The Eye of the Storm battleground is a fun and exciting place to fight it out in the World of Warcraft. It is a very confusing battleground though, as it combines two different objectives. It is partially a capture the flag game and partially a capture the objectives game. Most players know how to deal with each one separately, however tie them together and players lose track of what is most important. So while you may know the basic rules and understand the ideas of how it works, the tactics and strategies to actually win may elude you. That's where this portion of our Eye of the Storm guide steps in to help. We are going to look at the basic strategies that will allow you to win in this exciting battleground.

Setup

Before the battle even starts, you need to get prepared. This means a few things, some depend on you class, others depend on you being the leader of the battleground.

• If you can buff players, you should be buffing everyone you can while the gates to the valley are still closed.
• If you are a mage or warlock, create food tables and health stones for other players.
• If you are the leader, attempt to create some valid 5 player groups that will work well together. This ideally means a tank, healer and dps in each group of 5. It could also mean a few smaller 3 person groups that can be split up to hold more objectives at once instead of the 3 normal groups.
• Decide which groups are going after and holding each of the objectives.
• Pick a flag runner for once you establish control. This should either be a druid or rogue for speed, or a solid tank class (druid, paladin, warrior) for survivability.

Part of your setup should also be creating a simply macro to inform everyone of basic tactics you use. The one I use for Alliance is as follows below. It can easily be changed to work for the Horde as well.

Opening Tactics

The best way to start and win an Eye of the Storm battle is with the above macro and the tactics it states. If you can put your enemy on the defensive quickly it is hard for them to react effectively.

The basic method to win is to get and hold three towers for as long as possible. If you can hold three then you are gaining more points than they are by 3-1 which far outweighs the points they can earn by capturing the flag. Luckily many players do not realize this and will continue to waste their time running the flag instead of attempting to capture another tower. Count on this and use it to your advantage.

Once you have captured the three towers you can move onto using mid-game tactics.

Mid-game Tactics

You now hold the towers, what do you do next?

The best place to start is to start moving people away from the towers into a flag group and a defense group. It's a good idea to remind players at this point of the basic mid-game tactics with a macro similar to:

Start with a defense group, each tower now that it is help really only needs 2 players at it as an initial defense crew. The general plan is 2 players at the 2 diagonal towers and one at the corner tower. If the players have lots of health you can sometimes get away with just 1 at a tower, but it is not advisable. Using the example from the macro above the corner tower would be the mage tower as it is between the Dranei and Fel Reaver towers, this is the hardest for the enemy to get to. This means that you have 10 extra players to move around into the defense and flag group, these should be 5 and 5.

The defense group's job is to react to the enemy attacks. As players call out the enemy attacks they move from area to area to assist in the defense of the tower being attacked. They should comprise of as many big DPS, CC (especially fear), and healing players as possible. This makes helping out far more effective as you can run in on your mount, drop off to fear (lock, priest or warrior) and then start taking out the opponents healers. Try to keep them off the tower as well, if you can trick them into fighting in the open instead of on the tower, all the better. Keep you healers and ranged players on the tower and your melee fighting around it engaging the enemy before getting to the tower. Most of the time you will not be able too, but if they fall for it, use it to your advantage. As soon as a tower is defended, drink, eat and mount up to get ready for the next call for help. Ideally you should also move to a central location (like the center flag area) so that you can get to any tower as quickly as possible.

Next you should have 5 players form a flag running group. Ideally this group will have 2 possible flag runners, a healer and 2 CC'ers. The plan is to have the group capture and hold the center area and then have the cc/dps'ers and one flag runner hold the area, while the other flag runner and healer takes the flag back to the corner tower. Again, using the example from the macro above the corner tower would be the mage tower as it is between the Dranei and Fel Reaver towers, this is the hardest for the enemy to get to. Once the flag runner is half way there and if still not being attacked the healer can return to the center. The flag carrier should reach the tower and announce it, and make sure the center is clear before capturing the flag. This way the next runner can take it immediately and start running back, the healer will already be there to escort him half way again, while the other flag carrier mounts up and returns to the center. If at any point the center comes under mass attack the carrier with the flag waits for it to be defended and the defense group moves in to help out.

Endgame Tactics

The end game in the Eye of the Storm is really just the final few hundred points. Your tactics should not change that much, other than the enemy will likely be redoubling their efforts to capture a tower to slow your points gain. Knowing this as soon as you get the flag at around 1800 points the center group can escort the flag carrier to a tower and then split up to help defenders are various towers. The flag carrier then holds the flag until the 1850-1900 mark (depending on the number of towers you successfully hold). That way you can capture it as soon as you are at 1850 (holding 3 towers) or 1900 (holding 2 towers) and win the game instantly.

Miscellaneous Tactics

How to deal with a Blitzing Opponent

When you come up against a group that blitzes from tower to tower with a large group of players (usually 10+) the best way to deal with it is to ignore them. As soon as it becomes apparent which tower they are attacking, everyone should scatter to the other 3 towers to hold or take them. As soon as they leave a tower, the players from the other towers recapture it behind them.

These games can be very frustrating as you are always running from one tower to another, but they are very easy to win once you realize what is happening. It does however take a lot of teamwork and coordination to get it right.

When to Focus on the Flag

Sometimes you run up against an opponent that excels at defense and you just can not take and hold a tower on their half of the map. When this happens it is generally better to switch over to defending just two towers and running the flag. Follow the same basic tactics laid out above, but you now have an extra player or two to help with the center flag area.

Have any comments, concerns, suggestions? We would be happy to hear them.

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