens are worth less than they were but HK's are worth more than gold.

[Inferna]

You have a valid point, a custom group outfitted in T3 Naxx gear will have a significant advantage over any pug they run across and will probably 5 cap those teams 95% of the time. It just comes down to your style of play.

But once I commit to staying in a BG I do every thing I can to try to win regardless if the other 9 or 14 people don't I will try to shout orders or lead by example and take a node or return the flag for us. There is no better feeling than going in with a pug and organizing them and coming out with a win or a good showing against a custom group. In the long run this approach I believe is more beneficial to the pvp system as a whole. It will promote better teamwork among pugs, people by now know what to do to win in any given bg in terms of strategies its all about who can execute and react quicker to a given situation.

I think alot of customs win by intimidation, its all pyschological. When pugs see a custom half of the players end up afk'ing out or get q'd which causes teams getting 5 capped. When if they all just did a gut check at the beginning and gave it an honest go the could leave the BG respectfully. But everyone has to be on the same page or it can quickly go from 15v15 to 10V15 in a heartbeat as other try to wait out the game since a 5 cap ends in like 3 mins or so.

The more you play a particular BG the way it is meant to be played (as a coordianted team that has the same goal to win) the better the pvper you become in my opinion. It helps your overall faction as well by increasing the talent pool of pvpers on your battlegroup.

[Seldom]

That's true enough. Because horde doesn't have very long queue times for BG, I know that most sign up for all 3 BG's at the same time. Enter AB (pre-made), click on WSG (pre-made), click on AV. Which is too bad. I've found that winning is no longer everything in BG's. If you want HWL gear, it's all about HK's.

And you can get HK's from T3 pre-mades just as quickly as T1 PUGs. If you're facing a Naxx geared pre-made, just defend 1 node and kill them as they come. It's easy to do if you have everyone at farm. The thing to remember is a T3 pre-mades won't have 15 toons with dps builds. They will have tanks, some dps and the rest support.

Whereas PvP PUGs will almost always concentrate on dps builds. Mostly because no one in a PvP PUG expects to get healed or buffed. We go out, unload everything we have on a couple people then expect to die so we can replenish our mana/health.

That makes it advantageous to concentrate all that dps around 1 node. I posted this same strat in the official forums and got pretty good responses. One person even suggested holding mines since it is a long run from farm/BS/stables to get to mines. I disagree. The point is HK's and you want it to be a short run so they can get back to farm ASAP ... to get killed again.

[Leonavice]

Seriously I see the opposite instead. I play Alliance and I often see Horde premades. But yeah, you are right. Use this opportunity to farm HK instead. It's way more profitable.

[Falgorn]

I think this oversimplifies things a little, and as much as everyone hates seeing there healers getting killed, a PUG BG Group just doesn't have the organisation to stand a chance against a Pre Made.

The thing about Randoms and Customs, is that Customs have healers, whereas Randoms have Shadowpriests, Retribtution Paladins and now Duel Wielding shamans. Everyone is looking for big numbers and HK's and no one cares about healing the person that will do 3 times the amount of damage as them in the BG (yes Paladins, I'm looking at you and your shiny new strike).

For this reason you are better off Gathering everyone into one big mob and having fun charging in with 15 head on. The BG will be over quickly and you can get into another one where you will get far far more honour and fun by fighting more regular opponents whom you have a chance of beating. And you still give the other T3 team a bloody nose by killing at least half of them per charge.

It's also hilarious if I didn't mention that.

Now.. CHAAARGGGEEE

[farafel]

And i think you are wrong mr Seldom its becose ppl like you premades on Horde side are so pefetic... You see I was doing some premades with the best PvP players on my server and we even with a gear collected at rondom from BG and other things were able to kick a horde premade with tier 2 2.5 and 3... The tackticks are important not gear... The best of best is colleckting every base and end in 5min but if we encounter a premade witch are easy to spot cose they are all from the same server we do this 3ppl to LM 3ppl to GM 5ppl to BS (cose if you control it you won the game) 4ppl are the mobil forces they go were they are needed... And wining with a premade like that is the best thing that you can encounter in WoW even killing Raggy doesnt get you so much pleasure... The tacticks change and so does WoW the rule is the same if you win you got 3 insignias if you loose then you are left with 1 and HK pfff who cares if you earn more honor if you win and after 3th kill you dont get any HP...

[lordicky]

Not all priest are in to killing my sister who I run with all the time in BG is a holy priest and all she is worried about in there is keeping others alive. The character doesn't need to hit the enemy to get the kill unless there trying for the killing blow but I know there were may times she would leave the BG with out doing any damage at all but she would have the highest kill count and the highest healing count. Once agian it falls back to the same thing as everything else it's all in playing style.

[Seldom]

And i think you are wrong mr Seldom its becose ppl like you premades on Horde side are so pefetic... You see I was doing some premades with the best PvP players on my server and we even with a gear collected at rondom from BG and other things were able to kick a horde premade with tier 2 2.5 and 3... The tackticks are important not gear... The best of best is colleckting every base and end in 5min but if we encounter a premade witch are easy to spot cose they are all from the same server we do this 3ppl to LM 3ppl to GM 5ppl to BS (cose if you control it you won the game) 4ppl are the mobil forces they go were they are needed... And wining with a premade like that is the best thing that you can encounter in WoW even killing Raggy doesnt get you so much pleasure... The tacticks change and so does WoW the rule is the same if you win you got 3 insignias if you loose then you are left with 1 and HK pfff who cares if you earn more honor if you win and after 3th kill you dont get any HP...


If you can win then by all means, WIN! That isn't the point of my post. The point is if you are going to lose, you want to lose with as much HK's as possible. That means holding 1 node to extend the game to 15 mins. It means keeping everyone near each other to concentrate you're side's dps in a small area.

Doing this has the added bonus of getting everyone HK's when someone on the other team gets killed. For those who don't know, HK's in raid are treated like exp in raid. Everyone in raid who is near the person killed gets a share of the HK's.

I honestly don't care about wins anymore. I want to maximize HK's for my time spent in BG. Please don't think that I don't want to win. If my side can win, then I want to win! What I don't want is to zone out of AB with zero kills and zero bonus. Which tends to happen if you do the 3 defenders, roaming reinforcements strategy against a T3 pre-made.

P.S.
Getting 5 capped in AB yeilds zero bonus honor. Holding 1 node gets ~25 bonus plus HK's from kills. If you get 5 capped, all you'll get is a mark for your 5 mins.

[frazil]

i see alot of lower brackets AB 20-29, twinked out and all DPS geared, last week was nice to get hang of the new system. i saw alot of people farming all week, and with this weeks honor Nurf they'll be sitting pretty. but having a group of twinked rogues camping GY and ganging up while clothies cap its a real pain.
and for those RP'ing in BG cut it out.