f13.net

Does anyone know of a website where it states how much honour you need to move up from rank to rank? If so could you post it here? I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

I can't find anything either, but all I can say is

Fuckloads. Fuck. Loads. I have a very catassy friend who's had over a thousand kills for the past several days, and he's STILL a Senior Sergeant (Rank 5). On the plus side though, it's killing the catass in him (he'll probably just quit and go back to DAoC before it does that though).

For the highest Rank for example, Rank 14, Blizzard estimates that only 0.1 percent of WoW players will ever reach it.....One in every thousand players. This should give some idea of how it all trickles down from there.

To top it off, he's trying to gain Frostwolf Faction (Alterac Valley), and at the pace he's going (a pretty good one), he won't be seeing Exalted Status (and that damn Frostwolf mount) for a very, very, very long time.

One thing you can be sure of:

You won't be gaining a high rank by being a "good PvP'er" per se.

Honor doesn't seem to be the direct determinant of rank; instead, 'rating' does.

Rating is entirely invisible to you, unless you look at the PVP rankings page on worldofwarcraft.com. The amount of standing you gain per week seems strongly influenced by a comparison of standing-vs-rank and weakly influenced by a comparison of honor-vs-rank. (That is to say, on weeks that I placed similarly in standing but got more honor, I got marginally more rating; on weeks where I placed significantly differently but got similar amounts of honor, the difference in rating was greater.)

Looking across all servers, you can see interesting ranking anomalies. For instance, I saw one server that had 2 Rank 14s, 1 rank 13 and 2 rank 12s. If you compare ranking to rating numbers, they break down to 1 rank per 5,000 rating, starting with rank 3 at 5,000 rating. Rank 1 is achieved at >0 rating (i.e. 1 week where you 'place' in the standings, meaning 25 HKs or more) and rank 2 I've not uncovered; I assume it's somewhere sane, such as 1,000 or 2,500 rating.

The main real-world effect of all this is to penalize the shit out of any server with PVP Catasses; they pump the higher-end standing numbers up to incredible heights (the top raiders in the top Alliance PVP guild on my server regularly breaks 300,000 honor a week - they steamroll AB nonstop), which mostly causes other PVP Catasses to grind even longer and harder just to get that single level of higher placement in the standings. The detrimental effect on the non-catasses is that those semi-catass folk who just want the top-end pvp gear stay in the system longer, causing the rest of us to place lower.

I was under the impression it all varies depending on how well everyone else on your server does....

I've been trying to Stone Guard for, oooh, let's see now .... An Eternity.

Yep, it's based on your server and how many people participate.  Also, if you're ranking up and doing anything other than AB (unless your server runs one of the others on a regular basis) and aren't at level 60 you're just wasting your time. There's not a lot of Alliance PvPing on my server (Alleria) these days, because the queue wait can be intolerable for someone who wants to do instances or not sit around farming or AFK for an hour while waiting.  Not much of a problem for me since i've got Kids and AB takes only 1/2 hour or so win or lose. The queue lets me take care of things in the house and the 'gong' sound is pretty distinct so I know when I need to get back to the computer to do the Basin.

 Here is Alleria's curent rankings (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/index.html?r=Alleria&faction=a#)  I'm the name "Ayarae" on that list.  Two weeks ago I did 2 ABs a day monday through thursday and 4 on Friday/ Saturday, none on Sunday.  I ranked against everyone as #632 on the server that week (and #232 for the week, which is what shows on your honor tab).  I didn't PVP at all last week, and you see I dropped to 849.   Prior to the battlegrounds I'd made Master Seargent, but then dropped PVP entirely to work on other chars, etc.  I was back down to Private when I started up again 3 weeks ago. Got to Corporal after my first 2 ABs on a monday night, then did that catassing I just mentioned to make Seargent. 

1000 kills is easy to hit, depending on your class.  I'm averaging 20-26 kills per instnace as a hunter.  That's low because I'm not using my AOEs or engy bombs a lot (they require me to stand still and become rogue bait or cost a lot more gold than I'm willing to use since I then have to farm.) and I play defense at nodes because other people just fucking won't.  I've gotten as high as 40kills/ 15 killshots before and last night there was a warrior who was doing nothing but berserk/ whirlwinding the Horde zerg who racked-up 46 kills and 20 KBs.  Take a look at the number of kills for the upper ranks.  12k or so at the lowest.. and they're that high in rank because they're part of the PvP uberguild who just formed a month ago (Rapture) and only enter as a team. (Wins = more honor than kills.  Esp. on 'bonus weekends')

In a raid I get 52 honor per kill, 200 if you're solo (but if you're solo you're just looking for kills and really don't care who wins). A win nets ~2100 bonus honor and a close loss ~1500.  That's 40 kills in a raid or 10 solo for a win.. Obviously winning helps a lot. Winning a lot helps even more, thus the folks high on the rank list are in a small number of guilds who field teams or are invited by those who field teams (because they're trying to recruit all the high-rank pvp players) because a coordinated effort that actually sticks to a plan and communicates just rolls over any opposing mixed-member team.  Axen, who has been Field-Marshall forever is an UBER catass, Risen is the high PvE raiding guild, so he's all purples, does PvP all day and PvEs with his guild. Forget about high ranks.. knigt-captain is probably the best anyone not a part of these groups can hope for.. and that still takes a LOT of catassing.

