Honor reduced ~30%

[NiteFox]

I must be the only person insane enough to be playing BGs just to get the tabards.

... I like the tabards...

[Quark]

I encourage you and your GM friend to visit Thottbot's beta side. Peruse the quest rewards from Hellfire Peninsula, a level 60 zone immediately on the other side of the Dark Portal. They have quests with green or uncommon rewards that will remind you eerily of epics you may have coveted in the past.

MC level gear does not compare favorably to anything, anymore. Even then, 7 DPS is a lot. A weapon cannot be considered "equal" by losing any more than 2 DPS.

Meanwhile, the PvP weapons are only slightly less powerful than my weapons now -> Late AQ / Early Naxx. Advantage over the late AQ because of the extra slow speed.

[Ashock]

Yeah, FFS, 10 days vs a week for better weapons than my toon that raided for 8 months has. It's still extremely trivial. I and a former Grand Marshal were discussing this over the weekend, and were just flabbergasted that people were going to be able to get GM-level weaps in 1-2 weeks.

That's easily explained. Blizzard is just making sure that they force as many people as possible to buy the BC, so they're making everything non-BC, trivial and broken. They did that with a horrible D1 patch that came out a week before D2 and they did that with global physical immunes for D2 X-pack AND plain D2 right before the X-pack came out.

Blizzard makes the best games around, IMO. However, as I've said on the Blizzard forums, they are "The Phillip Morris" of the gaming world. They really are very very bad.

-A

[Ashock]

Oh, I know. It's just how trivial stuff is to get now that we put in tons of effort for.

All of it will be junk in BC anyway.

They did this with D2 X-pack also. As I've said in the post above.... sure you don't have to buy the BC, but they will make damn sure that you will basically have no choice in the matter.

-A

[lemekim]

MC level gear does not compare favorably to anything, anymore. Even then, 7 DPS is a lot. A weapon cannot be considered "equal" by losing any more than 2 DPS.

Meanwhile, the PvP weapons are only slightly less powerful than my weapons now -> Late AQ / Early Naxx. Advantage over the late AQ because of the extra slow speed.

It's true, but 2.0.1 brought a lot of TBC changes. Honor points change is one. Another one that people kind of overlooked is Reputation - the amount you get for turn-ins and kills at least doubled, so it is much easier to get Epic rewards through that avenue.

It's a general trend in Beta: everything is much easier to get, even at level 70. There are crafted weapons that rival those from raid dungeons, and probably take around week to get the mats you need. All reputation gains were doubled, and there are plenty of epic rewards available at exalted level (one rep in particular took me about 5 hours to go from friendly to exalted with some friendly help, but I don't know if that will stay that way in live TBC). And even raids - in Karazhan, for example, you now split the same amount of epic loot between 10 people instead of 40, essentially increasing the amount of loot per person.

So if at level 70, a person is able to get a comparable epic in a week of hard grinding, it's pretty inline with the rest of ways of getting epics. And it's kind of what we are seeing now.

[Monkey]

MC level gear does not compare favorably to anything, anymore. Even then, 7 DPS is a lot. A weapon cannot be considered "equal" by losing any more than 2 DPS.

Meanwhile, the PvP weapons are only slightly less powerful than my weapons now -> Late AQ / Early Naxx. Advantage over the late AQ because of the extra slow speed.

You're talking about the faux-Corehound Tooth and faux-Brutality Blade? The 7 DPS difference is because both of the green rewards are 0.2 seconds slower than their MC counterparts. The average damage per swing is nearly identical; they're only less powerful because of the slower speed.

However, my point wasn't to say, "this quest makes all epics obsolete," but to gesticulate wildly at the trend it indicates. These are Uncommon level quest rewards (greens) from non-elite quest in the very first zone, and they're better than all current similar Rare (blue) items and almost as good as the lowest "raiding" Epics. Future quest rewards will certainly have to be even better still, and the trend is more likely to speed up than to slow down.

[Ynir]

I must be the only person insane enough to be playing BGs just to get the tabards...

