Farming Honor

[gitcho]

I read a post last week where someone mentioned questing in WG for 20k honor ... i'm currently losing 10 games / week for arena points, only to have to spend hours in AV (for each team) just to get enough honor to buy anything. I could not find that post on the search.

Are there any viable means of getting honor other than running BG's (queues on recknoning aren't as good anymore)?

[suprafro]

Wintergrasp has 4 quests on a 4-5 day reset which each give around 3,500 honor each + 10 stone keeper shards (30 shards can b econverted to 2k honor) and are basically completed automatically while your in the battle. B Quests aside I usually net about 2k honor a win outside of the quests. Additionally the victory tokens from Wintergrasp can buy all sorts of pvp armor/accesories/trinkets. The battles take about 15-30 minutes depending on if towers get killed

[Kromtor]

Stonekeeper shards can be converted like he said so if you farm heroics and your faction has WG a lot you can get decent honor that way plus a lot of other goodies. If really desperate you can convert your arena points to honor.

[heyaz]

Farming honor sucks. If you want it slow and steady with very little time committment, do Wintergrasp twice a week when the quests are up - that'll get you about 30k. If you want it any faster, do AV. That's about all that's worth your time unfortunately.

It's too hard to carry the smaller battlegrounds when mutliboxing, and the honor in Isle and Strand kinda suck.

[Eloxy]

pretty much what heyaz said.

once u get better gear and can handle some action on your own, u can do the other bg's aswell and get the token cathering quest for some more honor

[Kromtor]

stay away from arathi basin and wsg. those are the types of bg's where you can rape face and still lose because your team cant figure out how to play with a boxer

[Stealthy]

There are 5 WG quests available, and they are on a 4 day soft reset, with a hard reset every Tuesday at 3AM server time - this means you can get them done twice per week - if you do them shortly after the hard reset, and again 4 days after that.

Each quest rewards 3723 honor, 10 Stone Keeper's Shards and 13g23s

Two of the quests can be done in between battles:

Slay them all! (H) / No mercy for the Merciless (A)
Requires you to kill 10 players or guards of the opposite faction

Fueling the Demolishers (H & A) - Fire Elementals
Bones and Arrows (H & A) - Shadow Elementals
Healing with Roses (H) / A Rare Herb (A) - Life Elementals
Jinxing the Walls (H) / Warding the Walls (H) / Warding the Warriors (A) - Water Elementals
These are gathering quests that require you to collect 10 quest items from killing the elementals in various areas of Wintergrasp. Things to note:
- The quest randomly changes every day, however they all share the same reset timer.
- 100% drop rate and everyone in the raid can loot from the corpses if they are in the area at the time of the kill.
- Killing opposing faction players in the quest area will yield 5 quest items, so two player kills are enough to finish the quest (you must loot the corpse before the player rezzes up at the spirit healer though, otherwise the corpse becomes non-lootable).
- Both horde and alliance quests will be set to the same area (WG is for pvp after all ;))

The remaining 3 quests can only be completed during the battle:

Victory in Wintergrasp (H & A)
Completed when your faction wins a Wintergrasp battle. This quest can only be picked up after a battle has started.

Defend the Siege (H & A) / Stop the Siege (H & A)
Defend the Siege is available before an Offensive battle (i.e. your faction is attacking the keep) and simply requires you to be in the same area when 3 siege vehicles break through a wall.
Stop the Siege is available before a Defensive battle and requires you or someone in your raid kills 3 siege vehicles.

Toppling the Towers (H) / Southern Sabotage (A)
This quest can only be picked up after a Defensive battle begins and requires you or someone in your raid to destroy a southern tower. You can be anywhere in Wintergrasp when the tower is destroyed and still get gredit.

Losing a battle in Wintergrasp will yield 1 x Wintergrasp Mark of Honor

Winning a battle in Wintergrasp will yield:
1 x Wintergrasp Mark of Honor for Rank 1 (Recruit)
2 x Wintergrasp Mark of Honor for Rank 2 (Corporal)
3 x Wintergrasp Mark of Honor for Rank 3 (Lieutenant)
You gain rank from killing opposing faction players or being in the same area when an opposing faction player is killed.

30 Stone Keeper's Shards or 9 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor can be redeemed for Wintergrasp Commendations, which reward 2000 honor when used and are Account Bound (i.e. you can send them to other toons on your account).

