Not hard to achieve? A full set of S1 gear requires 65k honor. Add in belt, bracers, boots, 2 rings, and a necklace and you're at 158k. Add another 15k plus for weapons/shields and you're easily at 175k for a complete S1 arena kit. Even at a VERY generous 2k honor per hour, you're talking well over 80 hours of battlegrounds. Sure, this isn't an obstacle for someone who doesn't work a usual 8-5 job and has no committments for the weekends, but that's a pretty insurmountable amount of time for someone who does or wants to mix in some PvE content or raiding as well. It's just not in Blizzard's interest to make the bar that high.

I suggested it in the AV thread, but I think they should get rid of honor gains for each individual game, but instead base your weekly honor gain on your win/loss record in each particular battleground. This would eliminate the trend of quantity over quality and make people really WANT to win to get more points at the end of the week. There's also no incentive to the AFKers to play more than the required number of games to earn points since there will be no additional honor gained that way.

As for a base set of gear, I think that having a vendor with zero-cost S1-equivalent gear (or just slightly worse, but with appropriate resilience and stamina) in the arena starting area would help reduce the feeling that you need to BG incessantly to have any chance in the arenas. Make this gear disappear upon zoning out of the arena and you won't have it imbalance the entire PvE realm with free gear, but give players at least a taste of the arena without first having to spend those 80 hours just to be vaguely competitive.

but you have to keep this in the context of 'WoW time', not rl play time. Raiding requires more time per week to get equivalent gear to S1, and they have to keep things relative in terms of PvP(bg) vs PvP(arena) vs PvE rewards.

Its going to be a slow process in whatever fascet you decide to improve yourself through equipment. Raiding is like 4 days of a week at about 5 hour intervals and having to be committed to base your RL around these events. BG's are anytime login and que type casual play over the longrun amass the honor to purchase upgrades. Arena is 10 matches a week for minimal points over the longrun to get the best PvP equipment in the game. So its all relative but will all take time to get to the rewards you want.

That time estimate only works for the bleeding edge.

In raiding, if you're behind your friends, you can easily catch up by going on raids and bottom feeding, so it's pretty quick in terms of time to gear up.

In PvP, if you're behind, you have just as much time to spend as people on the bleeding edge, if not more because your gear sucks and there's little incentive to form premades since in some cases they reduce your honor/hour (b/c they match you against premades now).

The other issue is that you have to Battleground to Arena. With PvE, I'm PvEing so I can PvE some more, so presumably I enjoy the gearing up process. I very much wish that it were possible to fully gear up for Arena solely through Arena -- I shouldn't have to play dozens of hours of another game I don't enjoy (Battlegrounds) just to compete in Arenas.

Blizzard elegantly fixed a previous incarnation of this issue (PvE-to-PvP) with the introduction of resilience gear. Sadly it appears that not only do they not see the honor grind as a problem, they actually see it as a good thing (given the introduction of S1 Arena gear being purchasable via honor, but no additional Arena-point-purchasable gear).

I see very little reason why this should be so. To excel in arena, you need skill more than you need time. To excel in PvE, you typically need a sizeable time commitment more than you need skill (though you obviously need both for both venues). Why not make BG's somewhere in between? I never understood the argument that arenas were bad because you could get epics faster. Who cares? WoW should cater to all interests if they want to maintain their dominance, so what's the harm in having gear-gain faster through BG's. All it would do is fast-track alts into being raiding-capable, reduce the burden on those who just want to play arenas, and generally make the battlegrounds a more enjoyable place for everyone involved.

Honestly, I think the only way BGs will be fun again is if actual competition returned to WSG, AB, etc. Now that all of the best PvP rewards are available through arena play, there just isn't an incentive to play the BGs competitively anymore. Sure, there are best in slot PvP items that you get from honor points, but you can afk your way to those items with no competitive investment in the BGs. Only way to do this is to removal/revamp of the honor system altogether. Until BGs become a "rated" activity, BGs will remain stale because of the lack of effort and skill required to play them and earn their rewards.

