Alterac Valley for druids in WoW Forever

If you’re levelling a druid in Forever towards 51, or you’re already there, you’ve probably wondered what a druid actually does in Alterac Valley, a forty-a-side fight that mostly looks like a crowd running north. This guide sets out which version of the map Forever appears to run, walks it objective by objective, and gives every druid job on it to Balance, Feral and Restoration alike, with a checklist and a one-page sheet you can print.

Whilst I’ve spent years on druids across both factions and more Alterac Valleys than I can count, Forever has only been live since 4 November 2026, and I haven’t timed a capture or counted a Marshal in a live match yet. The druid spells here come from Blizzard’s own notes and stand as written, but nobody outside Blizzard fought in Alterac Valley before launch, so its map rules are still the Classic ones, and each says so in the sentence where it appears. The guide is written from the Horde side because that’s where I play (an Alliance druid can mirror nearly all of it).

The short version

If you only want to know what a druid does in a forty-a-side match and which rules decide it, these are the fourteen calls this guide turns on, each with its reason and a link to the detail, and if you’d rather have them on paper or open on a phone, the cheat sheet further down prints.

Before we start

This guide assumes you’re level 51 or higher, where the client data starts the bracket, that you’ve skimmed Balance druid PvP mechanics (the guide links to it rather than teaching movement twice), and that your client is ready for eighty players on one screen, which the raid and battleground profile covers. Solo-queue advice comes first everywhere, and the premade changes have their own section.

Anything Blizzard’s notes and hotfixes, the launch client or a named live tester back is stated plainly, with its source credited. Anything that rests on the Classic version of the map, or on a report from before launch, says so in the sentence, most often as “in Classic”, and nobody has checked those in a live match yet.

The map knowledge here is mostly other people’s. Ragor’s Classic Alterac Valley strategy guide at Wowhead is the rules reference this guide checks everything against, and the Warcraft Wiki editors’ tactical overview is the best map reading anyone has written, chokes and all. Everyone else this guide leans on, from the version history and the developers’ honour comments to the client data and the live hotfixes, is named with what they back in Sources and credit.

Live in Forever

Alterac Valley is live in Forever, one of four battlegrounds alongside Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin and Darkspear Islands, and it’s listed in the PvP tab. Blizzard’s 7 October article, How PvP Progression in World of Warcraft: Forever Works, says it wants players to enjoy every map “without feeling compelled to choose Alterac Valley solely for Honor efficiency”. On the PvP episode of the official podcast Josh Greenfield and Tim Jones said they’d made it “a little less lucrative” for honour whilst raising every other battleground. ForeverDB, which reads its data from the game client, lists it as 40 against 40, levels 51 to 60, kill the enemy general, though that bracket and team size come from the client data rather than a live match.

It’s also the one map nobody outside Blizzard got to play before it went live. Luxrah at Warcraft Tavern reported on 7 October that it wouldn’t be in the beta, which stopped at level 30 with Darkspear Islands its only battleground anyway (by Kaivax’s 1 October development notes and MmonsteR’s beta page). No Forever patch note or hotfix since launch mentions it by name, so no map rule below that comes from Classic has had a public test in Forever, which is why each one names Classic as its source rather than reading as a Forever fact.

Which version is live

Everything published so far points at Forever using the Classic Era version, 1.12, with no reinforcements and a single way to win, killing the enemy general. ForeverDB’s client data gives the objective as killing the general and lists no reinforcement count. A player who looked at the leaked map said on the official forums that the Horde spawn is “still halfway up the map” (the pre-2.4 cave), and Blizzard’s worry about honour per hour only makes sense for the fast version. The exact NPC count, the cave position and any quiet Forever tuning still need a live match to settle them, and the retail version’s 700-point counter and Korrak’s Revenge (a retail anniversary event) aren’t in the 1.12 version that looks to be live.

