I searched and searched, but could not find a thread talking about the new battleground Strand of the Ancients. If anyone has an official Blizz explanation, feel free to post it. I will give a brief overview below, and then go on to list what areas need to be explained better and what areas we can talk about in this thread.

Strand of the Ancients is the first battleground to incorporate siege weapons as well as a true all out defense. Most BG's can be won by pure offence with the possible exception of AV - but even AV can be won with very little (if any) defense. The game is exactly 20 minutes (minus prep times) split into two 10 minute segments. The game is simple, one side attacks and the other defends. The defenders have a total of 6 gates that need to be defended, as well as 3 graveyards. The attackers really only need to knock down 4 (I have never been in a match in which the final wall was taken down, not sure if that is all that is needed to win - someone may want to confirm). The attackers have access to siege weapons that use a catapult and a ram to do damage to the gates. Each gate has 2 stationary "catapults" that they can use to help destroy the siege weapons (note that siege weapons can be destroyed also by direct damage, on my mookin the siege weapon was immune to all DoTs). At the end of the first10 minute segment, the sides switch and everything resets. It is worth mentioning that the GY's cap instantly and cannot be recaptured - the first 2 GY's also give access to an area that manufacturers siege weapons.

First, I would love to see someone confirm how one can win this BG. I have never seen anyone take down the last wall and I am assuming that this is the final goal? Along these same lines, how are the tokens given/won?

Now, onto the specific questions that I am hoping people have all ready figured out:

What is the best way to keep pressure on the gates when attacking?

How many siege weapons can be used at a single time (the most I have ever seen is 2)?

Is it better for 2 attackers to get on the siege weapon and defend/attack from the siege weapon? It appears that you loose a lot of mobility, and I have never been able to turn which makes anyone behind the siege weapon very dangerous.

When defending, what is the best defense - manning all of the catapults or to do direct damage? I find that once a siege weapon gets to the gate and hugs it - I cannot do much damage shooting it from the catapult. In fact, the catapult seems to do the same damage that I could if not less.

How does catapult damage work? It appears to have some type of splash damage (or the circle shown when targeting does damage to a much wider area then it actually shows) When attacking the gates, I cannot tell a difference in the damage a gate takes no matter if I directly hit it or if it receives "splash" damage. But when I hit a siege weapon with a catapult, it seems to do no to little damage even on direct hits but sometimes I appears that I take 10% of its health away when hit by splash damage. Is this a bug?

Do the barrels of TnT (pretty sure this is not what it is called, but it looks like one out of the old Road Runner episodes) do building damage only? Is this more useful to use at times then siege weapons?

Finally, a discussion about what could be better would be nice. In my opinion, the time of each round needs to be lengthened or the siege weapons need to move faster. The introduction of speed boosts and health/mana return for people should be added. Certain types of buffs should be given to the seige weapons (speed boost at the very least). Finally, I would like to add NPC's to help attack and defend. Right now the whole BG seems very spread out, especially at the beginning with the huge beach and the two gates being so far apart. I really don't get a feeling of defending or attacking as it always seems to be 2 or 3 people vs 2 or 3 people at each gate.

If you are the attacker, you win by knocking down the very southern wall and getting in proximity to the Titan Orb (which is just behind that last wall). If you are defending, preventing the opposing side from reaching the orb is how you "win". Each game is 2 rounds, one you play offense, the other you play defense (same map, just flipped roles for each team). In my experience, the vast majority of games I've played were a draw, both sides defending just fine. If you reach the orb on offense and prevent the opposing side from doing so when on defense, then you win your 3x marks. The game takes about 20 minutes total, 10 minutes being on offense, and 10 minutes on defense. If offense reaches the orb, the round ends early.

As an attacker, I've had some success jumping in the tank and just ramming thru the first gate. Sometimes I can make it thru the 2nd gate before the tank goes. Good defenders pretty much ignore enemy players and burn down the tank before they even get in range of the wall guns (which are pretty bad, low damage and limited range/coverage). Most people are just playing as a pre-made Murmur chars and treat the game as deathmatch style, so I've managed to reach the last orb a couple times using the tanks/bombs.

As a defender, you just want to prioritize attacking the tanks. Blow those up, and offense rarely even uses the bombs and can't get past the first set of gates. As people get used to the BG, I expect more to grab bombs and use them on gates instead of just providing tank cover. There are also graveyards to defend, but unlike AB, if you lose a flag that represents a GY, it is lost for the entire round, no re-capturing it. This is a good mechanic as it moves the battle down field.

