Healing in PVP, or "I Like Healing Unkillable People"

I healed in arenas for a bit. The other team identifies you and you get a HoT or two off before they kill you.

I quit arenas pretty soon after we started (it was the waiting for our games to pop as much as the games themselves) and started healing battlegrounds.

Which is the funnest thing ever.

My favorite part is that you can stay in the back and if your dps is good enough, they'll keep the other team so busy trying to survive, they won't even notice you.

I went to a WSG with a prot warrior friend who tanks raids for our guild, and we more or less two-manned that game. Our team kept them a bit busy, but he ran the flag and I healed the 5% of health he lost every now and then, and we were unstoppable.

I went into an Eye of the Storm this morning and had two really great unstoppable dps that I just followed around healing. They could not die even with five people on them, as long as I kept something coming.

I used bg chat to roll around in the happy a moment: "I like healing unkillable people."

Another person replied: "You should heal us killable people too." (Paraphrased from the gibberish it actually was.)

It bummed me a bit, because I had been. I heal anyone in my range who needs it, regardless of gear or level.

Things I've learned from healing battlegrounds:

• Grid is as amazing as everyone says it is.
• People like to leave healers on defense alone, where they can't heal anyone and can't defend anything.
• Going in with at least 1 dps who will make an effort to stay near you can win you the game.
• It can be therapeutic to yell "Don't you hurt my honey!" in Vent while you heal your injured spouse to full.
• If you accept a bg invite while in an instance, it ports you to the nearest graveyard when you get out.
• If you're traveling in flight form when you enter, you'll still be in the air when you get out -- but you won't be in flight form.
• Certain times of day are better than others.
• A healer in the right place at the right time can turn the tide of a battle.
• Some things, you can't outheal. Like stupid. Or their entire team.
• When you are trying to outheal another healer, and you're evenly matched, the one who wins is the one whose dps realizes they shouldn't be attacking the other dps. They should be attacking the healer.
• Defense is boring. Winning is fun.
• Rotating defensive positions between several people keeps individuals from rebelling and leaving something completely undefended.
• Getting PUGs to coordinate is painful. Getting a premade to coordinate is delightful.
• Playing defense can be fun with a friend.
• The more you can be aware of what everyone is doing around you, the smarter your play will be.
  
• Stealthers can retake or defend positions more cleverly than anyone else.
• Taking the time to open and study your map in an unfamiliar battleground is better than following others with no clue where you are or where you should be.
• One healer is good. Two is great. But a team of only healers loses.
  
• Staying in stealth until people need heals makes me giggle.
  

And so on and so forth.

Change Coming to PVP?

Arenas and grinding for rewards
I think some players like Arenas because they are quick, easy to organize (relative to a BG), often have fast queues, and / or they just enjoy the “purity” (for want of a better word) of just trying to kill the other team without having to worry about flags, reinforcements, bad players not contributing to the war effort, etc. However, a lot of players who may not really like Arenas get drawn into them in order to procure the best PvP gear. This second issue is something we’d like to fix, but we need to develop a way to reward good gear through BGs that isn’t based on endless grinding. (Source)

I stopped playing arenas on my PVP character, Plum. It's not that I hate them, it's that I get bored in the queues. Battlegrounds are actually more fun for me, because healing large groups tends to give more bang for your PVP buck. It's easier to get away with and it consistently makes a major difference in whether you win or lose.

And healing bg's is freaking fun.

So the idea that battlegrounds are under examination for these changes thrills me. As I've said before, I like battlegrounds, and I'd like for them to become popular again.

AV Towers, or "Joining the QQ"

I have said how ardently I hate QQ. But here we go.

The Hard Knocks achievement is not impossible. For the most part. I got the WSG flag return on an 80 and a 74, the EotS flag respawns many times per game, and the AB points are in constant fluctuation.

These are battlegrounds with 10-15 players per team and flags that can respawn many times per game. Theoretically, every player in the battleground can get the achievement without sacrificing the game itself.

Alterac Valley is a different beast. 40 players, limited towers, no incentive to take your towers back to help the other side, and the shortest time limit.

