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adventures_in_azerothI love PVP, and whenever I wax poetic about it my fellow n00bs ask how, exactly, it works. So...here's how it works. :-)
From a N00b to a Fellow N00b: Random Battlegrounds
Table of Contents:
1. Full disclosure
2. Introduction
3. The Basics: All the mechanics of getting in, around, and out which are common to all BGs
3.1 When, How, and with Whom You Can Queue
3.2 Zoning In
3.3 Tools (i.e., How Your Screen Will Look)
3.4 Leader? What Leader?
3.5 Joining a Battle In Progress
3.6 Battleground Maps
3.7 Battle Begins
3.8 What to Do in BGs When You're Dead
3.9 How and When Things End
4. Gameplay and Victory Conditions
4.1 Warsong Gulch
4.2 Arathi Basin
4.3 Eye of the Storm
4.4 Alterac Valley (Coming Soon)
4.5 Strand of the Ancients (Coming Soon)
4.6 Isle of Conquest (Coming Soon)
4.7 Battle for Gilneas (Coming Soon)
4.8 Twin Peaks (Coming Soon)
5. Choosing a BG (Coming Soon)
6. What is a twink?
7. Gearing for PVP
7.1 Stats for PVP
7.2 How and Where to Get PVP Gear
7.3 What to Get in What Order
7.4 Enchants and Gems
~~~***~~~
1. Full disclosure
I've been playing World of Warcraft for 8 months and I've been doing BGs for less than half that time. Hence the title! But sometimes the stuff that player-since-Vanilla don't even think to mention are the things a n00b needs to know. So let's give this a shot! I encourage more experienced players to point out any errors or misconceptions in the comments and I will edit to include/correct.
2. Introduction
So, you've decided you want to try out Random Battlegrounds (BGs for short). Maybe you want to poke at PVP and someone told you BGs were the place to start. Maybe you're just curious. For whatever reason, you've decided to jump in. But you don't want to jump in totally cold. That's what this post is for.
First, some clarification so that we all know what kind of PVP we're talking about.
Random Battleground (BG): An instance isolated from the main world of the game. Members of the team are selected and grouped at random, hence the name.
Rated Battleground (RBG): A battleground in which the teams are pre-made. That is, you get your own group together (usually guild groups) and go in as a unit. You are facing off against another pre-made group. Rated battlegrounds contribute to a ranking system. Randoms don't.
Arena: An instance isolated from the main world of the game in which teams of players compete to kill each other. There is no other objective. Arena teams can be of two players (2v2), three players (3v3), or five players (5v5). You may belong to a formal arena team, or you may ask around and get a partner (or partners) to play with you for a handful of matches.
Duel: When two players meet up in the main world of the game, issue a formal challenge, and complete to kill each other one on one. You may challenge your own faction members to a duel.
I'll only be talking about Random Battlegrounds, as I have little or no experience with the other types at the moment.
3. The Basics: All the mechanics of getting in, around, and out which are common to all BGs
3.1 When, How, and with Whom You Can Queue
Battlegrounds become available to you at Level 10. To queue for one, press the "H" key. If you've customized your keybinds and are using H for something else, find your faction symbol on the minimenu and click on it. The window that pops up is your PVP pane. The Battlegrounds tab is automatically open. For the purposes of this guide, ignore the Arena and Conquest tabs.
(Once upon a time, you had to physically go to the Battleground location to queue. This is no longer the case. Now you just use the H key.)
More BGs become available as you level up. Here's what your options will be as you level up:
You may notice I'm leaving out Wintergrasp and Tol Barad. These are somewhat different from regular BGs. I'm not going to talk about them here.
You may also be wondering if your Level 10 toon is going to be thrown into a BG with a Level 34 or even 85 player. Don't worry, they won't! BGs are divided into level brackets. This means that you will only ever be in a BG with players a couple levels away from you. As you level up, you move up through the brackets. These are the level brackets:
[10-14] [15-19] [20-24] [25-29] [30-34] [35-39] [40-44] [45-49] [50-54] [55-59] [60-64] [65-69] [70-74] [75-79] [80-84] [85]
This means that, as a Level 10 character, you will be playing with levels 10-14. As a level 56 character, you play with level 55 to 59.
Okay, you're now reassured that you aren't going to be immediately facerolled, and you're ready to pick. You may queue for two BGs at the same time, although you don't have to. Say you just want to try Warsong Gulch. Click on it, then click "Join Battle" in the lower left.
This will put you in a queue. A little round picture of your faction symbol will appear on your minimap. If you hover over it, it will tell you how long you've been in the queue and how long you can expect to wait until your BG is ready for you to join.
A note on queue times: They are known to be bugged, especially for Horde (my faction). I am told that Alliance queues are extremely short and that they often pop immediately. If you are Horde, expect to wait between 5 and 15 minutes. For either faction, because queue times are bugged, if you've been in the queue for a long time and it hasn't popped, leave the queue and re-queue. I generally wait about 12 to 15 minutes for a 5 min queue before re-queuing. If you queue for two BGs at once, it will show both queue times.
While you're waiting for your BG to be ready, continue questing and so on as normal. However, you are NOT allowed to queue for a BG and a dungeon at the same time.
3.2 Zoning In
When your BG is ready, a tone will play and a little window will pop up asking if you want to join the battle. It will name the battle, unless you've queued for whichever one comes up first (an option available at higher levels by selection "Random Battleground" in the window). The tone and the little box may both flicker. This is another bug. Just click "Join Battle" until the window goes away permanently and you'll be fine.
You can't join the battle if you are in combat in the main world, so kill whoever you're fighting first. If you are in flight, whether on a mount or via a flight point, you can join the battle in flight and when you exit the battle it'll put you right back on the mount, flying along. You get a minute or so to click the button.
Once you've clicked the button, a loading screen will come up, and then you'll appear in the starting zone of your BG. You appear in the starting zone regardless of whether or not the BG is currently in progress.
Most of the time, you'll zone in and have anywhere from two minutes to thirty seconds during which you are confined to the starting zone before the battle begins. The period of time before the battle begins will be counting down on your screen via a little red bar with the time remaining written on it. During this period of time you should put on your buffs, make sure you have the correct gear equipped, eat buff food, get out the right kind of pet, etc. etc. Anything you need to get done to get ready for the BG.
3.3 Tools (i.e., How Your Screen Will Look)
In your chat panel, text is going to start appearing in orange. Some of this is system announcements, but most of it is battleground chat. To contribute, type "/bg whatever you want to say". Once you've done it once, your following words will automatically be in BG chat unless you type "/say" or whisper someone or similar.
On the left hand side of your screen a grid of green boxes will appear. This are Raid Frames. There is one for each member of your team. If you choose to, you may right click on your own frame and select "set role" and choose damage, tank, or healer. These roles don't have the same responsibilities in a BG as they are in a dungeon, but it will tell your group what kind of gear and capabilities you have. When other people do this, little sword, plus, or shield icons appear on their frame to tell you what role they selected. Most people don't bother with this, though. As people's health changes, their box will vary between green (life) and black (dead). This helps you keep track of the status of your team.
At the top center of the screen will be a little counter of some type. For Warsong Gulch, it's flag captures, one counter for Horde, one for Alliance. For Arathi Basin, it's resources that start at 0 and build up to 1600 (a win). For other BGs it's other things. Some BGs have a counter and a timer. This tells you how the BG is going. It varies from BG to BG, so I'll leave it there for now.
