Still here, still playing, still logging in, but I am logging out a lot earlier, and a lot more often
Besides trying my luck healing some Za’s/Zg’s my most recent passion has been Rated Battlegrounds. I had considered trying to find a guild that did them regularly in my peak times. I even considered moving back to Oceanic servers to do it, but most of the guilds recruiting where either hardcore into it already and I had no real ‘experience’ in a rated bg to offer, or they were in the recruiting phase, and unfortunately, it’s like the very new level 1 guilds that start up with the ambition ” When we have enough people we are going to start raiding/rated bg’s” You could be waiting a very long time.
As Disc Heals I went on Trade pug runs, found a couple of groups that tried to run them regularly, and get a good core team, but half their games were while I was at work, and I was having to tell random trade pug people also newly stepping into the rated BG team that – a) they needed pvp gear, and b) epic 1 on 1 battles in midfield are not productive.
Got thrown into some better rated teams because they always need heals, so that gave me a little boost in rating, and got me invited to better groups. Also managed to go to a couple of Guild rated runs on their off raiding nights to try to get some people started on their ratings, and if anyone was LF Healer RBG I was like “me!!: 3.5/4k resil disc priest and whatever rating I had managed to scrape up at the time.
As an Aussie on an American server most teams have been only able to keep together for a couple of games. The time zone and country differences usually mean at least one person has to leave to go to bed, or have dinner, or go to work, or something, but I have cobbled together a 1626 rating. Aiming for the higher ended teams now
There were some bad pugs. I submitted myself to a what felt like a rather intrusive gear inspection at a fountain, I had nothing to hide, but there is still something humiliating to have to stand still near someone while they spend what seemed like an eternity running their mouse cursor through your slots. It was the most detailed inspection I had been through, and it was the worse team. If I had known they had planned on two healing straight up I would have politely declined. I am sure that two healing is a valid strat, and while me and a druid healer, healed our little hearts out, keeping two healers cc’d is a lot easier than three, ( and some rateds we have come across run 4 on flag carrying maps )especially with the reduction in the classes able to dispel that cc. Not only do ” healers need to die first” and thus we became the prime targets, trying to keep each other alive, and cc’d free in addition to healing I felt was a terrible way to do it, and it was no suprise when that team only lasted one game before disintegrating.
One of the weekends I was barking ( yes barking) strats to people in Call to arms normal BG to try to end the cycle of infinite losses that Alliance seemed to be suffering that weekend – someone picked on my win/loss ratio on the Rateds, and yes, it’s not necessarily pretty. I didn’t walk into a 1700 team and get carried. I’m earning it the hard and bloody way, in the trenches.
I was disappointed to see that it is often the way of a losing team to leave battle. Eg if they get capped too easily or get matched up against a much higher rated team. I thought at least in this instance, that while you may be losing, or hitting your heads against brick walls – you are still learning – forced to think harder under pressure, even if you only just managed to pee the other team off rather than beat them.
But my journey so far is a start, its learning, and at first I was ashamed of my loss ratio, but this season has also been a valuable networking opportunity. When your trade pugging rateds, you meet other like minded people, other groups, and get invited to another Pvp channel ( our old one died… ) and eventually become part of better teams.
Got into a pretty steady 3′s arena team too, mainly for points for gear, and that has also helped but we really left it too late in the season, but we are still winning on occasion 
