Gearing for PvP

[Okiba]

Good morning/Afternoon/evening orcs and subordinate lesser horde races.

I'm writing this quick Guide to gearing for pvp for a coupele of reasons. firstly is to set aside and displace the confusion that often seems to surround the subject, and the second is related to Rated Battlegrounds of which i will discuss later. i wil lset this post up into stages of gearing to make it simpler, please feel compelled to post any criticism or points to add.

Fresh and ungeared (Crafted gear)

So you just hit 85, your in half blue, half green levelling gear, and you want to be the next arena champion or High warlord. well, we can help! at this stage of the game you wont have any pvp gear as you have yet to step into a Battleground or arena.

as we know, the special thing about PvP gear is Resilience, that all wonderful stat. now, fear not, you can start yourself off on the road without yet setting foot in a single BG. Crafters (Blacksminths, leatherworkers, tailors and jewelcrafters) Can make all your basic blue quality pvp gear.... and more importantly, these stuff they make gets upgraded with every new pvp season to boot! it could be easy enough running down to the AH to buy it all, but that can be extremely expensive, so i advise tlaking to guild crafters... with some politeness they -should- craft the items you need if you simply provide the materials, which 90% of the time works out far far cheaper.

the second thing you want to consider is spec. Everyone is entitled to play the game how they want, and how they feel comofrtable doing so. its your subscription and fun time, afterall. just bare in mind that some specs may pove more useful/helpful/easy to play in a Battlegrounds and arena than others. what i'm hinting at is, with classes like shaman, or other hybrid classess: once you start down a path with a paticular set of gear (for healing) it will be tiring and hard to switch to a new set. so unless you want to work toward two gear sets, pick your pvp spec carefully!

oh, and check your glyph's carefully, make sure they are fit for purpose, or just simply how you like them!

Battlegrounds Grind (honour gear)

Now this is the long and often dull part. unless you happen to have an Alterac valley weekend close at hand, this can be a slow drag.

At this stage your after the most up to date honour bought PvP gear, bought from vendors in the Hall of legends (valley of strength) in orgrimmar. you will also be wantng to start gemming and enchanting the gear you get at this stage, as to give you an extra edge. Ebonsteel belt buckles, and pvp bought shoulder/helm resilience enchants are a must for those added stats.

also take the time to look into reforging some items. some pieces of gear may have an excess in a stat your not paticullarly interested in, use the chance to swap it some for a stat you do want. maybe spell damage for healing, or perhaps that extra resilience, or as i do... that extra bit of Mastery.

at present it should also be noted, that you need to aquire a total amount of honour this season, to buy paticular weapons, so dont panic about them too soon, store it away if need be.

Stepping into the competition (Conquest points gear)

the next stage of Gearing is where the challenge of PvP truelly is. its no longer a case of mindlessly grinding, your opponents are more likely to be smart, co-ordinated, organised and very well geared. Conquest points are used to buy top end pvp gear, the best of the best. you can gain 1650 of these points each week by either winning arena games (180 per win) or Rated battlegrounds (i believe its 450 per win). now you cant fill your entire cap by doing one option alone, so heres my suggestions...

Get yourself an Arena team, a 2 Vs 2 preferably, and with a guild member if you can (its great for guild rep, 740 points per win). remember you can have up to 4 members in a team like this and you can help your friends by playing games even if your already capped. the objective here is gaining wins to get points, Rating at this stage is not important.

Even if its five losses to one win, points are points and help you work toward that gear, so take it where you can, hammer through thoe games with your partner, reach the cap, and profit. though with conquest points do try and carefully plan your upgrades. once again you will have to gem/enchant/reforge your new pieces.

I wont suggest organising RBG's to get the last few points, instead i'd say get valor points from heroics and -buy- the conquest points to fill your cap.

Best of the Best (rating gear)

now this is the tough stuff. to get this gear from this vendor you need either 2200 rating with Battlegrounds, or 2200 rating with a 3 man or 5 man team in arena. this is NOT easy.

probably the best way to do this is with Rated battlegrounds, and takes immense dedication, hard work and effort. Morgeth currently runs some guild members through this, becuase they have top end gear, and have no other avenue of aquiring better items (or the pvp mount). my suggestion is to not join her RBG team unless you in paticular are on this road, otherwise your wasting spots when you could just go do simple 2 Vs 2's. The requirements for these teams even beyond the guild are often strict, having possibly achievement requirements, rating needs, gear level requirements and more. its not easy to get the wins, so the bar is set high for a reason.

Arena is still an option, but this requires strong team work, the very best gear, and most importanty... a dam good setup to pull it off.

in respects to the gear rewards, only the weapons are in fact an upgrade from conquest point gear. the armour is merely an aesthetic ego boost, the reward for reaching the higher rating is the slighty stronger weapons.

Well thats the quick crash course in the road to getting yourself pvp geared, once again feel free to post any comments, questions or criticsm.

[Kozgugore]

Looking good! And quite helpful as well. I approve!

A few minor things I'd like to point out is to perhaps put emphasis on things such as enchants or the like. Far too often do I look someone up on the armoury and they turn out to have no enchants or no arcanums or whatever on their shoulders or heads, nor leg armours or embroidery (whatever they're called) on the pants. Sure, they can be expensive, so I usually save them for the gear that I know I'll be sticking with for a while, but for that newest gear you get, it really rewards to get a hold of those too. There's a special professions tab in the in-game guild window, so you can easily see who can give you what enchants or upgrades or such.

Not to mention to keep your own professions in mind. Engineering for example provides three additional tinkers to your gear as well.

[Lars]

Indeed, Koz has a very strong point with proffessions.

If you plan on doing serious pvp (or PvE) pick a proffession and max it out.
He did the Engi example.
Blacksmithing gives you two extra sockets on gear for gems.
Enchanting gives you ring enchants.
LWing gives you fantastic Bracer enchants (and cheap leg patches)
Inscription better shoulder (maybe head) enchants.
Tailoring has some tailor only stuff aswell, and Alchemy has the Alchemst stones and basicly free alch flasks. JC has what Braggha posted.

If you plan on being PvP geared having a Proffession atleast up to the self buffed level is part of that.

Edit:
And, when grinding for honour. Remember Tol Barad. Even losing gives quite a bit of honour, and a win gives roughly 600.

[Kozgugore]

Indeed! Nice list you have going on there.

[Braggha]

JC gives you JC-only, stronger gems. No more than 3 overall can be equipped at the same time. No enchants.

All in all, i consider maxed professions being default for any activity that envolve actual game mechanic, be it PvP or PvE.

For PvP, my advise is:

1) Go to www.arenajunkies.com, class forums, there is detailed, mostly up-to-date PvP guides for each class, including specs, rotations, gemming, etc etc.

2) Look at armory profiles of top arena players, to have an idea of top comps and gemming/enchanting/spec/glyphs. Arena rankings can be found on Arena Junkies as well.

3) Watch a lot of videos of good players PvPing. Not only your own class, but others as well.

4) Learn other classes, what they can do, what is durations of their cooldowns, have an idea how to counter them.

5) Practice A LOT. Duel a lot. Learn. Do your BGs. Play arena, not only for weekly cap, but for fun and practice.

6) HAVE FUN OBLITERATING THESE PESKY ALLIANCE DOGS.

7) I WANT BLOODFAG ARMOR SET FOR MY ROGUE

[Kozgugore]

See what you did thar. ;3

Anyway, I approve of this topic so far! Nice tips out there.

[Lars]

*facepalm* I wrote JC instead of inscription... Fail! *changes*