I use this basic strategy which offers a good mix of honor, gold and emblems:
1. Do Wintergrasp whenever it's up.
2. Try to complete all the WG quests twice per week (worth 37K honor in total, not including honor from turning in Shards & Marks)
3. If your faction controls WG, run heroics (since you'll also get Stone Keeper's Shards from isntance bosses).
4. If the opposing faction controls WG, run dailies

Hope this helps...

Cheers,
S.

[Fuzzyboy]

Just digging up this old, but nice post with a question for Stealthy. Is running heroics while WG is under your factions control better honor/hr than AV?

[gitcho]

dont think you get honor for running heroics... u get lootz ... and badges ... and repair bills ...

[Fuzzyboy]

dont think you get honor for running heroics... u get lootz ... and badges ... and repair bills ...

When your faction controls WG, you get stone keeper shards. 30 stone keepers shards = 2000 honor. Most dungeons can be done in about 30 mins, which is around 3-3500 honor per hour.

[gmbattletech]

Where do u turn in Stonekeeper shards for honor at

[Bettysue]

Knight Dameron appears when the Alliance has control over WG Fortress
Stone Guard Mukar appears for the Horde when they have control.
Both are directly east of the main doors within the central courtyard.

[Bettysue]

When your faction controls WG, you get stone keeper shards. 30 stone keepers shards = 2000 honor. Most dungeons can be done in about 30 mins, which is around 3-3500 honor per hour.

Bosses in heroics drop 2 shards per kill, and majority of the heroics have 5 or fewer bosses, so going with the 10 per 30min rule, it would take you ~2 hours with travel time to get to 3 instances to get 2k honor, netting you approximately 1k/hr...aka a pretty poor rate for honor.

They are a nice way to pad a couple points to grab a new piece "today instead of tomorrow" type thing, but instances aren't really a viable way to "farm" honor. Especially considering every2.5 hours you'd have to go win WG again just to continue farming.

[Stealthy]

Completing all 4 WG combat quests in a single battle and then doing the gathering quest will earn you 20K honor (including the honor for winning a battle). However this can be kinda difficult to do, since it requires a defensive victory (WG favours attacking sides), depending on population balance of course.

Most battles however you should be able to get 3/4 combat quests done, and then the gathering quest afterward - that will give you 16K honor...which is a pretty good reward for 30 minutes time invested.

Will farming heroics when your faction controls WG get you honor faster than doing BG's? No.

You need 30 shards to get a 2K honor token. Since each heroic boss drops 4 tokens, thats 8 bosses you need to drop to get enough shards. Running back to back BG's will earn honor faster.

However, looking at the bigger picture - running heroics when your faction controls WG is a very efficient use of your time since you are effectively earning both badges and honor at the same time.

On my server, WG usually changes hands each battle, so if we control WG, I run heroics. If we don't control WG I use that time to farm dailies instead. I find this gives me a steady income of gold, badges and honor.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
S.

[SideWays]

Bosses in heroics drop 2 shards per kill, and majority of the heroics have 5 or fewer bosses, so going with the 10 per 30min rule, it would take you ~2 hours with travel time to get to 3 instances to get 2k honor, netting you approximately 1k/hr...aka a pretty poor rate for honor.

They are a nice way to pad a couple points to grab a new piece "today instead of tomorrow" type thing, but instances aren't really a viable way to "farm" honor. Especially considering every2.5 hours you'd have to go win WG again just to continue farming.

Bosses in heroics drop 4 shards per kill, bosses in non heroics 3 (atleast the higher lvl ones).. I can complete Gundrak in 20 mins which means I get 5x4 shards in 20 mins => 1shard/min.

You can make 4k honor in 1h this way.. Not that much but its rly good if you are gearing up your team for PvE too..

Edit: Well I should have read Stealthy's post before posting -.-

[Fuzzyboy]

Bosses in heroics drop 2 shards per kill, and majority of the heroics have 5 or fewer bosses, so going with the 10 per 30min rule, it would take you ~2 hours with travel time to get to 3 instances to get 2k honor, netting you approximately 1k/hr...aka a pretty poor rate for honor.

They are a nice way to pad a couple points to grab a new piece "today instead of tomorrow" type thing, but instances aren't really a viable way to "farm" honor. Especially considering every2.5 hours you'd have to go win WG again just to continue farming.