Once you get the enemy towers, you'll find yourself sitting in them with 2-8 other players waiting for the enemy to show up and defend. You must pray that a) you're the fastest clicker and b) none of the others with you are jackasses waiting to kill the enemies that show up to defend. Which happened to me and several others.

All of those who want the achievement are sitting and waiting at the attacked towers, praying some kind soul on the other team will arrive to take it back. What this means is, nobody's coming to defend because there's no real gain to that. It doesn't give you the achievement (I know, I defended), and the people wanting to win the game don't need to defend as much as kill the final boss. (And, no, they won't stop or slow down to let people get the achievements.)

Out of 40 people, only about 6 managed to attack the 4 towers for my first game. It's pathetic.

Those in the battleground who are actually playing the game zip through and defeat the boss at the end because they meet no resistance.

80's who race forward and get the towers rarely stop to kill the mobs on the towers, so lower levels who want to wait and recap with their orphans get mercilessly killed by 79 mobs (I was in stealth and they still got me).

The only sure way to get this achievement is to have a completely flawless run to a tower and to not get targeted by any of the tower mobs (or have an ability that drops aggro).

All in all, the odds are overwhelming, the company is both competitive and sadistic, and the enemy is apathetic. I have no idea how anyone can succeed without astronomical luck or premades with an "understanding."

WSG at 49, or "Who Let These Guys Off the Short Bus?"

I enter on my druid and start to buff. Now, my friend was supposed to come in with me but we had some crossed wires (did you know you can't group queue someone for the type of battleground they're in?). And it's a pain to pug WSG at any level. So I'm putting thorns on folks wondering why my friend didn't join me and this guy says: "Anyone an enchanter that can do Fiery?"

Ignoring the fact that Fiery is the hot but dimwitted sister of twink enchants, it's impossible to trade the materials to an enchanter even if one is present. He or she would have to be in the battleground by chance with the materials for Fiery and be willing to do the enchant without payment for his or her mats (since you can't trade anything but conjured items in a bg).

Then the game started and I said I was going to be on D (defense). I got this in reply: "I guess having 3 druids on offense would be too easy."

I said, "I think the 49s will have a better chance at running the flag." Since I'm 47. Also note that stealthers are extremely beneficial in protecting the flag room, and I've taken this into account from my many games on Dustfire.

So, after encountering both incompetence and insults at the very beginning, I focus on getting our flag back but discover that my team has chosen to stay in our base and mid-field instead of making any real effort on returning a flag with 5 people hanging around it (which I noticed before the humans Perceived me and I died).

So I told them where the flag was and said "Bye." Then I left.

Anyway, that was all in pursuit of the fun prizes we get while the Olympic games are happening (so, for about the next 3 weeks). If you win any battleground, you get a tabard and a really good chance at a Chinese dragon pet. Dusty got them first try. (I love AV as horde.)

Eye of the Storm, or "Fun to Pug, Fun to Premade"

Non-Gamer's Guide to This Post

Premade: When a group of people band together to enter a battleground as one strong, coordinated entity.

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The Game

Eye of the Storm is a combination of Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin, wherein you capture and hold as many points as possible while capturing the flag in the middle as many times as possible. Held points give steady resources while flag captures give bonus resources per capture. Goes to 2000 resources.

The Gameplay

15 players.

You start on north and south sides of the map and head to one of four bases. Standing on the base slowly captures it (if two teams are on the base, the base responds to whomever has more players standing on it, so it is always in your team's best interest to fight on the point rather than on the road).

The alliance usually capture and hold Mage Tower (MT) and Draenei Ruins (DR), and the horde usually capture and hold Fel Reaver (FR) and Blood Elf Tower (BE).

In a game where alliance and horde hold equal resources, it can become a battle over the flag in the center, wherein the one to get more flag captures (and therefore bonus points) will win.

The best way to keep the other team off the flag is to keep enough people attacking their bases that they have to defend and you can keep grabbing the flag.

Some very strong teams insist on four-capping (capturing all four bases) because there is bonus honor involved at the end of the game if you four-cap. This is usually only viable when working with a premade against a weaker team.