Other than Raid Frames, BG chat, and the battle counter, your UI should look as normal. If you want to hide the Raid Frames, click on the narrow grey box with the arrow that is to the left of the green boxes. It will open a weird little menu. Click "Hide". Then click the arrow on the right of this menu to hide the menu itself. I generally leave the Raid Frames showing, except in 40v40, when they take so much of my screen space that I have to hide them. 40 boxes is a lot!
3.4 Leader? What Leader?
During the start up time, one or more players may take it upon themselves to give instructions to the group. Remember, this is a random BG, which means that there is no agreed upon and pre-selected leader. If someone starts giving instructions, that doesn't meant that they're giving smart instructions. There may be more than one person giving conflicting instructions. Or it might be dead silence or just jokes and insults. Ultimately, in a random, it is up to you to decide what the intelligent thing to do is going to be. If the person giving instructions sounds like they know what they're talking about, I'll usually do what they say, because more organization is a good thing, even if not everyone does the same (and there will always be people who ignore any and all instructions, good or not). How you decide what to do depends on the individual BG, so I'm going to leave that aside for the moment.
3.5. Joining a Battle In Progress
All of this assumes that you zone into the BG before the battle begins. Most of the time you will. But sometimes, you'll join a battle in progress. You'll know it's in progress because you won't have a red countdown bar, and because the counter displaying the status of the battle will not be at its starting state (more on this later), and because you won't be confined to the starting area. Also, there won't be a huge crowd of people in there waiting for the BG to start.
If the BG is in progress, take a few seconds to put all your buffs on, eat, get your pet out, etc. anyway. You're no help to your team if you run in unbuffed and wielding a fishing pole! Then go to the map view (just the same way as you would in world, except you'll get a map of the BG), decide where to go to help, and jump in.
Wait, you say, what's this about maps?
3.6 Battleground Maps
In the main game, when you go to the map it shows you a map of your zone, with the parts you have explored all colored in. When you're in a BG and you go to the map, it shows you a map of the BG and nothing but the BG, and it always starts all colored in. You don't have to explore it. Your team will display as little colored dots. The colors depend on the class of the player. The enemy team is not displayed on the map.
If the BG involves a flag, the flag will not appear on the map unless it is being carried by someone. If the BG involves a control point, the control point will be colored gray if it is not being held by either side. If it is in the process of being captured, it will be gray slowly filling up with red or blue, depending on which faction is doing the capturing. If it is fully captured, it will be fully colored with red or blue depending on who is holding it. If the BG involves vehicles, they have their own icons which are pretty self-explanatory. Checking the map is your best way of evaluating what's happening in the BG at any given time.
3.7 Battle Begins
When the battleground is about to start, big numbers will appear on your screen, then your faction symbol, and then you can run out of the starting zone. You want to run out immediately. This is why most of your team will be running in place at the gate. You don't have to do that--I usually don't--but if you've got all your buffs and such up, don't dally in the starting zone. (Unless you need to be there for defense.)
I'm going to skip over gameplay and strategy for now, as this is different from BG to BG.
While the BG is in progress, you need to keep an eye on BG chat. This is where everyone will communicate about what's happening, where help is needed, and so on. There's a lot of abbreviations and slang here. More on that later. The only thing I'll say about that right now is, if someone whisper or bg chat tells you to type "/afk" or "/afk clear" or something similar, DON'T DO IT. This will get you kicked out the BG. People try to trick other players into doing this all the time. Don't fall for it.
3.8 What to Do in BGs When You're Dead
Okay, so the BG is in progress, you've jumped in, and then suddenly you're dead. Happens all the time, expect it, don't worry. Once you are dead, you can release to the graveyard immediately, or you can wait a bit. Waiting is sometimes a good idea--for example, if you die in the enemy flag room, your corpse can be a spy on what kind of defense the enemy has. However, the enemy doesn't want you to spy on them, so they will usually remove your insignia. This is don't by clicking on your corpse as if they were looting it. This takes away your insignia and gives them a tiny bit of cash. Once your insignia is removed, you are forced back to the graveyard. If there are multiple graveyards in the BG, it sends you to the nearest one controlled by your faction.
So now you're in the graveyard. Here's the good news: PVP doesn't damage your armor! Yay! Here's the bad news: You don't get to choose when to rez. It's on a timer. Groups of dead folks are rezzed at 30 second intervals. Sometimes you die and go to the graveyard just before the timer is up and you rez right away. Sometimes you have to wait the full 30 seconds. If your faction loses control of the graveyard you are waiting for rez at before your rez, your ghost will be redirected to the nearest graveyard controlled by your faction. If you control no graveyards, you will rez in the starting zone.
Once you are alive again, take a moment to put your buffs back on and run back into the fray.
If you are dead when the Battleground ends, don't worry. You'll be returned to the main game alive.
3.9 How and When Things End
The battleground ends when the victory condition (different for each BG) is met, or when the timer runs out (not all BGs have timers). When the BG ends, a tone plays and a window pops up which says "[Faction] Wins!" at the top and which lists all the players and their stats (damage done, healing done, honorable kills, killing blows, etc. etc.) for the BG. You may sort by any field by clicking on the field name at the top to see how you did. At the bottom of this window is a button labelled "Leave Battleground". Click on that to go back to the main world. If you don't press the button, you will be automatically removed from the BG and returned to the main world after 2 minutes have passed.
Battlegrounds are designed to last a maximum of 25 to 30 minutes. Battlegrounds with timers enforce this. Battlegrounds without timers tend to finish in around that amount of time anyway, just because of how they're designed.
4. Gameplay and Victory Conditions
As mentioned before, these are different for each BG. Here's a quick summary of the number of players in each:
I'm also not going to get into terrain and strategy here, because that would take forever to write up and still be a subject of much debate.
4.1 Warsong Gulch
The WSG Map (Coming Soon)
A YouTube video that shows you what the terrain looks like (Coming Soon)
Counter: Counts Flag Captures.
Gameplay:
Each faction has a flag room with a flag. The flag room is also the starting zone. The flag is located in a little alcove at the back of the flag room. The opposing faction will attempt to fight or sneak their way into the flag room, pick up your flag, take it back to their base, and capture it. You will be attempting to do the same to them at the same time.
You pick up the opposing flag by running up to it and right clicking on it. This will put the flag on your back. You are now the flag carrier (fc). The person from the opposing faction who picks up your flag is call the enemy flag carrier (efc).
You can run and fight with the flag on your back, but if you mount up you automatically drop it. If you are killed, you drop the flag. When the flag is dropped, it appears freestanding in the BG landscape. If one your team right clicks on your own flag (dropped by the efc), it is returned to your base. If one of your team right clicks on the enemy flag, they pick it up and become the flag carrier.
You capture the flag by taking it back to your own base and running into the alcove holding your own flag. It caps automatically. Your flag must be at your base in order to cap the enemy's flag. This means that if both flags are in motion, neither team can cap until the enemy drops their flag and it is returned to home base.
Victory Conditions:
* Your team wins immediately if you cap 3 flags.
* The timer runs out and you have more flags capped than the enemy (i.e., 1 to 0, 2 to 0, or 2 to 1)
* The timer runs out, the teams are tied for number of flags capped (1/1 or 2/2), but your team capped most recently.
If no one has capped a flag when the timer runs out, it's a tie.
The Warsong Gulch timer is set for 25 minutes.
4.2 Arathi Basin
The AB Map (Coming Soon)
A YouTube video that shows you what the terrain looks like (Coming Soon)
Counter: Shows resources. (More is better.)
