Wintergrasp

Wintergrasp
Level: 77-80 PvP
Races	Revenants Elementals
Location	West-central Northrend

Wintergrasp is a large region located between Sholazar Basin, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, and Icecrown.

Wintergrasp appears in the second World of Warcraft expansion as the first non-battleground zone fully dedicated to world PvP, even on PvE servers. It focuses on siege weapon warfare.

History

Wintergrasp was once the location of a vast lake known as Lake Wintergrasp; the lake has shrunk since then, leaving the basin open to exploration. Wintergrasp contains a valuable mine, ownership of which is contested by the Horde and the Alliance, who both seek to reap its riches.

Geography

Wintergrasp map

The Wintergrasp zone in World of Warcraft is about the size of Westfall. Wintergrasp can be reached via portals from Dalaran, one portal for each side, which open while the zone is controlled; the portals are shut down while the match is in progress.

Players can fly into Wintergrasp under their own power, but in Wintergrasp the air is too thin to sustain flight; players entering this no-fly zone are warned and failure to leave within 8 seconds will result in the player being kicked off of their mount. Players who are kicked from their mount are automatically given a "parachute" effect (similar to Slow Fall).

Players can fly out of Wintergrasp to other regions via the flight master near the attackers' rally point. They can also leave Wintergrasp by moving to one of the various locations that are technically within other zones (but remain on the plateau) then summoning a flying mount.

Adjacent regions

Zone Name	Faction	Level Range	Direction	Access
Borean Tundra		68-72	Southwest	By flying mount
Dragonblight		71-75	East	By flying mount
Sholazar Basin		75-78	North	By flying mount

Notable characters

Horde

•  Commander Dardosh
•  Hoodoo Master Fu'jin
•  Lieutenant Murp
•  Primalist Mulfort
•  Siegesmith Stronghoof
•  Tactical Officer Kilrath

Alliance

•  Anchorite Tessa
•  Commander Zanneth
•  Bowyer Randolph
•  Siege Master Stouthandle
•  Senior Demolitionist Legoso
•  Tactical Officer Ahbramis

Quests

Main article: Wintergrasp quests

Horde

•  [80Daily PvP] Victory in Wintergrasp
•  [80Daily] Stop the Siege
•  [80Daily] Fueling the Demolishers
•  [80Daily] Slay them all!
•  [80Daily] Healing with Roses
•  [80Daily] Bones and Arrows

Alliance

•  [80Daily PvP] Victory in Wintergrasp
•  [80Daily] Stop the Siege
•  [80Daily] Fueling the Demolishers
•  [80Daily] No Mercy for the Merciless
•  [80Daily] A Rare Herb
•  [80Daily] Bones and Arrows

The quests in Wintergrasp yield money, honor, and also  [Stone Keeper's Shard] for completing them.

Wild creatures

Level 80 elementals of all known kinds (earth, fire, water, air, shadow, life) wander in various areas. Each side also has level 76 elite NPC guards. However, the guards, while having health consummate with an elite mob, do not do much damage and can be easily soloed.

Wintergrasp as a PVP zone

One faction defends Wintergrasp Keep while the other assaults it. The faction that controls Wintergrasp when a match starts will have to defend the keep while the other faction assaults it.

Both factions fight over towers and siege workshops scattered around the zone. It will be necessary to destroy the walls with siege weapons in order to take the keep.

If the attacking force is outnumbered, that faction will be given a buff to balance out the fight, and give every faction a chance to hold Wintergrasp. The buff increases health, healing, and health regen by 25% and damage dealt by 18%, stacking up to 20 times.

As with the Spirit Towers in Terokkar Forest, Wintergrasp is only under control for a certain period of time, after which it becomes available for capture. A faction controls Wintergrasp for approximately 2 hours 30 minutes after capture after which time it becomes contested. The battle then lasts 40 minutes or until the attackers successfully capture the keep. The status of Wintergrasp and whether or not it is contested can be seen from the Northrend map by the appearance or absence of a faction symbol over the zone.

Ranks

Wintergrasp uses a two rank system. After killing sufficient enemies, (enemy players or NPC guards) you are given the rank of Corporal (rank 1). This allows you to purchase Catapults at a Factory. With more kills, you are then promoted to First Lieutenant (rank 2) which allows the purchase of Siege Engines and Demolishers. The precise number of kills required varies based on the number of players in the battleground at that time.

Vehicles

The defining feature of Wintergrasp is the use of vehicles to assault buildings. In order to use Wintergrasp vehicles, you must attain the rank of Corporal or higher in Wintergrasp. Vehicles are obtained at Vehicle Factories under your faction's control.

