My wife and I have been playing for 2.5 years now. The game just offers so much depth that I can never really grow tired of it. It's especially fun when we play together; it's the most fun activity a couple can do together, as far as I'm concerned.
Our tastes in the aspects of play we enjoy are different; my wife primarily enjoys raiding and dungeons (beating challenges cooperatively with other people), whereas I primarily enjoy battlegrounds (where one group of players is pitted against another). But one activity we've both enjoyed, for more than a year now, is leveling a couple of characters slowly, and exclusively by playing together in low-level battlegrounds.
My wife's character is a Shaman; she plays either Restoration (healing) or Elemental (ranged spell-casting damage dealer). My character is a Hunter; I've played him mostly as Marksmanship (until 40 or so), then Survival, now Marksmanship again, when we reached 69.
The reason I'm posting this right now is because this might be the last time it's going to be possible to have this much fun in leveling battlegrounds. Currently, leveling battlegrounds are widely known as "broken" and "unbalanced". The reason they are perceived as "unbalanced" is because, if you prepare, and come with friends who are also prepared, you can have a ton of fun. This fun, of course, comes at the expense of the opposite faction, which might not have players who are as well prepared, and therefore aren't going to have as much fun.
Being well prepared for a low-level battleground generally involves the following:
- Knowing your way around WowHead - an online database of all the items you can use to equip, enchant, and empower your character at each level.
- Having high-level characters with which to buy heirloom gear. Heirloom equipment is powerful until about level 35, and about break-even until level 60. After level 60, it is better to replace heirlooms with items obtained in dungeons (with the exception of weapons).
- Having high-level characters with which to purchase or create enchants and gems for your lower-level characters. Especially in early brackets, enchants are what makes the difference between a character that's going to be killed, and a character that's going to be doing the killing. From level 60 onward, gems become available, and equally important.
- Picking professions that give a useful bonus to your character, and taking the time to raise those professions to the maximum skill level available at any given character level. On early levels, good candidates are Mining (gives Stamina), Skinning (increases critical strike chance), Herbalism (gives an ability that can be used to periodically increase spell-casting speed), or Alchemy (boosts potions and elixirs, but you have to actually use potions and elixirs). On higher levels, I use Alchemy (boosts flasks) and Engineering (gives various abilities, like periodic sprint and parachute). My wife uses Alchemy and Jewelcrafting (gives access to better gems at higher levels, when gems become available).
- Most importantly - taking the time to turn off experience gain when not in battlegrounds, and keep doing dungeons until your character is equipped with the best gear you can get for your level.
- In some brackets, some classes can get major boosts if you've leveled Archaeology and endeavored to dig up low-level gear that's transferrable between characters. Rogues, Enhancement Shaman and Death Knights, for example, can wreck at levels 71-74 using Nifflevar Bearded Axe - especially if wielding two of them.
The process of preparing for leveling battlegrounds takes a while - but not nearly as long as fully equipping your character at level cap. Fortunately for you, who invested the time to prepare, most people feel like they're in a hurry to get to the highest level. As a result, they don't prepare. Their characters have half of your health pool, and their abilities do half the damage. When you encounter them one on one, by the time the encounter is over, their character is dead, and you've lost about 25% health.
If you prepare, most classes can do well in low-level battlegrounds; especially if you play with a friend. Some classes and specializations are stronger than others, but a well-prepared character of any class will beat a player who didn't gear for the bracket.
I would go into a discussion of the relative strengths of various classes; but in a mere two weeks, the game will change. Characters will now have built-in resilience to damage from other players. I fear that this is going to make healers in low-level battlegrounds extremely overpowered, and practically unkillable. Geared damage dealers are still going to dominate in low-level battlegrounds, as they do now; an encounter between a geared and ungeared character is still going to result in the geared character maybe losing 25% health, and the ungeared character dead.
But the overall reduction in damage is going to make some of the more hilarious encounters in low-level PvP much less frequent. Geared Rogues will no longer be able to kill everyone in two moves with Ambush + Eviscerate, and a geared Marksmanship Hunter isn't going to one-shot people with a Chimera Shot critical strike.
In the interest of preserving these moments for prosperity, I present to you... Eloquin and Rheo, Alliance Hunter and Shaman, in Warsong Gulch at level 69. We don't claim to be great - especially not me; I have moments of clarity, when everything goes great, but I also derp around and mess up a lot. This shows the extremes of lower-level battlegrounds, as we were able to play them in late Cataclysm, just before Mists of Pandaria. Enjoy!
Rheo went Resto in this one. A tense match ensued against a hard-to-kill Horde Blood DK, who one- or two-shot most everyone in his vicinity.
This video is available in high quality. Select the 1080 HD resolution when viewing.
It seemed we might have decent healers, so Rheo went Elemental. But the Horde had many Rogues. A single well-geared, well-played Rogue can completely prevent your team from capturing a flag. Fortunately, the Horde Rogues in this match weren't that well coordinated, or well geared; so a tense match resulted.
This video is also available in high quality. Select the 1080 HD resolution when viewing.
In this match, our side had geared damage dealers, so Rheo stayed Resto. Horde lacked good players and ended up being farmed in the graveyard. This is what about 50% of our matches tend to look like. There was a lot of one-shotting.
This was our last match in this bracket; the first flag capture pushed us to level 70.