The map has had several versions, and this history is Classic’s, not a Forever fact. The 1.5 original was a zone full of elite NPCs, patch 1.11 cut the NPCs hard, 2.3 added reinforcements (a point total each side loses as its players and objectives die) and 2.4 moved the Horde cave further back. Blizzard chose 1.12 for Classic in 2019 as “an original WoW patch that gives us the most clarity”, with Commanders and Lieutenants still standing and Korrak the Bloodrager gone.

So read this as a guide to a raid with a map attached, not a battleground with some NPCs in it, which is the right frame for the 1.12 version and the one every druid job below assumes.

How the map works

These are the Classic 1.12 rules, which the client data and Blizzard’s honour comments point at for Forever, and each one changes what a druid should be doing.

• The win, which comes the moment either general dies, Vanndar Stormpike in Dun Baldar at the north end or Drek’Thar in Frostwolf Keep at the south. There’s no score and no clock in the Classic version, so a match where both sides defend can run for hours, and a race (both sides attacking at once) is usually short.
• The teams, forty a side, with parties of up to five allowed to queue together since a January 2020 Classic change, and the Forever client data Kami Labs read says the same.
• Towers and bunkers, four each side. The Alliance has Dun Baldar North and South, Icewing and Stonehearth bunkers, and we have the East and West Frostwolf towers, Iceblood Tower and Tower Point. Each one still standing keeps a Marshal or Warmaster (an elite guard) beside its general, so every bunker we burn takes a guard out of the Vanndar pull.
• The capture timer, which means an assaulted flag burns after a timer unless the owners retake it, and a retake resets the clock. The timer is four minutes in most Classic guides and five in some, including different parts of Ragor’s own page.
• Graveyards, you respawn at the nearest graveyard your side holds, so a captured graveyard moves the front and a lost one sends your dead somewhere else. The starting caves can’t be taken, and Snowfall in the middle starts neutral.
• Captains, one a side, with Captain Balinda Stonehearth holding Stonehearth Outpost for the Alliance (ours to kill) and Captain Galvangar holding Iceblood Garrison for us (theirs to kill). A living captain periodically gives his or her side a 20% health buff, and killing one pays bonus honour and reputation.
• Everything else, two mines with a boss inside, a boss each side can summon (Ivus for the Alliance, Lokholar for us), the Wing Commanders and the quests all exist in the Classic version, and in a race they barely matter.
• Rewards, Blizzard says it’s made Alterac Valley pay less honour than the other three battlegrounds, though the developers’ own word was “probably” a little less, and it hasn’t published the numbers for any of them. Icy Veins reports three marks for a win and one for a loss across battlegrounds in general, Marks of Honor stack to 30 since the 16 October notes, and reputation went to the Frostwolf Clan in Classic. Notably, Blizzard’s Known Issues post of 5 November says the PvP vendors are “temporarily unavailable in all locations”, so, as Luxrah at Warcraft Tavern put it, most PvP gear can’t be bought until that’s fixed.

The map, north to south

Alterac Valley is a long valley running north to south, with Dun Baldar at the top, Frostwolf Keep at the bottom, and one main road between them that both armies use. The schematic below is drawn from the Classic maps rather than copied from Blizzard’s, so the positions are approximate, and the question mark on the Horde cave means its Forever position isn’t known yet, as shown below:

For a druid the useful thing about this map is that nearly all of it is outdoors, so Travel Form works almost everywhere and every snare on the long road goes with a shift, by Travel Form’s live tooltip, and a root should too, if Forever keeps Classic’s rule (the root-breaking shift explains how). The exceptions in Classic were the two mines, the starting caves and parts of the keeps, so expect the same in Forever if it keeps Classic’s layout. Being indoors costs a druid less than it used to, because Entangling Roots now works there in Forever, as Blizzard’s Hunter and Druid deep dive says.