Not at all. I have the Stormpike tabard, which I don't like. I will take delivery on the Arethor tabard today, just 500 more rep. The tabard I really want is the Silverwing, which has the prettiest pattern, but 18K rep remains, and I don't think I'll be in Warsong much after TBC opens.

For us Fury warriors farming BWL and "progressing" in AQ40, the GM armor isn't worth the trouble. I will take the fist weapon set for my Christmas present, even if their stats are obsolete. I wonder if the gems would be a better investment, in the long run.

Some interesting patterns have emerged on the battlegrounds. Much of the opposition is now low to middle rank, compared with before the patch. These players seem to be new blood rather than alts, since our win rate (Alliance) in WSG and AB is much higher than before. I'm sure the effect is symmetrical: premades on both sides are doing better than ever.

Our win rate in AV has plummeted, however. I am astounded to see the Horde zerging our keep on a regular basis, just as we have always zerged theirs. This started right after the last patch, but I don't understand the connection between these new tactics and the new honor system.

[TheDragoon]

So are the tabards still on the rep system rather than the honor system? I would also love the Silverwing tabard, but I think that getting exalted in WSG is a bit out of my reach...

[Ynir]

So are the tabards still on the rep system rather than the honor system? ...

The Stormpike and Silverwing tabard are now available for 60 tokens, at any rep level.

The Arathor tabard is a quest reward:

The tabard is purchased from Samuel Hawke in Refuge Point, Arathi Highlands. However, in order to buy the tabard you must first complete the quest called "Control Four Bases" which is given by Field Marshal Oslight. Oslight can be found under the tent just left of the portal to AB at Refuge Point ... To be eligible for this quest you must first be friendly with The League of Arathor.

I did this quest long ago and never got the tabard, from Oslight or Hawke. Hence my assumption about rep requirements, which is wrong.

PS. Highlander's Plate Greaves have minor speed increase built in. I heard that this won't stack with the speed enchant. I put on mithril spurs, however, and these the only boots in my inventory that have +speed to both walking and riding.

[oldmandennis]

I'm not sure why you are comparing MC epics to TBC items. It's a much more informative to compare the HWL items to TBC.

2h melee comparison

You will see the first items that stack up come from an elite 68 quest, other then the BOP crafting ones. Many of the items have no known drops, other seem to be heroic mode drops.

Var, if you can't get 1 1 handed weapon in 5 weeks.... I'm flabbergasted by this statement. That's less then 5k per week. These are ezmode epics, not free.

My personal feeling is that this is a good change. It's bad enough to see a ton of people with blues, greens, and the HWL shoulders. It would be worse for every single person to stream through the portal with the exact same gear. Most players will be able to get a weapon and 1-2 pieces. That sounds like a fun way to level the playing field a bit.

[vor_lord]

Var, if you can't get 1 1 handed weapon in 5 weeks.... I'm flabbergasted by this statement. That's less then 5k per week. These are ezmode epics, not free.

ezmode, free, call it what you will. I like the current system. It's time invested overall, not time crammed into a short space. But your mockery of the amount of time I suppose stems from the fact that you have lots and lots of free time to invest in such things. I envy you.

I agree that these items are/were too cheap (esp. HWL weapons). But that doesn't change that fact that for it to make sense I have to do it now.

So let me redo the calculations for your benefit. I'm assuming I don't quit raiding. Right now raiding is 80% or more of my game time and has been for a while.

I spent 3 hours last night in a "pre-made" doing AB games. We had a good time -- we lose 3-2 to good Alliance pre-mades, but generally clean up even though most of us aren't experienced pvpers and are in a mix of blues to half T2. This is the best situation I could hope for.

I made a total of 1815 honor in those 3 hours. That puts me at 600 honor per hour when I'm in a pre-made. When I'm playing solo, I'd guess at half that. Let's say I can average 500 per hour (I'm really hoping I get to run with groups more often than not, and honor weekends will help a lot, but that will be lucky). I'd say this is decently optimistic.

