Put 15 random people into a group, add a dose of epeen, a dash of afk, and a dollop of cluelessness, and you have your typical battleground group. At any given time, there will be a couple people in low quality (or high quality PvE) gear trying to figure out what the rules are, a couple of bitter people that have lost 4 in a row trying to get their daily, and maybe some guy who has an arena team and wants to make sure that (a) everyone knows how bad they all are, and (b) does what he says.
How can you turn a rag-tag band of misfits into a winning team?
First, recognize that the other guys have it just as bad, on average. You will increase your win rate by utilizing the resources you have as well as you can.
- Know the rules: every BG has rules and mechanics. Know them so you can make intelligent decisions.
- Know the strategies: people write volumes about strategies. It’s not a raid with a strict “when this happens, do this”, but you might glean various bits of information you can put to your advantage (like “defending nodes after capping them can help you win”).
- Put winning ahead of your place on the scoreboard: if you spend the whole game using demolishers to poke holes in their walls, regardless of your damage done, you’ve advanced the battle.
- Know your class: should you open with aimed shot or explosive shot? How many types of CC do you have? Do you have Master’s Call easily available in case you (or your flag runner) are snared?
- Know your opponents: should you never tranq shot a tree druid? Should you interrupt polymorph or frost bolt? Do you trap the approaching rogue or healer?
- Be mobile: the maps are cleverly designed so that there is no single strategy that always works, and you never have enough people to attack or defend everything at once. Moving from objective to objective to react to your opponent’s attacks as well as forcing them to react to yours is the only way to get ahead.
- Communicate!
This last one is hard to strike a balance with. On the one hand, you really don’t want to be that douche-nozzle trying to tell everyone what to do, but on the other hand, you really need to know what’s going on, and to let others know as well.
The art of communication
My strategy for communication is two-fold. Before the battle starts, I either suggest an opening strategy, or confirm that I will go with an opening strategy already suggested. It doesn’t matter what the strategy is, just so long as as many people are doing it as possible. The only downside is if the strategy is too comprehensive- unless you’re in a pre-made, you can never tell what you’ll be doing after a couple of minutes elapse. In any case, avoid bickering about strategies whenever possible, as negativity feeds on itself, and breeds hopelessness and afkism.
Once the battle has started, I will call out enemy movement as I see it (if it’s relevant), call for reinforcements when needed, respond and acknowledge requests for help, as well as ask people in my vicinity to come with me. I’ve macroed:
- “/battleground OMW”
- “/say Could I ask for a few of you fine folk to follow me?”
- a few “/battleground there’s light defenses at [node], heading there now and would appreciate backup :)”
Lastly, I make a point of being positive as much as possible. If you’re waiting for a graveyard respawn, take the time to try and reinforce how awesome the team is doing, or bolster their spirits if you’re losing. Little things like “lol, poor hordies/allies” or “I smell a turnaround coming- can we get anyone to blacksmith?” can get people smiling, which, believe it or not, has a huge effect on how well they perform. It may make little difference when they’re beating up a target dummy, but when they’re facing a group of coordinated, intelligent players with a group of their own, having a positive attitude will make them cooperate better with their team.
Euripides
jurgwena
lemli
eidotrope
pherra
femaledwarf
We are kinda lucky on our battlegroup there is this outfit called queueq premades the have a vent you log into and you get put into a waiting room when a spot opens up the move you into it.
Although guild members or people who have contributed to their vent and stuff get priority they announce what bg to join.
They also before wg spam thier guild on a particular server will spam for raid invites and they give you vent info and instructions in raid cahat before it pops and you join their vent you are muted.
So if you are of the opposing faction you can’t spam false instructions server
They have a pvp guilds on a lot of the bloodlust battlegroup so they are not restricted to pvp people from just one server that means they have heaps of pvp orientated people even if off peak hours available
I’m pretty cynical about strategizing in random bgs. I think that simple strats that redirect the facerolling (like “all on Blue!” in SotA) can work. But if the strat doesn’t involve facerolling forward (like, say, if you ask people to defend rather than fight on the road in AB), it seems like it’s doomed to fail far more often than not because it goes against players’ preferences. People do want to win, but they also don’t want to just stand around doing nothing for most of the bg guarding a flag. Most seem to be free-riders who expect others to make the sacrifices while they faceroll in the middle. It’s a collective action problem that defender bonuses and win bonuses don’t seem to be able to solve.
