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Theo's PvP 101 (was forum=21)Follow

#1 Aug 06 2010 at 7:06 PM Rating: Excellent
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13,048 posts
Greetings, and welcome to PvP 101. I've had a suggestion that more people would enjoy PvP if they understood more about what makes a good PvPer and had some tips and tricks that the higher-end PvP crowd uses.

This is going to be very basic info for a lot of people, but I think it could be very helpful to the PvP newbies among us. I'm going to go over the absolute basics to start, then move onto UI, key binding, and movement. This information will be kept up-to-date through Cataclysm, and

Table of contents:
Roles
CC
Stuns
Classes
Healing
Interrupts
Battlegrounds
Wintergrasp
Arenas
Rated BGs
PvP Gear
UI
Key binds
Movement


Roles

Healer
Any class whose primary focus and spec is on healing others and themselves over doing damage. It seems counter-intuitive, but it is a necessary role to be filled in group PvP.

Ranged
Any class who deals damage from range, whether physical or magical. This could be via direct damage or dots.

Melee
The last role is that of the melee, a role that involves getting up close to the enemy to deal damage. Often this role will come with an ability to get into range with other classes in order to deal damage.

CC
Crowd control; every class has at least one CC. All CC breaks under a certain amount of damage; most breaks on even one damage, some break on more. Unless noted, assume that the CC breaks on any damage. Below outlines CC from other classes. If I'm missing something about your class, please post and I'll add it in.

Rogue: Blind, 10 sec duration, 3 min cooldown (2 min with talents); Sap (target must be out of combat and rogue must be in stealth), 10 sec duration.

Mage: Polymorph, 10 sec duration.

Druid: Cyclone, 6 sec duration.

Hunter: Freezing Trap, 10 sec duration, 30 sec cooldown; Wyvern Sting (survival talent), 10 sec duration, 2 min cooldown.

Warlock: Banish (demons/elementals only, though this includes Druid tree form), 10 secs duration; Fear (doesn't break under damage until a certain threshold), 10 secs duration; Seduction (Succubus pet only), 10 sec duration; Death Coil (horror effect), 3 sec duration (3.5 sec with glyph), 2 min cooldown.

Priest: Psychic Scream (AoE fear), 8 secs duration, 30 sec cooldown, Mind Control (Priest can't control their character while controlling another and the other character becomes friendly to anyone on the Priest's team), 10 sec duration.

DK: Chains of Ice (95% snare at the initial cast, gradually allowing the person it's casted on to run faster as it wears off), 10 sec duration.

Paladin: Repentance, 10 sec duration, 1 min cooldown.

Warrior: Intimidating Shout (AoE fear, though the target does not run), 8 sec duration, 2 min cooldown.

Shaman: Hex (person casted on turns into a frog and can still move but cannot make any actions), 10 sec duration, 45 sec cooldown.

Stuns

Rogue: Cheap Shot (must be in stealth), 4 sec duration; Kidney Shot (finisher), duration depends on amount of combo points, 5 CP = 6 sec duration, 20 sec cooldown; Gouge (incapacitate, breaks on damage), 4 sec duration, can be talented to 5.5 sec, 10 sec cooldown.

Mage: Impact (fire talent), 2 sec stun, needs to proc; Deep Freeze (frost talent), 5 sec duration (only usable on frozen targets), 30 sec cooldown.

Druid: Bash (bear form), 2 sec duration, 1 min cooldown; Pounce (cat form, must be in prowl), 3 sec duration; Maim (cat form, finisher), duration depends on amount of combo points, 5 CP = 6 secs.

Hunter: Intimidation (beast mastery talent, pet must be in melee range to target), 3 sec duration, 1 min cooldown. Scatter Shot (disorient, breaks on damage), 4 sec duration, 30 sec cooldown.

Warlock: Shadowfury (destruction talent, AoE), 3 sec duration, 20 sec cooldown; Intercept (Felguard pet only, demonology talent), 3 sec duration, 30 sec cooldown.

Priest: None.

DK: Gnaw (requires Unholy talent Master of Ghouls, requires Ghoul to be in melee range), 3 sec duration, 20 sec cooldown.

Paladin: Hammer of Justice, 3 sec duration, 1 min cooldown.

Warrior: Intercept (requires Berserker stance), 3 sec duration, 30 sec cooldown; Charge (must be out of combat), 1.5 sec duration, 12 sec cooldown; Concussion Blow (Prot talent), 5 sec duration, 30 sec duration; Shockwave (front AoE cone starting in melee range, Prot talent), 4 sec duration, 20 sec cooldown.

Shaman: Bash (requires Enhancement talent Feral Spirit, wolves must be in melee range), 2 sec duration, 45 sec cooldown.

Classes

Rogue
Always fills a melee role. Rogues tend to be easily killed without their cool downs available, but are highly mobile and have a great many ways to control their target. Rogues have mediocre CC.

