Warsong Gulch (WSG) is a fun battleground. It's the first you can enter into (lvl 10), and often considered the first step into how PvP works.
The objective in WSG is to capture the flag. You do this by taking the enemy flag back to your teams flag in your base. Your flag must be at its start point for your team to score. If the enemy has your flag you must return it to your base. To return your flag kill the enemy that has it, it will drop, then right click on the flag to return it.
There are some strategies to WSG that increase your chances of achieving the objectives of the battleground and helping you to net additional honor points:
- Battle Map
Pressing M in WSG will bring up the battle map. This map shows where all your team players are located and where your flag carrier is. Your flag carrier is the player on your team who has the enemy flag. After one of your team mates picks up the enemy flag you should check your battle map to see where they are, and help by healing them and slowing down the enemy that are chasing them.
Forming a Raid group helps players communicate and keep track of who needs healing and buffs.
- Always go after the enemy flag.
One of the biggest mistakes I see is panic when your flag is in the enemies possession, which leads people to chase it down, and oftentimes results in an enemy flag capture since the enemy simply has to outrun you to their base. However, in wsg you cannot win if you don't capture the flag, and the opposing team cannot win if you have their flag. So ALWAYS get their flag, even if your flag is in their possension. This way they can't turn in your flag for a capture.
- You want to worry about getting your flag back ONLY if you have their flag first.
This is effective in two ways. First, the enemy base is usually less guarded when they are trying to make a flag capture. This is because they are concentrating their efforts guarding the enemy flag instead of their own. This vunlterability makes it easy for just a few players to reach in and grab the flag from the base, as well, it makes it easier to get the flag to your side of the field where it can be guarded more safetly because of the enemies concentration around your flag. Second, as mentioned before and can't be emphasized enough, when you are in control of their flag they cannot turn in yours!
- Don't zerg.
Zerging, or taking all of your force, concentrated in one small area, to try and overpower anothers, is not a good idea. First, it leaves you vulnerable to attack if all of your force is in one area. The enemy simply has to take a small force to run to your base and capture your flag. Than, run around you to turn in the flag.
It's better to stick into small groups instead of one big group in this particular battle ground. This is because you need to prevent from getting rooted down.
- Do root and run.
If you want to capture the flag, root and run. It's simple, in each base there is a top balcony which a player can drop in. If you have a small force who has crowd control abilities you can drop in to their flag room, use your crowd control skill, grab the flag, and run it out. Generally, the flag carry in this situation should have a movement skill, such as travel form for druids/shaman, mage blink, rogue run, or aspect of the cheeta for hunters. The runner needs to only have one or two supporting in order to root. In my experience, mages and shaman mage the best rooters. A mage with frost nova, cone of cold, or blast wave is quite effective in controlling mass amounts of people, as well, spaming earthbind totem slows players down significantly.
It's also a good idea to have one rooter when you drop to get the flag, but also one outside of the base to prevent enemy players from getting out of the base, or enemy players from getting in the base in order to mount a defense.
- Don't crowd your own flag room on defense.
It's a terrible idea to crowd your own flag room. This is because you are left horrible vulnerable to being rooted down and then the enemy simply uses a run ability to return a flag.
- Do use one or two high level crowd control players in the flag room.
It's very easy to stop enemies trying to get your flag, or if they have the flag you can root them in your flag room. This also alerts other players to a potential flag capture before the carrier can get out of the base. Oftentimes, the player/players trying to capture the flag also don't fight you but try and get out of the base. With crowd control abilities it's usually easy to just pick off the flag carrier and return it to the base.
- Intercept them don't chase them
If an enemy player has captured the flag and is returning to the base, a player in the center of the battle field who can root or slow is effective if they can intercept the enemy flag carrier instead of chasing them. Sub level 40, hunters concussive shot and mage polymorph work well on flag carriers, slowing them down in order to kill them, or slowing them so a player on your side can intercept them and kill them. Post level 40, being mounted makes it easy for an interception of an enemy flag carrier because it is faster than movement abilities.
As well, having players in the middle of the battle field puts them in great position for guarding a flag capture, or as reinforcement on defense.
- Hiding the flag
If you can't return the enemy flag, hide it! Find a difficult place near your base to hide it. You will want to make sure the enemy can't see the flag from a distance, and standing near the flag turn in, you are easily found and thus they can return their flag easily. Make sure that your allies know where you've hid the flag so they can root and kill anyone who comes near it before exposing it's location. If a hunter gets within range he can see you on his mini map.
A good location is somewhere with only one entrance but more than one exit. Like on a roof, or near a cliff.
- Hunters
Hunters can use Track Humanoids to find the enemy that has your flag. You must know the name of the enemy player that has the flag. Any time an enemy picks up your flag his name will be announced in the chat window, remember the name so you can track him. If the enemy player is a druid they can change to beast form, if they do you would need to use Track Beasts to find them.
- Healing/shielding is good
Oftentimes, priest/druids/shaman/pallys only heal themselves or the flag carrier when in WSG. It's very easy, appreciated, and effective to lay a renew/restore allies (not as in alliance, but players on your own team) players, or sheidling them. This allows them dish out more damamge, clear more players from the field for flag carriers, etc.
- Force the opposition together
Often, one or two players can distract the enemy into zerging them. This is great right before a flag carry because it allows for mass rooting of the enemy, as well, it lets the flag carrier avoid many enemy players making for an easy return.
- Hk's are cool, but not worth it
If you want to win, don't worry about getting tons of HK's in the BG, concentrate on achieving the objectives. As well, it's often more effective to root an enemy instead of killing them. As an added bonus, you will get more honor for winning the BG than getting 100 HK's.