Alterac Valley

How to Earn Those Seemingly Impossible Alterac Valley Achievements

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av-achievements

Before attempting to shoot for several of these achievements, it is strongly advised that you have the following:

  • AV Preform Enabler installed and ready to go
  • A group of 10-15 friends
  • Several hours to kill

I won’t go into much detail about the AV Enabler. Veteran BG players understand why it’s useful and nearly a requirement in most preforms. There is no exception especially when it comes to AV.

Loyal Defender

This Achievement involves you killing 50 players while defending your general. It’s either going to be Drek or Vann depending on your faction. If you happen to join an AV in progress where you are losing, then it’s the perfect time for you and your crew to make their stand. Ideally, your defense will involve a couple of Death Knights. Have them Scorpion any unsuspecting Horde (or Alliance) players in.

As DPS, strafe in and out of sight as much as possible. Sneak out and try to bait players in, but take care not to get yourself caught outside. Death Grip from Death Knights work both ways.

Line of sight everything as much as possible. There are two columns in the back of Vann’s room which I’ve found perfect for the job. I’d be able to partially conceal myself behind it and still heal players around me. There’s probably something similar in Drek’s room as well.

The most important thing here is to don’t ever release. If you’re lucky, opposing faction members won’t loot your corpse allowing the healers behind you to pick you up manually.

I was able to get this achievement in about 3 minutes after dying and doing the run of shame back into Vann’s room.

Now make like Braveheart and hold!

The Alterac Blitz

Ready for the fastest AV ever? Here’s the roles you’ll need:

  • 2 tanks
  • ~4 healers
  • Miscellaneous DPS

You’ve got six minutes to win Alterac Valley. Once those gates open, your team is on the clock.

This is straight forward, PvP brute force tactics at its finest. With your team assembled and buffed at the gate, mount up and make straight for Drek’s room. Evade, sidestep, and ignore as many Horde as possible. Alliance players will be riding through the Fields of Strife along the west side while the Horde are going the opposite direction along the east.

If you’re lucky, you won’t get stalled heading down. Most of the time you won’t. If you do get held up, there’s nothing more you can do.

Assuming everything goes well, you’ll be staring down Drek and his four tower cronies. When Conquest got this achievement, we did it with 2 Paladin tanks. One of them picked up Drek and dragged him to the back of the room while the other picked up the other 4 tower marshals and peeled them away from Drek’s tank. The goal here is to minimize whirlwind damage as much as possible. Pop a Heroism and pray that your DPS is sufficient to take him down with the allotted time. You might have a few stragglers coming in from behind trying to put a dent in your plans. Dropping fear bombs and other forms of CC should delay them long enough for your strike force to take out Drek.

The other faction won’t even realize what happened. I’ll never forget the disbelief in Battleground chat when Drek died. It felt like Conquest went to Drek while the rest of the other players were working on Galv. Lot’s of “WTFs” and “Whoas” ensued.

Stormpike Perfection

Win Alterac Valley without losing a tower or a Captain. You must also control all of the Horde’s towers.

It is imperative that you do not attack Galv at all. I’ll explain why later.

You’ll be playing a tight checking defense at first. When your team comes screaming out of the gate, set up shop inside Belinda’s room and stave off the initial rush. Stonehearth is going to be assaulted at this point. Once Belinda is clear, head straight to Stonehearth and take it back. Use overwhelming force.

At this point, your team will need to split. The bulk of the forces will be advancing south and slowly capping towers.

Strong communication here is key. Definitely keep a player back on Belinda duty. You can watch from far away and see how many Horde players are going in. If it’s a substantial amount, alert the defense. The defense will be alternating between securing Stonehearth and Belinda. If Horde players manage to reach back, send 2 or 3 players to recap. It’s important to maintain possession of bunkers. If one is in the process of being turned by the Horde, and you manage to reduce their tickets to 0, you won’t get this achievement because you lost control of a tower. Even though they haven’t capture it yet, it won’t matter.

The strategy for the offense is to slowly and systematically capture towers. Note that the Horde have to have enough tickets left for this to happen. For example, if they have 40 tickets left and you still have two towers to cap, you won’t get the achievement. One tower will reduce the tickets to 0 while the other is still in progress. This is why you can’t kill Galv as it would drop their ticket count by 100 and reduce the time you have to capture towers.

We came close once to gaining this achievement but we lost a bunker at the last possible minute. This weekend. That’s my goal for this weekend.