Mage
Always fills a ranged role. Mages are very good at crowd control (one of the best classes in the game at this), have high burst damage (lots of damage in a short amount of time), but when they run out of their cooldowns, they're killed very easily.

Druid
Druids can fulfill any role, and their role will depend on what tree they choose to spec into. Resto druids are very good healers, balance druids are similar to mages but have weaker burst and weaker CC because they can also heal, and feral is similar to a rogue and warrior but is also lacking some of the rogue and warrior cooldowns and advantages because they can also heal. As a note, Cyclone can only be casted in caster form or moonkin form; tree, bear, cat, and travel forms cannot cast Cyclone.

Hunter
Always fills the ranged role, though do so through physical damage instead of magic. Hunters also are a pet class, and thus have a pet that they can put on players to either cause constant damage, or put on healers to cause pushbacks in their casting. Hunters have good—though not great—CC.

Warlock
Is another class that fills the ranged role, and is also the other pet class. Warlocks tend to do most of their damage through dots, though it depends on what spec the warlock is. Warlocks have strong CC and decent survivability, even without cooldowns.

Priest
Priests can either fill the healing or ranged damage roles, and sometimes both at once. Shadow priests will do ranged damage similar to a warlock (without the pet and castable fear), though they can drop shadowform and heal if needed. Non-shadow priests tend to be discipline, and heal almost solely, though there are instances where they will be asked to help out by using Smite and Shadow Word: Death to help with damage.

DK
Death Knights are melee damage primarily, though they do have an ability or two that can be used from range. They also can have a permanent pet if they're Unholy. DKs have very weak CC, but strong survivability and damage, as they also can do damage through magic, unlike rogues and warriors, the other two primarily melee classes.

Paladin
Paladin can be either a healing or melee class. Paladins have very strong defensive cooldowns and have a natural resistance to most CC (Hand of Sacrifice will pop the paladin out of most CC as soon as the person they cast it on takes damage), in addition to having an immunity to all damage for 10 secs (bubble). Ret paladins are strong melees, and do damage through a mix of physical and holy damage (which can't be resisted through armor resistances).

Warrior
Warriors are a melee class who are very durable, as they wear plate and can equip shields. They also have protective cooldowns that can be used to help out healers, and truly excel when they have a healer with them. Without a healer, they tend to not do very well unless they're fighting 1v1.

Shaman
Shamans are very much like Druids in that they can fill any role based on their spec; elemental will be ranged, resto will be healing, and enhancement will be melee. Shamans, like druids, do not excel in their damage roles, though the addition of healing and some spells and abilities unique to them makes them still very viable.

Healing

Healing is a very hard concept to get around in PvP, as it's very rare that healers are able to stand still and just cast over and over, as they can quite often in PvE. To this extent, there are four different kinds of heals that are used in PvP at different times:

Instants tend to be hots, or heals-over-time. These are best put up before the person you're healing starts taking damage, as they tend to not heal in large bursts (hence heal-OVER-TIME, right?). Instants can be cast while moving, and are some of the most cast heals in PvP.

Short casts are 1.5 sec casts or lower that heal for a small to medium amount. The reason these are used over the longer heals is simply because you want to keep moving in PvP, whether it's to move away from a melee class that's attacking you, or you want to move out of line-of-sight (LOS) from a ranged DPS.

Long casts (also called "OH sh*t" heals) are heals cast when the person you're healing is dangerously low on health and you're desperate to keep them alive. Most of the time when casting a long heal, you're going to get interrupted, stunned, or CC'd as you're not moving and have to sit for 2-5 secs to cast a heal. Often one or two short cast heals are better than one large heal, as in PvP you're not trying to be perfectly mana-efficient.

Shields are a type of heal that only a few classes and specs can use, but they're very effective in PvP as they prevent damage and allow the healer to take their focus off the person they cast it on for a short amount of time.

As I mentioned with long heals, often two short heals or two short heals and an instant work better, as you can move between them, and they're harder to interrupt.

Getting interrupted is the last thing you want, as most interrupts lock you out of that specific spell school for a small duration of time (often 5 secs). Most of the best healers will learn to "juke" interrupts by fake-casting a spell; they take a step backwards to interrupt their spell after it's been going for half a second so they can draw the person trying to interrupt into casting their interrupt, which then goes on cooldown, and the healer can then cast their spell without fear of getting interrupted. It's an advanced move in PvP, but is a good ability to have.

Interrupts/Silence Effects

I am unfamiliar with all of the classes specific interrupt abilities; if I'm missing one, please let me know.

Stuns, incapacitates, CC, disorients, and knockbacks/Death Grip work to interrupt casting as well, but will not cause a spell school lockout.

Rogue: Kick, 5 sec spell school lockout, 10 sec cooldown.

Mage: Counterspell, 8 sec spell school lockout, 24 sec cooldown, silences for 4 secs with Arcane talent.