I had full S1 with all the Vindicator's within 2 weeks of Season 3's release on my alt. It's not hard at all. That also includes the 2 minute pvp trinket and the resil/healing one.

Full season 1 gear means gloves, hat, chest, pants, shoulders, then your adding in belt bracers boots rings and necklace, and then weapons as well. in 80 hours. if you PVPed for 4 hours per session, 2 sessions per week, thats 10 weeks.

Approximately 13 items, exactly the ones you want, on a predictable schedule, over ten weeks- potentially less, if you can mix in some arena items.

if you raided two nights a week for 10 weeks, would you be guaranteed the exact 13 items you were after? would the other 25 people in your raid be guaranteed their drops as well? I started PVPing when season 3 started (~5 weeks ago?) and i have just about a full pvp set (mix of arena and honor gear: s3 gloves and chest, s1 shoulders and hat, s2 offhand, honor legs/boots/bracers, few other pieces, ~320 resiliance.). can you go from fresh-70 to a comporable gear level in PVE that quickly?


Honor grinding is the fastest, most predictable upgrade path- put in the time, you get your epics.
Arena provides the most efficient upgrade path- if you have the skill, you get rewards, fast.
Raiding provides the most challenging, diverse, engrossing upgrade path. Its you and your friends vs. the RNG- one of ya'll has got to win.


Imo, ten weeks is far from insurmountable. I think its pretty clear that from a pure gear perspective, PVP has a clear advantage from a risk/reward standpoint. the question is, what is more rewarding to you? overcoming obstacles WITH other players, or overcoming obstacles that ARE other players.



UPDATE: The dudes above me are even pro-er than I am.

Posts like this are just obnoxious. Did you have any honor banked? How many hours per day did you play? Were you rolling pugs with a premade constantly? As far as I can tell here's how it would break down for my rogue alt:

Vindicator Belt/Boot/Bracer/Neck/Ring + Veteran Ring + Medallion = 107k honor.
Resil/healing trinket + PvP cloak = 30.5k honor.
S1 Armor = 65.25k honor.
S1 Weapons = 35k honor.

So that's a grand total of 202k honor to fully pvp gear out an alt, starting with nothing, and assuming they aren't spending 60 badges on the cloak. You're claiming you did that in 2 weeks? Assuming 1k honor/hour, that's over 200 hours in 2 weeks, which is over 14 hours a day. I'm not sure any reasonable person would consider that "not hard at all".

The problem is that you can only get this (167k honor) in 80 hours if you're pulling down over 2k honor/hour, which is twice as much as you're likely to be able to get. So it's really more like 160 hours. 160 hours of playing the same BGs over and over literally hundreds of times. Just so you can be geared well enough to be realistically competitive in Arenas.

There's no other area of the game that requires this kind of prepatory time commitment -- it might even be a larger time commitment than leveling a character from 0 to 70 with the new xp curve.

I understand the sentiment. My experience on my newly-70 druid has been nightmarish, running into premades in about 16 of 20 games of AB and EotS. Not quite sure why that's happening, since my other characters didn't encounter that. Probably a long chain reaction due to AV no longer being best honor for alliance.

Out of all the problems listed in this thread, I think the premade versus non-premade dynamic is are what I hate most. How is it fun for either side in that game? I think they could solve the entire problem with several different solutions (standardizing rate of honor gain, separating queues), but I suspect nothing will happen.

I wouldn't ban them though. No sense in removing features that are already there.

First off:
Please refer to any page of the AV thread to realize that AV is basically ZERO honor for alliance, not "no longer being best honor for alliance."

You are correct that the premades in the other BGs are somewhat of a side effect of the AV changes. However, you are running into premade games 80% of the time not only because of premades on the Alliance side, but also because of premades on the Horde side as well. When I pug AB or EOTS, I also face premades 80% of the time. It's because of cross queueing. You've seen it, joining a AB where you've died while zoning in, and are 5 capped because some failure of a premade ditched it.

