Battle Ground Tactics

I wrote this when i was horde (Belf Mage and Orc shaman, arcane, enhancement) but the guide is still usefull for everyone just swap alliance and horde if you are alliance ^^

Since players tend to act extremely stupid in BGs, causing to loose an otherwise easy to win game, i wanted to inform all of you of how to do and what not to do. A guilds reputation depends HEAVILY on its members actions in the world - and while you can **** up in raids as well, cnahcnes are good that most raidmembers are from the guild and your fail wont reach far. BGs on the other hand are mostly cconsisted of non guildmembers and stupid actions on your behalf will ruin our reputation. On the other hand, if you know what to do and win the BG by being a hero, you and our guild will gain a LOT of reputation. So i consider it most important, that all of you KNOW the BGs and their roles, there is no better chance to gain or loose repuation on the server. Besides, if you are really good you may even be considered by other players as one of the "Top Players" of Warmane which gives you and the guild a huge reputation and popularity bonus and may even win you some prize money! So its your best interest to read this with care.

1. General:

Spoiler: Show

In all Bgs, no matter which, some ideas are always stupid and lead to certain defeat. Except you have luck and the alliance acts even worse but that wont happen often. This include:

- Zerging: A "Zerg" is a term of Starcraft where the race "Zerg" could produce a HUGE number of weak units in a very small ammount of time, overrunning the enemy very early in the game which was almost impossible to counter as zergs likely had 4 times the units you had (Zergrush) In WoW this term means clustering together to fight other players (PvP). In a Zerg you are like 90% of the Team in one huge cluster hunting after enemies. This is a very bad idea cause
a) you will waste a lot of power and time in killing a few number of players which makes you easy to control - some guys are sent to suicide in the zerg while the rest of the alliance team goes after the mission goals and wins with a huge advance. This will lead that you loose. Yes you may feel good for killing single guys with 20 ppl (really?) but you will loose the game.
b) Against all preconseptions - Zerging does NOT lead to a huge honorincrease. A lvl 80 player grants, if killed, somewhat around 150 Honor as base. That base is devided between all players present (near) the defeated player, it does NOT matter if they have contributed in killing. Even if they did no damage, didnt heal or even buff, just being near the dying enemy will give them honor as well. So if 2 people kill the guy both will receive around 70 honor points. In a zerg you usually gain around 4 honor / kill. So killing 40 players will have the same honorgain as killing 1 solo and in most BGs (besides alterac) you wont even be able to kill so many at all. Besides, winning grants you in between 1800 - 3600 honor ALONE FOR WINNING. Accomplishing mission goals during the battle grants you additional 125 - 375 Honor! So going for mission goals and win will increase the Honor a lot (up to 7000) while zerging a whole BG may lead to only 1k honor on lvl 80 (with the 675 you gain for loosing included!)
c) Zerging is the surest way to loose a BG as you let your whole team be distracted by a few people while the rest of the enemy team wins. If you see a zerg do not participate in it. try to remind people of the BGs goals and motivate them to win, go after mission goals yourself. Try to break the zerg by not participating.

- Turtle: A Turtle is a "Zerg stalemate" where 2 huge clusters of players collide and no one advances. This usually happens a lot in Alterac valley (in bottlenecks like the pass leading to ally base or the bridge) but i have also seen it in every other BG just less.
Turtles lead to exhausting battles that stretch - the longest turtle i have ever seen lasted 2 full hours. Do i have to mention, that the honor you gain from a turtle is very small? In those 2 hours you could easily have made 10 times the honor even if you win in the end. Turtles usually stretch the game a lot, gain nothing (even to loose fast is a better option, honorwise) and are just overwhelmingly exhausting.
If you see a turtle in progess do ot participate in it. Try to break it by advancing in mission goals and therefore forcing enemy players to leave the turtle (like taking the flag in warsong or attacking towers in alterac) and therefore letting your team advance

- Solo attempts: With some exceptions (Turtle or Zerg in progress or being a rogue / feral druid) solo attempts usually utterly fail. I have seen it over and over again and in all BGs - someone wants to play the hero and ends up helping the enemy team. If you take flag in warsong without help you will just be stomped by the enemy. If you cap a tower in Alterac, you will just be overrun. If you try to solo defend a base in arathi you will be rapestomped. Forget it. Unless a zerg / turtle is in progress and you try to break it by forcing the enemy to focus elsewhere and therefore buying your team time and an advantage, solo attempts are stupid. You waste your time and the healing / damage you can provide may have been needed desperately somewhere else.
Example: You solo defend a base in arathi - its extremely rare that some guy tries to solo get a base and even then you may loose in 1 vs 1. So you stant there for minutes, doing nothing and if someone comes you cant do anything anyway. So you simply wasted space for a valuable member. While, on another flag, 2 horde may fight 3 allys and could have won and taken the flag if you would have been there.

- "Being passive": Just running after someone else without thinking on your own will likely lead to a zerg or a turtle (as a lot of players just run with the mass) So be active - think of your own, accomplish goals, try to get players to help you, take a leading role.

- Use time while dead or walking: When you are dead you may have to wait for 30 seconds for reanimation. Use the time to look at the map and get information about the current situation. Where are your teammates, where is the flag / which towers are captured or undefended. Where may the enemy be? Look at the map and try to get an idea of what is going on (you can do that while walking to the next goal as well) if you can, try to pass the information to the battlefield by using the chat. Tell people where they are needed, where the enemy is, what must be done. Like "Guys at Lumbermill, 5 of you come help at blacksmith or we loose it"

- About running & about Dying: Running is a bad idea, again with a few exceptions. But first, in a BG you WILL die a LOT. Dieing is in some cases even a good idea - dying will refill your hp and mana and spawn you elsewhere, so may be a good idea if low on mana. Or you come into an already running bg and start at the beginning while you would be needed on the other end of the map. Getting killed may save you a lot of time running as you, if your team has a graveyard (GY) close to it, will spawn near your team or mission goals.
If you run, chances are very high (except for rogues and feral druids) that the mob will get you ANYWAY since hunters can shoot far and slow you, dks pull you in etc. So usually running doesnt help anyway, better die with pride and do some dmg.
An exception would be if the enemy zergs and is going for an important mission goal and is chasing you - then you may be able to distract the enemy, lead him in the wrong dirction or split up their forces which buys your team a lot of time. So fast characters who can take a beating may even try to do so on purpose and lure the enemy forces to some completly unimprotant places, slowing down the enemy progress a lot

- Know your role and skills: No not damage dealing. Each class has different strengths to bring on the field. Mages can not only deal damage, they can also sheep and freeze / slow and crowd control is often very important in PvP. Rogues dont do well in the fray but are perfectly suited to defend or attack towers / bases, Even boomkins and eleshamans can heal! and shamans are most effective in bigger groups as their totems aid all near them while paladins make perfect distractors. That doesnt mean you cant do something else if its needed but in general, try to stay with your role and fullfill it to serve the team. If the team is entirely stupid you may change tactic though.
In general, you cant have enough healers. Healers are, in most BGs, the key to winning. Usually the team with the better healers wins as survival is >>>>> dmg in PvP. So if you have healerequip / specc, please heal. There should be at least 1 heal / 5 people which is rarely ever covered. I have seen AV BGs without healers in horde site at all - just to mention there horde failed dramatically. Healers can win a BG by keeping tanks and DDs or each other alive, buying a LOT of time for their team - i have seen a group of 4 healers withstanding the constant attacks of 15 ppl for minutes (until oom) and those 4 won the bg for alliance as the rest of the team simply went after mission goals while those 4 bound almost all horde forces.