Warlock: Spell Lock (felhunter pet only), 3 sec silence, 6 sec spell school lockout if target is casting, 24 sec cooldown.

DK: Mind Freeze, 4 sec spell school lockout, 10 sec cooldown; Strangulate, 5 sec silence, 2 min cooldown.

Priest: Silence (shadow talent), 5 sec silence, 45 sec cooldown.

Hunter: Silencing Shot (marksmanship talent), 3 sec silence, 20 sec cooldown.

Warrior: Pummel (requires Berserker stance), 5 sec spell school lockout, 10 sec cooldown; Shield Bash (Prot talent, requires shield), 6 sec spell school lockout, 12 sec cooldown.

Shaman: Wind Shear, 2 sec spell school lockout, 6 sec cooldown.

Blood Elf: Arcane Torrent (racial, AoE), 2 sec silence, 30 sec cooldown.

Battlegrounds (BGs)

Warsong Gulch (WSG)
Level requirement: 10 (brackets are organized by levels x0-x9, for example the first is 10-19; level cap players have their own bracket)
Number of players per side: 10
Objective: Capture the flag style BG with a 25 minute time limit. Whoever has the most flag caps at the end will win if no one has gotten to 3.
Tips: Healers. They're vital to capping the flag, unless you have some really skilled players that can manage to avoid the other team on their run. This is easier at lower levels when there are no mounts, and nearly impossible at higher levels with 100% speed mounts.
Rogues with Preparation can Sprint/Evasion then Prep and Sprint/Evasion again, giving them a great advantage in attempting to cap the flag solo.
Druids are exceptional flag runners, as they can shift out of snares and roots and also apply hots to themselves.

Arathi Basin (AB)
Level requirement: 20 (brackets organized like WSG, starting with 20-29)
Number of players per side: 15
Objective: King of the hill focused on five bases with flags at each base. Teams progressively gain "resources" through holding bases in their possession. For a detailed look at how fast a side accumulates resources, see this link. A team wins when they accumulate 1600 resources.
Tips: Stay and fight near the flags at each base; try not to fight on the roads.
Any direct damage will interrupt someone capping a flag, so don't attempt to use AoE, but for rogues and warriors, throwing and ranged weapons—as terrible as their damage may be—can interrupt someone from capping the flag if you're rooted or snared.
Don't leave a node while it's capping; often the other team will zerg (mass-rush) that node in response and try to defend it.
Rush only three nodes at the start. Splitting up to go to four reduces numbers at each node and reduces the chance that your team has in capping.
Call incoming attacks; "2 inc LM" means two enemies are coming to the Lumber Mill. To be even more beneficial, call from which side those enemies are coming. "2 inc LM from ST" means two are incoming to the Lumber Mill from the Stables side.
The generally agreed short names for the nodes are: ST = Stables, LM = Lumber Mill, GM = Gold Mine, BS = Blacksmith. Farm is almost never shortened.

Alterac Valley (AV)
Level requirement: 60
Number of players per side: 40
Objective: Kill the opposing faction's general OR reduce their reinforcements to 0 (start with 600).
Tips: Capping towers will remove warmasters and marshals and also reduce the other team's reinforcements (75 per tower destroyed).
Killing players on the other team will reduce their reinforcements by 1.
Cap graveyards (GY) by having one person ride by mounted to aggro the guards, and have another come in right behind them to cap the flag at the GY.
How to win: In my own personal opinion I've always had the best results with an all-out zerg with a few people hanging back and re-capping towers and GYs behind the other team as they zerg. If you want to win via a turtle that can be done by just defending your towers and turtling in the room that your general is in.

Eye of the Storm (EotS)
Level requirement: 70
Number of players per side: 15
Objective: Combination of WSG and AB, though there are no flags at the bases to protect; instead you must be at the base and visible (no stealth/invisibility) to capture. Capturing the flag at the center of the map will gain more resources for your side (to capture it, take it to any base your faction controls). Gain 1600 resources and you win.
Tips: Bases are worth far more than the flag unless one team is turtling on two bases. If you can gain three bases, you will win regardless of how many flags the other team can cap. Similarly, if both teams have two bases and one team is capping more flags, they will win.
Go for a four cap and if it looks like your group can only maintain control of two bases, then go for the flag.
As in AB, fighting on the roads is not very beneficial. Most fighting should be contained at bases or the flag whenever possible.