Here are the possible match ups, and let's assign some stupid numbers to these:
PM Alliance vs PM Horde - 25%
PM Alliance vs PUG Horde - 25%
PUG Alliance vs PM Horde - 25%
PUG Alliance vs PUG Horde - 25%

So as a solo queue player, you will only see
PM Alliance vs PUG Horde
PUG Alliance vs PUG Horde
However, you have to realize that PM Alliance vs PM Horde will rarely ever actually play a game against each other. One premade will almost surely cross queue. So it looks more like:
PM Alliance vs PM Horde - 1%
PM Alliance vs PUG Horde - 37%
PUG Alliance vs PM Horde - 37%
PUG Alliance vs PUG Horde - 25%

So as a solo queue player, you will see:
37/(37+25) = ~60% of your games against a premade.

In addition, a PUG vs PUG game will almost surely last longer than a PM vs PUG game. So there are less of these games available. Yes, these numbers are made up, but it should be easy to get an idea of why you only seem to run into premades nowadays.

I hate it too. It actually wouldn't bug me so much if I had to fight premades all day if the alliance didn't just roll over and eat the loss as fast as possible whenever seeing a premade. If I can solo cap and defend farm against anywhere up to 5 attackers the whole game because I'm two shotting every single one of them, just imagine what the rest of the team could do if they actually tried. I'm not bragging, I'm just not sure how to drive the point home that facing a premade does not mean a sure loss.

What I'd like to see happen is something like a betting system: You pay 1 honor for everyone in your group, so solo queueing will cost 1 honor, a full premade will cost 15 for each member. This is all thrown into the pot for the beginning of the game. At the end of the game, the pot will be split amongst both teams depending on the objectives obtained.
WSG: <Your team caps>/<Total flag caps>
AB: <Your team points>/<Total points>
EOTS: <Your team points>/<Total points>
Something like this. The points are subtracted from anyone who gets the first 10/15 slots of that BG. So a premade wagers more for joining a game, but they can earn it all back if they completely dominate, and a pug has more incentive to not lose as badly, since they can steal some of that honor even if losing. And most importantly, this helps prevent the stupid stupid stupid cross queueing since if you keep queueing into other BGs you'll end up losing a bit of honor. (And uh, AFKers are forced to match the pot and are not eligible to gain it back at the end >:D)

Well, that's just an undeveloped idea off the top of my head that's really not worth spending more time on because it'll never happen, but that'd make the games more lively I think. BET IT.

Make it half and you've got me.

I can see weapons still costing a ton, because their usefulness carries over in PvE. Going from some crappy blue 71 DPS weapons (if that lucky) straight up to 91 DPS weapons is a massive leap for PvE. With that in mind, I understand a hefty price tag on 'em.
It doesn't quite work the same for the Gladiator Gear vs regular armour. I think the only class that might do okay that way is a warlock (due to the Stamina co-dependency for PvE and PvP).

The daily quests need to be 4k honor again. Would the game be worse for it? Would anyone complain?

I don't think so.

It's 234826 honor for a mage to get fully geared with the staff. It's about the same for dual wielding meele /2hded meele. It's 19k more for hunters, and 8k more for healers or magic dmg classes that dont want the staff and want OH/MH.

You did over 16k honor a day for two weeks, ya...pretty damn hard / impossible on some battlegroups. On my battlegroup hordeside, the most honor you can get per hour is either a)steamrolling AB in under 7 mins in a premade during AB weekend for about 2k an hour, or AV for about 1400 an hour. Unless you were getting upwords of 2.5k an hour, that's over 8 hours a day.

How is 8 hours a day for 14 days STRAIGHT w/o breaking, easy by any means? It's a fracking huge timesink. Huge. Definately DOESNT need to be there.


Can we have babies together?

