New Lake Wintergrasp PvP Items

Compiled list of the new lake wintergrasp pvp items, available in patch 3.0.8.

Type	Slot	Spec	Item	Price
Plate	Head	Melee	Titan-forged Plate Helm of Triumph	40 x
Plate	Feet	Melee	Titan-forged Greaves of Triumph	15 x
Plate	Head	Spell	Titan-forged Plate Headcover of Salvation	40 x
Plate	Feet	Spell	Titan-forged Greaves of Salvation	15 x
Mail	Head	Spell	Titan-forged Mail Helm of Dominance	40 x
Mail	Feet	Spell	Titan-forged Sabatons of Salvation	15 x
Mail	Head	Spell Hit	Titan-forged Chain Helm of Triumph	40 x
Mail	Feet	Spell Hit	Titan-forged Sabatons of Dominance	15 x
Mail	Head	Phys. DPS	Titan-forged Ringmail Helm of Salvation	40 x
Mail	Feet	Phys. DPS	Titan-forged Sabatons of Triumph	15 x
Leather	Head	Phys. DPS	Titan-forged Leather Helm of Triumph	40 x
Leather	Feet	Phys. DPS	Titan-forged Boots of Triumph	15 x
Leather	Head	Spell	Titan-forged Leather Helm of Salvation	40 x
Leather	Feet	Spell	Titan-forged Boots of Salvation	15 x
Leather	Head	Spell Hit	Titan-forged Leather Helm of Dominance	40 x
Leather	Feet	Spell Hit	Titan-forged Boots of Dominance	15 x
Cloth	Feet	Spell Hit	Titan-forged Slippers of Dominance	40 x
Cloth	Head	Spell Hit	Titan-forged Hood of Dominance	15 x
Cloth	Feet	Spell	Titan-forged Slippers of Salvation	40 x
Cloth	Head	Spell	Titan-forged Hood of Salvation	15 x
Misc.	Trinket	Phys. DPS	Anvil of Titans	25 x
Misc.	Trinket	Spell	Flow of Knowledge	25 x

Source: mmo-champion

Archavon the Stonewatcher – Wintergrasp 10-man Boss Strategy Guide

Archavon the Stonewatcher is the first and only boss located in the Vault of the Archavon, more commonly known as the Lake Wintergrasp boss. This boss fight is fairly straight forward and can be easily pugged so long as your raid has sufficient healers and tanks. You should note that you’ll only be able to enter archavon’s instance when your faction controls wintergrasp.

note: the instance is located within the fortress at lake wintergrasp

Archavon the Stonewatcher Abilities

• Health: 2.3 million
• Rock Spikes – Sends rock spikes flying at one random member of the raid. These spikes will continue to pelt this player and will deal AoE damage to any other players near by.
• Smoke Clouds – Archavon will occasionally put down a smoke cloud somewhere in the room, this cloud deals AoE damage to anyone standing inside of it.
• Tank Toss – Archavon will cast AoE stomp stun on the raid and then grab your main tank and hold him in his hand. At this point your off tank will need to taunt and hold aggro on Archavon until he tosses your main tank from his hand and re-aggros him.
• Enrage timer: 5 minutes

Archavon the Stonewatcher Boss Strategy

This fight is fairly basic, it’s really more of a DPS race than anything else. Start the fight by simply running into archavon’s chamber at the back of the lake wintergrasp instance. Your main tank will get the initial aggro, at which point the remainder of the raid should spread out around the room. It’s important to spread out as much as possible (not including melee players), as this will prevent the raid from taking unnecessary AoE damage during rock spikes or the smoke clouds.

As I mentioned above the 2 key AoE aspects of the fight are the rock spike and smoke clouds. These occur periodically and can be easily healed through. If you’re a DPS or tank just make sure you aren’t standing in these AoE attacks, thus putting additional pressure on your healers.

The Tank Switch

The big thing many groups might struggle with the first time is the tank switch. Periodically Archavon will grab your main tank and pick him up with his hand. At this point Archavon must be taunted by your off tank. If he’s not taunted fast enough he will simply go down the aggro list and kill off your top DPS 1 by 1, so it’s important that this taunt is quick. The off tank only needs to hold Archavon for a few seconds. Soon Archavon will toss your tank back down and resume aggro.

