Thursday, April 15, 2010

Gear, Part 1

When you first start to PVP, it's easy to get overwhelmed.

No, literally. When you have like 17k life, you are generally targeted first. No resilience can make for a frustrating time in PVP, and you tend to spend a lot of time chatting up the spirit healer.

They don't say much, but they seem nice.

Anyway.

It's fairly easy nowadays to get the gear necessary to begin to feel...less squishy in the face of impending doom. But where do you start?

I was faced with this difficulty when I got back into PVPing. With the mismatched bits of PVP gear that I DID have, I had around 400 resil, and I had downgraded from my 264 epics from PVE to free ilvl 200 PVP pieces that I had stored in my bank.

This is my general arbitrary advice on a priority order for the process of gearing up as a moonkin.

1) TRINKET.

This should come as a no-brainer. It is my honest solid opinion that getting some incarnation of the PVP trinket (the one with flat resil that breaks you out of moving impairments) is a very good idea. The highest ilvl trinket to date is this one, and though its cost may seem intimidating, I highly recommend getting this first.

Why? First of all, it's 153 resilience more than you had before. Second, a PVP trinket is absolutely essential. You won't believe how often you will use this trinket, especially in arenas.

The exception to this would be if you already have one of the lesser ilvl trinkets, which would bump this down the priority chain. But if you already have a PVP trinket with some resil, you probably don't need this guide.

2) Furious (or in the future - the easiest attainable set via emblems or honor)

You can currently buy the entire furious set with badges. If you were a PVE junkie like me, this means that you can painlessly run heroics until you get enough for the full set, and not have to worry about breaking the ice with the spirit healer.

2a) 2 2pc set bonuses

This only applies to hybrid classes, essentially. Lucky you!

If you're going to go the way of getting furious super duper duper quick, you may want to consider this option. For a long time, I had two pieces of the resto furious set to go alongside my three pieces of the boomkin furious set. Why? Because the two piece set bonuses stack. That is an easy extra 200 resilience until you get to a reasonable amount. I personally waited until I could buy the relentless shoulders with honor and arena points before swapping out my 2pc set bonus for resto. This is also because I gained a shit-ton of resil with relentless, and I got a further upgrade that helped with the resilience deficiency.

3) Wrathful accessories!

OMG you need accessories to match your set of pwnage. Until you get rating, the only wrathful-level accessories available are the cloaks, rings, neck and bracers. Belt and boots need at least 1200 (1400 for the boots, iirc). These accessories are an EASY boost to resil, but not completely necessary until you get set pieces out of the way.

Not going to do arena? Worried you can't get a good belt or set of boots? Well the relentless vendor is RIGHT BEHIND YOU. For just a little less honor and resil, you can get the belt and boots no problem. I have the relentless belt right now, but I'm saving for the wrathful boots now that I have the rating for them.

Soon enough, you will have all the gear necessary to be the panzerkin you have always wanted to be in PVP.

Next post will be about GEMS AND ENCHANTS. See you soon!

2 comments:

  1. A few comments:

    An important one you missed is the ilvl 245 shoulders you can now get from Wintergrasp marks. It takes 40 of them, but they're a good bit better than the Furious shoulders as your off-set piece.

    Something else I've been thinking about... I don't actually have a PvP trinket. I run BGs a lot, and I arena'd a little for like two weeks... very seldom in a BG am I in a situation where breaking out of a CC would have made any difference toward a BG objective.

    I also went for the 4pc Balance PvP set. The proc is effectively "Eclipse for the moonkin on the go" and I love it enough to work around the 100 resil I'd get for "free" by double-dipping on sets.

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  2. The WG shoulders are 251. The only reason I skipped those is because it can be grueling to grind the 40 marks necessary to attain them, and this was mostly a list of gearing priorities...quick and dirty ways to get your resil up fast.

    I got the 4pc set bonus last. In practise, it's hard to notice the proc, tbh. It's nice when it happens...but it's a proc all the same.

    I completely totally 100% wholeheartedly disagree that the trinket is in any way not intrinsic to get.

    Let me list you the situations I have encountered in which having the trinket has helped toward BG objectives:

    1) MC in EotS

    Because you can get MC'd off the side of the world, and that's annoying and insta-kill-like.

    2) Sap anywhere

    If you are defending something with one other person, if you get sapped...that person is in critical danger.

    3) Seduction

    It has diminishing returns. Why not hurry it along?

    4) Deep Freeze

    You're boned otherwise.

    Hate to say it, but a PVP trinket is absolutely vital, and a point on which I will not sway.

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