I rarely bother with battleground communications unless I am there with guildies. Too often some malcontent just uses it to whine at how awful their faction is. The best tool though is the minimap, since you end up coordinating targets by where the raid is moving too. I do believe Blizzard created part of the problem when they killed twinking by introducing battlefield xp. Now people rush to AV for levelling without learning strategy or coordination at low levels.
Totally agree that good comms is a big contribute to a BG win. I did some holliday AB ‘testing’. Chain ran AB’s for à couple of hours. One half I went with the ‘silent but deadly’ approach. Second half I used your approach, using short BG chats, just to indicate howmany-where and ask ‘need one more @ farm etc’. Most if not all of the time one or more players will pick it up and join the chatter. This way building Situation Awareness.
I’d say >80% of those BGs were wins with ‘gg’ at the end.
What I won’t say:
Follow me, 5 go here, group 1 go there, etc etc.
what I will say:
2 inc at BS.
*links cap time on a flag point from DBM*
BS is gone. Going LM.
That way, people can make their own decisions. I don’t follow someone’s convoluted (and doomed to fail as soon as players die and rez at a random gy) strategy, so I don’t expect the others to do the same. Its just an exercise in frustration.
Winning a BG isn’t about uber-coordinated attacks. This isn’t the military, and you aren’t a commanding officer, and this isn’t an army. Its a herd of cats who think they are all better than you are. So providing information instead of barking commands minimizes ego bruising and maximizes effective decision making.
I find songs are the best way to keep morale up…type “don’t stop believin…” in a losing BG and watch as the rest of the group completes the song. Another favorite for flag carriers is the always popular “I’ve got the flag and, I’m going fast and…”
I love Battlegrounds, and i love to pvp.
Being positive helps a ton, being insightfull as well. Simple incoming alerts and suggestions really get people thinking and doing what they need to be doing. Their is no one leader in a Battleground, just group-think and people who avoid it.
Thankfully i’m nearly finished battlegrounds.. 2 more for battlemaster and 12k more hk for of the horde then im done going into that pit of morons.
Generally it consists of the following..
WSG: guys just farming (badly) in the middle and not helping out at all, they will even ignore the fc from either side.
AB: same thing everytime, the players who HAVE TO GET THE STABLES.. and continue to try get it for the whole game while the other faction just run from one of their other bases behind stables and take eveything else.
EOTS: all rush to the middle and fight over the flag and never move from there despite us maybe having 1 tower.
SOTA: attacking > no getting tanks, defing them or even picking up bombs.. just rushing in on mounts to kill random allis.
defending > ignoring the tanks to kill random alli running about while the tanks get down all the gates in the first couple of mins.
IOC: meh whatever about it tbh
AV: amg RUSH TO VAN NAU.. which ofc always ends up with a bunch of tools all at the boss standing there shouting OMG WHERE R TANK/HEALERS.. then proceed to call everyone else noobs while the alli win a few mins later.
The people who try farm hks never get tha fact that if your defending a base that the allis attack there more often than you roaming around looking for randoms.. thats how ive so many hk’s atm from playing bg’s correctly.
You try to give some tips or pointers which generally get ignored or you get abuse from some random scrub.
I hate to do it, but i agree with those who say they just call out incomings and other such basic info. Any more than that, even just encouraging phrases, too often are met with derision which unfortunately quiets those who would otherwise be on the communication bandwagon. Example: last night when we were up around 1000 to 900 in AB i said “alright! We keep 3 and we’re solid!” Just a friendly bit of encouragement. The response I got was “We all know how to play AB, Calvinball.” After which, no one said a single word the rest of the bg. I briefly thought of arguing “Well hotshot, maybe not all of us do, besides what’s wrong with a little encouragement.” That thought lasted about 2 seconds, like usual, before I decided it would be absolutely entirely pointless. So I’ll just stick with calling out basic info and only going further (as far as communication) if I see others do so. Too many asshats out there who, unfortunately, keep the majority quiet.
I get those sometimes, however I usually just tell them to ignore my comments if they want to.
I quite often get yelled at for fighting in the road in AB/EOTS or in the middle in WSG, even though I don’t try to do it. 99/100 times its because some rogue has sapped me or some DK has pulled me off my bike while I was traveling to my objective. The other time is when we are down 2-0 with them having the flag or 1200-200 in AB/EOTS and I figure I might as well get some HKs.
Sometimes there’s no way to avoid it :)