Wintergrasp

What is Wintergrasp? Located in the center of Northrend, Wintergrasp is World of Warcraft’s first and only designated PVP area. Its mobs offer up an array of crystallized elements, which makes it an ideal place for players looking to farm some much-needed gold. Where is the portal to Wintergrasp in Dalaran? I dont usually go to wintergrasp but I am buying some heirloom gear with my stonekeeper shards for my lower lvl toon and I need to get there to purchase them.

How honor is calculated:
Currently the numbers on Dalaran are like this:-

Defense Matches:
Winning grants 3000 honor.
Each of the 3 towers on the south side of the map which are destroyed grant 750 honor each.
Total possible – 5250.

Offense Matches:
Winning grants 3000 honor.
Each of the 4 fortress towers grants 750 honor if “Damaged” text is shown, and an additional 750 if “Destroyed”.
Total possible – 9000.

Losing grants 1250 honor but the tower objectives are still added onto it. So in theory one could lose an offense match and still gain 7250 honor. 1250 from the loss and 1500×4 for destroying all fortress towers.

How marks are calculated:

The losing faction will only ever gain 1 mark.
The winning faction will gain marks depending on their rank:
1 for recruit
2 for Corporal
3 for First Lieutenant

Attacking strategy:
Our number 1 strategy to attack the fort is to meet up near the main door of the fortress and achieve full rank there together. Once all enemies are dead, including NPCs (they all give rank, including quest givers) head through the north west side of the fortress. Kill the cannons as you leave, they have a five minute respawn timer so speed is of the essence in this strat.

Wintergrasp Raid

Run to Broken Temple as soon as possible. Once there, make only siege engines, not catapults. If we are very low on available players, one or two demolishers is also fine. Attack that northern side of the fortress as soon as possible.

There are a couple of reasons why we specifically go to north west.
First being that the north west and north east walls have only got two cannons within range of them, whilst the other walls all have at least three and in some cases four (depending on your exact position) cannons within range.
Second reason is that if you use a siege engine or a demolisher on those walls, it is possible to hit the wall without being in range of the cannon on the enemy tower (if it’s respawned or was never killed). You can use this to your advantage to bring the wall down without taking any damage, then drive in.
The reason why we don’t ever do the north eastern side even though it also has this cannon advantage, is because the north eastern side is near their graveyard. When the first wall of the NE side is breached, there will be horde coming from both in front of you, and on your right side. On the west side however, they will all be funnelled through the small hole in the wall there, or from the nearby staircase. It’s a small area that lets us keep them pinned down and kill the enemy easily.

Another thing to note is that the walls in the fortress have different hp values. If you hover your mouse over the walls, note that they have slightly different names.

Fortress door (the one near the relic) has only 30,000 hp.
Wintergrasp Towers (the ones on the south side of the map) also have 30,000 hp.
Wintergrasp Walls have 100,000 hp (the walls with the little holes in them for people to run through).
Wintergrasp Fortress Walls (no holes in them) have 116,000 hp.

The door on the southern side of the fortress has the lowest hp of them all. I can’t remember what the value is, but it’s around 80-90,000 I believe. Unfortunately it also has a lot of cannons facing it. There is a niche strategy which is sometimes used. If the push at north west fails, keep 2-3 siege tanks pushing north west to distract the enemy whilst our rogues can destroy the cannons near the front door. Then pile as many vehicles through that door as possible and hope the enemy haven’t noticed quickly enough to defend it properly.

When we break into the north west side of the fortress, there are only two options that we should take. Either break the wall with the hole in it as it has less hp, or turn a hard left and drive behind the enemy workshop and shoot the walls from there. This lets you harm them without being hit by enemy cannons, and sometimes the enemy will fail to even see you at all from there and will run past you, outside the fortress.

The three southern towers will give the attackers a 5% damage buff per tower at the start of the fight. If they are destroyed, the defenders will receive the buff instead. So if one tower is destroyed, our buff goes down to 10% whilst the enemy gains 5%. Then 5:10% and finally 0:15%. For this reason it’s preferable to have ~3 people from our team defend these towers by using the cannons on them. In drawn out matches, it’s worth having people stay on them permanently until the battle ends. If all 3 towers are destroyed, the match timer will drop by 10 minutes, turning the 30 minute battle into a 20 minute one.

