Tobold's Blog: Best place to farm honor

Friday, December 22, 2006

Best place to farm honor

My Horde warrior is up to over 18,000 honor points, and has over 30 marks of honor from each battleground. So which of these battlegrounds is the best place to farm honor? In my opinion Arathi Basin is the place to go. The reason for that is that in AB it doesn't matter much whether you win or lose. You get bonus honor based on the resources your side gathered. So if you lose, but have lets say 1,650 resources to the winner's 2,000, you still get 100 bonus honor to the victor's 120 bonus honor. Not much of a difference. Add to this the fact that it is nearly impossible to totally stall a Arathi Basin game, and you have a honor point farming winner.

Second best for honor is Alterac Valley. In the shorter AV battles both sides make as much honor as in Arathi Basin. On the AV bonus honor weekends probably even more. The problem is that in AV you only get good honor in the first half hour or so. After that most of the named NPCs that give 14 points of honor are dead, and for killing players of the other faction the diminished returns rule applies, giving less and less honor the more often the same guy gets killed. When an enemy player is worth only 1 honor point, regardless of rank, and there is no more bonus honor to gain, grinding AV for honor is not a good idea. When I join an Alterac Valley battle and find I've just joined a combat which has been going on already for over 1 hour, I just /afk out. The 15 minutes deserter buff is a less harsh penalty than staying in a long AV battle.

The worst place for honor is Warsong Gulch. This is due to the high number of premade groups in that battleground. If you are member of a pickup group and the other side has a premade group, it is quite possible not to capture a single flag, and thus get no bonus honor at all. Even if you are member of a premade group and get paired against another premade group, the honor yield isn't great, because two premade groups often stall each other and draw out the battle. That can be fun, but it isn't great from a honor grind perspective.

Following the wise advice from a reader, I also tried the battlegrounds with my Alliance priest, thus getting the other point of view. For WSG and AB that doesn't make much of a difference. In AV I did three battles, all three of which the Alliance won in 25 minutes or less, which obviously was good honor gain. But in the end farming Alterac Valley for honor as Alliance didn't give much more honor than doing it as Horde. Because as Horde I can join any battleground in under 1 minute, while as Alliance the AV queues I experienced were 10 to 12 minutes long, adding over half an hour of no honor gain at all to the total time spent in the three battles.

So to summarize "Tobold's Guide to Honor Farming", my recommendation would be to alternate AB and AV, and just doing enough WSG to have the marks of honor you need. Doing just Arathi Basin gives slightly better honor, but is getting repetitive real fast. Doing Alterac Valley as well is more variety, more fun, and nearly the same amount of honor. Stay away from Warsong Gulch, unless you have a premade group, and even then it isn't the perfect place to farm honor.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:26 AM Permanent Link

Comments:

I tend to disagree :) Specially as a Priest its very easy to get huge amounts of honor in AV. You simply heal, everyone who needs a heal you pop one.

You get honor for kills he does, simple as that. I am usually last on the charts which appears when you loose(win, but my honorable killes I am usually first. I let other people kill so to say.

What you need however is a good mod which shows you targets in range you can heal. Healers Assist or even better HealBot is key here.

I am make about 120-220 honorable kills per AV with pure healing (and I am shadow specced...) which is more than the bonus honor of any BG.

# posted by

Teut : 22/12/06 09:44

I pvp pretty hardcore in the last couple of days, well hardcore compared to my usual play times ;)

I play alliance in pickups, wich means i lose about 8 of 10 BGs, no matter wich one. My realmpool is good enough, that any BG has a queue less than a minute.

I agree that AB and AV are the best picks for pickup players. That said, i usually queue up in WSG first, when the "enter bg" window pops up, i queue for AB and AV too and enter WSG. When im lucky, im picked up by premade of my own side, that means fast and easy honor, about 150 for 15 minutes of playtime max. When the enemy is premade, i can count on the popping up AB and AV windows and usually choose AV.

Farming honor in pickups is all about to max honor per hour, it's not about winning or losing. AV is without a doubt the best honor, if the game only last 30 minutes or less. Anything more and AB honor becomes superior.

Alliance on my pool slowly learns to max the honor on AV with losing the game nevertheless. We may lose all the time, but most of the time we gained more bonus honor than horde. When everyone is doin their thing right, AV means about 200 bonus honor every 20 minutes, you can't beat that in pickup ABs.

Just writing this shows, how fubared even the new pvp progression is. I mean AV is even less pvp now, than it was some weeks ago. Fighting enemy players is wasted time, show me any pvp system, that penalties player vs player action rather than reward it. My ingame mail floods over with BG marks, wich is a second sign, the new system is not working properly. One year from now, i see a third revision of this progression. This can not be a truely working system.

