Why BG Brackets should be shrunk.

I've enjoyed BG's since the first time I stepped into WSG on my paladin. The fast paced, unpredictable action was a big lure for me. But what always got me was that while I was leveling I would pop a bracket and suddenly I was completely out matched, so I had to do more leveling to get up to a competitive level again, this magic range was the #5 - #9 range. I always asked myself why only the top 5 levels in a bracket were "supposed" to be there. Then Blizzard released patch 3.2 and allowed leveling via PvP. I was in love, there was a sudden rush of people that were below this magical range coming in and getting slaughtered right along side of me. Not to mention that there were all of those twinks that didn't read patch notes suddenly leveling out of the bracket that they so loved. Two of my favorite things were suddenly occurring, crying and mass murder on a pixel level. But, this didn't last long, most of the twinks, on my battlegroup, that had read the patch notes, became mothballed. And soon the mindset of "Level until you're #5 - #9" returned because as we all know the prior levels were not very useful and easily one shot. This is the purpose behind this blog though, to change that concept.

So, back to the concept. If BG brackets were shrunk down to a 5 level bracket, you would have 100% competition in all levels, it would equal the playing field. The fact that this concept didn't come with leveling in BG's still baffles me. I mean you don't go into an instance that has mobs or bosses that are 8-9 levels higher than you and expect to do any damage, and that idea was the foundation of placement through the Random Dungeon Finder. So why wouldn't a BG allow you to be more competitive?

Most of my characters have been able to take on mobs that are up to 5 levels higher than them and succeed. This has held true through World and Organized PVP also. So if I had a level 10 fresh into the bracket, I can compete with most people up to level 15, but obviously once they hit 16-19 it is nearly impossible to hit them and they can usually do enough damage to kill me in two to three hits if I don't have a healer behind me. So, for a pure leveling experience that allows for a balanced competition between the two factions it is logical that offering a 5 level bracket would bring more interest to the PVP aspect of the game. I am sure many people are put off by the fact that they can't be competitive at all levels, where as in instances you have a set choice of instances that you can be competitive.

I would honestly like to see this change in Cataclysm with the rest of the perspective changes. I imagine many changes are going to occur in the battlegrounds with the rated battleground concept. Since they are looking to organize battlegrounds more I can see a reduction in the amount of people required for AV as one of the major changes, and hopefully this change will come along with it.

As always, we are still recruiting in both guilds, hit me up with an email or catch TLDNR [H] / CHRGR [A] or KTALGSTO [H] / Tinibubbles [A] online. You can also find me on Twitter.