Battlegrounds
Temple of Kotmogu: Orbs, Scoring and How to Win It
Four orbs, three scoring rings and a carrier debuff that grows the longer you live. How Kotmogu scores, who should carry, why two held orbs beat four scattered ones, and what patch 12.1's healing cut did to the map.
What Temple of Kotmogu is
Temple of Kotmogu is a resource race with no bases and no flags. Four orbs sit in the four corners of a symmetrical temple, and a team scores by holding them and standing closer to the middle than the other team dares to let them. It runs 10v10 as a random battleground and 8v8 in Battleground Blitz.
Everything that makes the map hard follows from one rule: the orb makes you stronger, more fragile, and worth more points the longer you survive with it.
How the scoring works
Points come from two places. Holding an orb generates points on a tick, and how fast depends on where the carrier is standing. The temple has three concentric rings: the centre pays most, the surrounding plaza pays less, and outside the temple pays least. Killing blows add points on top.
The in-game currency is Victory Points, which is the term What is Best in Life? uses when it asks for 8,000 of them across your career.
The orbs
There are four, and their in-game names are Cyan, Green, Purple and Orange, as enumerated by Four Square. Almost every guide calls the cyan one blue; the game does not.
- One orb per player. Four teammates can each hold one, and I've Got the Power exists because holding all four at once and winning is possible.
- You cannot mount while carrying. The mount speed buff that makes other Blitz maps fast does nothing for a carrier.
- Dying returns the orb to its pedestal, not to the killer. Nobody steals an orb; they reset it.
- Ten seconds before you can pick up another. Orb Exhaustion is the timer, and it is the reason a re-pick after a death is not instant.
The carrier debuff, and why patch 12.1 made it worse
An orb carrier deals more damage, takes more damage, and receives less healing, and all three effects grow the longer that carrier stays alive. Blizzard's own description is that the effects are minor at first and increase quickly.
Patch 12.1 then cut healing received in battlegrounds by 20% across the board, with the stated goal of making players less durable. On most maps that shortens fights. On Kotmogu it compounds with a debuff that already reduces healing on the one player your team most needs alive, which is why carrier rotations matter more this season than last.
The practical rule: a carrier who is about to die should walk their orb outward rather than dying in the centre. Points earned outside the temple still count, and a reset orb earns nothing while it sits on a pedestal.
Who should carry
Older guides name specific specialisations as orb carriers. Those lists are years out of date, and the answer changes every tuning pass. What has not changed is the profile: a carrier needs personal defensives that work without a healer, movement that does not depend on a mount, and enough survivability to be worth the damage amplification.
The specialisations currently performing in Blitz are the practical shortlist:
PvP tier list
rating first · top segment 1950+ · 7,053 playersMeta
Healers are the contested case. Carrying an orb as a healer converts your throughput into a target on your back, and the two schools of thought on this have never been reconciled. In a coordinated group, keep healers free. In a solo queue where nobody else picks the orb up, a healer carrying is better than an orb on a pedestal.
The opening
The instinct is to scatter for all four orbs. The consistent advice across every source that covers this map is the opposite: fight first, pick up second.
Two orbs held by a grouped team outscores four orbs held by a team spread across the temple, because the scattered version loses carriers continuously and each death both resets an orb and feeds the enemy killing blow points. Take the two orbs nearest your entrance, group, and contest the middle as a unit.
What losing teams do
- They chase all four orbs. Four carriers alone in four corners is four free kills.
- They park in the dead centre. The centre pays most and is also where the whole enemy team is looking. A carrier who survives on the plaza usually out-earns one who dies repeatedly in the middle.
- They treat killing blows as free. Kill points are real, and a team that trades evenly while holding fewer orbs is losing twice.
- They re-pick too early. Running back into the temple during Orb Exhaustion just puts you in range of the enemy without an orb to show for it.
Playing from behind
Kotmogu punishes a losing team more than most maps, because the team that is ahead is holding orbs and the team that is behind has to walk into them to get any. Two things work.
The first is to stop contesting the centre. A team that is behind and keeps throwing itself into the middle is feeding killing blow points to the enemy while earning nothing. Taking two orbs and holding them on the plaza scores slower than the centre and scores continuously, which beats scoring nothing.
The second is to kill carriers rather than fighting the group. A carrier is amplified damage and reduced healing on legs, and their death resets an orb to a pedestal that neither team is standing near. Two coordinated kills on carriers swing the tick rate harder than any team fight in the middle.
What Blitz changes here
Kotmogu is in the Blitz pool, confirmed by Battleground Blitzest, which asks for a win on each of the nine maps in under seven minutes.
- 8v8 instead of 10v10, with two healers. Every carrier is a larger share of the team than on the base map.
- Resource acquisition in the middle of the map is increased. Blizzard states the direction and no number, so the centre is worth more in Blitz than it is in a random battleground, by an amount nobody outside Blizzard knows.
- The 4 second capture and the 45 second node window do not apply. Those are rules for maps with bases; Kotmogu has none.
- The mount speed buff is smaller here than on the node maps, and it does nothing at all while you hold an orb.
Achievements worth the detour
- Powerball, for carrying an orb in the centre of the temple.
- Four Square, which needs all four orb colours across your matches.
- I've Got the Power, winning while your team controls all four at once.
- What is Best in Life?, 8,000 Victory Points earned for your team on this map.
Where the map sits in the rest of the Blitz pool, and the rules shared across all nine maps, are in our Battleground Blitz guide.
FAQ
How does scoring work in Temple of Kotmogu?
Holding an orb generates points on a tick, and the rate depends on where the carrier stands. The temple has three concentric rings: the centre pays most, the plaza less, and outside the temple least. Killing blows add points separately. Ignore per-ring point values you see quoted, because the figures in circulation contradict each other; the ordering is what holds.
How many orbs can one player carry?
One. Four teammates can each hold one at the same time, which is what I've Got the Power asks for. The orbs are named Cyan, Green, Purple and Orange in game, though almost every guide calls the cyan one blue.
What happens when an orb carrier dies?
The orb returns to its pedestal rather than dropping for the killer, so nobody steals an orb, they reset it. The carrier then cannot pick up another for 10 seconds because of Orb Exhaustion.
Should healers carry orbs in Kotmogu?
In a coordinated group, no: carrying converts your throughput into a target. In solo queue, a healer carrying beats an orb sitting on a pedestal, and this is the one carrier question the sources have never agreed on.
Can you mount while carrying an orb?
No. That also means the Battleground Blitz mount speed buff does nothing for a carrier, which is why rotations on this map are slower than they look on the node maps.
What does Battleground Blitz change on Kotmogu?
Teams are 8v8 rather than 10v10, and resource acquisition in the middle of the map is increased, by an amount Blizzard describes only as a direction. The 4 second capture cast and the 45 second ownership window do not apply here at all, because those are rules for maps with bases and Kotmogu has none.
