Posts with tag Honor

I have a theory that either our various caps for justice and valor points are too low, or the amount we get per activity is too high. I'll relate my thinking. I have several level 85 characters I'm running through the Dungeon Finder and Raid Finder tools. Clearing both halves of the Raid Finder Dragon Soul gets me 500 valor; I then run four random heroics, and I'm capped. This means that playing my main any further that week is effectively a waste of time. (I usually cap my valors out before I even raid for a week, which makes raiding just about the gear, but I'm OK with that.)

My problem is, I like my main. I'd play him more if there was anything to do. As it is, I tend to cap out on justice points rather than run on one of my alts, and even then, they usually cap on valors as well. (At least two of them do.) I even sometimes cap on honor, and with the new conquest point gains for Random BGs, I could cap on conquest if I really set my mind to it. And while I understand why we have both weekly and total caps on points, it often feels like I'm being penalized for liking the game and wanting to play it.

WoW Insider covers the world of player vs. player action in Blood Sport for fans of battleground, world PvP and Arena play. Steering you to victory is Olivia Grace, who spends most of her time in Azeroth as a restoration shaman turning people into frogs.

With patch 4.3 imminent and Arena season 10 due to end Nov. 29, it seems reasonable to assume the patch will appear in early December. While you're racing to get your team into title range, get that last piece of gear, or just running laps of your capital city, you might be thinking forward to the arrival of the patch and wondering what your fate will be in PvP as the nerf bat winds up for another swing. Firstly, let's deal with some housekeeping.

Conquest points, the PvP equivalent of valor points, will now be far, far easier to earn from ordinary Battlegrounds. The first daily Battleground win will now award 100 conquest points, up from 25, and wins after that will award 50 conquest point, up from, well, none! The conquest cap will remain, so while it will still be far quicker to reach it through Arena, it will also be attainable via Battlegrounds of the non-rated variety. This makes it far easier for solo players to build up the resilience numbers people often demand (fairly or otherwise) for access to Arena and Rated Battleground teams or just to gear for Battlegrounds.

The shattering of Azeroth wreaked havoc across the world and destroyed many outposts and important areas to both Alliance and Horde. This destruction prompted an all-out war between the two factions, centered mainly on grabbing as much land as possible -- with the devestation of the shattering, both sides felt the pressure of losing precious resources.

The Stonetalon Mountains, nestled in the heart of western Kalimdor, are one such location that's come under heavy fire from both sides. Formerly home to the Venture Company, the Stonetalon Mountains are now under contention by both sides, in an effort to grab what resources and land are immediately available. For the Alliance, it's a harder fight than previously thought. Not only is the Alliance dealing with Horde forces, they're also dealing with an ancient evil lurking beneath Stonetalon Peak.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Sport for arena enthusiasts and The Art of War(craft) for fans of battlegrounds and world PvP. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 Gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more.

It's the beginning of a new arena season. Recently hitting 85 myself, I noticed a lack of information about the best ways to acquire PvP gear for my upcoming adventures in Azeroth. Well, I've put together a little guide for you that I hope will aid you in whatever your PvP goals are this season.

Conquest points are the most important type of PvP currency in Cataclysm -- and they're awesome. They're incredibly easy to get, as you only have to win four or five arena games a week to get to the starting cap of 1,343. The average piece of conquest gear is bought for 1,579.4 conquest points, so even if you never break 1,500 rating, you'll be getting a new piece of epic PvP gear almost every week.

Try to save up early for your weapon, offhand, and relic/wand. These three slots are the only pieces of gear that can only be bought with conquest points -- don't make the mistake of buying other stuff with conquest points! You can just get a slightly inferior version of the other pieces via honor, but you might have to wave around that green or blue weapon for a while if you aren't wise about what you buy!

After the hotfix last week (rewarding 1,800 honor to the offensive team) aimed to increase Tol Barad changing hands from faction to faction, Blizzard has recanted and lowered the amount of honor gained when the attacking side wins the PvP objective. There was much confusion over why Blizzard would introduce such a huge honor gain for the attackers, as it clearly encouraged players to win-trade Tol Barad back and forth, negating the whole reason for a PvP objective.

However, Blizzard has just changed the amount of honor gained when the attacking side wins Tol Barad to 360 honor, down from 1,800. Let your servers know that the win-trading can stop.