- Get advantage of tactical important spots: You guess it, its no good idea for a mage to stand in the first line. Standing behind the Melees may also not be a good idea as enemy melees will just run past them and AoE will hit you as well. instead, try to get ontop of a hill or near a tree - places where you can hide and are barely seen so you can deal massive dmg without getting killed. Alterac is beautiful for this where are a lot of canyons to stand above and shoot down. Melees on the other hand should seek positions which force close combat (like inside a tower or a small path with a tree near) so range dds like mages or hunters cant kite you and you can hide from powerfull attacks (out of sight)

- Priority List: First is always accomplish mission goals. If you see someone fighting dont help until you either need him for the mission goal or you can end the fight in a second. Otherwise leave them be fighting and go for the mission. Thats Top priority always.
Battle: If a battle occurs and you are a tank: RUSH IN, annoy enemy players, force them to abbort spells, bind forces, take damage and hope that some healer heals your ***. Take the attacks so other people can do their job and win the fight.
Damage Dealer: HEALERS FIRST. Dont bash the tank in your own row, he will just get healed and do damage anyway. Ignore that guy unless you can sheep / freeze him. Attack the enemy healers at all costs, as long as they live you have no chance winning. All target the same healer if possible and nuke him. AFTER the healers are dead kill: cloth > leater > mail > plate. Usually cloth are dead fast and deal enoumous damage, decreasing dying speed and damage delt with better armor. Besides cloths also have annoying crowdcontroll spells and fear can cost your team a fight. if the healer is a paladin he still comes before cloth But a priest comes before a pala...i hope you get it.
Healer - dont heal targets with low mana, those cant do damage / heal anyway and are better off dying to come back with full mana. Instead heal healers first, dds second and tanks only if they really take heavy fire.
Third: Skirmish - if the battle is won, mission goals accomplished and you can camp the enemy base cause you will win anyway - go for the kills. Or, if a BG is already lost for SURE, go fight and fasten the defeat, its time / honor efficient. But be sure that your team has lost anyway (like alliance proves to have the much stronger tea or is a far ahead ina ccomplisment of goals)

- Buffs: Buff up whenever you can, yourself and the team. Each buff may just give that extraadvantage needed. BG buffs like speed, regeneration and berserk are to choose wisely. Pick them if the enemy is about to get them. Better a Buff wasted then in enemy hands. If you dont need thema nd no enemy is near, leave them. Its stupid to get the regeneration buff while on 90% health and 80% mana while a teammate is out of mana. Berserk is only usefull for RangeDDs that arent targeted often as they dish out much more dmg while the increasing vulnerability doesnt count much. A warrior wo rushes into the frey will be weakend a lot by such a "buff"

- About Gear: BGs are dominated and heavily populated by good or top geared players who know the BG very well. On lvl 19 that means unless you have at least 1.4k HP UNBUFFED (around 2.2k buffed, have even seen 3k buffed) you are meat, make no difference and are simply dead.
On lvl 80 the same goes for anything below 5k gs PURE PvP. Below 1k Resilience and, depending on class below 28k - 50k hp (mage to warrior).
If you are not good geared you cant do serious BGs and cant fill the roles discussed. Exception of healers - a crappy healer is still better then no healer. So if you have bad gear and can heal HEAL. If you have bad gear and cant heal - be a distraction. Try to get enemy players to hunt you instead of going for your team or the BGs goals. Be a nuisiance, silence the healer, fear the healer, get everyone of the enemy team to hate you and hunt you and lead them somewhere where they cant do damage to your team. You will die OFTEN and wont be a help in combat so distract!

About Skilling: BGs are different then other forms of PvP. In General (unless you tend to solo as rogue / feral or are a healer) you will be of more use to the team with PvE Specc then specialised PvP Specc. In BGs, once you are focused you are dead anyway so putting effort in reducing incoming damage or avoiding damage like tanks do is usually a bad idea. If 40 people fire at you may last 3 seconds longer then others but you are dead anyway.
So if you are DD a damage oriented equip and skilling is of much more use (and fun) If you are tank or heal, special pvp speccs are a better idea as you will last much longer and may escape focus (like mages with blink)
In general, skills that help the whole group are better then skills that only help yourself (in ideal circumstances you will work in groups of 5 people)
Also skills that help crowdcontrol or prevent crowdcontrol are of more use them damage or heal. A massfear is the end of the fight. So getting reduced cd on cc spells or cc antispells is a good idea.
Forget crits - in pvp resilience will lower your critchance around 20% and the critdamage around 40% so crits are rare and not crucial. They are nice but not worth going for them. Better use your gear / gems / skills to reduce cds of usefull skills.

2. Warsong Gulch

Spoiler: Show

The classic Capture the Flag scenario. The Goal is to get the enemy flag 3 times and prevent that your enemy captures it. Due to size this BG is rather simple: each base has 2 houses which each has 1 buff + 1 buff inside the keep - the buffs will always be the same - keep always speed, left house (from view of owning side) berserk right house regen.
The map itself is simple too and mostly open field. You can still use the trees in the rend of the map to sneak by enemies or the houses to run from an enemy (run around) or run around/ jump in between the fallen trees in the middle.
With some skill you can also jump from below the alliance graveyard up to the graveyard (not recommended except no allys present or you are lvl 19)

a) Positioning: It is a good idea to use the 3 level layer of the keep to your advantage. You have the flag room "first floor" the small room above it "second floor" and the roof "third floor" If you are a defending you may want to get up to third floor - attackers wont see you and you can shoot / jump down and get them icecold. (except for feral and rogue who can simply hide in a corner of first floor)
Fighting near trees may also give advantages to run out of sight of spellcasters or buy time by running around.
If you have the flag, you should hide near the lumbers of the horde graveyard - reason is simple, respawning horde will be able to protect you immediately if you are attacked. if you hide inside the keep you will likely be on your own against a mass off attackers and loose. Hiding near the graveyard makes sure, that you will always have help in reach.

b) Flagcarriers: Never run alone. You chances of success are near zero except your team campes the enemy GY and even then a good rogue may await you in your flagroom...Dont run away from your team. You dont need the speedbuff if its there - running ahead of your support is plain stupid. Go as team and only run ahead when no enemies are ahead and your helpers bind chasers or if under heavy attack. if you take flag, run through exit in 2nd floor as the long tunnel will in most cases be full of alliance rushing back to get you, then run around the corner (NOT to the GY) and then straight for the horde tunnel. Horde tunnel will often be free of enemies, is the sortest route and since the FC cant mount up (others can!) the tunnel will slow down chasers a LOT as they are forced to run themselves amking it easier for reinforcements to catch up or defenders to slow them down.

c) Non Flag carriers: Either protect your own FC or kill the enemy FC. Its not wise to leave your FC unprotected but its also stupid to send 3 People after the enemy FC. If tne ehemy FC made it in its base but you have a FC with their flag in your base, regroup and send a strong team of 5+ men to get the flag back. Anything less will very likely fail. The enemy FC is often directly covered by 2 - 3 defenders and will receive heavy reinforcements when attacked. Goal here is to kill FC as fast as possible, get the flag back and die so you spawn in your base to def your flag. You are not there to survive the fight but to bring the flag back. So put FC down, take flag back and thats it.

