In common with what seems like a large proportion of the WoW population, I took to the battlegrounds this past weekend to complete the final steps of the Long, Strange Trip meta-achievement, abandoned in disgust last year after failing to click the damn flag in WSG for the umpteenth time. This year was a refreshing change. Why? This time I had backup.
Before I get too far in, I need to say a huge thanks to my bodyguard in these battlegrounds. As last year proved, these achievements are a nightmare to attempt solo, so she helped so, so much.
My experience
When I tried this last year on my Priest, solo, I struggled. My problem is that I insist on healing in battlegrounds.
Normally this isn’t a problem: I don’t get the caps or killing blows but I do get to keep our flag carrier alive while he races up the tunnel, or hide behind the broken-down Fel Reaver and help our apparently-lone defender hold a flag. As long as someone does get the caps and kills then all’s well.
The trouble with the School of Hard Knocks achievement is that it requires me to take point:
- Warsong Gulch – Return a flag. This requires me to be the quickest person to click on a dropped flag in order to get credit for returning it. As a healer I don’t stand much of a chance of actually killing a flag carrier, and I don’t get too excited about standing in melee range either, so I’m relying on other people killing the flag carrier and then me rushing in and spam-clicking to get credit. Last year I tried and failed at this for several battlegrounds in a row before this being the straw that broke the camel’s back. This time around I brought my friendly neighbourhood Feral Druid along and camped our flag with her. She did the killing and I did the clicking, and we got the achievement on our first battleground. We then continued our defence of the flag while our team capped a couple more times and we won the match. I even got Warsong Perfection as a tidy bonus.
- Eye of the Storm – Capture a flag. This one requires that the enemy be killed or chased off from the flag spawn in the centre, me to be the fastest person to click the newly-spawned flag, and then me to survive carrying the flag all the way to one of our towers. Actually this turned out to be the easiest one, since a DPS + healer combination is very effective at holding the centre, and I was allowed to pick up the flag. Doing this as a healer last year was pretty tough, since I couldn’t clear off the flag on my own and no one on my team seemed especially keen to capture the flag. Once I’d got my achievement, we helped out and went on to win the battleground. 2/2 so far.
- Arathi Basin – Assault a base. Note that defending a base doesn’t count, it has to be already enemy-controlled when you attack it. This is another one which does not favour a healer: if there’s any sort of defence of the flag I don’t stand much of a chance of clearing it out, and since the healer is often (should be always, but people aren’t as logical as they should be) taken out first my chances of being able to assault the base ahead of any others who are assisting me are slim. Once again, a DPS + healer combo was plenty to clear out the 1 or 2-person defence left at a node so I could go in and assault it. Oh, and we went on to win that battleground too. 3/3
- Alterac Valley – Assault a tower. Same as Arathi Basin really. If there’s any sort of defence I will have great difficulty clearing it out in order to assault the base, and my inconvenient lack of Crusader Aura makes it tricky for me to win the race to the towers. Not a problem, bring a pocket DPS along who can do my killing for me, and it’s easy. We then went on to tank Vanndar and three adds and won that battleground as well. 4/4
Now I’m not saying that I couldn’t do these achievements solo, but I would require a lot of cooperation or an even larger quantity of good fortune. Warsong Gulch would require me to follow the enemy flag carrier like a terrier until I got lucky enough to be the one to click the flag. Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin would require me to find an undefended node to assault. Eye of the Storm would require the flag to be undefended or me to be the fastest clicker and no one to attack me while I channelled the flag pickup.
Playing DPS makes this a lot more possible. I doubt I could take down two or three defenders but I have a much better chance of killing that lone rogue hiding around the back of the Gold Mine as a DPS than as a healer. That said, having a pocket healer probably makes life a lot easier for a DPS player too, guaranteeing the win for them rather than making it 50-50 based on who gets the jump on whom.
It should be borne in mind that I suck at PvP and have functionally zero resilience. I even use the no-resilience version of the PvP trinket from Wintergrasp, which I picked up for some fight or other in T7 or T8, lost in the mists of time. But I share this with a large proportion of the WoW community, and I’d like to think I have a better grasp of my character than most.
