Glass Cannon with a Heart of Glass

A little while back, my guild was wasting time around a raid (can't remember if it was just before, or just after a raid) and a few of us were meandering around the Dal Sewers.

While I will run the occasional BG (Wintergrasp in particular) I VERY rarely duel. However, a guild mage, and a guild warrior (among others) were bashing each others' heads in

I swapped over to my PvP gear, and went at it with the Fury Warrior. I won by about >< that much. (he was in PvE gear, so he hit like a truck, but had no resilience) and then went up against the mage.

Blink/stun/ice/stun/trink/HoF/bam

He was dead after not THAT long of a fight, and I was still well over half health.

I swapped gear, and let my cooldowns cool off, and the mage & I went back at it. He pretty much 3-shot me.

Granted, I did NOT use my stuns as well as I could have, but I hardly had a chance to get near him to even use them. In the first fight, I could be a bit sloppy, and survive long enough to get close to him. The second time around, not so much. Ouch. I was dead and he still had 90% health (or there abouts)

And by the way, Seal of Justice is pretty dang useful, especially against a caster. It gives me 3 extra stuns (though they are short and kind of random) which helps interrupt AND gets me 2-3 extra attacks.

But yeah, the mage & I were both shocked at how much of a difference my gear sets made. (and it was a big difference)

I also think that he wasn't "ready" for a Ret during the first fight, so I had an easier fight the first time. I was able to get in close, break LoS by running through him, etc. Whereas the second fight, he maintained a good distance and wasn't even really even threatened. Gear was one part, but he also fought better the second time.

As it stands, I have ~850 resilience in my set: LINK

War Pig, or Battle Goat - More General PvP Gearing Thoughts

In general, there are 4 typesPvP gear, each with it's own level of investment to get:

• Heirloom PvP Gear, purchased with Stone Keeper Shards.


• Crafted PvP gear. This will generally be iLvl 187 or there abouts.


• Honor/Mark purchased PvP gear. This can be Potent! (especially the Wrathful stuff!)


• Arena PvP Gear. Purchased with Arena points with a minimum rank requirement (hard to get for a noobie)

Well, there's one other place to get PvP gear, though it may not be perfect:

Outdated Heroic/Tier/Epic gear! (you know, the T-9 stuff, your Heroic drops, and maybe even some T-10 stuff that got replaced by ToC and/or ICC gear)

Huh? NONE of that has any Resilience, the bread & butter of PvP!!!

True, but it will have AWESOME "normal" stats for whatever spec you play, AND, you will likely have 10-12 gem slots that can accept resilience gems. Either Mystic King's Amber (a JC cut) or Kharmaa's Grace, which you just buy with Stone keeper Shards. Both of which are +20 Resilience. That's 200-240 resilince right there!

(thanks to WoW gem-finder for the easy search & filter)


And then you can add:

• Arcanum of the XYZ - Add 20-25 resilience (depending on particular one, there
  are SEVERAL) to a head slot.


• Earthen Leg Armor - Add 40 resilience to
  legs


• Enchant Chest - Exceptional Resilience - Add 20 resilience to your
  chest


• Inscription of XYZ - (like the Arcanums, there are several) Add 15 resilience to your shoulders

(thanks to epicenchants for the easy to use search/filter)

That's another 90+ resilience there, for a bare minimum of 300 resilience. Not too shabby!

While this won't be a truly "Epic" (let alone Gladiator) set, it will still be epic in its own way, and will get you a "full set" of PvP gear for only the cost of a few gems & enchants. (just remember not to throw away all that old gear!)

Remember: reduce, reuse, recycle

:P