d) Roles: Roles depend on Level played, for lvl 19 Twinks the best flag carriers are druids and somewhat shamans as they are 40% faster then everyone else at that level, can easily get out of snares / slows and heal themselves very well.
On all later levels the following is true:

Flagcarrier: Tanks. Best Paladin, then War, then Dk and in some cases druid. Reason is simple - tanks will get heavy fire from all directions. They need to be able to withstand heavy fire for a long time, so tank specc and good resilience is needed (1k+) Your job is to survive the run from the alliance base to the horde base and those classes simply can do it best. Druids are problematic as they cant take as much punishment as others and while they can escape slows and snares, its no good idea to be ahead of your own team. Still, if the team binds the enemy a druid or shaman may take advantage of the speed from formchanging (shapechanging does not drop the flag, mounting does)

Wingmen: Mage, Hunter, Healers. The Job of the Wingmen is to stay close to the FC and support him at all costs. Healers keep him alive, mages sheep / freeze and hunters slow down / distract chasers. A rogue may also work as wingman if he can stunlock chasers. But usually rogues are better as:

Defenders: Defenders defend the Flagcarrier and the flag in the own base. They should be able to do awesome burstdamage to kill an intruder. Rogues work best here as they can stunlock / kill single intruders with ease and wont be seen. In some cases a whole group will rush in so that slowing down the group is important. Anyway defending in general is only an option if the game is a stalemate and you have capped the flag first.in other cases its more wise to go after the flag and kill enemy fcs on the field where you will likely meet.
Rogues can even "defend" in the enemy base by killing enemy defenders in the flagroom.

Skirmishers: In short - the rest. But in special shamans have the duty to skirmish - you start a battle and try to get all enemy players involved in it, Its not important if you die or loose your job is to bind enemy forces to buy time and make live a lot easier for your FC and his wingmen. You are simply there to get as much alliance distracted and involved in the battle as possible. The more alliance you fight the less go after the flag. Since all skirmishers profit from shamans totems, keeping the shaman alive is second priority (healers first)

Honor - you gain 375 honor and 35 reputation per captured flag (plus the addional Honor bonus from winning / loosing if joined random BG)

3. Alterac Valley:

Spoiler: Show

Ah...maybe the most beautiful, most strategic of all Bgs where tactic makes the most difference of all Bgs. I love it. Its also the biggest BG in terms of numbers (40 vs 40) and mapsize and time needed (i have seen battles around 2 hours) and you can gain a LOT of honor in here (i have seen people gaining 12k+ honor in a single AV) and it is the most complex of all. On the plus side that means, one low geared ***** doesnt lead to defeat. On the downside, the chance that there are quite some low geared *****s is high. And still a single hero can shine here, and make a huge difference.

Both teams start with 600 reinforcements. The goal is to reduce the enemy reinforcements to zero while preventing your reinforcements to go down. This makes AV special, as dying is a bad idea.
Each player killed reduced the reinforcements by 1. So staying alive is important, better retreat instead of loosing 20 reinforcements for a fight you cant win anyway. Still, distracting the enmy to buy time is worth 1 reinforcement lost. But player killing is NOT a good idea still since there are so many things that help winning the game...

a) The mystery boss:
Actually there are 2 enemy bosses on the map. The "Miniboss" aka Captain in the stronghold in the middle which reduces the enemy reinforcements by 100 if killed and the "boss" aka General in the enemy stronghold at the end of the map whos death will lead to instant victory for the team killing a general.
The captain is relatively easy to kill (5 man team can do it if they are well coordinated) but will still, in most cases, require 15 players to kill + another 10 players who prevent alliance to kill of the 15.
As long as the captain is alive, he will grant the WHOLE RAID (40 people) additional 20% health! (and size) So killing the enemy captain while protecting your own is crucial.
The general is guarded by 5 marshalls which each have decent HP and dps. Each tower destroyed kills one marshall and reduces the generals damage and hp by 20% (so even if you destroy 4 towers he still has 700k hp and can oneshot nontanks) (and reduce enemy reinforcements by 75)
- The Blitz - aka "the epic fail": As should be clear by now, the "Blitz" tactic (all 40 People going straight after the general, ignoring towers and players) will not succeed. In my entire 3 years of PvP i have only seen a single blitz succeeding and there no one was below 6 k gs and the alliance just had around 5 players on the field. Still a lot of players believe the blitz is a good tactic - it is not. The general will have around 5000k hp and oneshot the tank, besides he will have 5 marshalls with each around 300k hp who will cause a lot of damage too. Even if you really succeed in getting all 40 people attacking the general (which wont happen as a lot will split away for chasing ally, taking tower or simply cause they are too stupid to find the way), you will fail even without alliance intervening. And believe me, they will. And 2 or 3 allys in the base helping to kill your tank are enough for a whole 40 man raid to wipe, leading to 40 reinforcements lost directly, making regrouping almost impossible and likely the alliance, by that time, has already captured your GYs and towers and wins a BG you could have won.

b) The Towers:
You may guess it - the towers are the real mission goal. Each tower destroyed weakens the general, kills a marshall and reduces the reinforcements by 75. Once a tower is capped it needs 3 minutes of control to destroy it and once destroyed its lost forever. So attacking enemy towers and rush to defend your own towers is the real key to win in Arathi. Depending on where you spawn you may choose to either rush onward to claim towers or retreat to defend towers. Look on the map - if 30 people are near enemy towers you have to defend. If there are 20 people defending, go attacking.
A tower will initially be guarded by some minor nuisiances aka NPC soldiers that have around 10k hp and crappy dmg and shouldnt be a problem. if you have a shield you can cap the tower while they hit you - once the tower is capped, they vanish (same for graveyards) but will respawn if the tower (or GY) is defended (taken back)
But its stupid to cap a tower and leave - a tower needs 3 Minutes to be destroyed ( i believe its even 4 on Molten) so the enemy has a very easy play to recapture a tower. Once you capped a tower, go into hiding in it and if alliance appraoches, kill them. Near the enemy base the "recapturing teams" will mostly consist of 3 - 4 people while towers near mid of map will likely be zerged. So do actually destroy a tower you should have 3 - 5 people guarding it until it is burned down. Otherwise the alliance will simply take them back and your effort was wasted
Same for defending towers - rushing to defend alone is in most cases stupid as usually 2 - 3 players will be guarding. So get some people to help you and take them back with 3 - 5 people.

c) The Mines:
There are 2 mines on the map - one near ally base one near horde base which are initially neutral. They are guarded by vermin (initially) and later by forces of the side who owns the mine. To capture a mine you have to go inside and kill the "boss" aka overseer in there - killing the overseer will kill all other NPCs inside and replace them with troops of your faction. While the NPCs are weak they are many so its usually rogue / feral druid job to capture mines. Each mine grants your team 1 reinforcement / 45 seconds which is not much but can make a real difference in long games.

