PVP glove bonuses: winners and losers
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
Mar 2nd 2007 at 11:12AM
Among the arena armor rewards you can get are a rather nifty pair of gloves. Unlike most items, these gloves have a class-specific bonus that decreases cast time or adds effects to one of your spells and abilities. The gloves all cost 1125 arena points and are available for different specs. You can also get gloves with the same bonuses by the usual PVP honor system.
Druid: While there are sets for balance, resto, and some sort of odd hybrid that is probably meant to be feral, all the gloves have the same bonus: reducing the cast time for Cyclone by 0.1 seconds. The druids of my guild rated this as pretty awful -- "I don't use cyclone pretty much ever," and since it already has a 1.5 second cast time, I would not call this an excellent bonus.
Hunter: The hunter set bonus is 4 percent increased damage to multishot. Since multishot is a regular part of the hunter's shot rotation in PVP and PVE, I would rate this bonus as pretty good, particularly since it can also help during raids, although "when you're all buffed up for raids you won't notice it."
Mage: The mage bonus increases the range of fire blast by 5 yards. More range is always good, and a mage friend informs me he uses fire blast often in PVP. It might be good for catching people running away from you.
Paladin: Paladins have two separate bonuses, depending on what set you pick. The magic damage and the healing sets increase the crit chance of Flash of Light by 2 percent, while the retribution set increases the holy damage done by Judgement of the Crusader by 20. The crit chance is nice for healing pallies, as it gives them free mana, while a pally in my guild ranked the crusader damage increase as "nothing too special" for PVP.
Priest: Both the priest sets give an increased Psychic Scream duration by 1 second. This sounds nicer than it is, because fears usually don't last the full duration. Priests are not too happy.
Rogue: The rogue set lets Deadly Throw (the ranged eviscerate of rogues) interrupt spellcasting and prevent any spell in the school from being cast for three seconds. This is probably the best PVP bonus of them all, and combined with Cloak of Shadows, will exponentially increase the number of mages and warlocks complaining on the rogue forums.
Shaman: Shaman have three different glove bonuses. The enhancement gloves increase the damage done by Lightning Shield by 8 percent. The elemental gloves increase the range of all Shock spells by 5 yards. And the resto gloves improve the crit chance of Lesser Healing Wave by 2 percent. The shock range increase is really nice for PVP, as is Lightning Shield. The resto one is kind of weak since a lot of shaman prefer healing wave.
Warlock: Warlocks have two sets for some reason, and I'll be damned if I can tell which spec each is supposed to be for. Affliction and Destruction, maybe? Anyway, the bonuses are 50 percent chance to avoid damage interruption while casting fear and the same chance to avoid damage interruption while casting Searing Pain. The fear bonus is excellent, while the Searing Pain one is pretty meh due to low usage.
Warrior: The rage cost of Hamstring is reduced by 3. Not bad for PVP, since you use it all the time.
All in all, I'd say warlocks, shaman and rogues come out the big winners, while priests and druids are unimpressive. What do you think?
Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, PvP
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Zuuler Mar 2nd 2007 11:32AM
I can lend some comment to the warlock gloves.
The one with the increased change to avoid interuption when casting searing pain can be good for a destruction lock. Destro locks can do a lot more with fire than they can do with shadow, and there is a talent that with 5 points increases the crit chance of searing pain by 5%. Searing pain is roughly half the dmg of a shadow bolt with half the cast time of a shadow bolt, so I have found spamming searing pain as a destro lock in PVP very useful. With bonus spell damage and the Ruin talent, increasing crit chance is key, and decreasing the chance of being interupted when casting a spell with a higher crit chance can be beneficial.
Because of the higher threat rating of searing pain, these gloves would not be worth it for PVE, as I almost never use searing pain in PVE unless I am in a group and the healer is taking a beating and the MT doesn't notice.
The gloves that reduce the chance to be interupted when casting fear. Thats more of a general purpose thing, any warlock can make use of that. These gloves are more useful in PVE than the other gloves, especially to affliction locks, who dot and fear, so anything that helps with casting fear would be beneficial.
