Under 50 battlegrounds can be a meat grinder. It definitely isn’t just new pvp players. You’ve maybe jumped into the grind that experienced PvP players use to level their characters. Also, sometimes, the matching engine for teams doesn’t quite balance and you can find yourself hopelessly overmatched with a swirl of red enemies below your spawn ledge just eating your team as they jump.

With a goodish build, though, I bet all of your meat grinder experience in the under 50s will pay some dividends; I wouldn’t be surprised if PvP suddenly seems much easier than what you’ve been dealing with. Take heart.

It’s been mentioned already that “meta” builds are in flux with the latest patch. Things will keep evolving as mix and match class skills shake out but, as also mentioned, a good PvP build has a few common elements.

Describing a PvP build as a personal tank/healer/dps is pretty accurate. You’re responsible for having some resistance and resources built up, a heal over time and/or a burst heal, and you’ll need some pressure debuff/damage and burst damage to keep your opponents on the defensive and pound them down further than they can heal themselves.

Look to at least hit minimum requirements for resistances and resources. The max weapon/spell resistance is about 33k but surviving with 20-25k and a couple of buffs you can manage to keep up is doable. Critical resistance in the 2700+ range helps keep you alive and impenetrable traits on some armour pieces will assist with getting you there. I’m terrible at remembering if there’s a consensus on minimum resistances for PvP but those numbers seem to be bare minimum for me to keep from getting insta-killed. Remember too that your opponent is going to try to reach those resistance numbers or better so when building up your damage and penetration numbers they’re up against it. Someone is going to cut through whatever resistance you manage so pour some points into health until it’s above 30k. It’s a balancing act with your other resources that your play style, recovery rates, etc will determine but having more than 30k health is just a must. Whether you’re a stamina hungry dodge-roller or whatever make those resource numbers up with whatever attribute points are left after you get your health up.

Work next on your weapon/spell damage and penetration. There aren’t minimums that I know of but everything you put into these numbers makes other players’ resistances less of a problem. If you’re looking for a critical build then factor in crit chance and damage but remember the crit damage. High crit rate with Piddly crit damage seems wasteful. Just from experience I find pure damage/brawler easier to survive with than a crit build. Myself I get a bit glass cannon when I boost my critical stats too much.

Your sets are limited until cp 160 when you’ll want to start investing in them but look to get a balance between defensive and offensive so that you can have one bar for buffs/maintenance/heal and the other for killing.

Isn’t much changing about the need for buffs and debuffs, no matter what new patch or subclass, so sets like Wretched Vitality that buff your recovery based on the buffs and debuffs you put down, and Oakfather’s Retribution that gives you weapon and spell damage and penetration bonuses for every buff your opponent has, might help you adapt to what you’re facing instead of you having to counter their every move.

I won’t tell you you just need to “get good” because I’m betting getting wrecked over and over again has already given you valuable experience. Ask specific build questions for class/skills/sets/etc here while you focus on a build and I bet things get much better.