I call it a major fuckup. Worthy of standing among even the best of all the fucked up ideas we've ever seen.

Really, what makes this any less of a fuckup than, say, Jedi's? And more importantly, why don't enough people bitch about it (*rhetorical* Don't bother answering that one.)?

Yep. Rank is "relative" and total honor/CP accumulated is not really relavant except to determine how you stand "relative" to the next guy under the context of the server as a whole..

On a Low Pvp Activity server, If you accumulate 1k honor, another other guy accumulates 10k honor, and the server average is 3k honor, then you may end up as a rank 3, most people may be 6, and that 10k honor guy might be rank 10.

Unfortunately, on high pvp servers, where people are killing non stop in battlegreounds, the average on the server might be 30k honor a week.  that means you would have to up your average from 1k to 10k just to still get the same rank as your 1k earned you on a low PvP activity server.

I have accumulated almost 1200 in honour and still no ranking. Thank you all for your answers :)

And I just noticed I've made Stone Guard.

Strange.

That's less than a level 60 gets for losing ONE battleground.  If you're trying for rank before your high 50s, you need to catass in the battlegrounds.

I was a little wrong about my friend...He will be ranking up soon. I thought when he said that he got a thousand kills over several days that it was total, over a period of days. That right there would be pretty damn productive, but No, he was getting over a thousand kills per day all last week, and said he'll at the very least make First Sergeant...But probably Stone Guard.

The reason why I point it out is that it shows just how insane you have to be to reach that.

I got a little over 40k honor last week and went from Sergeant to First Sergeant at lv. 44.  I think the patch notes for the last patch said something about letting more people get to the top ranks, and you also get bonus honor from the BG's on weekends (from midnight Thurs. until server maint. Tues. morning), so if you catass bg's on the weekend you'll probably do ok.  In the 40's BG on weekends you seem to get around 900 from losing unless you completely fuck up, and about 1200 from winning.

I think I pretty much hit the peak of how much I could catass BG's in a week, so I've kinda hit a wall until I level up higher.

Were they all solo kills? Because if they weren't, that would certainly explain why it takes him so long. I can hit 1k kills per day easily by entering AV solo on my mage, but I don't have that kind of time. It's catass either way, but a better explanation of circumstances would help clear that up a bit.

Sometimes solo, I think. Heh, I know he bitches quite a bit about Rogues who follow him around and pick off his targets a lot (he's a Mage), so maybe it's not "solo", depending on how you look at it.

I know that he pretty much did the same thing the week before to get Senior Sgt. He had taken a break from BG'ing for a while until a couple of weeks ago, and at that point he was a Scout. He catassed in one week and jumped from Scout to Senior Sgt. Now, at the same pace and rate, he'll probably move to Stone Guard (I guess it hasn't been updated yet). [edit] Just asked him, and he said he's made 133,571 honor since Tuesday.

Btw, anyone care to explain something real quick? I'm still a little confused as to how this works.

Rating  Name             Lvl  Kills              Rating
--------  ---------            ----- -------------     --------
381st   Tronn             60  3,904 - 3     11,795
382nd  Juggernaught  60  4,821 - 1     11,771
383rd   Vulcan            60  2,341 - 2     11,766
384th   Zaaruhl           60  3,164 - 0     11,755
385th   Dicer              60  4,018 - 6     11,725
386th   Sinnj              60  3,709 - 1     11,709
387th   Brala              60  1,697 - 1     11,684
388th   Loljin              60  4,222 - 2     11,677
389th   Tempestt       60  2,698 - 0     11,667
390th   Jhfty              60  2,504 - 6     11,656
391st   Oo                 60  6,770 - 2     11,631

Just taking an example from my friend's ranking, and the 9 players closest to him. All of them have roughly the same Rating, but he's still ranks underneath them all at 391st, even though he has twice as many kills than any of them. Is that because he "took a break" for a while, like I said earlier, or is it about "quality" of kills over "quantity" or something (then again, I see him kill high ranking Alliance all the time as well)?

Another thing, I just have to wonder: What would be wrong with it being based off a kill/death ratio? Wouldn't that better reflect "PvP Ranking"? What am I missing here?

Kills mean nothing.

If you hit some one for 1 damage, you get a kill listed. But you would only get about 1% of the total CP that player is worth. Also, if you are in a group/raid, you get a kill logged for every person in the raid. I could get several thousand kills a day but forming a raid, and just farming silitus, but I wouldnt get very much CP (honor).

The ranking system is a funky hybrid bell curve. No one knows totally how it works, including my friend who works at Blizzard. But basically to rank up, you have to earn more CP than the other people or your rank.

On my server, it takes around 4 million CP to go from rank 13 to rank 14, and thats over a few weeks worth of time. A guildie of mine was the first rank 14 on my server, and it took him probably 4 months of 60-80 hours a week CP farming. Now as most of you know, I really like this game, and I usually stick up for it, but the stupid fucking bell curve honor grind is the dumbest PVP system I have ever seen.

