Kay, I know what you mean about abuse in BG’s, sure it happens a lot and honestly, I do a lot of it myself. Thing is, I see it as somewhat justified. Have you ever played any team competitive sports? Or watch them? If you have or do you’ll see exactly the same thing to a lesser extent. Someone does something stupid, their teammates shout at them. They want to win, the one doing the wrong thing is reducing their chances. The big difference and why the abuse sometimes escalates so much in WOW random bg’s is that there’s no coach, no selection procedure, no ‘well if they keep screwing up they’ll get sat/subbed/sold to a lower league team’, you’re stuck with the idiots who won’t listen to advice, actually think they’re being useful fighting pointlessly in the middle of nowhere while you lose or just plain don’t care. So, yes, that makes me angry. I do something competitive, I want to win or at least do my best and I really don’t understand people in BG’s who don’t feel that way, if you don’t want to compete or work as a team, why are you doing a competitive team-based activity?

Basically things happen for reasons. If you’re getting trash-talked in a bg or a pug raid, odds are it’s because you’re doing something wrong. Now you have two choices; either you can focus on the insults and feel aggrieved, or you can focus on your performance and rectify whatever mistakes are causing people to yell at you.
Everybody was new to PVP once, I went in and ran around like a headless chicken getting called an idiot, noob and many other things I won’t repeat here. I don’t like getting insulted anymore than most people, so I took what few bits of constructive advice appeared amongst the vitriol and worked with them. I learned. I improved. And now, years later, I’m one of the guys telling people to ‘get out of the middle and go after their fc’ and after three or four times repeating it, I’m the guy saying it in all caps with added profanity and insults because they didn’t listen and I doubt they will and until the technology is invented that lets me reach through a computer screen and punch someone in the face, capslock and profanity is my only recourse after reasoned argument has failed.

Bigbearbutt, you want to really have some fun in silvershard, glyph explosive trap for the knock-back and go for the top cart, I honestly have had more fun with that glyph since 5.0 than any other ability since they removed my beloved eyes of the beast. Ahh the days of sitting underwater with my waterbreathing caster staff from gnomeregan walking my crocodile along the shore scaring lowbies.

With the gear changes coming next patch, things might be a bit easier to join mid-patch… but realistically, only if you are going to dedicate time to it.

I like both of them, but as I never seem to see you in there BBB, most of them are loses.

As melee or healer without PvP equip I find random BGs simply horrible, because I’m so squishy and basically a free kill. The current gear distribution seems to work at the start on the expansion (aka PvP gear can get you started in PvE and vice versa), but while PvP upgrades continue to make you more powerful in PvE, this – at least in my experience – the missing resilience can not be replaced.

Rauxis, chosen of CAT

I used to love PvP back during Classic, because of the community my server built, and when that started to go away (just about the time that server transfers became available), I discovered that I HATED that part of the game without the people. Flat out hated it. I briefly enjoyed it again during Wrath when I could sit in a tower cannon and take potshots at distant figures on mounts. I missed a lot, but at least it kept them moving! But then they “normalized” the battlegrounds and I was taking space from someone who really wanted to be there, so I stopped.

Personally, I think Warcraft would be better off without PvP altogether. It would mean losing a lot of subs (which is why I will never see this dream become reality) but it would also mean losing the worst and most immature section of the community, which could only be a good thing.

Plus, I’m tired of having cool abilities nerfed because some weenie abused them in PvP.

(yes, I have a strong opinion on this. I think the behaviors encouraged by PvP –bullying, trash-mouthing, ganging up on the weak– are a large part of what is wrong with the game and the world in general. Your mileage may vary. Sorry, Bear, this is a chronic sore point with me and I was already resentful about it. Will keep my rants to myself from here on out!)

For me, Silvershard was a confusing mess, our team kept going in all 5 directions, I have no idea how we won that second time through.

Hope to run into you out there sometime!

And as a healer you need to start using your CCs on cooldown in PvP, which you never really do in PvE. :)

As horde, ToK is all about “Come at me bitches” while carrying the orb and pureeing anyone who comes into melee range (warrior here). I think I’ve only ever lost two ToKs as horde, usually we win by a landslide. I think ToK is biased towards plate DPS orb carriers though – with the orb we hit so very hard and can duck into alcoves, run up stairs to break LoS.

Silvershard Mines drives me to tears. No horde comes to the carts or they go single file to a cart and get blown away by the escort, first come first served. As melee, just like BBB said, the lack of any LoS is just terrible if you’re up against hunters, mages, locks or shadow priests. Two ranged defenders will just stand apart and shred you, without you having any opportunity to reduce your damage taken by LoS etc. In a way, I think that map is a good primer for those very new to PvP but for melee and healers at least, it teaches you bad PvP habits – not using terrain and LoS being the main ones IMO. With a good group it can still be fun (read pocket healer + ranged buddies) but its definitely no picnic for melee.

Not just no, but HELL NO.