Like SW says, heroic bosses drop 4 shards, not two. And it's not a matter of me winning WG in order to farm, but obviously just running heroics when your faction has WG and doing other stuff when they don't :-)

Stealthy has a good point about effiency, especially until you've ran out of stuff to spend emblems on. All in all, I think they WG when dailies are up, heroics when WG belongs to your faction and dailies/AV when it doesn't is a good route. Only problem for me is that im at about 55k honor due to honor tokens, and I have no plans to spend them until next season, so shards and WG commendations are the only real way to go for me atm.

[Altsoba]

When your faction controls WG, you get stone keeper shards. 30 stone keepers shards = 2000 honor. Most dungeons can be done in about 30 mins, which is around 3-3500 honor per hour.

For that, you have to make 45 shards/h, around 10-12 heroic bosses I guess. If you take into account that you can only do that specific heroic once per day and that you have to travel from one heroic to another, it might not be worth it.

I currently do a bit over 4.2k honor/h in AV, Horde Side. I have around 80% win ratio. I think a multiboxer with pvp gear on one of the sides can switch the balance of that BG.

I have a macro to spam in AV in order to try make Horde play as AV should be played, meaning make a stand at Galva with the multiboxer plus 5-8 more ppl, whatever the outcome, that same group stay on tower recovery. It works most of the time and if you chain BGs you start getting a lot of people on your side and it results in a lot of 2.5k+ wins.
It's even better if you bring along a few friends with you or at least your arena healer.

To answer you - AV is in my opinion and experience better for honor farming

[Fuzzyboy]

For that, you have to make 45 shards/h, around 10-12 heroic bosses I guess. If you take into account that you can only do that specific heroic once per day and that you have to travel from one heroic to another, it might not be worth it.

I currently do a bit over 4.2k honor/h in AV, Horde Side. I have around 80% win ratio. I think a multiboxer with pvp gear on one of the sides can switch the balance of that BG.

I have a macro to spam in AV in order to try make Horde play as AV should be played, meaning make a stand at Galva with the multiboxer plus 5-8 more ppl, whatever the outcome, that same group stay on tower recovery. It works most of the time and if you chain BGs you start getting a lot of people on your side and it results in a lot of 2.5k+ wins.
It's even better if you bring along a few friends with you or at least your arena healer.

To answer you - AV is in my opinion and experience better for honor farming

Some battlegroups have really sucky AV win percentage though - I'm not sure on what mine is, but if you win 80%, that means alliance side on your realm win 20% - i can't imagine what sucky honor/hr they must have in AV :-)

[Altsoba]

Some battlegroups have really sucky AV win percentage though - I'm not sure on what mine is, but if you win 80%, that means alliance side on your realm win 20% - i can't imagine what sucky honor/hr they must have in AV :-)

Nono :) not exactly, AV is sucky for Horde here too :). It's just that having a multiboxer can really imo change things. Most of my friends just don't do any AVs at all because it really sucks (solo) and they have almost the opposite %.

I've done hundreds and hundreds of AVs, people start knowing me and playing it as I stated in my post. That helps a lot, a multiboxer cannot win alone oc :). If you manage to keep those 5-8 around you in defense you win most of the time.
Even when it turns out really bad I cannot even count how many AVs I've won after losing all towers and defending our king with a few more people.

That strategy, defend Galva for a while (very important: defend like once and then just go to towers, leave it alone for them to kill), recover towers, kill anyone going south, defend southern graveyards and above all motivating those few players to stay with you all it does in fact is giving Horde time to "breathe". The terrain favors alliance so the strategy is gain time so our guys can go north, cap a couple of towers and kill the king.
If you see that alliance isn't moving fast as they usually do, you can move north and cap one DB tower (I'm able to cap it almost all the time as they don't get organized to defend it..., sometimes I even cap both).
Vanndar is killable with two marshalls up even without a tank. Just tell a healer to spam heal on ONE of your elementals, pop all 4. That, along with some more dpsers around (not many needed) and your huge burst drops their king in no time.

I never ever attack as a main strategy. People (other players) appreciate that, see that I play the game and are then willingly helping me defending.

[Fuzzyboy]

Nono :) not exactly, AV is sucky for Horde here too :). It's just that having a multiboxer can really imo change things. Most of my friends just don't do any AVs at all because it really sucks (solo) and they have almost the opposite %.