d) The Graveyards:
You do not spawn to the Graveyard farthest but at the greathyard nearest to your corpse - that knowledge is crucial. Graveyards are slightly defended by NPCs so can be taken easily in theory. The real problem is, that you will likely have a troup of players respawning while you try to capture it. Solo taking a Graveyard is possible IF it is far away from the GY where most alliance players are. (if alliance has a gy in the middle, they will not respawn at the GY in their base) but usually you will encounter heavy resistance if trying to get a GY. The GY at stonehearth bunker is usually the first biiiiig zerg where masses of alliance respawn against masses of horde tryijng to take it and even if taken is heavily attacked since the next alliance graveyard (bridge) is close and will usually be the next biiiiig zerg.
Graveyards are an often ignored tactical tool you can use but a great one. Graveyards dont grant or destroy reinforcements they are just spawnpoints. Nothing more. So it may be a very good idea to LET THE ALLIANCE take 2 GY in the middle while going for the GYs near their base. This way your troops spawn very close to where you need them, while the alliance have a long way to defend their base and a long way to take yours. Taking the middle GYs is only for very early game if you need troops to capture towers near stonehearth GY.
Actually you CAN NOT take the 2 towers near stoneheart GY ("middle") without capturing the stonehearth GY first. Players simply ignore this fact over and over again and fail and fail again. The SH GY is very close to the 2 towers and since its usually the farthest GY the alliance has, the alliance will simply keep coming as zerg and with reinforcements each time. So lets say you have an astonishing 20 man team in SH tower defending. They have to stand for 4 minutes against usually 30 alliance which come again each 30 secs while reinforcements from horde side (usually snowfall GY) will need about 3 times the time of alliance to reach the tower. So you will loose here if you dont have the SH GY. With the SH GY your troops will spawn to defend in masses, making it impossible for alliance to reatke the 2 towers (if you zerg near the ramp leading up to the towers - its a bottleneck there is no other way!)

e) Tactics:
So finally, a real tactic appears.
- First, your team should, at all costs, protect your miniboss. The alliance WILL rush for the miniboss directly (as does horde in most cases) and the miniboss has nice AoEs making it a lot easier for your team to defend the Miniboss. Its a great idea if some people get inside directly and others wait outside for the alliance to attack inside and then falling in their backs. People inside should be tank oriented to withstand and distract the alliance while those outside should be heavyDDs who kill of the alliance from behind. After this initial wipe the alliance likely will not recover and be unable to regroup to kill your miniboss for the rest of the game as it takes some people to do it. Besides a lot of people will leave and the joiners will think the boss is already dead (usually no one goes looking for the miniboss as its quite a bit from the usual path and hidden inside and cant be solod anyway)
- After the alliance wiped, immediately go after their miniboss - the alliance will have to walk quite a distance (besides respawn time) so their miniboss is likely completly defenseless. Your casualties should have been very low so your team has an easy play to kill off the miniboss. Remember miniboss means 20% more health for the raid!
- When the alliance captain is dead, the real fun begins and you will likely encounter a turtle at stoneheart GY. However, after killing the Miniboss, ALL go DIRECTLY for SH GY! It cant be taken by less then 30 ppl so you need everyone there. You cant take the 2 Towers there without the GY so get it at all costs
- COMPLETLY IGNORE SNOWFALL GY! I cant understand why horde is always going for it. It hurts the team possessing it. It is out in nowhere and to get to any tower or other GY it takes even longer then from iceblood or stonehearth. Believe me reinfocements from Iceblood GY will arrive at the SAME TIME as from Snowfall as the distance from both to Stonehearth is exactly the same. Just the Snowfall is completly another direction allowing alliance to pass unbothered into horde territory. Actually its a great idea to let the alliance get the snowfall GY as they will spawn in the nowhere, unable to defend their base in time and unable to attack horde base in time (its just a long walk)
- When you have Stonehearth GY, go for the 2 towers near it and zerg at the rampart. Alliance CANT GET PAST THE ZERG NOT EVEN IN STEALTH. So as long as the ramparts are defended, supported by SH GY respawns, the alliance wont be able to save their towers. They can easily be taken now, alliance only chance would be to completly devestate horde and then they just ahve a much stronger team and you loose anyway.
- After the 2 Towers have fallen (not before or they will be retaken if you wipe) advance to Stormpike GY. It will be the 2nd big Zerg. Take it.
- After the SP GY is taken, advance to alliance base and take GY and towers there.
- If the alliance is now in your base, and you have the GY IN ally base - go for the boss, reinforcements from respawners are there in no time leading to a constant fightersupport for the boss.
- If the alliance tries to retake GY and their base, hold the bridge at all costs until the 2 towers are burned down
- by now you have either already won or the boss is cake and can be killed now.

f) Advanced Tactics:
Since most of the game will be a turtle, its always wise to have advanced tactics to back up.
- At start a rogue or feral druid breaks away to get first the horde mine, then the alliance mine. After that he goes (stealthed!) straigt in the alliance base and caps the GY and towers there. This is NOT to conquer them but to force the alliance forces to split up to get their towers back. Usually 5 - 10 alliance will come back to defend so just hide till they are gone and cap again. Gone means wait a minute cause if you start caping again when thery just retook the last base you can be sure they will get you icecold. so just wait a minute or 2 - tikll then they may likely reach sh GY and need to run back all the way giving you time to cap all bases. This way a single player can keep 5 - 10 enemies busy for the whole game, now thats crowd control!
- If you can find a team of 2 - 5 people consisting of rogues and feral druids you may try to actually burn down the towers in the alliance base by attacking people who try to take them back. With the 2 towers there lost a lot of alliance players will leave the game, leading to an easy advance and likely to a win.
- A team of 3 - 5 people stays behind (near middle) to defend towers / prevent what i mentioned above from alliance side. If a lot of new people join they may advance as those "stay behinds" will usually try to defend towers if the other players are far ahead on the map)
- Use the "horde bonus" Horde territory has only 1 bottleneck (near base the tower) so if alliance troops zerg you can get past them easily by using a different route. Alliance must fight the zerg at Stonehearth ramp or bridge.
- You can use trees and higher positions to let hell loose on enemies if range DD. Just hide there - most people dont look at trees or high ground) and zerg near them so AoE can deal immense damage and you will likely not be disturbed for quite a while until someone sees you and foes for you, and then you may even kill him as they usually just come solo. The Zerg itself will ignore you. As AoE DD you can really be devestating as your AoE spells may hit 20+ players per second.
- Use environment. Trees provide a great place to heal up or hide if you are focused, Towers and bottlenecks may force Range DDs into Melee range making them easy prey for Melee, Higher grounds provide a great spot for range DDs. If you are near a canyon or a bridge, push enemies down. If you are a firemage or ele shaman have fun with aoe push - you can kill 20 players with a single strike as they will likely fall to death. If you are melee, scare them, some Range DDs will simply run from you and fall off the cliff while doing so.

g) Class Specific Tactics:
- Stealthers - (Rogue, Feral druid) get mines, towers, force enemies to come back to defend
- Healers stay savely behind the frey and heal with AoE heals whenever possible
- Range DDs seek out high spots and shoot down
Its pretty easy since it will likely lead to many zergs - acutally all should try to get towers / GY but usually that is stealthers work or teamwork of the whole zerg. In special shamans, DKs, boomkins, mages and healers and locks should ALWAYS stay with the zerg as their special abilities are either providing huge boni to ALL friends there (shaman totems) or their AoE is simply devestating or their pets (army of dead) cause a huge chaos and intimidating effect (if there is an army of red people, most wont look if its just summoned zombies or players but shy away allowing you to advance)

Honor:
AV grants the biggest honor boost in a single game of all BGs. (It may not be effective for farming though as matches can take a looong time)
Usually you gain 375 honor for killing Miniboss, 125 per Tower burned, i think 1 k for killing the general and at the and of the match you gain additional honor for each tower destryoed, for each of your towers still intact, for your miniboss (and boss) being still alive and even more honor for each controlled GY and again more honor for each mine controlled at end of match. As i said a single AV match can boost you 10k honor or even more.