Strand of the Ancients (SotA)
Level requirement: 80
Number of players per side: 15
Objective: Similar to Wintergrasp, break through the walls (three tiers, two tiers of two gates, then the final "yellow gate" to get into the courtyard) and the gate to expose the Titan Relic and capture it. Teams take turns on offense and defense; if the first attacking team caps the Relic, the other team must cap the Relic faster in order to win.
Tips: On offense, zerg one side of the map. Similar to WG, stacking siege engines on one side (along with people on foot using seaforium found on the dock) is the fastest way to get walls down.
On defense, do not man the wall canons at first; get down onto the beach to destroy the demolishers as soon as they become active targets. After the siege engines are dead, then man the walls.
On offense, do your best if you're not in a demolisher to keep the defenders out of melee range from your demolishers.
On offense, if you're a stealth class, once the second tier of gates has been breached, you can cap the top graveyard, giving your team an advanced point to rez at.

Isle of Conquest (IoC)
Level requirement: 80
Number of players per side: 40
Objective: Same as AV, kill the opposing general, or reduce the other faction's reinforcements to 0.
Each individual base (of the 5) gives a separate bonus to the faction that controls it.
Refinery/Quarry: 15% increased siege weapon damage.
Docks: Allows Catapults and Glaive Throwers to be built, in addition to your normal siege vehicles.
Hangar: Gives control of an airship, which flies around the opposing base and allows you to shoot into and at the other base without taking any damage.
Workshop: Allows whoever controls it to make siege vehicles. This is situated directly between the two bases.
Tips: The Hangar and Workshop should obviously be the two bases most fought-over, as they provide the most benefit.
I have not done this BG very much, so I can't provide very in-depth tips.

Lake Wintergrasp (WG)
Level requirement: 80 is suggested, though you can go as soon as you can make it to Dalaran or fly to the zone.
Objective: Similar to SotA, capture/defend the Titan Relic. Since this is more complicated and the objectives are more complicated, I'll do a rundown of defense and offense after general tips.
Tips: Rank up by killing members of the opposite faction. Seems pretty basic, but the faster you rank up, the faster you can buy siege engines.
Workshops allow your team to have 4 more vehicles total. Try to get as many as possible (on defense, it's possible to control every workshop and thus every GY so the other faction can only rez at the flight path into the zone, this is called "WG rape" and is awesome).
Always be doing something. A battle lasts 25 minutes at most, don't be sitting around; it wastes your time and your teammate's time.
Use Tenacity to your benefit. If your team has Tenacity, that means you're outnumbered (often by quite a lot). Being outnumbered is tough, but if you stick together and help your teammates, you will be able to kill many more of the other team before they can kill you (I've won a 1v4 before, and 2v8s and 2v10s with a healer).
The southern towers may seem insignificant, but they give a 15% bonus to damage. Keep control of them for as long as possible.

Offense:
Your objective is to capture the Titan Relic and therefore the fortress at the north end of the zone.
Workshops (Sunken Ring, Broken Temple, Eastspark, and Westspark) outside of the fortress will allow you to build siege vehicles.
Defending the lower workshops and towers with 5-15 players (depending on how many you have total) isn't a bad idea; in fact, it's a good idea to make it as hard as possible for the defense to destroy the towers.
Zerg one side in a train. By this, I mean make as many Siege Engines (the best vehicle) as possible and make a train to one specific point to down the wall as fast as possible.
Ranged classes should take out the wall canons as early as possible and let siege drivers know where the canons are down so they can drive there.
People manning turrets in the Siege Engines should fire directly at the target wall for as much time as possible. Leave the defenders trying to destroy your Engine to the attackers on foot around you.
On the same vein, if you're on foot, kill anyone trying to kill your Siege Engines.
After about 5 minutes or so, don't make Catapults. They do mediocre damage and have terrible range. By then, people on your team can make Siege Engines, so don't take up a vehicle slot.

Defense:
Your objective is to defend the Titan Relic for 25 minutes (reduced to 15 by taking out the southern towers).
Take the southern workshops (Eastspark, Westspark) as soon as possible to destroy the southern towers.
Fight OUTSIDE of your walls until the enemy breaks through. Call incoming with a side so that people can move to that side to be ready to kill siege vehicles.
Try to kill people taking out your canons, canons are easy ways to take out vehicles.

Arenas
Arenas are a completely other topic of conversation, but a summary follows:

Arenas are split into three different brackets (2v2, 3v3, and 5v5) and award the highest level of PvP gear. In arena, your class, spec, and composition of your teams is of absolute importance, and unlike in BGs, matters entirely. Refer to your individual class forums if you'd like to know more about getting into arena, or ask here.

Arena is the single most complex thing in this game and makes raiding look simple by comparison, but it is also one of the most rewarding and fun things when you learn the system. I personally strongly urge everyone to at least attempt to make an arena team.

Rated BGs
More info to come as it's known.

PvP Gear
Generally, in PvP you want a stat known as resilience. This is obtained through several ways: PvP gear obtained through honor or arena points (or a combination of the two), enchants, and gems.

The resilience cap is 1415. 900+ is considered a decent amount for PvP so that you don't get bursted into the ground. Less resilience can be used by certain classes, but it's generally wise to use mainly PvP gear for PvP.