I've done hundreds and hundreds of AVs, people start knowing me and playing it as I stated in my post. That helps a lot, a multiboxer cannot win alone oc :). If you manage to keep those 5-8 around you in defense you win most of the time.
Even when it turns out really bad I cannot even count how many AVs I've won after losing all towers and defending our king with a few more people.

That strategy, defend Galva for a while (very important: defend like once and then just go to towers, leave it alone for them to kill), recover towers, kill anyone going south, defend southern graveyards and above all motivating those few players to stay with you all it does in fact is giving Horde time to "breathe". The terrain favors alliance so the strategy is gain time so our guys can go north, cap a couple of towers and kill the king.
If you see that alliance isn't moving fast as they usually do, you can move north and cap one DB tower (I'm able to cap it almost all the time as they don't get organized to defend it..., sometimes I even cap both).
Vanndar is killable with two marshalls up even without a tank. Just tell a healer to spam heal on ONE of your elementals, pop all 4. That, along with some more dpsers around (not many needed) and your huge burst drops their king in no time.

I never ever attack as a main strategy. People (other players) appreciate that, see that I play the game and are then willingly helping me defending.

People still have to be willing to help. On some battlegrounds it seems that players spend a lot of time spam-afk-reporting boxers, while on others, they're more appreciated. I'm not sure what the average battlegroup is like, but it's a very variable subject for sure. I like your approach though :-)

[Bettysue]

Like SW says, heroic bosses drop 4 shards, not two. And it's not a matter of me winning WG in order to farm, but obviously just running heroics when your faction has WG and doing other stuff when they don't :-)

Stealthy has a good point about effiency, especially until you've ran out of stuff to spend emblems on. All in all, I think they WG when dailies are up, heroics when WG belongs to your faction and dailies/AV when it doesn't is a good route. Only problem for me is that im at about 55k honor due to honor tokens, and I have no plans to spend them until next season, so shards and WG commendations are the only real way to go for me atm.

Ya my fault heroic bosses do indeed drop 4, I still wouldn't call it the best farming method but for a slow night in BG's it could help quite a bit I suppose.

[Stealthy]

Few things I thought I'd add since it's kind of relevant to the discussion:

1. The honor tokens purchased with the shards are account bound - you can send them to other toons on the same account. So you can use your shards to start gearing a 2nd team if you've already gearded your primary team. Note - you can also use the Wintergrasp Marks to buy honor tokens (9 marks = 1 token)

2. Honor tokens can effectively let you get past the 75k honor cap, so they can be useful to store up if a new arena season is starting soon (which means a new tier of honor gear).

3. If you reach the 75k honor cap, use some of your honor to purchase epic gems (10k honor each). The cost of the gems is low enough so you can keep yourself near the honor cap without having honor points go to waste. :)

Cheers,
S.

[Lyonheart]

Few things I thought I'd add since it's kind of relevant to the discussion:

1. The honor tokens purchased with the shards are account bound - you can send them to other toons on the same account. So you can use your shards to start gearing a 2nd team if you've already gearded your primary team. Note - you can also use the Wintergrasp Marks to buy honor tokens (9 marks = 1 token)

2. Honor tokens can effectively let you get past the 75k honor cap, so they can be useful to store up if a new arena season is starting soon (which means a new tier of honor gear).

3. If you reach the 75k honor cap, use some of your honor to purchase epic gems (10k honor each). The cost of the gems is low enough so you can keep yourself near the honor cap without having honor points go to waste. :)

Cheers,
S.

i mix it up.. i do WG a few times a day normally ( just for fun..quests are a bonus ) I run a few heroics IF we own WG and ill do an AV or two. I get 100k+ a week easy. I never "try" to get honor.. as I just use it to buy epics since I have all the non rated gear.

[Fuzzyboy]

I just remembered something. ToC normal bosses drop 3 shards. You can do ToC normal in about 20 mins, which is 27 shards per hour, which translates to about 1800 honor per hour, but more importantly 1800 honor / hr that doesn't cap out. Add to that a whole bunch of gold (price of enchanting mats will rocket once 3.3 and next season hits). Guess I know what I'll be doing when we have WG :-)

[Fuzzyboy]

Wow, just timed it - 11 minutes - that's a lot of shards/hr per hour :-)

[Ualaa]

And you can go into an instance six times in an hour.
11 minutes is pretty close to the cap, but you should never be locked out.