22500/500 = 45 hours of PvP. Let's start with where I am (I have 4515 honor):

(22500 - 4515)/500 = 36 hours of PvP at 500 honor/hour

I count 34 days (counting tonight). And a good chunk of them are the holidays, with very little WoW time (traveling and staying with relatives). For 10 of them for certain there will be no chance of play.

So 24 days for 36 hours. That's 1.5 hours a day. For you that might be nothing, but for me it's fairly significant. I made almost 5k honor in the past week. Half of that was on the honor weekend before nerf. A significant (majority) portion of my game time was spent PvPing.

If I gave up raiding it'd be really easy -- I figure I raid twice a week (5 hours and 3 hours). But in order to achieve this I will have to get up early or stay up late, and doing PvP at that time means getting honor at a much lower rate.

Given your item comparisons it is probably worth it though for me. I might make it. If DPS items like this won't be replaced until late 60s it's worth it for me to continue this at a much reduced pace even after TBC. I just need to get reasonably close.

edit: Oh, and last week I missed the 5 hour raid, hence majority of game time spent PvPing makes sense (game time significantly shortened)

[lemekim]

I saw a post that made an excellent suggestion: rested honor.

Just like Blizzard's compromise between casual players and hard-core on experience gain, this could help a lot in balancing out honor gain. Maybe something like 110% of the original honor amount when rested, and only 55% honor gain after a certain amount per week or whatnot.

[oldmandennis]

Rested honor wouldn't be a terrible idea.

Var, are you basing your calculations on the blizzard default screen? 600 an hour sounds way low - I get more then that pugging AV (AFTER the 30% nerf). I'm not sure what exactly I get in premade AB's, but its certainly much more then that. However, my server is pretty much the undisputed champ of our battle group - I think I have lost one game ever when running premade since xserver came out.

In any event, it seems to me like the default screen doesn't count your bonus honor. I use Fubar BGfu to keep track of my honor. It seems pretty accurate, once all the honor roll over issues are ironed out.

You could easily be undercounting your honor per hour by half. Which would mean somebody who doesn't play a lot, raids most of the time he does play, isn't on a super pro pvp team, could still get 1 AQ40 level epic item. Sounds like a good deal to me.

[Arnulf]

Limit the maximum amount of honour one character can accumulate per day.

That would be my suggestion. Currently I'm fuming inside that because people who would not even need it are gaining hundreds of thousands of honour points. While the small players must endure both humiliation in the battlegrounds and suffer under the slow pace of honour gains. If everyone would just gain, let's say 2000 honour points per day per character, it would be okay for me.

As a side note, one german word for slanderer is 'Ehrabschneider'. The verbatim translation would be 'one who cuts your honour'. (Ehre = honour, abschneiden = to cut off/truncate/prune/crop) I'm just trying to figure out whom that term is describing in this drama. Sorry for the sarcasm.

[WimpySmurf]

You could easily be undercounting your honor per hour by half. Which would mean somebody who doesn't play a lot, raids most of the time he does play, isn't on a super pro pvp team, could still get 1 AQ40 level epic item. Sounds like a good deal to me.

What I've noticed is that the Honor Tab guess for how much Honor you've earned for a given day is ~1/2 of what you actually get. Yesterday I logged out with ~792 as my estimated honor for the day. Logged in this morning and got 1592 Honor for yesterday.

[vor_lord]

What I've noticed is that the Honor Tab guess for how much Honor you've earned for a given day is ~1/2 of what you actually get. Yesterday I logged out with ~792 as my estimated honor for the day. Logged in this morning and got 1592 Honor for yesterday.

I've noticed the same thing, but I am giving you the actual numbers (from the next day, not the estimated honor from the day of).

So I don't know why my honor gain is that slow compared to what OMD thinks I should be getting.

At any rate it is all moot. Looks like we won't be raiding much for the next 3 weeks, and I should have enough time to get it done.

It is interesting to see the effect -- an Azuresong Mageblade dropped last night and was virtually unwanted despite the presence of quite a few infrequent raiders.