That sounds like the most boring catassing ever.

I mean really, what's the point? I've beaten 2 games this week, there's no way that's more fulfilling.

Is there some magical insanely neat thing that happens when you rank up? What's the carrot you're chasing?

At rank 13 you get some insane armor. Its very much "teh shiny". Lots of flame or glow effects. At rank 14 you get to buy weapons that are by FAR the best weapons in the game.

Then what?

WHEN DOES IT END?

That's my doctoral thesis on MMOGs.

It doesn't silly man.  And it only costs me 15 a month.  And time lost playing.

I will say one small thing in the defense of trying to catass to 14. If you make it, and then drop in rank later, you can still keep the uber gear.

I wouldn't even try getting to rank 14 (or 10-13 for that matter) except through an all out binge though. Doing it over time sounds much more painful (not sure though). I told my friend that he might as well just go balls out for a month, now that he's on a roll. After that, he can just log on whenever he wants and always have a character who's well equipped.

Definitely not my thing though. This much loot whoring and gear focus bothers the hell out of me. It's not for PvP'ers, it's for PvP'ers who also happen to be losers....Or "Achievers", if you will (and yes, my friend is one of them).

As for "What next?" I don't know. World PvP is a joke, and there's only 3 battlegrounds. The only good that may come out of having a character like that is, like I said, that you'll be able to have something pretty damn good to mess around with in case Blizzard adds more bg's or facets to their PvP system.

K/D ratio screws over non-DPS classes; if it were pure K/D-ratio based, you'd rarely see anyone healing outside of the uberguild steamroll-groups.

What Morphiend said is 100% true: kills mean precisely dick. If you examine the list there, the 'rating' column on the far right is arranged in purely descending order. Click around in the rankings pages and you'll find that your rank can be perfectly predicted from your rating number. I would assume the precise number can shift around if the pyramid gets too top-heavy, but it definitely doesn't seem to shift downward - there's no rank 14s, anywhere, with less than 60,000 rating. Alternately, those numbers might be constant, but the amount of rating awarded will shift severely based on your rank vs. your standing.

Oops, apologies for forgetting the obvious.

Anyways, back to better PvP games where that shit doesn't matter.

If I'm forced to catass to get the rank of private that's not happening. There are quests to be had and somewhere, roleplaying.

Here's your RP right here. (http://www.deceiveguild.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=562)

lol Wow.. no..no... I don't want to ever see that again. Why do you link that? Do you hate me? Did I do something to you?

The bottom half of the ranks are very easy to get. In protest to the stupid honor system, a bunch of us in my guild decided that we where going to do the exact oppisite from what Blizzard wanted us to do. We went on a tear, killing every quest giver and civilian and lowbie we could. I didnt go as big as my friends, I only have around 300 DKs. My friends have over 1k each. Needless to say, we all dropped to rank 1. Since then I havent got many DKs, but just from playing BGs with my guild for fun I am already back to almost rank 5. We are talking around 10 ABs a week or so. And this has taken 3 weeks of just playing.

So no, you dont have to catass the lower ranks. Its only after rank 6 that it gets harder, and then again at rank 9, and again at 11.

Then you get to continue your pwnage on the other peons on your server who are not nearly as hardcore as you, all so you can keep that shiny armor/weapon you just catssed for. In other words, it doesn't end until you quit or put a bullet in your head and end our misery.

They added in a LOT more slots for most of the ranks now. Before I was pretty much stuck at rank 5 but now its very doable to progress beyond that. Hell my level 35 warrior went from no rank to 2/3 the way through rank 2 after one good night of pvp in a week. Before the chance it was damn near impossible to get to SGT pre level 40 now its very doable. You won't get to far beyond sgt at those levels but at least honor points have some meaning now to the pre 40 set.


kaid

Even at 60, it's pretty easy to rank up on my (very low-pop) server. My schedule permits about 3-6 hours of PVP a week, netting between 25-35k honor on average when running AB with pickups. Prior to the patch, I was getting a little less than half a rank a week for ranks 2->3 and 3->4, while for the past two weeks I've gotten nearly a full rank going from 4->5 and 5->6. My honor total is low this week (20k due to F.E.A.R. taking my pvp time), so I'm expecting to tread water or maybe gain a little bit of ground; it'll be a good test to find out how dependent rank is on an individual week's placement.

A coworker of mine has been going all-out since the patch, netting 70,000+ honor per week and he's ranked up each week, sitting currently at rank 9.

There is a Paladin in my guild who is currently 14th on our servers overall rankings. I think that puts him at Rank 12. The only way he has accomplished it is by tag-teaming with his Dad. So basically, between the two of them, the character is in Arathi Basin about 8 hours a day and even more on the weekends. The level of devotion required for the high ranks is really disgusting.  I hadn't ever realized it until joining this guild and seeing how often this dude is online. The thought of the 13 people ranked above him, and the amount of time they must devote to endless rounds in AB is frightening. I guess I was a fool for ever thinking the Honor system would be relatively fun and casual to contribute to.

