Posts with tag pvp-gear

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What is the purpose for PVP and PVE gear being mostly useless in the opposite grouping? At one time, raiders would own the Battlegrounds having the top gear in the game. In The Burning Crusade, subtlety rogues did the same in Arena with the tier 6 set bonus combined with Illidan's blades. But that was then, this is now.

Currently, I hate the fact that I have to grind two separate sets of gear to do the same exact role. My paladin is holy. Whether I PVP or PVE, I heal with her. The problem is that my resilience healing gear hinders me while running heroics, and my ilevel 346 gear hinders me in Arena and Battlegrounds. Some of those in my guild do not mind dying a few more times because my gear is not optimal, but let's face it, they would rather not die because of my gear.

I do remember how tough the grind for gear used to be. I do know that it is easier than ever to grind out two separate sets of gear. At the same time, I would like it to be more effective to wear a full 359 PVE set than 358 PVP set of gear.

What do you think? Should PVE and PVP gear be that so different from each other?

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

If you can make blue PVP and leveling gear, you can make a lot of gold. Blacksmithing is one of my most profitable businesses, and almost all of the money I've made is from that gear. Sure, belt buckles are great cash when there's no massive undercutting war, but every night a couple of people kit out their plate alts with my Hardened Obsidium gear or start a PVP set with my Bloodthirsty Pyrium gear.

There are three professions that you can use for this market: blacksmithing, leatherworking, and tailoring. All three of them have gear that is appealing for alts and new characters; however, be aware that some of this gear is made by people leveling the trade skill and isn't worth making.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

Unless you've been living under the most remote rock in all the world, you've probably heard about transmogrification by now. It's the talk of the town, and even I (who lives under a somewhat remote rock) have already had five people ask me, "So Dawn, what are you going to have your priest wear?"

Without thinking too much about the question, I've continually responded, "the white tier 6 from Black Temple." Don't know it? It's one of the most iconic and coveted tier sets priests have ever had, and I've talked about it a couple of times, both in my Benediction article and my story of Baba. For me, the set is actually the primary reason that I started PVPing in The Burning Crusade, and without which I'm absolutely certain I'd have never started raiding at all. In that regard, I owe a lot to tier 6 and was looking forward to wearing it again.

That was, until while telling the fifth friend my wardrobe plans, I had the dawning realization that ... won't everyone else want to wear that, too?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Tailoring is a profession often accused of being a profitless pursuit. While any profession can be unprofitable if you try hard enough, let's talk about some of the things you can do with tailoring. I'm going to start with the market that's newest for this expansion: PvP gear.

Dear, dear Bolvar Fordragon. You may be caught off guard in the image above, but you can still handle yourself around a bunch of dragons. Player versus dragon may be easy for you, but player versus player is often a little more surprising than even a small fleet of dragons suddenly appearing in the throne room of Stormwind. While the advice is no longer timely for Bolvar, lets take a look around the blogosphere for PvP tips for those of us not currently occupied with ... other chilly activities.

• Spicytuna has some words of advice for frost mages regarding gearing for PvP.
• The Hunter's Mark talks about PvP specs for -- what else -- hunters!
• World of Matticus discusses leaping into PvP the correct way.
• Cynwise's Battlefield Manual fills us in on rated battlegrounds and how to prepare for them.

I want you to go get killed this week.

In game, that is. I know that sounds out of the ordinary, but this week, I'm giving you permission to die. Not in raids, mind you, but in the fields of battle. You see, this week we're going to venture into the dark and spooky land of PvP. Granted, it's not at all that dark or spooky. The in-game lighting in battlegrounds and arena actually tends to be a lot brighter than it is in some raid environments. Getting back on track, though: you've probably noticed that Spiritual Guidance tends to be a very PvE- and raid-oriented column. Today that changes -- sort of.

The focus of this week's article is to introduce primarily PvE priests to the idea of PvP as a means to improve yourself as an overall player. I don't intend to impress experienced arena junkies with the nuances of playing a priest in the 2400 bracket (mostly because I never played anywhere close to that level) I will try to give priests who have no PvP experience a good introduction to it, though. If you are already a seasoned PvP priest, I encourage you to visit the comments and share any beginner advice I miss.

Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column.

