Wintergrasp is a zone specifically designed for World PVP. The whole zone itself is comprised of a vast frozen tundra with ruins of ancient buildings as well as some goblin ingenuity. Within this zone, Alliance and Horde compete against one another to obtain or defend the sacred artifact hidden within inside Wintergrasp Keep. In order to accomplish this task, both sides are given various weaponry to fight their opponents in a no holds barred cage match.

Whoever wins hold the zone for 2h30m... after which, the battle starts again.

Contents [hide]

Layout Access Battles Offense Defense Ranks Vehicles & Buildings Gobling Siege Factory Catapult Demolisher Siege Engine Towers Tenacity PVE The Vault of Archavon Essence of Wintergrasp PVE resources Quests Achievements Subzones

Layout

Deep within the barricaded walls lies Wintergrasp Keep where the sacred artifact is being held. On the outside of the fortress are many gun cannons positioned on the walls and the towers. On the inside are two identical Siege Factories that make vehicles for the upcoming battles.

Outside of the fortress, within the zone itself, are 4 Siege Factories for the offensive side, as well as 3 defending towers that are positioned close to the zone borders. There are also 3 different bridges leading to and from the 3 defending towers and the Siege Factories.

As you may have read, or are just now reading, many walls, towers, and bridges can be destroyed within this zone. In fact in order to reach your objective of obtaining the sacred artifact hidden within Wintergrasp Keep you must breach the main gates and fight through the onslaught of the offense.

Access

You can't simply walk into Wintergrasps as it is surrounded by mountains, but there's several means of getting there.

You can fly into Wintergrasps if you have flying mount, both if you get to close to the ground you will be dismounted. This also mean you cannot fly out of Wintergrasp. Shortly before a battle and while your faction own the zones there will be portal from Dalaran to it as well. Lastly, there is a flightmasters.

Upon entering Wintergrasps, you will be asked if you wish to join the Queue for the next battle, refusing will hearth you to your current home. 120 players from both faction can join the Queue. You cannot enter Wintergrasps if it is full.

Battles

Each battle lasts a maximum of 30 minutes, during which the offensive faction tries and capture the relic inside the Wintergraps fortress and the Defensive faction try to prevent them from doing so. If the offensive faction reaches it, they win and the game ends, otherwise the battle ends when the timer runs out and gives the defenders a victory.

At the end of the round, if you are the winning side, you will gain 7500 Honor and 150 Arena Points and a number of Wintergrasp Mark of Honor depending on the rank you acquired. The losing team get 1 Wintergrasp Mark of Honor.

Offense

Your main job is to breach the outer walls of Wintergrasp Fortress and make your way inside to Wintergrasp Keep where the sacred artifact is being held. Clicking on the Artifact will begin a 10 second channel and completing this channeling will win you the game, and end that round. Any damage taken during this channeling will interrupt it.

As easy as this sounds, standing in your way are the opposing side who are typically huddled inside the Fortress bombarding you with the gun turrets located all around the fortress. To make matters worse the fortress also has teleporting discs located on the outside and the inside to allow easy access in and out of the fortress for the defending side. Once the walls are breached however, there is no means of stopping the offensive side from running inside, except of course to kill them.

Defense

Your main job is to protect the Sacred Artifact hidden within Wintergrasp Keep. Failure to do so will end in a loss. Although this may seem very difficult, you are given 2 Siege Factories on the inside, as well as fortified walls to the fortress and keep itself. These walls can only be brought down by the larger catapults and siege tanks, and makes it very difficult for the opposing side to make their way inside.

You also gain access to the many gun turrets located along the walls and towers within the fortress to help you defend against the offense. The battle quickly becomes intense as each side gains access to new and more powerful vehicles.

Ranks

As each round starts, you will receive the rank of recruit. In order to obtain a rank you must earn Honorable Kills.

Rank	Minimum HK	Vehicle	Marks Per Win
Recruit	None	None	1
Corporal	5	Wintergrasp Catapult	2
First Lieutenant	10	Wintergrasp Demolisher Wintergrasp Siege Engine	3

Why are ranks important? Because they allow you access to various types of vehicles and also increase the reward for winning the game.

Blizzard had originally intended to have more vehicle, including a Shredder, Fighter/Flying Machine and a Bomber, but has since said those would not be implemented.

Vehicles & Buildings

The main focus of Wintergrasp are vehicles and how they interacts with the buildings and fortifications. The side that control the most vehicle is usually in a good shape and will win. It's very important to rank up quickly so that you can bring forth more vehicles for your side. Vehicles are the only way to break the walls of the fortress and thus essential for a successful offense. They also have a lot of hp and deal a lot of damage (Both scale based on your gear) and as such can be quite useful in killing other players.

Gobling Siege Factory

Located all around the map are various Siege Factories. In order to obtain one for your faction, you must stand there, much like taking over a tower in Eye of the Storm. Once you have obtained the Siege Factory an NPC will pop up inside and allow you to make weapons based on your PVP Rank for that particular round. A goblin appears inside for the horde, and a gnome appears inside for the alliance.