As a Horde player in the Shadowburn BG, I've noticed that it is almost entirely impossible to play AB anymore. Nearly every round, the gates open with Horde being outnumbered 3 to 1 or even more. By the time the Horde have even 2/3rds the number of players, the Alliance has already four or five capped and the Horde have to fight from a 600 point deficit. I don't know what's causing this but it is becoming increasingly frustrating. Is this happening in any other battlegroups for either faction? It's making me seriously question Blizzard's queuing algorithms.

It's the BG queue filling up on both sides, but people not entering. Maybe because AV popped, maybe because WSG/EotS popped... whatever.

It's not so much the algorithm as the fact that people are holding open the queue spots and not entering. You should see more people start to enter once the preparation time has ended (which, granted, won't help your position much) as the queue spots are cleared then.

What I'd like to see is a handful of daily quests with varying amounts of honor based on the difficulty of the objective. I also think it would be great if these quests were randomly generated, so people entering the battleground have their own motivations.

The topic of BGs being boring has been beaten to death already, but as an anecdotal example, me and some random mage I've never seen before spent about 20 mins doing world PvP in BEM, often taking out people at 2 to 1 odds against us. It was a ton more fun than random BG number eleventy billion, but the whole thing was worth something like 100 honor, which makes it terrible compared to grinding AV 'till your eyes bleed.

The problem with that is that it sidesteps the issue of terrible honor gain rates.

Winning EotS with the hypothetical 4k honor daily is about 4300 honor, whereas any following wins are 300 honor, less than 10% of the first. To get the bracers, for example, requires 40 mins a day for 3 days (assume 50% win/loss, 20 min games), but if you want to bump that up to 2 days, with a 50% win/loss ratio and 20 minutes a game (assume 100 honor losses), it's going to be 10 honor/min, that's something like 360 minutes, or 6 hours, over 2 days, to make the needed honor.

I'd wager that the vast majority of players never see 4k honor in a single day, so this would be a huge step up for almost everyone. True, it would discourage powergrinding honor to get your stuff more quickly, but that's kind of the idea behind daily quests in the first place.

I'd love to only play BGs for 20-60 minutes a day until I get a win and end up with 4-5k honor. That would leave me time to play more Arena, or level another alt, or do Kara/ZA with alts, or any other element of the game that I enjoy more than playing my 217th AV.

Yeah, everyone would get their S3 stuff pretty quickly and be able to bank a bunch of honor for S4 if they wanted. But hey, that's cool -- it's a relatively easy way to get a leg up in beginning PvE (good for game in this stage of TBC) and leaves BGs mostly for people who genuinely enjoy BGs. Plus it puts the focus more on winning than every individual person trying to maximize their own honor per hour and refusing to do stuff like guard stables.

The only real solution is to make BGs rated and give exponentially more honor for highly rated play. That way crappy players get matched with other crappy players and don't get rolled and competitive players get their gear fast and can get back to arena.

But short of that, matching premades only with premades (at increased honor) and dramatically increasing honor output are the best solution. I know they tried matching before, but with 100 of each BG up most of the time on my BG and with the majority being premades I don't see there being a lack of matches. And if you reduce the number of BGs needed to get your gear they would actually be fun. Doing them occasionally is fun (if you don't get rolled in a pug vs premade game) as it is less demanding than arena, but grinding them is not. Further they need to somehow solve the AFK problem. Most premades suck but they win because nobody is AFK.

The 4k daily was seriously the best thing ever. And if honor gear being easy mode kills Kara, that is a price I am willing to accept.

As long as the quality of badge-purchasable PvE gear remains as high as it currently is and Kara continues to deliver 23 badges per clear, it won't die, regardless of how easy PvP gear is to collect.

I like this idea, but at the very least, they could make the current BG daily quest be repeatable as many times as you want each day, with each completion counting towards your 10 daily quest limit. (And remove the WSG daily as a possibility until WSG pugs get fixed!)