My Road to BG Blitz 1800

PVP Battlegrounds
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I’m a career BG Hero and wanted to offer some advice on getting to 1800 in BG Blitz to similarly situated players.

I consider myself a person of slightly above average skill in PVP, and I am totally happy with that. I’m lifetime 1850ish in Arena and 2000ish in Rated BGs. I have neither the time, nor skill, to break 2200, so I basically go for the elite shoulders and helm every season and then call it a day. I’m sure there are a lot of other people out there like me.

I recently broke 1800 in BG Blitz and here are my suggestions for others who are trying to do the same.

1. Queue as a tank if possible

Yes, you will get “tank hate” from time to time when your team loses, but I get props far more often in wins. Tanks can sometimes be far more impactful than DPS on most of the maps if played correctly.

More importantly, during peak times you will often get placed into lobbies far above your current MMR. When I was queueing as a tank in the 1700 range, I was playing in 2200-2500 MMR games. That quickly boosted by MMR to get out of the 1400-1500 MMR mess for good.

2. Don’t queue if the wait time is over 4 minutes

When I was in the 1500-1600 bracket, I had the best luck with 4-minute queue times, meaning there are lots of players queueing. 5 minutes is borderline and 6+ you will usually get stuck with randos who have no clue what is going on. I’ve seen 4-minute queues as both DPS and tank, so it happens. You just need to be patient.

3. Don’t queue on Monday or Tuesday (and sometimes Sunday)

Those days will have a lot of players that don’t care about rating trying to cap their Conquest for the week. Also, the top Arena players are grinding Arena rating on Tuesdays, so they won’t be in Blitz to carry the bad players. The top Arena players are also doing Blitz boosts on Mondays (and sometimes Sunday) before reset, so you will get mis-matched MMR games.

Every time I queue on those days, my rating tanks. When I queue on a Friday or Saturday night, the games are competitive and overall the players more engaged/competent.

4. If the enemy team has a player +200 CR over your team’s rating, stop queueing for the night

That means the boosters/sellers/MMR tankers are likely out in force. It definitely sucks when both teams are 1600 MMR, but the enemy team has a 2200 MW queueing with a 1200 warlock, so their MMR balances and get placed into a game they can dominate. Again, this usually happens on Sunday or Monday night before reset.

  • BTW, IMO Blizz needs to have higher-rated players count for a greater proportion of the MMR when duo-queueing with low-rated players.

5. If you lose two in a row, stop queueing

Otherwise, you will fall into the MMR death spiral, from which it can be almost impossible to recover. BG Blitz is a lot like gambling due to the randomness, so chasing the win will most often end in disaster. Try again on another day when queues are fast.

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Any tips will help players!!!

Every player that does NOT give in and give the boosters cash is a win!!!

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Ye my guardian druid is stuck at 1650-1710 rn, yesterday I went on a 3 win streak only for the next game to be placed in a 1400 mmr lobby and lose 19 rating, ig playing on Tuesdays really is bad

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This is a certified goober take :slight_smile: (no hate)
The reason you’re suggesting to queue as tank is probably just because it makes you focus on objectives more.
You can do every job a prot war can do as an arms war MUCH BETTER.
Likely you queued tank and started actually focusing on flags/flag caps/spnning. And because of that you thought tank was easier.
JUST MY OPINION MAYBE SOME TANK PLAYER WANNA COME TELL ME IM WRONG

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you are wrong, prot warriors are actually decent in team fights, don’t need to babysit by healers much, you bring in the game one of the best debuff on a short cd etc

and tanks are allowed to queue for pvp, if your team gets a tank, the other team also gets one

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Saying prot is good in teamfight is not a positive.
Arms is good in teamfight…
Youre going to need a better argument of why to bring a prot?
I am not wrong lol.

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Or in off-peak times far below; it’s a double-edged sword. Also there is a soft cap on tank rating because there aren’t enough queuing at high mmr. On peak I normally queue into 2400-2500 mmr. Off peak I can dip as low as 1700-1800.

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demo shout is great in a team fight, prot warrior is decent

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1 ability does not make a class in solo.
I am not going to argue that its not viable at all. If you wanna say decent thats fine.
My argument to the OP is that suggesting someone queue tank over dps to climb is silly advice.
Likely Queueing tank just caused the OP to pay more attention to objectives.

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Prot is more mobile than Arms (40 yard dash/20 sec cd), harder to kill, and brings team damage buff and debuff capabilities.

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Even granting all 3 of those
It still doesn’t make prot MORE valuable to the TEAM than non prot.
Maybe you’ll have more fun cause you can charge further?
My question is more what makes prot more valuable?

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Damage buff is 15% with 4 additional people targeting the same target. The more people on the target, the more benefit the Warrior is; potentially more than making up for their sub Arms dps. The debuff is AoE, up to 30%, and on as short a cooldown as 15ish seconds in ideal conditions.

Dragon Charge is much more than a simple charge. It is targetless direction sprint that knocks back everything in its path. With it only having a 20 sec cd, I am able to reach far objectives, flags/orbs/bases, much faster. It being super fun is just an added bonus.

