by ZACH YONZON

So now you know all about the zone, familiarized yourself with the gameplay, and have some sort of idea on the strategies on how to win it, let’s have a look at the daily quests associated with the zone. The cool thing about Wintergrasp dailies is that they are the only source of Stone Keeper’s Shards outside of dungeon bosses and the only way to obtain them whether or not your faction controls Wintergrasp. 

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by ZACH YONZON

The vault is a raid instance accessible only to members of the faction that control Wintergrasp. It is one of the more important reasons why control of Wintergrasp is so important. Archavon the Stone Watcher is an extremely easy raid boss who drops pieces of Tier 7 and Arena gear. In short, he means free epics.

While there are no level restrictions to entering Wintergrasp (though if you can’t fly you’ll either have to take the portal or be summoned), players must be Level 80 and in a raid group in order to enter the Vault of Archavon raid instance. It’s a very short raid with exactly four trash mobs who have special abilities, but are essentially tank and spank and prepare the raid for how the boss will be like. Archavon is a DPS race.


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by CHRISTIAN BELT

Chilly Slobberknocker

Is your Mage still working their way to level 80? If so, this is an easy choice. Once your Mage has reached level 75, you can take them toZul’drak and head directly for the Amphitheater of Anguish. This is the Northrend equivalent of Nagrand’s Ring of Blood questline, in that it’s a series of 5-man boss fights that grants a ridiculous amount of gold, potions, and experience, and ends with a pretty fantastic selection of blue weaponry as a final reward. The Mage choice is the Chilly Slobberknocker, and it it’s a great gift for any mid-level spell-slinger on your list. This will be an instant upgrade for almost any Mage at the level, and there isn’t a valid replacement until you begin to get access to level 80 instance drops. 
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by ZACH YONZON

With gear upgrades these days being so easy to come by, I’m not so sure ‘welfare epics’ is such an accurate term for PvP gear anymore. That said, Arena Season 5 started the other day without so much as a whimper. It kind of crept in quietly, without even a patch to go along with it. I’m sure it’s taken a few players by surprise to see so many new PvP gear available from different sources that it can get confusing. Don’t worry, we’re here to help you make sense of it all.

First of all, in the new PvP rewards system there are three tiers of PvP gear. The Savage Gladiator, Hateful Gladiator, and Deadly Gladiator are equivalent to Level 80 dungeon blues, 10-man raid epics, and 25-man raid epics respectively, with a lot of item points thrown in the way of Resilience and sometimes Stamina. These items aren’t the best for PvE, so gear accordingly. You’ll be wasting a lot of item points by way of Resilience, so keep in mind that all this new gear is best for your Battleground and Arena pursuits.
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by ZACH YONZON

The battle for Lake Wintergrasp is one of the most fun parts of the game today — it’s certainly my favorite thing, such that I sometimes only log in whenever I know there’s a battle. The great thing about Wintergrasp is that there are numerous battles throughout the day. It’s the game’s best mini-game, and I’m looking forward to seeing it get even more awesome as more and more players reach Level 80 and Blizzard makes improvements to the zone.

Pre-game
An hour before each battle, an NPC in Dalaran — Arcanist Braedin for the Alliance and Magister Surdiel for the Horde — will yell that a battle will soon begin. He will repeat this battle cry again at thirty, fifteen, ten, and five minutes in order to alert the inhabitants of Dalaran to hopefully drive players into going to the zone. To make it easy, portals to Wintergrasp appear at the Silver Enclave and Sunreaver’s Sanctuary. 

Generally, a portal to Wintergrasp appears in Dalaran for the controlling faction and observably disappears about an hour before battles begin. This usually means that defenders must make their way through flying mounts into the zone before the battle begins or wait until the game ensues whereupon their faction’s respective Wintergrasp Battle-Mages will open a portal to allow reinforcements. Defenders will port directly in front of Wintergrap Keep, where the Titan Relic is housed, while players on offense will port into their respective landing camps — the Horde on the West side, and the Alliance on the East.
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by ZACH YONZON

Arena Season 5 is here, a completely different season from all the ones before it because of three critical things. First, there are ten new levels. Even though rated Arena play will still be available at Level 70, the real PvP endgame is at Level 80, with new spell ranks, new abilities, and ten more sweet talent points for wonderful PvP tricks. Second, there’s an entirely new class to throw a monkeywrench into the equation. How does the Death Knight fit into new team comps? Will they be enough to curb Druid dominance in 2s and 3s? The metagame changes drastically with one more variable. Third, unlike previous seasons, there will be three tiers of Arena gear. Furthermore, there will be numerous sources of Season 5 gear, and not just Arena play. It will be quite possible for players to get entire sets of Gladiator gear without having to PvP at all!

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by ZACH YONZON

Wintergrasp is the smallest zone in Northrend, bordered by Sholazar Basin, Icecrown, and Dragonblight. It is a PvP zone, which flags all players entering it for PvP. This isn’t an issue on PvP servers, but on normal or RP servers, this makes everyone in the zone fair game. There is no physical way to access Wintergrasp other than through a flying mount, creating a natural Level barrier of 77 although lower-level players can be summoned or take the portal from Dalaran. It is my favorite zone in Wrath of the Lich King, although it isn’t without its flaws.

To best understand how to play Wintergrasp, it’s important to understand the zone itself. Wintergrasp Keep is the structure North of the map, with siege workshops and graveyards to the East and West, as well as further down South. There are three towers South of the map that currently have no strategic advantage but confer bonus Honor when destroyed or defended. The Horde permanently controls a graveyard and flight path on the Northwest side while the Alliance have a counterpart on the Northeast.

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by ZACH YONZON

With blue, or rare, gear easily attainable through several sources, it should be extremely easy to gear up in preparation for ten- or even twenty-five man raids. 

Of course, before we get all our gear, we have to have a clear idea of what we want from them considering Blizzard has seen fit to load some Plate with Haste and others with Crit. Protection Paladins have no problem because as soon as you see a Defense value, we’ll know it’s meant for us. Holy and Retribution don’t have it as easy, and must often choose between Crit and Haste. Don’t worry about Tier 7 and other raid epics — they’re loaded with both. There are benefits to both, so we’ll examine those are after the break.
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by CHASE CHRISTIAN

After a few all-nighters in a row and a lot of showing up to work very tired, I finally reached level 80 this weekend. After a few victory laps in Dalaran to celebrate my victory over experience points and blue bubbles and Hemet Nesingwary (not for long, I’m sure); the looming realization of level-cap responsibilities started to enter my mind. Reputations, heroics, arena points, and honor – I had a lot of work to do. 

So, I took my own advice and decided to start some heroics, but not before spec’ing into my PvP mutilate build. I thought about trying out the truly insane DPS of Honor Amongst Thieves builds, but decided to postpone that until I’ve got some more gear to give it a real trial. Read on to see what I discovered on the way to my first Emblem of Heroism.

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