Observations from a PvP n00b

For the better part of two years, I never got into PvP. I play on regular servers. During the first year of play, my gang leveled a set of alliance toons, then horde toons then got into raiding. During the second year, we had Burning Crusades & raiding. Now that I'm not raiding & I'm waiting for WotLK, I've spent more and more time in PvP on both my hunter & druid. Of course, the big reason is the gear for feral druids. Even with the lame bonuses to healing, the Merciless Gladiator's Sanctuary set provides much needed help for a non-raiding Bear who wants to tank. I thought I would provide some of my observations, for PvP n00bs like myself. Again, I am not a PvP expert. These are just my observations.

General Flag/Base Control
Every Battleground (except WSG) have bases to control and hold. You'll see a lot of people in BG chat yelling "Fight at the Flag" and/or "Don't fight on the road." What does this mean and what do I do?

When your team controls a base or flag, it's essential that you never let the enemy draw you away from it. A sneaky rogue or druid can come around and cap it on you if you do. You've got to fight at the flag and interrupt people trying to cap. Fighting away from the flag or chasing runners is the worst thing (and I do it all the time still) you can do. It's better to die on the flag than live on the road.

However, this is not true when your enemy is defending. Fighting on the flag that you're trying to capture allows defenders to interrupt your allies trying to cap. Lead them away and do everything you can to distract the enemy. I've helped capture numerous flags this way.

The 2-Minute Trinket
The most cost-effective piece of PvP gear you'll ever get is the Medallion of the Alliance. This 8k Honor item provides 20 Resilience & removes all movement impairments on use. The 2 minute cooldown means you'll get to use it more than once in a battle ground. The 5-minute trinket has no resilience & isn't that much cheaper. The next more expensive trinkets are not cost-effective for the amount of resilience they provide. It's also something that you can keep in your inventory when you aren't PvP'ing. Several instance bosses stun. Some heroic instance fights have mobs that will stun and eat your healer for breakfast. There are also some raid bosses that nearly require raiders to have this trinket.

Warsong Gulch
My friends (even the ones who PvP a lot) avoid this like the plague. Even those saving for a PvP set will simply make an excuse to avoid getting the pants. I've done it, but not enough to provide suggestions.

Eye of the Storm
The most effective strategy I've seen for EotS is to immediately divide, attack 3 bases and most importantly ignore the flag. Even if you can't get three, it usually puts the opposition into a defensive mindset. Once you've gotten your 2-3 bases, defend them. At this point, steal the flag from the middle, but do not cap it right away. Once a lead is established, you can concede a base and take the middle to start running the flag. This strategy almost always works but a surprising number of players ignore it and go right for the flag.

Alliance Strategy called out in chat usually looks like this:
1 FRR, 2 MT, 3 DR. Don't go for flag until we've got 3. Call out inc.

Arathi Basin
I love/hate Arathi Basin. If I'm in a good AB, I can stay there forever. There's nothing better than a hard-fought AB, win or lose. There are a lot of strategies for AB, but the most effective I've seen involves going for 4 bases but basically defending a triangle of 3 base using 3 defenders on each base and a roaming group of 6 running from base to base assisting in their defense.

Alliance Strategy called out in chat usually looks something like this:
1 LM, 2 GM, 3 BS + ST. Call out inc.

Alterac Valley
There's so much to say about AV that I can't do it all here. If you've never been, it can be very VERY confusing. Start by reading in a good, basic strategy guide like the one at Wowwiki.

The basic idea is to destroy your opposition's resources & kill their boss before they can destroy yours. Alliance usually sends groups 1-5 south to take Frostwolf Relief Hut & the East & West Frostwolf Towers. Groups 6-8 usually go to Iceblood Garrison, kill Galvangar & then take Iceblood Tower & Tower Point. Once all these things have fallen, they kill the boss, Drek'Thar. Defense usually "happens" but it's not the primary objective. If the Horde slow the Alliance down, they usually win or turn the whole thing into a turtle.*

Lately, the Horde have been using a heavy "back-capping" strategy involving 7-10 players re-taking Iceblood Tower & Iceblood Graveyard. If they are fast, it's very effective and they can re-take Tower Point and win the game fairly quickly. I have yet to see the Alliance effectively manage this. In these situations, Alliance wins only because of bad horde play or by out-muscling Drek and extra warmasters with extra tanks & healers.

*Turtle: Turtling is a strategy when one faction or another is forced to concede everything but one location. It's usually seen in WSG & failed AV's. Usually, it's just a time-sink. A WSG turtle can force the opposition to get frustrated and sloppy, but usually means you're going to waste 30-40 minutes for 60-70 honor & 1 badge. An AV turtle usually involves most of the Alliance being forced back and defending the last bridge to Dun Baldar. It's a slow, hard grind but can be rewarding for both factions if it's the battle-ground's holiday weekend.