Gameplay:
Each faction has a starting area. The starting area is not a control point, but can serve as a graveyard. There are five control points: Farm, Lumber Mill (LM), Goldmine (GM), Blacksmith (BS), and Stables. Each control point has an associated graveyard. If you control the point, you also control the graveyard.
You want to control as many control points as possible. When you control a point, it builds up resources for your team. The more points you hold, the faster your resources build.
To control a point, you run up and "assault" it. Do this by right clicking on the flag at the control point. The flag will be gray if the point is unclaimed or colored by faction color for whoever owns it. You can (and should!) assault flags controlled by the opposing faction. Assaulting the point has a cast time and can be interrupted. You have to finish the cast to finish assaulting the point.
After you have assaulted the point, a minute must pass before your team "owns" that point and gains resources from it. It is possible for the opposing team to assault the point before it finishes becoming yours.
In Arathi Basin, control points are repeatedly traded back and forth between teams as they move around the map, attempting to build enough resources to win the BG.
Victory Conditions:
* Whoever gets 1600 resources first wins.
4.3 Eye of the Storm
The EotS Map (Coming Soon)
A YouTube video that shows you what the terrain looks like (Coming Soon)
Counter: Victory points (more is better).
Gameplay:
Each faction has a starting area. The starting area is not a control point, but can serve as a graveyard. There are four control points: Fel Reaver (FR), Blood Elf Tower (BET), Draenei Ruins (DR), and Mage Tower (MT). Each control point has an associated graveyard and an associated flag capture location. If you control the point, you also control the graveyard and the flag capture location.
There is only one flag in EotS. It is located at the centre of the map and can be picked up, carried, and capped by either faction. The flag is green (a neutral color). Picking up, carrying, and dropping the flag is the same as in Warsong Gulch with one exception: Right clicking on a dropped flag does not return it to base; instead, you always become the flag carrier. Capping the flag is a bit different, since there's only one. To cap the flag, take it to a control point held by your own faction. There will be a little metallic circle on the ground. Run onto that circle and wait for the flag to cap. Sometimes it takes a second, and sometimes you have to try a couple times.
Capturing the control points is different than in AB. In EotS, the control points are "tug of war" points. When you get to the control point, a little bar will appear on the right hand side of your screen. One end of the bar is red (Horde). The middle is gray (neutral). The other end is blue (Alliance). There is a little slider on the bar. Where the slider is determines who controls the point.
You move the slider by having members of your team stand at the point. The more people are there, relative to the other faction, the faster the little bar moves. So if you have one of your faction and none of the other faction at the point, it slowly moves toward your faction's control. If five of your faction and none of the other faction are there, it moves quickly towards your control. If four of your faction and three of the opposing faction are at the point, it moves towards your control as if there was one of yours and none of theirs at the point.
You get victory points from holding control points. If you hold one point, you accrue them slowly. If you hold multiple points, you accrue them quickly. You also get 100 victory points from each flag cap.
I know I said no strategy, but this one is done wrong so often I have to mention it: It is a common misconception that the victory point accrual described above means that capping the flag is more important than controlling points. This is WRONG. The math explaining how wrong is in the comments here, posted by user Jehoiakim. Get three bases first. THEN you can go for the flag.
Victory Conditions:
* Whoever gets 2000 victory points first wins.
(Other BGs Coming Soon)
5. Choosing a BG
Coming Soon
6. What is a twink? (bystrikeslip)
If you played low level battlegrounds before they gave experience, you will know the twink. Even today, you may hear about them. Though the term is also often used to refer to a toon with BoA gear and enchants, perhaps a few AH greens, the original twinks were even more than that. A twink is a low level character at the top of their bracket (popular levels are 19, 29, 39 and 70) with the closest thing they can find to best in slot gear, enchants, maxed out professions, and comestibles, everything from free action pots to rumsey rum to elixers.
Because of experience gained in normal brackets, today true twinks must pay 10g to turn their experience off and therefore play in separate brackets against other twinks, but partially twinked characters may appear in exp-on battlegrounds, as griefers or as that one hero who carries all the flags and kills all the efcs at the same time. The twink community is a strange shadow of the endgame community with theorycrafting and Best in Slot lists, long gear farms and famous names. Twink brackets can be quite close knit, with public vents and set game times. They were playing rated battlegrounds before rated battlegrounds existed, so to speak.
As for partially twinked characters, the 'twinks' you will see in exp-on battlegrounds, if you are not twinked, be careful of them. The same way that you might avoid fighting a mob with four times as much health as the normal mobs you fight, keep an eye on the health of your enemies if you want to spot twinked characters before they kill you. If you want to make a twink, all active brackets keep threads going in the official blizzard forum battleground brackets, and you can find resources there, but they are also often full of trolls so be careful.
7. Gearing for PVP (byfaesdeynia)
You need different gear for PVP than you do PVE. PVP can be really disheartening if you're constantly being killed by people in great gear, so having the right stuff is important. I'm not going to list the BiS (Best in Slot) items for each class; I'm giving you a rundown of where to go if you're a n00b.
7.1 Stats for PVP
PVP specific stats are resilience and spell penetration.
You need spell penetration to overcome the enemy's defences versus spell damage: cold, fire, arcane, nature, and shadow. The druid and pally buffs give the highest amount of resistance to these spell types, and you use spell penetration to effectively mitigate the resistance. Spen (as it is sometimes abbreviated) is important, but not to a huge degree. If you have 200 points of it at level 85, you have more than enough. At 85, that's as much as the PVP cloak plus the spell penetration cloak enchant.
Resilience is the major PVP stat. It will determine how well you resist incoming damage from an enemy player. (Resilience is specific to players; it gives you no benefit when fighting NPCs.) Since patch 4.1, resilience is a linear value; the more resilience you have, the less damage you take, and it does not cap. So, you want as much resilience as you can get your hands on.
You will not be able to reforge spell penetration or resilience onto an item, so you will have to get all of it from gear, gems, and enchants.
Stamina is always a good stat to have, since the leading cause of character death is running out of hit points. PVP gear comes with a big chunk of stamina in it already, but not so much that it's more appealing for PVE tanks to wear PVP gear. However, point for point, resilience is better than stamina.
7.2 How and Where to Get PVP Gear
PVP gear is most often purchased with Honor. You are usually awarded Honor for kills, capping flags, earning resources, and winning the battle. You use Honor to purchase PVP gear from your faction's PVP hall; in Wintergrasp, you can use the commendations from participating in the battle. If you haven't participated in PVP in a long time, you might find you still have commendations from battlegrounds in your currency tab. Those were phased out late in Wrath, and you should be able to exchange them for honor at your PVP hall. The vendor who sells PVP items for Honor is called the Honor Quartermaster. The Legacy Honor Quartermaster sells heirlooms; make sure you go to the regular Honor Quartermaster.
From levels 1-59, there are only a handful of items available from the Honor Quartermaster. Many of then are better than what you'd get questing--blues and one or two purples--but they don't have resilience, so they won't make a major difference to your play; you may want to save the Honor for when you get to 60.
While leveling up, gear is less important, and here's why: your character is trading out new items constantly as you get better ones from quests/rewards, and farming/crafting a low-level PVP set is only worth it if you're twinking. If you have heirloom PVP pieces (available at Wintergrasp, the Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar, or Champion's Hall in Stormwind), you should have a good base. These heirlooms still give you the 10% XP boost, so they are functionally no different from the shoulder/chest you would have for PVE. However, they come with a chunk of resilience. If you don't have heirlooms, you can start buying PVP gear with Honor once you reach level 60.