User Interface
In any decent discussion about PvP, UI will always come up as it's an integral part in making information easier to process and makes timing much easier. Things like knowing when your Kidney Shot will end so you can put up a Dismantle, Evasion, or Vanish; even more obvious, knowing when a Blind, Polymorph or other CC will end so you can chain another CC onto it.

Other concerns will be timers in BGs to know how long something has before it's capped, how long before the BG is over (and who will win at that time), or how long you have left on your cooldowns are all important information.

Without going too in-depth, here's a screenshot of my UI out of combat and with my unit frame addon in configuration mode:

Screenshot

And in combat:

Screenshot

Some things you will quickly notice are:

1) My unit frames are incredibly easy to see; they don't have portraits, animations, or anything crazy. So often you'll see crazy unit frames that while they look awesome, do nothing for you because you want to stare at them the whole time. Keep your eyes off your bars 98% of the time.

2) I have a minimalist setup. This isn't because I like it (well, okay, it kind of is), but it's because the more screen I can see, the more I can see my enemies and see where they are.

3) I show a couple bars. This is because I show cooldowns on them. I could play without them, and often have in the past.

4) All of my timer information is centrally located on my screen, along with my combo points. Exceptionally important because you don't want to have to be looking all over the place trying to find information you need to know.

5) Too many addons kill you. More addons use up more of your processor and RAM, making your computer slow down, making your reaction times slower, making you dead in PvP.

See how I did that?

A couple quick notes and then this section is over: I NEVER use Curse. In fact, I hate everything to do with that company (and it still pisses me off that they bought MMO-Champion, but that's another thread).

I will use Wowinterface over them every single day of the week. If WoWI doesn't have it, it's not worth having.

Mods I actively use in PvP are: Pitbull (unit frames), Dominos (bars), OmniCC (cooldown timers), DoTimer (CC/debuff tracker), Gladius (arena frames), Capping (BG timers), and nugComboBar (combo points). That's it.

Key binds
Here's one of my biggest pet peeves and also methods of success. Efficient keybinding can shave as much as half a second off of your reaction time, which is huge in PvP at any level. Taking half a second longer to find Kick or reach for it and press it can mean missing an interrupt that will eventually cause you to die.

To that end, let me tell you how I keybind, and from there, you can figure out how to bind your own keys.

Here's what my hidden bars look like, so you can see what I'm referring to when I talk about my keybinds:

Screenshot

As you can see, I don't use ANY numbers over 5. That's because that's what my fingers can reach from my position on the WASD keys. I also choose not to rebind Q, E, or R, as I've been playing with those keys for more than five years now, and it would make me awkward.

So here's a run-through: I have a G5 mouse (honestly the best gaming mouse in the world), which has two buttons under the scroll wheel that can be re-bound. I bound them to Page Up/Down, which you can see as PU and PD on the screenshot.

I also unbound the scrollwheel from the zoom distance. I keep my zoom distance pretty standard (and fairly far), so I don't need to mess with it on the fly.

I've re-bound my scrollwheel to abilities. You can see it as WU/WD (wheel up/down). I also have Alt, Ctrl, and Shift bound as modifiers to the scrollwheel. If I use WD normally, it will stealth/unstealth me. If I use Alt-WD (hold all while moving my scrollwheel down), I'll use Eviscerate.

You can even add other combinations to those, to add even more buttons. As a rogue though, I only need Alt, Shift, and Ctrl.

The G5 mouse also has two buttons on the side; Buttons "4" and "5". You can see their binds as B4/B5. I've also added Alt, Shift, and Ctrl modifiers to those.

So on my mouse alone, with the three modifier keys, I have about 20 keybinds, with the potential for more. These are binds that aren't awkward to reach, I can press pretty much instantly, can comfortably spam, and don't need to move my hands at all to use.

Oh, and I can keep my character moving as normal while using them.

For the rest, I use typical letter keys and number keys. 1-5 as you can see, are CloS, Evasion, Sprint, Vanish, and Prep. I also use ` (the key next to 1) for shiv though I almost never use it anymore. F, G, V, T, Y, U, I, and O all get used for either gear sets, abilities, or engineering items.

Mounts are * and -, up at the top of my num pad. Why? Because when I'm using them, I'm never rushed. I'm always out of combat, able to move my hands, etc.

So there you have it, my keys to keybinding. Smiley: facepalm

Oh! Before I forget, put your PvP trinket somewhere that you can twitch-activate it. Mine is one of the buttons right below my scrollwheel, so I move my index finger to it and voila, I can trinket right as someone blinds/fears/cyclones me.

Movement
More info on this to come.

I will be editing with more info as I type it up, and this thread will be updated throughout Cataclysm, including a section about rated BGs, if they make it to the live servers.

Edited, Sep 4th 2010 8:29pm by Theophany
#2 Aug 06 2010 at 7:18 PM Rating: Excellent
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2,680 posts
And so it begins.

