Why does battle high exist?

[KageTokage]

My other problem is that it's theoretically balanced for the reasons you stated, but outside of premades people are extremely unlikely to actually behave in a manner that prevents it from getting out of control.

Case in point, in my previous game the team with highs was in the lead and all three teams were about equal distances from one another, but the third place team decided to attack us instead of them for whatever reason. I assume their base logic just told them we'd be easier kills and they decided that was more important then stoppng the lead team's momentum.

I wouldn't have a problem with it people always knew what they should be doing, but they don't and that's honestly something they need account for with balancing, especially when PvP attracts a lot of people who don't take it super seriously due to the rewards like glam and hairstyles. Alliance raids are already balanced around casual players by predominantly having mechanics that punish individual mistakes instead of the party and also generally lacking meaningful DPS checks.

With no battle high, the better team would still win, they just wouldn't totally steamroll people to the point of it feeling frustrating and hopeless. I actually got a very negative first impression of Frontlines that largely turned me away from wanting to do the full Garo grind after getting totally stomped about a dozen games in a row because of battle high.

It's gotten a bit better now that I actually understand can potentially be done to fight back against it, but the mechanic still feels unneeded, especially when there's already a reward/punishment for KOing/being KO'd by other players and that's the point increase/decrease, increasing respawn timer, and being booted back to base camp. It's those penalties that are a part of what makes people reluctant to engage a team with battle high in the first place; though that's kind of silly when it often comes down to a "Wipe their team or you lose" situation where worst case scenario they win faster and your suffering ends quicker and best case you make a comeback and win instead.