The Greatness of Wintergrasp: Why Should You Do It?

I’m not much of a PvP person.  My mind is just never really in the game.  And yet, this is my schedule when I log on during weekends:

• Log in
• See when next Wintergrasp battle takes place
• Pick up Wintergrasp daily quests
• Fight in Wintergrasp (and hopefully win)
• If Win, hit up Heroic Dungeon IMMEDIATELY

Suffice to say, I’ve been somewhat addicted to the PvP-only zone.  And you should be too!  Let’s talk about some ways doing Wintergrasp once in awhile is worth your time and effort.

STONE KEEPER’S SHARDS

The main reason that I do Wintergrasp is for Stone Keeper’s Shards, which are rewards for doing the aforementioned Daily Quests.  You can use these items as currency to purchase superior or epic items (PvP focused, of course), Honor Tokens (for 2000 honor), a wide variety of Jewelcrafting Patterns and PvP gems or (what I’m aiming for) a Mammoth Mount.

Also with Red Harnass for Horde

The Shards can also be used to purchase Heirloom items, which are items that bind to your account.  This means you can switch them off to alts for easier leveling!  So, not a bad idea.

Now the Shards are rewards from the five Daily Quests, which can give you anywhere from 1 shard to 3 shards per quest completion.  I do three of the quests every time: No Mercy for the Merciless (kill 20 of the opposite faction), Victory in Wintergrasp (win Wintergrasp) and Stop the Siege (destroy 3 siege engines) which in total, gives me 7 shards.  That’s not bad at all.

If you gain control of Wintergrasp, you also get a world buff that allows for the aquisition of Shards in any dungeon.  Normal dungeon bosses drop one shard a piece, but heroic dungeons can drop anywhere from 3-4 shards each!  Running Heroic Azjol-Nerub (which takes less than an hour) can net you 9 shards for the run.  And if you’re jumping from one heroic to the next, that’s a lot of shards.

Personally, I have 126, so I’ve got some work ahead of me if I want that mount (which costs 300 shards).  Well worth it, as far as I’m concerned.

For a look at what you can purchase with shards, I’d go here for Alliance and here for Horde.

VAULT OF ARCHAVON

Let’s say you don’t really enjoy PvP, but you love running instances and raids!  Well, Wintergrasp has something special for you: a raid!  Once your faction controls Wintergrasp, you gain access to the Vault of Archavon, a 10man/25man Raid.  The raid itself takes very little time to run, seeing as it is made up of four trash mobs and one boss, Archavon the Stone Watcher.

The second the battle is won, people will start groups for this, so you don’t even have to go looking for a group.  You just have to go inside the main building and jump on general chat.  I’m positive you’ll find a solid group within minutes.

Archavon himself isn’t too difficult as long as you have a group that knows what they’re doing, and seeing as I’m only DPS I’ve just kept my eyes and ears open while I laid down the damage.  The fight is a DPS race – you have 5 minutes to take him down or he enrages and wipes to group.  For a more detailed look at the fight, I’d check this out.

What he drops is pretty cool.  In 10 man raids he only drops two items, which can be Tier 7 (10 man) hand, leg or chest set pieces for ANY class.  He can also drop any of the new Hateful Gladiator’s Season 5 pvp set pieces. On 25 man, he drops four items – Tier 7 (25 man) hand, leg or chest pieces or any of the  Deadly Gladiator’s Season 5 pieces.  He also has the (very rare) chance of dropping the Reins of the Grand War Mammoth, which is a really hard to find Mammoth mount, very different from the one above.  You can only get this badass mount in Heroic (25 man) mode.

Of course when I ran the 25man version, he dropped the Death Knight’s tier 7 gloves and I lost the roll.  I rolled a 4, he rolled a 14.  Sigh.

FARMING

Having control of Wintergrasp is also great for farming!  If your faction controls the zone, you’ll be able to see a ton of wandering elementals which drop Crystalized Earth, Fire, Water, Air, Shadow and Life.  Combining 10 of these turn them into Eternal (insert element here) which are used for various recipes and get you some gold on the auction house.

FINDING GROUPS

The one thing I didn’t expect to get out of Wintergrasp would be finding groups to hit up other content.  Granted, your milege may vary, but if you’re looking to start up large pvp or pve raids, this might be a great place to start.  You’ve already got over 40 people milling around together, you might as well have them work towards a goal.

The first time this happened, we ended up doing a 40 person raid on the Horde faction leaders.  I’ll get into greater detail on this in a later post, but by killing all four Faction bosses, you get an achievement and a Black War Bear mount.  Suffice to say, I know ride my black bear whenever I can.

Reins of the Black War Bear

These raids usually happen early in the morning when the other faction is sleeping or questing, so I’d recommend looking (or asking around) then.  It’s a lot of fun to take part in, so I’d recommend it!  Once again, I’ll get into greater detail in a later post.

On a seperate occasion, I happened to run a 25 man Vault of Archavon and found out that the same group wanted to run a 25 man raid of Obsidian Sanctum.  I jumped on board and we cleared that instance no problem.  I’ll get into details on THAT raid another time as well, but it was a blast to do and was my first ever 25 man content!  I didn’t win anything, but I did have a great experience.

Once again, your milege will vary, but it’s a great way to start up a group for some high level content easily.

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Have I convinced you?  Yes? No?  Well, in either case, the battle for Wintergrasp itself is actually a lot of fun anyway.  It’s worth giving it a shot even if you’re not interested in those sweet rewards.

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