Mind Control in BG’s Forcing Opposing Players to "Lose" Out on Tokens

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Want to have revenge on that one player who keeps dogging you in Arathi Basin? Fear not! There is a way! I believe it’s a bug but props to Aylii for bringing it to my attention. I thought this was fixed a while ago but apparently not.

You can force opposing players to only get 1 token instead of 3 when they win. I haven’t exactly verified this myself but this happened to my Guildmate last night. When it’s assured that you’re about to lose in your BG, what you can do is Mind Control a player of the opposing faction and hold onto them until the BG ends. I think the game treats them as a part of your faction when the BG ends. As a result, it awards the amount of tokens based on whether your side wins or loses.

However, it’s a known exploit. It’s been around for a while but I figured I’d reshare it again.

Plain and evil, no?

5 Ways to Survive Alterac Valley

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Before I played my Priest, I had a 60 Paladin. My first guild was Micro, a PvP group based in Twisting Nether. My time on WoW was spent running organized Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch for hours on end. This was before the battlegroups concept was introduced into WoW. You may consider me a hardcore raider, but I’m no slouch in PvP tactics either. The mechanics of AV has changed. What’s the general premise? Beat the crap out of the other team before they do it to you.

Two Methods to Victory

Killing the opposing team’s General
-OR-
Running their reinforcement counter to 0

As healers, we will often be one of the most sought after targets. Not all of us have full Season 2 gear with 400 resilience. If we want to give our team even a remote chance of winning, we need to survive. If we can survive, we can heal our own knuckledraggers pew-pewers. Remember, every death sustained is one point taken off of our reinforcement counter. With that said, here are 5 easy ways to live and support your side.

1) Use terrain to your advantage

When a player goes out of your line of sight, your spells automatically cancel. No other battleground or arena has much junk to hide behind. If you’re on the frontlines and you know you’re being targeted by range, duck behind a tree. You can move behind a tower. Don’t just stand in the open and give their mages easy Frostbolting action. Line of sight THEIR spellcasters. If I’m healing a Warrior, I will dismount behind a tree. All that crap you learned in Grade 10 math pays off here. Set up a triangle. You can see the warrior. Enemy mage sees the warrior. You can’t see enemy mage, therefore enemy mage cannot see you. Mage blasts warrior, sees heals, tab targets to you, realizes you’re not in line of sight, gets crushed by Skillherald. And all you had to do was park yourself next to a tree.

2) Do not mindlessly charge into the enemy

If I had a copper for everytime I’ve seen this happen, I’d be able to quit school and sell WoW gold for a living. In a game where every player’s life is precious, people who randomly charge into the horde with no support behind them are pissing away reinforcement points. Please do not do this. Do not stay mounted and numlock your way into Frostwolf Graveyard while realizing that there are 4 players of the opposing faction guarding that flag. If you’re going to go in on the offense, tag along with a few other players. Odds of survivability greatly increase with your proximity to other players.

3) Cut your losses

If your offense is stalling and you’re not able to sustain the health of players around you, do not hesitate to cut your losses and fall back. Being able to think on a macro scale and on a micro scale is an asset. If six players are rushing up the ramp into Tower Point and you just capture it, there’s no way you can hold out that long for four minutes. Forty seconds maybe, but not four minutes. Better to drop a psychic scream, jump off the tower and fallback to the IB graveyard. Because if you think about it, you can either lose the tower and two reinforcement points or lose the tower anyway and come back later with some fire power.

4) Maximize your range

What’s the difference between healing at point blank range and healing at maximum range? Whatever your health is. If your at max, you’re not likely going to be targeted because the opposing team is busy with groundpounders that are smashing their face up front. That leaves you free to drop your renews, healing waves, shields, etc. Use the players your side as a barrier. Keep them alive and they will in turn protect you.

5) Stalling tactics

We have defensive measures at our disposal that we can use to evade enemy attacks or make us stronger. When you’re falling back, slow down the other side. Keep using your global cooldowns. Shamans should be dropping earthbind totems and grounding totems as much as possible. Priests should be tossing up shields, screams, and stoneforms (Dwarves only). Tie up the enemy as long as possible. Delay them. Do whatever it takes. If you see a mounted Tauren ride by, frost shock him. This especially holds true when you’re assaulting a graveyard. Don’t fight ON the flag. Fight between the graveyard and the flag so you can tie up and stall the players that are ressing. Think about it for a moment. What is your first inclination when you see an opposing player that is trying to tag your graveyard? You are going to do whatever it takes to get that player off the flag, right? Exactly. The reverse holds true.

Follow these simple concepts and you will help your side see success in AV. At the very least, even if you don’t win, you won’t die as much.