Strategy

Coordination and communication are key in this game. Some people make strategy macros to organize everyone at the very beginning. This is an example strategy:

Group 1 - Fel Reaver, then Mage Tower
Group 2 - Blood Elf, then Draenei Ruins
Group 3 - Draenei Ruins, then flag captures

The most important detail, though, is to always fight on the point you're attacking. If you outnumber them, you'll capture the point just by being there.

Gear

+resilience

It's the most important PvP stat at 70.

The Morons

One of my guildmates formed a premade for EotS, and this guy joined after we queued. In raid chat, he kept begging for someone to help get him into our game: "which 1 r u in?" ... "GUYS!" So I whispered him to tell him which one to queue for and the following horrifying conversation ensued:

Premade v. You, or "How Your Faction is Screwing You"

Non-Gamer's Guide to This Post

Battlegrounds are little mini-games in Warcraft where a certain number of horde go up against the same number of alliance and both try to kill, maim, and beat the others. Each battleground has a different strategy.

A premade is a group of people from the same server who band together with fantastic coordination to dominate a battleground.

-------------------

It started happening more and more, and I couldn't figure out why. You enter a battleground just as it starts, you only have three people on your team, and you're facing a full premade that swamps you with players.

It's not your fault and, honestly, it's not the premade's fault. The situation you're stepping into is where two premades faced off and one left. And you are filling in for a 10-15 man team that suddenly vacated for another, more promising battleground.

It's rude. It's spineless. And it puts anyone hoping to grind a little honor into an impossible situation. There is no winning. None. Not when you start a game undermanned and confused.

Premades who jump battlegrounds should be shot because the only people they screw over are the people who take their place. Their own faction. People who have fought side by side with these same players time and again.

Hiss.

Youshutup has died, or "The Single Oddest Argument I've Ever Had, Ever"

I guess he was just in the mood to argue. I can't explain it any other way. It was just so . . . confusing. Especially considering I was the defense most of the time for LM.

Losers, or "Never Stop Trying"

"Losers" in the title is a pun. I want to rant about some idiots (losers) who lost Warsong Gulch (losers).

Ever since the daily battleground was implemented (gold and honor for winning a specific battleground), I've been doing more of them. I at least try it every day.

When you go up against teams with Season 2 gear, you tend to lose. But when just one person on their team has Season 2 gear and the rest is kind of awful, you have a very good shot.

Today, Warsong Gulch was the daily battleground for Zuluhed. They had a decked-out warlock attacking and their whole team zerged (attacked en mass) our base, staying close to our turf and pushing us back.

Both of us had the flags, and I wasn't sure what was going on, but I wanted to find their flag carrier. So I ran up the right (east) side of the map, went up the side, got a little lost in their base (it had been a while, and I'd forgotten how to get to the tunnel to get to the roof).

Here's the thing: They had no defense.

Here's the other thing: After rezzing, my shadowform stopped working. Shadowform, for those of you who don't know, improves survivability and spell power. It's like wearing mail with +damage enchants.

Their flag carrier? A holy priest. Alone.

And here's the last thing: While attacking the flag carrier, by myself, without shadowform, my team dropped their flag. All their flag carrier had to do was jump down, run to their flag, and they would be 2-0.

He jumped down.

He ran out of the room away from me.

I grabbed their flag and booked down the tunnel with 5 health. Not 5%. 5. I couldn't even see any health on my health bar, it was so low.

I got outside before their team could zerg me, and saw my team racing frantically in response to my message, "And I got their flag. Where is the rest of our team????"

If I'd had someone reasonable with me, like my healer husband, I could have passed the flag to him. (Right-click the flag buff and the other person clicks the spot where it's gonna drop. Great teams will do this more than once down a field, if their flag carrier is low health.) I could have stopped in the middle of the tunnel and taken my time with it.

That is how bad their defense was.

And where was my team? They were trying to kill the warlock in Season 2 gear. Like morons.

I mean, I assume he was trying to get to our flag carrier. But how many people would it have taken to get our flag back so we could cap? One. Maybe two.

The main point is that they were uncoordinated (no bg chat at all), but I also think they'd stopped trying. Winning a battleground is part skill, part gear, and part attitude. If you lack severely in one of those, you'll never win unless you somehow, somewhere, find a team with less skill, gear, or attitude than you.

