Wintergrasp
Posted on March 25th, 2009 by Lawbringer under Efficiency Tips, General Tips, Instances, PVP, World of Warcraft, WotLK
In our last article we covered achievements as something you might have overlooked. Depending on your preferences that might also be the case for Wintergrasp. The same can be said for heroic dungeon runs. So let’s take a peek at why you might want to kill some time there when you’re bored.
There are so many things to do in WoW that it’s really impossible to find time to do them all and have a life. Professions, making gold, raids, rep grinds, achievements – this game could easily chew up all your time. So people prioritize. Even when it’s your job (as is the case with me) you still have to more or less concentrate on one thing at a time in order to truly get to the point where you are Dominating.
For the last few months after WotLK, I’ve spent almost all of my time leveling alts and gearing toons for Raids. And since the guild has progressed well I kind of skipped some things on my druid. Heroics, for instance, and PvP. But one of the main reasons for taking the druid to 80 in the first place was for the express purpose of doing more PvP; which, I’ve mentioned a number of times hasn’t really ever been my “thing.”
When I finally made up my mind to get busy with the program of gearing for PvP I naturally started with Battlegrounds. Up until about a week ago I had never even been in an arena match. Lame, yes, but I figured it was pretty worthless to do them since I don’t enjoy PvP that much and knew that it was a learning curve best done by gaining some proper gear first.
Sadly I have a bit of pressure from a certain guidie who lives and dies for PvP. So he says “let’s just do some skirmishes to get your feet wet.” Then proceeded to queue us up for rated matches. First time arena fool on a new class. Painful is all I can say. I’m pretty nerdy about research and I just hadn’t taken the time to go to certain places like arena junkies to expand my repetoire of information so I was pretty lost. I’ll admit that it was awful.
So when he finally turned me loose I started back doing what I do best. I looked at specs and macros, and rearranged all my actions bars so I could shape shift with some degree of fluidity. Got my CC ironed out in a few battlegrounds and began looking at what gear I needed to get my resilience above zero to some number that would actually do me any amount of good.
I’m glad to say that in less than a week we are now winning more than we are losing, but I still have a long way to go. But it’s not just that I have a huge hole in my game for PvP – I also had overlooked Wintergrasp and Heroics.
If, instead of spending so much time working on a few other things that interest me, I had made an effort to attend WG whenever possible, and done a few heroics every day, my PvP gearing would be much further along. With Wrath, Blizzard was apparently shooting for balance in game play so you really don’t have to just BG until your eyes bug out any more. As a matter of fact, it’s not really possible.
Enter Wintergrasp. There are some Deadly Gladiator quality items available from the vendor there, but you have to have Wintergrasp marks to spend. If you don’t do Wintergrasp you can’t get them. The advantage is that if you can get your boots and helm for a mere 55 marks. So if I had done WG even once a day over the last 3 months I would have had something like twice that number even if we lost every single one.
Wintergrasp matches also reward more honor than almost anywhere else you can go, especially if you are winning. Do it a couple of times a day and what with the daily and a couple of wins you can garner something like 7-10 marks, 3,000+ honor points and some stone keeper’s shards to boot. Not bad for 30-45 minutes worth of work.
And then there are heroics. If all you do is PvE and raids, you’ve probably long since stopped running these. But it’s not a bad idea to do a few when your faction holds Wintergrasp for the emblems of heroism and stone keeper’s shards. This was another thing I missed. Since I didn’t need anything from heroics because of 25 man raids, I just quit doing them. But if I had, I could have at least picked up a couple of bits of blue PvP gear for some more resilience right off the bat.
Plus, since you need arena rating and points to get the Deadly Gladiator shoulders, you can pick up the BoA shoulders for 50 resilience just to get you started on the right foot with the stone keeper’s shards. It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s a way better option than almost anything PvE.
I’m sure most of you are aware that you can also get a decent start to you PvP set by doing Vault runs, which is a nice twist in Wrath. The only problem is that you will be at the mercy of the loot tables and getting the chest, hands and legs from the same part of a Deadly set from the stone watcher would be a long process. (It’s not a terrible idea to blend sets either since the 2 piece set bonus is +50 resilience.)
