PvP for dummyheads
Myrmidon
Baron von PuttenhamCalifornia Icrontian
As we all know, we are predominantly a PvE guild. And that's okay. But there's a whole facet to this game we've been missing, and as they say - Azeroth's a book, and those who don't travel read only one page.
...Not so sure that's a relevant saying...
In all seriousness, one of the things I am supremely grateful for was the privilege of doing a small amount of arena with @SpencerForHire during cataclysm. At the time, I was strictly PVE - partially because of ranked anxiety (LoL players know what I mean), partially because of Fear-Of-The-Gear (would I have to lose and lose and lose just to get the gear to even play?). Spencer pressured my ass into giving it a shot, and I'm glad he did - it was loads and loads of fun, and I have memories I won't forget.
Anyway.
Since none some of you have displayed an interest, and since I love to hear myself talk some have displayed ranked anxiety and fear-of-the gear, I would present to you: a PVE guide to getting in on PVP.
Step 1: lolwtfisthis
PVP functions using different currencies and stats than PVE. Instead of justice (low tier) and valor (high tier) currencies, they have honor (low tier) and conquest (high tier). Even better, all relevant equipment is purchased with these currencies - you don't need to go grind PVE bosses or whatever and hope for a drop. That means you're currency limited by a weekly cap (which is impossibly high for conquest and nonexistant for honor) and your willingness to do shit.
Also, this is more of an intrinsically motivated part of the game. Not entirely, mind you - carrot-on-a-stick gearing is still a thing - but there are significantly more challenges that are really just for-the-fun-of-it endeavors. Just make sure you understand that going in - the "I raid for gear" mindset some of us have won't be as strong of a driver for PVP... but I promise, it's worth it. Nothing feels better than victory over an opponent that, had you made a mistake, could have beaten your ass silly.
Step 2: overcoming Fear-Of-The-Gear, PVE style
Let's face it. If you don't have a ton of resilience and PVP power but your opponent does, you're probably going to be the carefully-transmogged mop cleaning the floor of Warsong Gulch. But that doesn't mean you have to sit and lose your way up to even having enough honor to having a chance!
Blizzard has conveniently put in multiple PVE methods for you to grind honor... which are actually significantly faster than PVP methods (if your response is 'lol y u pvp then,' go back and read step 1). Some are even worth it just for the geek cred! In order of ease:
- Kirin Tor dailies. Go check out the Isle of Thunder! Once you've completed the Kirin Tor Assault scenario questline, there is a daily quest that awards valor or honor, depending on your choice... and it's 500-600 honor. You can bang it out in less than an hour!
- Tol Barad - This is almost always an alliance win. You get 180 honor per win, plus like 60 per tower or something... which are all but guaranteed!
2.5 While you're on Tol Barad, be sure to get the weekly quest for an easy 300! - Grizzly hills has a bunch of quests... but they're all over the place, and some require that you find other horde players (so not strictly pve). Plus you have to go all the way back to Northrend... but otherwise, it's an easy 200 honor.
- There are three mobs that spawn in the enemy base at operation: shieldwall (you may need to start the operation: shieldwall questline to be properly instanced, it's given to you by scout lyssa at the shrine of the seven stars). Once per day, each mob drops 275 honor, and they might drop less afterward (not sure)... so that's a fast way to make 825. The trouble is, they are heavily farmed and have respawn times of like, an hour. Find the group farming them and join! A good way to do this is stand on a respawn location and join OQ groups until you end up in a server where the mob has respawned...
- Dungeons! Justice points convert to honor at a rate of about 200ish per dungeon. The hard bit is of course finding people who care enough to chain dungeons...
- My personal favorite - solo 25man Vault of Archavon! Each boss drops a set number of honor that is split between all raid members... but if you're the only raid member, you get it all! 10 man doesn't drop much, but 25 man does. It's something like 180 - 220 per boss, and at four bosses, that's an average of 800 per run! Obviously you can only do it once a week, and it's not easy - you'll need to specifically talent - but think of the geek cred!
There are PLENTY of options to get the gear to pvp without having to sit through that lousy daily 30-minute only-if-you-win random battleground grind (a grind that is much more fun once you're geared, and significantly shitty if you're not!)
Also - still worried you aren't relevant but wanna pvp now? Remember that pvp is won and lost on cc timing - even if your gear is lackluster, good timing and use of cc still means you have a place on the team.
Step 3: Ranked Anxiety
Ranked anxiety is a phenomenon in League of Legends that scares people away from playing ranked games - games where their rating will go down if they lose, and up if they win. People are frightened they 'aren't good enough' and will let the team down. WoW PVP is much more forgiving and makes ranked anxiety easy to overcome by having multiple tiers of PVP. In order of anxiety-inducing:
- A while back, Blizzard added the ability to queue for 'War Games.' These are just-for-fun premade arenas, battlegrounds, what have you - where both teams are pre-built. That means we can all get together in our PVE gear and queue, and play against one another TF2 style. No worries if you suck, you're among friends! We can restructure teams or play around as we desire in a stress-free environment. Got three other buddies? Do a 2v2 arena! Got an odd number of people? Balance the teams and do a 9 v 8 battleground (at least I THINK it supports imbalances...)!
- Random battlegrounds! Who cares if you suck, so does everyone else! You'll meet people with crazy strong gear and people with terrible gear here, and it's very hard to judge your actual impact on the game. Personally I hate these, but I think with enough friends, they'd be a blast.
- Arena - this is full-on ranked play... but the good news is you're going to lose anyway! Everyone loses. A lot. and your rating can go down, which will cause ranked anxiety for sure. And yeah, your impact can be measured. But you'll never see the people you're running with again, and there's lots of reasons you can lose - class composition can be a big one! just get those losses out of the way and you'll stop being nervous and start playing the game.
- Rated battlegrounds! Full-on coordination with ~9 other people, carefully chosen for their competencies and classes? This can be pretty nerve-wracking. But I bet with ten of us, it'd be a blast! Just like raiding, but we get to put arrows in stupid orc faces, yeah?
So get some gear and step on up! Maybe if we get enough people interested, we can have a nice casual way to kill time without having to devote a whole night to raid and worry about ruining it if we don't show up?
Comments
I just item restored my PVP set legs, a PVP belt, and PVP back (bye legendary?).
Apparently this could be a thing.
I could find #1 enjoyable.
The war games sounds awesome.
I'm fairly experienced with WoW PvP. I know general strategies for the Battlegrounds and have done some arena. Mostly for !@#$s & giggles and cool looking gear or weapons. All on my hunter. Haven't done it much this expansion but I'll gladly help out.
WoW Arena I actually feel ok about compared to LoL's ranked. No real anxiety for me since I'm working closely with a teammate who likely is already friends with me so it's mutual.
Dueling and war games are great practice and I'll gladly
dragon kick your face inspar with you if you ask.It's been awhile, but I believe Arena Junkies is a still a good site to learn up on what you class can do PvP wise and some basic strategies and whatnot.
This will be a learning experience for me since this is my first Monk toon let alone PvP monk.
I ran a PvP monk back in the burning crusade. it was good.
No you dint
243 honor from Emalon
162 honor from Koralon
0 honor from Toravan - this one was a touch hard on 25M heroic.
Oops - I was honor locked.
@RahnalH102 , @CannonFodder , @AgentSheep and I all ran some 2v2 skirmishes last night. It was a fucking blast.
We also ran a couple 2v2 and 3v3 arenas against randoms - generally getting stomped, but now and then we had our moments. It's surprising how many matches you can get in in ten minutes. This is a really fast way to get conquest points.