All You Ever Want to Know About the Honor System

[xlAnonym0uslx]

Sources:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/honorguide.html - Specific information
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/index....Select=true - interactive pvp ranking page
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th......post5286625 - Jargar's original thread.


How do I gain rank?

The quick answer is that you gain Rank by gaining Honor. Your amount of honor is then compared to all those on your faction on the server to determine your standing for the week. Depending on your standing you will then gain a certain amount of 'rating' point - the higher your standing, the more rating point you gain.

You also lose some rating point to 'decay', as long as you gain more rating point from your standing then you lose from decay, you will progress into the pvp system. As you reach a certain amount of rating point, you will be promoted to the next rank.

That's the jist of it... but it truly doesn't explain all that much, now does it? I'll be breaking down the information above, and hopefully by the end, everybody will understand.


How do I gain Honor?

You gain rank by gaining Honor. There is couple way to gain honor:

- Killing a player of the opposite faction within the proper level range (Any player who's level is not gray to you will yield honor).

- Reaching certain milestone in a Battleground. All battleground score screen have a 'bonus honor' column, which show you how much bonus honor you have earned. Contary to popular belief, you do not need to stay until the game end to get that bonus honor - if it is the column, you've already earned it.

- Turning in 3 Battleground token. On top of a reputation boost, it also give you a small honor bonus.

It is important to note that lower level player get less honor from kill, less honor from Battleground objective and less honor from tokens. If you wish to maximise your honor gain, the first thing to do is to reach the level cap.


About killing players...

Not all kills are equal in honor. The higher the player in level, the more honor he will give you. His rank also increase the honor value - a Knight will give you more honor then a Private.

The amount of HP you take from a target matters greatly. You will only receive a % of the Honor value of a target equal to the amount of HP you take from said target.

So if you kill somebody at 50% (because he just killed a mob), you only gain 50% of his honor. You'd gain 100% if you'd wait for him to heal and engage when he has full health.

By the same token, if you're fighting someone 2 on 1, you're effectively competing with the other guy to know who will do the most damage and thus get the biggest share of his Honor value.

Target who heal themselves do not increase their honor value.

So the best way to gain honor as far as fighting go, is to engage somebody at 100% in 1 on 1 combat. An honorable fight.

Another thing that factor in is 'Diminishing Return' on kills. The first time you kill somebody, you'll gain the full honor for the kill. Each kill there after has a 25% honor reduction. Even in Battleground.

So if you're fighting Jim, who's worth 100 honor to you, it will look something like this:
1st Kill: 100
2nd kill: 75
3rd kill: 50
4th kill: 25
Future kill: 0

This affect last 24 hours.

This make constantly fighting the same person a waste and also make 'honor farming' in battleground a useless exercise.


What about party/raid?

Parties/Raid count as a single player as far as the 'Honor tag' go. A party/raid will gain a % of the honor value of the target equal to the % of the health the target the party/raid inflicted. The honor is then divided equally among the players in the group if they are close enough to the battle (Exactly like XP).

So for exemples:
Party of 5 do 100% damage to Jim, who's worth 100 Honor = Each member gain 20honor

Party of 5 attack and do 50% Damage to Jim (100 honor) - Jim either lost the other 50% of his hp to a mob, because of a fall or to pvper outside the party = Each member gain 10honor

Party of 5 attack and do 60% damage to Jim(100 Honor) - However 2 member of the party were still in Orgrimmar, far from the fight = The 3 present member each gain 20honor

So why group? Especially if you're a higher damage class?

Well, for support. It's a lot easier to heal group member then random pvper. Many buffs (paladin aura, shaman totem, Imp's blood pact, warrior's battleshout, etc) only affect party members.

What more, healers do not do damage if they heal, so they get little to no honor - they'll have little interest in assisting you or healing you. They'll probably spent most of their time trying to nuke. This is bad for you and bad for the team. You want healer to heal... and healer will not only heal better but also get honor for it if they are in your group.

Despite the lessened honor, the fact that being in a group (be it raid or party) makes teamwork easier usually mean it is well worth being grouped for pvp. You get more honor if you win after all.


Standing and Rating

So you've been pvping all week, and come tuesday morning, they tally all your points and compare them to all other member of your faction. This give you your weekly standing. This mean that from week to week, your standing will change, depending on how much you pvped and how much everybody does.

