The overwhelming majority of players will not make it over rank 10. It’s a simple fact supported by the numbers. You compete against the rest of your faction for ranking points and there’s only going to be a few very hardcore players beating the pack and getting the higher ranks. I can just about guarantee it’s not going to be you.
The rewards for rank 10 and under are terrible.* They are not worth the time, especially when MC and Onyxia are so easy and BWL will probably be a cake walk too. The time spent grinding out the rare PVP gear would be much better spent in an MC pug a couple of hours a week. Or even farming and crafting/buying it on the AH.
So, going into AV just for the sake of farming honor is ludicrous. Going in with no plan to win, just to kill named NPCs for honor makes no sense at all. You’re not going to get any good rewards for always playing to lose, at least if you win you get more rep and faster epic AV rewards.
Instead, have some pride and play for fun. Play to win. Actually try to capture good objectives like GY and hold them. Take back towers and GY from the enemy. Go in groups to kill things and don’t be solo heroes.
Going after named NPCs instead of playing to win is absolutely silly.
* edit: I mean they are terrible for the time:reward ratio. Yes, they can be good items but they are not worth farming honor for them. Do normal games and you’ll probably get in the rank 8 to 10 range without having to go out of your way to honor farm.
“The rewards for rank 10 and under are terrible. They are not worth the time, especially when MC and Onyxia are so easy and BWL will probably be a cake walk too. The time spent grinding out the rare PVP gear would be much better spent in an MC pug a couple of hours a week”.
This is just your opinion, albeit a popular one. Personally, I have zero interest in raiding. Been there and done that back in the day. I enjoy pvp, and dare I say enjoy AV to an extent. The time required to obtain the rare set seems excessive, but again, I’m fine with it. This is where your generalization doesn’t take into account subjectivity. Also, the rewards aren’t terrible, c’mon.
“So, going into AV just for the sake of farming honor is ludicrous.”
I disagree with this, too. If you’re not rolling in a WSG premade, or even 5 man AV/WSG, then you have little choice. Again, going back to my point that there are aspects of AV that I, personally, enjoy, and to each his own.
“Instead, have some pride and play for fun. Play to win. Actually try to capture good objectives like GY and hold them. Take back towers and GY from the enemy. Go in groups to kill things and don’t be solo heroes.”
I agree with you on this one, and it also makes me realize that you’re writing this from an alliance perspective, yes? It definitely translates to horde, but I feel as if you’re alliance. No big deal either way, just asking.
Find me a better 2 piece set bonus.
Find me better legs outside of R12 before phase 5.
Find me a higher AP/Crit combo than R10 shoulders/helm in the game. Doesn’t exist.
All warriors who are in for the long haul should aim for 10, whether they’re in for PvE or PvP. There’s no rush though and you can have fun while doing it. Brackets are a bit silly right now so I’d recommend to wait if you’re on a more limited schedule.
I enjoy PVP too, that’s not what’s at question here. I do AV and WSG for the fun of PVP and the competition of trying to win in them.
The rare rewards are simply not worth the time needed to get them. They are on-par with many items you can get in dungeons and are far below many items you can get in raids. It was different back in Vanilla when raiding was difficult, then you could get the rare PVP items in less time.
In Classic, raiding is very easy and the time to get epic rewards is pretty short. Even a dedicated PVP player can probably take a couple of hours out of their week to do MC and Onyxia to get great gear with far less time put in the rank system. Then take that gear into PVP and do much better with it.
Now, if you’re very good at PVP and you have tons of free time to grind honor then you should go for ranks 11-14. However, most people in AV won’t be doing that. They may think they are but they are probably not.
So in any AV you’ll have maybe 5-10 people who will actually get higher ranks and 30-35 who won’t. Those 30 people should not blindly follow the rankers trying to farm maximum honor because it just doesn’t do much for the masses. Instead they should be going for wins, quickly getting AV rep and the epic rewards from that. Even a single win gets great rewards like the Ice Barbed Spear.
Do AV and try to win it. If you get honor doing it then great but don’t sabotage a chance to win by chasing max honor. Above all, have fun and do your best.
And, yes, I currently play Alliance. I’ve also done AV as Horde. Either way what I’m saying rings true, the main difference is that Horde are winning and Alliance are not.
I’m just happy my main is a class that doesnt want a single piece of pvp gear. I mean, the weapons would be cool, but nothing BWL isnt going to give me.
I only hover around rank 5 to maintain the rank 3 discount should i ever decay that far.
I gave up trying for ranks now. It’s just not fun spammin AV all day long… I just use the BG que for a ‘ghetto portal’ now. Queue up, go farm until the queue pops, then afk out and get ported back to the city. Then I just log out.
I might try for ranks again in a couple months when there are fewer players.
Yes, there are good items in the ranks. No doubt about that. However, the time invested and the things you need to do to get those ranks is insane for the gear.
Instead there are lots of alternatives for a warrior:
Now, just normal fighting in AV and trying to win will easily get you to rank 8-10 as well as getting you more rep from wins. Throwing an AV away to farm honor means you’ll tend to get slower rep and rewards.
This doesn’t take away from the hardcore players who can reach rank 14 but a lot of that is just playing more than anyone else and doesn’t really need to farm every bit of honor from AV.
Gear related to PvP and it’s rewards, should NEVER be better than “greens” in PvE. Keep the two modes as separate as possible. As much as PvP may appeal to some players, it must be kept in its proper perspective as a mini game.
Phase 2 was sunk by Blizzard’s decision to do layering, stuff servers to the brim like a sardine can, then turn layering off, all without doing a single thing to ensure population balance.
Even if they HAD kept populations balanced, the serious overcrowding of most servers ensured phase 2 would be a trainwreck.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having fun in PVP and getting some ranks as a result of this. I’m just trying to put honor farming in the proper perspective. Too many people seem to think they will be the ones to get rank 14 and they need to play to honor farm rather than to win.
They should realize that it’s probably not going to happen and people are burning out hard because of the useless honor race. Play for fun, play to win, play to crush. Get rank as a side effect.
I agree, there are many factors and blizz really dropped the ball. But, peoples’ perception of PvP / PvE servers has also been completely off. It ain’t like the old days.
So many PvE guilds on PvP servers. My guild is one of them (they’re great and I love them of course). But I raid with them and get a lot of good PvP gear basically for free. No competition for stuff like dragon’s blood cape, bracers of might, etc. after tanks have them lol.
The rank grind was always a time investment… Sure you can try to solo kill your way to the top but it wont matter if the guy sitting next to you in ques does 10 more games a day then you do, even if you are the king at solo kills. The premades gave a false sense of reality to the majority of the wow community, they found a way to literally farm millions of honor without much effort as far as actual pvp but they still putting tons of hours into the grind.
You will always have a few people in your realm that will play 20 hrs a day, just the way it is. They will be rank 14, all you can hope for is for them to burn out at end and allow others to replace them, that they don’t actually try to hold titles…
