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Should rank decay be removed?
Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2026 2:13 pm
by Morag
i think the honor cap is a significant enough limiting factor in the acquisition of PvP gear. Rank decay just encourages you to put an unhealthy amount of time into grinding rank beyond the honor cap for fear of losing a good chunk of your progress every week.
If you're like me and you stop grinding when you hit the honor cap, your progress beyond rank 10 slows to a crawl. I lose roughly 1/5 of a bar of progress every week, which means the climb from rank 10 to rank 11 will take me a full month. I can only imagine what it will be like at higher ranks.
Re: Should rank decay be removed?
Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2026 2:37 pm
by Knifewrench
Morag wrote: Wed Oct 28, 2026 2:13 pm
i think the honor cap is a significant enough limiting factor in the acquisition of PvP gear. Rank decay just encourages you to put an unhealthy amount of time into grinding rank beyond the honor cap for fear of losing a good chunk of your progress every week.
If you're like me and you stop grinding when you hit the honor cap, your progress beyond rank 10 slows to a crawl. I lose roughly 1/5 of a bar of progress every week, which means the climb from rank 10 to rank 11 will take me a full month. I can only imagine what it will be like at higher ranks.
Ranking is already super easy, and its more then fair u have to do more then 20k/week to hit r14. Also i didnt hit 20k and got 65%ish so its 2 or 3weeks with cap
Re: Should rank decay be removed?
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2026 5:21 am
by Dzielkus
High ranks are grind, but so do endgame PvE content, not everyone has to be r14 as well do full clear of Kara40.
Turtle removed rank drop, so we're still on better side than vanilla was.
Re: Should rank decay be removed?
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2026 10:51 am
by Zvyrhol
The question itself is misleading. I support the idea of removing decay. But in current rank system, it would trivialize rank progression (which already is very easy). Whole rank system need to be changed. Here is my full idea from
PvP Rank Progression Revamp
Proposed Solution
My proposed solution should fix the problem originally presented by Jamey and also fix some more. I will later present all pros and cons of all 4 systems compacted in one place.
New system:
RP acquired in real time.
Player stops getting RP once they hit weekly 20k Honor cap.
Whole progression of R0->R14 extended by 5x. Player needs to get 5x more RP than now to make same progress. Early Ranks should be similarly easy to get as now, the most part of this extension should be focused on later Ranks (R10-R14). Each Rank should feel gradually more grindy.
Decay removed completely.
It's basically current system but without all its errors.
First of all, RP is acquired in real time as in current system on Octo. In my opinion it's better than getting it once a week which feels clunky design.
Second, there is introduced limit to RP gain each week - same limit as 20k Honor cap that is in the game now. This shift the meta from playing 24/7 to playing reasonable amount of time, that's certainly good for health of the players. It also fixes the problem of sharing accounts so advantage of RMT companies is dulled.
Decay mechanic is removed COMPLETELY. Players who start ranking on Tuesdays shouldn't be punished by the system. So each hour spent in PvP actually matters and no decay can hurt your progress.
To compensate for the decay removal, whole progression becomes 5x longer in terms of RP needed. This essentially also fixes another problem that all previous Rank Progression Systems had: the people who spend crazy amount of time during short period (months) have clear advantage over those who play regularly (years) but spend less time in short period.
For example, in Turtle WoW player could spent 3 months in PvP by playing 8 hours every day, he got R14, then he left and never returned. There is another player who regularly plays PvP 1 hour every day and he is loyal player of Turtle WoW, he has been playing for 6 years. Due to his limited time, his max Rank was R10. Is that fair? I don't think so. Ultimately, the most loyal players whose names we all know should be promoted. This long progression would equalize the effort of both types of players.
It's important that the progression to R14 would be very long path. Potentially, extended even further if 5x isn't enough. It's up to devs to decide on specific number. It's essential if we want to keep prestige and elitism assosiacted with this Rank. It's not good if everyone in Stormwind is R14.
Re: Should rank decay be removed?
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2026 11:23 am
by Knifewrench
Zvyrhol wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2026 10:51 am
The question itself is misleading. I support the idea of removing decay. But in current rank system, it would trivialize rank progression (which already is very easy). Whole rank system need to be changed. Here is my full idea from
PvP Rank Progression Revamp
Proposed Solution
My proposed solution should fix the problem originally presented by Jamey and also fix some more. I will later present all pros and cons of all 4 systems compacted in one place.
New system:
RP acquired in real time.
Player stops getting RP once they hit weekly 20k Honor cap.
Whole progression of R0->R14 extended by 5x. Player needs to get 5x more RP than now to make same progress. Early Ranks should be similarly easy to get as now, the most part of this extension should be focused on later Ranks (R10-R14). Each Rank should feel gradually more grindy.
Decay removed completely.
It's basically current system but without all its errors.
First of all, RP is acquired in real time as in current system on Octo. In my opinion it's better than getting it once a week which feels clunky design.
Second, there is introduced limit to RP gain each week - same limit as 20k Honor cap that is in the game now. This shift the meta from playing 24/7 to playing reasonable amount of time, that's certainly good for health of the players. It also fixes the problem of sharing accounts so advantage of RMT companies is dulled.
Decay mechanic is removed COMPLETELY. Players who start ranking on Tuesdays shouldn't be punished by the system. So each hour spent in PvP actually matters and no decay can hurt your progress.
To compensate for the decay removal, whole progression becomes 5x longer in terms of RP needed. This essentially also fixes another problem that all previous Rank Progression Systems had: the people who spend crazy amount of time during short period (months) have clear advantage over those who play regularly (years) but spend less time in short period.