All you have to do is talk to the NPC and choose which vehicle you wish to make.

Factories are marked on the map, and the defenders starts with 2 inside their base that cannot be captured - the attackers can however, destroy them. The attackers do not have any protected factory like this and it is possible for the defender to capture everything, which lead in an assured victory for them. Owning a factory not only allows to construct vehicles, but also increase the maximum amount of vehicles a side can field by 4, so holding factory increase the size of your vehicular army and lowers the opposition's.

Owning a factory also gives you the adjacent graveyard, allowing you to ressurect closer to the action. Dead players who are waiting for a ressurection can ask the spirit healer to be transfered to another graveyard owned by their faction, so this also grant a significant tactical advantage.

Catapult

This crude looking machine is the first one you will gain access to and only requires the Corporal Rank. It can only hold one person and has two attacks: Plague Barrel, and Flame Breath.

Of those two, only plague barrel deals damage to building, and even so it only deals very little. The catapult is not truly designed to act as a siege weapon - it's mean to kill players and protect other siege weapons.

	Plague Barrel - As the name suggests, it launches a highly volatile barrel at your opponents that explodes and spreads the plague when it lands. It leaves behind an AE cloud that will deal constant damage to anyone still standing in it.
	Flame Breath - Deals constant fire damage to anyone in front of the Catapult for about 10 seconds. This one hurts badly if you're caught on foot by a catapult. Just pray you have enough life and can out maneuver it before you become toast.

Demolisher

The upgraded version of the catapult, which requires the First Lieutenant Rank. The Demolisher is designed to destroy building, and while it can still be somewhat effective against players, it's not as good at that job as the catapult. It has two abilities:

This vehicle can also hold 2 additional passengers that sit on the vehicle and are able to use any ranged abilities they might have, spells, arrows, etc. Sorry melee, it's just a fun ride for you guys. Passengers are protected from harm, so having powerful range class can turn the demolisher into a killing machine as well as make it very protected. Frost Mages especially are awesome passengers, since they can frost nova, cone of cold and frost bolt (slowing and immobilizing) with impunity from their perch on the Demolisher.

	Battering-Ram - Deals frontal damage and knocks back any player it hits. Useful to clear away players trying to melee you down or to push siege engine away from a wall. It also deals decent siege damage to building and can be used while the Catapult is on cooldown to quickly destroy a wall in 'melee' range.
	Catapult - Throws a flaming boulder at the target. This deals AE damage and very good siege damage. It is a rather large minimum range, so using on melee opponent can be quite tricky, which is the main reason why the demolisher is simply not that good at dealing with players.

Siege Engine

One of the most powerful vehicles in the game due to it's massive amount of HP, this thing can take a beating and keep on ticking. However it's damage is very small, and requires a 2nd person to mount the gun located on top. The driver has access to a bashing ability that forces the front bumper of the vehicle outward to push back and deal damage to anything in front of it. The gun turret located on top of the siege engine is much like the turrets used to defend the towers.

As the name implies, the Siege Engine is designed to destroy walls and building, its ramming attack deals massive damage to building.

	Ram - Deals frontal damage and knocks back any player it hits. Useful to clear away players trying to melee you down or to push siege engine away from a wall. It also deals decent massive siege damage to buildings.
	Siege Cannon - The attack of the siege engine's passenger, it works exactly like a tower cannon can do damage to building as well as players.

Towers

The Keep has 4 Towers built in its corner walls and the attackers have 3 towers at the far ends of the field. You can climb in them and jump into one of the cannon. You can maneuver it around and aim it at your oncoming enemies. It deals decent damage and more importantly, enemies who shoot back at you will hit the gun and not you. While the guns can be destroyed, they will eventually repair themselves.

The towers themselves can of course be destroyed by siege engine, and this removes the possibility of the turret respawning at all.

The attacker's tower also each grant a 5% damage buff, for a total of 15%. If the defenders destroy a tower, the buff then go to them. Destroying tower also gives bonus honor. On top of that, if the defender manage to destroy all 3 towers, the game is shortened by 10 minute, which usually means victory for the defender.

Those towers changes were made to assist the attackers assault and also to give an incentive to the defender to get out of the keep and thus make the battle more dynamic.

	Siege Cannon - A rapid fire cannon that deals AE damage (about 5k).

Tenacity

Since Wintergrasp is a world pvp stage, it is quite possible for one faction to be heavily outnumbered, resulting in a crushing defeat for the unlucky side. Blizzard's answer to this is the tenacity buff.

The size that is outnumbered will get a stacking buff called Tenacity, each stack increase their health, healing and damage output. Players can effectively become raid bosses if enough stack of Tenacity are on them, but when this happen, you're probably looking at 7:1 odds. Tenacity also affect vehicles, but only their health, not the damage they deal... Tenacity empowered players are better off using their own ability to kill other players, falling back on vehicle only to destroy the wall and towers.

If you have Tenacity, try and use it to your advantage. Stick together in small group, with a couple 'bodyguard' for your siege engines.

