Vol'jin's Spear

Well, I just hit Exalted with Vol'jin's Spear a few hours ago. I received two achievements for doing so: Hero of Warspear and Vol'jin's Spear. The first one's listed under the PvP --> Ashran category, and the last one is listed under the Reputation --> Draenor category. Funny enough, the achievement criteria for those two is exactly the same: they both ask you to reach Exalted with Vol'jin's Spear. I don't think there's a similar case in World of Warcraft (in which there's more than one achievement that asks you to do exactly the same), but well, I'm happy with my 20 extra points. If there's a similar case, I would like you to reply to this comment and remind me of it =P

Vol'jin's Spear is actually the achievement that rewards the title "%, Spear of Vol'jin". Not that it matters, as you will get both immediatly after hitting Exalted, but someone might find it useful.

Now, to the serious part.

WHY on earth did I choose to grind this seemingly painful reputation?

Apart from being an Achievement/Reputation/Collection junkie, I own a Trading Post and I wanted to get it to Level 3 so I could benefit from the passive 20% increase to all reputations in Draenor. All the Draenor reps are grindy as hell and I figured every small boost would be very welcomed.

Yes, I know what you're thinking. As far as I know, Ashran can be a very painful and frustrating experience for Horde in 90% of the realms. Just by looking at the forums you will see a lot of threads complaining about "Allianceran" (hell, you might even find one of mine). If you are in a Horde-favored realm (meaning Horde wins almost all the time), then congratulations, you probably won't even need to read this post. Just push your way into Tremblade, as each Ashran Victory will lend you 2500 reputation. If you are NOT in a Horde-favored realm... well, welcome to the club.

In my server, 95% of the time, we (and our Warlord) are constantly farmed in our base by the Alliance. They just kill Volrath, regroup outside, and then they kill him again after 10 minutes. This, as I said earlier, can be VERY frustrating for those who are trying to get their daily quest done, or those who are trying to get their 200 Ashran-only conquest points. So, we used this to our advantage.

This is HOW we did it:

We formed a group with a couple friends and started advertising it in General chat as a "Conquest points/Fragments farming group, so you can get your daily/weekly cap done!". I think Horde saw that announcement as a shining beacon of hope, because two minutes later we had 35+ members in our raid. Then we told them to get out of our base and the main road, because we wouldn't be participating in the main Ashran battle at all.

What we did was very simple: we just started zerging ALL the Ashran mini-events. As you might already know, there are four mini-events in the four areas at the corners of the map.

Amphitheater of Annihilation: Race event. You need to help your Horde mob win the race by staying inside his circle, thus increasing his speed. After 3 laps, the race is over.
Brute's Rise: Fires event. There are 5 bonfires which act as EotS bases (whichever has the most people in it, is the faction that controls it). Each bonfire grants resources over time. First to 1500 resources wins the event.
Ashmaul Burial Grounds: Ghosts event. There are many ghosts scattered through the zone and each player is given a special button skill to catch them. First faction to catch 10 ghosts wins the event.
Molten Quarry: Ores event. There is a handful of ores scattered through the zone. You have to pick them up one by one and get them to your faction's cart. First one to deliver 10 ores, wins the event.

By winning each mini-event, EVERY Horde member in the zone gets 500 Honor, 125 Conquest, 500 reputation with Vol'jin's Spear, and a chance at a blue box which contains a random blue PvP piece.

It was perfect. By zerging the events, we ensured that we would always win, overwhelming the few allies who weren't farming our faction leader. Those of us who were undergeared could quickly get a full set of 620 PvP gear (due to the random pieces dropping and the big amount of Honor gained). Those who were in for the Conquest Points only had to win 2 events for them to reach their 200 weekly "ashran cap". And those, like me, who were in for the reputation... well, 500 rep for events that would last 30 seconds each.. That started to add up very quickly.

There is no limit whatsoever on how many events you can win in a day. We kept a full 40-man raid for like 4-5 hours, constantly replacing those who would leave after achieveing their goals.

Each mini-event is announced as a chat message, 3 minutes before it starts. There's enough time to get there even if you are in the other side of the map, however getting the Warlock Portal operational helps a lot. It costs 400 Fragments and it gives you the ability to teleport from the back of the Amphiteather to a mountain behind the Molten Quarry. The events are VERY short, most of them would only last 30-40 seconds due to the amount of people we had there. And once they finish, there's a 20-30 30-40 minute internal timer before it is up again.

What did we do in the meantime?

Once we had done the 4 events, we would run through the mountains and the forests in the sides of the map, looking for rares. There's plenty of them: Panthora in the cave beneath the Seat of Kor'lok, Darkwhatever in the Dark Woods, Brickhouse in Brute's Rise, Mandragoragoragora or something in the Ampitheather, the guy at Ashmaul, and plenty of them in the Ring of Conquest.

This was very important. The rares would drop from 70 to 150 [currency=944], which could be turned in at our base for extra Honor and Reputation. 1 Fragment = 5 Reputation. Just by killing 3-4 rares, all of us would get like 400 fragments, which were a whooping +2000 reputation. And here comes the funny part.

Turning in fragments at your base helps towards the Ashran main battle. A full 40-man raid getting massive amounts of Fragments quickly started to get noticed. There were millions of summoned captains. Kronus had almost a 100% uptime. After two hours, that alone helped our other groups in our base to push the Alliance back. Before we realized, they had pushed all the way into the Alliance base, and we helped by turning artifact fragments, even when we didn't set a foot in the main road. Then we sent our full raid to kill Tremblade, and the Horde won for the first time in weeks. Yes, it was +2500 reputation, but it was great because of something else. It felt nice because we thought it was selfish to only care about ourselves while the main groups were being farmed at our base.

Final words

After 4-5 hours, I had reached Exalted with Vol'jin's Spear, so did my friends. We helped dozens of fellow hordies to get their ilvl up to 620, and to get their Conquest caps done. And we had something I didn't even think we would ever have in Ashran: TONS of fun and laughs! :D

And of course, my level 3 Trading Post is now fully operational, and I regret nothing: I still think the rest of the Draenor factions will be a LOT tougher than this one was.

I hope you found my post informative. I also apologize if my english isn't good enough, it's not my main language.

See you in battle!
~ Glen

This achievement is now a legacy item and no longer obtainable as the Ashran battleground has been removed from game.

Earned this is 2023, as Ashran is back as a battleground. Includes the title!