PvP Guide

How to gain Honor

• Honorable Kills
• Killing racial leaders
• Achieving Battlegrounds objectives

• Your victim's level : killing a level 60 character gives more Honor than killing a level 50 character. Killing a "grey" player gives no Honor.
• Your own level : a level 60 character killing another level 60 character gains more Honor than a level 40 character killing another level 40 character.
• Subsequent kills : killing a character a second, third or fourth time within 24 hours after the first kill will give reduced points for these kills (75%, 50% and 25%, respectively). The fifth and subsequent kills give no Honor at all. Note: the Honor notification in-game when killing an opponent does not take this diminishing return into account.
• Group or raid : killing while in a group or raid will share the Honor among team members in the same way as XP, with the exception of the raid penalty on XP not being applied to Honor. Lower level members will get a smaller portion than the higher level ones. Note: kills made in a group or raid still count towards your subsequent kills penalty (see above). Members of the group or raid group will not receive honor points if they are too far away from the group member who got the kill, much like earning XP.
• You or your team or raid's contribution to the kill : each solo character, group or raid participating in the kill gets their share of the Honor. The share is roughly equal to the percentage of damage inflicted to kill the target. Notes:
  • If an opponent does not receive any damage for one minute the record of who contributed to killing him is wiped clean. Thus, even if you come upon a lone enemy someone else might have fought him (and lost) recently and you might not get the full share of Honor for killing him.
  • Monsters and NPCs take their part too. If you jump a character already injured by a monster or NPC (and maybe still in combat) your reward will be smaller.
• Your victim's rank : Honor Ranks make the target worth more Honor.
• Being present at the time of the kill: you need to be alive and close by at the time of the kill to get your share of the Honor. Note : The opponent being healed during combat does not mean he's worth more points, only that it takes more damage to kill him.

Killing racial leaders: killing one of the NPCs considered leaders of their race. There are only a few of these, all on a two hour spawn timer, and the bonus for their defeat is divided between participating solo characters, groups and raids based on damage contribution. The racial leaders are:

• Thrall
• Cairne Bloodhoof
• Lady Sylvanas Windrunner
• Highlord Bolvar Fordragon
• King Magni Bronzebeard
• Arch Druid Fandrag Staghelm

Achieving Battlegrounds objectives: the Battlegrounds contain several opportunities to gain Honor in addition to killing your opponents, one of them naturally being winning the Battleground. E.g. in Catch-the-Flag Battlegrounds each returned flag gives your side a share of Honor. All members of the Battlegrounds team (Alliance / Horde) will receive the same amount of Honor for a flag capture.

Tips:

• Battlegrounds objectives are intended to be a substantial part of your Honor for a week. Don't ignore them if you wish to attain a high Rank.
• As kills in raids give fewer points to you personally but still count toward your subsequent kill ratio, try get some kills alone or in a small group earlier in the day / evening, then join a raid to collect more kills to meet the cut-off.
• If your number of Honorable Kills is a bit low for the week, join a raid or go play a Battleground to collect some more before the weekly calculation.

Dishonorable Kills

NPCs which give dishonorable kills have the rank of Civilian and show up with a white title background in the targeting frame.

Calculations - daily and weekly

Rank
There are 14 Ranks . Behind the Ranks is a hidden number scale, each Rank representing a range of points. These points are not your Honor points for the week, but something we'll call Rank Points for the sake of this guide. The exact points and scale will not be revealed here, but it's important to keep in mind that there are numbers behind the Ranks to understand how the Ranks work.

There are three steps in calculating and adjusting your Rank: 1. Excluding those with too few kills from the pool. a. Those with less than 25 Honorable Kills will not be included in the calculations this week, and their points for the week will be 0.
b. A cut-off is calculated based on the number of Honorable Kills made by all characters of your faction this week. Those having less Honorable Kills than this cut-off (but at least 25 Honorable Kills) will not be included in the calculations this week, but their points for the week will be enough to at least attain or keep Rank 1. 2. Calculating your points for the last week. Factors involved are: a. The total Honor of all characters of your faction on the realm who made the cut-off: this determines the size of the pool of points to be given out to your faction this week. A more active faction will have a bigger pool to share, but also more characters to split it between.
b. Your Honor for the week: this determines how many of the points from the pool will be assigned to your character.
c. Your level: characters lower than level 60 will not get their full share of points for the week. The penalty is especially significant at levels below 50, and for someone of level 30 or below to attain any Rank above 1 is hard indeed.
d. Thus, for maximum points for a week your faction needs to collect a lot of Honor, you need to be one of the characters collecting the most Honor, and you need to be at or very close to level 60. 3. Adjusting your Rank Points and thus your Rank. a. This is done by comparing your points for the week with your Rank Points. If the points for the week are higher than your current Rank Points, your Rank Points are adjusted upwards by a set percentage of the difference. If your points for the week are lower than your Rank Points, your Rank Points are adjusted downwards by a set percentage of the difference. The set percentage is higher for upward adjustments than downward adjustments.

Example: (note that you will never actually see any of these points in-game, only the Rank) During your first week with the Honor System your activity awards you with 14000 points for the week (not Honor, but points from the faction pool). As this is your first week and you had no points from before you will get a set percentage of these points added to the Rank Points. Let's pretend this is 2000 points, which then determines your Rank for the coming week.

During the second week you get 25000 points (again, not Honor, but those points from the faction pool). You will now gain the set percentage of the difference between 25000 and those 2000 points, bringing the points determining your rank up to let's say 5000 points. This probably means you will have a higher Rank than last week.

In the third week you're not as active, earning only 3000 points (from the pool), which is lower than your Rank Points. This means your Rank Points will be adjusted down by a set percentage, but a lower one than the percentage used when you gain points. Let's say you go down to 4500 points, which would probably not lose you a Rank.

Additional notes

• Gaining two new Ranks in a single week is possible, but only likely below rank 6.
• Rising in Rank every week is possible until about rank 11. Above that each rank is expected to take two weeks or more, each week with the same high performance as the last.
• Getting to rank 14 is expected to take about three months even for the most efficient and active players. Staying there is also quite a challenge.
• About 1.4% of the players participating in PvP are expected to have a Rank of 11 or above when the system settles itself after some months.

Other Information

Battle Standards
The Horde and Alliance PvP Battle Standards may only be used inside PvP Battlegrounds

Rank Progress
There is progress bar on the Honor tab of your character window that displays how close you are to your next rank. This will let you know whether you are moving towards your next rank or falling back towards your previous rank. from week to week.

Special Officer Commands
Players rank 11 or higher can now chat in the WorldDefense channel. The WorldDefense and LocalDefense channels display your rank as well as your name when chatting.