[WoW]: The Honor Grind Chronicles

[Taantric]

I posted this in the WoW General forums hoping to get some reply from the CM's. Would like to also hear this board's opinion of the honor grind.

WoW Forums -> Request for Comment: Honor Grind

Hello CM's,

My question is regarding the state of the Honor Grind. Are the Dev's

a) Aware of the current rate of acquisition of Honor?
b) Happy with the way it is at present?

I am a newly 70 shaman. With the 5man gear horribly out of date, my two avenues of character advancement are:

a) Honor grind
b) BoJ Grind (not really a option as most heroics are gear checks)

Neither of which is particularly appealing, in fact just the prospect of the grind ahead has put me off this game completely.

Note: Raiding and Arena are completely out of the question for a new level 70. Consistent Kara groups are hard to find and even for kara PUGS there is a certain expectation of gear level. You need to run 5mans for a while (till the gods of the RNG smile upon you) before you are ready for Kara.

I did some calculations for Honor requirements for Resto shamans:

Vindicators Gear:
Wrist - 11794 Honor
Waist - 17850 Honor
Feet - 17850 Honor

S1 Honor Gear
Helm -14500 Honor
Shoulders - 11250 Honor
Chest - 14500 Honor
Hands - 10500 Honor
Legs - 14500 Honor

Weapons + OH
1h Healing Mace - 25000 Honor
OH - 9000 Honor

Neck - 15300 Honor
Ring 1 - 15300 Honor
Ring 2 - 11934 Honor
Cape - 7548 Honor
Trinkets x 2 - 60000 Honor


Total Honor required - 256826 Honor /weep

Now the average player probably plays WoW 21 hours per week or 2 1/2 hours per day (this is being generous imo). Assume 1000 Honor per hour (again pretty generous what with dodgy AV maps and premade groups and High resiliance requirements).

This means a over time steady rate of Honor acquisition at 2500Honor per day (some days more some days less but steady over time).

So to get all the gear above I am looking at 102 straight days of playing the same 4 battlegrounds for 2.5 Hours every day.

This is frankly ridiculous and completely over the top. We have now gone the complete circle and back to the old design philosophy of the GM grind.

The rate of Honor acquisition needs to go up by 30% AND the cost of Honor items needs to come down by 30%. I don't know what the devs are afraid of. So what if people get their honor gear fast? It is not like the game is over for you. In fact on the contrary getting the Honor gear opens up tons of new content for you, suddenly you are looking at the possibility of doing the 25man raids, doing Heroics, doing ZA, not getting insta-gibbed in arena.

[T-rex]

You are a gigantic baby. Try getting 200k honor a week for 13 weeks strait. O ya, when honor was harder to get. This is nothing like the old honor grind. It is too easy, actually. Get some non-heroic level 70 instance gear.

[chu]

This is like losing your contact lens in the grass and looking for it on the sidewalk because you can see better there.

Decreasing the cost of honor items is not the way to fix it: remove this shitty honor-buying mechanic altogether.

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Taantric

Raids and Arena are completely out of the question for a new level 70.

Lose your 10 games a week to victory while doing the honor grind. In a few weeks you might actually start winning games. I had to start over completely in September and I have everything now, getting S3 mainhand next week.

[Tyreny]

Run 5-Man's and do a few BG's. That's how you get gear. If that doesn't appeal to you, may I suggest Peggle®: Official Site - PopCap Games - Free Download Games

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Taantric

So to get all the gear above I am looking at 102 straight days of playing the same 4 battlegrounds for 2.5 Hours every day.

How much time do you think the people before you spent getting their gear?

[T-rex]

Originally Posted by Mist

Lose your 10 games a week to victory while doing the honor grind. In a few weeks you might actually start winning games. I had to start over completely in September and I have everything now, getting S3 mainhand next week.

Seriously. What does this faggot assume that everyone has been 70 for a year? We just geared up, it isn't hard.

[Sinzar]

So 3.5 months to completely gear your character in close to end-game epics for pvp?

If I wanted to go from 0 epics to full epics via the PvE side of the game, it would probably take 6 months or more of raiding 4+ hours a day (instead of the 2.5 hour a day example you used for pvp'ing).

If anything, gearing up in PvP gear is far too quick/easy compared to PvE. The only problem, is how horribly bad the battlegrounds are in todays WoW.

[T-rex]

And you just had to get your AV map comment in there you piece of shit. Just because alliance is terrible at it doesn't mean it is imbalanced, just that you are bad. God, you should just quit and save everyone some time.

[Senen]

Its a game gear should be given out for free... Login collect your Daily Epic upgrade = the Win. Just think WoW can potentialy boost its Subs up to
20Mil + new casual subs..

[Ishad]

You forgot this option:

3) Farm gold via dailies and buy a shit ton of arena points every week (mileage may vary by server)

[Gauss]

I did the grind on my shaman by being a bit more hardcore than your scenario for most of it but the last 2-3 items have been me doing just the daily BG. I honestly do not see the issue considering your scenario says you get a new (sometimes BT-level) epic every week. The closest I ever got to a premade during that time was when I accidentally got in on an uberguild's AV premade from another server a few times in a row, so basically I got an entire set of epic gear by soloing a few hours a day. Sounds fair to me.

This thread is just plain retarded. Please take the WoW forum idiocy back to the WoW forums. You have no idea what the honor grind was before it was changed. You would have to sacrifice your life for WEEKS to get the epic loot.

[Tolanin]

completely failing to factor in arena is dumb. Even if your team sucks total balls you still get 250 pts a week. So figure you dont have to buy like 2-4 items now, you get it down to 70 days or so and you have close to end game pvp gear.

Is it really unreasonable to have to spend 2 months from being a fresh 70 to have full end game pvp epix?

The only part that is fucked up is that we only have 4 battlegrounds.. but thats not really the same as the honor grind being unfair.

[Dennadyne]

100 days to be decked out in the best gear possible? Sounds pretty awesome to me. I'm not even 70 yet in WoW but from other MMO's raiding for 100 days most certainly would not get you every piece of gear you want.

[Taantric]

Same bullshit arguments and the internet tough guy routine. here I will just cut and paste my reply from the other site:

First of all without gear at Level 70 you are nothing and it is even more painful when you are Resto spec. The difference between a new level 70 and a geared level 70 is huge, gigantic, very large, immense etc etc. Hell I can't even finsh my remaining quests because I am so gimped. So it is not instant gratification that I am after but rather the something to make keep playing this game and make it fun.

It's like Blizzard made this completely different, amazingly fun game level 1-69 and then as soon as you are level 70 they put huge roadblock in front of you with sign that says "Thou shall not have anymore fun for a while". it is simply absurd.

And please stop with the straw man arguments.... "uh you just want free epics from the vendor as soon as you get to level 70". I did not say anything like that. I think there is a lot of leeway between the current massive uphill honor grind and making it some reasonable.


Also which arena team in their right mind is going to take in a newly 70 shaman? Ok so I form my own 2 man team, find another sucker and whoopity doo I can now get arena points at the rate of 200 per week. So now I just do 4 months of arena and I am all set. Do you realize how insane that sounds?