Overall, the concept is neat, but the implementation is pretty flawed. Tanks have 50K HP, guns have 25K hp. I know the guns shoot for about 2K per 2 seconds (roughly), and frankly it is pretty insignificant given the HP of players and tanks. The guns can't even cover right in front of the gate and there is terrain prevent them from firing straight and at any downward angle. As I noted before, the best approach is simply to wail on the tank with weapons/spells instead of using the guns. The machinery is pretty easy to take out for folks in pre-made gear, I can't fathom any machines lasting long or even being used when s6/7 roll around. I think the machines in the strand should do bonus damage to each other, and take reduced damage from players if they plan to leave the HP on those machines where they are at now. When driving a tank, I ignore the guns and ram right into the siege wall. The guns can't hit me there and I just ram/catapult the door down before proceeding.

That covers the bulk of it.

The other interesting thing to note are that all gates have a 'defenders teleport' in front of the gate, which will port players of the defending side back behind said gate. I believe you must use (right click), rather than running overtop of it.

I think the tanks respawn after a given interval, with one on each side of the map, but I haven't actually tested that.

Tanks respawn at the Goblin hunt after the first wall (he says "tank ready" or something similar).

The guns aren't too great, they could use some buffs in damage.


I can see more players using the bombs as more people learn to focus fire the tanks.

This is I guess a longshot sugestion but having a goblin at the start give a unique powerup scroll or potion, just lasts for your 10 minutes, and after channeling for 15 secs restores max hp mana, 3 minute CD. It would do a nice bit to keep the pace of the game up.

So what happens if neither team succeeds in taking the orb? Both sides get 1 mark? Or do the rounds continue until someone wins?

So far I've played quite a few games of SotA. The first few were great, as we went back and forth barely managing to get to the objective. In these games, I got 3 marks for the first, and 4 in the second. I wasn't expecting to see four marks, so I didn't really pay attention to the circumstances. Every game since has seen no one break through the final gate, with our (both?) sides getting no marks.

That certainly would seem to be a problem, so I hope it's not quite finished yet.

I played this on my premade (wooo!) priest character last night and this morning, and had a blast! A really nice battleground, and brings a lot of interesting aspects to the game. That said I have a few observations and questions.
Can the passengers on the assault wagons turn around? (Can hunter/mage/warlock kill stuff behind the wagon?) As a priest I hardly noticed as I can heal all around anyway.

The damage/hp/range for both the mounted guns and the wagons seems to be well off from what they should be. The guns are, as mentioned above, quite useless. 10 minutes per round seems to be somewhat low too, I have only had one game that someone won, and the rest have been draws, meaning no marks for anyone (??).
Overall the BG got great potential, but it's not implemented as well as it should be (yet?).

I'd like to see them record/give bonus honor for destroying gates and tanks like they do in AV. Most of the games I've played have been Deathmatch style with no one even using tanks on offense and no one attacking tanks on defense.

Last time I asked people to focus tanks I had multiple people tell me to "STFU, we are testing our classes."

I played that battleground maybe for 20 matches and I like it a lot.
Of course on the beta server, getting a good strategy running is really hard.

But one person alone manning the defense turrent can destroy the tank before it reaches the wall, especially if it stops to fire, instead of trying to ram the gate.
But if the attackers also shoot at the turrents it gets harder, because they can be destroyed.

As an attacker it is easy if no one is manning the turrents. Just hit the wall and alternate ramming and fireing.
You will get both first walls before you are destroyed, even if 2 people are attacking.

I played one game, where no one was bothering me and I finished the round after about 6min by activating the big golden orb.

But that is all on the beta, we will see how it plays out when WotLK hits live.
I am really looking forward in playing that battleground with my friends.

edit: Oh I totally agree that destroying walls should give bonus honor. They can even add achievments, like destroying a tank all by yourself, destroying all walls only using one tank and so on.

There are three possible end-states

Offensive tie - both win on offense
Defensive tie - both win on defense
Win/Loss - One side wins on both offense and defense

My experience, which doesn't quite mesh with what others are reporting is that a tie is one mark is awarded for a tie or loss and three marks are awarded for a win. Honor is around 425 in the 71 bracket.

I think most people misuse the turrets.

They're greatest strength is used as a support function, not the only line of defense. I've seen many players at the start of games who hide behind the wall if they don't get a turret. When a side is being zerged by 10 players, and the only two people defending are on turrets -- that's not going to stop anything.

If there are 8 people on the ground, supported by two turrets laying down 3-4k aoe damage without requiring heals against 10 enemies. The chances of defending that wall increases immensely.


