It Takes Up to 45 Hours to Earn a Set of PvP Gear - Is the Pre-Patch Honor Grind Still Too Long?

Posted 2026/01/20 at 9:00 AM by PopularTopular

boosted charactersFebruary 5thincreased Honor gains by 150%lowering the prices of PvP gearthe Honor grind is still too long45 hours

Spoilers if you don’t want to read post: Honor buffs weren’t enough. They need to cut cost by 50%, personally I think it should be cut further. Especially for a prepatch we only have 3 weeks to play in.

I did the entire honor grind just queuing alone the entire time and here are the statistics from just my personal experience from a fresh 60. I had 4 days off of work to do this grind

Bg’s played: 97

BGs Won: 48

Total time spent in grinding honor: 45 hours from the moment I started playing until I bought my last piece. This could be lower if you premade but this is to attempt to get a casual players perspective/experience.

So slightly under a 50% win rate which makes sense as im solo queuing and ran into premades in probably 15% of the bg’s. And this was for 8 pieces of gear. Weapons, and main set pieces. No off-set items from WSG, AB, or AV vendor. I mainly played WSG and AB as before the honor buffs I sat in AV for about 6~ hours getting 40ish marks.

For a prepatch this is way too much time to be spent grinding honor for 8 pieces of gear and when you factor in that most people play extremely casually for maybe 1-2 hours a day the grind for 8 pieces is simply not a viable route for people attempting to gear mains for tbc or even alts. Even if you cut this grind in half this would still for a lot of people be way too much of a grind. We also only have 3 weeks of prepatch. This isn’t a case of we have months and months of a phase to get gear. That means if a casual player (1-2 hours) of gaming did the grind they’d get all of their main set and weapon pieces a couple days after TBC releases.

13 45

Comment by Munj.Comment by UnderfearThese retail players keep crying and crying after all the honor updates.
This is CLASSIC, enjoy the grind or go back to retail.Comment by ataeginaThe honor gains should've been buffed by 600% at these prices.

Before someone goes "retail player etc", no. 4 * r14 grinds back then. But this is prepatch. The whole point is to be able to somewhat gear a new character, possibly a boosted char, so they can start normally in BC.

"but I had to grind for months to get rank14".

Yeah, so did I, but that was then, when that gear was OP, when it was going to last "forever".

It's not going to be OP for leveling in BC and it's definitely not OP now - it is, in fact, the minimum required to even be able to complete a quest, because you'll be surrounded by people in full rank 14 gear and if you're wearing anything else (with the possible exception of full naxx gear), you won't stand a chance. They'll just delete you in 2 globals.

As for how long it will last...not long. Not even one month.

On that note, the anniversary honor grind (the "original" one, with ranks involved etc) should've been nerfed INTO THE GROUND. Like maaaaybe 30% of what it was. It took MONTHS and for what? It's not like we were getting gressil and the wraith blade or kiss of the spider. Just some placeholder gear.Comment by alkyd312The post is a bit misleading because it would be nice to know how that guy calculated his time spent grinding.

I am at the moment 5/6 pvp set, 1h and off hand pvp weapons. All are the epic versions, not blue. I only grind for one piece per day.

I calculated my own time spent (by checking Nova Instance Tracker) and it's around 14.6 hours not considering the wait time between BGs. So it's like 2 hours of grind per day per piece.

I played 64 BGs out of which 26 were losses. All were random BGs, Horde faction, EU.

I also didn't just spam AV. I played all three BGs to turn in the bg marks for more honor.Comment by DarqStalkerit shouldnt be easy to get what some people worked weeks for.. 45 hours is fine for full set. its not like you have to farm it to be able to playComment by Raincrowfor people coming back to classic anniversary it is way too long
the boosted gear is terrible so why not let the people who want to get the pvp gear get it a little easier now? not like the titles and such are includedComment by redbackI have boosted an alt, and im waiting until I can send it some TBC greens, because its painful trying to do anything.

Boosted gear wasn't just BAD, it was "gear 30 levels lower than it" bad.Comment by Nyte1103What kind of stupid @#$%^ question is this? 'Does it still take to long?'...... yeah dude...

Like wtf wowhead. WHO EVEN WRITES THESE ARTICLES.

NO %^&* ITS TO LONG.Comment by RaincrowI have boosted an alt, and im waiting until I can send it some TBC greens, because its painful trying to do anything.

Boosted gear wasn't just BAD, it was "gear 30 levels lower than it" bad.Comment by AcrophisAlot of us Retail players don't have time to grind hours and hours for gear like Classic players enjoy, Blizzard please reduce the cost of the PVP gear, a few hundred honor per item is MORE than enough. We don't have the time to waste in battlegrounds all day, we have wives, kids and families now. If you can't reduce the honor, the least you could do is mail everyone who bought your boost to support the development of the game the full PVP set, it's not fair that classic players have such a big advantage right now. Thanks!Comment by LiquidPotatoI think people needs a serious reality-check on this topic.

The rank 14 gear is not for casual players. It has always been intended as a reward for the absolute elite of hardcore PvP players in classic.

To give you some perspective. Initially, the r14 PvP bracket only held slots available for 0.2% of PvP players in classic. Reaching rank 14 was a grind that took several months, or even up to a year to attain. Having a progression system set up like this might seem insane, but it also meant that the set carried a ludicrous level of status for players who attained it.

Fast forward to the PvP system changes on era classic. The system was revised to increase the rate of ranking up. Significantly cutting the time it took to achieve r14. Players were able to finish the entire grind in a minimum of 8 weeks i believe. And the rank fall-off system was removed. You stayed at your rank forever once attained.

So, Blizzard reduced a 6 month (8+ hour/day) long grind to 45 hours and you still complain about the pacing? You are not the target players for this set. You never were. Stop acting like trust-fund kids and appreciate this incredible opportunity Blizzard handed to you.

PeaceComment by LiquidPotatoI think people needs a serious reality-check on this topic.

The rank 14 gear is not for casual players. It has always been intended as a reward for the absolute elite of hardcore PvP players in classic.
"absolute elite of hardcore PvP players"INSTEADComment by checkpoint93These retail players keep crying and crying after all the honor updates.
This is CLASSIC, enjoy the grind or go back to retail.Comment by thunderaansI assume this guy was alliance, I feel like horde is closer to a 30% or less winrate in my experience. Many more premade alliance teams we run up against, or simply just typical horde experience in bgs. Its like 500 honor per hour as horde. Do the math on the time it takes to get one piece.... just to replace questing at level 65 12 hours into tbc.Comment by XxiolaAPremade AB, 6min per game for 700 honor.
Much much faster than spamming AV.

13 45