Is PvP gear good enough for heroics?
by Anne Stickney 
Mar 5th 2012 at 3:00PM
I don't really PvP these days. In vanilla, I had plenty of fun with my priest, running around and healing people who were on the mad dash for High Warlord. Back then, there wasn't really much in the way of PvP-appropriate gear -- in fact, when the honor system began, the most effective and deadly people you ran across in Battlegrounds were those who were raiding and collecting tier gear.
I remember that fact particularly infuriated a friend of mine, who over the course of vanilla did nothing but PvP, although at the time that meant basically running around Southshore and Tarren Mill. When the honor system was introduced, there was a contest held by Blizzard for those who engaged in PvP, and the top characters on the realm who got the most amount of honorable kills were rewarded with a special tabard. My friend spent weeks in Tarren Mill, happily murdering Alliance until his fingers bled, and he won his tabard handily -- after all, nobody really did as much PvP as he did. Then the Battlegrounds came out.
When he stepped into Battlegrounds, he discovered that despite the fact that he did nothing but PvP, he couldn't hold a candle against those people who engaged in raiding. The gear and weapons that they got from raiding were too powerful. And that's when he threw up his hands, said he didn't want to have to raid to be good at PvP, and promptly stopped playing the game.
I remember that fact particularly infuriated a friend of mine, who over the course of vanilla did nothing but PvP, although at the time that meant basically running around Southshore and Tarren Mill. When the honor system was introduced, there was a contest held by Blizzard for those who engaged in PvP, and the top characters on the realm who got the most amount of honorable kills were rewarded with a special tabard. My friend spent weeks in Tarren Mill, happily murdering Alliance until his fingers bled, and he won his tabard handily -- after all, nobody really did as much PvP as he did. Then the Battlegrounds came out.
When he stepped into Battlegrounds, he discovered that despite the fact that he did nothing but PvP, he couldn't hold a candle against those people who engaged in raiding. The gear and weapons that they got from raiding were too powerful. And that's when he threw up his hands, said he didn't want to have to raid to be good at PvP, and promptly stopped playing the game.
The reason I tell this story is because I remember those days, and I remember when there weren't such things as resilience or PvP gear. If you wanted to be good at PvP, you picked up the best PvE gear you could find. The change between now and then is so different that there's no comparing the two. PvPers got their own gear, their own stats, and their own PvP world that they could pretty much live in forever, without having to worry about gear or anything else. My friend would probably be pleased with how much it's changed, though I lost track of him long ago.
Because PvP has its own set of stats, PvP gear isn't exactly the most ideal thing to wear into an instance. Yet for those who PvP all the time nonstop, if they decide they want to see these instances that everyone's been talking about, their PvP gear is their only option. For DPS classes, it's not as much of an issue -- but when you're talking about a tank, heroics are pretty brutal, particularly the latest stretch of heroics. Can it be done? Yes -- but for new healers or healers who aren't decked out in raid gear, it's extremely difficult to do.
So what do we do about this? Should there be an option for a tank set, one that you can purchase with honor points -- one that doesn't have any PvP stats on it but is simply a starter set for those who want to try PvE tanking? Should there be some sort of gear check when you queue as a tank that looks not only at item level but the presence of resilience on gear? Is there a solution, or do healers simply continue to despair when they see a tank in full PvP gear?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
Bapo Mar 5th 2012 3:07PM
While it isn't the best gear in the world, you can convert honor to JP to help. I know, I know, half the jp gear is still pretty terrible, since some of the items are still blue (helmet is the one that sticks out, shoulders too I think).
Honestly, I think you should be able to convert conquest to valor if you want, 1 to 1 like how valor to conquest is. It would really make the whole process a little more friendly for everyone I think.
Amanda A. Mar 5th 2012 4:41PM
Even plate tanks can get away with one or two honor pieces, and helm/shoulder is pretty ideal, especially if you have blues. For DKs, the PvP helm has mastery, and shoulder is expertise. At the start of 4.3, I bought both these pieces, reforged the shoulders to mastery, and replaced my blues; my avoidance barely twitched (I lost something like 1% dodge, and gained a slight amount of parry from strength) and my mastery and HP went way up.
You can't go in wearing a full PvP set, but if you're smart about your choices you can do a couple of pieces.
Sorro Mar 5th 2012 7:00PM
There's really no need to transfer conquest to valor because it's so easy to cap weekly valor as it is.