4. Arathi Basin

Spoiler: Show

This is one very simple BG actually and victory is all about speed and quick thinking. You win by holding the most bases over the most time, the table is:
1 Base = 10 Reccources per 12 Seconds
2 Bases = 10 Ressources per 9 secs
3 Bases = 10 Ressources per 6 secs
4 Bases = 10 Ressources per 3 Secs
5 Bases = 30 Ressources per Sec.

A good tactic is usually to split up in 4 Teams of 4 People and each team goes for 1 base. Usually 1 team will simply be stomped but the others 3 succeed leading to 3 bases owned vs 2 lost. In genral the enemy will zerg and go for one base after one, but if you can hold the tactic up you will still win as you will always have 1 base more then the enemy and win in the long run.
The worst you can do is zerg yourself as it will lead to the enemy owning 4 bases while you have just 1.

The lumbermill can easily be defended by an ele shaman or fire mage - if positioned correctly you can send attackers flying down the cliff, where they die. So Solo defending is possible here.

Another good tactic is to go for base after base after base with a rogue or feral druid left to defend. The rogue can keep sinle or duo attackers from capping the flag which provides a solid defense (if they zerg you cant defend anyway and you will mostly only encounter either duos, solos or zergs) The others split up and take take take. This usually is devestating for the enemy who likely cant keep up and is forced to zerg. and take take take on his own but you will be much faster if split up.

Finally, when the enemy team has only 1 base left (ideal stables) all should gather there for an epic zerg - you cant win it in mopst cases but you buy crucial time and the enemies will be bound to fight - and the few intelligent beings who escape the zerg will fail at the rogues defending.
If you control all 5 bases gather at alliance base and make sure non escapes - you will have won soon anway so go for kills.

A bit more specific tactics include keeping the Blacksmith at all costs - its the central base and if you spawn there you can easily go to every other base and help defending / attacking there. If you are sneaky you can go through the water to sneak into stables, farm and with slowfall into mines undetected. On the down side the Blacksmith is usually also heavily attacked from all sides.

If you got a shield go for the flag even inmidst of the combat. The sooner the flag is yours, the more ressources you gain. Most players will be distracted by the onslaught so if you can shield yourself from AoE getting the flag right away is a good idea as the fight for the base may lead to a zerg where each second counts already. Besides if its an enemy base then allys stop spawning there as soon as you cap it making it easier to take it in the long run. Just fight against ever respawning allies is stupid and likely leads to defeat.

You gain honor each 260 Ressources collected.

5. Eye of the Storm:

Spoiler: Show

This is usually a quite fast BG and good for farming honor as its fast and quite effective as you gain honor for holding bases and capping the flag.

But there are some major misunderstandings for this BG as there is a flag - the Flag does NOT grant huge bonus points!

The team who first reaches 1600 Points wins. You can make points by conquering the flag and from towers over time. BUT:

1. Towers are MAIN Priority. The Bonuspoints from taking the flag into a base are related to the number of towers controlled!

1 Tower = 1 Points per second, 75 Points from flag
2 Towers = 2 Points per second, 85 Points from flag
3 Towers = 5 Points per second, 100 Points from flag
4 Towers = 10 Points per second, 500 Points from flag

So unless you have 4 Towers the flag does not make a big difference and usually its wasted effort to get it as usually, alliance has 5 - 8 people going after the flag. Which is wasted effort on their part if horde can overrun the towers in the meantime - you cant cap the flag with 0 towers and then you just have to kill enemy fc, take the flag and get 500 points.
Taking the flag is only a good idea if the enemy controlls more towers then you and you prevent them getting huge bonus points or if no ine is trying to get it so you can solograb it.
In all other cases going for towers is main priority.

If you are ele sham or fire mage, you can solo protect the flag.. just stand behind a rock near it and whenever a group of allys tries to take the flag, send them flying into the nether...
If you are DK and falling - Deathgrip the bastard with you ^^

The rest is more about knowing how to skirmish. You CAN Solotake towers if they are not protected by hiding somewhere near, but it takes a lot of time. A towertaking team shouldnt be less then 3 people or it takes ages to get it. though if you are rogue or feral it may still be a good idea to slow down enemy progress. However if just a single guy is guarding the tower your effort is wasted (unless you kill him)
How fast the tower is captured depends on how much are near it. + = friendly player. Each enemy player = - so if there are 4 horde and 3 ally you will ahve 1 + resulting in the horde SLOWLY taking control of the tower. If there are 5 horde and 0 ally its 5+ and the tower is captured fast. if its 1 horde 1 ally = nothing happens

Usually the Mage tower is great to hide (inside) its rare someone looks inside the tower for people. But you can also hide behind or near but below a tower - just watch when the progress bar appears.

And - learn how to jump off correctly at the starting point. If you dont have a slow fall or dont jump in 2 phases (stone then ground) you will loose around 50% of your hp from jumping...which will be desaster in the battle ahead
If you have slowfall be carefull in which direction you jump as you cant change it for a while. Jumping into direction of flag may cause you to land in an ally zerg

6. Strand of the Ancients

Spoiler: Show

This is also a quite fast BG in most cases and the tactics are pretty simple.

1. Attacking:

You start on the ships (or if joined later at the beach) For attacking its best to gather all tanks on one side and rush through. Splitting up your forces and firepower will very likely result in defeat, the tanks destroyed and a lot of time lost. Remember you may have 10 minutes to attack but you have to defend every second it takes you afterwards! So a fast conquering is recommended.
The enemy will usually split up in 2 euqal groups, but more often have a slightly bigger pressence at the blue gate, because in most cases most attackers spawn at the ship to the blue gate (check before reaching the beach in order to decide on one side that all attack! - You should take the side where more your team are present)

When its decided its rather simple. ALL take bombs - melees drive the tanks (get them first) and Range DDs mount the tanks (2 per tank) The tank protects the driver and the crew from most attacks so dont worry about hp too much.The drivers job is to drive to the gate that was chosen to attack as fast as he can while shooting at the gates as soon as possible and as often as possible (if there are stones in your way you can shoot at the door, drive a curve to avoid stone until shot is ready, drive towards door for another shot, again curve to make it around the stone etc.) if done correctly you can shoot the gate as soon as its in reach for the whole time until you are there and then its usually almost down (solo. and down if 2 or more tanks to the same) if the gate is NOT in reach, shoot at the tanks before you - its likely that some melees are on their asses and so you damaghe and likely kill them. if you are the first tank shoot enemies infront, if there are any. But under all circumstances DRIVE ONWARD and SHOOT THE DOORS not the players. Players respawn, doors dont. Each shot at the door is a win, each shot at a player when gate is inr each is wasted. if a tank is destroyed the crew goes directly for the gates with their bombs!

The Range DDs on the tank simply slow down attackers, preventing melees to come in range or fearing away enemies that attack - usually shaman, hunter, priest and lock make good crew cause they can heavily slow down the enemy attackers.

IF the cannons are mounted, the range DDs (never the tank itself but the crew) shoot them down. Cannons deal AoE damage of 5 k possibly killing the crew and damaging the tank and nearby protectors. If there is no crew, ignore the cannons. Their damage in the tank is rather pathethic.