The bigger decision is mount or form, since mounts were allowed here in Classic and Plainsrunning has added nothing to mounted speed from the 26 October notes on, and the recommendation is to ride between objectives and shift the moment anything hostile is within 40 yards, for the reason below. Say a leg of road is 600 yards (an illustration, not a measurement). On foot at 7 yards a second that’s 86 seconds, and in Travel Form at 9.8 it’s 61 (the form is instant and 40% faster than running, by Wowhead’s live Forever tooltips), whilst at Classic’s mount speeds a 60% mount at 11.2 takes 54 and an epic mount at 14 takes 43. The mount wins on an empty road every time, but a daze knocks you off it and the remount is a three-second cast in the Classic numbers, so two dazes on that leg and the 60% mount is level with Travel Form, which never had to stop.

Those numbers leave out Plainsrunning (the Tauren racial that builds run speed, to 60% on paper after a long run, the mount’s 11.2). Kaivax’s 5 November hotfixes stopped it stacking before the gates open and say “Plainsrunning can no longer stack and stacks will be cancelled when carrying a flag in a battleground.” With no flag to carry here, the hotfix leaves open whether it still builds on the road at all. Where it does build, it adds nothing to Travel Form’s 40% until it passes it, as I found in my own test on 8 November, because you move at whichever is higher. It takes over about 105 seconds into a run and carries on to 60%, if nothing hits you (the Plainsrunning test), which agrees with Warcraft Tavern’s report, from before the 26 October change, that it doesn’t stack with other speed increases.

On the Classic map the chokes are the Dun Baldar bridge, where bunker archers cover everything coming off it, the inner gates of Frostwolf Keep, which the tactical overview calls tight enough to hold a larger army, and the high ground at Iceblood, where a few ranged players on the tower can watch both roads.

Every druid job on the map

A druid can do every job in Alterac Valley, which is the trap, because forty strangers will happily let you try them all at once. These are the jobs, roughly in the order the match asks for them, with what each spec brings to them.

• Offence, in the race, most of the raid rides north on the main road past Iceblood and Stonehearth and goes for Dun Baldar. Your job on the way is to arrive, which means mounting on the open road, Travel Form when dazed or rooted, and not stopping to fight the Alliance coming the other way, because every minute in the Field of Strife is a minute their offence spends on Drek’Thar.
• The Balinda group, five to ten players peel off at Stonehearth Outpost to kill Captain Balinda for the honour, the reputation and her side’s health buff. In Classic her Water Elemental can’t be crowd controlled, so don’t waste a Roots on it (and Hibernate can’t target it anyway), and her Ice Block and slow Arcane Explosion are easy to see coming.
• Tower and graveyard assault, someone has to click the flags, and a druid is the best class at getting to one alone, because Travel Form shrugs off the slows on the way in and Prowl in Cat Form (every druid has it, whatever the spec) gets you to the flag unseen. Whether you can assault a flag from inside a form, and whether the click breaks Prowl first, is still an open question in Forever.
• Defence, a smaller group stays south to slow their offence at Galvangar, at Iceblood and at the Frostwolf Keep gates. Balance is the best druid defender there is, because Hurricane, with no cooldown in Forever (Blizzard’s deep dive again), does more on a gate or a bridge here than anywhere else in the game, and Roots or Faerie Fire (now free from Bear and Cat Form, on a 6 second cooldown) handles the Rogue who peels off to reach you, with the mechanics guide’s line of sight and range habits keeping you alive. The trap is fifteen defending whilst twenty-five fail on offence, so count before you stay.
• The recapper, the Alliance will assault our towers and graveyards on their way past, and every flag left alone burns or moves our respawn. A druid in Travel Form who rides the south loop retaking flags (Tower Point, Iceblood, Frostwolf graveyard, the Relief Hut) is the job this guide rates above another body at the front, because one player resetting a timer undoes the work of five who set it.
• The raid healer, at Vanndar the job is healing a tank and a crowd through a boss and a counter-attack at once, and in a forty-player raid healers are the scarcest thing there is. Restoration does this best, with Tranquility the spell the fight is built for (Improved Tranquility now cuts its cooldown by up to 60%), and Rebirth on a dead tank saves the run back from a graveyard that might be a long way off, if it works inside the battleground as it did in Classic. Swiftmend doesn’t eat your HoT in Forever, and since the 2 November notes it only works on a Rejuvenation or Regrowth you cast yourself, which matters with three or so other druids in the raid (about four in forty, if the nine classes come out even), whilst Innervate on another healer before the pull is worth more than most of your casts. The raid-style frames earn their keep here.
• The off-tank, a Feral druid in Bear can hold a Marshal off the healers whilst a Warrior tanks Vanndar, or hold Balinda, which saves the Warriors for Vanndar. The spell that matters is Feral Charge, which keeps its interrupt in Bear (four seconds on a fifteen second cooldown, by Wowhead’s live Forever tooltips), whilst the Cat version doesn’t interrupt at all, and on defence it’s how you catch the Alliance capper before the click finishes.
• The 35/0/16 hybrid, whose recommended job is offence, riding with the race, healing at Vanndar and rooting anything that tries to reach the healers from the bridge. The hybrid sits between Balance and Restoration (the Restokin build has it in full), which makes it the most flexible druid on this map, because it can defend a choke or heal a pull and switch on the way. With no points in Feral it’s a poor tank, and a healer who can also stop a counter-attack covers the thing that loses a Vanndar pull most often.