It all comes down to how you play and what you spec. If you're a destro lock who PVPs a lot, both gloves would be useful. If you're demo or aff, or don't PVE a lot, take the fear gloves.
Of course, since these are arena rewards, most of the locks are going to be heavy PVPers anyway.
Erik Dasque Mar 2nd 2007 11:47AM
What are the names for the different gloves ?
The link provided mentions Gladiator's Silk Handguards for Mages but I don't see any FB improvements there.
Evilsandwich Mar 2nd 2007 11:46AM
"The druids of my guild rated this as pretty awful -- "I don't use cyclone pretty much ever," and since it already has a 1.5 second cast time, I would not call this an excellent bonus."
Cyclone is brilliant in PvP. If your druids arent using it, make them. Nothing like knowing someone is COMPLETELY incapacitated for 8 secs, it cant even be dispelled.
Twinny Mar 2nd 2007 11:49AM
even still, i would still go for the fear gloves...
Twinny Mar 2nd 2007 11:51AM
and btw, my god! priests just cant stop QQ'ing for 2 minutes these days.
homant Mar 2nd 2007 12:59PM
Intensity already reduces interruption of Destro spells by 70%.
If you are destro spec and getting nailed, you'll proc a backlash for an instant SB or Incinerate in 1/4 hits.
With that in mind, the Searing Pain bonus on lock gloves are kinda worthless, imho.
The fear interruption is perfect for every spec, though :)
-Gritz
Zuuler Mar 2nd 2007 1:04PM
I thought intensity only works on soulfire, rain of fire, and hellfire though.
Its been a while since I even looked at the talents.
TarikB Mar 2nd 2007 1:16PM
Note on the hunter gloves. A MM specced hunter will often have up to 6 talent points dedicated to Multi related talents. Like the old Tier1 8/8 bonus that 4% interacts with the already boosted damage netting you better that 4% in practice.
Tazrach
Lvl 70 Orc Hunter
Gurubashi
InfoMofo Mar 2nd 2007 5:33PM
While I admit that Priests have a lot of legitimate concerns these days, this seems like a fairly lame thing to complain about.
Also- while you're comparing their Equip: bonus, you don't mention their Set(4) bonuses, which are incredible for Druids and Priests, and meh for Rogues.
Guernia Mar 2nd 2007 6:33PM
re: priests QQing, it may be a small thing to complain about, but consider that the priest equipment only gives a 1 second increase to the possible maximum duration of Psychic Scream. As stated above, given that PS usually breaks long before the maximum duration is reached (plus the abundance of PvP trinkets that break fear) this typically has no real effect.
Contrast that with the rogue and hunter bonus, and you do have a legitimate concern. Now, if it reduced the cooldown on PS or increased the radius, or number of enemies affected, that might be more useful. Or hey, while we're wishing here, increases VE healing by 33% and enables it to crit :D
Argent Mar 2nd 2007 7:14PM
the ret pally set is almost more of a PVE farming/grinding set (no resilience? neat!) -- and in that context, the glove bonus is just frightfully good.
even in pvp, jotc is still pretty darn usful if you really wanna lay into someone, so i wouldn't call it 'nothing special' per se.
the healing set one is a bit more deceptive, imo. 2% crit to FoL sounds cool (and would be cool for raiding/5mans, etc), but if you really rely on FoL in a pvp/arena setup, you'll have lots of dead team mates fast. a holy paladin would most likely just be gunning 2s HL casts over and over.
ans Mar 4th 2007 1:14AM
"The resto one is kind of weak since a lot of shaman prefer healing wave."
Since these are PvP armor sets, and my main is a resto shaman, I feel the need to counter this. Our heals have the same mana efficiency , and a second extra casting time can be life or death. I, nor any other shaman I know, use healing wave out of combat, on a warrior/bear flag carrier. with the extra second to cast, generally your target may have moved out of range, or even worse, be dead.