Turrets are great against vehicles, but that's only when the catapult isn't at the wall. If it's at a wall, the damage any player can dish out is much greater than that of a turret.

If I'm alone at a side and see a vehicle coming. I'll starting shooting it with the turret until it gets near the gate. I'll exit the turret and start laying into the vehicle myself. Once I destroy the vehicle, and I get low on hp from fighting the other player. I can always port behind my wall and start gunning them down with the turret. No one says you have to fight fair.

This is currently how it is working on live servers.

Also of interest to note is that carrying the bomb gives you a buff which is handy to watch for on other opposing players. Players with the bomb buff (ie: carrying a bomb) can be prioritized over players without the bomb buff.

I noticed that, contrary to some complaining on the beta boards, certain DoTs were working on the siege tanks. The ones that I noticed sticking were SW:P and Vampiric Touch. As a death knight however my diseases definitely were not applying to the tanks.

Anyone know what the categories are for what will and what wont apply to the siege engines? This would help decide which classes should focus more on attacking the tanks, possibly manning turrets or attacking players carrying bombs/attacking turrets/defending tanks.

Some Warlock DoTs seem to stick to siege, though not all. Corruption for near certain.

I haven't played the scenario, but perhaps magic DoTs stick while curses/poisons/diseases don't?

As a feral druid I noticed that Infected Wounds, Rip and Rake didnt apply to the tanks.

Currently the only dots that work on the vehicles are magic dots. Mind Flay also works on them even though it didn't before.

I haven't seen a lot in here on a strategy level so I'll post from my experience, I have been running this a lot since I hit 80 on live, and ran it a lot on beta also.

Offense: by far the most effective strat so far has been sending 2 siege vehicles at each of the gates and having everybody on foot grab bombs. The vehicles make a beeline for the gate w/o paying any attention to any alliance players in the area. Fire the cannon as soon as they get into range of the gate and then start using the ram once in melee range. Players on foot CC the alliance as much as possible and make your way to the gates to plant bombs. Try and peel as many players off of the vehicles as you can. Winning is not about killing alliance but rather about getting the walls down as soon as possible.

If you find that they have a weak side and a strong side on defense send 3 vehicles towards the weak side and 1 at the strong side while sending almost all of the players on foot to the strong side. This will encourage them to stay there while the vehicles trash the weak sides walls.

Defense: This is all about killing vehicles. Players can drop bombs but they do minimal damage when compared to vehicles. Turrets do more damage depending on how accurate you are with them. If you hit somebody dead center in the target circle they will hit for about 6k but if you just clip them with the edge of the circle it will be closer to 1k. Unless there is a huge clump of players in range of the cannons it is almost always better to just stay on foot and use your own DPS to burn down the vehicles.

Again it is best to start out evenly spread between the 2 sides but be ready to send more players o one side if it has more vehicles hitting the walls. Also remember that your job on defense is just to stall as long as you can. Even if they manage to take the objective you can still win if you take it faster when you are on offense.

The key to victory in this BG is vehicles and walls. Hitting individual players is almost never a good use of time either on offense or defense.

If you are an unholy specced death knight with Shadow of Death (Ghoul Rez) and you die as the first half finishes then you are still a ghoul for the start of the second half. Since the Shadow of Death is unlikely to last until the fight begins you will have to wait until the first ressurection until you can play, effectively missing the first 30+ seconds of the second half.

So if you're playing against an Unholy Death Knight try to get them killed at the end of the first round, but don't kill the ghoul. This makes me wonder of Spirit of Redemption suffers from the same problem.

It does not. Ghoul form is apparently the only state-change in game right now that bugs out in this way.

A note to defenders in premades: before the match starts, it is wisest to send 5 dpsers to both the east and west beachfront to start destroying the siege engines right as the match starts; assuming 3k dps per person the first tank will be killed in about 5 seconds and you can move over to the next one quickly. I believe they respawn every 1.5 minutes (?) and thus this gives a huge advantage in time. If you can control them there and at the first gates, its nearly a predetermined win.

This strategy has been used successfully against me. What irks me about it is that it's almost impossible to counter. The tanks can't be healed (as far as I know) and they have no defenses. The only way to stop the enemy killing them is to kill them. Unfortunately that's going to take longer than it takes to destroy the tanks.

From my point of view SotA doesn't have much to do with PvP. Organised defenders focus on destroying vehicles and organised attackers focus on destroying gates. There is very little incentive in actually fighting other players. And frequently if one does attack other players they'll ignore it until they die. That's not very enjoyable sadly. I hope that not too many items will depend on SotA marks.

On the upside, at least the games don't last long.