One nice thing about the PVP vendor is that they will only show you equipment you are able to wear. Clothies will only see cloth armor, for example.
Conquest points are also used to buy gear, but you can only earn Conquest points from the daily Random Battleground, Arena, or Rated Battlegrounds, and only once you reach the level cap (currently 85). There is a weekly cap on Conquest earnings. Conquest is used to buy the highest end PVP gear, and the current PVP weapons. With the end of each Arena season, the Conquest items become the new Honor items. Beginning with Arena season 10 (late June 2011), this includes weapons.
If you are starting out in PVP and your character is 85 (or soon will be 85), your best bet is to gear up by using the crafted items. They are 339 blues, have decent stats, and will help you be more effective while earning Honor to buy better gear. Jewelcrafters can make PVP rings and necks as of patch 4.2, and your gear will come from the usual sources (tailors for cloth, leatherworkers for leather and mail, blacksmiths for plate). Check the Auction House if you can't craft your own gear; crafted PVP items aren't cheap, but they aren't horribly expensive either, and you need the resilience.
Also, Baradin Hold drops PVP gear (mostly, PVE stuff does drop, but I've only seen one piece and I run it weekly), so that can be a good place to pick up a PVP epic. Those drops are class based.
7.3 What to Get In What Order
One of the first things you probably want to buy is a trinket; specifically, one of the trinkets that reverses all loss of control of your character. These trinkets give you a “get out of jail free” with regards to fear, traps, Circle of Frost/Frost Nova, and movement-impairing effects. Also, remember to put it on your toolbar so it's easy to reach when you need it. You can buy a low level version of this trinket at level 10; that one costs 55 Honor. As you level up, higher level versions of the same trinket become available.
The endgame PVP (85) and formerly endgame (60, 70, and 80) sets have set bonuses attached to them, usually more than one bonus depending on how many pieces of the set you have. You'll want the set bonuses, but the Honor will take time to earn, so you'll start by filling in the spots you need most.
If you have crafted PVP pants and chest, but don't have gloves, buy gloves; the resilience boost going from PVE to PVP gear is better than any upgrade to a current PVP item. Getting the sets is usually worth the wait over getting unmatched pieces.
7.4 Enchants and Gems
With respect to enchants and gems, there are a lot of options here, and very little consensus. Generally, I put a resilience enchant on a piece if one is available. Next, I go for my main stat, be it agility, intellect, or strength. If you somehow don't have your to hit value for level 85's down to 0%, you should use hit enchants/gems to get there.
Remember that, starting at level 70, you can reforge a less useful secondary stat (secondary stats are the ones in green on gear) into a more useful secondary stat. If you can get your hit for 85's down to 0% by reforging, that frees up a gem slot for a stat you can't reforge to. Reforging generally isn't worth the time and money when levelling because you replace your gear so quickly, but you'll be hanging onto your resilience gear longer than normal, so you might consider it, if there's a less useful stat on the gear.
End Notes
Please leave comments, corrections, questions, and so forth in the comments! I wrote a lot of this from memory and I am pretty new myself, so I welcome all constructive help. :-)
Table of Contents:
1. Full disclosure
2. Introduction
3. The Basics: All the mechanics of getting in, around, and out which are common to all BGs
3.1 When, How, and with Whom You Can Queue
3.2 Zoning In
3.3 Tools (i.e., How Your Screen Will Look)
3.4 Leader? What Leader?
3.5 Joining a Battle In Progress
3.6 Battleground Maps
3.7 Battle Begins
3.8 What to Do in BGs When You're Dead
3.9 How and When Things End
4. Gameplay and Victory Conditions
4.1 Warsong Gulch
4.2 Arathi Basin
4.3 Eye of the Storm
4.4 Alterac Valley (Coming Soon)
4.5 Strand of the Ancients (Coming Soon)
4.6 Isle of Conquest (Coming Soon)
4.7 Battle for Gilneas (Coming Soon)
4.8 Twin Peaks (Coming Soon)
5. Choosing a BG (Coming Soon)
6. What is a twink?
7. Gearing for PVP
7.1 Stats for PVP
7.2 How and Where to Get PVP Gear
7.3 What to Get in What Order
7.4 Enchants and Gems
1. Full disclosure
I've been playing World of Warcraft for 8 months and I've been doing BGs for less than half that time. Hence the title! But sometimes the stuff that player-since-Vanilla don't even think to mention are the things a n00b needs to know. So let's give this a shot! I encourage more experienced players to point out any errors or misconceptions in the comments and I will edit to include/correct.
2. Introduction
So, you've decided you want to try out Random Battlegrounds (BGs for short). Maybe you want to poke at PVP and someone told you BGs were the place to start. Maybe you're just curious. For whatever reason, you've decided to jump in. But you don't want to jump in totally cold. That's what this post is for.
First, some clarification so that we all know what kind of PVP we're talking about.
Random Battleground (BG): An instance isolated from the main world of the game. Members of the team are selected and grouped at random, hence the name.
Rated Battleground (RBG): A battleground in which the teams are pre-made. That is, you get your own group together (usually guild groups) and go in as a unit. You are facing off against another pre-made group. Rated battlegrounds contribute to a ranking system. Randoms don't.
Arena: An instance isolated from the main world of the game in which teams of players compete to kill each other. There is no other objective. Arena teams can be of two players (2v2), three players (3v3), or five players (5v5). You may belong to a formal arena team, or you may ask around and get a partner (or partners) to play with you for a handful of matches.
Duel: When two players meet up in the main world of the game, issue a formal challenge, and complete to kill each other one on one. You may challenge your own faction members to a duel.
I'll only be talking about Random Battlegrounds, as I have little or no experience with the other types at the moment.
3. The Basics: All the mechanics of getting in, around, and out which are common to all BGs
3.1 When, How, and with Whom You Can Queue
Battlegrounds become available to you at Level 10. To queue for one, press the "H" key. If you've customized your keybinds and are using H for something else, find your faction symbol on the minimenu and click on it. The window that pops up is your PVP pane. The Battlegrounds tab is automatically open. For the purposes of this guide, ignore the Arena and Conquest tabs.
(Once upon a time, you had to physically go to the Battleground location to queue. This is no longer the case. Now you just use the H key.)
More BGs become available as you level up. Here's what your options will be as you level up:
Level 10-34: - Warsong Gulch - Arathi Basin Level 35-44: - Warsong Gulch - Arathi Basin - Eye of the Storm Level 45-64: - Warsong Gulch - Arathi Basin - Eye of the Storm - Alterac Valley Level 65-74: - Warsong Gulch - Arathi Basin - Eye of the Storm - Alterac Valley - Strand of the Ancients |
Level 75-84: - Warsong Gulch - Arathi Basin - Eye of the Storm - Alterac Valley - Strand of the Ancients - Isle of Conquest Level 85: - Warsong Gulch - Arathi Basin - Eye of the Storm - Alterac Valley - Strand of the Ancients - Isle of Conquest - Battle for Gilneas - Twin Peaks |
You may notice I'm leaving out Wintergrasp and Tol Barad. These are somewhat different from regular BGs. I'm not going to talk about them here.
