Last night in the arenas we had some jaw dropping moments. With Mob Health 3 installed and set to a 10% calculation (begins calculating target health at 90% health), we encountered a priest and a mage on two different teams that each had 14,000 HP.

That blew me away. 14k HP on a mage or priest? Both of those teams had a priest and a druid, but no paladins, so there was no BoK involved. The only thing we could figure was that these guys were stacking the green +stam gear that has like 600 HP but no other stats. (Unless the flask bug hasn't been fixed yet)

Is that viable right now? It certainly made chewing through a priest as a DW enhance shammy pretty tough, but in practice I'm not sure how much more they gimped themselves by doing that. We've been laughing when we see these huge stam items drop with no stats in instances, but is this a good route to take for arenas until people have actual pvp gear?

Wouldn't 1 heal immediately skew the hp total?

I've been debating on stacking green stamina for the arena myself. I've had a couple times where I'd be up against a two-mage team. Dual PoM-pyros from invis is a little more than my healthbar can handle.

It's definitely possible. One of my guild mates on beta (a warlock) got over 17K buffed with mostly "of Stamina" greens. We also killed Collidus the Warp-Watcher (Level 68 rare elite) who dropped an "of Stamina" cloth headpiece that had 90 stamina on it. If you've been diligent about watching the auction house I think you could definitely collect that gear.

Is it a good idea? I'm not sure... I think it may work if you have one person in the group with very high stamina (typically a class that is targeted to be killed first). The opposing group will initally be very confused when the priest / mage has twice the HP they should. Once you fight this team again however, you'd know that you can pretty much ignore the priest that probably has 4000-5000 mana.

My current arena setup is a mix of my tanking (high stam) and spell damage gear (with preference again on higher stamina pieces). I'm around 8500 HP unbuffed, and it doesn't drastically effect my ability to heal / "dps".

Too much stamina is definatly better than not enough stamina

I don't really think the "of stamina" approach would be effective on anyone who isn't expected to be getting FFd immediately. I mean, a mage in Of Stamina may be a bitch to kill, but if they other team isn't attacking them they are just a mage with underpowered fireballs.

It might be interesting to have a team with a juicy target, then give them 16,000 hit points.

Enhancement shamans are rather weapon dependent. If you had two very heavy weapons, then you can get away without stacking the usual AP I would think.

I've seen a priest stacking stam in my few experiences in the arena, my mobhealth3 was showing him well over 12k, and I've seen self-buffed priests over 10k in AV.

And for what he was doing it was brutally effective, he just ran to midfield, served as a decoy, and by the time we realized we couldn't burst him down, they had already nuked our healer and it was over.

Edit: As for what the priest was doing, he wasn't healing at all, but just mana burning anything that got into range (specifically our paladin).

That seems kinda overboard on the stam side. Don't get me wrong, stamina is great for pvp but you're just sacrificing way too many other stats by wearing of stamina greens.

I'm at just under 10k life self buffed right now (1000 healing 10.2k mana) and I could probably get that up to 11k with a few pieces of gladiator gear and some better gems without hindering my other stats too much, but to push it up to 14k? I don't even want to think about the stats i'd lose to gain 300 stam, not only from the stats -> stam conversion, but from the purp/blue -> green downgrade.

Best way to gear up for the arena :

2 Piece PVP Blue Lvl 70 set : Gloves + something else ( chest )
2 Piece from Haala : Belt + Pants
1 Piece Head from Terrokar Forest : Helm

Rest use your normal gear . Put only +sta enchants and use 12 stamina gems in every slot.

Once you get enough arena points buy 2 piece arena set .

This should put you above the average players who are still sporting their tier 3 / warlord set .( dont spend your first points on a weapon unless your current one sucks )


This easy shopping list is for people who are more than casual . You can go for more than 2 piece blue PVP set but i wanted to make a minimum of what everybody should have.

Depending on the situation, I wouldn't even FF the priest, Especially in a 2v2 setting. Most of the priests spells are instant cast (Renew/Mending/PW:S), meaning you'll likely be unable to interrupt him anyway. You'll let his teammate just take free shots at you. We've had much better luck locking down the DPS and just trying to CC the healer in 2v2 matches.

As far as stacking stam gear goes, I think that is just silly. You can get a fair amount of HP with just minor enchants and gems. I'm at 9300HP still packing 1500AP and 22crit. If I was to stack all "stam" items, I'd maybe gain 2-3k life, and lose a ton of crit/AP. Definitely not worth it in my opinion.

Reward from spirit shards which you get off the bosses of the auchidoun (sp?) instances while your side controls the towers.

Exorcist's Linked Helm http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28577
or one with agility http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28576

Good suggestions, but I would add the 50 Spirit Shard ring before the Helm (since the rings are well itemized except for tanking/healing).

Also, I don't think the average player has Tier 3 or the Warlord/Marshal set .

It's the spirit shard reward (18 shards I believe) and you get it from the Allerian Stronghold. It's something like:

34 Stam
2x Int
20 Resil
29 Dmg/healing
1 Meta Socket

There are 2 versions of it and I'm sure someone with access to the wowhead will give you a link, its a pretty good pvp helm though.

Edit: Beat by a whole bunch of people.

*Every* average player has warlord sets now

Stamina's not just about survivability. It's about controlling the tempo of the match. When your health drops to a dangerously low point, your actions become defensive; more stamina lets you maintain an offensive focus while you weather whatever damage is coming your way. Simple example: I'm in 2v2, with my Warlock partner fearing some healer around the map while his DPS buddy beats on me. If I had low stamina, I'd have to do something defensive; shield or HoJ and heal. With high stamina, though, I can ignore the DPS class on me and assist the Warlock in taking down the enemy healer before Fear breaks and he heals back up.

That said, I think 14k is a little outlandish unless they've got the full blue pvp set + stam gems. As a Paladin in mostly PvE gear, I'm pretty comfortable at 10k considering that I'm rarely a focus fire target. Going past 10k with PvE gear would require sacrificing considerable stats.

True, and the first time I just dismissed it as a problem with the mod. But we played that same team twice in practices and both times got the same values.

Overally focusing on just Stamina probably isn't wise, especially when you also have resilience on most PvP pieces. Having both high stamina and high resilience together allow you to both reduce incoming damage, make heals for efficient and have a good buffer.

Update: Work + Post = Bad. Fixed.

I think you're confusing work and the game

How much stamina/armor/resiliance you want depends completely on what your role is and the makeup of the rest of your group - the more likely you are to be focus fired, the more important it is that you gear yourself to survive. "Armor priests" are generally the best way to gear, stacking stam/resil/armor over other stats, while warriors generally just want to be as dangerous offensively as possible since it's the rare team that actually tries to kill them.

For point of reference, I have 9200 unbuffed health, and as a hunter on a warrior/priest/paladin/frost mage team, I'm very often the primary or secondary target of the assist train of a good team, so I'm constantly aiming for more.

Unyielding Bracers/Belt are brilliant pieces.