Seriously, and don't take this as an insult, what's wrong with having game objectives that are only acheived by a few people?  Not everyone should be able to be Grand Marshall nor should anyone be able to beat every part of the game. 

From a design point of view it makes sense to have a game which caters to a wide variety of playstyles (ie Bartle etc).  Of course players don't see that and only see them being excluded from content.

It's not that certain Ranks or Areas are barred from a vast majority of players, it's the "how" and "why" they are barred.

I would think that Rank was supposed to signify someone who has a bit of skill or good leadership.....Not necessarily someone who has next to no time constraints.

Secondly....Well, I'll just stop there. I've already said enough about how I don't like the idea of individual focused, "phat l00tz for rewards" based, instanced Battleground PvP, so I'll just cut myself short. To sum it up though, WoW PvP is for selfish achiever noobs and catasses, not for PvP'ers. And anybody who argues with me is one of them themselves.  :-)

I guess the problem people have with it is that as with most things in MMO's, it's based more on who has the most time to catass rather than player skill (which should be the whole point of PVP).  You can lose every single battleground you play in and get killed 10 times for every 1 person you kill and still make a lot of honor if you play enough.  I think that's the issue that people have with the system.  There are some other problems as well, like nobody wanting to defend in BG's because you'll get more kills running with the zerg (I have to defend in EVERY bg I'm in because people will actuallly leave places completely unguarded).

In WoW, the loot pretty much is the elder game content. You can either grind faction for loot (Silithus/ZG), raid for loot, or grind players for loot (honor/rank). There aren't a diverse and interesting set of areas or mechanics to explore, and of those higher areas, many are restricted by loot quality and raid size.

WoW doesn't cater to a diverse variety of playstyles. It caters to people who want to grind; you just get three choices of what to grind on: small mobs, big mobs or other people.

I agree that it's OK to gate off some of your content, but at least make the gate different each time; "spend X hours grinding" as a gate gets old fast. It's more of a problem with their fundamental design than anything else, though. That and their instance designers are some of the most unimaginative fuckwits I've ever seen.

What if it was more like DAoC's "I Remain Standing" score.  You take how many Foozle Points the person has earned, divide it by the number of times they were killed in PvP.  Add a bar for entry, like "Must have earned over X Foozle Points".

In this case, Foozle is Honor.

For DAoC it was a weekly thing.  I see no reason why it couldn't be a perpetual thing for WoW.  That way the person with the best win-to-loss ratio is at the top of the heap, not the person with the most time.

Guess you never saw EQ's insances then. Or COH's. WoW instances are overflowing with creativity compared to either of them.

Yes, what instances have you seen that are so wonderful?  I really do want to know.

See, this would have made infinatly more sense.  Anyone with ANY experience in online RPG-PVP would have sussed that out compared to the current system.  However, I at times wonder if the breadth of 'pvp' experience Tyren (the lead dev) has is limited to RTS and FPS games.  It seems like pure 'kills' or 'wins' are more important than being effective in the group.  In fact, if you're grinding for honor points and are any good at all, joining a group only hurts you because your honor is divided among the group. 

While I most certainly do agree if the honor system was setup in such a way that it rewarded skill instead of timespent we would still have a thread similar to this bashing it.

Because under a skill system the barrier for entry to get to rank 11+ would be being in pvp+ guild, with top tier gear and the time to sit in a queue already grouped, ventrillo, organization, and just steamrolling all the poor unorganized PUG's (that'd be most of you guys) to create that great win/loss ratio.

I think the sad truth is, when the sample size is large, you are going to be no better than average.  If you just admit your mediocrity and deal with it, you can have fun at these games, but if it constantly eats you up inside that you aren't the number 1 person out of a group of millions, you'll end up spending your life bitching on forums about how fucking crappy the system is because you didn't get teh win.. *shrug*..

Nothing is wrong with it, IF the rarely achievable game objectives are reachable with SKILL as opposed to just assloads of time. I'm not saying these players aren't skillful, they would have to be. But just having better skills than those high ranked players isn't enough. One must actually put in goboodles and gooboodles of time (which is like asstons squared) just to even hope to do so. Meaning, once again, time played > all else.

Are you talking about creativity artistically or in the actual mechanics? I'm talking about the latter; WoW's art team does pretty well within the constraints of the engine.

I never played EQ, fortunately. I did play COH and they were pretty bad, gameplay-wise, and occasionally frustrating (e.g. hunting for the last glowy in an Oranbega map). COH at least had two objective types in its solo/small-group instances (objective hunt and dude killing); I hear there may be more diverse types of objective hunts now and some neat side-stuff (e.g. prisons), but I couldn't stomach the grind the last time I resubbed.

Of the WoW instances I've been to (all except MC and BWL; I've read a good deal about MC, not so much BWL), the formula has been:
10 put in bunch of stuff that you must clear to eat up time
20 put in boss that drops phat lewtz
30 goto 10

A friend of mine has told me about one encounter in BWL (Razorgore) that sounds kind of neat and interesting, but that content is gated off and requires 39 other people. From what I hear, the boss encounters in MC are more detailed and fun than the stuff you'll see elsewhere, and a handful of the ZG bosses are on the borderline between fun and annoying.

