I put in my 10 games/week on a 3v3 team to pick up Gladiator weapons for PvE but I also like to keep an eye on my PvP set to get the most out of it with the limited time I spend on it.
Knowing STA is king, I've worked to max it by re-using old blues and socketed pieces from my PvE gear as I upgrade out of them by putting STA gems, enchants, even armor patches on. I'm also picking up some of the bigger STA upgrades from the BG purchasable gear to supplement it, as well as to start working on resilience which I realize is important too.
The question is: when, if ever, do you have enough STA to start swapping gems/enchants back to DPS stats? Right now I am thinking getting to a nice round number like 10k unbuffed sounds pretty good, but would anyone suggest more? It's not like I hit like a gimp in PvP or anything, but I don't want to take survivability *too* far, if that is possible.
The same question could also be made for exchanging STA for resilience, although for my case I figure resilience will come with naturally with time as I slowly purchase more PvP gear.
I'd also like to hear any viewpoints from other classes or levels of arena play to see what a good "baseline" for these two PvP stats are.
The question is: when, if ever, do you have enough STA to start swapping gems/enchants back to DPS stats? Right now I am thinking getting to a nice round number like 10k unbuffed sounds pretty good, but would anyone suggest more? It's not like I hit like a gimp in PvP or anything, but I don't want to take survivability *too* far, if that is possible.
If you're a rogue, never. You're basically going to put 12 stam in every socket. Your job in 5v5 isn't to output damage, it's to play disruption, and set up the other members of your team, particularly the warrior, with things like expose, and stuns.
As XI said, rogues need +12 stam in every slot basically, as do most classes except Paladins / Warriors (not to say warriors don't die, of course they do). Shaman / Frost Mages can get away with some DPS gems, for rogues/hunters/locks/priests/druids I'd stick with 12 stam in every slot though.
As XI said, rogues need +12 stam in every slot basically, as do most classes except Paladins / Warriors (not to say warriors don't die, of course they do). Shaman / Frost Mages can get away with some DPS gems, for rogues/hunters/locks/priests/druids I'd stick with 12 stam in every slot though.
I think for a Frost Mage it depends on your team really. I can't speak for Shamans though.
If you're running a 1-1.5 healer burst teams then it's a different story then a 2-2.5 survival team.
In 5vs5, everyone but the Warrior/Paladin should be stacking +12 stamina gems. For a Warrior, you're very rarely the target of focus fire, and if you are, it's that bad at all since you naturally have high armor/HP. Against heavy Magic teams, you might find they'll go for you first, but you can mitigate alot of that damage with spell reflect and PH kiting out of LOS. Just remember to keep MS up on your group's target, and that YOU stay in LoS of your healers.
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While 5v5 everyone but Warrior/Pally should stack Solid Stars, in 3v3 and 2v2 you can get away with a few dps gems (since you have more chances to blow up someone quick).
Also, if you tend to be focused fired, you need at least 200 resilience and more is better.
While 5v5 everyone but Warrior/Pally should stack Solid Stars, in 3v3 and 2v2 you can get away with a few dps gems (since you have more chances to blow up someone quick).
Also, if you tend to be focused fired, you need at least 200 resilience and more is better.
Ironically in 2vs2, and 3vs3 stamina stacking as a Warrior prob has more benefit >_>
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I don't see much reason to stack stamina for Warriors, I can reach around 10,800 HP/240 resilience in items alone and just stuck to the socket colors for everything else except marshal bracers which have 12 STA.
I've been at a crossroads regarding stamina, myself.
We're a fairly competitive 2v2 Resto Druid/Mut Rogue team, and I've been playing in almost entirely PvE raid gear(8k hp/0 resilience), but my concern is that in small-scale play like this, would it be worth going for any of the non-gladiator set pieces? I was considering getting the (gladiator)chest and shoulders to begin with, and maybe the BG bracers, but other than that, I'm really not sure whether the sacrifice of damage in arenas like this would be a wise choice. Any input, 2v2-wise? Thanks in advance.
Last edited by Tinkerfizzle : 05/02/07 at 12:48 PM.
Reason: Clarity
Do you want survivability or do you want more damage? More survivability you gain the less chance you have of dying while your healer is CCed and it takes longer before they go OOM since you don't need as much healing.
Well, there's only a certain number of class combinations that will consistently beat us, but I feel like if I give up my damage for survivability with pieces of the Gladiator set, I won't have sufficient damage to kill the teams that will usually outlast us otherwise. It feels like it'd be a huge sacrifice to drop say, 110 ap and 2% hit for 750 hp and 40 resilience.