Nicely done, great start. I'm assuming that additions and edits can be suggested either by PM or via posting? (Adding Hammer to Pally CC for example =)
#3 Aug 06 2010 at 7:37 PM Rating: Good
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474 posts
I've missed Theo's PVP threads.

#4 Aug 06 2010 at 8:16 PM Rating: Excellent
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1,912 posts
You're going to expand this?

NPCs in BGs (like av and isle) will be affected by defense/hit/weaponskill and not by resil (EDIT: by the flat damage decrease component of resil). (unless it was changed by a patch I didnt read).

Flasks do work in BGs and the buff lasts trough death and you don't lose it when zoning in and out.

Vehicles can't be healed but they can be cleansed off of debuffs. Since debuffs not only do damage but also happen to be strong damage modifiers this can greatly increase the durability of the fragile vehicles.

Roles:

Tanks:
- Can carry/hold flags, best in company of at least 1 heal and 1 dps.
- Can tank bosses in AV and Isle.
- When 2 large groups meet the tanks have the ability to go into melee range without being insta-gibbed, they don't add as much DPS but can be very disruptive to the enemy group. (Do note that you don't really spec like a PvE tank, you spec for disruption effects like hungering cold.)
- Resil > Defense.

Death Grip: This spell alone is so powerful that it can be a role by itself alone. In BGs I can get 1 kill per cast of deathgrip guaranteed. It works by staying next to at least 2 teammates and anyone I deathgrip gets insta-gibbed without any chance to prevent it unless it's someone with a pally-bubble kind of immunity and does not have it on cooldown. If you pick targets correctly you can cast deathgrip on every cooldown and enemies will have 0% survival ratio. Part of it's effectiveness is in that it tends to pull people out of range of healers and pull healers out of range of their teammates.


Warsong:

Shaman, Druid, Mage, Rogue tend to be very good "escapey" flag runners.

DK, Prot Paladins and Resto Druids tend to be good "durable" flag runners.

When holding the flag you may not use any kind of immunity (paladin bubble, stealth, etc), mount, or engineer rocket boots.

The engineer boots however may still be used to run towards the flag to grab it but you have to click off the speed buff to be able to pick up the flag.

Free Action and Swiftness potions are great for running the flag.

There's 2 objectives, your flag and the enemy flag, if you're not going after either of the 2 objectives you're doing it wrong.

AV:

There's a trinket that you can use to switch to defense if the enemy team is advancing much faster than yours. This makes it an easy choice to go offensive and only port back and be defense if you really need to.


Edited, Aug 6th 2010 10:22pm by xorq

Edited, Aug 8th 2010 3:16am by xorq
#5 Aug 06 2010 at 8:20 PM Rating: Excellent
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2,680 posts
Quote:
There's 2 objectives [in WSG], your flag and the enemy flag, if you're not going after either of the 2 objectives you're doing it wrong.

Seriously.
#6 Aug 06 2010 at 8:24 PM Rating: Good
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4,684 posts
Little typo under Rated BG's ("into" > "info"), but otherwise a grand job. I haven't done serious PvP in ages, but will keep an eye on the priest section. So far it all looks clean, clear and enjoyable to read.
#7 Aug 06 2010 at 8:36 PM Rating: Excellent
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13,048 posts
TherionSaysWhat wrote:
And so it begins.

Nicely done, great start. I'm assuming that additions and edits can be suggested either by PM or via posting? (Adding Hammer to Pally CC for example =)

Hammer, like Kidney Shot, I don't consider to be a true CC, but I suppose it could be considered that.

Thanks for the input guys. I'll be constantly making edits, and as always feel free to post or PM me to give your feedback and input.
#8 Aug 06 2010 at 8:55 PM Rating: Good
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It looks good so far. One thing I'd suggest, similar to the CC section, is one about interrupts, so they can be make-or-break in the same way if they happen at the wrong time.
#9 Aug 06 2010 at 8:57 PM Rating: Excellent
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Majivo wrote:
It looks good so far. One thing I'd suggest, similar to the CC section, is one about interrupts, so they can be make-or-break in the same way if they happen at the wrong time.

Great idea. Another thing I'll have to add.
#10 Aug 06 2010 at 9:54 PM Rating: Excellent
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Aside from the incorrect accenting of the word melee, very nice work Theo :D
#11 Aug 06 2010 at 10:16 PM Rating: Excellent
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Nicely done.

As for IoC, Hangar or Docks are both valid methods to win, its more about having enough people with a good mix of roles all on the same page.

In WSG, healers if they have good PvP gear, make some of the best flag runners. Not sure about Holydins though but the other healers are beast flag runners.

For priests, well Disc at least I've always felt that the less healing you do in arena the more likely you are to win. Which is strange as you are there to heal. Disc is also most effective in BGs when not acting in a strict healing role, DoTing people on the go, dispelling like mad and Smiting with some heals thrown around as needed. Disc is a support build more than a healer to a great extent. Dispels, shields, and some burst when needed.

