Hey all,
I did a ton of competitive WSG in vanilla in a very highly populated battlegroup, BG9. Luckily, everybody on our team had either already gotten rank 14, or had enough gear so they weren’t interested in farming games. We would actually queue OUT of pugs, and then eventually started matchmaking with other teams. I’ll put a TL;DR at the bottom, but it’ll be hard to sum this up. Thanks, in advance, for reading :).
Composition
This is what our team ran on horde: 2 warriors, 1 hunter, 1 lock, 2 mages, 1 druid, 2 priests, 1 shaman. Mages were pom/pyro spec (no arcane power, though…I can’t remember the specifics, I think they just felt useless if AP was down). Warriors were arms, marksman hunter, affliction lock (shadowbolt spec), shaman resto, druid resto, priests both discipline.
If you notice, no rogues. A LOT of teams wouldn’t bring rogues in WSG. There wasn’t much they could do that a warrior couldn’t do better. I can explain more in a section below. With that said, I’m not saying rogues were useless, I just think they were difficult to make work. Rogues were solid in a LOT of aspects, I just don’t think WSG was one of them.
The game started…what now?
Druid was the flag runner, so he would instantly stealth, and sneak his way across the map into the room. The way to support and take full advantage of this was to have your hunter run down your tunnel, grab speed boots, trap/flare the tunnel, and stay where. Nobody should be getting by them. The other eight would position themselves in a decent spread by the ramp. If the other team is trying the same thing, then wait to grab the berserker buff. If they’re going full 10 offense, then take it immediately. Sometimes, this can create a stalemate if both teams do this strategy. Hopefully your druid can get across. If he does get across and grab the flag, then time is 100% on your side. Their team is gonna start freaking out - just communicate where they are to the druid, help him find a hole, and help him out of it. If not, you’ll want to try as best as you can to find theirs, kill them, and then maybe just engage them.
Why does this work? If they decide to 10v9 your team, they might win, they might lose. Even if they win, they shouldn’t have too many people left. By this time, your team will res and significantly outnumber them, meanwhile your druid FC just got over halfway across the field.
Defense
So this section is all about what happens when you each have the enemy flag, and it looks like you’re gonna start having some coordinated attacks back and forth. So, first thing’s first! – Defend on the roof!
Your defensive team, at this point, should be one warrior, the druid, priest, shaman, and hunter. Typically, you’ll want your warrior holding the flag, and maybe equipping some more defensive gear (our warrior on D had fire res and shadow res gear, and of course an off-tank gear set for raiding…we were fortunate). Your hunter should be laying their AoE slow trap at the base of the path from the tunnel to the roof. Our hunter didn’t have the best gear, and would never kill less than one person on their way up to the roof…usually it was two, as lots of teams had a cloth-heavy offense. The hunter can then replace the trap a little closer, and their offense is going to be hurting a lot before they get to you.
If you feel comfortable enough, your warrior can drop the flag, give it to the druid, and you can go to work on their offense 4v4 or 3, and the druid can support if they feel comfortable, or just LoS. Don’t forget, your priest should also be trying to MC one of them off the roof if they get that far.
Also, your priest should be using mind vision to see where their offense is grouping up. If they try to get cute and group up in your tunnel with 2 or 3 at a time, GO KILL THEM. If you can stagger their offense, do it…
Offense
So, this would be the rest of the team! Priest, mage/mage, lock, warrior (NOTE: it wasn’t uncommon to run three healers, and have an offense without a healer. Be warned, without a healer on offense, if they are running a defense behind a hunter, you’re going to have a very tough time running up to the roof).
I recommend meeting up at their berserker hut before running in. It’s very important to be fast, and don’t allow your team to get staggered. If you pushed, and you’re gonna die, then just die, or run. You don’t wanna miss a res, and be 30 seconds behind.
The offensive strategy is hard to really give a guide on. You wanna get to them, and burst their FC. You’ll have to determine if it’s more efficient to kill a healer first, or the FC. It’s gonna change from game to game.
Gear
Stamina. Stamina. Stamina. Priests? probably gonna need to wear warlock gear or PVP gear. Healers, nobody cares if you heal for lower amounts. There’s gonna be a few of you, it won’t take 93 casts to top your homies. If you die in two crits, you just become a liability. Yes, you will see 3-minute AP mages 1-shot critting people. It won’t happen a ton, but you’ll see it.
Rogues
I mentioned earlier about not bringing rogues. You could play a rogue on defense instead of a hunter, or replace the warrior, mage, or offensive healer with one. I personally don’t love the idea, and think AB is much more suited for rogues, but if you know a godlike rogue that convinces you they’re more important than mortal strike and 5k pyro crits, by all means do your thing! Just remember, they’re gonna get absolutely whacked by warriors, and are just going to get flared out of stealth.
Unspoken rules
So this section is gonna be for a few things that most of the super competitive teams I played with/against kind of decided on. Again, just my experience :).
-We didn’t use any potions or flasks. If you wanna use em, then definitely consider a rogue! Sprint/Preparation/Sprint with a free action potion? Bye bye! If you had engineering or first aid, those would usually be used.
-The flag carrier doesn’t hug the graveyard. We would run towards the graveyard, but not in it. The rule of thumb was, if you’re in panic mode, to jump off the roof, run outside, and hang a left, not a right.
-No flag-grab addons/macros. I don’t know exactly how they work, and didn’t see them often, but I know they existed. Little tip - the flag drops just behind the FC’s left shoulder, unless that somehow changes with new model mechanics.
These obviously aren’t things that are against any rulebook (except the flag-grab addon maybe? idk). If you wanna flask up before the game and defend the flag in the graveyard, more power to ya!
A super short breakdown of a couple other strats
-Obviously the triple heal comp is common as well. In that scenario, most teams replaced the second priest with another mage.
-You can also build a defense that’s oriented around kiting the enemy offense. I played against a 6-man defense one time with a druid FC, two pals, one priest, a frost mage and a hunter, or something to that effect. What. A. Nightmare.
-Some teams ran lock-heavy, not mage heavy. Mage burst is obviously much more controllable, but locks were harder to kill, did great consistent damage, and nightfall procs quite a bit with multiple targets. In case you didn’t play in vanilla, or forgot about them, hit the deck with geared locks start throwing shadowbolts around…
tl;dr
I’ll try to do my best…
-Try to intercept their offense first wave, don’t go 10v10 if you can avoid it
-Defend on the roof
-Priests need to mind vision/MC
-Think long and hard before bringing a rogue over a warrior/mage/anything really
-Do what you can to stack stamina
-Stagger their offense
-Don’t get staggered
Thanks again for reading! Again, please don’t take this stuff as law…this is just some stuff that worked very well for us, and a lot of other teams back then. And before that first person says, “The game has changed, rogues can be good!” - you’re right! Rogues can be good! I’m not saying they’re dead weight, but you’ll have to do some tweaking to fit them in just right:).
