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February 11, 2008

6 Mods and Macros to Help You Win in Battlegrounds


Winning battlegrounds doesn't just take good gear, it also takes good organization. I've been running a ton of BGs, both pug and org, to farm honor for my arena-ing shadow priest and pick up the 2-minute PvP trinket for my mage, and the one thing that's struck me (especially in Eye of the Storm) is how much more honor I get when I'm a) running with an organized group (where everyone is well-prepared, in TS, and following directions) or b) in a pug that is actually communicating well. Today I thought I'd share five addons and one macro that I've found especially helpful in either organized or unorganized battleground pvp.

AlphaMap
AlphaMap is an excellent BG map mod that I have set up to pop up whenever I enter a battleground. The addon provides a transparent, scaleable map of the entire battleground that you can drag to anywhere on your screen. The huge advantage to this, of course, is that you have a constant view of the battleground's progress without ever having to hit M to look at the in-game map. AlphaMap will also display the location of everyone else in your raid on the map, and gives a special icon to the flag carriers in EotS and WSG. A right-clickable menu on the side of the map lets you broadcast information like the number of nodes needed to win in AB, the location of a flag in WSG, or the number of enemies incoming in AB.

Deadly Boss Mods
DBM is familiar to many raiders as one of the two main contenders (along with BigWigs) for raiding boss mods and timers. If you're already using DBM and want to take advantage of its battleground timer features, just make sure you have the Battlegrounds suite installed and enabled. (If you're looking to pair timers with a good map mod, I recommend AlphaMap.) Fans of other boss mods or folks looking for pure PvP addons can find similar functionality with Capping.

Stinkyqueue
Without Stinkyqueue, there would be no organized Alterac Valley. (Without Stinkyqueue, I might never play Alterac Valley again until patch 2.4.) Stinkyqueue is a mod that allows you to join AV as a premade group. Technically speaking, it just synchronizes the queue requests to greatly improves the chances that your entire group will end up in the same Alterac Valley, but the effect is largely the same. Here's how it works: everyone in the raid must have Stinkyqueue downloaded and enabled, and must talk with the battlemaster to open up the queuing window. The raid leader types /sq q to simultaneously queue everyone in the raid. For Ace fans, Lightqueue is the Ace alternative, and will work even if some of your raid is using Stinkyqueue.

Capping
Capping is the Wowace heir of Battlefield Commander, an old standard long-favored by PvP veterans. (Battlefield Commander is no longer being maintained.) It's an all-in-one informational BG mod that provides popup maps and timer bars, and lets you broadcast the estimated time to win or time until a node caps by ctrl-clicking the bar. To move the timer bars, click them once to highlight, then drag them by the title text that appears above them. Capping also provides a flag carrier frame that you can left-click to target the flag carrier in WSG or EotS.

Wopumentia's BG Defense Macro (modified by Snapfizzle)
This macro will call out incoming enemies along with your location, which it automatically detects in the first line. It broadcasts via a raid warning if your BG leader gives you assist. For minimal disruption while you're dealing with the incoming wave, just mash the macro once for each incoming enemy. Three lines of raid warning = three enemies to deal with. This macro is especially useful in AB and EotS.

/script mP = GetMinimapZoneText( );
/script cL = "";
/script if ( IsRaidOfficer( ) ) then cL = "RAID_WARNING"; else cL = "BATTLEGROUND"; end
/script SendChatMessage ( "<<"..mP..">> has inc! 1 per spam...", cL, nil, nil);

There are also addons out there that do the same sort of thing (see AlphaMap, which has a similar menu), but if you ask me, this is a far simpler and more lightweight solution. Just type /m, create a new macro, copy and paste the green text above, and drag the macro to your toolbar.


Whether you're just starting out in PvP or looking to improve your game as a battleground veteran, I hope this list had something useful. If you have another favorite battleground mod you'd like to share, please leave a note in the comments!

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

I didn't try AlphaMap, but sounds like it's the same as battle map (shift+m I think).

Nice list btw

Girl Meets WoW said...

AlphaMap is actually pretty different from the in-game map in a couple of ways. Instead of being a basic minimap, it actually uses textured terrain maps. I like them because you can change their size and transparency -- I make the map mostly seethrough and covering up the entire bottom right quadrant of my screen.

Shift-m is also perfectly acceptable if you're just looking for a basic bg map, though, and I bet not everyone knows about it. Thanks for commenting!

Anonymous said...

Cartographer is a nice addon as well, though not entirely necessary. Since it colors your mini-map dots to represent classes, it helps see who's where in most BGs. That way you can say "Holy crap, they left a priest at the Lumber Mill? I'd better get up there!" or "Bah, warlock guarding everything, we're cool".

The most important mod to have, though, in my opinion? TS or Vent. Having clear voice comm in a BG is a huge advantage.

K said...

Isn't Stinkyqueue illegal?

WyldKard said...

The Blizzard mini-battle-map suits all my needs when run alongside the Battlegrounds FuBar plugin.

Also note that BigWigs, the Ace version of Deadly Boss Mods (DBM), does not appear to have the Battleground integration, which is rather unfortunate.

@Girl Meets WoW

Don't you find running AlphaMap, DBM, and Capping a bit redundant?

Anonymous said...

MUST KILL 'BOT!!!!

Anonymous said...

Isn't Stinkyqueue illegal?

Nope, tons of people have told me it is not. I have not used it but I do use another AV Q'ing addon called Fini Group AV which from what I am told is pretty much the same as Stinkyqueue (a few differences in options) but same result. I have been using Fini for over a month now with no problems.

I don't see how it could be illegal, for it to work the entire AV group has to sit at the AV battlemaster with the "join battle" screen open (but don't click join battle) then when prompted by the group leader the addon simply clicks join battle for everyone at the same time. Pretty simple, and not always accurate.

Anonymous said...

Proximo is also very good. I use it mostly for arenas. It appears as a box and as you click on your opponents it gives you unit frames (color-coded according to class and also gives spec in 0/0/0 format). This comes in handy when you are in arenas and someone yells "Target the priest!" Much easier than tabbing through all the pets in frustration :P It also shows who is carrying the flag (name and class color) in WSG.

Girl Meets WoW said...

K - Stinkyqueue is definitely not illegal. It relies on a piece of code that lets addons enter a queue and join a BG. All Blizzard needs to do to make SQ illegal is remove this functionality for addons, but they've specifically stated they are fine with Stinkyqueue being used at present.
Durg - Too true.
becar00 - Proximo is excellent, and my choice in arenas as well.
alibaba - I will keep deleting your gold spam. Give it up.

Anonymous said...

I mainly just run with DBM since it has the timers that you talked about with Capping, it just doesn't have that Flag carrier tool....which would be really nice

grumpus said...

The spam is evil I say. Evil.

That macro looks awesome and I admit I didnt know about the battlegrounds pack for DBM. I shall check it out!

Great list!

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