Only thing I think is missing is something about Hit and Spell Penetration for PvP, as both can be extremely important. Having your spells miss or get resisted is a *****.

edit: grammar

Edited, Aug 6th 2010 6:17pm by Horsemouth
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#12 Aug 06 2010 at 10:24 PM Rating: Excellent
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Filterspawn wrote:
Aside from the incorrect accenting of the word melee, very nice work Theo :D

I blame my iPad. I typed the first quarter of the post on it.
#13 Aug 07 2010 at 3:03 AM Rating: Good
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"Hunter: Freezing Trap, 10 sec duration, 30 sec cooldown, Wyvern Sting, 10 sec duration, 2 min cooldown."
Missing Scatter Shot, edit: also missing intimidate.
Plus I suggest a (T) mark for talented spells/CC's.

Warriors also have shockwave and concussion blow that they can talent for.

Edited, Aug 7th 2010 11:19am by Aethien
#14 Aug 07 2010 at 5:49 AM Rating: Excellent
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Excellent write-up. I think it's a great idea to have a nice simple pvp thread like this for people thinking of getting into it for the first time. Maybe it could become a general advice thread for people with questions about how to fight different classes and situations.

It's easy for newer pvpers to get quickly overwhelmed by more complicated resources like A.J or whatever.
#15 Aug 07 2010 at 6:32 AM Rating: Excellent
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Excellent thread. There are two things I would like to try someday. Healing is first and PvP the second. Such compact information that give basics to newbies to that aspect of game might just be the push I need.

About stuns. You might consider either including them into CC section or making new since they can be quite crucial.

I look forward to reading more.
#16 Aug 07 2010 at 6:55 AM Rating: Good
Also some good racial trait for PVP, these 2 have excellent ones.


Gnome:
Escape artist : Escape the effects of any immobilization or movement speed reduction effect. Instant cast. 1.45 min cooldown.

Human
Every Man for Himself : Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. This effect shares a cooldown with other similar effects, 2 minute cooldown.

Perception : Increases your Stealth detection, passive.
#17 Aug 07 2010 at 9:40 AM Rating: Excellent
You forgot to add Strands (the beach one).

Question about an ability.

Quote:
Warrior: Intimidating Shout (AoE fear, though the target does not run), 8 sec duration, 2 min cooldown.


My warrior has this, it reads pretty close to this (the bold), yet the run around like a priest's psych scream.
o.O anyone know why? Or did the ability get changed?
As I leveled warrior I thought it would be a good tool to CC on big pulls, only to have them run off in fear and sometimes cause even bigger pulls or wipes.
Should I contact a GM and tell them my shout has been broke from the day I learned many moons back?
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#18 Aug 07 2010 at 9:57 AM Rating: Good
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Sandinmygum wrote:
You forgot to add Strands (the beach one).

Question about an ability.

Quote:
Warrior: Intimidating Shout (AoE fear, though the target does not run), 8 sec duration, 2 min cooldown.


My warrior has this, it reads pretty close to this (the bold), yet the run around like a priest's psych scream.
o.O anyone know why? Or did the ability get changed?
As I leveled warrior I thought it would be a good tool to CC on big pulls, only to have them run off in fear and sometimes cause even bigger pulls or wipes.
Should I contact a GM and tell them my shout has been broke from the day I learned many moons back?


You need a target to cast Intimidating Shout. Your target stands still in the /cower animation. Up to four other hostiles around you run like beheaded chickens.
#19 Aug 07 2010 at 6:38 PM Rating: Excellent
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Updated with interrupts and stuns sections. Let me know if I missed anything.

Spelling and grammatical corrections made, as well as some formatting.

Edit: also, Xorq, as far as I know, NPCs have always been affected by resilience and still are. Supposedly in Cata they'll make resilience only affect players, but in WotLK it still works on NPCs.

Edited, Aug 7th 2010 5:41pm by Theophany
#20 Aug 08 2010 at 12:32 AM Rating: Decent
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Overlord Theophany wrote:
Updated with interrupts and stuns sections. Let me know if I missed anything.

Spelling and grammatical corrections made, as well as some formatting.

Edit: also, Xorq, as far as I know, NPCs have always been affected by resilience and still are. Supposedly in Cata they'll make resilience only affect players, but in WotLK it still works on NPCs.

Edited, Aug 7th 2010 5:41pm by Theophany


Right. Let me clarify...

Resil has 3 components.
1. Crit component that affects both players and npcs.
2. A flat damage modifier that only affects players and I think it doesn't affect BG npcs.
3. A mana drain modifier.

Also, you're doing pretty good but I think you might want to rethink the layout of your guide.

