The question on my mind is how far into the building of the isle before the gem vendor shows up?

I don't think any warrior can really afford to drop 5% root resist in PvP. Surefooted is mostly there for the Resist, not the hit.

I think you should reroll gnome then. The primary reason most people use surefooted has nothing to do with the random chance snare/root resist but more with the fact that in full pvp gear you will not reach the hit cap without using surefooted (and a hit gem in S3 gear).

At this point, with the way things are going with badge rewards, I'd like to see badges made account-owned and not restricted to a single character. If I want to gear up my alt and have no need for badges while I'm raiding, I don't see why I can't just mail my badges to my druid.

./shrug. I use a Brooch of Deftness and I'm at the hit cap. Full PvP gear? No, I guess you can say that I'm missing 1 piece. But the benefits of the brooch far outweigh the resilience from the neck. There are many ways to hit the cap, Surefooted is just the path of least resistance.

I use the snare/root resist meta, and believe me, it is absolutely for the snare/root resist.

You can do this to some extent via primal nethers, nether vortex, and now gems. I wouldn't mind seeing another use for the stockpile of badges that raiders will end up with, though. Maybe a consumable vendor for badges?

Your arena ratings are also sub-1500.

Here's what you have combined from your neck/meta/boot enchant slot.

12 crit rating
5% snare resist
Minor Speed
57 Stam
22 hit
21 expertise

If you swapped to AP/Movespeed/pvp neck with 5str4hit gem/surefooted

22 crit rating
5% snare resist
Minor Speed
38 stam
14 hit
74AP
18 Resilience

The tradeoff is +10crit rating, -19 stam, -8hit, -22 expertise, +74AP, and +18 resilience. Those combine for a pretty hefty overall upgrade.

Yeah, my ratings are sub 1500. Notice the team name? Notice the title? I didn't pay for the title. I just don't give a shit anymore with all the reroll teams. Different thread for a different time, but I'm kinda annoyed everyone looks at the arena rating without looking at the title or the team name and assumes I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I do, I just don't know a druid who can ezmode me to the top. I guess I suck.

The resilience is a non issue. I don't take hits in arena. I'm ignored until the end. I don't have a gladiator 2h, it would be a pointless investment, therefore I can't actually give up 8 hit without gemming for it. The AP is actually misleading. I'm using a 4 hit 4 agi gem right now, I just don't have any desire to run steamvaults for 10ap. So 64AP and 10 crit rating vs 22 expertise, which is -1.25% to Dodge and Parry.

Now, I don't know the math, it could be that I'm way off the mark here, but I do know that a caster's base dodge chance is 3.90%. Cutting almost 1/3 of that off isn't worth more than 10 crit and 64ap? Not getting a mortal strike dodged isn't worth 10 crit and 64ap? The DPS increase from hitting someone 1.25% more isn't comparable to 10 crit and 64ap? For that matter, 2.5% more dps on paladins and other parry'ing types isn't worth it?

I decided it was. I really don't see how it could be otherwise. But yeah, fucking 1400 scrub, doesn't know what the hell he's talking about and going off "gut feeling" rather than math.

It's exactly the same as gaining 1.25% hit. Hit is pretty highly valued but I doubt it overcomes 10crit and 64ap. It also doesn't work when said person is casting (can't dodge while casting) or when you attack them from behind, which you can usually do at least 50% of the time with proper movement. Same applies to people who can parry.

I personally do not look at someone's title or ratings to judge their merit because they could have been top players in the past (say, season 1) who don't care any more or perhaps got lost in a class balance paradigm shift.

But you really should not be bragging about a Challenger title. When I read "notice the title" I clicked your armory link expecting to see a Gladiator, heh.

Badges for Marks of Illidari!

I'm wondering what the final prices will be for all these BoE items coming off the badges vendors. The only people who will be using the AH to sell their badges are going to be T6+ geared raiders - everyone else is saving for the new items. And doing the farm content of BT/MH gives us 30 badges...

Predicting the future is difficult. I guess at this point I'd be happy to get 10 gold/badge and picking up 300 gold for a full clear of BT/MH. I'm just hoping the prices on the items using the AH don't drop below that and will be excited if they can get above that mark.

Oh yeah, sorry about that whole 0.5% thing on the gladiator. Glad you all managed to get that. I mean every one of you? Really, quite impressive, I must say.

The point is that I used to give a shit, got to 1800 and couldn't climb any higher with a drunk paladin healing me. Now the druid is geared in greens with about 100 resilience and we don't play to win anymore because you can't ever get away from getting steamrolled by gladiators.

