Because I and many other members of Casual are infuriated and astounded at the staggeringly terrible level of skill and strategy displayed in the battlegrounds, I'm creating this guide as a community service.

HOW TO WIN THE BATTLEGROUNDS
This series of guides is intended to help your average pugger gain an increased understanding of strategy inside the battlegrounds so that the Alliance win rate will actually go up. Follow these instructions, internalize them, and you will start to see positive results.

Warsong Gulch
The key to winning WSG is controlling mid-field. It's not defense, it's not rushing the flag room with all 10 people, it's controlling the middle of the field and sticking together.

The Flag - When the game begins, only one person should actually go after the flag. Ideally, a druid. You should never dedicate more than is absolutely needed to get the flag. Sending your whole team means you have lost control of mid-field. If the other team is dumb and has people defending the flag, you should be happy. This means their mid-field control is weak. Just send 1-2 people with your flag runner (preferably someone with CC) to help him get the flag and then get your ass out of there.

Offense - When the game begins, everyone except your flag runner should run off the graveyard hill and veer left. The goal here is to stop the enemy team from advancing to the flag room. If one or two sneak by, that's okay. The idea is to break up the main force (preferably not losing anyone in the process.)

Digo's Gladiator Tip #1: PvP is not about making the other guy die as fast as possible. It's about controlling the other guy and not letting him use his abilities. If you have CC abilities, use them. If you can heal, do it. (This means you, Mr. LOLRetConsecrate.) If you are a paladin, for the love of christ, don't consecrate. That breaks CC. Druids, root people and cyclone them. Do whatever you can to break up their DPS.

Defense - DON'T GUARD THE FLAG ROOM. Just keep everyone at mid-field in a big group. Keeping a few people to guard the flag is a waste of manpower and means that you will lose control of mid-field.

Mid-Field - If you lose control of mid-field, the enemy team will be able to slip multiple people past you and get the flag. Groups of 3+ flag carriers are very hard to stop. If only one or two get past and start running the flag, that's fine, because 1 or 2 are easy to stop. Just call out where they're headed and intercept them.



TLDR Version of How Casual Wins WSG - We control mid-field. We don't have anyone on Defense. We have one druid or warrior run the flag.

ARATHI BASIN
The key to winning Arathi Basin is communicating where the enemy is, where they are likely to go, and fighting on the node, not on the road.

The Flag Nodes - Fight on the node, not on the road. If you fight on the road or away from the flag, you are breaking up your forces and not doing anything productive. Fight near the flag so your forces will be concentrated. If you are defending a flag, it will be easier to prevent it from being capped. It only takes one hit on someone trying to cap to interrupt them. Just be a pain in the ass until more of your teammates arrive. You don't have to kill everyone, just stop them from capping.

Strategy - This is the Casual strat:

3 to Mine
3 to Lumber Mill (usually 4 because Horde really like the Mill for some reason)
7 to Smith
1 to Stables and then whatever needs help

- After the initial rush, we send people wherever they are needed. Note that we can do this because we communicate. Even if you're in a pug and aren't using voice chat, use text. Tell people where the enemy is heading, where they are weak, and where they are strong. Hit them where they are weak. It's pointless to send a bunch of people to try and cap a point that has a lot of horde guarding it.

- Controlling the smith is very important because you have quick central access to any point that needs reinforcement. If you have to choose between controlling the smith and the mine/mill, choose the smith.

- Assist your teammates, don't break CC, and COMMUNICATE.

- If you see that only one person is capping one of your flags, don't send your whole team to re-cap it. Just send the bare minimum.

This all sounds like common sense, but if everyone had it, I wouldn't be writing this post.

EYE OF THE STORM

The more towers you control, the more points you earn per flag capture.

The Opening Rush-

• - Only 1 person should head to each of the towers closest to your starting base. You only need one on each tower for a cap.
  
  - Everyone else should head toward one of the enemy towers and completely overwhelm it. Once you've killed everyone there, cap it, and then push to the last remaining tower.
  
  - If enemies slip past and try to cap the towers on your side of the field, send only enough reinforcements as necessary to hold them, and then get your ass back to the main group.
  
  - Do not go for the flag during the opening rush. It's not worth it at this point. It's more important to secure the towers and break up the enemy opening rush.

Capturing the Flag-

• Once you have 2-3 towers, then you should start worrying about taking the flag.
  
  Hunters or druids are usually best for flag running and defense.
  
  Do NOT overcommit to the bridge. If you see 2-3 people already there, leave. Go help cap towers instead. 5-6 people on the bridge is a waste of manpower, and probably means that you are losing the towers.