The only time to give up is when you just can't stand it anymore, when there's no hope, or when you have a dentist's appointment you're going to be late for. But before you reach that point,
you better have tried your best, tried to coordinate, tried to outwit and outplay the others.

If you didn't, well. I'm heartily ashamed of you.

Warsong Gulch, or "Turtle Soup"

Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beaufiful Soup!
Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Beau--ootiful Soo--oop!
Soo--oop of the e--e--evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!
--Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

Turtling: When a whole team gathers together around one point and will not move; in WSG, it's usually around the flag or flag carrier. Turtling prolongs games to unnecessary lengths.

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The Game

Warsong Gulch is a capture-the-flag game. You must capture the enemy's flag 3 times to win. Until one team captures 3 flags, the game will not end.

The Gameplay

10 players.

The minimap (shift-M) shows where your teammates are and where your flag-carrier is.

Each side has a starting base (south for horde, north for alliance) with a flag (red for horde, blue for alliance). An enemy player can enter the base and click on your flag, thereby picking it up. That player is called the Flag Carrier or Flag Runner, and attempts to take your flag back to their base, where they must run up to their own flag to capture yours.

If their flag is not at their base (you have captured it), then both teams must protect their flag carrier while killing the enemy player holding their team's flag.

The flags leave a trail, like blue or red dust, for a certain length behind the carrier (who cannot mount but can transform while carrying the flag), so it is fairly easy to follow (around corners, for example). Alliance players will chase the blue flag (to kill the carrier and reclaim it), and Horde players will chase the red flag (ditto). When the enemy flag carrier is killed (called "returning the flag"), the friendly flag carrier can bring the enemy flag to the newly-returned friendly flag in order to capture it (called "capping").

The terrain is such that the bases are far apart with a wide, flat terrain in the middle. The struggle is getting the flags past the people fighting in the middle of the map and keeping those people away from the flag carrier until the flag is capped.

The Strategy

The best flag carriers are classes with enhanced speed: druids in run form, shamans in ghost wolf form, or hunters with their speed buff. Also, mages, with blink, are very good at getting out of snares set for them by their enemies.

Like with AB: know your class and it's pvp strengths, coordinate with your team, and don't join a battleground unless you're in the upper half of your bracket.

In Warsong Gulch, coordination is the most important part. Because you only have a 10-man team, and protecting your flag carrier is directly related to winning, not a single player can be spared to goof off. Either you are keeping the enemy busy while a team runs in to take their flag, you're defending your own flag at your base, you're killing their flag runner, or you are aiding your flag runner. The least important job is fighting in the center. If any other job needs doing, that is where you should be.

A trick to carrying the flag: when you pick the flag up, you get a buff. You can right-click that buff to drop the flag on the ground (this also happens if you die) for a very short amount of time. The flag can be picked up by a teammate if they are very quick to click on the flag (they should start clicking rapidly in the spot the flag will drop to), though an opposing player can click on it and return it to their base. (The best teams I've seen have passed the flag from one dying player to another at least twice in order to run it to their base.)

Also, like coordination, it is important to stay in a group of some size. More often than not, the most annoying Gulches are when you run out by yourself and get killed by five of their players. If you are alone on the field in Gulch, you will die. Period.

This is also the most-twinked battleground. (I covered twinks here.) If you are just leveling through the 19 bracket, it's probably better not to play any Gulches, just because you often go up against full twink teams. (Twinks exist in every bracket except 50-59 and 70.)

If you are the flag carrier (best classes: mage for blink, druid for run form, shaman for ghost wolf): DO NOT STOP TO FIGHT. Keep running. That is your job. That is your only job. Get to your base and let your team defend you. I just got to listen to Manasseh on vent ranting about a warrior with the flag stopping to fight every person who ran up to him. And the guy died. Because that's what happens when you stop to fight -- you are zerged.

The Same Gear Spiel I Gave You in the AB Post

Get some boots with +speed on them from the Arathi Basin vendor in Hammerfall(H)/Refuge Pointe(A). In any battle, you cannot win if you can't keep up with your opponent. (Speed is the most important factor of Warsong Gulch, as you must be able to outrun your enemies and keep up with the flag carrier.)

