With the recent pvp revamp it became quite possible for many casual players to partake in the battlegrounds and gain epic rewards equal to about the Tier-2 raid set. However, the rate at which these rewards were being earned was very high for some individuals. As a result the developers decided to implement a hotfix into the game which reduced the honor rate for players by about 30%. While a change was needed to maintain the value of the pvp rewards this change has had major consequences for some players.
The population imbalance between horde and alliance makes pvp changes especially difficult to balance because of the difference in queue times. Since I have several level 60 characters on both factions and they just happen to be in the same battlegroup I was able to collect some data on the rates of honor gain. Most horde players were earning about 18-25k honor for playing about 7 hours with queue times that were at most a couple of minutes. The alliance who were running into average queue times of 11-16 minutes for AB/WSG and 35-45 minutes for AV were earning about 10k honor for playing 7 hours. These numbers were based on non-premade teams and reflect last weekend on Lightnings Blade and Shadowmoon servers.
The main problem with the honor nerf is that while it lowers the rate at which pvp epic items can be earned for both sides it still gears the horde players up faster. Normally this wouldn't be a problem since players would get their rewards and then leave to raid or continue doing instance runs. However, it seems that almost all raiding has been put on hold by high level guilds in effort to gain the max amount of honor and tokens that can be held in reserve. This strategy is in preparation for the Burning Crusade introducing new level 70 pvp rewards.
You can already see the problem that the alliance players are running into. As more and more horde earn their pvp rewards the average amount of honor gained per game for the alliance is reduced since they are fighting against better geared players. However, just applying the nerf to the horde would be unfair since they shouldn't be punished for their choice of race. Some better ideas have been introduced on the forums but it looks like most of the developers are too busy with the expansion to implement any of them.
Options instead of Honor Nerf:
1) Cap the amount of Honor that could be earned per day.
2) Implement a rest system for honor.
3) Implement the matching system which would make better geared players wait in the queue longer until they could be matched against players with similar gear.
4) Just let people get the current pvp rewards and reset honor and marks with the expansion.
Some Honor Calculations:
Entire Honor Set
Boots: ~12k, Shoulders: ~12k, Gloves: ~12k
Helm: ~20k, Chest: ~20k, Legs: ~20k
Two 1-hand weapons or One 2-hand weapon: 45k
Total: 141k Honor
Last week I gained 25k honor which allowed me to buy two pieces of the pvp armor set. My friend who played horde on my battlegroup last week gained 54k honor for playing about the same time as me.
Playing with a small group of friends and keeping constantly queued for AV which provides the most honor for the alliance I gained me about 9K honor in 7 hours last week. Now technically with the honor nerf I should now gain 6k honor in 7 hours but last night I only got about 2k honor for playing 5 hours since the queue times for AB and WSG had gone up considerably. I have a horrible sinking feeling that if I play for 5 hours on my horde character tonight that I will gain the 6k honor I calculated. Its simply a matter of the queue time imbalance combined with the honor nerf which is really hurting the rate at which alliance can gain honor.
Original Thread discussing the Honor Nerf and some misleading done by Drysc
http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/us/54922884.htm
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Honor Nerf destroys Alliance PvP
Posted by Relmstein at 12:16 PM
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10 comments:
It is too bad about the honor earned nerf.
30% less earned, really means that you need to spend 43% more time PvPing for the same honor totals. 100 honor earned before nets you only 70 now. That next 30 is 43% of the 70 you've earned that you need to do to reach the 100 from before.
However, for the battlegroup that Dalaran is in, I didn't notice any significant change to the Alliance AV queue times after Tuesdays change, although I admit I didn't do any careful measurement.
After the honor nerf I actually noticed a improvement in the alliance AV queue of about 5 minutes making the average queue time around 39 minutes in the Shadowmoon/Lightning's Blade battlegroup.
However it looks like AB and WSG seemed to have gone up on average by about 4 minutes which makes it around 20 minute queues most of the time.
Also WSG is becoming more and more useless to alliance puggers since when they are rolled by a pre-made they get no bonus honor and very few kills.
In AB a pug team can still hold 1 or 2 resource nodes against a pre-made and get bonus honor.
Gear disparity is interesting. A common horde headache is running into quite a few alliance in T2-T3. There is a PVE gear disparity thanks to Paladins and alliance PVE advantages. Allowing horde an easier way to gear up via PVP might be a balancing factor. If we are pointing to the expansion... sure horde gets Paladins, but in the Arena system (the PVP system for the best rewards), faction no longer matters. So there won't be queues based on faction for Arena battles.
Running into a AQ40/T3 guild that is farming honor for future lvl 70 rewards is a pain for everyone.
The problem is that when horde lose a WSG/AB game they are back into one in less then 2 minutes on the Shadowmoon/Lightning's Blade battlegroup. For the alliance it can take anywhere from 13-20 minutes to requeue.
my point was alliance has in general faster pve progression than horde thanks to larger pool of players and paladins. so to me its a bit balancing that horde has faster pvp progression now (but which didnt exist when horde competed with each other for ranks). Nonetheless, I expact the exapansion will equalize the 2 factions when it comes to both PVP and raiding for reasons already cited.
This inbalance in favour of Horde is interesting, but as anonymous says it may well end once the Arena is an option.
Currently on my server some top raiders are re-rolling Alliance or moving to other servers, since about 19 of the top 25 guilds in terms of raid progression are Alliance. I'm not sure if this is due to a greater population overall, and therefore more raiders, or some other factor.
It'll be interesting to see if top PvPers re-roll Horde if the queuing is still an issue following the release of the expansion.
I started looking at the scoreboard the last few weeks since the change.
I'm getting 200-300 bonus honor per AV. AND 200-300 Hk's.
The horde is killing the alliance at a rate of 4 to 1.
The raiding alliance is not very good at PVP despite the gear.
And that is why the horde earns honor faster.
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