This entry has been copied and made into a page, it might get updated later as well.
As some might have read already in one of my previous posts, I’ve started leveling a horde alt in the same server I got my alliance characters. As I’m writing, my horde DK is already 77, and Alterac Valley has probably provided a decent chunk of all the experience I’ve needed so far.
The interesting thing is the ability of being able to quest while being queue’d, going inside when the chance comes up, and then go back to questing (or just standing in Dalaran and doing other stuff while waiting for the queue to come up).
To tell the truth I never looked into leveling in battlegrounds (after one of the latest patch, you gain experience per objectives when you do battlegrounds), but I started looking for it and found some articles of people with people saying that they got an exaggerated amount of experience, which seemed sort of odd (they would always put the amount of experience they get, which is not the correct thing; keep reading).
Anyway, I thought about writing about it, here’s all the information I’ve gotten so far by myself, which will probably help anyone else that is interested:
First and most of all, the experience that you gain in Alterac Valley scales with your level, meaning that you don’t get the same amount per level; it’s more like a percent:
- If you kill Balinda / Galv: 1%
- If you burn down a tower: 1% (4 towers = 4%)
- If you win: 4%
- If you lose: 2%
These results can have a margin of error of +1%, that’s because during the game you can get random experience (I guess over time?). Assuming that you win a game and you take down all your enemies’ towers, you would probably be getting around 10% experience (remember the margin of error, so it could oscillate between 9~12%).
To make this actually viable, I’d say that your character has to be 71 or higher, to be able to get into the 71-80 bracket. The whole point of this is so games take between 10~20 min.
That being said, you really don’t want to end up in turtles, 30~40 min games or higher are really terrible.
You can also:
- Get AV mount and tabard (to get rid of AV mark excess)
- Get a lot of honor (I was capped @ level 74 or 75?)
- Get exalted with AV faction
- Get exalted with Orgrimmar / Ironforge
There are probably other stuff also. I turned in reputation stuff whenever I had a chance.
80′s won’t really mind, but you want to make sure that towers burn down (as in defend if possible). At 71 you won’t be able to do much, tho, being the lowest level of the bracket.
Other interesting things that you might not know:
- Rested experience is not consumed
- I’ve heard people in the games saying that if you are dead as something caps you still get the experience
- I’ve been told that heirloom items that boost xp (shoulders and chest) don’t work (can’t confirm by myself because my DK doesn’t have)
Note: Leveling in Alterac Valley is probably not as appealing to someone that has both heirloom shoulders and chest, simply because they get more experience when they are questing than someone that doesn’t have them. Still, it’s probably a good change of pace alternating questing with AV, but this always ends up in how fast the games end, tho.
Gahlok
Frostbolt.com
Thanks for the great post. Just in the past two days I was thinking on the viability of leveling trough battlegrounds. This post is quite informative on the subject. I agree that the definite added benefit is the gear you get doing it.
I wouldn’t really recommend spending honor in the gear, at least until you hit 80. Instead, you could probably spend that money in epic gems and selling it in the Auction House.
Great Post! A group of friends and myself rerolled alliance recently, and with the changes to AV we thought we would give it a chance. Like you said, turtles are horrible, long games are excruciating but if your faction in the battlegroup tends to dominate AV, this is definitely the way to level. The only downfall I had was the lack off gold once you get to 80 as you didn’t really do many quests.
I’ve got four more level 70 toons from BC that once I get them to 71 will be leveling via AV as well.
You will also lack gear once you hit 80 (since you won’t be doing many instances either), but that’s something 5 man ToC can fix
Re: Gahlok
You can purchase level 80 PvP gear while youre leveling to 80 so you have something to wear when you ding.. I have a few pieces of deadly already, my gear will be better than heroic gear after I have enough honor for full relentless!
Yeah, that leveling through battlegrounds is insanely easy. I came back to an old character I made 4 years ago and was leveling to 70 when I decided to go back to my old pvp ways…I went from 73-80 in a matter of days without questing. I didn’t even realize the experience I was building until I hit 74.
Maybe the EXP is better for lower lvs………. but I started playing yesterday at lv 53, and did ALL alterac Valley. I noticed that when we won, I would get up to 4 complete bars of experience. (out of 20 total bars), wich is 20%…….. And im VERY sure I was getting this amount of exp, because I got to lv 58 and a half all yesterday. (along with a new stormpike mount =p)
So Im not real sure about the percentages…. but since it scales with lv, im sticking with AV all the way. Just thought I would share my findings as well…. to me, atleast, its more like 20% for each win in AV.
