PVP Question

[SuperPopTart]

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!

[stray]

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.

[Yoru]

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.

[Ironwood]

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.

[Merusk]

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  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.

[stray]

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.)?

[SurfD]

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.

[SuperPopTart]

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

[Ironwood]

And I just noticed I've made Stone Guard.

Strange.

[Merusk]

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

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.

[stray]

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.

[Velorath]

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.

[TheWalrus]

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.

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.

[stray]

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?

[Morfiend]

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.

[schild]

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?

[Morfiend]

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.

[schild]

Then what?

WHEN DOES IT END?

That's my doctoral thesis on MMOGs.

[MrHat]

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

[stray]

Then what?

WHEN DOES IT END?

That's my doctoral thesis on MMOGs.

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.

[Yoru]

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?

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.

[stray]

K/D ratio screws over non-DPS classes

Oops, apologies for forgetting the obvious.

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

[SuperPopTart]

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

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.

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.

[Shockeye]

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.

[SuperPopTart]

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?

[Morfiend]

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

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.

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.

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.

[HaemishM]

Then what?

WHEN DOES IT END?

That's my doctoral thesis on MMOGs.

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.

[kaid]

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

[Yoru]

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.

[Jobu]

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.

[Lt.Dan]

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.

[stray]

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. 

[Velorath]

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.

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).

[Yoru]

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.

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.

[Llava]

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.