WSG tactics

Interesting topic! On a personal level I'd be interested in seeing what people use for tactics in WSG, particularly in reference to how the game has changed with new abilities and expansions. Additionally, I figure I will contribute a little with some of my own personal thoughts and experiences.

Before continuing this topic though, I would like to make the caveat that I have not been doing organized and competitive "premade vs premade" WSG for quite some time, and it is likely that some of the tactics I used when leading teams are obsolete; alas - I digress.

WSG is one of those battlegrounds where I found class composition to be of particular importance. In an environment where CC, and not just kills, significantly helps you wins the game, it was natural to stack up with CC capable classes that also could produce a decent amount of damage. I also believe one of the most important aspects to keep in mind with Warsong Gulch is that mobility is far superior to durability when transporting the flag across the field. An example of this is the differences of having a protection warrior carry the flag vs having a druid carry it. With that in mind, druids made the perfect flag carriers due to both high survivability and the option to negate mobility impairment innately.

This is also one of the reasons that, at high levels of competitive WSG, entire teams would stack up on enough Free Action Potions prior to entering the battleground to last the entire game. This naturally puts a reliance on having offensive dispellers of your team in order to slow down your opponents.

Now, history aside; allow me to dig into actual tactics.

I am pretty sure that everyone who has played WSG is familiar with the most common concepts of tactics:

- Flag room defense (x people remain in the flag room to deal with attackers while y people went on offence to get the flag. Numbers on both sides vary).
- 10 man offense (The entire team would go together to get the flag and transport it back across the field).
- Half and Half (half the team would remain on defense, half the team would go on offense to get the flag).
- "Kill anything in sight, anywhere on the field" (Mainly what most PuGs seem to employ).

Personally, I found all of the above to be sub-optimal in a competitive environment where you were fighting equally skilled opponents. This is why:

- Flagroom defense: It is too easy for the opposing team to speed-grab the flag and leave the room before being slowed down (even while outnumbered in the flag room). This eventually leads to half your team chasing their flag behind them fighting to catch up. Meanwhile, your own carriers are being set up to face a 10 vs 5 situation before your defense and additional support can catch up.

- 10 man offense: This allows the enemy team to disengage everyone except their flag carrier to start picking off your team members before they even get to the flag room. With nobody defending, a single player can get the flag and be out of the enemy base before anyone can catch up, and since the other 9 players will be between your offense (and defense in this case) and their carrier, they are at a severe advantage.

- Half and Half: This is a case of CC and mobility winning the game for you. I believe it reasonable to say that the fewer people engaged in fighting the enemy, the more powerful CC is. Example; If there are 3 people on defense, and offense sheep/fears/etc one player; he is taking 33% of the defense out of the game long enough for the carrier to move. If there are 2 people on defense and the same sheep/fear/etc is applied, suddenly 50% of the defense is taken out of the game. This leads to the conclusion that to counter your 5 on defense, the opposing team can send less people (for example 4) and still have high chance of being successful while at the same time devoting 6 people to defense; thus outnumbering your offense by one.

- "Kill anything in sight, anywhere on the field": This is not efficient because the battleground's objectives are not designed around death match or killing as much as possible, and will in the majority of the cases let enemy flag carriers move around unhindered.

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Now before this post gets too long; I will elaborate on some of the tactics I personally found effective and leave further elaboration of other viable strategies for others to detail. Here is what I found to be the overall most effective form of strategy in WSG:


One person remains in/around the flag room (usually a rogue due to CC/snare/stealth). If enemy flag carriers entered the room with a rogue (even druids as they needed human form to pick up the flag), the rogue would be able to double-sap and slow the druid down for a considerable amount of time before getting out of even the flag room in order to both 1) let Free Action Potions wear off, and 2) allow more of your team mates to come to your assistance.

Combine your one person in the flag room with "mid field defense". What this basically entails is that you leave around 7 players mid field; usually around your ramp area. The task of these 7 is to engage and dismount enemy teams and flag carriers before they even get into your base. Imagine in a 10 person offense, 7 of your guys can sheep/sap/fear/etc enough people to the point where they will never get into your base at all. Especially high priority was the killing of druids as they tended to be the main flag carriers.

If players made it past your mid field defense, they were both 1) at a numerical disadvantage as they still have to get back out again past your midfield, and 2) communication would allow for the rogue to know who was coming, how many and plan accordingly.

For offense, it would work to send in 1 or 2 players to get the flag. Druid stealth was often put to good use in order to preserve the element of surprise in the event of flag room defense. Once the flag was picked up, it becomes the priority of (some of) your midfield defense to move towards your carrier to help escort him to safety!

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Phew! That was a lot of text, and might be a little confusing as to "so what is the general idea then", so allow me to conclude with the following:

In an oversimplified manner; I believe that WSG is about clever use of a numerical advantage combined with CC and mobility. If you can force your opponents into fights where they are either at a disadvantage with who carries the flag, splitting their attack force into smaller units by killing them and forcing an in-base re-spawn, or if you can make them over/under commit a given amount of players to a task and take them out with fewer numbers, you win the game. This is, of course, provided that you don't make the same mistakes yourself!

I hope that some of my thoughts or opinions have been of some assistance to you, and greatly welcome further examples or elaboration on what you all have found to work well for you; perhaps accompanied with an explanation as to why!

Q u o t e:
And btw feel free to tell us more about your "personal experience" doing WSG as a premade. Cause I doubt it ever happened considering it's literally impossible to even get a game when you queue up as a full team.

Well, I'd say it's a bit audacious to call me a liar based on that, wouldn't you? Fun fact related to this, my first character on live realms was created on the 23rd of November 2004 at roughly 9am CET - though that is neither here nor there. This thread is about Warsong Gulch strategies, let's stay on topic shall we!