Friday, April 16, 2010

Gear, Part 2: Gems

This post comes at the heels of an apt conversation held with another moonkin/resto in my raiding team. We held a few premade WSGs, in which he decided to stay moonkin for the pwnage factor. After we finished in there, he asked me why I hadn't enchanted my cloak (I hadn't the heart to say BECAUSE I AM LAZY) and what gems I use.

Well, this post is for you, aspiring PVP laserchicken.

Gems:

I actually struggled with this myself for a while. Is it better to gem flat resil, flat spellpower, flat spell pen, flat stamina, what? In my opinion, one is better off gemming for spellpower and spellpower/resilience, particularly once your gear set is almost complete. Personally, I have a combination of resil, spellpower, and spellpower/resil WITH ONLY ONE gem that happens to be spellpower/stamina, and that was used to push me over a certain HP milestone which I can't remember right this second.

You can leave a couple blue gem sockets open (better blue for the socket bonus, tbh, to help get back stats you miss) to gem spell penetration.

What *is* spell penetration, you ask? And how much of it do I need?

Spell penetration on WoWWiki

In PvP, good spell penetration values are 54 (to counter unimproved Mark of the Wild, 75 if the druid spent two points in Improved Mark of the Wild) and 130 (to counter various single-school resistance buffs, such as the Paladin's resistance auras); these are usually enough. 50 will often do for 'occasional' PvP.


As the article states, every point of spell penetration counteracts a point of resistance. 50 is a solid minimum if you don't expect to PVP much, or if you only PVP casually. Something between 75 and 130 seems to be more reasonable if you do arenas. I personally have been skimping out on gemming/enchanting spell pen because I'm going to be getting some upgrades soon, and I'm a cheapass. But I have 40 spell pen right now, and that is actually a noticeable difference.

So in summary:

* spellpower or spellpower/resil are solid gems
* gem flat resil only if you feel you're behind on anti-squishiness
* save a couple blue sockets for spell penetration

META!

Before you go coughing up dough for some of these meta options, swing by your local Wintergrasp and get them for stone keeper's shards instead. You're welcome.

There are many many options, and frankly...most of them are great depending on what you centrally do in PVP. I personally use the Forlorn Starflare Diamond, as keeping me silenced is a bad idea. I got this gem specifically because I do a lot of arenas. In 2v2, if I get silenced, my partner is in critical danger. If I were exclusively doing BGs, or only 5s, I imagine I would get Tireless Starflare Diamond instead for the run increase.

There are gems there that increase your crit and add these wonderful things, but I find foremost that the spellpower is lacking in a lot of PVP gear. I am aiming to bring my spellpower back up to about 2900-3000 in caster form before I switch my meta. When I do, I'm going to probably switch it to Impassive Starflare Diamond for the crit and reduced fear duration.

Bear in mind that most of my specs listed in this post do not include eclipse, our primary reason to stack crit. Food for thought!

Your mileage, as always, may vary. There are quite a few options here as opposed to PVE (Chaotic Skyflare Diamond or bust), so play around, see what works for you.

I don't want to bog you down with information, so enchants will come in another post. Coming up: enchants, and links I like.

2 comments:

  1. I thought I just asked if you wanted that spell pen enchant done.

    You say you gem Tireless for the speed increase... then are you enchanting +stam on boots or Icewalker? I use Tuskarr's Vitality for the +15 stam/run speed since they don't stack.

    Other than that... stacking crit vs. haste is one I don't have an answer at all to, and suspect it's a play-style thing. PvP is a case where the PvE haste cap doesn't apply since you're (probably) not chain-casting Wrath, so Wrath casts of 0.7 seconds are good things.

    In BGs (and lower-level arenas) it's a lot more common to find people in primarily PvE spec/gear (farming honor for gems?), so crit is a good thing there for the damage benefit.

    BTW, I'm liking this blog so far :D I'm reading backwards and probably "necro-ing" to comment a few of them.

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  2. LOL it's okay, just some creative license. :P

    That's something I am probably going to address in my post about enchants. Since...for boots, we do only have three choices, Tuskarr's, icewalker and pure stam, and it'll depend on the meta gem you use.

    Yeah...there's no real active theorycrafting from what I could see on what moonkins should rely upon more in PVP, haste or crit...I mean, I generally don't find myself in too many situations where I am simply chain-casting. I tend to have to do a lot more CC and mass AoE of doom, and dotting and such...and the haste cap DEFINITELY doesn't matter.

    Yeah, if people are in BGs with their PVE gear then...well...hrm. Personally, I believe that's just a huge automatic hunter's mark for me anyway. XD

    And glad you dig it so far. In some cases, I'm making it up as I go, in others...I'm actually trying to do research, so. Yeah. Enjoy, I guess. XD

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