A Word About Grouping

SMART: When you rez, you wait for other people before attacking. You move in a group. You assist each other. You use CC. You heal.

STUPID: You run headlong off into battle the moment you rez, eager for glorious battle. Unfortunately, you will die, wasting your team's valuable manpower and sacrificing any chance your team had at victory.

TLDR Version: Do not run around solo. Stick together. Towers are more important than the flag. You only need 1-2 people on the bridge. Fighting over the flag is dumb. Only take it when you have a good opportunity.

Alterac Valley
Since patch 2.3 there are two good ways to win this BG:

1. The Oldschool Rush - This is probably your best bet, as it requires less coordination.
2. Hold and Control the Towers - This is for smart people only who like earning lots of honor, or games with a good number of premades.


The Oldschool Rush-
This strat relies on speed and killing Drek'thar as fast as possible.

1. Skip Galvanger.

2. Capture Iceblood Tower (the tower next to Galvanger)

3. Capture Iceblood Graveyard and leave a couple people to hold it. If you don't do this, people who die go all the way back to Stormpike.

4. Capture Tower Point and leave one or two people to hold it.

5. Ignore Frostwolf Graveyard.

6. Capture the Frostwolf Towers and have one or two people hold them.

7. Capture the relief hut and hold it.

8. EVERYONE in and kill Drek'thar. DO NOT LEASH HIM BY RUNNING OUT OF THE ROOM. JUST STAY IN THERE IF YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.

Note: even if you follow this strat and don't kill Drek'thar before the Horde kills Vandarr, at least the game is over quickly, which means more honor per hour.

The Hold and Control Strat -
This strat is harder, but earns more honor, and can take a bit longer. I only recommend this is you queued up at the same time with a bunch of friends so that your team has some semblance of coordination.

Remember: CAPPING TOWERS MEANS THE OTHER TEAM LOSES 50 TICKETS. You can win by capping all the towers on the map. This earns the most honor.

• 1. On the opening rush, about 10 people should protect Balinda. You only need to do this for a minute or two to break up the Horde's initial rush. If you can stop them, they'll give up after a minute or two, and you can then move along. If they don't kill her during this initial rush, they probably never will.
  
  2. Everyone else should move ahead and start capping the Towers. Only 15 or so are needed to kill Galvanger, but it is worth it.
  
  3. Start taking all the towers on the map and hold them. Again, HOLD THEM.
  
  4. Leave about 10 people on Defense to prevent the horde from taking the towers in your base. If you can hold these towers, you will probably win.
  
  5. Leave the Horde a forward graveyard (stonehearth is best). If they rez back near their base, it will break up your offense. Again, LET THE HORDE HAVE STONEHEARTH GRAVEYARD.

This strat takes about 20 minutes if done properly, but earns over 1k honor.

Great guide Digo, hopefully some alliance listen to it

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Q u o t e:
This strat takes about 20 minutes if done properly, but earns over 1k honor.

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INPORTENT: Now that PvP actually happens in AV, the honor you get from killing people is not 0 like it was before. Don't forget to account for that when figuring out how much honor you get per game. Most people don't.

Note also that while the other three battlegrounds are symmetric in strategy, AV is not. Horde should be using their own strategy, one that still involves coordination and tower control, but more emphasis on defense than offense.

Also, hot tip for AB: If the other team is better at either coordinating a zerg, or just fighting, then actively try to avoid the other team rather than actively trying to fight them. Head towards their points that are thinly defended rather than your points that are active hot-spots: if they're going to win that node anyways, it's better for you to get another one quickly. You can actually win against a better-fighting but worse-coordinated group (which includes some premades) by avoiding their main force and back-capping everything.

IMO, it's probably best to always kill Galv in the initial rush for AV.

This is the only time you have 30 people all in the same zerg all charging down the same channel. You don't yet know whether the Horde has stacked IB with defenders or is just rushing like you.

If you get outgeared by defensive-strat Horde, you can quickly get pushed back beyond IW bunker without any hope of return. At this point, you can sometimes overcome a 150 ticket deficit thanks to the DEATH STAR capabilities the Alliance base, but not a 250 loss (from missing Galv, getting creamed at IB, and then losing Balinda and two bunkers for zero return Alliance side).

[You will get more than a few games where it comes down to Horde being locked outside DB by the bridge by 40 Alliance. Having killed Galv is almost always the key to winning this, because Horde casualties will be high but not 2-1 in trying to break in. God I love Dun Baldur. =D]

Galv dies *extremely* quickly now. A 30 man zerg will kill Galv with just a tank and a healer required for the main target while you kill any Horde in his base. The net loss of time is under a minute, if that, since towers/gy can be solo capped by most classes now. (And, if everyone is killing Galv, there's always someone smart enough to realise they could be using their time better by running up into a tower.)