[Kevin]

I've noticed the same thing, but I am giving you the actual numbers (from the next day, not the estimated honor from the day of).

So I don't know why my honor gain is that slow compared to what OMD thinks I should be getting.

At any rate it is all moot. Looks like we won't be raiding much for the next 3 weeks, and I should have enough time to get it done.

It is interesting to see the effect -- an Azuresong Mageblade dropped last night and was virtually unwanted despite the presence of quite a few infrequent raiders.

Two AV PuG loses that took a total of 1.5 hours netted me, are you ready, 467 honor yesterday.

One match I came in late, but it still took us another 30 minuts to lose it. The other match I was there the whole time. So I see actual honor rates like you see, or worse.

But I need 30 AV marks for one of the items I want so I'll be back in there.

[Xame]

Var, are you basing your calculations on the blizzard default screen? 600 an hour sounds way low - I get more then that pugging AV (AFTER the 30% nerf). I'm not sure what exactly I get in premade AB's, but its certainly much more then that. However, my server is pretty much the undisputed champ of our battle group - I think I have lost one game ever when running premade since xserver came out.

I was in the same pre-made AB crew as Vor Lord. For about 5 hours (I stayed longer) I recieved 3441 honor. This is close to VorLord's numbers. In that time we only lost two matches with a 3-2 base spread and 5 cap'ed the few pugs we saw. Most of the matches are against well geared pre-mades, so they are a much harder fights to win. Since they normally don't go up against organized resistance, we have a small edge from an experiance point of view but they normally have better gear then us, so its a wash. The bonus honor spread is close to 50/50 since these are close matches (but much better then getting stomped in a PUG as Horde).

In AV on the otherhand, I ended up in two well run Horde matches. I had ~500 bonus honor in about 45 minutes counting both wins plus some additional honor kills that will be calaculated this evening. Since it is much harder to get pre-mades for WSG or AB as Horde and the Alliance is almost always pre-made (forcing hard matches with lower bonus honor), AV without the pre-mades is pooling better Horde players on average. Thus, creating a better winning situation and better bonus honor per time invested for Horde.

Granted, I would rather play AB with a Horde pre-made because they are hard fun fights and the voice chat has me rolling on the floor laughing. Winning a close match always feels great. But from a time perspective, AV will grind out more honor faster. In AV, read the raid chat and do what the leader tells you. If 80% do as they are told, victory will be yours in minutes (10 on D, 30 on O and 3-5 ppl camp the flags until they flip, rather simple eh?). Horde victorys require a little patience given the geography, placement of npcs etc. but not too much.

[Artega]

Yeah, FFS, 10 days vs a week for better weapons than my toon that raided for 8 months has. It's still extremely trivial. I and a former Grand Marshal were discussing this over the weekend, and were just flabbergasted that people were going to be able to get GM-level weaps in 1-2 weeks.

Greens to epix!

Really, though, I don't know why Allies even bother; their Rank 12-14 stuff looks horrible.

[Artega]

I saw this coming.

If anything, this widens the gap between the Honor Point and the BG marks requirement. As it was, you would have three times the required number of marks before you had enough Honor for an item. This change has exacerbated this issue.

Either they start selling stuff for marks only, or put back the marks for Honor turnins; or there's going to be a serious number of surplus marks in my inventory before I'm done.

Agreed. I was fairly pissed off when I found out they were removing the marks-to-honor/XP thing, because beforehand I enjoyed leveling solely off of WSG and AB marks. It took quite some time to do so, particularly at the end of the bracket, but nothing was better than getting right up to the tip of the last bubble at -9, going hardcore for a day (since excess marks were sent to you via mail with a 24 hour time limit on them), and then grabbing the last couple hundred XP you need to hit the next bracket and use all those marks for an easy 2-3 levels, plus the accumulated rested XP:)

That little bit of fun aside, I think it makes sense to have a marks-to-honor conversion system, even if three marks were equal to only a third of the honor you'd get from winning the battleground in question.