Defending strategy:
If organising a premade, there are two options to take. The first is to start at flamewatch tower (east), rank up there together and then move to winter’s edge tower (south) to get full rank and then start creating vehicles at eastspark and westspark to destroy the towers. This is a fairly straightforward strat and it works pretty well. It can fall apart if the enemy has stealthers near the towers who jump into the cannons when it starts and wipe you.

Wintergrasp Location

An alternative starting position is to head to broken temple together. This requires a large number of players, ideally 20+ to be working together. You simply sit there until the horde that come from their starting area come to the workshop and use them for rank. If there aren’t enough horde coming within the first 60-90 seconds of it opening, you must all move as one group to the horde starting zone. There are enough NPCs there to provide full rank, and there are no enemy cannons to worry about, only enemy players. Once full ranked, all should head to bt and produce vehicles as soon as possible.

When it comes to defending, catapults are a viable option due to their speed and their ability to kill enemy players easily. A mixture of demolishers, siege engines and catapults is generally best. To prevent the enemy from overrunning the fortress, holding as many workshops as possible is necessary.

Each workshop should always have friendly vehicles on it to defend. A common mistake is to leave eastspark and westspark empty for the enemy to caputre. The workshops increase the number of vehicles the team can create which is important, but also the graveyards themselves are important. If we can hold 3 workshops, then we know where the majority of the enemies will be spawning from and can corner them.

Communication is key to defending the fort from enemy attacks. As soon as you see enemy vehicles or an enemy multiboxer, ping the mini map and tell the raid chat. Even if the distraction means that you die, it’s worth it.

Also remember that the cannons in the fortress respawn every five minutes. If the enemy kills them, don’t abandon them completely. They will come back soon and will need to be protected/utilised.

Vehicles are incredibly important to successfully defend. The majority of the times we fail to win a defensive match it is because we didn’t create enough vehicles. Your usefulness in the battle shoots up if you are in a vehicle. One because you can output a lot of aoe damage, and two because you now have an extra health pool which will help you survive a lot longer. A 250k hp tank that rams and shoots enemy players will do much more damage than two regular players can do on their own. A catapult will do damage comparable to a player on foot, but it moves at the same speed as if you were mounted giving you better mobility, making you immune to cc and making all your attacks to aoe damage. Demolishers have very high range on their attacks, only require one person to operate and they have room for passengers. Passengers on demolishers are able to use their abilities as if they were running around, so melee should drive them whilst ranged like hunters become passengers to help defend them.

The final thing is to stick together. It’s obvious but important. Every time you die, you help the enemy gain the rank they need to start producing sieges. During the early parts of the battle, don’t run around on your own. If you don’t have at least 20 players moving as one group, dont attack broken temple near the start of the match. Instead either head to the 3 southern towers, or stay near the fortress where the cannons give us the advantage. The enemy will have to come to the fortress at some point, and that’s when we bombard them and get our rank.

As soon as you have that rank, produce a vehicle inside the fortress and only then should you try pushing to BT or SR.

How To Get To Wintergrasp

How To Control Wintergrasp

Wintergrasp Fortress is the primary objective for control of the Wintergrasp region. The fortress has two layers of walls — the outer wall with the fortress gates, and the inner wall protecting the keep. The fortress also has a siege workshop for the construction of siege weapons for the defense of the fortress, quest-givers, the Wintergrasp quartermaster, and the entrance to the Vault of Archavon.

The walls have anti-vehicle turret alcoves all around it, and there are anti-tank rocket launchers available near the fortress' siege workshop.

Tower Room

Atop a tower in the south-west corner of the innermost courtyard there is a room seemingly magical in nature. It seems to serve no purpose besides providing a hiding place.

Gallery

• Wintergrasp Fortress while controlled by the Horde.

• Wintergrasp Fortress under Alliance control.

Wintergrasp Pvp