Thlop's Guide to Eye of the Storm (EotS)

(Created by Thlop from the euro server Hellscream)


Thlop’s Guide to Eye of the Storm

1.0 Intro

1.1 Hello and welcome all to my guide on how to play Eye of the Storm (eots) battleground. Since levelling my warrior to 70 I’ve started pvping a lot more, and in fact decided to make him an all pvp character. With the recent changes in 2.3, pvp has changed a lot, but given this, eots is still one of the most overlooked bgs. In recent games I’ve got so annoyed because people don’t know how to play or just go for HK’s and hope that someone is willing to capture bases and defend, and from that I’ve decided to create this guide. Some parts are from external sources to give the best clarification.

Want tips, know how to play? Go to 4.0!

2.0 The Basics

2.1 Eye of the Storm is a battleground which combines World PVP like that in the Eastern Plaguelands and traditional battlegrounds PVP as in Warsong Gulch (Capture the Flag), with the "resource" requirements (points) of Arathi Basin.
The main objective for each team is to hold as many towers as possible, much like in Arathi Basin, and then to score points by bringing the flag from the center of the map to one of the those towers. The towers work much like in Eastern Plaguelands: players stand in them to capture them and the more people standing in them the faster the capture goes. More towers held increases the potential to score points. Each flag return to a friendly tower rewards points depending on the number of towers controlled by the team. The game ends when one side reaches 2000 points. If the flag carrier dies (similar to Warsong Gulch) then the flag is dropped and can be picked up by any player. Thus it is possible, and sometimes tactically advantageous, for one team to allow the opposing team to pick up the flag initially, then kill the flag carrier and seize the flag, returning it to one of its towers and scoring a flag capture. If the flag is not promptly picked up after being dropped, it will return to its spawn point (much like Warsong Gulch). Again, a player may return the flag to any tower owned by their team, so holding many towers is helpful not only in scoring points, but also in creating more options in retrieving the flag.
Flying mounts are not allowed in the battleground. This prevents people from using certain floating areas to their advantage.

2.2 Map of Eye of the Storm: http://www.wowwiki.com/images/7/7d/EotSbig.jpg


3.0 Some Maths

3.1 Resources are collected every 2 seconds, regardless of how many towers your team controls.

3.2 Each claimed tower generates victory points for the controlling team. The more towers your team owns, the faster your team gains points
1 tower controlled = 1 point/tick (0.5 points per a second)
2 towers controlled = 2 points/tick (1 point per a second)
3 towers controlled = 5 points/tick (2.5 points per a second)
4 towers controlled = 10 points/tick (5 points per a second)

3.3 Points from flag captures
1 towers controlled = 75 points
2 towers controlled = 85 points
3 towers controlled = 100 points
4 towers controlled = 500 points

4.0 Tips & Tricks

4.1 Holding at least two towers, preferably three, is more important than capturing the flag. If your side controls only one tower, regaining control of a second tower should be the highest priority. If the other side controls three towers it is virtually impossible to win no matter how many times you capture the flag. To see this, consider the case where your faction controls one tower and the other faction controls three. The other faction is gaining two points more per second than your faction (2.5 vs 0.5). Each flag capture is worth about 75 points (this does not take into account the 2.2.0 changes). This means that you would have to capture the flag once every 38 seconds, with the other faction never capturing it, to win the battle. Practically speaking, a faction which controls only one tower for most of the battle cannot win, no matter how many times it captures the flag, you still will gain points from the capture however which gives you more time to capture a tower back meaning it's a good idea to at least have a few people trying to keep flags capturing.

4.2 While a team holding three towers is in a better position to four-cap (take control of all the bases), they may find trouble with the opposing faction pushing in force on their third tower with only one or two people from that faction running the flag. This can ultimately make or break the game depending on how strong the defense of that tower is.

4.3 One often used strategy is to have one or two people capture each tower on the starting side of the battleground at the beginning of the match, with the rest of the team quickly pushing to the flag and gaining control of the middle. Generally fights should take place by the flag or near a tower; fighting elsewhere will not cap towers and leaves the flag open to the opposite faction.

4.4 One of the most key things to do is speak. Tell your team mates where an incoming attack is, tell them if your base is safe, tell them if the flag should be intercepted, just SPEAK! The number of times I’ve been trying to control the fight and its just silent. Silence is not good. No communication = lose. So, say things like “inc DR” or “belf safe”. It really does help the rest of the team.

4.5 During the game you will have to defend and assault a base. Don’t just sit there waiting for someone to come along and fight you, mount up and go assault an enemy base! There’s no harm in doing so. For example, if you’re at FR, the enemy has mage tower and there’s no enemies around, go attack mage tower. Tell a friend to come with you. What that does is harass the enemy into trying to kill you and forget about the rest of the battle. You die, you rez back at FR. The enemy is still at mage tower healing up. You can then defend if an attack is incoming or go again and assault the mage tower. Eventually, if your team’s not busy, they’ll see that there’s only 2 people at mage tower and come help you capture it.

4.6 When defending a base, say mage tower, and you see the incoming attack of 4 enemies…
1. Alert your team by saying “inc MT 4!”
2. Engage the enemy far away from the tower – this will not let them start pushing the capture bar more towards their side, so if you do die you have more time to rez and fight them again
3. If you win the fight, the enemies will be sent far back to their base, giving you time to heal up.
4. If you lose, don’t worry. You’ll get sent to your nearest base to rez. Once you’re up again say something like “mage tower lost, 4 there now” and get some friends to come and help take it back. Even if it means taking some people out of the flag fighters, bases > flag.

4.7 If you’re in a pug, and at the start everyone goes for the flag, try to make them spread out. If you can’t get them to spread evenly, just say group 1 flag, group 2 belf, group 3 FR. If you’re with a load of silent allies just say politely “Get 3 bases and hold please”. Hopefully, if they understand or ever read the chat log, they’ll get 3 bases and you’ll be on your way to a win.

5.0 Conclusion

5.1 So from all this, Eye of the Storm isn’t actually the hardest game in the world. Thanks for reading my guide, hope its helped you in some way and I hope you enjoy playing your next Eye of the Storm. Stick to the tactics and you’ll do well. Just remember, and spread the word, Bases > Flag :)