For example, in Turtle WoW player could spent 3 months in PvP by playing 8 hours every day, he got R14, then he left and never returned. There is another player who regularly plays PvP 1 hour every day and he is loyal player of Turtle WoW, he has been playing for 6 years. Due to his limited time, his max Rank was R10. Is that fair? I don't think so. Ultimately, the most loyal players whose names we all know should be promoted. This long progression would equalize the effort of both types of players.
It's important that the progression to R14 would be very long path. Potentially, extended even further if 5x isn't enough. It's up to devs to decide on specific number. It's essential if we want to keep prestige and elitism assosiacted with this Rank. It's not good if everyone in Stormwind is R14.
Any form of removing decay just makes ranking a joke. Someone who only pvps 7h/week shouldnt be able to hit r14, this would make it even more meaningless.
Re: Should rank decay be removed?
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2026 12:44 pm
by Morag
Zvyrhol wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2026 10:51 am
The question itself is misleading. I support the idea of removing decay. But in current rank system, it would trivialize rank progression (which already is very easy). Whole rank system need to be changed. Here is my full idea from
PvP Rank Progression Revamp
The problem with making the rank grind take even longer than it currently does is that players will be sitting on orders of magnitude more honor than they will ever be able to use once they hit rank 12, which is the last tier of PvP gear that the Twow devs added before the server closed. Under the current system, I will have 80k honor when I hit rank 11. By the time I hit rank 12, I imagine I'll have something like 200k+ honor, assuming there isn't a cap. And I won't even be able to buy the rank 12 gear until the AQ40 patch in March.
If they simple removed rank decay, you would hit rank 12 sooner, but you would still need to spend weeks or even months grinding out the honor for the full set of epic gear because of the honor cap. At best, it would allow you to have access to the epic weapons a little sooner.
Re: Should rank decay be removed?
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2026 12:54 pm
by Zvyrhol
Morag wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2026 12:44 pm
Zvyrhol wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2026 10:51 am
The question itself is misleading. I support the idea of removing decay. But in current rank system, it would trivialize rank progression (which already is very easy). Whole rank system need to be changed. Here is my full idea from
PvP Rank Progression Revamp
The problem with making the rank grind take even longer than it currently does is that players will be sitting on orders of magnitude more honor than they will ever be able to use once they hit rank 12, which is the last tier of PvP gear that the Twow devs added before the server closed. Under the current system, I will have 80k honor when I hit rank 11. By the time I hit rank 12, I imagine I'll have something like 200k+ honor, assuming there isn't a cap. And I won't even be able to buy the rank 12 gear until the AQ40 patch in March.
If they simple removed rank decay, you would hit rank 12 sooner, but you would still need to spend weeks or even months grinding out the honor for the full set of epic gear because of the honor cap. At best, it would allow you to have access to the epic weapons a little sooner.
In current system, Honor is a currency that will eventually be meaningless when you purchase everything. No matter if decay exists or not.
My suggestion was to extend RP needed to progress rank by ~5x and the extension was divided mainly on R10-R14 ranks, not on low levels. If you are able to buy all gear at R12, that wouldn't be a problem. T1 PvP gear is accessible at R6, T2 at R10 I think? Removing decay without extending the grind would make ranks and associated titles meaningless.
Re: Should rank decay be removed?
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2026 1:19 pm
by Knifewrench
Zvyrhol wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2026 12:54 pm
Morag wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2026 12:44 pm
Zvyrhol wrote: Thu Oct 29, 2026 10:51 am
The question itself is misleading. I support the idea of removing decay. But in current rank system, it would trivialize rank progression (which already is very easy). Whole rank system need to be changed. Here is my full idea from
PvP Rank Progression Revamp
The problem with making the rank grind take even longer than it currently does is that players will be sitting on orders of magnitude more honor than they will ever be able to use once they hit rank 12, which is the last tier of PvP gear that the Twow devs added before the server closed. Under the current system, I will have 80k honor when I hit rank 11. By the time I hit rank 12, I imagine I'll have something like 200k+ honor, assuming there isn't a cap. And I won't even be able to buy the rank 12 gear until the AQ40 patch in March.
If they simple removed rank decay, you would hit rank 12 sooner, but you would still need to spend weeks or even months grinding out the honor for the full set of epic gear because of the honor cap. At best, it would allow you to have access to the epic weapons a little sooner.
In current system, Honor is a currency that will eventually be meaningless when you purchase everything. No matter if decay exists or not.
My suggestion was to extend RP needed to progress rank by ~5x and the extension was divided mainly on R10-R14 ranks, not on low levels. If you are able to buy all gear at R12, that wouldn't be a problem. T1 PvP gear is accessible at R6, T2 at R10 I think? Removing decay without extending the grind would make ranks and associated titles meaningless.
U do know u need around 800k honor for full t3 pvp set of just one spec? Before u have 800k u coulda hit r16 basicly so honor for sure never obsolete, and i know ur a priest so if u want offspec pvp make it 1.6mil honor.
Re: Should rank decay be removed?
Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2026 9:29 am
by Duraluminium
The easy solution would be to unchain better PVP gear from higher rank requirements.
R11 should become the cap for gear requirements, R12 - R-14 should become ranks for sweats with only cosmetics rewards like special mounts, items for transmog, titles, etc.
This way the decay can stay as it is, but everyone's happy.
Re: Should rank decay be removed?
Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2026 10:00 am
by Joeblack
R13 to r14 can be done in 2 weeks, which is super ez already