With gear in general, you want stamina to increase your health -- consider getting +stamina enchants on your gear if you want to be more protected in pvp (though they're expensive). In pvp, you want to outlast your opponent. In case you're a little like I was when I started, here are your five basic stats:

• +Stamina: +10 health
  
• +Intellect: +15 mana
  
• +Spirit: Percentage of mana regeneration. This is better for priests than most classes, because priests can use talent points to improve mana regeneration by spirit.
• +Strength: Percentage of attack power. Good for warriors, rogues, and other melee classes. Useless for casters.
  
• +Agility: Percentage of dodge and critical strike chance. Best for hunters and rogues because it also gives them attack power.
  

My shadow priest, Dustfire, focuses on Stamina and Intellect (as well as +shadow damage) when choosing gear. So Spirit isn't always the best choice for priests.

Better gear will not assure you a win, but it will help you survive.

Buffing, or "Can I Get Fort?"

Now, there are some places I really don't mind buffing people. In a 5-man party . . . right before a battleground starts . . . in instances . . . passing each other on the road or in a safe little town . . . when another person is in trouble and needs help . . .

But when we're in the middle of a battleground, when I have 1 non-mage-made drink left in my bags and just enough mana to shield myself and one other person in case we get jumped by rogues (which happens), I do not, and I mean NOT appreciate being asked to use the rest of my mana to fortitude some dork. (I always fortitude the flag carrier in Warsong Gulch, but that's different.)

Yes, I am a shadow priest. Yes, this means I don't heal well. But my main job in a battleground is still shielding and healing. It is NOT giving people fortitude, which drains ONE THIRD of my mana and doesn't protect half as much as a good old-fashioned shield does.

(Btw, any priest who doesn't use shield or heal in battlegrounds is dumb. It might use more mana if you're shadow, but it keeps the people who can tank alive so they can protect you -- and, more importantly, what you're trying to defend. Plus, when you aide an ally by shield/healing, you share the honor from their kill.)

Anyway, I just wanted to rant. Thanks for not throwing fruit.

Arathi Basin, or "LEAVE THE FRIGGING STABLES ALONE!"

For Alliance players, "stables" in the title would be "farm." I've just been playing a ton of Horde, so whatever.

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The Game

Arathi Basin is a capture-and-hold game. You succeed in capturing as many of the 5 resource nodes as you can. When you hold a node, it gives you "resources" (a number, which grows more rapidly when you hold more nodes) until you reach 2000 resources and win. To hold 3 or more nodes steadily means that you are accumulating resources faster than the other team and are acquiring a huge lead. A horn sounds when one team hits 1800 resources, and that team is likely to win even if a node is lost, unless the score is very close.

The Gameplay

(Click on image to see full size.)

15 players.

The red-circled numbers are the resources you collect, and that's how you keep track of them. Resources collect per node thus:

• 1 node= 0.8 resources/sec
• 2 nodes = 1.0 resources/sec
• 3 nodes = 1.7 resources/sec
• 4 nodes = 2.5 resources/sec
• 5 nodes = 30.0 resources/sec

The minimap to the bottom right shows the nodes (shift-M to toggle it). You'll see that one is blue, two are red, one is blank, and one is half-half. I edited the image to show what nodes look like when you or the other team holds them. Blue is for Alliance, red is for Horde, blank is neither (they are never blank again after you start), and half-half means it's being contested and no one holds it, though the color on it (red, on this example) is the one taking it.

The nodes are thus: Stables (blue), Mine (red top), Blacksmith (blank/center), Lumber Mill (half-half), and Farm (red/green circle). Memorize these, because people will abbreviate them in-game.

The beginning point and main graveyard of the Alliance is behind the stables. The Horde is behind the farm. When you hold a resource node, you adopt its graveyard (each has its own graveyard) and dead players will go to the nearest graveyard that their team controls. Here in my made-up example, Alliance would go to the stables graveyard and Horde would go to the farm or the mine. Not the lumber mill, because that is contested and no one owns it yet.

The green-circled yellow dots are your fellow players. You can always see how many people are at which node, though you can't see where the other team is.

The blue-circled button on your personal minimap will give you more info about the other team when right-clicked. This can tell you what classes/levels/names you'll be going up against, but that's about it.