Others just stay near tanks and try to protect them with sheeping, killing players and such.

As soon as the first gate has fallen, the "non tanks" try to get the 2 GYs behind the gate. BOTH - each gy provides a spawnpoint close to the doors left and additional 2 tanks that can be taken immeditely to push forward.
DO NEVER TAKE THE 3 GY infront of the yellow door. The problem is, people will spawn far away from the tanks and there is no realistic way to destroy the doors without (yes in theory you can take bombs to put them down but in practise allys wont let you go there to place them)

If you are no melee but realise that no one is getting the tanks - go get a tank. Tanks are the "only" way to win here. Dont split up, the more tanks are together the better, as they gates will be down in no time and while a team can easily break down a single tank, 4 tanks are unstoppable. Exception is the very first assault where all head to the agreed door as fast as possible, refilling destryoed tanks with freshly spawned from the GY

If the initial attack fails, regroup get 4 tanks and go for it, unstoppable here. may also be a good idea to get 2 tanks to destroy another door opening another path since allys will likely focuis on the side where doors are already destroyed. if someone spanws near beach, get a tank from beach.

As soon as the relic chamber is open, rush for it and click it - won.

BEWARE OF THE CHAMBERBUG: If 1 or 2 people are ahead of you and already inside with no ally killing them - DONT GO IN. It sometimes happens that (if round 1) people inside the chamber will not get ported out which may lead to (i expierenced it) a lost BG since 4 defenders are trapped inside the chamber unable to do anything.

2. Defending:

Defending is somewhat simple but still hard. At the beginning you spread EQUALLY - 7 players each gate and one joker for wherever needed more. You dont know which gate will be attacked so spreading is the bst otpion or you may all assemble at one gate while the enemy easly walks through the other, unchallenged into the chamber of ancients. Be aware, that a tank once through a gate unchased will likely not be stopped until the chamber of relics gate where already 4 new tanks from the GYs are behind him.

So you split up - ignore the players, attack the tanks as soon as they appear. A player respawns in 30 secs a tank in 1 min. Besides players wont (in most cases) damage the gates, tanks will. Holding the Gates is main priority so its killing tanks. A tank destroyed also has to move up again (and is slower then players who can mount up)
If you see that a tank is not driven, and you are not needed at another gate, do NOT destroy it, just beat it down to like 10 k hp. If you destroy it it will respawn with full 220k hp and be "unstoppable" but if its down to 10 k its down to 10 k and can be stopped easily if someone drives it later.

Cannons: A topic of some discussion. Mount cannons or not? Lets see the strength and weaknesses of a cannon. A Cannon causes 5k AoE Dps. So on singletargets a lvl 80 player surely does more dmg. BUT single targets near a gate are very rare and usually only appear in the last 4 minutes (of initial 10) Cannons do 5 k dps AoE - means 5k dps on 1 target, 10 k on 2 (where most players already reach their limit) 15k on 3 20k on 4 and so on.
Usually tanks will be mounted by a 3 man crew - while a cannon cant damage the driver, it damages the other 2. So on a mounted tank its 15 k dps and thats quite a lot. besides if you kill the crew, the tank is easy to finish off for other players. If you have, which will often appear, 2 or even more tanks at one gate, they will often be close to each other so you can hit 2 tanks per shot or even more making cannons unreachable in dps (40k if both crewed)
Besides, on a cannon you are rather safe. Cannons are rarely attacked and have 50k hp themselves. So you can do damage without interruption. On the field you will likely be killed by other players, and soon. if you are melee you will likely not even reach the tank (slows, fears etc.) so even if you crit for 20 k you can bet that, overall, a cannon will do more dmg as melee.
So - Defending Melees mount cannons unless you have 6k gs. Ranges shoot the tanks and chase them if possible. There are 2 cannons per gate which should be mounted at the start and later if needed.

Teleporters: As defender you can use teleports (white glowing circle near gate) which will always teleport you to the gate nearest to the next controlled GY. SO if you use them near beach but the enemy controlls the gy near yellow gate you will be ported behind the yellow gate. So teleporters can get you quickly to where you are needed

Bombs - just to mention, IF a player should ever drop a bomb near a gate (rare) and you see it (even rarer) you can disarm it by clicking it and it wont explode.

GY - If the enemy breaches through the first gate(s) PROTECT THE GY. Cannons and others surely will take care of the incoming tanks and if they succeed the enemy advance is stopped for around 3 minutes as tanks need time to respawn, being mounted and drive. If the GYs are lost the enemy spawns closer to the gate and gets 2 fresh new tanks per GY. GYs can also not be recapured so once lost they provide the enemy with fresh tanks and fresh players near the gates.

Once one gate is down its better to amass near the breach since most likely some other tanks are on their way. Only split again if the enemy attacks the other side. If 2 gates of one side are down, ignore the other site completly and defend the middle gate at all costs

Finally, get as close to the tanks as possible. You respawn fast. The tanks dont. So if 2 tanks are rushing to a gate, GO TO THEM. attack the tanks as soon as possible do not wait at the gate for incoming tanks! The sooner youa ttack the tanks the better. So run towards them and do damage like hell. If you get killed you will likely spawn when the tank is in range for attcking the gate. If you dont attack the tank before that, he will for sure break through, so dont wait for the tanks to arrive, go get them as soon as they are there.

oh and avoid Mass PvP. Always target the tanks. The players arent important, the tanks are.

7. Isle of Conquest:

Spoiler: Show

The final (working) BG.

The isle can be confusing and confusing but luckily there is really just one valid tactic that will lead to victory in 99% of the time. (depending on the team that successfully uses it)

In short, there are 2 ways of wining. Either make the enemy run out of ressources, which will happen in one of 100 games when teams are really equal or kill the enemy general.

There are a lot of different bases that grant different tools to conquer the enemy base. Luckily, there is only one of importance - the docks. The docks provide you with catapults which can get you inside the ally base by just flying over the wall and they move very fast (and in stealth! if use skill) and the docks grant you glaives which do 5k dps on the gates - which is the same ammount of thw WHOLE workshop. So one glaive does the same dps as 4 tanks + siege engine. (and the siege engine spawns 3 minutes AFTER the worksop is conquered. Tanks, Glaives, Catapults spawn instantly after capture)

The Hangar makes you able to use the teleporter near it to mount the flying ship from where you can jump inside the enemy base (you get a parachute so you dont fall to death) which is exactly the same as catapults do so conquering the hangar is stupid and useless. The ONLY advanatge may be for hunters as they can mount up on ship, jump, and land on the roof of the enemy castle from where they can shoot down on allies which usually takle quite a lot of time until they realise the hunter up there. + the Hunter has a longer reach so its hard to get him down there allowing him to go for a lot of kills until someone deathgrips him down. its fun but worthless for winning.

The workshop provides you with 4 tanks and after 3 minutes with a siege engine. Those are of more value as a tank and the engine do 1k dps on the gates and arent that easily to take down (easy enough still. A single player with skill can do it in half a minute) but overall the workshop isnt worth it.

The raffinery and the quarry are not really usefull too. They grant bonus honor, reinforcements and 15% higher siege damage (damage to gates) so capturing both does a nice dmg increase for glaives but usually aint worth it as, if you have 2 intact glaives, the gates will be down before the 2 bases are captured. if you are far away from everything, before you ride into the ally zerg and die a meaningless death or stand around, get the quarry or the raffinery. Else they arent worth taking.

