Sneaking Into Stormpike

Let's get this right out there: I love Alterac Valley.

I loved the old AV when it was full of NPCs and it took literally days to complete a battle, I liked the middle version with the NPCs nerfed and long-capping towers, and I like the current version with its race to the finish. We could get all nostalgic and argue about which version is best, but there's a place for all of them in my heart.

In the current version of AV, which has been stripped down and mostly been reduced to a race to each others' general - don't forget to wave at the enemy as they ride by - there are still some things a person can do to bring back the PvP in an otherwise PvE battleground.

And before we discuss it we should probably mention that the L80 version of this battleground is drastically different than the 50-60, 61-70, and 71-19 brackets. In the 80 bracket you can have the best-geared tanks in the game riding down to pull the general for you, and these are the icecrown raiders who aren't afraid of nothin'. With proper heals they can pull the entire room with all the generals' buddies and tank them all at once. It's crazy. Multiple times I've seen the Horde (and the Alliance only once in my battlegroup) ride straight through from one end of the valley to the other, ignore the towers and graveyards along the way, and pull the general's room immediately. Five minute finish, 600 honor. Not bad.

Most of the time though the group just can't do it. If the pull messes up then you have dead tanks and healers, and they need to ride all the way back because you skipped graveyards. If the DPS pulls too much threat and gets themselves killed then you can end up fighting the boss forever and eventually the other team will show up and make you wipe (die to the boss). Sometimes it doesn't take anything more than a rogue or druid to sneak in and throw some crowd control on the tank in order for the whole pull to fall apart and people to start dying. The "blitz" works best with a good tank, and a decent sense of surprise.

Aside from that, the typical strategy is to cap the towers and bunkers and graveyards, and when all of the towers and bunkers are destroyed (each building destroyed gives you one less NPC to fight with the general) you pull the general and kill him quick. Each NPC still alive when you fight the general adds to his strength, but at L80 it's still pretty easy to take one or two of the NPCs with him and still burn him down.

If the battleground has lasted six minutes your enemy is probably not blitzing, and is eliminating adds (and getting extra honor) before they take out the general. If you see them taking every tower and graveyard along the way, you know they aren't blitzing or they wouldn't bother. In this case, where they are waiting for bunkers and towers to be captured, there is the opportunity for espionage.

Enter the rogue.

If both teams are waiting for the towers to go down before they pull the general, then usually the team that caps first is going to win. It is my supreme joy in AV these days to mess up that schedule by sneaking into our captured towers and recapping them before the timer expires. You have four minutes from start to finish, and no matter where you are on the field - which is huge - it is still enough time for you to ride to a tower and turn the flag in your favor, at least if no one kills you before you can complete your attempt.

My secret weapon is the AV trinket. Starting at level 51 you have the ability to complete a quest for your AV faction to go into a cave in AV and retrieve a piece of a banner. It's guarded by a bunch of higher-level mobs, but it's not too difficult to pound or sneak your way in there, get the banner, and return it to your questgiver in the Alterac Mountains. In return you get a trinket that will allow you to teleport from anywhere on the field to the entryway to your general's building.

For most classes this is a suicide mission. Once you show up the enemy is usually waiting there (for the tower timers to expire) and seeing you show up is like throwing meat on a kennel floor. *chomp* But for rogues and druids, if we click our stealth buttons just at our teleport is finishing, we will immediately go stealthed when we arrive, and we can scoot out of there before anyone detects us.

Then it's the difficult science of sneaking into a tower, identifying the people guarding it and figuring out how much or how little they are paying attention, and using the right timing or crowd control to create eight seconds during which you are not attacked and can recap the flag.

It's a science. Hunters and DKs with pets on auto-attack can be a nuisance. Sometimes you end up CC-ing the pet and not the character who is oblivious. Sometimes you need to use two forms of CC to keep them busy. Sometimes you need to use one form, wait for them to trinket out of it, and use another. But the very best tower recaps, the ones that taste like grade AAA prime rib au jus are when there are three or more people in a tower guarding that flag and you still recap it. My personal record is six. I stood right on top of a tauren right in the middle of a pack of people guarding it, and vanished without being attacked. It was savory.

See there's safety in numbers but there's also complacency. Everyone thinks they're helping the effort, but not primarily responsible. When I go to recap, that flag is mine. It's my responsibility. When they defend it's just something they're helping to get done. If they took as much responsibility for their job and paid it as much attention as I do, they'd never allow a recap. Some players are tough and really expect a recap and they're pretty hard to deceive, but most are pushovers. Some you need to trick.

When a tower or bunker caps anywhere in the valley, there is a red swirl around the flag that looks exactly like someone is trying to recap it. If you time your recap correctly you can make it overlap with you actually capping the flag and it buys a couple extra seconds before the defense reacts. And oh God are they pissed if you dupe them and they know it.

By the way, the Horde word for rogue is "THROM!" Shout it louder, Hordies. I drink in your confused tears.

AV battles played: 409
AV towers defended: 324*

*That's the number I got from the armory and I'm almost certain my actual total is higher. My record for recaps in one battle is 9, although some of them were recaps of the same tower. I don't try to kill the person capping, I just recap it so they have to cap it all over again and restart the timer. All I'm trying to do is buy us enough time to win.

**The armory site is wrong, as usual. In-game statistics say 213 AV battles, 330 towers defended.