nubb3y

What about 45/5/11 for patch 2.3, from a purely 5v5 viewpoint? It allows you to pick up all of the goodies in arms to be able to do massive damage when you aren't being focused, and you have last stand for when you ARE being focused. The loss of piercing howl is notable, but the loss of enrage shouldn't affect 5v5 much at all. Personally, if i'm being focused in 5v5, I'm sword and board and running away to line of sight, so it's really useless for me besides in BGs, which i could care less about.

However, I'm sure many of you (2345 warriors, probably) tend to stay out there when you're being focused, spell reflecting but keeping MS up, at which point enrage is valuable...but in a drain team, i can't see it being of much use. In regards to disarm, if someone tries to disarm me, i'll just disarm them back, and MS will fall off of both targets, and my healers will run away and sneak a drink, which essentially helps my team overall (which, as i said before, wins on mana, and not really on bursting someone down)

Whats the general opinion of 45/5/11 versus 35/23/3 or 33/28 for 5s with a mana-drain build?

 

• Encross

I would pick up the PvP mace. The nerf really isn't as bad as it probably should be; a 3-second stun 9-ish% of the time is really appealing when placed up against a sword proc.

I'm probably going to pick up an axe and spec for attack power (I'm using a crit/mongoose sword build atm). I figure that the axe will make up for the crit I'm losing, and the extra attack power will just sustain more damage over time once crit-mitigations are factored in.

 

Mem

I guess disarm will be more a problem when fighting combat rogues (most rogues will probably go combat/hemo next season) whose cooldown on riposte is much shorter than ours on disarm.

 

Zalein

Removed.

 

Feeble

Long time reader - first time poster...

Just read on WoR (world of raids) that they are adding Diminishing Returns to stun effects. This leads me to believe that charge, intercept, pummel, and the mace stun (stormherald) will all be on the same DR.

If this goes through, do I (we) switch over to sword spec and pick up one of the very attractive swords coming out in 2.3? Or just deal with it and keep the old Stormhearld.

I imagine that mace rogues are looking at this too..

 

mikebro

Stuns have had DR for a long time now. They are seperated in to 2 different categories (timers): Controlled (Charge, Intercept) and Uncontrolled (Mace Stun)

What they're putting on DR now is interrupts and silences, so Pummel and Shield Bash. I'd imagine all Interrupts/Silences will be on a seperate DR timer.

Edit: And foget all of that. WoW Forums -> Silence Effects and Diminishing Returns

It doesn't mention interrupts but pretty seems like it's implied... Hopefully.

 

Salted

I understand most of the theory people have been talking about for 23 pages, but I still fail at life in PvP.

Anyone have some links to decent movies to watch?

 

• Encross

I watched a lot of Laintime videos when I was first leveling my warrior. He's pretty solid.

You can also look up my name on Youtube, if you want.

Edit: My video is more of a crit reel.

 

Devonia

I'm a warrior with a 5's team that hovers around 1970-2050. We run marks hunter/sl warlock/ms war/holy priest/paladin drain team. Our biggest problem we run into is 4dps, and mainly me surviving. I've tried turtling in defensive LOS'ing and it works in that I don't die, but then they just switch targets and if I go back to berzerk/2hander they switch back to me and my hp starts dropping fast again forcing me back to defensive. With me in defensive sword/board our dps is pretty low.

We've been focusing on trying to drain their spriest asap while I turtle just enough to not die, but it seems by the time we can drain him fully they manage to get a cc combo off on one or more healers and gib me. Not having any way to remove tongues from our paladin really hurts too.

My question is, is there some trick to surviving 4dps while not being useless that I don't know about or is SR really the only answer?

 

Mearis

Shield, wear a lot of resilience gear, focus on interrupting their DPS and mash spell reflect. Use all your rage only for pummels/spell reflects and hamstrings - you can keep MS up with a 1h weapon.

 

Salted

Referring more to arena videos. Battlegrounds and world pvp is always a lot more situational...

 

nubb3y

once i started stacking resil (415 with sword and board) 4dps got a great deal easier.

 

Quixotic

Stay in battle stance, keep shield reflect up, but the most important thing is to keep MS and hamstring up on the target. Don't lose your head when under focus fire and hop around like an idiot, or intervene away, they will just swap off you, then back on you when you are back in rage. The only thing that accomplishes is making things harder for your healers.