When I say they're unimaginative, it's not because they can't design a decent encounter (which the above shows they can; they just choose to gate most of it off), it's because they fundamentally conceive of a dungeon as entirely 'clear trash'-'fight boss' sequences. The latter can be fun, but I complain because the purpose of the former seems to primarily be to eat up time.

I expect the answer is that trash mobs are a cheap and easy way to add 'length' to a dungeon; I'd like to know what the amount of development time required to produce a decent boss encounter is vs. placement and development of the trash leading up to it.


Actually, thanks to the bonus honor for BGs, the best way to get high ranks is to join (or get friendly with) a big pvp guild and steamroll PUGs in AB, /afking out if the battle setup prior to starting seems to be in your disfavor. A coworker of mine has done the joining part and was describing the latter two parts over morning coffee not 15 minutes ago. He sat somewhere around 100,000 honor this week. The catasses in his pvp guild rake in over 300,000 a week. Excelling in the honor system requires (primarily) time and (secondarily) one out of fifteen people with organizational skills paired with fourteen people who generally just do what the one guy says.

You don't see those of us in BF2 bitching about it, though.  It's more tolerable when it's a true representation of skill vs a representation of time to catass. I know I'm mediocre at best in terms of skill, however I'm relegated to the bottom of the heap because I don't have the time to invest.

> /afking out if the battle setup prior to starting seems to be in your disfavor
why isn't this massive loophole fixed?

There is very very little skill involved in wow pvp compared to twitch games.  The only skill that matters in battleground pvp is organization, which is very handsomely rewarded.  Time is not all it takes to get high ranks, you need to WIN also.  Obviously the guy losing 50 times a day will be ranked higher than the guy winning 5, but hes still going to be far behind the guy who won 25.  At the highest ranks the honor you get for kills is mostly inconsequential, anywhere from 75% to 90% of your honor comes from the bgs bonus honor so joining a GOOD group will never harm you, even if you are the uberest most "skilled" pvper evah.

This ideal pvper that doesn't have lots of time but can kick ass that deserves to get high rank but can't because of lack of time is pretty much bs. 

You play too many mmo's, I guess.

I guess just enough to know that there isn't much skill involved in them, yeah.

I don't care if this guy doesn't exist. I KNOW I'm not the guy, as I could probably best be described as 'sucking monkey balls at PVP' myself. But I'd like the opportunity, if I was so skilled to be able to be that guy, even if I don't have 3 bazillion hours to devote to the game.

But then, I'm not really talking about MMOG's anymore then am I?

The problem with going with anything that rewards your kill/death ratio or whatever passes for 1v1 "skill" in wow is that the classes are not simply balanced with 1v1 pvp in mind.  In group pvp it doesn't matter if you play the healer role die a lot and get zero kills, you still did your job and if your team won you still got the same reward as the bad ass warrior you kept alive long enough to get 25 killing blows.  As a rogue im glad the paladin healing and buffing me is getting as much honor as me, if he wasn't he sure as hell wouldn't be doing it.  In group pvp skill DOES get rewarded, winning does matter a great deal, solo pvp skill does not mean as much when every johny wannabe hero gets torn down to pieces by an organized group.  This isn't bf2 where everyone plays basically the same guy.

Just wanted to update somethin' about my friend real quick (for illustrative purposes):

Last week I posted his stats as

Standing  Name     Lvl     Kills              Rating
------------  --------    -----    -------------      --------
391st       Oo        60     6,770 - 2     11,631


And in one week, he moved to

204th      Oo         60     16,065 - 3   18,864


10,000 kills in a week (and over almost 150,000 honor), moved up over 100 in Standing etc..

But he only jumped 1 rank to First Sergeant. Wtf?


No matter how you slice the importance (or lack of importance) of "killing", you can't deny that that's just *a little* fucked up.

Makes sense to me.  There should be limits in place to how fast someone rises in ranks; I would be upset if I spent months PvP'ing and then one day got knocked down in rank because someone catassed his character with his friends 72 hours straight or something. 

It can never be skill based unless there's penalty for dying, and if there's penalty for dying I'm beting A LOT of people will play like total pussies.

If you do AV and join the raid every single kill each and everyone of those 40 people get counts as a "kill" for everyone.  You can easily finish an AV match with 2k+ kills, most of which got you 0 honor since killing someone 4 times in a day makes them worthless.  Kills.  Mean.  Nothing.

He jumped almost 2 ranks (10k,15k,20k rating  each would be a rank, he went from 11k to almost 19k) which is pretty good for the amount of honor and standing he got.

The honor system is a real pain to keep track of, because there’s two systems in place that appear to work totally independent of each other.

I.  Gaining Honor:

You gain honor anytime you kill a flagged opponent.  The point value of killing an opponent is based on their level, and their rank. Therefore, killing a level 60 Grand Marshall is worth more than killing a level 60 Marshall.