# posted by

Anonymous : 22/12/06 12:32

The problem with getting 120 - 220 HK's in AV is diminishing returns. You probably get very little honour from it.
I've had a few AV runs recently where the majority of my team where working on the "let's farm HK's in the middle ground for an hour" principle. They see all the HK's and the estimated honour on their pvp window and fail to realise that they probably wont get anywhere near that amount when it's calculated over night.
It's going to be a while before everyone sees the benefit of quick battles.

# posted by

Anonymous : 22/12/06 13:06

I started to type an analysis of the variables that impact the choice of where to honor farm in the current PvP environment, then it occurred to me that in four weeks PvP landscape - and the entire game - will be radically altered.
Two new battlegrounds
More importantly, lots of new non-PvP content

We're in the interim - I'm thinking it's unlikely that anyone will give much more AV / AV / WSG analysis once the BC is released :P

So just PvP wherever you're finding a good time...

---

Tobold, speaking of analysis, I'm struggling between pre-buying the BC and waiting to grab it from the stores (I'm in the USA). I'm probably not alone.

Is it better to pre-buy? I'm seeing shipping times of 3+ days unless I pay a premium, and what if I pre-purchase only to be put on an out-of-stock waiting list?

If I wait for a release-day in-store purchase, will the stock be there to support the demand for the BC?

Input greatly appreciated...

# posted by

Doeg : 22/12/06 15:20

From a Kilrogg Alliance PUG PvPer, doing almost anything but AV is a waste of time. WSG I almost always ran into a PUG, and then one time I didn't and Alliance were up 2 to 0, I think almost our entire time must have jumped ship to AV (I was the idiot who didn't), and suddenly Horde turned it around, tied the game up, then proceeded to farm us for HKs.

AB is an almost guaranteed lose unless our PUG is better than their PUG, but I go up against pre-made AB groups so many times it's literally not funny. If we're lucky, we can hold the Stables (and that may be more because the Horde let us keep them while they farm us :P)

Only in AV does Alliance have a very good chance of winning and in a short period of time, although occasionally the Horde surprise us (or me at least) with a quick win.

I'll still enter AB but only because I need/want those Marks for my 2H Polearm or Battleaxe. Everything else will be AV so I can earn my GM Hand Cannon.

# posted by

Cap'n John : 22/12/06 15:36

I've found that as Alliance in AV the most fun I have now is playing defense starting at Stormpike GY (I'll try to annoy at Stonehearth, but the fact that taking Stonehearth from the Horde actually HURTS the Alliance attempt is beyond stupid). I get plenty of HK's, probably barely less than those on the front lines. I get all the bonus honor from the NPCs. Most importantly, I've been fairly successful in helping to slow the Horde down enough that they can't get cleanly into Dun Baldar. Because the Horde are able to exploit the Vann pull and ignore the NPCs that are supposed to be chained to him, every minute you keep them from getting to Dun Baldar is fairly critical.

Thank goodness for the snowball defense. Sneak in, snowball some poor sap into the NPCs and watch all hell break loose.

# posted by

Albatross : 22/12/06 16:00

Raider pre-made v. casual PUG, duking it out on the battlegrounds of Azeroth for Tier 2 PvP epics!
How deliciously ironic!

That's the funniest thing I've read in days!

And in the same post as an all-too-true observation about post-patch PvP:
"Blizzard didn't predict..."
'nuf said.

# posted by

Doeg : 22/12/06 18:24

My experience has been pretty similar to Tobold's, except that on AB weekend AB is a cess pool of endless premades that 5 cap you and camp the GY. The loss is swift at least, but you get 0 honor.

In general, against a non-premade AB does seem to be best. I avoid WSG like the plague. I got the 30 marks I needed for the epic legs, and will probably never go there again.

# posted by

Anonymous : 22/12/06 18:58

My current favorite since the BC is EOTS. Why??? Think AB with alot more killing and alot more honor.

As long as you can keep at least 2 towers and bring in a flag now and again you should net almost 300honor per win or loss.

Now if you can cap 3 towers let the fun begin. Towers return points faster than flag turnins and once the opposite side only has one tower it is easy to farm HKs. And even if you are on the recieving end of the 1 tower you still gain alot of honor from the tower, flags, and hks.

# posted by

Anonymous : 24/3/07 05:50

This is a fun way to farm honor points, regardless of battleground:

Farm honor video

# posted by

Anonymous : 19/7/07 03:01

I disagree with ur comment *i m alliance so we lose 8 of 10.....*
i m alliance and yeah we seem to lack teamwork in the lower lvl ones but we win 90% of the time in AV i got over 80 av marks in 2 hours from str8 wins *gnomeregan server* Therth lvl 70 pally shockadin spec

# posted by

Anonymous : 29/10/07 14:56

BEST PLACE TO FARM HONOR IS ON HORDE. PERIOD.

# posted by

Anonymous : 13/3/08 13:35