The goal of facing 4 dps isn't to kill one of them right away with your team, it's to limit their incoming damage enough that the warrior can use a 2h. The typical 4 dps team is healer/ua warlock/s.priest/ele shaman/rogue. Your warlock should be counterspelling the opposing warlock with spell lock, while keeping tongues up on the s.priest and ele shaman, while throwing in fears on the priest/shaman/rogue, and keeping up dots on the warlock and shadow priest. You should be on the warlock putting pressure on him so he can't fear. Your hunter should be draining the shaman, then the shadow priest, while attacking the shadow priest.

Once you limit enough damage that only the melee/one caster is casting on your with tongues, your priest can mana burn one of their hybrids which are terrible on mana efficiency, and when they have to drink, you've won the battle.

 

nubb3y

I pretty much agree with everything quixotic said, except that I personally notice better results (smoother games) against 4dps when I just intervene away and get behind a pillar or something, and they have to chase me around while my team sucks them dry. However, I play on a drain team which benefits from running the other team out of mana and avoiding as much damage as possible, while quix's team might depend more on getting a quick kill (i can't look at armory at the moment to see what your comp is, quix, sorry)

One thing you may want to try is setting one of their burst dps classes (like the shadow priest) as your focus target. Since shadow priests tend to unload mind blast and shadow word death simultaneously, you can actually reflect BOTH spells if your timing is right. This works for pretty much any dps class--set a secondary dps class as your focus and go about your business, then pull off a devastating spell reflect sheep or something. Similarly, interrupt the burst damage of the other players by getting your hunter or warlock to silence the shaman or warlock when they pop trinket or use heroism. Also, don't be afraid to hamstring multiple opponents or spam piercing howl if a member of your team is kiting away. With hunter/warrior/sl lock, you aren't built for burst, so don't try to act like it.

With viper sting, drain mana, and mana burn, you pretty much just have to limit the opposing damage as much as possible (demo shout/tc their warrior, hamstring him, interrupt damage casts with your pummels, save intimidating shout until they pop heroism, etc.) and stay alive until your teams sheer mana advantage leads to a win.

oh, and stacking sunder is really great for dumping rage for you because your hunter will do more damage also

 

Thiaril

First of all /hello to everyone participating in this topic.

I've been following this topic for some time now and now some questions raised about respeccing Arms for Arena, for the personal rating requirement of the shield (season 3) in patch 2.3. I'm more or less the MT of my guild, so never really had time to do lots of BG's / Arena post TBC, and thus having kinda crappy gear for PvP. But since the shield is so extremely good, I should be trying to get 1850 rating, right?

(this is from a 2v2 perspective, most likely with a Resto Druid partner)

So here are a few questions, I hope someone could answer them:

What would be the best weapon choice of the current Gladiator weapons that'll be buyable in 2.3 for honor? I do not have access to a Stormherald/Deep Thunder, because I'm a sword-specialized blacksmith. Take into account that my gear won't be good, but since 1850 is all I'm aiming for my opponents won't be swimming in resilience either. (I'm also Orc, if that's in extra favor of Axe spec) This has been discussed quite a few times already, but I hope you can take my ''newbieness''and gear level in account.

What is the absolute minimum of resilience/AP/crit that I should have before stacking stamina (for example wearing tankgear, because some pieces give me over 1000 health)?

And the last question; what talent build would you suggest for me? There are a few cookiecutter builds that I've in mind (33/28, 31/30, 31/27/3 or something like that, but not sure what's the best option in 2v2 combined with healer), but I lack the experience of serious 2v2 matches to see what's the best for me.

Sorry for just asking questions, I hope I'll be of more use to the community after I've got some experience. :P

Thanks in advance!

 

◊ Vectivus

1. If you're a Swordsmith, why would you not make a Lionheart Champion/Executioner? They're vastly superior to the s1 weapons.

2. You will hit opponents 'swimming' in resilience, regardless of your rating. Since ratings get wholly reset with the new season, and teams are always starting secondary teams to sell or profit off of, it's more or less unavoidable.

3. You can get upwards of 150 Resilience just from the Honor rewards (currently - not accounting for s1 purchasable with Honor), so that's a good benchmark. ~1500 AP and 25% crit unbuffed is probably reasonable, assuming you swap in PvE DPS gear of some kind for your tanking pieces. As long as you retain upwards of 10k health unbuffed, don't stress about stamina - you've got talented Commanding Shout and MotW at your disposal.

4. Currently, 35/23/3 or 35/28 are the favored PvP specs (for the most part). Post-patch may be a whole different ball game - personally, I'm in a position similar to your own (raid MT, PvP once or twice a week), and I am planning on trying out a 35/26 (something to this effect - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft ).

Don't take my opinion as gospel, though - I'm struggling to find a partner that cares enough about PvP to push beyond my current ~1700 rating in all three brackets.