Well color me a moron but I only put +12 Sta in gear with bad socket bonuses. The neck is a good example, +Hit does nothing worthwhile for me in PvP so its a prime candidate for STA. On items that give +Agi, +Crit/AP or +Res as a socket bonus I use +4 Agi / + 6 Sta or +4 Crit / +6 Sta.
You still get above 10k HP and all that jazz. Stamina is nice for obvious reasons, but it *is* possible to overdo it. You want some semblance of an offense as well. Kick / Gouge / Kidney / Blind is nice, but you want to put some pressure on in the form of damage in addition to that, otherwise you might just play hemo with a couple of stoppable forces.
People say everyone 'except paladins' should go for 12 sta sockets ... so what should we go for? healing-type sockets?
Correlated question .. for a paladin who only arenas casually (= happy if my teams get over 1500), do I need to stack resil?
In the lower rating of the 2v2 / 3v3 brackets I don't see a significant need for it. It can't hurt, but as a rogue who is squishier than a paladin, I didn't see my lack of resilience as a problem until 1750+.
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You still get above 10k HP and all that jazz. Stamina is nice for obvious reasons, but it *is* possible to overdo it. You want some semblance of an offense as well. Kick / Gouge / Kidney / Blind is nice, but you want to put some pressure on in the form of damage in addition to that, otherwise you might just play hemo with a couple of stoppable forces.
raal
That's kind of what I was thinking; I'll likely try to push myself for upper 9000s, I think that, combined with a decent set of resilience, will be enough to push our team over some of the tougher combinations we have a problem with, thanks to our lack of pvp gear.
Along the lines of how much to value stamina, is there an easy way to calculate the relative value of resilience vs. stamina? I would like to calculate the relative value of say, two trinkets, one of which was +30 stamina, and the other which was +20 stamina and +20 resilience.
Here's an initial attempt at some simple theorycrafting.
ASSUMPTION 1: You go into arenas at 12k HP fully buffed.
ASSUMPTION 2: Someone is hitting you for 800 DPS non-crit, 1600 DPS crit. They have a 30% chance to crit.
ASSUMPTION 3: You receive no heals during the course of the fight.
ASSUMPTION 4: You have no talents which boost your basic ratio of 1 stamina = 10 health.
The average damage to you will be 800 + 800*0.3 = 1040 DPS.
Your survival time is 12000/1040 = 11.538 seconds.
Now let's compare what happens when you equip a +20 stamina trinket vs. a +20 resilience trinket.
With +20 stamina, your HP increases by 200.
Your survival increases to 12200 / 1040 = 11.731 seconds, a gain of .192s.
With +20 resilience, you reduce your attacker's damage as follows.
Base DPS is still 800.
Additional crit damage drops from 800 to 800*(1-0.02*(20/39.42)) = 791.882.
Percent chance to crit drops from 30 to 30-(20/39.42) = 29.493.
Total average damage is now 800 + 791.88*.2949 = 1033.547
Your survival time is now 12000/1033.55 = 11.611, a gain of .072s.
Ratio of Stamina gain vs Resilience gain = .192 / .072 = 2.66
*** BURST DAMAGE AND PROCS ***
According to the above analysis, stamina is much better than resilience for survivability. But it doesn't take into effect the additional benefits of crit, such as "burstiness" or chance to activate/proc trinkets or talents. When I say burstiness, I mean the ability for you or your healer to react to a sudden spike in damage taken. To model this, let's say the value of the attacker's crit increases from +800 to +1600. Then the numbers become:
The average damage to you will be 800 + 1600*0.3 = 1280 DPS.
Your survival time is 12000/1280 = 9.375 seconds.
With +20 stamina, your HP increases by 200.
Your survival increases to 12200 / 1280 = 9.531 seconds, a gain of .156s.
With +20 resilience, you reduce your attacker's damage as follows.
Base DPS is still 800.
Additional crit damage drops from 1600 to 1600*(1-0.02*(20/39.42)) = 1583.765.
Percent chance to crit drops from 30 to 30-(20/39.42) = 29.49.
Total average damage is now 800 + 1583.765*.2949 = 1267.094
Your survival time is now 12000/1267.094 = 9.470, a gain of .095s.
Ratio of Stamina gain vs Resilience gain = .156 / .095 = 1.64
So even by doubling the value of crit bonus damage (from +100% to +200%), Stamina still increases survivability by more. With this assumption, I would value Resilience to be only 1/1.64 = .61 Stamina points. Going back to my original item comparison, a trinket with +20 Stamina and +20 Resilience would be equivalent to one with 20 * (1 + .61) = +32.2 Stamina alone.