Anyway, if you’re wondering what the real point is I’ll get to it. I found that if I had just done a few WG battles from time to time as well as helped out some guildies by doing those heroics I could have entered those first arena matches with a much better set of gear. By skipping all that stuff I am now faced with the fact that I pretty much have to do it anyway. You might as well get it out of the way now before you decide to get serious about PvP.
It is nice that you can get ready for PvP more effectively than ever by just doing a few PvE things and a pretty fun battleground from time to time. It’s not unreasonable to say that you could do a couple of heroics, and a couple of WG battles a day for a month or so and end up with 7 or 8 pieces of really decent PvP gear and a resilience rating around 400. Which certainly isn’t going to hurt your chances at all. And don’t forget that you can add a couple of pieces from the Hateful set if you save you emblems of Valor as well.
So if you’ve been looking at Wintergrasp and Heroics as a waste of time, just ask yourself if you ever plan on taking your toon into anything bordering on serious PvP. If you do, adding those runs to your routine will put you in a position to just run out and buy your starter set when you do get ready to get with the ganking. It’s a whole lot easier to Dominate if you’ve got the right gear. So go blow up some easy instances and a few buildings and I’ll see you in those rated matches soon.
first again?
Yay first!
Starting to wonder when I’ll learn something new again from you guys.
I guess when I know as much as you do about WoW. Stop telling me it’s not a good article and send me one if you’re so knowledgeable.
he kinda has a good point, and lately alot of these articles havn’t been up to par like they used to be….no offence. I luv reading these, but you’re rehashing stuff that people who play WoW already know. It’s suppossed to be dominateyourserver, not educateanewb.
I too, leveled a druid up for the sole purpose of getting into pvp (level 78 at the moment). I wouldn’t mind hearing your experience so far about druid pvp and your thoughts on 3.1 (I don’t believe the last installment on the class changes was posted). Any websites or specific macros you think are vital, either for resto or feral?
Thanks
p.s. /cheer for a non-DK pvp article
i must agree, as a death knight, and someone with too much time, if i find myself bored and in dalaran and the shout goes out for reinforcements on the battlefield i pop over jump in a hard to kill turret and start defending the seige or attacking. the most fun part is to take guildies in whos beliefs are that of pure PvE and train them up for the upcoming flame lev in Ulduar as some siege vehicles are similar
Forgot to add that as a DK without professions when im bored of leveling them from 0 O.o
Well – that’s cool. I learnd this with my Pally at 69. Basically Twinked him for a couple of months back in the Day… Not big on Arena, but Blizz has announced a new BG coming out soon – looks promissing.
Hey guys – how about an article on Streamlining the New Auctioneer… I find it Much more difficult to work with, and No where near as fast and up-to date… Hate the Screenshot searches that seem to Always be out-dated…
There is only so much “new” stuff you can find in a game. At some point, until a new patch and instance come out, there really isn’t a lot of “new” stuff you are going to learn if you’ve spent a lot of time studying this game. Not Dominate’s fault, just how it is.
I like the different perspectives and ideas. Some, yes, I already know all about. Some I don’t care about. But I like seeing all of them so the ones that ARE new, that I did somehow miss, I get.
I just wish I hadn’t followed the ill-fated advice of flooding the market with glyphs at high prices…. lol
A small suggestion = Instead of buying the worthless (in stats) BoA shoulders for the 50 resilience, farm some Emlems of Heroism and buy the Savage Gladiator’s ones and socket with resilience. Much better stats & a bit higher resilience.
Better yet, do some raids, farm Emblems of Valor and treat yourself to some hateful. :p
I believe I mentioned both of those options sir.
I’ve found over the years that it never hurts to do all aspects of WOW, even if you’re chosen route is exclusively PVE or PVP. Back In Burning Crusade, some of the best gear outside of t5 or t6 was arena gear, such as the staves for casters or socketable neckpieces. So if you’re a meticulous player who isn’t an altoholic and wants to min/max their toon to the fullest, do everything Blizzard offers. With every new patch, they bring new elements of the game into vogue and out of vogue pretty easy.