If you're fighting a team with tenacity, try and avoid direct confrontation with the other team. If you do fight them, make sure to be in a group and to focus fire as it will take a lot of damage to bring down an enemy player.

Tenacity also affect the number of kill needed to advance in rank, players with the Tenacity buff will rank up much faster, allowing them to bring vehicle in play earlier.

Despite all the advantage of Tenacity, it is important to note that the team with Tenacity is actually at a disadvantage and usually loses. It is fun to walk around with 100,000 hp and dealing 3 time your normal damage, but once the fun pass, you'll quickly realize you don't want to be the side with Tenacity.

PVE

Despite being a pvp zone, the advantages of winning Wintergrasp are mainly pve benefits.

The Vault of Archavon

The main advantage and key reason why people fight for Wintergrasp is to gain access to the Vault of Archavon. The vault is a raid instance with a 10 and 25 man version which include 3 bosses and very little trash. So far Blizzard has added 1 boss with every new arena season and next season will introduce Torvalon the Ice Watcher.

Those boss drop Tier gear as well as pvp gear. Unlike most other Tier drop, the pieces from the Vault boss are already assigned - you do not get a token, but a specific piece for a specific class and spec already. The boss in the Vault are considered much easier to defeat than their raid equivalent and thus are highly prized as an easy way to get good pve gear. The 10 man version of those boss drop the 10 man Tier version and the 25 man drop the 25man Tier version.

The same goes for PVP gear - its' much easier to kill one of those boss and get a piece of pvp gear then it is to get the rating and/or points needed to buy one.

Boss	PVE Drop	PVP 10 Man	PVP 25 Man	Emblem
Archavon the Stone Watcher	Tier 7	Hateful	Deadly	2
Emalon the Storm Watcher	Tier 8	Deadly	Furious	2
Koralon the Flame Watcher	Tier 9	Furious	Relentless	2
Torvalon the Ice Watcher (Not in game yet)	Tier 10	Relentless	??	2

Essence of Wintergrasp

While in Northrend, member of the owning faction will be empowered by the Essence of Wintergrasp buff. This buff increases all xp gained by 5%, which is a good boon for leveling character. It also makes all 5 man instance boss drop Stone Keeper's Shard which can be used to buy various items from the Wintergrasp Quartermasters.

PVE resources

Wintergrasp also one of the best zone in the game to harvest material for crafting purposes. You don't need to own Wintergrasp in order to go farm it's resources.

• Mining: There is an abundance of Saronite and Titanium nodes.
• Herbalism: Wintergrasp also has plenty of herbs and is the only place where you can find node of Frost Lotus.
• Fishing and Cooking: All the fishes required to cook a Fish Feast can also be fished out of the water here, making this place an ideal fishing spot for high level fisherman.

Wintergrasp also has many revenant type mob who drop crystallized elements. There's 2 type of revenant for every element, both have a chance to drop crystallized elements but the bigger ones (listed second in the list) have a guaranteed drop rate of at least 1 element and can drop has many has 3.

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

Quests

• [Weekly PvP] A Rare Herb
• [Weekly PvP] Bones and Arrows
• [Weekly PvP] Defend the Siege
• [Weekly PvP] Fueling the Demolishers
• [Weekly PvP] No Mercy for the Merciless
• [Weekly PvP] Southern Sabotage
• [Weekly PvP] Stop the Siege
• [Weekly PvP] Victory in Wintergrasp
• [Weekly PvP] Warding the Warriors
• [Weekly PvP] Bones and Arrows
• [Weekly PvP] Defend the Siege
• [Weekly PvP] Fueling the Demolishers
• [Weekly PvP] Healing with Roses
• [Weekly PvP] Jinxing the Walls
• [Weekly PvP] Slay them all!
• [Weekly PvP] Stop the Siege
• [Weekly PvP] Toppling the Towers
• [Weekly PvP] Victory in Wintergrasp

Achievements

Black War Mammoth
	Obtain a Black War Mammoth.
	Destruction Derby
	Destroy each of the vehicles listed.
	Didn't Stand a Chance
	Kill 20 mounted players using a tower cannon.
	Leaning Tower
	Destroy a tower in Wintergrasp.
	Master of Wintergrasp
	Complete the Wintergrasp achievements listed.
	Vehicular Gnomeslaughter
	Kill 100 players in Wintergrasp using a vehicle or a cannon.
	Wintergrasp Ranger
	Kill 10 players in each of the Wintergrasp areas listed.
	Wintergrasp Veteran
	Win 100 battles for Wintergrasp.
	Wintergrasp Victory
	Win the battle for Wintergrasp.
	Within Our Grasp
	Attack Wintergrasp and succeed in 10 minutes or less.

Subzones

The Broken Temple	Cauldron of Flames	Central Bridge	The Chilled Quagmire
Eastern Bridge	Flamewatch Tower	The Forest of Shadows	Shadowsight Tower
Glacial Falls	The Steppe of Life	The Sunken Ring	Western Bridge
Winter's Edge Tower	Wintergrasp Fortress	-	-

Wrath of the Lich King required!