Treatise of War #1: Resources of Warcraft A

There are 3 resources in Warcraft PVP. Whichever team exploits and utilises these resources better, will emerge victorious. So before we get into strategy and tactics, it would behoove you to internalize these resources and recognize their use and misuse.

In order of importance, they are:
Leadership
Action
Mobility

For the first Treatise, I will discuss Action, the resource most easily understood.

Action is simply the use or non-use of spells, abilities, and item activations in WoW PVP. This needs to be differentiated from movement (mobility) and unity of purpose (leadership).

Most Action is granted in the form of Global Cooldowns (hereafter referred to as GCD). All classes except rogues and cat form druids are granted one GCD every 1.5 seconds. Those two exceptions are granted GCD's every 1 second. For an in-depth definition of GCD, see http://www.wowwiki.com/Cooldown .

Action, then, is a renewing, non-exhaustible, extremely perishable resource that will last as long as you are alive.

Posit the following. You love ice-cream. You are given one cone of your favorite flavor every 1.5 seconds (1 second if you are a cat or ninja). If you do not eat it by the end of the 1.5 seconds, the cone disappears. There are no negative consequences to eating the cone, only positive utility gained for every cone eaten.

What will you do? Chow down with all due haste, of course.


It's quite amazing to see how such a simple resource as Action can be misused. I recommend jumping into the next available Battleground (hereafter referred to as BG) and see how many players do not consume their delicious ice cream cones as soon as they become available. Pay particular attention to the reactions at first contact -- that is, when a player and his enemy first see each other. The player who misuses Action will simply back up away from the engagement, not using GCDs at all. The longer this hesitation lasts, the worse the misuse of the Action resource.


Action is the most fundamental of all tactics. It is the bedrock of strategy and leadership. So before anything else happens, develop a good internal clock of that golden GCD cooldown, and force yourself to eat every last goddamn ice cream cone that's placed in front of you.

For those who understand better visually, take a look at this simplified random pvp video off youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UBMotPwb8o

Replay the video from 1:20 to 1:25. When the rogue is rushing towards the mage, the mage is simply backing up (using mobility, albeit poorly), and wasting his GCDs. Those things never come back once the time is past, and aggregated over the time of a fight, and over however many players in that fight, this small difference becomes overwhelming.

Next week -- choosing the right flavor cone.

Deva out.

Welcome to AO

Greetings gentlemen and welcome to AO Warcraft. This blog is devoted exclusively to developing and perfecting the tactics and strategies of PVP in the MMO World of Warcraft. To launch the blog, I will be posting a set of Treatise of Warcraft that will update every Saturday.

Comments, suggestions, welcome -- just post or send email to zhang17@fas.harvard.edu .

Deva out.