Our Warlock Tank on Leotheras the Blind in SSC wore Arena, HIGH STAM gear, to tank, so it’s all valuable, even if you live and die by only one avenue of Blizzard.
Also, they plan to change battlegrounds in a future patch AND to add another battleground. Those with pvp gear, marks, and honor stockpiled will have a headstart to the enjoyment these BGs bring. Those without the requisite items will be behind the curve and will probably fall victim to the better geared players, even if gear is easier to come by.
This new Ulduar-patch-3.1 is no different. Those who didn’t want to raid, won’t jump right into the flurry that is Ulduar or 10/25 man content. While WOW has been slightly “boring”, there’s plenty of things to do and when the patch comes, there will be TOO MANY things to do.
- New tweaks to classes
- New Arena season, New pvp gear
- New Raids
- Tweaks to professions
- Argent Tournament
- Changes to dailies, mount to fish up
- New Lore
As a longer-term player, I learned to squirrel what I had to during the down times so I could enjoy the uptimes, such as patch drops and holidays. Wintergrasp and PVP are no different; fortunately for PVP-h8ers, you can enjoy Strand of the Ancients, Wintergrasp, and even AV, without needing top-end PVP gear, while still getting honor, marks, and saving for mounts toward your achievements.
Good article.
“If you don’t do Wintergrasp you can’t get them.”
Harumph Lawbringer,
I believe it should look as I have edited below:
“If you don’t do Wintergrasp, you can’t get them.”
How dare you forget a comma.
-Thekal
Harumph Thekal –
How dare you mar the beauty of the English language by peppering it with unnecessary punctuation. If anything it would be a semicolon since ‘If you don’t do wintergrasp’ does not form a complete thought – while ‘you can’t get them’ does. However, since both are necessary for this one complete thought no punctuation is required. So I did the right thing and didn’t just put a comma in there for the heck of it.
People like to throw in commas all over the place. They use them as a sort of conjunction. But when you use a conjunction you don’t need a comma. If you don’t need a conjunction you also do not need a comma.
Heehee.
Im gonna have some fun with you.
where at in wg can i view the deadly gear u can get with marks of honor?
Deadly equivalent sir, not from the actual deadly set.
If you’re looking for instant pvp gear to stack some hp and resil, there’s an 8 piece crafted set which requires level 78 to wear. It’s a good start for those w/o any pvp gear yet, and amounts up to around 400resil i think. The stats are close to the lvl 80 bg gear, savage i think it’s called, minus the set bonus. Buy the crafted gear and a few costly enchants, and you’ll be decently geared for bgs before you even start.
Ummm, You also forgot to mention that by doing Vault every week you can get some Epic PvP pieces on both 10 & 25 man
No I didn’t. I said that building a full set from doing vault would be pretty hit or miss, so don’t rely on that to happen really soon. You will be at the mercy of the drops.
Agreed, DK PvP is boring. I’m currently leveling up my Shadow Priest and rogue for the purpose of PvP. Of course i will be doing raids and such so that will be good. DK’s suck in general
Huh.. thats odd, i do far better on my dk than my rogue in pvp. They tend to be more forgiving with this BS where your auto attacks have a longer range than you special abilities.
Plus, you are not having true fun with a dk until you install the GetOverHere mod.
It is exactly what you expect; it plays “Get Over Here” and “Come Here” from Mortal Kombat when you use death grip. Classic.
Good article. As I am not doin areana’s i do do bg’s and am on a pvp server. I actually got a lot of crafted pvp gear to start. Also dont for get u can turn in your bg marks for more honor too.
Uh…
“Enter Wintergrasp. There are some Deadly Gladiator quality items available from the vendor there, but you have to have Wintergrasp marks to spend.”
These are actually Hateful Gladiator quality items, sorry!
Hey
i tried contacting you and didnt work, well anywase you had post few months back 5-6 about the haunted momentos i beleive you predicted after 6months that they would be selling for 600gold, so anywase i stocked up and i have 35 of them. well my server is only selling them at 200g pretty easy and 300g if you try. 600g is far off. can you please help me?