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Prot is more valuable than arms on certain maps. For example:

  • On Deephaul, I can solo lock the other team out of grabbing the crystal, allowing other teammates to focus on carts. I will also usually draw 2-3 opponents to kill me, giving my team the advantage on carts.
  • On cart maps, the other team needs to devote at least 2 or more to take it. 1v1, no way a DPS will kill me before it caps so that gives my team the numbers advantage elsewhere.
  • On CtF maps, prot is a great FC if the other team does not have a MW
  • On flag maps, prot can solo defend vs. 1 or 2 DPS longer than Arms
  • When I play Arms at LM, MT or BET, I really wish I had Dragon Charge to knock the opponent off so I can solo cap.

When I play prot during peak times, I’m put into 2k MMR/CR games, much higher than my current MMR/CR. So, I play with higher quality players and have more to gain with less to lose.

When I play arms during peak times, I never get pushed into 2K lobbies. Since there are more DPS queueing, it’s unlikely you will be moved into lobbies significantly higher than your current one if you are in the 1500-1600 range.

That said, it’s not a way to climb if you are shooting for 2.2k+. I made it pretty clear this is the method I found effective to hit 1800.

If you really want to climb to the top brackets, tank is not the way to do it. But if you want to hit 1800, I found tank much easier than I did DPS.

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Again youre just telling me 2 abilities prot has. The damage buff is nice in an ideal situation. But were talking about pushing solo queue. Neither of these will likely help you outside of maybe the damage one on a flag map with a decent team. But even still an arms war would be near same effect.

I guess if were talking pushing out of the 900 cr to the 1100 cr???
If you can 1v3 as prot in the current expansion youre either at 900 cr or blizzard accidently buffed your account and you should immediately be banned.

you are decent base holders as tanks. but only decent. that is the one point of every point ill give a tank. Ironically 99 percent of base based maps I never see tanks sit but thats a different story. Still this 1 point doesn’t overide the 20 points in favor of arms.

tanks are AWFUL FC’s generally speaking. MW/Dragon always gunna be better. But youre right i guess that if you get a really particularlly bad comp you might maybe be slightly useful if the other team hopefully doesn’t have a real fc… This isn’t really a point in favor of prot, its more like a “if no one else can I guess I kinda can”

Eh Ill give you a slight point here. At low rating things like knocks can change the game. However Hoping you get AB when tank queueing is hoping for what a 1/8? Again seems better to be arms and just get the 8/8. So a half point at best.

Slight point possibly.
But I’ve seen others say it goes the opposite way aswell. That it can be incredibly hard to find tank lobbys so you can get 1800 and the only other tank queueing is 1500 so you get a 1500 lobby.
I have a feeling this can go both ways, so again, maybe a half point. But still not enough to get ahead of non prot.

Sorry I dont mean to sound super negative or just like im contradicting to contradict. Maybe tank is the play for low MMR and I’m just missing something. But from pushing like 4 chars out of the starter MMR All I know is that any time I see a tank Im instantly sad that its a 7v7 and not 8v8. Relatively speaking as long as youre playing objectives I really genuinely dont think tank spec is gunna be the difference maker. But maybe it is. Or maybe youre just better at it. I truly dont know. I j ust remain unconvinced

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From 1500 to 1750ish, I would typically get 2-3 enemies tunneling me on the crystal with no coordinated CC. I can usually hang in there vs. the other tank and a dps. I can easily handle a third if one of my teammates throws heals on me as the carts are passing mid.

In the 2k+ games, they will chain CC me to take the flag or nuke me down with heals in CC. So, it’s not as effective in higher lobbies.

This is how I see it. Not a spec if you want to push high ranks, but it will get the job done for people just shooting for the elite shoulders and helm.

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I would just hazard to say listen to this part of your advice at your own risk to people reading :). Or rather results may vary. Or maybe even just “give it a shot and see if it helps”. Again I just remain unconvinced. I feel like if two players couldn’t kill you in mid on prot for 30 seconds they probably wouldnt kill you on arms with parry up either. Tank’s arent even that* tanky. Again Ill accept the possibility im wrong at low mmr. But I hesitate to just agree with you lol. It just hasn’t been my experience I think in 1 game of probably 50+ tank games that I was happy i had a tank, at any rating. Or that they made some game changing difference. Every single time its been a hinderence on the entire game.

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I told you of 3 stand-out abilities, and their difficulties being killed that make it more valuable than Arms. If you can’t see the value, there is no convincing you.

I have pushed two Prot Warriors above 2k, and now that I have them side by side, I will push them as far as rating will late me take it.

That was literally point #1 that he made on this post.

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Ok? when did I say it wasn’t? I never mentioned for climbing higher.

I asked you what made prot more valuable than bringing an arms.
You gave me an example of 2 super low impact abilities and 1 situationally good ability.
That is not enough to make prot more valuable, or make up for everything it lacks, or the spot it takes up that could be filled by a true role.

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Good luck, I’m rooting for you!

BTW, Dragon Charge alone is worth playing Prot Warrior just for the fun factor. If only Blizz would remove those damn rocks from the middle of EoTS. . .

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Also let me just caviat and say If you WANT to play tank PLAY tank, I’m not trying to be a rager whos saying dont play what you find fun because ‘i think its useless’ or w.e.
My whole thing ws simply fighting against the idea its easier to push. Which I admit I may be wrong. Just my opinion.