For one thing, unlike arenas, BGs are more strategic and less tactical. So you might want to focus on strategic elements and reduce the amount of explanation given to tactical elements or pass the per-class tactical elements to a latter extension or to a per-class guide to bgs.

While CC, interrupts and stuns play a role and are of obvious importance you may want to avoid running trough the extended list of such effects of each class of every possible spec and instead go directly to explaining strategies like explaining how mass CC is a great way to grab a flag in a guarded flag room and how certain spells can be key to protecting a flag carrier or fragile vehicle. You should still pay special attention to the very specific spells that are of real large scale strategical impact like for example ghost wolf, travel form, stealth, death grip, bloodlust and so on.

Also notice that in BGs a much greater variety of specs is available, unlike in arena. So you may get a wider range of interrupts and CCs and other various spells coming from talent trees like the warrior prot tree which is viable in BGs.

BGs have significant strategical elements that will pretty much take precendece over anything else, like for example in AV keeping track of where each team's dead players will respawn and in AB keeping track of the travel time of backups and the time it takes to grab a node from it's guarding force.

What the per class explanation should probably focus on is the role of each class related to BG objectives (such as flag carriers and so on) and their role as natural predator of other specific classes, for example you want to mention that arms warriors should hunt down rogues so that their clothies and healers can do their part and warlocks should focus on paladins because of how effective they are at removing that threat for their team.

Edited, Aug 8th 2010 2:39am by xorq
#21 Aug 08 2010 at 8:01 AM Rating: Good
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Just a random note, but...
Quote:
Paladin
Paladin can be either a healing or melee class. Paladins have very strong defensive cooldowns and have a natural resistance to most CC (Hand of Sacrifice will pop the paladin out of most CC as soon as the person they cast it on takes damage), in addition to having an immunity to all damage for 10 secs (bubble). Ret paladins are strong melees, and do damage through a mix of physical and holy damage (which can't be resisted through armor resistances).

If you put it like that, it's actually silly how ridiculously overpowered the class sounds. Healing, melee, strong defensively, resistance to CC, damage immunity, unavoidable damage... What's left? =P
#22 Aug 08 2010 at 11:32 AM Rating: Decent
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Mozared wrote:
Just a random note, but...
Quote:
Paladin
Paladin can be either a healing or melee class. Paladins have very strong defensive cooldowns and have a natural resistance to most CC (Hand of Sacrifice will pop the paladin out of most CC as soon as the person they cast it on takes damage), in addition to having an immunity to all damage for 10 secs (bubble). Ret paladins are strong melees, and do damage through a mix of physical and holy damage (which can't be resisted through armor resistances).

If you put it like that, it's actually silly how ridiculously overpowered the class sounds. Healing, melee, strong defensively, resistance to CC, damage immunity, unavoidable damage... What's left? =P

Yeah, I know. Paladins are one of the strongest classes in WotLK PvP by far. I don't see that changing much in Cata (part of the reason I'll be rolling a Tauren Pally).

Edit: Xorq, I couldn't care less what you think about my guide. Pretty much everyone but you thinks that this is valuable information about PvP, ergo it's going to remain.

This is NOT a BG guide. This is "PvP 101" or "the basics of PvP". The basics of PvP is how classes work and how they work together and against one another. BGs have been thrown in because they're seen as the basic level that people start doing PvP in. If I expand the rated BGs section enough, I may start actually posting strategies that will always win you a match (not that winning is that hard, really), but don't hold your breath.

Actually, please do hold your breath. This forum would be better off without your retarded posts. Smiley: grin

Edited, Aug 8th 2010 10:37am by Theophany
#23 Aug 08 2010 at 12:51 PM Rating: Good
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One thing though, rewrite it for Cata and use a dozen or so posts so you can make an index and it'll be easier to read/find what you're looking for.
#24 Aug 08 2010 at 1:49 PM Rating: Excellent
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His Excellency Aethien wrote:
One thing though, rewrite it for Cata and use a dozen or so posts so you can make an index and it'll be easier to read/find what you're looking for.

That's probably a good idea. It would be more useful if there was a way to reference individual sections of the first post (like a wiki page), but in lieu of that, I suppose I'll have to break it up.
#25 Aug 08 2010 at 9:47 PM Rating: Excellent
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Very cool post. Having organized information like this (lists!) is great.

I would suggest yet another section: CC/stun breaking skills

That's the other side (defensive abilities) of knowing what is available to your opponents, and would be very helpful to people new to PvP. I would PM you a list, but I'm not sure I know them all.
#26 Aug 08 2010 at 10:10 PM Rating: Excellent
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boquaz wrote:
Very cool post. Having organized information like this (lists!) is great.

I would suggest yet another section: CC/stun breaking skills

That's the other side (defensive abilities) of knowing what is available to your opponents, and would be very helpful to people new to PvP. I would PM you a list, but I'm not sure I know them all.

Another good idea. Thanks, I'll work on it.
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