Deepwind Gorge: Five Bases, Not Mine Carts

Deepwind Gorge is not a cart map

If you remember Deepwind Gorge as the map with mine carts and stolen gold, that map no longer exists. Patch 8.3 rebuilt it from the ground up as a five-base domination map modelled on Arathi Basin, and the cart-era achievement that named the carts was moved to Legacy at the same time.

Anything you read describing carts, three mines or twin graveyards on this map is describing the version Blizzard removed in January 2020. The confusion is common enough that guides still conflate it with Deephaul Ravine, which is a different map and does have carts.

The five bases

Market, Farm, Ruins, Shrine and Quarry. Market sits in the centre and is the only one both teams can reach at the same speed; the other four sit two per side.

Market is separately confirmed as a live base by Market Dominance, which asks for 25 wins while controlling it.

How scoring works

It is a resource race to 1500, and that number is not in dispute: Deepwind Gorge Perfection asks you to win 1500 to 0.

Bases generate resources on a tick, and the more you hold the faster you earn. Capturing is a stationary channel that breaks if you move or are interrupted.

The Blitz node cycle

In Battleground Blitz a base does not simply flip and stay flipped. It runs a cycle, and understanding it is most of what separates a good Blitz player on this map from a good random battleground player.

1. You cast for 4 seconds to start a capture.
2. You must hold it 30 seconds without the enemy recapturing before it is yours.
3. It then generates resources for 45 seconds, and during that window the enemy cannot capture it at all. The flag carries a shield visual and the objective tracker shows the timer.
4. When the window ends the base goes neutral and the race for it starts again.

The consequence people miss: a base you have just locked cannot be taken from you for 45 seconds, so defending it during that window is wasted manpower. Leave when the shield goes up, come back before it drops.

The Blitz resource curve, and what it changed

Blitz pays differently from the base map, and the numbers moved in a way that overturns the map's oldest piece of advice.

The old curve made four bases barely better than three and made a five-base lockout enormous. The new one makes four bases worth more than three times what three bases pay, and flattens the reward for locking the map down completely.

The rotation clock

The three Blitz numbers combine into a schedule you can actually run against. From the moment a base flips to your team, you have 30 seconds of contest, then 45 seconds where nobody can take it. That is 75 seconds of ownership, of which only the first 30 need defending.

An attacker needs 4 seconds of cast plus 30 seconds of holding, so a player who sets off the moment a base becomes neutral arrives, at best, 34 seconds before it is theirs. Anyone who leaves after seeing the flag change is already too late for that cycle.

The habit that follows is to leave a shielded base as soon as the shield appears, spend the 45 seconds somewhere useful, and be walking back before it drops. Teams that hold five bases in Blitz do it by never standing on a base that cannot be attacked.

The opening

One player to each of your two home-side bases, everyone else to Market. Alliance start nearest Farm and Shrine; Horde start nearest Quarry and Ruins.

The home bases do not need defending so much as capturing, and a single player who caps and leaves is worth more than two who cap and stay. Market decides the opening because it is the only base neither team owns by geography.

Who to leave where

Deepwind rewards players who can hold a base alone against one attacker long enough for help to arrive, and players who can take a base alone against a lone defender. Both are survivability-and-control jobs rather than damage jobs.

Stealth specialisations have an extra role here that no tier list captures: a ninja cap on an undefended Ruins or Shrine while both teams are fighting over Market is the cheapest 15 resources per tick on the map.

What losing teams do

• They send five players to Market and leave them there. This is the single most common complaint about the map, and it is accurate. Market is one base out of five, and a team that wins it and nothing else loses.
• They defend a shielded base. During the 45 second window the base cannot be taken. Standing on it is standing still.
• They rotate after the flag flips instead of before. The 4 second cast plus the 30 second hold means an attacker who leaves late arrives 34 seconds late.
• They treat it like the old map. There is nothing to steal and nothing to escort.

Two details that are still true

Swift Pursuit, the Blitz mount speed buff, runs at its full value on this map, one of only two where that is the case, which makes rotations meaningfully faster here than on the smaller maps.

And Stormstout Brew survived the rebuild: Cruisin' for a Brewsin' was added in the same patch that redesigned the map, so the brew belongs to the current version rather than the old one.

The rules shared across all nine Blitz maps are in our Battleground Blitz guide.