However, almost every time you PVP, you won't do 100% of the damage to kill an opponent.  Therefore if you're PVPing ungrouped, you will recieve honor as a fraction of the damage that you dealt.

For instance, if you were solo, and you did 30% of the damage (some other person did the remaining 70% of the damage), you'd recieve 30% of the total honor point value.

If you were in a 5 man group, and your group did 80% of the damage (some other person not a part of your group did the remaining 20%) of the damage, you'd recieve 80%/5 of the total honor point value, or 16% of the total honor point value, split evenly regardless of how much damage you did versus your teammates (this is to give healers a carrot, of sorts). You also have to be alive when the enemy dies to gain faction.

If you're in a 40 man group, the same mechanic goes into play as the 5 man group, just divided over 40.  Note however, that if you're out of range, you won't gain any honor split amongst the group, and they split it 4 ways, instead of 5.  I have no clue what "in range" is, however.

There is also a diminishing returns effect, which is built in to remove cheating.  The first time you kill an enemy, the enemy gives you a full 100% of the availble honor (factoring in splits for groups, etc, is still in effect).  The second time you kill an enemy, you can get at most 75% of the available honor. 3rd and 4th give you 50% honor and 25% honor, respectively. From the 5th kill on, you get zero honor. Note: the Honor notification in-game when killing an opponent does not take this diminishing return into account. The diminishing returns effect allegedly resets in 24 hours.

You also can gain bonus honor for accomplishing a number of different events.

* Winning Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch, or Alterac Valley and turning in 3 medals.  Note when you win, you get 3 medals.  When you lose (noted below), you only get one medal.
* Losing 3 times at Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch, or Alterac Valley, and turning in 3 specific "loser" medals
* Capturing banners at Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch, or Alterac Valley.
* Killing Faction bosses, like Thrall or King Bronzebeard. However, due to the difficulty of reaching said faction bosses, coupled with the odds of accidentally killing a civilian, you likely to not be a part of these events.

If you kill civilians (usually marked in white), you lose a bunch of honor.  In the lower levels, it's usually enough to drop you a rank.

- So, to use a complex example:

There are 4 of you in one group, and one tag-along, non-grouped Warrior.

You see Jimbo the Mage, and kill him as a group.  Let's say that the Mage gives you 50 honor points a kill, and your group does 50% of the damage, and the Warrior does 50% of the damage (damn execute).

Your group would get (50/2)/4 honor points per person, or each person would get 6.25 points (no clue how rounding works.  However, assume it works like reputation rounding). The Warrior would get 50/2 honor, or 25 honor.

Jimbo resses to full life, you spot him and kill him again.  The Warrior also tries to sneak a kill, and gets only the execute. As a result, your group did 80% of the damage, and the Warrior does 20% of the damage. This time your group gets ((50*.80)*.75)/4=  7.5 points apiece, while the Warrior gets (50*.20)*.75 = 7.5 points.

Things I don't know:

- Is a level 55 Knight worth more than a level 60 Sgt Major? (Ie, what's the function of the level of your opponent, and the rank of your opponent in determining what the honor points available are)

- If a enemy resses, and you corpse camp it at > 100% life when it resses, do you gain full honor, or a fraction pro-rated at his/her existing health when it ressed?

- How close you have to be to gain honor for a kill. You can be in range, and do absolutely zero damage to the mob, and be credited with a kill, if your group/raid kills it for you (again, to help out healers).

- How does healing factor into this?  Let's say you do 40% of the lifebar of a Priest, then run to kill a warrior.  The Priest heals back up to 100%, then a wandering Shaman burst damages and kills the Priest from 100% to 0%.  Assuming you were in range of the priest's death, do you get 40% of the honor, 0%, or what?

Consequences:

* In places like Town raids (Astranaar, TM/SS, Crossroads) and Alterac Valley, places where you have a lot of kills over and over again, After a certain point, you don't gain any honor.  As a result, for those sort of places, honor gain actually isn't all that efficient.

* If you're very good at staying alive AND doing lots of damage, there's no real incentive for you to group up, because you're having inefficient classes leach honor from you. However, sometimes this is a good thing, if you can keep alive even longer.  This includes groups like Warriors and their own personal healers.

* Dimishing returns can really bone you.  For instance, if you get a weak lovetap on a enemy before he dies the first time, you've screwed yourself out of subsequent honor.

* Classes that die fast, like Priests, and to a lesser extent, warriors, tend to get the shaft on Honor gain, because they are dead before their opponent is.

* Paladins, you guys 90% of the time can't DPS. Keep your damage classes alive with healing; you're usually grouped, so you'll gain Honor.  It's okay.

* High Honorable Kills =! High Honor. If all you do is 40 man town raids, odds are that with efficient killing in AB, you can get more honor.

II. Gaining Rank:

Every day, Blizzard displays how much honor you've gained for the day. After 7 days, determined by the maintenance schedule, you get a cutoff and a value that's your honor for the week. From there, everyone who's gained honor this week are tabulated. 

There's a minimum cutoff in play to eliminate stragglers.  This cutoff isn't determined by honor, but by your Honor Kills. Blizzard states that this cutoff is 25 HKs.  So, if you kill 20 Grand Marshall/High Warlords for the week, even though those are the highest value targets, your honor for the week will still automatically be 0.

