New PvP 45 Resilience Trinket in PTR 2.4.2

by Naive at April 24th, 2008 in General, PTR | No Comments »

A new PvP epic trinket has been added to the new 2.4.2 PTR patch. It costs 40k honor and has the following characteristics:

• Improves your resilience rating by 45.
• Removes all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. (2 Mins Cooldown)

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 2.4.2

by Naive at April 23rd, 2008 in General | 1 Comment »

Add-On Spotlight: Proximo

by Naive at March 31st, 2008 in General | 1 Comment »

The first arena add-on to highlight the players on the opposite team was ArenaMaster. ArenaMaster was first released in January, 2007 right after The Burning Crusade was released and before arenas were popular. But 6 months later, Proximo was released in June, 2007 and quickly began to surpass ArenaMaster in features, quality, and ease-of-use. Recently Proximo has become even better by displaying the specs of your opponents even before you engage them in combat.

I don’t know how Proximo does it, but being able to see your opponent’s specs (even if their of the opposite faction) being engaging in combat is extremely helpful. For example, you can now easily spot Elemental/Enhancement/Resto Shamans, see if the Warlock is Soul Link or Unstable Affliction, see if the Rogue is Shadowstep, and more. It’s the single most important piece of information you can have and Proximo gives it to you.

While some purists may say that ArenaMaster and Proximo negatively affect the fairness of arena, I say you have to fight fire with fire and if other people are using these mods, you should not put yourself at a disadvantage and you should use them too. The other benefit besides seeing your opponents and their specs is also being able to quickly reference their health points as well as mana. Being able to quickly switch to new targets for a kill or just seeing your opponents mana without having to have them targeted makes for a huge advantage in arena. No hardcore or casual PvPer should be without ArenaMaster or Proximo.

Spellsurge or +81 Healing

by Naive at March 27th, 2008 in Druid, General, Paladin, Priest, Shaman | No Comments »

Spellsurge (Permanently enchant a Melee Weapon to have a 3% chance on spellcast to restore 100 mana to all party members over 10 seconds.) was the rage in Season 2 for a lot of healers. It seemed as if the mana back was significant enough to warrant losing +81 healing. However, by the end of Season 2 a lot of healers were switching over from Spellsurge to +81 healing, because burst combos began to become really popular in all brackets. That extra 81 healing would make a significant difference whereas you’d rarely lose due to mana issues. And, of course if played right, you can grab a drink of Stars Tears now and again. Now in Season 3 most healers will choose to enchant their weapon with 81 healing as opposed to Spellsurge. However, if you want the best of both worlds, you can enchant one weapon with Spellsurge and one weapon with +81 healing and use a mod such as a CasterWeaponSwap to change your weapon over to 81 healing after Spellsurge procs.

Melee Enchants

by Naive at March 24th, 2008 in General | No Comments »

Nearly every slot can be enchanted besides the Helm (note: Cenarion Expedition), Shoulders (note: Scryer or Aldor rep), and Legs (note: Leatherworking). Those enchants for melee are typically as follows: Back (+12 Agility), Chest (+15 Resilience), Wrists (+12 Strength for Warriors; for Rogues; for Hunters), Gloves (+12 Strength for Warriors; for Rogues; for Hunters), Boots (Surefooted for Warriors; for Rogues; for Hunters), and Rings (+2 Weapon Damage if you’re an enchanter). There’s really no exception to those enchants for melee classes.

Healer Enchants

by Naive at March 23rd, 2008 in Druid, General, Paladin, Priest, Shaman | No Comments »

Nearly every socket of gear can be enchanted: Back, Chest, Wrist, Gloves, Boots, and Rings (if you’re an Enchanter). There’s also your Helm (note: Thrallmar rep), Shoulders (note: Scryer or Aldor rep), and Legs (note: Leatherworking), but those aren’t exactly enchants. We’ll stick to the actual enchants in this post. I use: Back (+15 Shadow Resist), Chest (+6mp5), Wrist (+30 healing), Gloves (+30 healing), Boots (Boar’s Speed), and Rings (+20 healing to each ring). Alternatively, if you are short on mp5, you can get 6mp5 to Wrist instead of +30 healing. I wouldn’t recommend +15 resilience to chest, though, unless you’re a Priest and normally get focused: with full Vengeful gear and all the honor pieces, you should be good on resilience.

