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.

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!