Objective by objective

Here’s the map in the order the race runs it, the offence north to Vanndar first, as shown below:

Steps 4 and 5 are the two to plan for, because that’s where a solo-queue raid most often stalls, and the walk below takes each stop in turn.

The cave and the Field of Strife

The match starts with both sides in their caves behind a gate, and in the Classic layout the Horde cave sits well up the west side rather than at the southern end. Buff the raid, then ride. In the Field of Strife the two offences pass each other, and the recommendation is to let them, because the side that stops to fight here arrives at the other general second.

Stonehearth and Balinda

Stonehearth Outpost holds Balinda, with the Stonehearth graveyard and bunker beside it, and the tactical overview notes that Horde rushes in Classic usually skipped the graveyard entirely. The druid’s job is to join the Balinda group if one forms, and otherwise to keep riding.

Icewing and the Stormpike graveyard

Taking the Stormpike graveyard means our dead respawn next to Dun Baldar rather than back at home, and losing it mid-pull usually ends the offence. The overview lists three ways in on the Classic map, under the bridge, from the mine entrance and along the high road above, and a druid in Prowl coming down the high road is the least visible of them. Once it’s ours, a Balance druid roots the first Alliance player who comes back for it.

The bridge and Dun Baldar

The bridge into Dun Baldar is covered by archers from the bunkers, which in Classic aggro as you step off it, so the raid burns the North and South bunkers or fights through them. The druid’s job here is the counter-attack, and Hurricane on the bridge with Roots on anyone crossing buys the minutes a bunker needs to burn.

Vanndar

In Classic, Vanndar stands at the back of his hall with a Marshal for every Alliance bunker still standing, and like any general he resets if he’s pulled out of his area. Heal the tank, keep a HoT on anyone a Marshal touches, save Tranquility for the moment a Marshal or a counter-attack lands on the healers, and keep Rebirth for the tank. When he drops the match ends there and then. Congratulations!

Iceblood and Galvangar

That’s the offence, and from here the walk turns south to the defender’s side. Galvangar holds Iceblood Garrison, with Iceblood Tower and graveyard beside it. In Classic he hits hard, uses a periodic Intimidating Shout (a fear on everyone near him) and a cleave, and the overview notes a disarm takes most of his damage away. If you’re defending him, stand outside the shout and root the Alliance Warriors before they reach him. The overview advises the Alliance not to take the Iceblood graveyard, because it sends our dead back to Frostwolf as extra defenders, and by the same logic, whilst we hold it our respawns land further from the keep, so fewer of our dead end up defending it.

Tower Point and the Frostwolf graveyard

These are the two flags the Alliance assault on their way past, and they’re the recapper’s beat, for the reason shown below:

Here’s how that plays out. If the Alliance assault Tower Point and you’re at the Frostwolf graveyard, you’re one short ride away, so you can be clicking the flag a minute into a four-minute timer (the common Classic figure) with three minutes to spare. If you wait for five friends to agree to come with you, the tower’s gone, and with it the Warmaster it was keeping beside Drek’Thar.