You may also be wondering if your Level 10 toon is going to be thrown into a BG with a Level 34 or even 85 player. Don't worry, they won't! BGs are divided into level brackets. This means that you will only ever be in a BG with players a couple levels away from you. As you level up, you move up through the brackets. These are the level brackets:
[10-14] [15-19] [20-24] [25-29] [30-34] [35-39] [40-44] [45-49] [50-54] [55-59] [60-64] [65-69] [70-74] [75-79] [80-84] [85]
This means that, as a Level 10 character, you will be playing with levels 10-14. As a level 56 character, you play with level 55 to 59.
Okay, you're now reassured that you aren't going to be immediately facerolled, and you're ready to pick. You may queue for two BGs at the same time, although you don't have to. Say you just want to try Warsong Gulch. Click on it, then click "Join Battle" in the lower left.
This will put you in a queue. A little round picture of your faction symbol will appear on your minimap. If you hover over it, it will tell you how long you've been in the queue and how long you can expect to wait until your BG is ready for you to join.
A note on queue times: They are known to be bugged, especially for Horde (my faction). I am told that Alliance queues are extremely short and that they often pop immediately. If you are Horde, expect to wait between 5 and 15 minutes. For either faction, because queue times are bugged, if you've been in the queue for a long time and it hasn't popped, leave the queue and re-queue. I generally wait about 12 to 15 minutes for a 5 min queue before re-queuing. If you queue for two BGs at once, it will show both queue times.
While you're waiting for your BG to be ready, continue questing and so on as normal. However, you are NOT allowed to queue for a BG and a dungeon at the same time.
3.2 Zoning In
When your BG is ready, a tone will play and a little window will pop up asking if you want to join the battle. It will name the battle, unless you've queued for whichever one comes up first (an option available at higher levels by selection "Random Battleground" in the window). The tone and the little box may both flicker. This is another bug. Just click "Join Battle" until the window goes away permanently and you'll be fine.
You can't join the battle if you are in combat in the main world, so kill whoever you're fighting first. If you are in flight, whether on a mount or via a flight point, you can join the battle in flight and when you exit the battle it'll put you right back on the mount, flying along. You get a minute or so to click the button.
Once you've clicked the button, a loading screen will come up, and then you'll appear in the starting zone of your BG. You appear in the starting zone regardless of whether or not the BG is currently in progress.
Most of the time, you'll zone in and have anywhere from two minutes to thirty seconds during which you are confined to the starting zone before the battle begins. The period of time before the battle begins will be counting down on your screen via a little red bar with the time remaining written on it. During this period of time you should put on your buffs, make sure you have the correct gear equipped, eat buff food, get out the right kind of pet, etc. etc. Anything you need to get done to get ready for the BG.
3.3 Tools (i.e., How Your Screen Will Look)
In your chat panel, text is going to start appearing in orange. Some of this is system announcements, but most of it is battleground chat. To contribute, type "/bg whatever you want to say". Once you've done it once, your following words will automatically be in BG chat unless you type "/say" or whisper someone or similar.
On the left hand side of your screen a grid of green boxes will appear. This are Raid Frames. There is one for each member of your team. If you choose to, you may right click on your own frame and select "set role" and choose damage, tank, or healer. These roles don't have the same responsibilities in a BG as they are in a dungeon, but it will tell your group what kind of gear and capabilities you have. When other people do this, little sword, plus, or shield icons appear on their frame to tell you what role they selected. Most people don't bother with this, though. As people's health changes, their box will vary between green (life) and black (dead). This helps you keep track of the status of your team.
At the top center of the screen will be a little counter of some type. For Warsong Gulch, it's flag captures, one counter for Horde, one for Alliance. For Arathi Basin, it's resources that start at 0 and build up to 1600 (a win). For other BGs it's other things. Some BGs have a counter and a timer. This tells you how the BG is going. It varies from BG to BG, so I'll leave it there for now.
Other than Raid Frames, BG chat, and the battle counter, your UI should look as normal. If you want to hide the Raid Frames, click on the narrow grey box with the arrow that is to the left of the green boxes. It will open a weird little menu. Click "Hide". Then click the arrow on the right of this menu to hide the menu itself. I generally leave the Raid Frames showing, except in 40v40, when they take so much of my screen space that I have to hide them. 40 boxes is a lot!
3.4 Leader? What Leader?
During the start up time, one or more players may take it upon themselves to give instructions to the group. Remember, this is a random BG, which means that there is no agreed upon and pre-selected leader. If someone starts giving instructions, that doesn't meant that they're giving smart instructions. There may be more than one person giving conflicting instructions. Or it might be dead silence or just jokes and insults. Ultimately, in a random, it is up to you to decide what the intelligent thing to do is going to be. If the person giving instructions sounds like they know what they're talking about, I'll usually do what they say, because more organization is a good thing, even if not everyone does the same (and there will always be people who ignore any and all instructions, good or not). How you decide what to do depends on the individual BG, so I'm going to leave that aside for the moment.
3.5. Joining a Battle In Progress
All of this assumes that you zone into the BG before the battle begins. Most of the time you will. But sometimes, you'll join a battle in progress. You'll know it's in progress because you won't have a red countdown bar, and because the counter displaying the status of the battle will not be at its starting state (more on this later), and because you won't be confined to the starting area. Also, there won't be a huge crowd of people in there waiting for the BG to start.
If the BG is in progress, take a few seconds to put all your buffs on, eat, get your pet out, etc. anyway. You're no help to your team if you run in unbuffed and wielding a fishing pole! Then go to the map view (just the same way as you would in world, except you'll get a map of the BG), decide where to go to help, and jump in.
Wait, you say, what's this about maps?
3.6 Battleground Maps
In the main game, when you go to the map it shows you a map of your zone, with the parts you have explored all colored in. When you're in a BG and you go to the map, it shows you a map of the BG and nothing but the BG, and it always starts all colored in. You don't have to explore it. Your team will display as little colored dots. The colors depend on the class of the player. The enemy team is not displayed on the map.
If the BG involves a flag, the flag will not appear on the map unless it is being carried by someone. If the BG involves a control point, the control point will be colored gray if it is not being held by either side. If it is in the process of being captured, it will be gray slowly filling up with red or blue, depending on which faction is doing the capturing. If it is fully captured, it will be fully colored with red or blue depending on who is holding it. If the BG involves vehicles, they have their own icons which are pretty self-explanatory. Checking the map is your best way of evaluating what's happening in the BG at any given time.
3.7 Battle Begins
When the battleground is about to start, big numbers will appear on your screen, then your faction symbol, and then you can run out of the starting zone. You want to run out immediately. This is why most of your team will be running in place at the gate. You don't have to do that--I usually don't--but if you've got all your buffs and such up, don't dally in the starting zone. (Unless you need to be there for defense.)
I'm going to skip over gameplay and strategy for now, as this is different from BG to BG.
While the BG is in progress, you need to keep an eye on BG chat. This is where everyone will communicate about what's happening, where help is needed, and so on. There's a lot of abbreviations and slang here. More on that later. The only thing I'll say about that right now is, if someone whisper or bg chat tells you to type "/afk" or "/afk clear" or something similar, DON'T DO IT. This will get you kicked out the BG. People try to trick other players into doing this all the time. Don't fall for it.