Note that on any given week, you must reach 25 kills, or you will not be given a standing. That's the minimum to be part of the honor system.

Your weekly standing determine the amount of 'rating' point you will receive from the 'rating point pool'. There is as of now no way to know the exact % that each standing gain out of the rating point pool (with 1 exception), but obviously, the higher your standing, the bigger a slice of the pie you'll receive.

The rating point pool is determined as well during maintenance. It is the total of how much honor your whole faction has accumulated this week. So yes, the more pvp there is on your server, the more rating point there is available and ultimately, the faster people will rank up.

What this mean is that even if you get the same standing twice in a row, you might not get the same amount of rating point depending on how much people pvped that week. The one exception is the Standing 1 spot - He always get 13,000 Rating point.

It is your amount of rank point that determine which rank you have.


How do I tell how high my rating is?

You cannot in game. The information is simply not there.

You can see it here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/index....Select=true assuming you made the top 1,000 on your server.

Your rating is shown under the 'Rating' Column.


Ok, how much rating point do I need to gain a rank?

Here's the breakdown of the rank/rating table:
Rank 1: 25Kill. The one rank with no standing/rating issue.
Rank 2 : 1000+
Rank 3 : 5000+
Rank 4 : 10000+
Rank 5 : 15000+
Rank 6 : 20000+
Rank 7 : 25000+
Rank 8 : 30000+
Rank 9 : 35000+
Rank 10 : 40000+
Rank 11 : 45000+
Rank 12 : 50000+
Rank 13 : 55000+
Rank 14 : 60000+


Honor Decay - your worse ennemy

Honor decay is what makes gaining rank hard.

Every week, before your new rating point are given, you will lose 20% of your current rating. 20%!

So if you're Rank 5, with 18,000 Rating, you'll lose 3800 Rating.

Then they give you your Rating point (determined by your standing and the rating point pool), and your the score is your new 'Rating' value.

It is that new value that is the compared to the rank/rating table abovec and determine weither you lose or gain a rank.

20% is a big deal. Someone who score Standing 1 every week gain 13k Rating, but he also lose a lot of Rating due to Decay. It will take him 13 weeks of getting standing 1 in a row to progress from rank0 to rank14. Without decay, it would only take him 5 weeks.


Effect of Decay in practice:

Here's two pvper and there progress in the honor system. This will l illustrate the 'damage' that decay does and how much it slows down your progression.


The Semi Hardcore pvper:
Week Rating PvP Rank
1 0 Rank newb
2 8500 Rank 3
3 15300 Rank 5
4 20740 Rank 6
5 25092 Rank 7
6 28573.6
7 31358.8 Rank 8
8 33587.1
9 35369.6 Rank 9
10 36795.7
11 37936.5
12 38849.2
13 39579.4
14 40163.5 Rank 10
15 40630.8
[10 weeks later]
25 42299.2 Rank 10 (Still!)


The Top Dog - That guy with no life who's always Standing 1
Week Rating PvP Rank
1 0 Rank newb
2 13000 Rank 4
3 23400 Rank 6
4 31720 Rank 8
5 38376 Rank 9
6 43701 Rank 10
7 47961 Rank 11
8 51369 Rank 12
9 54095
10 56276 Rank 13
11 58021
12 59417
13 60533 Rank 14
14 61427
And so on.

Note: This will not work in the next patch or TBC because they are changing the honor system and will make it very different.

[Hounro]

Source Please

[Glynbeard]

hmmm lol this is like the 6th guide post u made in 15 mins

[Alkhara Majere]

Hehehehehee....useful...for 2 more days! :O

[Wagstorm]

As Alkhara said, in other words; This is useless in 2-3 days..

Only the part with the "player honor gain" maybe worth alittle..

[xlAnonym0uslx]

ya i said that it will not work in the next patch or TBC, but i didnt know when new patc

[thestupidguy]

how can you not know what the next patch is? It states that this tuesday is extended maitenence for the servers due to the patch being installed every time you log into wow.... :confused:

[wolv6769]

This guide is no longer valid after patch 2.0.1. The honor system has been revamped.

[shattered.ice]

The old sustem sucked. The new system doesnt do a very good job for those who spent time and effort. Now a bunch of 6yr olds in greens can get GM/HWL gear wich is now better than some T2 in cases.