Beating the Enrage

The main concern with this fight is centered around the enrage timer, which is set at 5 minutes. It’s not a difficult timer to beat. Your raid will need to put out approximately 7,666 DPS as a whole, which if we assume you have 6 total DPS in the raid (less your 2 tanks and 2 healers) we end up needing 1,277 DPS per person. This is a very reasonable number for players of even the lowest gear levels.

Just stay focused, stay alive, avoid AoE, and conduct propper tank switches and you’ll be well on your way to your first kill.

Archavon the Stonewatcher Video

WotLK PvP Changes and Blue Posts

There’s been loads of changes in the past few days for WotLK, specifically related to PvP. Take a look at a few of the most recent blue posts and updates regarding pvp in the last 48 hours.

WotLK PvP Recap from Zug Gaming

• Berserker Rage Change
• Season 4 End Date
• Arena Match Making System Change
• Build 9014 Class Changes
• Honor Points will NOT Reset for WOTLK
• New Honor Items for Patch 3.0.2

PvP Developer Q & A

Why is it so hard to measure skill in a battleground and have rated BGs ?
I wish it were that simple. However, for a rating system to reasonably zero in on the skill of a single player in a game with teammates it takes a number of games approximately equal to ten times the number of players participating on that player’s team.

So for example, for a rating system to have all the information it needs to know to figure out how “good” of a battleground player you are in Alterac Valley, it needs to take about 400 games to do it (10 times the number of players on your team). Unfortunately, that’s without the additional complexities of being able to queue solo versus queueing as a group, etc.

It would be kind of annoying to have to play about 400 games of AV before the system could decide what items you’re eligible for. So, there are some complexities in creating a system to work around that problem (among others).

Archavon changes (Lake Wintergrasp Boss)
We don’t plan to change Archavon, as he needs to have compelling loot that isn’t something you can’t possibly get another way. However, I think it’s important to note that Archavon does not drop the helm or shoulder slots (or weapons), which are the hardest to obtain both in pve and pvp.

Why is PvP gear available for purchase for PvE tokens with no rating requirement ?
To put it simply, you can’t endlessly wipe on raid bosses and get these tokens. At some point, you have to succeed. Even then, the pvp gear you get from these tokens is 1 tier behind their pve value (ie: the ilevel 213 pve tokens from Nax 25 only get you “Hateful Gladiator” gear which is ilevel 200). It’s not possible to get the “best” pvp set items through pve.

Are there any plans of allowing us to attain PvE gear through honor/arena points?
For the most part (lack of tanking gear aside), if you have the highest-end pvp gear, you can do fairly well in a “tier behind” raid (ie: 10-man nax). So, for the most part that dynamic already exists.

WotLK Battlegrounds Changes

No Honor Points Increases for WotLK

Battlegrounds wins/losses and honorable kills will not award experience after the next patch, nor upon the release of Wrath of the Lich King. It could always happen somewhere down the road as we work to improve PvP progression, but there are no plans for changing this in the immediate future.

Battlegrounds Discussion with Tigole

Actually, we have been discussing new battlegrounds quite a bit lately. Wrath of the Lich King will feature Strand of the Ancients (attack/defend) as well as Wintergrasp (non-instanced, world PvP).

But past that, we are exploring ideas that would involve expanding our Battleground content in future patches and beyond. We believe we have some strong ideas for improving Battlegrounds and PvP as a whole in the game and we’re definitely going to focus on improvements in the future. Now, it’s very early to be talking about some of this stuff but I think it’s important for the community to know that it’s on our minds.

Our general thought is that we could provide more BG content over time. The BG content that we could provide could be of higher quality with a higher degree of accessibility. Overall, we’d like to have more content and variety. We also want the gameplay experience in the BGs to be better directed. We’re also exploring the concept of a complimentary “competitive” bg system as well. Over time, we’d like the focus of PvP to shift back to being more BG-centric and more focused on Horde versus Alliance — the core of our game.

We’re also planning on improving some Battleground and PvP features in general. For example, we want to give you the ability to queue for Battlegrounds from anywhere in the world. We’re also going to explore EXP gain through the PvP system as well as low level itemization to support that.

Please don’t take this post as a promise. This won’t be an overnight process. Not all of these things are set in stone and guaranteed to happen. It would take us a while to shift in this direction. But these are some of the current thoughts on the development team. I think it’s important for you guys to know some of our thought process in regards to PvP.