The docks combines the usfeullness of all other stations. - 1 glaive does more damage then the whole workshop and one catapult gets your troops faster inside the enemy keep then the airship. And there are 2 glaives and 2 catapults! The glaives dont just do insane damage - they also have insane range. While tanks need to be pretty close to the gates in order to damage them, where they will likely be bombarded by the turrets on the towers and destroyed by players, the glaives can fire out of a hideout out of range from turrets and out of sight of players. While glaives go down rather fast, they are not defenseless - the bladestorm does insane dps on PLAYERS (ONLY - NO dmg on Gates or NPCs) Still its always a good idea for other players to protect the glaives from being destroyed as the glaives are THE key to victory.

Why? Well you can not attack the enemy general until one of the 3 surrounding gates is down. The gate of the keep itself (middle) can not be damaged or destroyed and will ONLY open if one of the 3 outher gates is destroyed.

When the gate is down, all players should head for the boss as fast as possible as victory is just seconds (and some firepower) away. As soon as the general is dead you win, so when the gates are down go for the boss if you are near ally base or help defend gates / your boss if you are near horde base.

Tactic is simple: All players. ALL Players. AAAAALLLLL Players without exception head to the docks and try to get them. if you get the docks and 2 glaives save, you will have killed the enemy general before the alliance with its workshop tanks has even got one of your gates below 50%
ALL players, ALL PLAYERS go for the westgate. The westgate is closest to the docks so its the only real choice to attack with glaives (for other doors glaives would waste much time driving there besides they would risk being destoryed by players) So if you have a catapult, drive it neat the westgate tower and fire yourself inside the keep. If you have a tank drive to westgate. it may be a longer way but if you drive past the west gate you can attack it while you are out of range for the turrets. (only with the cannon not the ram) which insanely increases your tanks survivability.
Glaives are a bit harder to position - you drive them IN the river neat the westgate - just drive down the cliffs, the glaive doesnt get falling dmg. From the riverbank you can already reach the enemy gate and damage it, while you are out of sight for players and out of reach for turrets.
The players who couldnt get into any vehicle, take the catapult and go inside the alliance base.
Inside there you capture the GY so your people spawn inside. You take seafarium bombs (the huge bomb piles) near the keep, take a bomb (will be in your inventory, right clicking drops it) and drop the bombs at the westgate. Each bomb does 10k damage to a gate. Unfortunately the piles vanish if enoug bombs are taken and you need to wait for respawn. usually 10 ppl inside the hold will already get the maximum dmg out of the bombs. the rest should go to eitther protect the glaives or defend.
The fight for the docks will be hard and crucial - usually 2 zergs clash so use every extra you can have, this first encounter is likely the most important int the whole match and decides it. who can get the glaives save wins. So activate BT if shaman, use trinkets, get every inch of advantage you have, you must win here. Then its best that melees grab the glaives and range protect them.
Dont forget to cap the docks already while the fight is still ongoing so the glaives will be avalaiable soon and the enemy has no time to regroup and get you. Besides the spawning point of the docks is pretty close to the westgates so - fast reinfocements.

If you lost at the docks you need to immediately go after the glaives, Ignore players, the glaives go down fast and are most dangerous so get them down. Then try to capture the docks again.

Usually players who spawn near alliance keep go to help attacking, while players who spawn near horde keep go defending.

Defending: KILL GLAIVES. As soon as you see those things flying through the air seek the glaive and kill it.
Turrests are of low use as glaives are out of reach anyway, tanks can hide right beneath the tower so you cant damage them while they can fire at the gate. the only use for turrets is to kill players inside the kep who try to place bombs at the gates. if there are masses of them the turrets can be much fun as you do insane dmg and are safe of getting killed. At least until someone with brain appears and moves up the tower to kill the turrets

Some general PvP advice:

I have seen a lot of very good PvE players that completly suck at PvP. I also heard a lot of people who wanted a guide and tipps for pvp and i have seen a lot of very wrong "guides" and assumptions regarding PvP. I play PvP in WoW since 3 Years quite professionally and did PvP in a LOT of games and since i once won a tournament in WoW im pretty sure i know some things. So have fun reading.

The problem with pvp guides is, that oppinions differ a LOT cause PvP is, depending on class, server and personal experience quite different and noobs will act quite differently then pros in PvP which gives them sort of an advantage if you mistake them for being good ^^

The main preconseption is, that PvP cant be calculated, there are, different then in PvE no certain actions or things you could anticipate. Thats true if you fight noobs. If fighting pros, with some experience you simply know what they will do and how they react. It takes practise but good pvp players know how to counter certain things and so you know if you do this your opponent will do that and by knowing you can guide himm into a trap. Players are predictable to a degree where Pvp becomes a chessgame. If you do "a" he must do "b" or he will be hurt badly. if you know he does "b" you prepare for "c" which he must coutner with "d" and then he may be defenseless against "e"
So dont be fooled - you can predict your enemies actions, though it takes a lot of experience.

But of course there are a lot of differences to PvE. While in PvE you try to max your damage, in PvP you max your surviability. Players wont just stand there and let you beat them - they will stun you, interrupt you, dispell, silence, smash back, deathgrip and the like. And you may miss them a LOT depending on your Hitrating and their dodge chance. Besides that they will kite you, slow you, blink and so on. So you usually wont be able to land a lot of attacks. That sounds like damage is important? Well dmg is reduced through resilience by roughly 30%, your chance to crit on a player is reduced by another roughly 30% and the damagebonus from crits is reduced by near 60%. And then, players have a decent armor too and some have skills that reduces damage even further. Sure the more dmg you do the more dmg you do, but due higher dmg gets reduced more, its not worth going for dmg. The longer you last the more dmg you can dish out and the better are your chances that you finally bring down your enemy. While you may onehit a 20k PvE opponent, a 20k PvP opponent likely last a lot longer and they heal when you cant reach them. They will hide heal up and come back at you.
So you are a rogue have that mage in stun and dot him to hell with poison and diseases? Oh that may just be what he waited for, when your last effect is up he iceblocks, freezes you blinks away and then you are dead.

So whats the PvP guide? Well first
- Survivability comes first at all costs. You can dish out much more dmg the longer you live, and the harder you are to bring down the higher the chance that your opponent runs out of mana, cds and becomes easy prey. That 20 Extraresilience or that 150 extrahp may just be the difference between winning and loosing. I have seen it happen a lot that someone won a battle with less then 100 hp remaining. Try to get resilience to 1k before you consider serious pvp and near endgame you should aim for 1.4k - 1.5k resilience. HP are quite depending on class, specc and playstile. High hp dont necesserally mean that someone is well geared or a good player. Someone who went for resil instead of hp may have 10k less hp but still last longer. If you can heal yourself, resilience is most important as it will reduce incoming damage a lot so heals become much more effective. Stamina is important if you cant heal yourself, (or just very little) because its your "total" hp. A Warrior with 50k hp has 50k total hp you have to bring down. A priest with 25k hp initial hp may have 70k hp to bring down cause he heals himself. A discipline priest who looks like an easy 20k hp target may outlast a tank with his shields.
So dont be fooled by high hp and dont be scared because PvP is all about

MINDGAMES;

Yes thats what PvP is all about...the key to winning is simple but hard to achieve. Stay calm, at all costs. Stay calm. Dont be scared cause the enemy got double of your hp. Cause thats what he wants, look intimidating. PvP and real life fights have a lot in common there - if you let yourself be intimidated or scared you will very likely fight like an ***** and miss a lot of chances and loose just because you act stupid.
High HP often make opponents playing defensive which can be used as advantage by the high HP guy. Dont let that happen - high hp dont mean he is better, you can bring him down easily. As a mage for example, fighting a warrior, the war will likely have twice or even more hp then the mage. But a good mage wont even get hit during the whole fight Ok if the war isnt good, but usually mags have a very high survivability cause they can kite like no one else.