The terrain is very confusing until you play a few times. I suggest going in with a friend who's played a lot and following them, paying attention to where you're going.


The Morons

There is an incorrect supposition that taking the stables or farm will hurt the other team worse than taking any other node. Some people believe that these nodes provide more resources than others, being close to the enemy's base (they don't). Some people believe that taking these demoralizes the other team (it doesn't, and if it does, losing the game demoralizes them muuuuuch worse). And some people believe that this is a way to cut them off from their graveyard (as previously stated, you can spawn at whatever graveyard you own, NOT just your beginning graveyard -- you can even run from one owned graveyard to another in spirit form, which is called "Spirit Run").

Grabbing farm/stables are the easiest to keep if they are close to your base, but the hardest to keep if close to the other team's base. So when people pass up perfectly good nodes in the middle to charge stables/farm, they are putting their team at a disadvantage. In any sensible Arathi Basin run, you should only go after stables/farm if you're able to take stables/farm without losing ground elsewhere. This means keeping two other nodes as well as stables/farm. This, however, is very hard to do, as stables/farm needs a lot of extra manpower to keep up.

This is how it went with me (slightly dramatized, but not really):

[upon 8 people trying to zerg (overpower by numbers) the stables and failing]
Dustfire: I don't think the stables is a very wise place to attack. I think we should take LM or Farm, which are both wide open.
O-guy: Yeah, guys, get off of stables.
Dustfire: [with Guildmate and Shaman at the mine] I'm on D for mine. We need to take these things and hold them.
[fighting spreads out as some people listen to us and some don't]
O-guy: Let's take the lumber mill, and hold blacksmith and mine, guys!
[farm is lost to alliance]
S-guy: We need to retake the farm!
O-guy: No, keep on blacksmith!
Mage: Losing blacksmith -- abandon it -- everybody run to LM!
Rogue: No one is at farm! Help!
Guildmate: (party chat) Let's help at the farm.
Dustfire: /s (out loud to Shaman) Headed to farm. Call us if you need help. [wonders if Shaman is mute or foreign, as he doesn't reply]
[get there just as everyone else dies, shield Guildmate, shield self, fear 3 enemies]
Dustfire: Not many at farm, maybe 5 or 6. Guildmate is very good, and can take several, but not all.
[I die, wait for resurrect, mine goes under attack]
Dustfire: We're getting there to support just as our teammates die. We need to group before we get there and go in together. [checks minimap] We have several at BS, 3 at LM, [notices 2 guys in particular] . . . why are people still at the stables?!
[the mine is lost]

Yeah, we didn't win. Surprised? Different people were giving different orders, people ignored us about the stables, and no one really stuck together. We put up an okay fight, but we totally lost, and not even by a little.

If you do not coordinate, you do not win. Period.


The Strategy

More in-depth strategies, most useful for pre-formed groups, but generally useful for everyone: WoWWiki Strategy Guide

(I kind of like the one where you leave 4 at each of three bases to defend and have a group of 3 travel together to aid whomever needs it.)

First, know your character and know its pvp strengths. You want to work your debilitating spells hard. Fear (warlocks, priests) is VERY powerful, as are stun (rogues), polymorph (mages), frost trap (hunters), seduce (warlock+succubus) and anything else that can slow the enemy down so that your melee teammates can kill them. Also, for priests, "Dispel Magic" is very important. You can remove slowing/harmful spells (like freezing trap) from teammates or remove helpful spells (like Power Word: Shield) from enemies. Also, Dispel is something you can cast while moving, which is great. (I suggest having extra taskbars: Main Menu, Interface Options, Advanced, Show _____ Taskbar.)

Second, coordinate. If you cannot work as or in a team, you cannot win. The minimap (shift-M) is important so that you'll know where your people are, and so you can meet up with groups to aide them. If you try to solo the whole thing, you will die often and weaken your team in the process. People who ignore group consensus are forcing the team to work as if with a man down. When facing a strong opposing force, this cannot be done. This is true for any battleground.

Do not head out to kill a specific enemy or take a specific flag on your own. Boneheaded players who insist on doing their own thing are how Arathi Basins are lost. Even when out-geared, you can still outplay (I'm level 36, wearing level 19 robes, and was key in keeping the mine this morning against 39's). But you must work with your people and not against them. I didn't run up and start beating on people with my wand -- I shielded the fighters, healed where I could, and Psychic Screamed (feared) when people came after me. It's a team effort.

