This is something that has been bothering me for a while, but it seemed pointless to make a post about it until it was actually relevant. Basically: In the Black Temple, there are a few fights with massive amounts of Shadow damage being thrown around. To this end, there is some very, very high-quality Shadow resistance armor available. Five of the pieces are created by patterns that are sold by the Ashtongue quartermaster (http://www.wowhead.com/?faction=1012), and the sixth piece is the necklace that you use for entry into BT (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32649). The stats on these sets, the same for every class, break down as follows:

Neck: 49 stamina 40 shadow resist
Back, Bracer: 30 stamina 40 shadow resist
Belt, Boots: 40 stamina 54 shadow resist
Leggings: 54 stamina 72 shadow resist

That's six pieces to cap you (or come very close, if you don't have access to Shadow Protection, Shadow Resistance Aura, or Mark of the Wild). They're cheap to make, and everyone in a BT guild is going to have them anyway for PvE content. Here's what's been bothering me: aren't these pieces going to completely obliterate Warlocks and Shadowpriests at the high end of both 2v2 and 3v3? Yes, these pieces have only Shadow resistance and stamina, but the loss of stats is a small price to pay for a permanent Shield Wall.

This whole thing seems like a huge oversight, and it seems like it's going to have a major effect on the metagame at the highest levels. It's a kick in the nuts after I have put in a sizable time investment to get the gear to do some competitive 2v2 in this coming season. Does anyone disagree that the PvP implications of this are just too severe? Why is no one else talking about this?

Because dots aren't affected by resilience.

Well. I guess from Blizzard's point of view, all of these pieces are attainable for everyone. If you look at the materials, they are mostly attainable outside of BT, sans Heart of Darkness. I admit I am not a BT raider, I have no clue how abundant these particular items are.

But, eventually, one would think that these Hearts of Darkness would become quite abundant in a guild bank, and one would think that said guild would have an interest in selling or crafting these particular pieces for guild profit.

Point being. Anyone who is truly competitive will have access to these pieces. Does that gimp a full shadow team? Yeah. But that team was gimmicky anyway, and could be countered with greens.

At first blush I thought this was bad too -- but lets be honest, you can do the same thing with greens right now if you really wanted to. Sure it would take a few extra pieces but the gimped damage really doesn't matter if they can't hurt you to begin with. All this does is make the pieces more common in the long run due to the extra high stats.

Not every combination or class is going to be viable at high level arena play, and 2v2 and 3v3 are always going have some glaring imbalances. 5v5 will remain mostly unaffected by this because you can't exactly gimp the rest of your gear just to counter one warlock. It would shut down gimmicky shadow-heavy teams, but that's the whole point to a gimmicky team -- there's a hard counter to them.

This sort of items has had a tendency not to filter out into the general populace. Even Fiery Cores and such were never a big commodity despite the guild banks having hundreds. Only Onyxia scales(/cloaks) were a common sight on the AH. At least that's how it's been where I play.

Not a fair analogy. How would you feel if you ran into a SP/Warlock team who all of a suddon swapped into plate gear, reducing your damage by 50-75% while only costing them 20-30% damage done.

This makes no mention of the fact that abilities which are shadowbased can now be totally resisted. (IE:Fear) Imagine if that plate gear that they swapped into suddenly made them resistant to Mortal Strike.

It will break 2v2 and 3v3 for shadowbased teams for sure. Do they need to do something about DoTs not being affected by resilence sure. But dont pretend like BT shadow resist gear is the answer.

Edit: A constructive fix IMO, would be to limit gear swapping in the arena. This prevent wholesale gear swaps which are pure cheese. If they dont do something like this, they are gonna have to create similar quality +dmg gear with a shit ton of spell penetration. That way both sides can cheese the gear swap, and the most skilled team might actually win.

What would be the opinion of changing the critical strike damage reduction to resilience to instead just be a general damage reduction? That way it would have an use on dots which most people seem to state to be overpowered.

Time to run AQ20 to get your eye of moam!

Oh man, I cant wait for the outcome of an arena to depend on who is quickest at itemracking their +resist or spell penetration gear. /sarcasm

It might be wise to start pulling the 'Oh-mah-gahd-its-heading-straight-for-us' maneuver in arenas by charging straight at them and getting an AOE fear off before they know what hit them and have the chance to swap out gear.