However, there is a clause that states if your server is really active in PVP, the minimum cutoff value may be higher than 25 HKs. There's no way of knowing what this cutoff value may be.  However, as long as you get 25 HKs, you're guaranteed to get or keep rank 1, which unfortunately gives you nothing.

After removing the stragglers, a recalculated honor value is determined, as a function of your honor for the week, plus a modifier based on your level.  For instance, if you're gaining insane Honor, but only Level 20, there's some fractional value put on your honor, which makes your honor for the week MUCH smaller.  The closer you get to level 60, the closer that modifier approaches 1.

After that, whoever gets the highest honor gets Standing 1 for the week.  The next highest gets Standing 2, etc.

A flat value is placed on getting each standing. If you get Standing 1 by 100 honor, or 100,000 honor, you still get the same Standing 1 point value. There's some talk that what that value is is determined by how much honor your side gets, but I honestly don't know.

All these values are collected in aggregate over time to form your Rating, which you see on the Honor web site that Blizzard has.  There's talk that there's a rating decay put into play, but I'm not sure what that value is.  There's talk about the guts of the rating mechanic at FOH, if you're willing to wade through.

As you move up in your ratings, if you reach a certain value, you rank up.  For instance, to reach the top rank, you need a rating of 60,000 or higher. There's a percentage cutoff for reach rank.  For instance, there should be x% rank 14s, x+y% Rank 13s, x+y+z% rank 12s, etc etc.  However, at this time the numbers of people reaching the high ranks are so small, that we're not even remotely close to having those cutoffs triggered.  So basically, if you make the rating value for your rank, you will get your rank. The restriction just doesn't exist because not enough people are PVPing enough for that to even matter (Yes, 8 hours of PVP are not enough folks!).

Consequences:
* There's no way of knowing what the high value will be for the week, unless you constantly ask around the high level PVPers what their honor gain is so far.  Most likely, if they know that you're snooping, they'll decline to disclose that value.

* As a result of the above, to reach the high level of PVP, you must PVP all hours of the day to get as much honor as humanly possible.

* Your opponents in the honor system aren't the enemy, they're your own side.

* Even if you beat out all people on your server by an order of magnitude, the most you can do is Standing 1.

* If you really want the high level stuff in the honor system (say, rank 8+), get to level 60 first.  The modifier value hurts.

III. Wrapping it up:

Q. As a result, what's the key to high honor?

A. Due to the lack of diminishing return, the key is to do places like Arathi Basin, or Warsong Gulch. Do them with a premade group, preferably with Teamspeak. If you win enough as a group, you'll start to outdistance people who are playing in pickups, with lower rates of success, even if those folks are better than you.  Teamwork > individual skill, apparently.  Although over time, teamwork morphs into individual skill. Then just play forever.  Never stop, never stop.

Q. Is it better to be on the side of high population, or low population?

A. Assuming equal skill, it's better to be on the lower population side.  More enemies mean fewer diminishing returns.  In addition, it also means you have a shorter queue length.  It means you play more games.  If (and only if) your team is good, that means you're "winning" at a faster rate than the pickups.  As a result, you're widening the gulf much faster. While this won't affect standing too much, this does mean that you have a better cushion against off days, or days you don't feel like grinding.  Plus, it means you get faction for doing AB and WSG much faster, which means more rewards, which will improve your surviability.

Q. So why do good teams /AFK quit against good teams?

A. As mentioned above, you're not competing against your opponents. If you play a good team to a stalemate, you may get 50-60% of the honor bonus compared to a short game against some PUG (Pick Up Group). Why "waste" 30 minutes against a good team, when you can get the same amount of honor for 10 minutes against a pickup?  Especially if you're on the lower population side, you can get into another game in as fast as 5-10 minutes in the queue.

Q. How broken can this system get?

A. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/index.html?r=Tichondrius&faction=a# (not my server)


Q. Man, doesn't this system suck?

A. ......

Q. Are things getting better?

A. Yes and no.  Allegedly, someone pointed out that Blizzard expected some percentage of people to make Rank 14 (purple weaponzzzzz).  However, after a few months of the honor system, we're well below that percentage.  As a result, they've made it easier to move through the ranks. Some of you stuck on the middle ranks may have noticed that with less work, you're ranking up faster. At least, that's what I've noticed. (Disclosure: I'm a Knight-Captain currently.)

Sources: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/honorguide.html
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/pvp-article-part2.html
http://www.fohguild.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=11

If I've botched any of this, please let me know.  This was very off the cuff, pulling data that I've known before.  There's a high chance I've misinterpreted something.

You mean like /afking or quitting the battleground when a real challenge comes into the instance?

Well written, and helps make sense of the madness.  Thank you for taking the time to type that out!

Lantien, if ever there were a more depressing expression of the fart in the wind futility of WoW PVP honor points, I've not heard one.

I miss singling you out in PVP, Lantien.  :cry:

edit: word omission. yay.