What is MOST important in the new AV is the time on the towers. If you are rushing, you NEED to be capping the FW base towers almost at the stame time as you are doing tower point. Any class who can wear plate or at least has enough defensive ability to survive past the hail of arrows and a couple of DoTs/Hunter shots to get to the top of a FW tower and cap it needs to be down there the moment after you secure (not even cap) IB GY. You just will not win the PvE race if you start capping their towers AFTER waiting 4 minutes to secure IB.

Moreover, if you are defending, especially in a PvE race, defending the towers is your first priority. Virtually any offense can deal with a solo general, and most can deal with General + 1 WM. Very very few can manage General + 2 WMs, however. Holding onto your last two towers in the base, or ninja-recapping poorly defended earlier towers is the way to win.

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Q u o t e:

3 to Lumber Mill (usually 4 because Horde really like the Mill for some reason)

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I never quite got that myself. After about a month of AB being out, suddenly 99% of Horde PUGs would insist that capping Mine was useless. I've seen groups insist it's more valuable to keep zerging LM when Alliance has 6 coordinated defenders there, than cap Mine which is left unguarded, when Horde only has Farm left captured itself.

Nevertheless, it's good to see someone giving actual good PVP advice, even if some people might have expected a parody piece on how it's best to fight at the road junction between Stables, Mine, and Smith in AB for example. I did :/
Still, your advice can mostly be boiled down to "use teamwork, know the map, and try a bit of strategy" which shouldn't need saying but I guess as you say it really does.

"know the map" is now clearly laid out for people with learning difficulties.

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Q u o t e:
suddenly 99% of Horde PUGs would insist that capping Mine was useless

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They know Trila is down there.

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Q u o t e:
Re: EOTS - Do not go for the flag during the opening rush. It's not worth it at this point. It's more important to secure the towers and break up the enemy opening rush.

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If for some reason you do decide to take the flag on the opening rush, and manage to grab it, take it to one of the two Horde towers that are being assaulted. This will almost force the random mouth-breathers to follow you and unintentionally help with the offense.

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Q u o t e:


If for some reason you do decide to take the flag on the opening rush, and manage to grab it, take it to one of the two Horde towers that are being assaulted. This will almost force the random mouth-breathers to follow you and unintentionally help with the offense.

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You know, I think I came in to one of your premades once and saw someone intentionally do that.

Brilliant. =)

As for the LM over the mine - you can see stuff at the Farm/BS/Stables all from the one vantage point at the LM. You can't see !@## at the mine (in fact it's the dullest place to guard anywhere of any BG).

LM/farm/BS is the Horde holy trinity of AB, you should be able to get a fairly good lead and call inc's effectively with that.

The mine, perhaps ironically, defends itself by being invisible to anyone who isn't actively checking up on it. Chances are, once you get it, you'll hold it using few defenders for a very long time.

heyu i know youa

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Q u o t e:
As for the LM over the mine - you can see stuff at the Farm/BS/Stables all from the one vantage point at the LM. You can't see !@## at the mine (in fact it's the dullest place to guard anywhere of any BG).

LM/farm/BS is the Horde holy trinity of AB, you should be able to get a fairly good lead and call inc's effectively with that.

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My point wasn't about the differing tactical benefits of LM or Mine. It was that in Horde PUGs, people would rather zerg LM fruitlessly for 10 minutes while slowly getting further behind in points, than cap the unguarded Mine.

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Q u o t e:


If for some reason you do decide to take the flag on the opening rush, and manage to grab it, take it to one of the two Horde towers that are being assaulted. This will almost force the random mouth-breathers to follow you and unintentionally help with the offense.

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This should be printed on the back of the WotlK box.

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Q u o t e:


My point wasn't about the differing tactical benefits of LM or Mine. It was that in Horde PUGs, people would rather zerg LM fruitlessly for 10 minutes while slowly getting further behind in points, than cap the unguarded Mine.

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Oh.

All PuGs do that. =/

Some premades, too.

That was the worst guide ever, DIgo. Everyone know that trying to organize alliance PvP will only serve to confuse people, diminishing their pvp ability to the point where they are merely monkeys at keyboards.

And for GOD'S sake, if you're a hunter defending a node in AB on your own and you get attacked by two or more, take a second to type out a warning. Don't think you can kill them all on your own; your job is to keep them off the flag and slow them down long enough for help to arrive with traps/snares/pudding, but you can't get help to arrive if you don't let yourself take a few hits and type for help.

Excellent guide. I'd recommend posting it on our battlegroup though, since its still our battlegroup of alliance that are quite horrible.
Again, very well done.