Harmful to PvP?
Well, my non-scientific, anecdotal, totally unreliable evidence would say “absolutely not”. Seriously, my BG stats are somewhere below 20% wins, but this time I managed to score 4 wins from 4 games. However, a hasty generalisation is not proof, and I’m quite sure there were Alliance with Orphans out who would tell the opposite story.
But most of these objectives are, at least so it seems to a PvP newbie like me, helpful actions. OK, deliberately allowing the enemy to kill you or dropping the flag so they can return it is not a helpful action, but guarding the flag? Capturing enemy towers or nodes? These are (or should be) the point of the game. Let’s not get into the fact that people don’t even wait for towers before attacking Vanndar Stormpike these days, they just push an ICC-geared tank into the fray and heal the living daylights out of them. If we wipe, we lose. C’est la vie.
I’ll agree that the Eye of the Storm achievement might be a little counter-productive if attempted unintelligently (like I did last year). There’s not much point capturing the flag when we only hold one tower because our focus should be elsewhere, but if we have the towers under control then a cap speeds things up and buys us a headstart.
The reason this causes such problems for PvPers in battlegrounds is in two parts: people are generally doing this solo, and everyone is doing this at the same time.
PvP in general, as with everything else in this massively multiplayer game is much more productive and successful if we cooperate and work as a team. Having people in your battleground with a specific goal who may ignore even the rudimentary coordination of a random battleground is not exactly a recipe for success.
But, as my experience showed, these goals can be beneficial to the battleground as long as only a small number of people are doing them. 8 people camped in our flag room would suck, but two or three people highly motivated to defend the flag are a good thing. Likewise a few people dedicated to recapturing nodes is beneficial in AV or AB. The problems come when too many people want to do this at the same time, like Children’s Week. Now you have a minority of people floating around the zone, doing the jobs necessary to win, and a majority of people racing to cap nodes or kill the enemy flag carrier.
You can see the thought process behind creating an achievement like this: encourage PvE players to participate in PvP, and reward them for completing the objectives of the battleground. This is fine if you’re bringing a small number of players in at a time, but doesn’t work when the numbers get too high. You need a range of roles and flexible people in a battleground to be successful.
Improvements
I don’t have any problem with being required to take part in all aspects of the game in order to get an achievement like this which rewards long-term commitment and wide participation. I don’t even mind that some of the achievements are a little difficult to obtain. I mean, I didn’t get a mount for Loremaster or World Explorer, so this one should require a little more from me.
But can we address the problems of the massive influx of players that cause such problems for the battlegrounds every year?
There’s a temptation to suggest making the holiday last two week rather than one to spread things out, but I’m not sure this would help. Think back to Noblegarden: the eggs are massively overcamped for the first day or two, then it seems there’s no one around at all. People just seem to want to do them as early as possible, and since a lot of people have work or school there will be a concentration of people at the weekend. Beginning holidays midweek rather than at the weekend might spread the load a bit though.
It’s difficult to introduce an artificial limit to the rate at which you can complete the achievements without punishing those who have limited playtime. For example, you could give the Orphan Whistle a 1hr cooldown, but then you’re limiting people to very few attempts.
You could change the achievement to a sort of “assist” system, where healing the person who returned the flag, or damaging the enemy flag carrier, generally assisting in the returning of the flag was enough to give credit, this would speed up the gaining of the achievement and at least get the surge through the system more quickly. Or you could give credit simply for winning the battleground.
Advice
If you’re a healer having trouble with this achievement, or dreading taking it on, the best advice from me would be to find someone to work with. If you can get yourself into a guild or other premade group that would be ideal, but even finding a partner willing to support you will make all the difference.
I would also encourage people to stick with the battleground once you get your achievement done. There’s no reason to screw over your fellow players by bailing the second you get your credit, and even one player swapping over make a big difference, especially in the smaller battlegrounds.
