pvp-strategy
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Rage Against the Zerg: Horde premades sew up Alterac Valley with vicious Rath Strat
I don't run Alterac Valley because the Horde always loses there. Are you a Horde player who craves a win in Alterac Valley? Does the inevitability of the Alliance zerg leave you feeling spent and hopeless, devoid of your former lust for battle? Do you dream of complete Alliance annihilation, caroming atop an endless stream of Honor Kills? What you need, my friend, is an injection of the renowned Rath Strat, the PvP premade team strategy refined by Rathamus of Nathrezim (US) that focuses on battleground domination and savage player-versus-player combat. Rath Strat games are all about rack and roll -- racking up HKs and rolling over the opposition with a prolonged, satisfying crunch. The premades that have sprung up around this strategy thrive on its ability to bring the spirit of PvP back to a battleground that's become a ghost of its former epic glory. Savvy strategy or premade steamroller -- is this even true PvP at all? "Some argue that what we do is not PvP," Rathamus explains about the concept's detractors. "However, when we defend Galv, we are fighting players. When we retake our towers, we are fighting players. When we kick the Alliance out of our Keep, we are fighting players. Taking bunkers? Yup, player combat. Our push that has been coined 'The Death March' phase of the strategy? We are fighting players. The failure to stand and fight as a team nearly always results in a Stormpike Graveyard (or cave) HK farm fest." Is that blood lust we see beneath that hopeful expression? Read on, dear Hordie -- the Rath Strat may be just what General Drek'Thar ordered.
Blood Sport: Developing successful arena strategies
Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple Rank 1 Gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in Blood Sport. It has not been a good month of WoW in the Moore household. Starting four weeks ago, my internet went down for a good three weeks. Last week, I got in a motorcycle accident. The crash wasn't that bad, but I am now very wary of puddles. Very wary. This week, we'll be discussing how to create and develop successful arena strategies. Quick aside: I see many players confusing the terms strategy and tactics. Strategies are overarching game plans for how to defeat specific enemy teams. Tactics are specific skills used to accomplish strategies. If strategy is the blueprint to a skyscraper, tactics are the best way to weld steel beams together. Strategy We can rotate crowd control on the enemy mage and rogue while DPSing the priest after he trinkets. Tactic The rogue is on Fear diminishing returns, start using Polymorph on him.
Spiritual Guidance: The basics of shadow priest PVP
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Wednesdays, shadow priesting expert Fox Van Allen regularly insults normal people, so you should never take his writing seriously. Fox encourages you to follow him on Twitter. I've been writing the shadow version of Spiritual Guidance for over a year and a half now. In actuality, it seems like forever -- like I've covered every topic multiple times. And yet, in all those columns, there's one topic I've never really taken the time to address: shadow priest PVP. There's a reason, of course. PVP in and of itself is a damn complex subject. With a PVE encounter, there's some randomness, but it's all contained within a predetermined set of variables that you can research on a resource such as Wowhead. You may not know when Onyxia is gonna use her Deep Breath ability, but you know it's coming. PVP is different. You don't know what your opponent is thinking (if he's even thinking at all). Some battleground teams head into battle looking for a street fight, hoping to win with raw brutality and no real strategy. Other teams choreograph their movements and communicate through Ventrillo or Mumble, approaching each battle like amateur Douglas MacArthurs. There's no algorithm that tells you how your opponents will act and react to what you do. I'm far from a PVP expert myself, so I can really only offer you some of the PVP basics to get you started. If you're looking for top-level strategy, check out Blood Sport. If you're looking to get your feet wet and start exploring the other side of the World of Warcraft game ... read on.
A closer look at the School of Hard Knocks
Let's take a look at the Children's Week PvP achievement School of Hard Knocks and the resources you'll need to accomplish it.If you want to get your Violet Proto-Drake and fly around at 310% speed, you're going to need to do this achievement. Reports are mixed on how easy or hard this achievement is. Some folks are saying it's done quickly and easily with a good group, others are banging their heads against the desk and spewing curse words at Blizzard.But just like everything, if you research and take an educated look at these achievements, they become more understandable and easier. That's not to say the achievement will become trivial, but it'll at least become more manageable.The achievement is broken down, complete with tips, after the break.
The inevitable loss
Around every 4th of July I reread Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels, which is a book about the battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. There's an early passage about the Southern general James Longstreet's unease over the Confederate push north to Pennsylvania: He had never believed in this invasion...He did not believe in offensive warfare when the enemy outnumbered you and outgunned you and would come looking for you anyway if you waited somewhere on your own ground. Longstreet, one of the finest military minds of the age, spends much of the subsequent bloody fight knowing that Union forces had a terrain advantage impossible to overcome.There's been a lot written about battleground strategy (particularly Alterac Valley) but I think all of us have known the sinking feeling you get when you realize that your side isn't going to win. Some causes of failure are relatively easy to pinpoint; starting a battleground with a heavy numbers or healing disadvantage often seals the fate of a match. And of course the collective quality of a team's gear will always play a role; people in Season 4 are unlikely to lose to those in Season 1.All other things being equal, what I find most fascinating are the matches -- PuG versus PuG, or premade versus premade -- where the battle can swing either way depending entirely on each team's degree of foresight and strategy. Rarely, single players can sometimes decide the outcome; I once saw a protection paladin in a 2-cap versus 2-cap Eye of the Storm prevent the opposing side from taking any flags by parking himself in the middle and simply taking forever to die, and one of my own favorite techniques is to suicide/harass heavily-defended nodes in Arathi Basin and EOTS while Horde quietly caps elsewhere (you'd be amazed at the number of players who prefer an easy kill over responding to "Inc!" calls elsewhere). But failure and success are usually collective and hard to pin down. How do you convince people to do the less-glamorous jobs -- defense, distraction, crowd-control -- more likely to result in a victory? How do you know when the battleground is lost for sure?
PvP for the beginning HK: 11 rules for the starter weasel
It is not unusual for younger or less experienced players to approach me with questions on my PvP experience."Allie," they ask. "How can we avoid sucking like you?""Well, first it helps to have a functional mouse," I always say, favoring them with a benevolent smile whilst swirling a fine glass of port. "Click-to-move is usually impossible when neither your right mouse button nor scroll wheel actually work. You'd be amazed at the number of problems you can pin on your refusal to replace a relatively cheap piece of equipment. Never, ever, get rid of Mr. Gimpy if you want a ready excuse for being a keyboard turner."They scribble this and then look at me reverently, hopeful for any additional pearls of wisdom I might drop. However, after receiving so many queries and accidentally mistelling most of them with, "I can tank, but gimme a sec to get rid of this punk who's bugging me," I have decided, in the spirit of all gifted Machiavellians, to preserve my bad advice in a medium more lasting than /w.For beyond faulty mice, children, we get into more advanced and underhanded PvP tactics...