Unless you're suggesting that people be able to go over the valor weekly cap by spending conquest points, in which case I say - it'll never happen. Blizzard has never wanted people to feel the obligation to pvp in order to earn pve rewards. Bliz know that as long as there is a way to make your character better in pve, people will do that - top raiding guilds will be obligated to do it if they want to lead progression. And Blizzard has been trying to lessen those obligations for a while now. That's the whole reason that they turned raids from 25 and 10 separate lockouts into one lockout and the reason they capped valor in the first place.
TonyMcS Mar 5th 2012 7:03PM
This isn't rocket science. PvP gear at the same level as PvE lacks a secondary stat. but it has all the primary stats. I may notice my lack of hit or crit or haste as a DPS, but I'm happy to use PvP gear as a healer because Int and Spirit are my main concerns. It's also not about equal iLevels. If I only have a 359 epic for a slot, I'm definitely going to replace it with 390 PvP gear (or higher with conquest points) to max my primary stats and I'll relace it with 397 PvE gear when it drops or I can afford it.
The other thing is availability. I was stuck with only a blue helm on a healer for some time, but it only took around 3-4 hours to get the honor necessary to purchase a 390 helm. Back last patch I tested a full 371 PvP set against my best 359 and some 378 gear set. With PvP I had more heals at a slightly slower rate and with PvE I had less heals with more haste - not enough to make any dofference.
Finally it's about access. If some PvP gear gets me into an heroic or LFR then it gives me an opportunity to upgrade that gear. People seem to think that a PvP choice has something to do with skill - it doesn't. There are plenty of players in LFR and heroics decked out in high level PvE gear who don't or can't play well and I'll always prefer a skilled player whether they are in PvE gear or not.
Khirsah Mar 6th 2012 12:10AM
@Sorro...
It is only easy to cap your weekly valor if you have the requisite pve gear to run the current heroic 5 mans or any kind of raid. But walking into an instance with nothing but pvp gear can be just as brutal as walking into arena in nothing but pve gear.
Blizz has done many things over the last couple of expansions to ease the transition from pve to pvp. They introduced crafted 'starter sets' of resilience gear. They made it possible to convert valor to conquest, and they made it easy to get honor points for very decent bg gear.
However, almost no effort has been made to ease the transition from pvp to pve. They do not allow conquest to convert to valor, they have minimum ilevels (which bg's do not), and it is a lot more time consuming.
This is not qq, it is just fact. Blizz has already stated that one of the goals for MoP is to make the transition back and forth easier, so I'm looking forward to that.
But to say that it is easy to cap valor in full pvp gear is like saying it is easy to cap conquest in full pve gear. It's just not true. If valor can convert to conquest, it should go the other way, too.
ScrubRogue Mar 6th 2012 10:46AM
I have 346 blues in PVE, 403-410 epics in PVP...my dps is double or more in PVP gear. Its a no brainer.
I still don't go to heroics because of all the nasties; have to wait until I can solo them.
Jamie Mar 5th 2012 3:08PM
As a returning player who didn't really get into heroics first time around even then. My ilvl is 337. I'm looking at these 377 pvp items and thinking surely even with the wasted resilience I'm still going to get some benefit. Every party of me is screaming out "nooooooooo!!!!!" though.
Caliea Mar 5th 2012 3:19PM
I think this gets into the heart of the problem. It's not that people (well, not all of them) are trying to scam the system. It's that when you have access to PvP gear, it does have higher stats that are attractive. So upgrading from a lower piece of PvE gear to PvP gear can boost all your stats, not just your resilience.
I understand when people get touchy about PuGs being made up of people in PvP gear, but if you're not a raider, or haven't been lucky with drops, sometimes that few pieces of PvP gear really ARE better than any PvE gear that someone has access to.
As for being full PvP and trying to see raids... I feel the pain now. I used to be solely PvE, but have recently ventured into PvP healing on my new shaman. I leveled her through PvE, but when I hit 85, I concentrated on PvPing with her. So now she's fully decked out in PvP gear, but hasn't seen any of the Cata raids. I'd love to take her in there, but I'm scared of the hate that will be thrown my way because I'm "scamming the system".
clundgren Mar 5th 2012 3:27PM
@Jamie: the 377 gear will be MUCH better across the board than 333/346 stuff. Don't let the snobs scare you off. They don't know what they are talking about.
Revynn Mar 5th 2012 3:37PM
- "@Jamie: the 377 gear will be MUCH better across the board than 333/346 stuff. Don't let the snobs scare you off. They don't know what they are talking about."
Last i checked, Jamie's toon is a tank and unless you're a Bear, I'd have to disagree. Plate tanks rely too heavily on the secondary stats like Dodge, Parry and Mastery to be a viable option. Bears can get away with it because their primary stat (by far) is Agility and there is loads of it on PvP gear.