3.8 What to Do in BGs When You're Dead
Okay, so the BG is in progress, you've jumped in, and then suddenly you're dead. Happens all the time, expect it, don't worry. Once you are dead, you can release to the graveyard immediately, or you can wait a bit. Waiting is sometimes a good idea--for example, if you die in the enemy flag room, your corpse can be a spy on what kind of defense the enemy has. However, the enemy doesn't want you to spy on them, so they will usually remove your insignia. This is don't by clicking on your corpse as if they were looting it. This takes away your insignia and gives them a tiny bit of cash. Once your insignia is removed, you are forced back to the graveyard. If there are multiple graveyards in the BG, it sends you to the nearest one controlled by your faction.
So now you're in the graveyard. Here's the good news: PVP doesn't damage your armor! Yay! Here's the bad news: You don't get to choose when to rez. It's on a timer. Groups of dead folks are rezzed at 30 second intervals. Sometimes you die and go to the graveyard just before the timer is up and you rez right away. Sometimes you have to wait the full 30 seconds. If your faction loses control of the graveyard you are waiting for rez at before your rez, your ghost will be redirected to the nearest graveyard controlled by your faction. If you control no graveyards, you will rez in the starting zone.
Once you are alive again, take a moment to put your buffs back on and run back into the fray.
If you are dead when the Battleground ends, don't worry. You'll be returned to the main game alive.
3.9 How and When Things End
The battleground ends when the victory condition (different for each BG) is met, or when the timer runs out (not all BGs have timers). When the BG ends, a tone plays and a window pops up which says "[Faction] Wins!" at the top and which lists all the players and their stats (damage done, healing done, honorable kills, killing blows, etc. etc.) for the BG. You may sort by any field by clicking on the field name at the top to see how you did. At the bottom of this window is a button labelled "Leave Battleground". Click on that to go back to the main world. If you don't press the button, you will be automatically removed from the BG and returned to the main world after 2 minutes have passed.
Battlegrounds are designed to last a maximum of 25 to 30 minutes. Battlegrounds with timers enforce this. Battlegrounds without timers tend to finish in around that amount of time anyway, just because of how they're designed.
4. Gameplay and Victory Conditions
As mentioned before, these are different for each BG. Here's a quick summary of the number of players in each:
| 10v10 Warsong Gulch Battle for Gilneas Twin Peaks |
15v15 Arathi Basin Eye of the Storm Strand of the Ancients |
40v40 Alterac Valley Isle of Conquest |
I'm also not going to get into terrain and strategy here, because that would take forever to write up and still be a subject of much debate.
4.1 Warsong Gulch
The WSG Map (Coming Soon)
A YouTube video that shows you what the terrain looks like (Coming Soon)
Counter: Counts Flag Captures.
Gameplay:
Each faction has a flag room with a flag. The flag room is also the starting zone. The flag is located in a little alcove at the back of the flag room. The opposing faction will attempt to fight or sneak their way into the flag room, pick up your flag, take it back to their base, and capture it. You will be attempting to do the same to them at the same time.
You pick up the opposing flag by running up to it and right clicking on it. This will put the flag on your back. You are now the flag carrier (fc). The person from the opposing faction who picks up your flag is call the enemy flag carrier (efc).
You can run and fight with the flag on your back, but if you mount up you automatically drop it. If you are killed, you drop the flag. When the flag is dropped, it appears freestanding in the BG landscape. If one your team right clicks on your own flag (dropped by the efc), it is returned to your base. If one of your team right clicks on the enemy flag, they pick it up and become the flag carrier.
You capture the flag by taking it back to your own base and running into the alcove holding your own flag. It caps automatically. Your flag must be at your base in order to cap the enemy's flag. This means that if both flags are in motion, neither team can cap until the enemy drops their flag and it is returned to home base.
Victory Conditions:
* Your team wins immediately if you cap 3 flags.
* The timer runs out and you have more flags capped than the enemy (i.e., 1 to 0, 2 to 0, or 2 to 1)
* The timer runs out, the teams are tied for number of flags capped (1/1 or 2/2), but your team capped most recently.
If no one has capped a flag when the timer runs out, it's a tie.
The Warsong Gulch timer is set for 25 minutes.
4.2 Arathi Basin
The AB Map (Coming Soon)
A YouTube video that shows you what the terrain looks like (Coming Soon)
Counter: Shows resources. (More is better.)
Gameplay:
Each faction has a starting area. The starting area is not a control point, but can serve as a graveyard. There are five control points: Farm, Lumber Mill (LM), Goldmine (GM), Blacksmith (BS), and Stables. Each control point has an associated graveyard. If you control the point, you also control the graveyard.
You want to control as many control points as possible. When you control a point, it builds up resources for your team. The more points you hold, the faster your resources build.
To control a point, you run up and "assault" it. Do this by right clicking on the flag at the control point. The flag will be gray if the point is unclaimed or colored by faction color for whoever owns it. You can (and should!) assault flags controlled by the opposing faction. Assaulting the point has a cast time and can be interrupted. You have to finish the cast to finish assaulting the point.
After you have assaulted the point, a minute must pass before your team "owns" that point and gains resources from it. It is possible for the opposing team to assault the point before it finishes becoming yours.
In Arathi Basin, control points are repeatedly traded back and forth between teams as they move around the map, attempting to build enough resources to win the BG.
Victory Conditions:
* Whoever gets 1600 resources first wins.
4.3 Eye of the Storm
The EotS Map (Coming Soon)
A YouTube video that shows you what the terrain looks like (Coming Soon)
Counter: Victory points (more is better).
Gameplay:
Each faction has a starting area. The starting area is not a control point, but can serve as a graveyard. There are four control points: Fel Reaver (FR), Blood Elf Tower (BET), Draenei Ruins (DR), and Mage Tower (MT). Each control point has an associated graveyard and an associated flag capture location. If you control the point, you also control the graveyard and the flag capture location.
There is only one flag in EotS. It is located at the centre of the map and can be picked up, carried, and capped by either faction. The flag is green (a neutral color). Picking up, carrying, and dropping the flag is the same as in Warsong Gulch with one exception: Right clicking on a dropped flag does not return it to base; instead, you always become the flag carrier. Capping the flag is a bit different, since there's only one. To cap the flag, take it to a control point held by your own faction. There will be a little metallic circle on the ground. Run onto that circle and wait for the flag to cap. Sometimes it takes a second, and sometimes you have to try a couple times.
Capturing the control points is different than in AB. In EotS, the control points are "tug of war" points. When you get to the control point, a little bar will appear on the right hand side of your screen. One end of the bar is red (Horde). The middle is gray (neutral). The other end is blue (Alliance). There is a little slider on the bar. Where the slider is determines who controls the point.
You move the slider by having members of your team stand at the point. The more people are there, relative to the other faction, the faster the little bar moves. So if you have one of your faction and none of the other faction at the point, it slowly moves toward your faction's control. If five of your faction and none of the other faction are there, it moves quickly towards your control. If four of your faction and three of the opposing faction are at the point, it moves towards your control as if there was one of yours and none of theirs at the point.
You get victory points from holding control points. If you hold one point, you accrue them slowly. If you hold multiple points, you accrue them quickly. You also get 100 victory points from each flag cap.
I know I said no strategy, but this one is done wrong so often I have to mention it: It is a common misconception that the victory point accrual described above means that capping the flag is more important than controlling points. This is WRONG. The math explaining how wrong is in the comments here, posted by user Jehoiakim. Get three bases first. THEN you can go for the flag.
Victory Conditions:
* Whoever gets 2000 victory points first wins.