Name	Seats	Rank Req.
Wintergrasp Catapult	One	Corporal
Wintergrasp Siege Engine	Driver, gunner, passengers	First Lieutenant
Wintergrasp Demolisher	Driver, passengers	First Lieutenant
Wintergrasp Shredder	One	Unknown (see below)
Wintergrasp Fighter	One	Unknown (see below)
Wintergrasp Bomber	Two	Unknown (see below)

Drivers can steer the vehicle but cannot operate any weapons. Gunners can operate a turret on the Siege Engine but cannot steer the vehicle. Passengers cannot steer or operate weaponry on either vehicle. Passengers are protected from harm but cannot attack in the Siege Engine; they are vulnerable to attack in the Demolisher but can cast spells.

The Wintergrasp Shredder, Wintergrasp Fighter, and Wintergrasp Bomber have not been seen in the current live patch (3.0.3). It may be that they are being withheld for a later content patch or that it requires an as-yet-unrevealed rank or condition to access the vehicles. Game Masters have given no indication of how the vehicles are to be accessed, but state that they are in-game.

Catapults are capable of throwing plague barrels along ballistic trajectories which cause small amounts of AoE damage to players, vehicles, and structures. They also can create a flame jet which does a cone damage in the front of the catapult to enemy players and enemy vehicles, but not buildings.

Siege Engines are capable of ramming which also does cone damage in front of them and is the highest damage to structures available. They also have a cannon that can shoot boulders which do high damage along a ballistic path.

Demolishers are capable of throwing burning boulders along a ballistic trajectory which cause medium amounts of damage to players, vehicles, and structures. They also can ram which does cone damage in front of them, and is particularly damaging to structures.

Strategy

Wintergrasp is a classic "assault"-style gameplay. The objective of the attackers is to capture the keep before time runs out. The objective of the defenders is to keep them from doing so. Should the attackers capture the keep, the battle ends immediately and they gain control.

The objective in Wintergrasp is a large orange sphere located inside the keep itself. The sphere must be activated by a player for 10 seconds, in the same way capturing a flag works in other battlegrounds. If this is done successfully, the attackers win. Any damage caused to a player attempting to activate the relic will cause the activation to stop.

To reach the relic, three levels of walls must be breached. First, the outer perimeter of the keep must be breached. This can be done in any of three different courtyards. The front courtyard is empty, other than NPCs, and the east and west courtyard contain vehicle factories for the defenders. The inner keep walls then must be breached which leads to a courtyard with higher level NPC defenders. The final barrier is the door to the keep itself. Once that is down, the attackers have access to the relic inside.

Vehicle Factories

Each side has access to two vehicle factories exclusive to them. For the defenders, they are located in the keep itself. Portals allow vehicles to teleport out. For the attackers, they are located in between the towers on the southern side of the map. These can be destroyed by the opposing side, using vehicles, and do not appear to respawn. Aside from providing vehicles to the controling team, they also spawn  [The RP-GG] to be used by players to hunt vehicles on foot.

Two capturable factories are located nearer to the keep. They start out under the control of the defenders, but the attackers can capture them. Capturing is done in the form of EoTS nodes, simply have more players standing at the node to capture it. Holding these factories has the dual advantage of allowing vehicles to be built closer to the keep and increasing the total number of vehicles a side is allowed to control. Unlike other factories, these cannot be destroyed.

Towers

The keep has towers as part of its design at the corners of walls. The attackers also have three towers at the south of the map. For each of the attacking team's towers that the defenders manage to destroy, the defenders will be rewarded with bonus honor.[1] The towers feature defensive turrets which players can use to fire at enemies. These towers do high AoE damage (up to 5000 for a well aimed shot) and fire quite quickly and thus are quite useful in defense. They can be destroyed by attack with either vehicles or direct attack by players, however they will respawn after some time.

Vehicles

The primary purpose of vehicles is to attack structures such as the keep, vehicle factories, and so on. They can be used to attack other vehicles but are not necessarily that efficient. Vehicles have a large amount of health, but are not particularly armored and thus are vulnerable to basic infantry attack. A player doing a concerted attack on a vehicle can destroy it quicker than the same player attacking from another vehicle.