They might start coming out the door with their full shadow resist gear on, but they would learn their lesson pretty damn quick when a totally different team pounces on them (Warrior/Priest/Paladin?), they get caught with that gear on and ripped to shreds.

Like Siawyn said, if its not a problem right now (given BUTTLOADS of green shadow resist gear floating around) its likely to never be a problem.

It actually is pretty prevalent at the top teir to see a warior pally team swap into green shadow resist gear. The reason no one is screaming bloody murder at the moment, is because swapping into that gear costs them MAJOR stats. If you start giving them epic shadow resist gear, it will become a major problem.

Might want to start stacking +magic (instead of +shadow) so you have a backup weapon, then.

It'll be pretty huge for my all stealth group. We'll be able to easily swap in whatever gear is necessary for our opponents.

It's totally cheese, but I'd be surprised to see Blizzard make a change until it becomes a big deal.

I am fully aware of how to counter the gear swap, I'm not a total newb.

What you seem to have missed tho, is that the epic shadow gear will allow the warrior and pally to retain very close to their current stats, since the resistance is so heavily stacked per piece. Hence the imbalance.

It is a very real problem, and I will be shocked if Blizzard doesn't do something to prevent it.

Arena gear is all +magic so that isnt an issue. But the ability to render an entire spec useless using 4 pieces of gear is pretty much imbalanced. Forced a shadowpriest to smite, is kinda like forcing a warrior to fight unarmed.

I'd more likely just participate in the arms race to stack spell penetration.

I haven't missed it, and I'm sorta excited about the change coming from a War/Pal group.

We have run with war toting ~200 SR before and I don't know how much I liked it. Maybe when he gets his T3 weapon it will be different, but with greens and old lvl60 epics he just didn't have the AP to take anything out quickly turning the fight into a fear fest. Eventually we won, but we did play the game much better. After that the team just came at us different and we couldn't counter their outlast strat. I think the shadow resist gear turns the smaller brackets into somewhat "even" fights if anything. You'll still have the 2v2/3v3 class advantage and if equally geared with T3 Arena, should be fine.

It does definitely take out what should be "easy wins" for you guys, so I see where you are coming from in being worried about this change.

Wrong, it will be grossly imbalanced in the warrior pally favor w/o stacking a serious amount of spell penetration. Consider this, lets say you have 300 resilence which covers basically all of your gear slots. That might reduce your total damage taken by 10-15% against a crit dependant team. 200 Shadow resist will reduce your damage taken 50-75% by a shadow dependant team, while at the same time having a chance at totally negating abilities such as fear. The Shadow Resist in itself is not the problem, but then allow the team wearing it to do 80-90% of their maximum dps while wearing it. That will not work out fine I assure you.

The "easy win" pally/warrior teams stopped at 2k in my battlegroup. Thankfully, so did the dual rogue smurf teams.

No one is talking about this because its stupid. Epic FR gear has been available since January and you can get it doing 5 mans. This is completely unfair to the pom/pyro mage teams (oh noes!). Guess what, epic frost and nature gear is also much easier to obtain and doesn't require you to be farming BT.

You are gimmick team, so you have a gimmick counter. If you want to avoid the gimmick counter, then man up and make some adjustments.

You've obviously never played a warrior or a rogue in resist gear then ... I switch into a resist suit and see 1600 attack power go to 700. That's called halving my dps. Those are the biggest stat items, making them ONLY Sta/Resist is taking away an enormous amount of stats.

Actually, I have. Halving your AP doesn't halve your DPS. Go test it, you will find it to be much higher than that. Same with me and +dmg, I can drop half my +dmg and only lose ~25% of my max dps.

The whole point of the OP is that Epic Resist gear will allow you to keep very near your max AP, while cutting a shadowbased teams dps in half or more. This will apply to Shadow/Shadow, Shadow/Hybrid, Shadow/Healer teams. I wouldn't consider either of the later 2 any more gimmicky than a Physical/Healer team.

As long as they don't restrict weapon switching, don't see it being that big of a deal, of course that doesn't change the fact that you can still figure out who you're playing before the doors open if they're on the same faction/different server.

So bring a set of spell penetration gear. The other team has to give up stats in order to counter SP+Warlock, likewise the same is expected of SP+Warlock teams.