Frostwolf Keep, the Relief Hut and Drek’Thar

In Classic, Drek’Thar stands in the keep with a Warmaster for every Horde tower still standing, and the Relief Hut graveyard behind the keep is the one the Alliance most like to take, because it puts their dead next to him. The tactical overview notes the Alliance can reach the Relief Hut past nearly all the other NPCs and the tower archers don’t cover its flag, so a defender’s first job when an Alliance raid reaches the keep is that flag. The second is the inner gate, which is tight enough for one Balance druid’s Hurricane to cover, and the third is the healers on their Drek’Thar tank, who are the players to root and Faerie Fire first.

Snowfall and the mines

Snowfall graveyard in the middle starts neutral, and in the Classic layout it isn’t the same distance from both caves, because it was only made equidistant in 2.4, and which cave it sits nearer in Forever isn’t known yet. The mines, Irondeep in the north and Coldtooth in the south, each hold a boss and feed supplies to your side’s ground assaults in Classic, which is a long-match job, and both were indoors there, so expect no Travel Form inside.

In a premade

Everything above is solo-queue advice, where the plan is whatever the first person to type says. In a premade, or a group of five queued together, three things change.

• You get named, a premade assigns the druids, usually a Feral to cap, a Restoration druid on the Vanndar tank and a Balance druid on the bridge. Take the job you’re given and do only that, because a druid doing two jobs is half-doing the one someone was counting on.
• The defence gets real, a premade can afford a standing recap group on the south loop, and a Feral and a Balance druid make the best pair for it.
• Timing becomes the point, a premade calls the Vanndar pull for when the bunkers fall, and the druid’s job is to have Innervate, Tranquility and Rebirth ready at that moment.

The pre-match checklist

The gates take a minute or two to open, which is enough time to check these, in this order.

• Settings, turn on the raid and battleground graphics profile with Spell Density on Essential, check enemy nameplates are stacking so you can click the one you meant in a crowd, and make sure your raid frames show all eight groups.
• The job, read the raid chat, count roughly how many are going north, and pick one job from the list above before the gate opens.
• The bars, Travel Form and Roots on keys you reach from caster form, Nature’s Grasp on every bar because, by its live tooltip, it casts from any form and roots the next melee attacker every time, with no proc chance, Faerie Fire on the Bear and Cat bars where it’s free, Hurricane or Tranquility where your fingers already are, and Rebirth somewhere you’ll find it under pressure. The form-picking habits matter more on a long road than in a duel.
• Consumables, mana potions and a Free Action Potion, which all work from inside a form in Forever, plus whatever you drink on the way north (the fishing guide covers the fish behind Free Action and the other potions).
• The buff, Mark of the Wild on everyone in reach of the cave, then mount up. After the match, the battleground review checklist is a way to pick one moment to learn from.

Alterac Valley is the one map in Forever where a druid can do every job the raid has, and the skill lies in picking the one the raid is short of and doing that well, rather than trying all of them at once. Ride north with a heal ready, root the counter-attack on the bridge and keep an eye on the south loop, and I’ll see you on the road north.

I’ll be riding the race from the day I reach 51, and on the stream once Restokins hits 60, correcting this guide in its change log as live matches settle the Classic rules. The build it hangs off is in the Restokin build.

Contributing to this guide

If you’ve fought in Forever’s Alterac Valley before I have, or you can show me something here that’s wrong in the live version, I want to hear it, and I’ll credit you by name when I correct the guide. The way that doesn’t get lost is an issue on the Restokins GitHub, with a screenshot of the scoreboard or a clip of the match if you have one. A clip with a timer running beside a burning tower settles the capture clock faster than any guide could. Every claim this guide still rests on a precedent for is on the open questions page, as a question anyone can settle in game.