I remember how good were skirmishes in old expansions and then in WoD. Basically when your partners were offline and you wanted to practice Arena you queued skirmish and could play with random people. From newbies you could help to rank 1 players who could teach you things. I remember I found comps I wanted to try I didn’t know even existed.
What I’d like skirmishes to be is an unranked arena with solo queue. If we get back 2x skirmish bracket with 2v2 and 3v3 and bring back healers to them then more people would be able to practice healing. 2v2 is usually the bracket you want to start with as a healer. The fact that healers can’t practice there and are forced instantly into ranked is really sad and one of the reasons there are not enough healers in PvP.
Other thing we need is increase in Honor/Conquest points in skirms so people won’t feel pressured to cap in ranked. They will be able to gear their alts via skirms and even if they lose there it doesn’t feel as bad as in ranked. This way ranked will be for rewards and rating and skirmish for gearing where you can queue alone to get your cap done on alt when your friends are offline. I don’t think that getting unranked set via skirms is a big deal since in PvE it’s worse than LFR gear.
Other benefit of skirms will be that you can find partners there. If you enjoy playing with someone with just add him. You are then judged by your gameplay not your achievments.
Also it’s good testing ground for solo queue in rated arenas if it works then maybe it’s worth implementing it as well. There is no better way to test than making two separate brackets in skirms and increasing their rewards so people will play it more to have bigger test sample. It will make also PvP way easier to get in.
Arena LFG is already toxic enough then why shouldn’t they try solo queue in skirms as an alternative.
What do you think about it?