 

Humbaba

Maces are generally regarded as the superior weapon. They do what no other weapon can do--stop your opponent dead in his tracks and let you beat him down. As an added benefit, you get some rage out of it, too.

That said, I'd go with the highest dps 2h you can get from pve. Gorehowl is comparable to the Gladiator weapons and anything higher dps will be be superior to them. I'd use the honor to get the 4 piece set bonus as long as you have Gorehowl or better. Edit: and since you're sword spec, use that weapon rather than a season 1 weapon if you don't have anything else.

You will want Second Wind for sure, so at least 33 in Arms. It's worth having for the extra rage alone. I personally like tactical mastery but that's because I derive far too much pleasure from cheesy spell reflects. I don't currently have Improved Hamstring, but I'm dropping two points into it from 2h Weapon Specialization when I next respec. I've decided that anything that can keep your target in range is key for a warrior.

 

soujeh

@ Thiaril, I'd definitely get a PvE weapon. I'm not sure how your progress is, but if you are doing SSC World Breaker is a really good choice for 2v2. Secondary choice would be Gladiator Mace from honor, unless you feel like making Deep Thunder :p Maces are vastly superior in the 2v2 bracket, but any weapon with decent DPS will work really. I'd also like to recommend 35/23/3 with Improved Hamstring, I wouldn't trade that spec for any other in 2v2, especially when you're playing with a resto druid, who'll benefit greatly from a root on their DPS when he wants to get away. The Hamstring duration nerf doesn't exactly make Imp Hamstring worse either

The best tip I can give you for 2v2 with a resto druid when you play vs healer + DPS; sunder is your friend! Be ready for long-ass games.

 

Oakblade

Long time reader, first time poster.

I've tried a lot of different arena builds, and for a long time (several months, in fact) I stayed with 31/30. I'm also a die-hard sword-spec.

Switching recently to 33/28 for PVE and then back to 35/23/3 for arenas, I noticed that on average, the numbers (the high crits everyone loves so much) flying on my screen went up significantly. They got bigger.

Well, granted, there's Blood Frenzy at work, but (and granted, this is highly subjective) it seems more than 4%.

The only real difference, as far as damage output is concerned, between the builds, is flurry in 31/30 and Blood Frenzy in 35/23/3.

It appears that faster attack speed (haste rating?) actually lowers your weapon "per swing" damage, even though it increases your damage output overall. Could it be related to how AP is factored into weapon speed?

The problem with that is, DPS doesn't kill people for me, crazy crits do. The more unpredictable your damage spikes are, the harder they are to heal through; in that sense flurry is bad for pvp, because it makes your damage more even and predictable.

That and there are certain classes (frost mages, cough) that you can only hit 3-4 times in a duel before it's over. Those 3-4 hits need to be as big as they can, since you can't sustain dps on a moving (blinking, kiting, iceblocking) target.

If it is indeed true that having flurry up decreases the size of your crits (and it's not just me being confused, at this point I'm doubting myself), that's just another reason for going deeper into arms for extra spike damage and having tactical mastery for a rainy day. By all means, correct me if I'm wrong.

I also had pretty good success in using Improved Slam in arenas.

It is highly situational, but it's good extra spike damage in the following situations:
1) Intercept Stun
2) Improved Hamstring Proc (it's so nice)
3) Your pummel's on cooldown and the guy is just standing there casting something instead of kiting you.

So, in closing... can't wait for 2.3 so I can put Improved Slam back into my 35/23/3 build.

 

nubb3y

i'd say sunder is far better than slam for an arena rage dump but i guess if you're in a burst team it can be effective

 

Zorac

Well depends on how you look at it really. I mean you dont find yourself in def stance or battle stance with loads of rage very often do you? And you cant use sunder in zerk stance anyway, so might aswell slam...

 

Oakblade

You can use Sunder Armor in every stance.

 

nubb3y

yeah, sunder is available for all stances.

anyway, thread change here--how hooked is everyone on the pvp medallion? will there ever be a point where the epic trinkets become good enough that you would drop the medallion?

 

Typhon

Meh: misread post - thought you were talking about the PVP Trinket for some reason.

 

Humbaba

The ability to break ice trap, frost nova and cyclone makes the trinket indispensable. The only way I'd replace it is if I had a better trinket with the same on use ability. Even a good paladin can't keep you BoFed and dispelled 100% of the time and breaking that root in order to get off a MS or execute has been the difference between victory and defeat more than once, and that ignores the fact that the paladin can't save you from cyclone.