Season seven is here! The new season brings the same familiar arena combat that we've come to know, love, and sometimes hate. However, the season of the Relentless Gladiator also has many meaningful changes for arena enthusiasts.
The 2v2 bracket is experiencing a significant revamping

Before season seven had started, 2v2 rewards were slated to be completely cut. 3.2 patch notes indicated that Relentless Gladiator gear could only be purchased if a player met the requirements with their 3v3 or 5v5. 2v2 teams, however, could still be used to purchase the previous season's gear (Furious Gladiator gear).

Welcome to the latest Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that believes there's no such thing as a wrong time to turn something into a sheep. Unless it was already a sheep to begin with. Then it would probably have been better to turn it into a pig or a rabbit or something. Or maybe just hit it with a Pyroblast. Mmmm. Lamb chops. What were we talking about again?

If you missed last week, here's a link to click on so you can catch up. If you can't be bothered to read the first part of this column, let me summarize the idea here: we're discussing ways to get your Mage all decked out in epic, raid-worthy gear without ever actually entering a raid instance. Now, more than ever before, we have so many options for obtaining raid-quality gear that actually raiding for it seems almost...old-fashioned.

Last week we talked about 5-mans in both their normal and heroic varieties, focusing on Trial of the Champion, because duh. But maybe you don't want to do 5-mans. Maybe your guildies aren't on, and maybe you hate pugs. Maybe you are a Mage, and because there are eighty-four DPSers looking for group for every one tank or healer, you threw your hands up after an hour of trying to get a group and went off to do dailies.

Well good news, everyone! Doing those dailies can get you epics too! Yes, it is entirely possible--even if you happen to be the guy on your server who ninjas gear in pugs and sucks at everything to the point that nobody invites you to groups anymore--to fill just every slot of your gear with sparkly purples without doing any instances of any kind. Isn't that wonderful? It tends to take a bit longer, overall, but these alternative methods for obtaining gear can be perfect for those of us who simply don't have a lot of time to commit to a group. Simply log in, craft an epic cloak, do a daily quest or two, blast out a couple Arena matches, and then repeat for a few weeks, and eventually you'll have epics too. Anyway, nice talking to you, see you next week! Wait...what's that? You want details? Oh fine. Clicky clicky.

Since we didn't have a WRUP this weekend, I'll go ahead and tell you what I did: leveled alts using Alterac Valley. Just a few hours of play, and the levels were flying past without a care, even with only about a 50% win rate. And those times we won fast? Hoo Boy. 100-150k experience for about 10 minutes of work is nothing to sneeze at.

It might be possible that I could have leveled up quicker by loading up a few questing addons and buckling down, but I found PvPing a lot more fun and relaxing for some reason, and I don't think questing would have been all that much quicker.

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Professions in The World of Warcraft are one of the many endeavors in which players can invest their time and efforts. Despite the fact that most players do indeed level them, and the fact that there is quite a bit of interest in them, people are often left questioning their value at the end of the day.

Profitability and cost to level are two of the most frequent complaints against their chosen professions, but today I would like you to consider another reason: boredom.

It is not that the professions themselves are inherently boring. It is more that, in a game where there are always new things to collect, new reasons to PvP or run raid content, new dailies and new factions, professions just can't compete. Most can be leveled in an hour or two at the Auction House, and once this has been achieved, the key items made, and the buffs applied to your gear, what else is there?

One of the most important things in World of Warcraft PvP, obviously -- as with all endeavors in a loot-driven game -- is gear. Epic items with Stamina and Resilience, PvP set bonuses and all that. Well, that's not what we're going to talk about today. Today we'll take a look at the metagame. What you do outside the World of Warcraft and how you can improve your PvP skills with so-called gaming gear and other factors out of the game.

Over the past few months, my brother built a custom trail bike that he weighed down to the gram (it's about 10.12kg compared to the 15kg bike I currently use). It cost him something in the atmosphere of $3,000, and when I chided him about spending so much for it, he explained that since he doesn't have as much skill as other competitive bikers, he tries to make up for it with a better tool. It makes sense. Obviously, a superior athlete with a mediocre bicycle could and does outperform him in competitions, but he beats bikers of identical skill and athleticism with his new, lightweight, high-end bike.

What does this have to do with the World of Warcraft, you ask? Well, my brother's reasoning applies to gaming, as well. While natural talent and skill for video games isn't something you can achieve or obtain overnight (if at all), it's easy enough to take steps to improve your metagame. Just as characters get an advantage through in-game gear, players can get an advantage using real life gear.

One thread over at the forums sparked quite a discussion when it asked what the problem was with World of Warcraft PvP. It's a pretty good question and definitely not something with a simple answer, but Ghostcrawler took up the task and addressed several issues in his usual forthcoming fashion. In a nutshell, Blizzard views the following issues as the primary problems of PvP:

• Too much emphasis on Arenas and not enough on Battlegrounds.
• Too much emphasis on 2s and not enough on 3s and 5s.
• Not enough class / spec representation in Arena. Warlock, hunter and shaman numbers in particular are too low, but they're not the only ones.
• Too fast-paced.
  

Ghostcrawler proceeded to explain the last point in detail, talking once again about burst damage and reiterating their intent that PvP should be a balance between damage, healing, and crowd control. He says that Blizzard plans to "add an extra GCD or two" in the small window where a player can either be healed to full or fall to enemy fire, allowing players to better use their full toolbox. Anyone who has ever played Arenas should know that that's a pretty tall order.

Tribunalx sent us this great video about something that's fallen out of fashion lately: Hunter soloing. Back in the day, when Mend Pet was still affected by plus healing (back when there was plus healing), Hunters would routinely take down Azuregos by themselves, but they've since had to sit on the sidelines while other classes stepped into the solo arena. But now, with Mend Pet and Bestial Wrath glyphs, a Hunter stacking Stamina in PvP gear, the new version of Deterrence, and pets with their own Tenacity talents, Hunter soloing is possible yet again.

As Tribunalx says in the video, it's not really easy, and there's a lot you have to keep track of (and Hunters definitely aren't the only class that can do this -- there's probably a Paladin soloing UK and/or a Death Knight out there as well). But it is definitely possible, as you can see above. Maybe we're experiencing a renaissance of Hunter solo possibilities -- next up, The Nexus? Good luck with the Ormorok gauntlet.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

If you've been reading The Queue for awhile, you'd know that Adam Holisky and I were taking turns writing this thing each day, but he's been sparse lately. Before we get started today, I just wanted to stop and let you guys know that he's okay, he's alive, but the flooding in his hometown of Fargo has gotten pretty ridiculous. He's been documenting the Fargo Flood on his personal blog the whole way through, so if you're interested, give it a gander.

If you have friends or family in the area, or simply want to lend a hand, Red Cross and the United Way have set up some resources for all of you to peruse as well. Keep the people of Fargo in your thoughts, folks. I'm sure having Blackhawks flying over your house loses its cool factor after awhile.

Jack Spicer asked...

"What's the best/easiest way to get starter gear for PvP at 80?"

When we reported on MMO Champion's sneak peek at the new Furious Gladiator gear, you might have found that new Arena sets were somewhat familiar. They should be. Arena Season 6 item sets are slight variations on a theme. Most of the pieces are recolored versions of the Season 5 multi-tier sets, but the head and shoulder pieces are entirely new models.

What many players who don't like the sets seem to miss on is that this is something entirely new in the game. Blizzard has always done recolored versions of armor, but this is the first time by my reckoning that they have done evolutionary tier gear. [EDIT: This isn't entirely true. Reader Suzaku pointed out that the leather armor from Level 60 PvP sets evolved. My bad on missing out on that.] When I first encountered Blizzard's new multi-tiered PvP gear system, I was apprehensive about the next season's gear because I was afraid it would be difficult to match pieces visually. Arena gear had, prior to Season 5, been mere recolors of PvE raid sets, so there was no contuity from the one season to the next.

The problem with that was upgrading from one season's set to the other created visual clashes. As much as we like to min/max, PvPers like to look good, too. Enter Season 5 and the multi-tier gear system. There were three different sets of gear but all of them melded seamlessly into the other, with minor discrepancies in color. The introduction of an entirely new set of gear with completely different designs in Season 6 would have invalidated not just one but three sets of gear. However, the new design philosophy builds upon the older models, evolving -- as Alex put it -- like Azerothian Pokemon.