So, I'm drinking wine, and I type real fast, and I'm irritated with common mistakes that you see in pugs. These are mistakes that seem silly to me, but I'm used to playing pvp type games so maybe it's not so obvious as I believe. Since I've played a lot of battlegrounds, I figure I may as well post my thoughts on what to do when you enter a battleground. 

First thing for any dps class to do is to quickly pick out a killable target. When you pick this target, keep track of what others near you are attacking. If you notice they're all attacking something else...switch over if you're not making enough progress.  One of the most important things in battlegrounds and any sort of group pvp is target selection and focus fire. You do not want to be the only guy fighting someone in a skirmish. Odds are your added dps to another target would have proved the final factor in turning the tide.

Normally you kill a healer first, but you can also shoot to kill another choice to throw off the balance, or lure the healer into being forced to choose between two targets to keep alive. If your burst damage is high enough, this is good to do in order to make the healer panic.  If you ever gun for a warrior first, and a healer is nearbye, you are making a huge mistake. 

Warsong Gulch: Stick together. There may be only ten of you, but if you're one of those dorks that goes off alone towards the center to hunt red letters, you may as well be running around in Nagrand. It's a flag capturing game. If you wanted to farm honor, for the love of god at least have the sense to do it in AV where you get more honor and games have time limits. Group people up to join you in assaulting the flag if you notice they're all in disarray. Most people in a pug need someone to listen to (If they're above the age of 16 and can read).  Try to determine what the defense is for the flag and call it out. Ask for what ever it takes to get the flag returned to help you get the job done. Pug warsong gulches are horrible, as for some reason most people join to go fight in the middle of the field and try to imperss one another with the killing blow/damage meter. 

When you run the flag, change up your path. Don't always go down the tunnel, and don't always go down the ramp. Learn to determine when the GY will have ressers and when the middle is too thick near the tunnel. You start to get a sense for it, and you'll know when to take each route. 

Never trickle in to attack the flag. Wait for more. Call out &quot;Meet at the ramp&quot; if you notice that your team keeps sending in two's and 3's weakly and failing. Go in together and you might succeed.


Arathi Basin: Call out incs fast. If you are a hunter tracking humanoids, and you can type, you are the fastest inc caller there is. Your track range is far, and you can give the quickest inc call around. Mount up when you are out of combat and look around, watch where the opposing team is riding and type out where they're headed. Fight at flags, and avoid road fighting at all costs. Do not dismount to join in killing one paladin. You know good and well he's going to bubble and he's clowning you, hoping that by holding you there on the road to kill him, his team can cap the flag you just left.  

Know when to defend 3 nodes, do not give up if your assault fails at the start. Many players want to 4 cap right away, and lose heart when it doesn't work. Mount up and leave if there's more than 4 of you hanging around at any node, if no one's moving, type out a node to hit. Your opposing team can only defend so many, use your head, do the math, and determine the weak node to hit. You only have so much time to attack that node, as the other team will likely have someone call out your inc and send playes there. Use feints if they respond fast, send two or three to a node to draw out more defenders, then have attackers assault from a blind side. If you see a zerg (usually in AB that'd be 6 or more players headed to attack a node) you can determine a weak node quickly seeing that the other team is attacking strong....they must be defending weak. Watch where the fights are taking place with your mini map, it will help you determine at what node ressers will appear. 


Eye of the Storm: Rule of thumb #1 Do not ever go to the flag at the start. Leave minimum defense (two or so) at each node, and then push one of the opposing team's towers in force. You can actually do the same with assaulting two towers using two teams of 5, balanced. But the main thing to do is to take their towers at the start. If they go for the flag and win it...but find they have no tower to return it to, they will break. The flag is a last resort if your initial rush fails. If you see the opposing team is strong in the middle, attack a tower to thin them. 

Once you have 3 towers, don't sit still, force the attack on their final node. You will cause the typical pug to fight you in the center, away from a tower and the flag both (People feel that once they see red letters, they must dismount and fight). 

As a ranged dps you have a lot of fun little spots in the battlegrounds to post up and shoot from where you are unseen and difficult to find. You can shoot through a lot of hills, rocks, and all sorts of crap you wouldn't expect. When a hunter or elemental shaman assaults a tower in eye of the storm, you run to the base of a hill , tab target for a weak caster, and open fire. They can't see you or where your attacks come from, but you will kill them quickly as they try in vain to locate you. 

Healing in Battlegrounds is huge, and it's not very often you play with a good one. Drag out your groups as though you were in a raid, find a good spot to &quot;hide&quot; and start spam healing. Check your battleground icon for the players doing the most damage and look for them, they are the people you want to keep alive and look for, because there's a reason why they're contributing the most firepower. 

Bottom line is I've learned it comes down to target selection and focus fire. Find someone who looks like they do a lot of damge and help them kill what they are killing. If you have any form of CC, use it on everybody else. 

AV: The most common premade strategy is to assign 3 to each bunkeer, 10 to Balinda, 3 to the Aid Station, and the rest to an offensive rush. The 10 at Balinda finish her, then they turn around and help whoever else is south recap the towers as the opposite team's pug rush forward. This is hard to organize in a pug. 

Option 1: Zerg Galv with a defense. Every idiot who joins AV knows Galv is worth a good deal of honor, and they're all trained to go directly to their mini boss at the start. Throw 12 or a few more in there AoE fearing, assisting Galv, and murdering healers, and you will cause a wipe on the alliance's offense. This sends them back north, and fills their battleground chat with frustrated whining. It also makes a long game if it works. It also fails to stop them from winning if they rush Stormpike Aid with most of their offense.

Option 2: Form a defense of at least 10 inbetween Iceblood Chokepoint and IceBlood GY. There's a &quot;chokepoint&quot; there, a narrow area alliance has to ride through where you can kill them as they attempt to mount past. It fails if you're not high enough in number to prevent, or if they totally all out zerg to overwhelm you. It's been the most successful means I've seen a group help a pug to win.

Option 3: Ignore defense, and take your friends all the way to stormpike. Hit stormike aid first, cap stormpike shortly after. Take the bunkers, then hit the stormpike bridge to pick off the straggling defenders who will res at the cave to try to reclaim stormpike or move across the bridge. With luck, your team will catch up to you and win the race, but more often than not the alliance wins the race. Helps if you get a tower ninja'd to slow the loss of marshals. 

Some GYs we don't touch. For us, we avoid Snowfall. Reason is you want your opposing team to res in the middle. This is so they don't hinder your offense by ressing at locations that slow our advance.

Add what you want!