My point stands though. You have your choice between 1.25% hit above the cap (2.5% on some classes) and 10 crit/64 ap. If you were below the cap, you'd do what you had to in order to get to the cap, I really fail to see why you would suddenly throw all of that logic away once you're hit "capped." Your mortal strikes can still get dodged. Cool, you get an overpower...not quite the same though when your target gets full healed isn't it?

Seriously, there's tons and tons of pages in the warrior PvP thread telling people that you don't ever want a mortal strike to miss, and it's your responsibility to prevent that from happening, and now because that same logic is being used by a "Scrub" it doesn't apply? Seriously? Come on. I guess we need to change all those posts to include a disclaimer that says that it's okay for your MS to miss as long as you've got 10 crit and 64 ap outta the deal.

I think you're wrong in this assumption. There are a lot of people out there with alts who have badges. There will be a gear reset in WOLK so now is the opportunity to cash in. There are also people who need money. Selling badges via gems will be a great way for them to cash out and work towards their epic mount or simply cover expenses.

You're right though--I think the majority of people buying gems for badges will be raiders who have few other uses of the gems. Either way, the prices of Crimson Spinels will finally fall--conceptually every BT clear will yield an additional 25+ of them =)

On a side note--let's keep the PVP title epeen discussion outside of the 2.4 thread?

This is dumb, your MS being dodged 1% of the time versus 10 crit and 64 AP on every god damn hit you make.
I'm sure that if you land 100 MS's in a match and 1 misses, the crit and AP will more then make up for the damage lost, even factoring in the healing the target MIGHT have gotten.

On another note, the gems for badge's is a glorious idea however, the fact that every gem is the same cost seems a little odd.

I'm strongly against the idea of BT level gems for badges. Well at least 15 badges per gem is far too low for a change thats completely gutting a profession. Blue gems will be worth nothing and mining will take a hit as well from this. I would not have an issue with this change if all patterns did not become available from a vendor. This is almost the same as allowing Fel lotus for badges or Large prismatic shards.

The reason the demand for Chrimson Spinel is so high is because so many classes use them. If you ignore the gem market as it is now, because supply will go through the roof, putting the cost for each gem at a fixed price is the only fair way to it. Those classes/specs that favor blue or yellow gems won't pay any more or less then those that benefit more from red gems.

Those of us who have been in a waiting queue for spinels within our guild due to the ridiculous drop rate will enjoy the tears of you and the other Jewelcrafters gouging the blue gem market at present.

I wouldn't get overly dramatic about the change that you can purchase uncut epic gems for badges in 2.4. Epic gems were going to become more available anyway with the attunement on Hyjal and Black Temple getting removed, this just makes them a bit more common.

The people with the most badges to spend, and the most willingness to spend their badges on epic gems, are the ones that most likely already currently have access to and will be using epic gems anyway. There's going to be a lot of people who aren't going to be using their badges on gems any time soon because they're still going to need a significant amount of time to purchase other new badge gear, and guess what gems they'll use in the meanwhile? Blue quality gems. Yup. And there's probably a fairly significant amount of people who're going to think "Bugger it, I'm not going to spend that many badges on gems for such a small upgrade!".

It also opens up the market for you to start selling pre-cut Epic Gems of various types for your own excess badges. Should be a good market I think; it's remarkable what kind of money you can make out of people's unwillingness to find their own crafter. And of course there's the potential to make money from cutting epic gems for people; like a lot of WoW's service markets people undercutting will probably crash this pretty fast though.

That's not to say blue gems won't see some devaluation though. They obviously will due to an alternative becoming more widely available. Blue gems are still a lot more common with a significantly higher amount being producible per week though.

What, then, would be the point of gathering professions at all? And my two cents on that idea are that it would be terrible.


Ultimately, they're probably doing this for the same reason they made pseudo-t6 available through badges: It's a gear reset. It wont matter when WotLK hits. Now, if they do it right off the bat with badges in WotLK, that'll indicate a shift in design, rather than "its going away in six months so who cares".

Amen. In our guild we are on a strict diet of Spinels, and I have a good stock of Badge of Justice. This change is just gravy.

Except that you still need a Jewelcrafter to craft the gem, and Jewelcrafters were already no better at getting the BT/Hyjal epic gems anyway. If anything, this should help jewelcrafters by making it far more likely that they'll get traffic for epic gem cuts that doesn't expect it for free.

Take solace in the fact even though my Land Barron tactics of gouging gem prices may come to an end, I'm still sitting upon a mountain of gold waiting for the next profession to rise in great demand (I'm looking at you inscription) only to continue on with my capitalist march to victory. Badges = communism D: