Quest:The Grand Melee (Alliance)

Quest givers
The following NPCs offer this quest to valiants of the Argent Tournament who have yet to complete :

Objectives
Bring 3 Marks of the Valiant to  at the Argent Tournament Grounds
 * Mark of the Valiant (3)

Description
The grand melee is the most important of the tournament's competitions. We know everyone's looking forward to seeing us in the competition. To that end, we've been honing our skills against the valiants representing the other Alliance capitals.

I suggest you do the same.

Go to the stables on the southwestern side of the coliseum, equip a lance from the lance rack, mount the stabled turbostrider, and challenge the valiants. They wait in the Alliance Valiants' Ring just outside our tent.

Rewards
You will receive: Valiant's Seal

Progress
Have you completed your training for the grand melee?

Completion
Well done. Training against the other valiants is one of the best way to prepare yourself for tournament competition. I know you'll make us proud,.

Shield-Breaker strategy
Most of the time the valiants will stay in Thrust range preferring to melee. As long as the player has three stacks of Defend up, let them. The valiant will eventually tire of Thrusting for insignificant amounts of damage and run away to gain enough range to toss a Shield-Breaker followed by a Charge. Let the valiant get some distance, fire off a Shield-Breaker as soon as it is in range, then quickly close to melee distance to keep the valiant from firing off a Shield-Breaker shot of its own.

Rinse and repeat.

Charge strategy
A somewhat more risky (but highly rewarding) tactic is to use charge instead of Shield-Breaker.

When your foe attempts to gain distance for a charge of his own, back away while continuing to face him. You have a small window of opportunity while he turns back towards you in which to charge him first.

After the charge lands, you will continue riding past (assuming you don't hit something). While you can't stop during this period, you CAN turn. By turning, you can keep the distance between you and your foe below that needed to charge. Turning gives you a little more time to close the distance to your foe, too, as he has to keep turning to line you up during his attempt to charge you.

Often, you can fine-tune your turn enough that you can get a Shield-Breaker shot off before your foe closes with you. Note that he will have probably done the same with you. This is acceptable, because you will be able to return your defense to level 3 again shortly. And meanwhile, you will have reduced your foe by two levels of defense.

Most likely, your foe will also restore a level of defense as well. If you managed to get off the Shield-Breaker hit, he will have lost one rank of defense (net) after the exchange.

The down side of this strategy is that if you fail to close after the charge, your foe will likely get off more Shield-Breaker hits than the more conservative strategy above.

Note that Defend, Shield-Breaker and Charge have the same global cooldown, so you only have the opportunity to do one of them each time your foe tries to gain charging distance. If your foe attempts to gain distance while you are still refreshing that cooldown, you may want to simply stay with him and wait for the next opportunity.

Enhanced Charge strategy
There's an alternate strategy to charging, wheeling around, and possibly getting off another shield-breaker. First off, as always, keep up three stacks of defend. Note that defend, shield breaker, and charge all trigger the GCD, however melee neither triggers nor is affected by the GCD (it has its own 1.5 second CD). Thus, any time you're in melee, you can top up defend without breaking your melee rhythm (and you should, as there's nothing so embarrassing as dropping all three stacks of defend because you let the buff expire). Now, as for the strategy when your opponent wanders off, both Shield Breaker and Charge remove one stack of Defend, and both do damage. However, charge does over four times as much damage, and also closes distance.

So, the optimal strategy is: As the opponent starts to wander off, face the direction he's headed and possibly back up a bit. As soon as he's in shield-breaker range, fire that off. Then, as soon as the cooldown is up, Charge. If the timing is right, you will hit him with one less stack of defend, and you will close enough distance before he turns that that you're in melee range and you won't lose a stack of defend yourself. This way, you are first off hitting with the big damage of Charge when he's at his lowest level of Defend, and second off each time he gains distance, he loses two stacks of Defend. He'll often do this more frequently than he adds layers of Defend, meaning that you can quite possibly spend the majority of the fight with three stacks of Defend up against his one or zero.