All a plate tank is getting out of PvP gear (unless it has Mastery on it) is extra health and we moved away from Stam stacking a while ago.
DPS and, to a lesser extent, healers mostly look at things like Int, Strength and Agility which isn't affected by the presence of Resilience on an item, so it's not as detrimental to their performance as it is for a tank.
clundgren Mar 5th 2012 4:52PM
Where does Jamie specify tank?
Killik Mar 5th 2012 5:22PM
@clundgren Jamie mentioned being a tank in The Queue earlier, when he asked a similar question.
@Jamie As a plate tank, you should be fine with PvP gear that comes with a chunk of Mastery - so gauntlets, belt and helm, I guess.
daumaenis Mar 5th 2012 5:23PM
Revynn: "Bears can get away with it because their primary stat (by far) is Agility "
inb4 agi bears are lol
Seriously though, we had our bear tank baleroc with dodge gems in everything. Ate more decimations than my healers care to think about. Once it was on farm and he didn't have to regem for the fight, his survivability didn't decrease with the stam prioritization that bears excel with for every other fight (larger absorbs, etc).
Yes stam is more prevalent on gear with more item levels, yes this post is off topic, yes knowledge is power.
adyuaa Mar 5th 2012 5:27PM
I did a Wowhead comparison of the 377 crafted PvP set and the same set of slots for 346 PvE for a resto druid, assuming the druid would not have best in slot for every slot. Gemmed and reforged, the 377 is slightly worse by the default weight scale. The big differences are weighing 556 Int against 108 Spi and 834 haste.
http://tinyurl.com/77vqzsd
Firestyle Mar 5th 2012 5:38PM
Just sim it and see what gear comes out better. I'm going 10:1 on the 377 PvP gear over the 333 PvE gear.
SR Mar 5th 2012 11:26PM
For most classes, 1 "pure" stat (STR, AGI, etc) is worth around 4 DPS (VERY ROUGHLY).
1 "secondary" stat (crit, haste, etc) is worth around 1.2-1.6 DPS.
Do the math. If you can get more pure stat out of a PVP gear than a significantly weaker PVE gear, then just go for it. Hell, some classes' secondary stats are so worthless (I'm looking at you, ret pallies and enhancement shamans), as long as you cover their ONE good secondary stat (mastery for both), it's not MUCH of a loss to just take resil in its place.
I'm only mentioning DPS because someone who's done NOTHING but PVP shouldn't try tanking. Ever.
On to the main issue, PVE gear can't be of much use outside of unranked BGs, just as PVP gear won't be of much use outside of basic 5-mans. I'd say the system is fairly balanced, but I'm guessing the article is asking if the wall should be brought down.
bjorn9486 Mar 5th 2012 3:12PM
I think this is a two-fold problem:
1. Because PvP gear iLvl is so much higher than stuff you can get with JP, people buy it so they can get into heroics/LFR
2. There are certain pieces that up until the new HoT's couldn't be obtained outside of raiding (Helm/Shoulders). Anyone that didn't raid last tier may have 359's (or 346 if its a relatively new alt) so purchasing the PvP helm and shoulders are a nice main-stat boast.
Jorges Mar 5th 2012 6:42PM
I really hope this get fixed in MoP, with PvP gear having lower ilevel than PvE gear.
Personally, I don't like this middle ground where PvP and PvP gear can be used for either one. PvP should stay away from PvE and vice-versa. That's why Blizzard made lots of PvP and PvE recipes for starter sets that can be crafted by almost any crafting profession.
If you want to try PvP, get one of those crafted sets, and jump into BGs. Farm some honor and get your gear. It's really that simple. Also you can convert your unused justice points into honor and directly buy honor gear (I do this myself). When you have the complete set, jump into battle.
The same goes for PvPers wanting to try PvE. Just buy some starter gear from crafters and try some randoms. Optionally, you can convert your honor for justice and buy 378 gear (same ilevel as current heroics) and wait until you have a decent setup.
I think the real problem is that nobody wants to work hard for their gear. They want to jump into arenas with 4k resilence or jump into heroics with full 397 raid set. The tools are there, but everyone wants the easiest route: free epics.
Jorges Mar 5th 2012 6:44PM
"Personally, I don't like this middle ground where PvP and PvE gear can be used for either one"
#corrections
ScrubRogue Mar 6th 2012 10:50AM
Aah they're going to fix this in Pandaland, PVP stats are free with regards to the iLvl Budget so the effective iLvl of PVP gear will be lower. No more sneaking into dungeons etc with PVP gear.