Originally Posted by Cwealm
Maybe it is just my battlegroup, but along with the fact that I am usually the only mage in every BG save for AV, when there might be two, but the thing that really surprises me is that the level of play seems to have declined in the past couple of months. People are more clueless than ever, and I did 6 AB's yesterday, and in each one 13 of the 15 people had under 8k hp.
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1. It's just your battlegroup. Mages are common on mine.
2. 6 AB's is a tiny sample set. When you've ground out 100k or so honor on all four battlegrounds you'll have a better judge of clueful vs clueless. It comes and goes with time of day, what the daily quest is, what the weekend battleground is and other variables.
3. Battlegrounds are for 61-70. For many classes, 8k health is impossible till level 70+ season1 gear or equivalent. There are going to be significant numbers of scrubs with zero resilience and low health. There are going to also be significant numbers of truly new people, who don't know the strategy of each battleground and/or don't know how to fit their alt's talents into it. Getting them to pull together and function anyway is part of being "Good" at battlegrounds.
4. In arenas, death matters. Your team now has a hole in it and will probably lose if your death isn't matched by one on the other side. In battlegrounds, death is trivial. Indeed, when I run OOM on the wrong side of the board, I sometimes see death as a way to mana up and reposition somewhere more useful. At worst it costs your side 30s of your actions, at best it can SAVE time, especially if by gearing for burst damage and/or sticking it out and blasting a little longer may result in a key death on the other side.
Death is so meaningless compared to interfering with objectives that it is quite often the right thing to do to jump into a pack of enemies just to buy a few seconds of time, be it preventing them from immediately capping a site in AB/AV, or to slow down/distract people chasing flag carrier in WSG. In EOTS, it's not that useful unless the match has degenerated into a stalemate and the game has shifted to flagrunning.
5. When facing hunter pets in battlegrounds, blink to the hunter and put pressure on him directly. This forces him to switch to shorter range (less effective) DPS or run, and also you in the face of hunter draws support from other battleground members, resulting in a dead hunter and no annoying pet. Warlocks that doesn't work as well on, but the idea of putting pressure on them and ignoring the pet pretty much still holds.
6. Battleground PVP is to arenas what solo questing/leveling is to raids. Not everybody WANTS to group all the time, even though groups are more powerful than individuals. It's a way to do something fun without the hassle of organization. It's also something of a leveler. A super-geared, awesome arena PVPer can still be ganked by a bunch of scrubs, they just have to work harder at it and will autofail 1 vs 1. The "uber" player can also be worthless regardless of personal power if he isn't where he is needed or focusing on the right goals. A scrub can still be the key player on a team if he focuses on objectives and is somewhere useful.