Third, defense is boring but necessary. I have stood at the Lumber Mill with my husband, shielding him as he cut his way through enemy after invading enemy, and triumphed. I have stood at the Mine, bait for hunters who want to take down a lowly priest and score one for the home team, only to watch my rogue friend ambush, sap, and steal their life away.

Fourth, don't join a battleground until you're in the upper half of your bracket. (36 is fine, but 35 isn't. If it's your first time, wait until you're at the top of the bracket to minimize death.)

Fifth, keep your team apprised of things that are happening, especially in defense. (/bg is how you get into battleground chat.) For example, "6 enemies at mine, 3 defenders, dying, help."


Gear

Get some boots with +speed on them from the Arathi Basin vendor in Hammerfall(H)/Refuge Pointe(A). In any battle, you cannot win if you can't keep up with your opponent. This goes along with the slowing-spells thing.

With gear in general, you want stamina to increase your health -- consider getting +stamina enchants on your gear if you want to be more protected in pvp (though they're expensive). In pvp, you want to outlast your opponent. In case you're a little like I was when I started, here are your five basic stats:

• +Stamina: +10 health
  
• +Intellect: +15 mana
  
• +Spirit: Percentage of mana regeneration. This is better for priests than most classes, because priests can use talent points to improve mana regeneration by spirit.
• +Strength: Percentage of attack power. Good for warriors, rogues, and other melee classes. Useless for casters.
  
• +Agility: Percentage of dodge and critical strike chance. Best for hunters and rogues because it also gives them attack power.

My shadow priest, Dustfire, focuses on Stamina and Intellect (as well as +shadow damage) when choosing gear. So Spirit isn't always the best choice for priests.

Better gear will not assure you a win, but it will help you survive. My guildmate, Ihsahn, stands by the idea that twinks (players who outgear everyone else) only twink because they aren't good players, and beating others by having more health and mana is the only way they can win. So he firmly believes that it's possible to outplay someone who is heavily geared, as long as the team works together.


Winning v.s. Losing

Note that I'm on defense at nodes that we never lose. We held the Mine in the losing image the whole game.


If the text is too hard to read, this is how it goes:

Dustfire: Guys at BS/LM are spread out -- decide on one, and team up.
Destinity: nonononono
Destinity: bad

Um, hello, I'm on the only one we haven't lost! Shut up and listen to me. (Didn't say that, just let them lose, because it exhausts me to fight with idiots.) Near the end, they actually told the people at the mine to LEAVE and help at the blacksmith. Leave the only well-defended node we owned so Alliance could get a 5-node lead and win that much faster. Yeah, right.

It really sucks, too, because I'm trying to build up enough honor for my Insignia of the Horde (a trinket that resists stun/polymorph/fear), but I'm still not farming for honor. I'm playing D, with less action and less chance for honor, because I want our team to do well. (You get bonus honor if you win, so that's good too.) And then stupid people like Destinity just keep fighting and dying and never changing strategy, both getting more honor than me and losing the game for our team. Yuck.

So, just tell me where to find Destinity, and I'll go beat my honor out of him.

Battlegrounds, or "Aren't You Related to Twinkerbell?"

Non-Gamer's Guide to This Post

Battlegrounds are PVP (player-vs-player) games that players join, trying to steal/recover land or flags from the other side (Alliance vs. Horde). They remind me of children's games like capture the flag, hide and seek, or king of the hill.

Whichever battleground you play, you're divided into level brackets (10-19; 20-29; 30-39; and so on). So it's unwise to play a battleground until you're near the top of your bracket. Once a side gets a certain amount of points, the game is over and you leave the battleground.

Marks of Honor are soulbound items that you can trade with battleground vendors to get special things, like gear. If your side wins a battleground, you get 3 marks of honor. If you lose, you get 1.

Twinks are characters that a player has leveled to the top of a certain level bracket (usually 19 or 29) and then decked out in the very best gear available. Twinks are unfair to players with normal characters, but they aren't against the rules.