Zarhym -- Tol Barad Honor Change

As you're probably aware by now, an update was applied to Tol Barad shortly before the holidays which granted the attacking side 1800 Honor Points for a victory. While the goal with that change was to provide more incentive for the attacking forces to claim victory, it ultimately led to an undermining of the spirit of competition in Tol Barad. We've just applied a hotfix which has lowered the attacking faction's gain to 360 Honor Points for a victory. The defending faction will still earn 180 Honor Points for a victory.

We appreciate all of your feedback regarding this change. We'll continue working to make Tol Barad a fun and engaging PvP environment.

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In addition, Blizzard is currently working on a fix for what many termed the "Tol Barad Bridge Marathon," where players would run across the Tol Barad northern bridge to enter the zone as the battle was ending to reap the benefits of the victory, even if they were not called to participate in Tol Barad.

Quote:

Whats the word on the bridge exploit?

We're working on a fix for this right now.

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There are quite a few changes to PvP in Cataclysm. Let's have a look at how the changes in the past few patches will affect the other aspect of World of Warcraft gameplay ...

Resilience is different

Resilience no longer reduces critical strike chance but instead only reduces damage across the board. As resilience is the premier PvP stat, this impacts gameplay in a major way. First, critical strikes are back on the table. This means that talents contributing to crit are valuable in PvP again. Burst damage from crits will happen more often, and players can opt to stack crit for PvP without it being devalued ... much.

Zach of The Art of War(craft) enjoys PvP in all its forms, which includes competitive sports, martial arts and the considerably less badass and infinitely geekier miniature wargaming. Like Warmachines. Or maybe it's because he kind of just likes anything with the word '"war" tacked onto it.

Last week we took a look at the delicious possibilities that Cataclysm will bring to battlegrounds PvP. It's going to be pretty brutal out there, and you're going to need friends. While there is a whole bunch of cool stuff all over, the best thing about Cataclysm for battleground enthusiasts will be the rated battlegrounds. Unfortunately, one of the things this will contribute to is the decline of solo play. In order to get the most out of your battleground experience, you'll need to be part of a group so that you'll reap the benefits of rated matches.

The new Vicious Gladiator gear for arena Season 9 (or rated battlegrounds Season 1) is listed on MMO-Champion, and I'm sure avid battlers are drooling in anticipation of how these sets look. Then again, it could just be me. At any rate, there's a whole load of gear waiting to be claimed through honor and conquest! Most importantly, one thing that separates itemization this upcoming PvP season -- and this is a game-changer -- is the availability of personal-ratings-free weapons and armor through the new system. That marks the first time that max-level PvP weapons will become obtainable by players of all skill levels and the first time that top-tier PvP armor will only have a cosmetic distinction separating them from their ratings-free counterparts. You read that right: PvP gear with ratings requirements will have the exact same stats as PvP gear with no ratings requirements.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

We haven't kicked off The Queue with reading music in awhile, so let's change that. Once upon a time I posted some Rhett and Link for you, an internet-based musical comedy duo, and people seemed to enjoy it. So here's more! Behold, the T-Shirt War. T-Shirt War was actually my second choice behind the far more hilarious Butt Drugs, but perhaps Butt Drugs aren't as safe for work. Still, funny stuff. Butt Drugs.

The Queue is actually a bit short today, since a majority of the questions we've been receiving require rolling bones and gazing into a crystal ball to answer. If you have a non-Cataclysm question for us, please ask in the comments below!

busuan asked...

"Why is there almost no sound effect for a warrior's shouts? In Diablo II, the similar shouts come with awesome sound effects. But in WoW, warrior shouts merely generate a visual cue. If Blizzard though effect were annoying to other people, they could have restricted the effects as self-only."

• PvP Mounts
• Level 60 Legacy PvP Armor - page 1, page 2, page 3
• Level 60 Legacy PvP Weapons - page 1, page 2, page 3
• Level 70 Outland PvP Armor - page 1, page 2
• Level 70 Outland PvP Trinkets - page 1, page 2

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Why yes, that is the most disgusting whale you've ever seen. Unless, of course, you've witnessed local authorities taking dynamite to a beached whale to get it out of the way since they couldn't move it just by pushing the thing. That is disgusting. Whale guts landing on cars a mile away? No thanks. I'll take the guy pictured above over that.

Moonkinmaniac asked...

"On the WoW calendar there's an undead whale picture. What the heck is it? Is it a rejected project for the current expansion or possibly one for Cataclysm?"