Everyone is correct, I am on my first character (Mage, why oh why did I pick such a difficult route!) and quickly discovered AV Levelling at level 51 and didn’t look back. The EXP is fantastic compared to the normal Questing and you quickly accelerate through the ranks, only problem as people have mentioned is that you miss out on the Gold so if your not careful you end up with a high level character without the necessaries (ahem, not that I did that you understand). It was a bit of a shock to realise that you needed 6,000g for the Cold Weather FM (5000g for the Fast Flying Mount Training and 1000g for actual mount) in Northrend especially as I only had 4,500g and thought I was doing well.
I must admit that I didn’t follow Gahlok’s advise and did spend AV Honour Points on Armour etc, yup the Full Field Marshalls Kit because being a softy Mage everything killed me in less than a milli second and I was grateful for the slight increase in the stiffness of my Cloth Armour to prevent Sword penetration (lol). This allowed me to do better in WSG and Arathi battles. Whether or not to keep the points and use them when you are level 80 I don’t know, maybe I should have saved them for better gear to do better in the upcoming Icecrown Tournaments which I see reward VERY nice gear with their credits.
By the way if you want a laugh in AV after killing Galv then I like to use my Mage to sit in Ice Blood or Tower Point just inside the Flag Room entrance in front of the Flag and then when the Horde come charging in (inevitable!) you use your Blastwave (rank 8 at LvL 75) which does a nice amount of damage and blows them clean off the top of the Tower back onto floor level which also damages them, there is retribution and satisfaction for being a softy after all! You can sense the Tanks total look of surprise lol.
If you pick a “Holiday” period in Alterac Valley then the EXP points are VERY nice and they are much better than WSG or AB.
Gahlok is absolutely correct in that if you end up at the beginning of a levelling band (i.e. 51, 61 or 71) then you are as good as useless until you get to midband, it’s gutting though when you start to get high Crits at the end of one band and then get into the higher band and are useless again, I cried for days at LvL 61!!!
Just on a slight other note, although you can access the AV BG from the button at the bottom of the screen it’s worth actually going to the real (?) entrance for Alterac Valley in the Alterac Mountains (go to Southshore and head northish) because there is a Dwarf outside with some quests aimed at AV. Once you get all these you get a nice Item (the Eye of Command) that you can use to Teleport straight back to Dun Baldar and cash in your collected medal items and also get back quick if you need to go defend. You also get very nice XP and a Stormpike Level 6 status from completing all of the 6 quest levels available (ahem, call me Sir). I didn’t realise that these were available so didn’t go to the Dwarf until much later and I managed to cash all 6 quests at one go, just keep re clicking him to cash them in. You can also cash in your excess AV points at the Guy next to him (you can only collect 100 in your Currency) and spend them on your Stormpike Mount (Fast Mount) and Stormpike Battle Standard (gives extra Health Points to anyone within 35 yards I think for a time period) and Tabard (Useless but looks good). If you don’t spend them you will end up in a situation like I did where your Currency is maxed out at 100 AV points and they then get mailed to your ingame account which then fills up and you can’t receive any more mail, not good if your waiting on that 5,000g sale from the AH lol. I have got to points where I have had to delete some of these mails just to keep my mail under the limit and that is not nice.
The only problem with trying to spend AV Honour points ahead to purchase LvL 80 gear is that if you are thinking of the Hall of Champions then you need other types of points as well as AV points.
For the record I am currently Level 75 Mage and am getting approximately 1.5 bars if we win AV and 1 bar if we lose which is still significantly more than a Quest gives and takes less time to complete.
Just an important point on Honour Points, I found out the hard way that Honour Points cap at 75,000!!! So don’t try to keep more than this before spending em on that LvL 80′s or whatever gear you want. I thought I was racking up the HP in my Currency only to find out that I must have lost 50,000 HP because I didn’t check if it was capped, lots of crying and cursing at this point.
Remember: 75,000 maximum Honour Points allowed in your Currency tab! Spend em or weep.
@Paul – Yeah, that happens. Happened to me when i was botting to 80 in AV for the first time (shame on me).