Resilience Cap

by Naive at March 12th, 2008 in General | No Comments »

The resilience cap is 492.5 (realistically, it’s 493, because you can’t have 1/2 a resilience point. This has been player tested, but never confirmed by Blizzard, but it’s safe to say that the player testing is sufficient. However, there’s some misunderstanding as far as what “resilience cap” means. It does not mean that there is no benefit whatsoever after 493 resilience. It only means that 493 resilience will only reduce your damage from crits by 25% and anything beyond that won’t benefit you. You can still decrease the chance you will be crit with more resilience. But any experienced player will tell you that anything beyond the “resilience cap,” and even anything over 400 for that matter, is more than enough resilience for arena. You should be focusing on other stats at that point.

hould Racials be removed from Arena?

by Naive at March 9th, 2008 in General | No Comments »

There have been rumors circling around that racials will eventually be removed from Arenas. No more Shadowmeld, Will of the Forsaken, etc. Personally, I’d really be against this change. From a competitive PvP standpoint, it would be a good change, but part of World of Warcraft is that your character is different than other characters. I believe that most racials are balanced; yes, some seem more powerful at first glance, but all of them have their place.

World of Warcraft inherently needs balancing, but taking out racials would be a bad step. It would be like giving everyone 5/5 Vengeful Gladiator, free enchants, free gems, and their pick of loot. Yes, this is used for competitive LAN PvP arena where every team gets their pick of whatever gear they want. However, this game has never been like a First Person Shooter where everyone starts with the same gear. World of Warcraft is more about tailoring your character to your play style and being able to be unique from everyone else. Jewelcrafting brought the best of this customization to WoW and I believe Inscription in Wrath of the Lich King will help to do the same.

Blizzard, if you’re listening, please do not take racials away from arena. Racials are part of what separates players from other players and taking it out of the game will further reduce the individuality of people’s characters. Instead, you should further bring out the individuality of players as you’ve done with Jewelcrafting and are planning to do with Inscription. More individuality, not less.

Jewelcrafting

by Naive at March 5th, 2008 in General | No Comments »

Jewelcrafting is one of three professions that are useful for PvP: Engineering and Enchanting being the other two. Why is Jewelcrafting worthwhile for PvP? Because, with Jewelcrafting you can craft epic bind on pickup gems that are even better than gems found in Black Temple. These gems are unique-equipped, so you can only have one on your character at one time and you must be a Jewelcrafter to use, but they are vastly superior to blue gems and even better than BT gems. Some examples of Jewelcrafting gems are: Don Julio’s Heart (+14 spell damage), Kailee’s Rose (+26 healing), Crimson Sun (+24 attack power), Stone of Blades (+12 critical strike rating), and others. However, to be able to make these gems generally require you to be Revered with different factions around the world. So not only is the Jewelcrafting profession good for making money, it’s also great for being able to use these unique-equipped gems. Enchanting and Engineering are also good professions to choose from, but being a JC is clearly a choice you shouldn’t overlook. It’s expensive to level, but if PvP is your main focus and you want to give yourself an edge in every available aspect of the game then picking up Jewelcrafting is an important step.

Buying Black Temple Gems

by Naive at March 4th, 2008 in General | No Comments »

The simple answer to whether or not you should buy Black Temple gems is if you can afford to or not. If you have the money to buy the Pyrestones, Lionseye, Seaspray, Crimson Spinel, etc., which all vary in price depending on which server you are on, then you should do so. If PvP is what you care about most then why not buy the Black Temple gems? With Battleground dailies and other dailies, you can easily rack up 50 gold a day and afford a new gem every week for your gear. Naysayers might say that when you compare, for example, a Teardrop Living Ruby (+18 healing) and a Black Temple epic Teardrop Crimson Spinel (+22 healing) you only gain +4 healing, but when you add everything up across all available gem slots, you’ll end up gaining a significant amount.

One thing you should keep in mind when buying Black Temple gems is that some are more expensive than others. For example, Lionseye, Pyrestone, and Seaspray are significantly less expensive than Crimson Spinel, Empyrean Sapphire, and Shadowsong Amethyst. On my realm, Stormscale (Horde), the first three sell for between 200 and 250 gold and the later three start anywhere around 400 and can go upwards of 800. The general rule of pricing goes that the more Black Temple clearing guilds there are on your server, the less expensive the gems are. And as for buying Black Temple gems, the Auction House isn’t always the best place to look. Try contacting the Guild Masters of the top Black Temple guilds and you can more than likely receive a better deal.

Furthermore, you should feel safe in putting gems in your Season 3 gear as it is certain to last for at least 6 months as Season 1 and Season 2 did and may be the last season before the World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King. And, if that’s the case, you’ll be leveling to 80 at the WoLK release and we can assume that new and better gems will be available at 80. Therefore, put your money into Season 3 gear now and don’t just save your money for Season 4 assuming you’ll be putting Black Temple gems in that gear as there may be even better gems at that point.