Two things to what Lantien said:

1:  After Stone Guard (First Officer Rank 6), all items you can get and use are 58+.  This is insanely stupid because it's quite easy to get Rank 7.

2:  I thought I read somewhere that diminshing returns didn't apply within battlegrounds.

Solutions:

1:  Cross Server BG's.  It's as easy as adding another line to the tooltip.  Name, Guild Name, Server Name.

2:  Lower level, high rank items.  I was shocked to find that there's basically no more point to me ranking up until I hit 58.  That's just stupid.

You people apparently play priests wrong..

(shield + heals) - (easily dispelled buffs/shield + cloth + number one target on the battlefield) = die fast.  Get a shaman and a meleer on a priest and they die in seconds.

I do take personal pleasure when the priest dies while I'm running away from his psychic scream.

I <3 Purge

Okay then how about this:  Alliance pvp's wrong.. :)

Alliance has Paladins....And if they're smart, they'll play them as Priests.

Thanks for the replies!  I hope this helps people.  There's still a lot of values I don't know, and honestly don't care to know.  But at least you get a rough idea of how weird the system is.


I dunno, it's not THAT horrible. Like I said, I've worked to a "mid-level" ranking, and all I do is PVP most of the night, except for weekends when I do MC. Granted, my server is PVE, but it's not a bad way to steadily grind. There's a lot broken in the system, and just downright cheesed/gamed, but you can carve out a niche in the lower ranks.  Just don't bank on getting your epic weapon.  Seriously, that's what MC/ZG is for.


Rasix I miss you, our server is all wonky now. Most of the great PVPers have quit because the system is so grind-y.  Battlegrounds have pretty much destroyed what overland PVP there used to be, putting the advantage squarely on the horde side. When you get a really short queue + decent players + a propensity for premades, your learning curve is shortened, big time.  The big PVP guild allegedly is a bunch of guys from SE Asia, who are just animals with teamspeak/webcafe, we can't tell. Your old guild is still chugging right along, I still see some of your bigwigs floating around Arathi Basin from time to time.  Tell Grimmy the Alliance will take him more seriously if he doesn't pick fights that he's got an 80% chance of winning.  Also, virtually every high level alliance guild has split up and reformed due to drama, it's fantastic.

In addition, I traded up from a reaper to http://www.thottbot.com/index.cgi?i=27740. With 20% crit, I'd be happy to reintroduce your Rogue to PVP.


According to this FAQ (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds/faq.html), diminishing returns does apply.  This makes Alterac Valley a terrible place to get honor, but a good place to get AV faction. I have no clue when this doc was written though.

Honestly, due to to the way the modifier gimps your performance in PVP, I have no real sympathy for sub 58s trying to grind for Honor. They're trying to alleviate it, but still.  It's not that hard to get to 60, play with the big boys.


Cevik, I'm glad to see you around again!  Priests are a mixed bag.
 If you're a shadowpriest, disregard what I said.  However, Shadowpriests bring surprisingly little to the table from a Group PVP perspective. As a result, you're really trading a ranged hitter spot for a Shadowpriest, as opposed to trading a healer for a shadowpriest, due to the inability to heal others. I'd put Feral specced druids in the same boat, especially those that can't shift often due to high mana cost.

If you're a holy priest, if your team isn't paying attention and they're too far away, a good rogue on assassinate duty will obliterate priests.  Especially when they're drinking. If you're an alliance priest, throw in Will of the Forsaken to take away your only getaway system. You can't discount the fact that the class that's best designed to kill you has one extra way of cancelling your fear.

I don't know if this is a result of that, or if my server just sucks, but the horde priests seem to show up a lot more than the alliance priests.  The best alliance priest? A shadowpriest, go fig.


A-freaking-Men.  However to be fair, most Paladins are wannabe warriors who also want to survive long time, and they play like it on PVP.  As a result, you have Warriors with double the surivalbility, and 1/3 the burst DPS fumbling around, being generally not-useful.

Yes.

Most groups I'm in they focus on the Shaman or the Rogues, ignoring the Priests or Mages entirely.. thus instead of one or two people dropping to the rogues before we turn on them, everyone dies, even in 2:1 or (this was really embarassing to witness as I came up on the flag being assulted) 3:1 situations.

Two posts from Jarlop on the WoW forums that seem spot on in explaining the ranking system:



And a calculator to help you figure out what ranking you'll plateau at.  Do your average PvP thing for two weeks running, note down your rating and punch it in, you'll get your approximate maximum rank, assuming you continue to PvP at about the same relative level to everyone else on your server and faction.

http://www.matrixws.com/wow/pvp.php?week1=21&week2=20

It shit like that what makes me not care about my ranking as more than a passing fancy.

Thanks for the informative posts Lantien and Koyasha.  Interesting (and scary) to know some of the magic behind the curtain...  Fortunately I've set my sights low (Sgt. Major) so I just need to keep consistent in my weekly "score" and based on numbers there I should be able to hit it.   

I hit scout!  phe4r my leetness.  Battlegrounds is still on my list to try; I am having the inverse response to PvP in this game that I did with Guild Wars.   :heart: