Raiding in PvP Gear (season3/4)

[Krushchev]

Hey everyone,

To be honest, I'm no WoW buff. So, I seek advice with from people who know more than me - a lot of people.
My question is what does F13 think about raiding in PvP gear, especially the most recent season gear?

So far I've heard only one side of the argument, and I wanna hear the other (if it's there of course).
From what I understand, it's not a very good idea for healers. But, what about your DPS classes, the rogues, hunters, etc?

edit: im a retarded foreigner who doesn't know english

[Gobbeldygook]

It depends on your class and spec.

1. It wastes budget on resilience.  This is bad if you can get equivalent ilevel gear that doesn't have resilience, but if it's a choice between a kara piece of pve gear and sunwell PVP gear (ie s4), it's generally not a competition.  There are exceptions; ring of thousand marks, I'm looking at you.

2. It has more +crit than normal gear.  This is fine if your spec weights crit highly (e.g arms or fury warrior), but is not so great if it doesn't (prot warrior).

3. For melee classes, four of your set pieces and weapon now have arpen.  Arpen went from Jesus to jesus fuck GET IT OFF GET IT OFF.

4. It doesn't have anywhere near as much +hit as comparable pve gear.  This is a big one for DPS classes.  You can get around it by gemming for +hit, but this degrades your gear for pvp purposes except when fighting classes/races that require more +hit.

5. It lacks longevity stats.  This was a killer for non-paladin healers pre-3.0.  It's no longer relevant in most cases.

6. You can probably outperform the mouthbreathers in your raid just by PRESSING YOUR BUTTONS and not dying regardless of where your gear came from.

If you really want to know how you'll perform, just go consult a spreadsheet; say what class (and in the case of hybrids, spec) you play and I'll point you to a good one.

[Krushchev]

Good info, what say you about a hunter, MM and BM specs?

[SurfD]

Could you explain your beef with the new armor pen rating?

Seems to me that new armor pen is VASTLY superior to old armor pen.

New armor pen is now a % of armor ignored.
I would think that this would actually be of greater benefit then static armor ignored, especially considering how much armor some bosses / plate and mail classes have.

I would think a druid with 26k armor in feral form is going to be much more worried about someone running around with 10% armor pen, then they would be someone with 1k armor pen.

Besides, while you would think that 1k armor pen would be much better vs low armor clothies, it probably isn't, due to the pathetic amount of mitigation they are getting from their current armor amount to begin with.

[Zetor]

As a rule of thumb, s3/s4 is either close to, or superior than, kara and heroic gear for *most* classes. Feral tanks benefit from the high armor [due to itemlevel], while warrior/pally tanks use the season2 shield and sometimes the shoulders for raw stamina+armor. The season2 salvation is also a better healer weapon than anything before t5 raids or ZA.

If you're a MM hunter, the season2 crossbow is pretty good, and probably better than most 'early' alternatives as well... if you have a season3 or season4 weapon, it's even better.


-- Z.

[Fordel]

PvP weapons are some of the best weapons in game. If you have access to s3/s4 weapons, you're already laughing 

[K9]

The weapons are good for everyone except tanks; the shields are decent for warrior/paladin tanks. As a priest healer, the lack of regen on the pieces is crippling, and I still think the only healer class who can get away with substantial amounts of PvP gear are paladins. As far as DPS classes go, Hunters, Elemental Shamen and Spriests are about the only ones who can get away with full PvP gear and still be competitive. For feral tanks, PvP gear can be a decent option at the T4 level, but the lack of dodge will kill you later on.

As a hunter, so long as you gem for +hit you should be ok. Obviously you'll always be better off with PvE drops for PvE, since PvP gear is bloated with unimportant stats such as resilience and stamina.

[Gobbeldygook]

Could you explain your beef with the new armor pen rating?

It boils down to two things:

1. Armor suffers from diminishing returns.  This is why my mage friend with 2459 armor has 18.89% damage reduction from armor while I with 17,865 armor have only 62.86%.   If I put a full sunder stack up on that mage, he has -0- armor and I'm now doing +18.89% damage on every single hit I land.  If I had a full sunder stack on myself, I'd still have 59% damage reduction.  This meant ArPen was LIQUID AWESOME vs clothies, pretty sweet vs leather, ok vs some mail, and mystifying vs plate.  It also got better the more of it you had.  It was Jesus!

2. The new arpen % applies AFTER sunder armor/expose armor and curse of recklessness/faerie fire.  Let's say the boss was typical and had 7685 armor.  You're not reducing 7685 armor by <whatever %>, you're reducing 4475 armor by <whatever %>.  This is why mace spec, which gives 15% armor penetration, is not as good as axe spec which gives just +5% crit and +5% damage on crits.

Are there situations where the new arpen is better?  Sure.  I would still rather have old, priest-gibbing, exponential-returns version back.  Truthfully, everyone knew that shit had to end, but it didn't have to end this badly.  At the very least, its value shouldn't go down when you add a second warlock or the first druid to the raid.

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Good info, what say you about a hunter, MM and BM specs?

Here is the only functional hunter spreadsheet I'm aware of that is up to date for WOTLK/3.0.  It only plays nice in excel, but it has all the features a good spreadsheet should, like an armory import feature.  Go ahead and enable macros, it's tame and will not hack your gibson and sell your epics to the Chinese.

I grabbed a random hunter in pvp gear (s4 in hands, bracers, pants, belt, s3 in rest except for s2 bow, bloodlust brooch, skyguard cross, 50/11/0 spec) and threw him into that spreadsheet.  Since I'm lazy and not willing to futz with the spreadsheet much, it's still set to use epic gems.  With no buffs beyond self-buffs and blessing of might/battle shout, no boss debuffs beyond a sunder/expose armor stack, spreadsheet spits out 1400 theoretical dps.  For comparison, when I put in a friends scrubby hunter alt that's in pure pve gear save his stat stick and bracers, spreadsheet says 1380 DPS.  Take that as you will.

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RE: weapons - Just buy the 150 badge bow and stop having to worry about upgrades unless you can buy a s4 bow.

[Fordel]

The Weapons are fine for warrior/paladin tanks too, unless they have access (and are lucky enough to actually get them to drop) to some really high end weapons.

Druid's still need their special armor staffs though, yes.

[Gobbeldygook]

The Weapons are fine for warrior/paladin tanks too, unless they have access (and are lucky enough to actually get them to drop) to some really high end weapons.

Yes for paladins, absolutely not for warriors unless by 'high end weapons' you mean The Sun Eater.  Even a warglaive would be a downgrade in TPS for a warrior in a raid situation vs the Sun Eater, much less some PVP weapon.  Weapon speed is very important to a warrior because Heroic Strike (a warrior's rage dump) is an on-next attack ability.  Faster weapon = more heroic strikes = more threat.  There are no fast PVP main hands, thus there are no good PVP weapons for a warrior.