What happens when Harvest Festival and Brewfest collide? The It came from the Blog Epic Harvest Brewfestival Ride! On Saturday, those of us who are level 40 and above are going to dress up our Epic Mounts as Brewfest Kodos and ride to Honor a Hero in Ashenvale.

• When: 4:30pm EDT (1:30pm PDT, 2:30pm Server Time) Saturday, October 3rd
• Where: Meet in front of Orgrimmar on Zangarmarsh (U.S.)
• Who: Any Horde character with an Epic Mount
  
• How: Send a tell to Robinella or any It came from the Blog Lurker to join the guild

We will be earning enough tokens in Brewfest to obtain the ability to transform our mounts and then riding to honor Grom Hellscream. We will then return to Javnir Nashak and complete the one Harvest Festival quest (there is no Achievement). If you do not have a high enough level character on Zangarmarsh to participate, there is still plenty of time to make a Death Knight and complete the starter quests.

If you have any questions about It came from the Blog, please read our FAQ.

We hope you'll join us for the Epic Harvest Brewfestival Ride!

We've gotten a bunch of tips recently that claim some very e-famous PvPers are botting in BGs. If you aren't familiar with the term "botting," Dictionary.com provides us with the following definitions of bot:

1. Bot:
   –noun
   the larva of a botfly.
2. Bot:
   –noun (Australian Slang)
   a person who cadges; scrounger.
3. Bot:
   –noun
   a device or piece of software that can execute commands, reply to messages, or perform routine tasks, as online searches, either automatically or with minimal human intervention (often used in combination): intelligent infobots; shopping bots that help consumers find the best prices.

One of the most widely-cheered announcements during the Game Systems panel was the introduction of rated battlegrounds and the reappearance of old PvP titles from the now-defunct ranking system. It's a question we've seen asked a lot -- plenty of people out there aren't fond of arena but love battlegrounds, and many of them chafed under the inability to get up-to-date PvP gear. It looks like Blizzard will be trying to reward better battleground play without punishing people who have the bad luck to land on an indifferent PuG. Here's what we know so far:

• Whichever battleground is currently on its holiday weekend will also be a rated battleground for that week.
• Battleground wins will award both rating and arena points. Battleground losses won't punish you with a ratings loss, but also won't award any points. I would assume that you can continue to accrue honor and a single BG token per loss. Points earned will be capped at a certain number (not yet known) per week to keep rated battlegrounds from feeling too "grindy."
  
• Your battleground ratings will, like the current arena system, encompass two ratings: a personal and a match-making rating.
• Old PvP rankings will make their reappearance as end-of-season titles (e.g., "Scout," "Commander," "Centurion"). No word yet on whether these are permanent or if, like the non-Gladiator arena titles, you have to earn them each season to continue displaying them.
• "Special epic ground mounts" will be made available to people playing the rated battlegrounds.
• Rated battleground wins will also contribute to the new guild talent system.

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BlizzCon 2009 is here! WoW.com has continuing coverage, bringing you the latest in Cataclysm news, live blogs, galleries, and reports right from the convention floor. Check out WoW.com's Guide to BlizzCon for the latest!

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So patch 3.2 will be bringing some pretty significant changes to PvP Battlegrounds to say the least. Not only will Wintergrasp be morphing into a weird quasi-battleground with queue, but Warsong Gulch is getting a time limit, Eye of the Storm and Arathi's resource goal is being slashed, and we're getting a whole new battleground in the Isle of Conquest. In short, we're going to have some soul searching to do while we decide where to get our non-arena organized PvP fix on.

We're running late on this one (the beginning of the month was quite busy), but it's not any less exciting: congratulations go out to our latest Guild of the Month for May: the Dragon Knights on Area 52. They sent us a nomination along with many other guilds in the game, and were selected for their originality, community, and raiding performance. Among other interesting things about the guild (which you can read in the second half of this post), they run a guild podcast, an email newsletter, and even a lotto, all along with raiding competitively and leveling up as a guild.

In addition to being profiled here on the site, the Dragon Knights will also win a raid pack from Swagdog.com, where they (and you) can pick up customized shirts and hats with their guild name and logo printed on them. Our Guild of the Month contest is ongoing, so stay tuned to the site for the next chance to nominate your guild to be recognized here on WoW.com. Read on to learn more about the Dragon Knights and why they're our winners for May.