Attacker Basic Strategy

If you are on offense, your first goal is to take the factories near to the keep. If you have to buy vehicles from the factories in the south, it will take a very long time to reach the keep (vehicles move around regular character running speed). Once you have one or both factories, you want to concentrate on breaching the outer wall. You also may with to fire at the cannons on the wall, as they will do a lot of damage to your vehicle if well aimed. If you break in to the east or west courtyard, destroying the vehicle factory there can be useful, as they can be destroyed. Once you begin to have higher rank players, you should split forces between attacking the keep and attacking players. Siege Engines are the most useful against the keep, and demolishers as well. If you are using a catapult, focus on enemy players and NPCs to try and keep them off your heavier vehicles. Also you can ride along on the vehicles and if they fall under attack, hop off and kill the attacker.

Once the inner keep is breached, all focus needs to go to the relic. Get in there and take it. AoE fears and such to get rid of defenders are useful in here. It is just like a flag capture situation in Arathi Basin.

Defender Basic Strategy

As defenders you need to divide your forces. It is tempting to simply sit in the keep and repel attackers from behind the walls but this is almost certainly doomed to failure. The keep walls aren't that sturdy so even with a heavy defense, you are likely to get breached. Part of the force should stay in the keep and defend it, in particular by manning cannons, the others should go out and assault. If you can keep the attackers from capturing and holding the nearby vehicle factories, you gain a huge strategic advantage. They either need to spend a lot of forces capturing them, or drive vehicles up from the south which is slow.

When you get rank 1 or 2 it can be useful to get a vehicle from the keep and try to strike at the defender's points. If you destroy their southern vehicle points, they then can only purchase vehicles at the norther points and if those are under your side's control, they will have no vehicles. The towers can also be destroyed, but it is unclear what the advantage is at this time.

If the attackers have breached the inner keep, you need to fall back as that's all that matters. It is then just a fight to keep them off it. If you see someone trying to capture it, hit them, and damage will break their attempt. AoEs are extremely useful. You must keep them off until the time expires to win the battle.

Numbers Balance

Being a world PvP zone, Wintergrasp has the possibility of numbers imbalance between the sides, possibly quite severe. This is countered by a buff called "tenacity" This buff increases the health, regen, healing, and damage of the players that have it. The more the imbalance, the higher the buff. You can very well see cloth characters with 50,000 or more HP in the event of a large imbalance.

If you have tenacity, you need to use it to your advantage. You are more powerful than normal and need to play as such. In particular, acting as basic infantry and attacking an enemy vehicle will lead to it being destroyed very quickly.

If you are facing tenacity, you want to avoid direct conflict with enemy players when possible. Use your numbers to your advantage and focus fire, it'll take multiple people to take one of the enemy out. Remember the buff applies to their vehicles too.

Wintergrasp and PvE

Control of Wintergrasp will affect PvE play as well.

Wintergrasp daily quests

The faction that controls Wintergrasp will gain access to a variety of new daily quests. These quests include (but are not limited to): quests where you have to ride a mount with an NPC, holding attackers at bay; flying aircraft quests; flying mount quests where you have to lower ropes to evacuate NPCs; in these quests mounts can hold multiple players.

Instances and raids

When a faction controls Wintergrasp, bosses in Northrend will drop a [Stone Keeper's Shard] for that faction only. These are used to buy certain PvP gear and jewelcrafting recipes. The controlling faction will also have access to a raid instance, Vault of Archavon, within the fortress of Wintergrasp. Like other raid instances, the vault is available in both normal and heroic versions.

New Marks of Honor, known as  [Wintergrasp Mark of Honor], will drop in the zone. These marks are necessary for honor gear acquired through the honor system.

Crafting resources

Wintergrasp has the regular mineral nodes and herbs found in Northrend, but is also a prime source of crystallized elements. Elementals of all types can be found in Wintergrasp, which have a chance of dropping their respective crystallized element. More powerful elementals (Revenants) exist that have a guaranteed drop of 1 element and as many as 3 elements per mob. Revenants are visible only to the side that is currently in control of Wintergrasp.

Mob name	Element
Chilled Earth Elemental	[Crystallized Earth]
Earthbound Revenant	[Crystallized Earth]
Flame Revenant	[Crystallized Fire]
Glacial Spirit	[Crystallized Water]
Living Lasher	[Crystallized Life]
Raging Flame	[Crystallized Fire]
Shadow Revenant	[Crystallized Shadow]
Tempest Revenant	[Crystallized Air]
Wandering Shadow	[Crystallized Shadow]
Water Revenant	[Crystallized Water]
Whispering Wind	[Crystallized Air]

Although [Frost Lotus] can be collected from other Herbalism nodes such as  [Icethorn], Wintergrasp is the only zone that has Frost Lotus nodes.

Gallery

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External links

• Wowhead
• WoWDB