So even by doubling the value of crit bonus damage (from +100% to +200%), Stamina still increases survivability by more. With this assumption, I would value Resilience to be only 1/1.64 = .61 Stamina points. Going back to my original item comparison, a trinket with +20 Stamina and +20 Resilience would be equivalent to one with 20 * (1 + .61) = +32.2 Stamina alone.
Key point here....
You receive no heals during the course of the fight.
As soon as you start talking about a target that is getting healed, resiliance starts to get better and better.
As a Shaman, I tend to have a warrior or rogue beating on me constantly and resiliance is king in that scenario.
Warlocks, Priests, Druids, Shaman, and rogues, tend to soak up a lot of damage 5v5 and thus in most caseses resiliance is better once they reach a certian threshold of HP. Classes who arent often targeted (Pallys, Mages, Warriors) are probably better off stacking stamina or perhaps even some non survivability items.
..I know our Warrior in the 2200 5v5 my guild runs goes for all DPS gems and still sits at just barely > 10k health unbuffed. He could get much higher but his job in plate is to kill people fast. So he gears for killing.
Anyone in cloth should be in the 10k - 12k range minimally for high rated play.. and as close to 300 Resilience as possible. Those are good goals if you don't wanna be frustrated.
People say everyone 'except paladins' should go for 12 sta sockets ... so what should we go for? healing-type sockets?
Correlated question .. for a paladin who only arenas casually (= happy if my teams get over 1500), do I need to stack resil?
Healing type sockets should be fine. Most Paladins in my battlegroup use mostly PvE/Gladiator Gear. 8,000 HP unbufed is a decent goal, and once you are there you can feel free to customize as you see fit. I still don't have a meta-gem in my helm, and I don't really see the loss; In fact, some games instead of the Glad Headpiece I just use my Mask of Pen. I suppose the nice thing about Paladin play is that casual PvPers can just use their regular PvE gear.
If you are only doing 10 5v5s games a week, I would just focus on healing gear. Every once in a while you'll find a 2v2 or 3v3 team that will put moderate initial pressure on you to force a bubble. Rogue teams I usually put any Resilience/Stam gear I have on just in-case the Rogue decides to go for me early or the team wants to split DPS between me and their focus target. You shouldn't have to worry about resilience too much. Just use the Gladiator gear as you purchase it.
With all of the Gladiator items and a mix of honor/spirit shard items I can still reach 11,000 health, 28% crit and 220 resilience, thats with 150 HP Chest, 12 STA Bracers and a Solid Star of Elune. In general theres really no reason for a Warrior to put 12 STA gems in everything or most of his items, we already can reach 10k-11k health easly so it's not a big deal where the extra 500-600 health is worst losing 2-3% crit.
STA increases your health buffer before you're in danger of dying, Resilience increases how long it takes before you reach the danger point. Are you considering how many people are attacking you in that? Most of the time you have at least 2-3 people attacking you at the same time, it's fairly rare to only have one person is trying to burn you.
People say everyone 'except paladins' should go for 12 sta sockets ... so what should we go for? healing-type sockets?
Correlated question .. for a paladin who only arenas casually (= happy if my teams get over 1500), do I need to stack resil?
This is an issue since there just aren't any particularly attractive gems, especially red ones. From the standard crafted rare variety gems, there's basically 12 stam or 8 int to choose from. I go with elunes (once I can afford them).
e: I wouldn't stack resilience as a paladin, resilience doesn't pay off unless you're getting heals. In 2s or 3s if you're a target there's noone other than yourself to heal you and it usually isn't the best course of action. In 5s, if all your other healers are paladins, I guess it could make sense, if there's any healers other than paladins the other team will go for them.
This is an issue since there just aren't any particularly attractive gems, especially red ones. From the standard crafted rare variety gems, there's basically 12 stam or 8 int to choose from. I go with elunes (once I can afford them).
e: I wouldn't stack resilience as a paladin, resilience doesn't pay off unless you're getting heals. In 2s or 3s if you're a target there's noone other than yourself to heal you and it usually isn't the best course of action. In 5s, if all your other healers are paladins, I guess it could make sense, if there's any healers other than paladins the other team will go for them.
Wouldn't teardrops (or hell, even royal nightseye) be a reasonable choice for a red socket?
I'm sitting at 9.3k unbuffed in pvp gear with ~20 resilience, I wear my timekeeper's legs and crest of the sha'tar from my tanking set ... should I grab the arena legs (currently only wearing gloves) and go back to my healing shield? In 2s with a MS warrior I tend to get shut down more than burned down (fear/CS me and attempt to blow up my DPS).
05/01/07, 6:42 PM
