Tol Barad

The World of Warcraft level 85 battleground, Tol Barad, is up for grabs once every two and a half hours, and is keenly fought over by the Horde and Alliance factions. The reward for the winners is access for the following two hours to the Tol Barad dungeon, where the prizes include player versus player (PvP) gear, and the daily quests. PvP gear has a property called resilience. Resilience basically is your damage shield and it absorbs damage inflicted on you by other players. It has no properties in any other aspect of the game, so it does not have a role to play in your questing and dungeon exploits. However, only heroic dungeon and raids reward you with better primary statistic gear.

To win Tol Barad your faction must capture, and hold, three buildings, The Warden's Vigil, Ironclad Garrison, and the Slagworks from the defenders within a 15-minute time limit. That time limit can be extended by the attackers by 5 minutes for every spire they destroy. The three spires are found at the bottom middle and the two opposite top corners of the map. There are siege engines available to complete that objective, and they can be left running and doing damage without a driver. To be able to drive one you first need to make an "Honorable" kill, so find some Horde and let rip. Then jump in a siege engine, their location is shown around the middle of the map by what look like towers. Set the siege mode on arrival at a spire and you will be ejected to rejoin the battle, whilst the siege engine gets to work.

The tactic of the defenders should be to ensure that they never get into a position where they can lose all three buildings, but this is easier said than done because there are frequent occasions where you do not have your full cap of players and the opposition has more players than you. Of course, you could be lucky and have the opposite situation, in which case the attackers have got the impossible task.  However working on the scenario you have too few players to defend more than one base successfully concentrate all your efforts on that one, but have a small team attacking to regain a lost building. You must have at least one building in your hands, or you lose. You will find that you chase around the map with that objective, that is as you lose a base you rush to another you do hold to defend it and so on.

The objective for the attacker is straightforward: mass attack one base, leave a defence; mass attack the next, leave a defence; mass attack the next and win. Simple huh!  But of course it doesn't happen quite that easily. It will if you have a full team complement and the opposition doesn't, and it is the tactic to follow.  However, if the teams are both full to cap the defenders should always win.  Defending with 20 and attacking with 20 should always ensure two bases.

Blizzard tries to balance the teams out equally, but Baradin Hold is not a well-loved BG and getting willing participants every two and half hours seems to be a problem. The main attraction BH offers up is more Honor Points than any other battleground, especially if you have taken the daily quest offered by the faction NPC.  It carries a 200 HP reward for the win.  Plus of course there is the chance to compete in the dungeon immediately afterwards, if you can find a team.  Ironically you may find that if you only have PvP gear PvE clad players will not want you in their team!

This article has been written with the new player in mind and for veteran World of Warcraft players it will have offered nothing new, but hopefully the guide will have been useful for the beginner.