(Other BGs Coming Soon)
5. Choosing a BG
Coming Soon
6. What is a twink? (by
strikeslip)If you played low level battlegrounds before they gave experience, you will know the twink. Even today, you may hear about them. Though the term is also often used to refer to a toon with BoA gear and enchants, perhaps a few AH greens, the original twinks were even more than that. A twink is a low level character at the top of their bracket (popular levels are 19, 29, 39 and 70) with the closest thing they can find to best in slot gear, enchants, maxed out professions, and comestibles, everything from free action pots to rumsey rum to elixers.
Because of experience gained in normal brackets, today true twinks must pay 10g to turn their experience off and therefore play in separate brackets against other twinks, but partially twinked characters may appear in exp-on battlegrounds, as griefers or as that one hero who carries all the flags and kills all the efcs at the same time. The twink community is a strange shadow of the endgame community with theorycrafting and Best in Slot lists, long gear farms and famous names. Twink brackets can be quite close knit, with public vents and set game times. They were playing rated battlegrounds before rated battlegrounds existed, so to speak.
As for partially twinked characters, the 'twinks' you will see in exp-on battlegrounds, if you are not twinked, be careful of them. The same way that you might avoid fighting a mob with four times as much health as the normal mobs you fight, keep an eye on the health of your enemies if you want to spot twinked characters before they kill you. If you want to make a twink, all active brackets keep threads going in the official blizzard forum battleground brackets, and you can find resources there, but they are also often full of trolls so be careful.
7. Gearing for PVP (by
faesdeynia)You need different gear for PVP than you do PVE. PVP can be really disheartening if you're constantly being killed by people in great gear, so having the right stuff is important. I'm not going to list the BiS (Best in Slot) items for each class; I'm giving you a rundown of where to go if you're a n00b.
7.1 Stats for PVP
PVP specific stats are resilience and spell penetration.
You need spell penetration to overcome the enemy's defences versus spell damage: cold, fire, arcane, nature, and shadow. The druid and pally buffs give the highest amount of resistance to these spell types, and you use spell penetration to effectively mitigate the resistance. Spen (as it is sometimes abbreviated) is important, but not to a huge degree. If you have 200 points of it at level 85, you have more than enough. At 85, that's as much as the PVP cloak plus the spell penetration cloak enchant.
Resilience is the major PVP stat. It will determine how well you resist incoming damage from an enemy player. (Resilience is specific to players; it gives you no benefit when fighting NPCs.) Since patch 4.1, resilience is a linear value; the more resilience you have, the less damage you take, and it does not cap. So, you want as much resilience as you can get your hands on.
You will not be able to reforge spell penetration or resilience onto an item, so you will have to get all of it from gear, gems, and enchants.
Stamina is always a good stat to have, since the leading cause of character death is running out of hit points. PVP gear comes with a big chunk of stamina in it already, but not so much that it's more appealing for PVE tanks to wear PVP gear. However, point for point, resilience is better than stamina.
7.2 How and Where to Get PVP Gear
PVP gear is most often purchased with Honor. You are usually awarded Honor for kills, capping flags, earning resources, and winning the battle. You use Honor to purchase PVP gear from your faction's PVP hall; in Wintergrasp, you can use the commendations from participating in the battle. If you haven't participated in PVP in a long time, you might find you still have commendations from battlegrounds in your currency tab. Those were phased out late in Wrath, and you should be able to exchange them for honor at your PVP hall. The vendor who sells PVP items for Honor is called the Honor Quartermaster. The Legacy Honor Quartermaster sells heirlooms; make sure you go to the regular Honor Quartermaster.
From levels 1-59, there are only a handful of items available from the Honor Quartermaster. Many of then are better than what you'd get questing--blues and one or two purples--but they don't have resilience, so they won't make a major difference to your play; you may want to save the Honor for when you get to 60.
While leveling up, gear is less important, and here's why: your character is trading out new items constantly as you get better ones from quests/rewards, and farming/crafting a low-level PVP set is only worth it if you're twinking. If you have heirloom PVP pieces (available at Wintergrasp, the Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar, or Champion's Hall in Stormwind), you should have a good base. These heirlooms still give you the 10% XP boost, so they are functionally no different from the shoulder/chest you would have for PVE. However, they come with a chunk of resilience. If you don't have heirlooms, you can start buying PVP gear with Honor once you reach level 60.
One nice thing about the PVP vendor is that they will only show you equipment you are able to wear. Clothies will only see cloth armor, for example.
Conquest points are also used to buy gear, but you can only earn Conquest points from the daily Random Battleground, Arena, or Rated Battlegrounds, and only once you reach the level cap (currently 85). There is a weekly cap on Conquest earnings. Conquest is used to buy the highest end PVP gear, and the current PVP weapons. With the end of each Arena season, the Conquest items become the new Honor items. Beginning with Arena season 10 (late June 2011), this includes weapons.
If you are starting out in PVP and your character is 85 (or soon will be 85), your best bet is to gear up by using the crafted items. They are 339 blues, have decent stats, and will help you be more effective while earning Honor to buy better gear. Jewelcrafters can make PVP rings and necks as of patch 4.2, and your gear will come from the usual sources (tailors for cloth, leatherworkers for leather and mail, blacksmiths for plate). Check the Auction House if you can't craft your own gear; crafted PVP items aren't cheap, but they aren't horribly expensive either, and you need the resilience.
Also, Baradin Hold drops PVP gear (mostly, PVE stuff does drop, but I've only seen one piece and I run it weekly), so that can be a good place to pick up a PVP epic. Those drops are class based.
7.3 What to Get In What Order
One of the first things you probably want to buy is a trinket; specifically, one of the trinkets that reverses all loss of control of your character. These trinkets give you a “get out of jail free” with regards to fear, traps, Circle of Frost/Frost Nova, and movement-impairing effects. Also, remember to put it on your toolbar so it's easy to reach when you need it. You can buy a low level version of this trinket at level 10; that one costs 55 Honor. As you level up, higher level versions of the same trinket become available.
The endgame PVP (85) and formerly endgame (60, 70, and 80) sets have set bonuses attached to them, usually more than one bonus depending on how many pieces of the set you have. You'll want the set bonuses, but the Honor will take time to earn, so you'll start by filling in the spots you need most.
If you have crafted PVP pants and chest, but don't have gloves, buy gloves; the resilience boost going from PVE to PVP gear is better than any upgrade to a current PVP item. Getting the sets is usually worth the wait over getting unmatched pieces.
7.4 Enchants and Gems
With respect to enchants and gems, there are a lot of options here, and very little consensus. Generally, I put a resilience enchant on a piece if one is available. Next, I go for my main stat, be it agility, intellect, or strength. If you somehow don't have your to hit value for level 85's down to 0%, you should use hit enchants/gems to get there.
Remember that, starting at level 70, you can reforge a less useful secondary stat (secondary stats are the ones in green on gear) into a more useful secondary stat. If you can get your hit for 85's down to 0% by reforging, that frees up a gem slot for a stat you can't reforge to. Reforging generally isn't worth the time and money when levelling because you replace your gear so quickly, but you'll be hanging onto your resilience gear longer than normal, so you might consider it, if there's a less useful stat on the gear.
End Notes
Please leave comments, corrections, questions, and so forth in the comments! I wrote a lot of this from memory and I am pretty new myself, so I welcome all constructive help. :-)
no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 06:10 pm (UTC)If you played low level battlegrounds before they gave experience, you will know the twink. Even today, you may hear about them. Though the term is also often used to refer to a toon with BoA gear and enchants, perhaps a few AH greens, the original twinks were even more than that. A twink is a low level character at the top of their bracket (popular levels are 19, 29, 39 and 70) with the closest thing they can find to best in slot gear, enchants, maxed out professions, and comestibles, everything from free action pots to rumsey rum to elixers.