Dont get provoked. Yes if you are slowed by 60% its annoying. Yes if you cant escape that snare you enrage. But dont. If you do, yu act like an *****. You will just focus on your opponent and want to get him at all costs. VBut he wont let you. So you are in that snare and instead of healing up you just end up doing nothing. So you are slowed and instead of trying to do smething or hide you just walk like an ***** towards your opponent. Bad idea.
So he taunts you and you want to bash his face? dont. Thats called a trick. He knows, that if you are provoked, scared or confused, he wins. Know that too. Mindgames are much more important then equipment or general skill. If you get your enemy to act like a fool you win.

And som classes are just perfect for such. Play as an arcane mage - you can keep your oppojnent slowed by 60% movement and 30% attack / cast for the whole damn fight. You can freeze them in place and blink away. You can use 4 Mirrorimages and instant invisibility to "vanish" run behind a corner and heal up with evocate whiole he stupidly bashes your mirrorimages. he dots you to hell, use iceblock for a second and they are gone! All the effort lost. Kite him to death and shoot him while moving...

Skills that help annoying your opponent are more important then skills that increase your damage.

If you fight players you want them to act stupid and not be provoked into acting stuopid yourself. So knowing your skills is crucial but also the opponents! Yes mages can have 4 mirrorinages with a glyph. If you dont know that, you may be fooled. And yes, a lot of glyphs and skills that look useless in PvE are allimportant in PvP. Tahe the ghostwolfskill of enhancement shaman - in pvE you wont need it at all. In PvP its your most important mind game skill as slows dont affect you as much, you can get after an enemy fast or get away...

Patience and a calm mind are as important as quick reactions. So you skilled that interrupt to be avalaiable 1 second faster? Completly useless if your reaction time is crap. Work on that first and watch your latency.

Fakecast. Yes the enemies got interrupts. You dont want that to happen - fake casting, stop after a sec and the enemies interrupt is wasted. and then you can cast for real.
If you have interrupts wait until the spell is almost finished, dont waste your interrupt on a fakecast

1.
The said stuff is not true in each and every situation or each and every specc. If you are going to play as fury warrior in PvP - which against preconseptions can be done even in arena and doing well though its difficult to play and needs a special team up - then survivability is <<<< damage. A fury warrior doesnt survive long anyway so here the main goal is putting your enemy down as fast as possible, damage is the way to go and if done well you will beat down most enemys before they can do something against it.

2. Buffing:
Yes i forgot as i thought its clear but just to make sure: There is a right and a wrong way to buff up. Buffs can be removed by skills like purge and mages can even STEAL them.
So its important that you buff the really important buffs with longer duration (at least 5 min) FIRST (usually stamina buffs) and then other buffs, which become less important the later you cast them. If you finally got all buffs you need up you buff the USESLESS buffs. Yes you heard me right! Thats a protection buff - if the enmy removes your stamina buff it hurts BADLY. If he removes waterbreathing...who cares?
The plus is, buffs can be cast as soon as you spawn so the mana should fill up again (or cds go down) until you encounter an enemy so you have clearly an advantage.
When it comes to order cast stamina / survival buffs first, then damage buffs, then nice to have buffs and finally the useless buffs to protect the others. In special priests should be aware here as they highly depend in buffs. Each buff removed means the enemy spent mana / a cd and time to remove it. And some buffs simply need to be removed - meaning you gain time and your enemy wastes his time removing buffs that arent important at all.

3. Rock paper scissors:
It is true, there is such a system. While in theory any class can beat any class, in practise each class has its meat and its nemesis.
Meat are opponents whos skills cant do much against you, nemesis is whos skills have an advantage over you.
While you can in theory win against anyone it will sometimes be very hard to do so and if you and yor opponent have the same skill you will always win against meat and never win against nemesis. (Generalised,...i personally win 3/10 duells against my nemesis and 9/10 against my meat classes)

As example enhancement shamans are the bane of most caster classes. Windshear can interrupt a cast every 4 secs, you can freeze targets in place so they dont escape, you can instant shapechange into wolf to gain 40% speed you can use earthbind totem to remove snares and slows, tremor totem to remove fear, snare ior slow effects each 4 secs (with luck every sec) you can slow them down with the ice weapon and since they are mainly cloth you will completly tear them apart in melee as the windfury weapon can deal up to 20k in a single swing.
Also you can fight from range if rly needed and heal up instantly (maelstorm) whle having 30% damage reduction and so on. Only problem can be druids as boomkins may kill you off even faster while you may not cause enough damage to take healing trees down.
Warriors arent a real nemesis but hard to deal as you WILL loose in melee so its all about kiting (not to far cause he will charge) and using spells - if done well you can kill him that way but it needs good timing.

As a mage it again depends. Usually all melee classes are your meat except the enhancement shaman. You can usually kite them all the time with blink, freeze slows and if arcane u dont need to stop moving to do awesome dmg. So melees usually loose badly.
Yes even rogues! While they have the initiative - wait for the first stun, sit it out most times the rogue uses it come close. wait for the second stun unil all poisons etc. are up - then iceblock, immeditately uniceblock (to remove all debuffs) freeze him in place blink - the time he is frozen in place is usually enough to kill him

The mystery rogue:
Everyone fears rogues in pvp but there isnt really a reason for that. Rly. Rogues usually do the same stuff all the time once you learn how to counter that with your class you usually win. What to do?
Wait for stun 1 and sit it out - most rogues just come close here and start a little. Wait for stun 2, sit it out and get all debuffs you can - if you have a damage reduction ability (like shamanistic rage) activate it to minimze damage taken - also swap weapons to a pvp shield (or any shield if u got one) best done bny a weapon swap makro - with the shield up your armor and therefore damage resistance increases a lot.
Once all debuffs are up, use your classes "loose all debuffs" skill like iceblock the rogue will stun you again - now use your trinket and be free and dot forget to swap weapons again.
if caster - use your "gain space" ability if possible snare the rogue but in any case try to use some aoe as he will likely vanish o some crowd control like fear. Once you got distance and see him he is dead.
Anyway whatever you do use 2 snares or 2 ccs. Rogues also have a trinket you know ;)
As melee: turn around and rape the bastard. In special fury warriors will have fun here as warriors usually outdps any class.

The hunter: Dps game. Its basicly who outdpses the other in burst damage. After the burst there isnt much left to fear. The general anti hunter tipp is using your dmg reduction and protection skills to survive the burst, cc the pet (which if beastmaster is the main source of damage) and go for the hunter.
Finally - please dont fall for feign death. As long as there is a red circle beneath the hunter he is not dead and you can simply kill him. Really dont stop dpsing just cause he falls to the ground you make an ***** of yourself if you believe that he is dead ^^