Because of experience gained in normal brackets, today true twinks must pay 10g to turn their experience off and therefore play in separate brackets against other twinks, but partially twinked characters may appear in exp-on battlegrounds, as griefers or as that one hero who carries all the flags and kills all the efcs at the same time. The twink community is a strange shadow of the endgame community with theorycrafting and Best in Slot lists, long gear farms and famous names. Twink brackets can be quite close knit, with public vents and set game times. They were playing rated battlegrounds before rated battlegrounds existed, so to speak.
As for partially twinked characters, the 'twinks' you will see in exp-on battlegrounds, if you are not twinked, be careful of them. The same way that you might avoid fighting a mob with four times as much health as the normal mobs you fight, keep an eye on the health of your enemies if you want to spot twinked characters before they kill you. If you want to make a twink, all active brackets keep threads going in the official blizzard forum battleground brackets, and you can find resources there, but they are also often full of trolls so be careful.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-30 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 06:18 pm (UTC)Here is a warsong gulch map with some popular flag carrier spots marked on it. The spots are 'roof', 'gy', and 'fr' or 'flag room'. Roof is the defensible place a flag carrier can dig in while waiting for their team to kill the efc and return the flag. When a flag is close to being returned, that is a good time to go to the flag room so that you can cap as quickly as possible. If most of your defenders are dead and you are in danger, that is a good time to run to the gy and hope your team rezzes around you to repel the enemy team. Horde flag carriers may also hide in the cliffs on the left side of their fort, or below the fort (past gy and to the righ) but while these spots are not the first place people look, they are also not very defensible.
When carrying the flag, if a lot of enemies are coming for you, it is better to drop down from the roof/the cliff and run a circle around them while your team harasses them. The trick is to keep in sight of your team so that you are not caught alone, but to stay away from the enemy. A moving defense can also pick people up from gy while heading to the tunnel to go back to the roof.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-30 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-30 02:26 am (UTC)Also, I recall with the last xpac they had two 80's brackets, based on pvp ilevel. That way you weren't as likely to get thrown in with people who had Relentless gear while you were tooling around in your PvE gear. Does anyone know, and if we did, do we still have that for 85's?
no subject
Date: 2011-06-30 04:08 am (UTC)Also, I recall with the last xpac they had two 80's brackets, based on pvp ilevel. That way you weren't as likely to get thrown in with people who had Relentless gear while you were tooling around in your PvE gear. Does anyone know, and if we did, do we still have that for 85's?
I vaguely recall a reference to this, but I don't know if it was current or talking about the previous expansion, alas.
Gearing for PVP
Date: 2011-07-01 02:28 am (UTC)PVP specific stats are resilience and spell penetration. You need spell penetration to overcome the enemy's defenses versus spell damage: cold, fire, arcane, nature, and shadow. The druid and pally buffs give the highest amount of resistance to these spell types, and you use spell penetration to effectively mitigate the resistance. Spen, as it is sometimes abbreviated, is important, but not to a huge degree. If you have 200 points of it at level 85, you have more than enough. At 85, that's as much as the PVP cloak plus the spell penetration cloak enchant.
Resilience is the major PVP stat. It will determine how well you resist incoming damage from an enemy. Since patch 4.1, resilience is a linear value; the more resilience you have, the less damage you take, and it does not cap. So, you want as much resilience as you can get your hands on. You will not be able to reforge spell penetration or resilience onto an item, so you will have to get all of it from gear, gems, and enchants.
PVP gear is most often purchased with Honor. You usually are awarded Honor for kills, capping flags, earning resources, and winning the battle. You use Honor to purchase PVP gear from your faction's PVP hall; in Wintergrasp, you can use the commendations from participating in the battle. If you haven't participated in PVP in a long time, you might find you still have commendations from battlegrounds in your currency tab. Those were phased out late in Wrath, and you should be able to exchange them for honor at your PVP hall.
While leveling up, PVP gear is less important, and here's why: your character is trading out new items constantly as you get better ones from quests/rewards, and farming/crafting a low-level PVP set is only worth it if you're twinking. If you have heirloom PVP pieces (available at Wintergrasp, the Hall of Legends in Orgrimmar, or Champion's Hall in Stormwind), you should have a good base. These heirlooms still give you the 10% XP boost, so they are functionally no different from the shoulder/chest you would have for PVE. However, they come with a chunk of resilience. If you don't have heirlooms, you can start buying PVP gear with Honor once you reach level 60.
One nice thing about the PVP vendor is that they will only show you equipment you are able to wear. Clothies will only see cloth armor, for example.
Conquest points are also used to buy gear, but you can only earn Conquest from the daily Random Battleground, Arena, or Rated Battlegrounds. There is a weekly cap on Conquest earnings. Conquest is used to buy the highest end PVP gear, and the current PVP weapons. With the end of each Arena season, the Conquest items become the new Honor items, with exception of the weapons. PVP weapons are almost always purchased with Conquest points.
If you are starting out in PVP and your character is 85 (or soon will be 85), your best bet is to gear up by using the crafted items. They are 339 blues, have decent stats, and will help you be more effective while earning Honor to buy better gear. Jewelcrafters can make PVP rings and necks as of patch 4.2, and your gear will come from the usual sources (tailors for cloth, leatherworkers for leather and mail, blacksmiths for plate).
The endgame PVP sets have set bonuses attached to them. One of the first things you probably want to buy is a trinket; specifically, one of the trinket that reverses all loss of control of your character. These trinkets give you a “get out of jail free” with regards to fear, traps, Circle of Frost/Frost Nova, and movement-impairing effects. Also, remember to put it on your toolbar so it's easy to reach when you need it.
From there, start filling in the spots you need. If you have crafted PVP pants and chest, but don't have gloves, buy gloves; the resilience boost going from PVE to PVP gear is better than any upgrade to a current PVP item. Getting the sets is usually worth the wait over getting unmatched pieces. Also, Baradin Hold drops PVP gear (mostly, PVE stuff does drop, but I've only seen one piece and I run it weekly), so that can be a good place to pick up a PVP epic. Those drops are class based.
With respect to enchants and gems, there are a lot of options here, and very little consensus. Generally, I put a resilience enchant on a piece if one is available. Next, I go for my main stat, be it agility, intellect, or strength. If you somehow don't have your to hit value for level 85's down to 0%, you should use hit enchants/gems to get there.
Stamina is always a good stat to have, since the leading cause of character death is running out of hit points. PVP gear comes with a big chunk of stamina in it already, but not so much that it's more appealing for PVE tanks to wear PVP gear. However, point for point, resilience is better than stamina.
Re: Gearing for PVP
Date: 2011-07-02 12:04 am (UTC)So, is it unusual for people to reach level 60 or 70 and start doing battlegrounds for the first time? The crafted PvP gear with resilience for leatherworking seems to all be for around level 78 and up.
Re: Gearing for PVP
Date: 2011-07-27 04:56 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for writing this up!
Re: Gearing for PVP
Date: 2011-07-28 01:12 am (UTC)I'm glad you like it. Happy to be of help!
Re: Gearing for PVP
Date: 2011-08-01 07:25 pm (UTC)Sweet! I'm never likely to amass much in the way of Conquest points, so this is an extra bonus for me. :-)