Cronjob

Thanks for the response. Yup I'm looking for a PVP/PVE hybrid robe an I thought the felshoud did just that. I could spec between my pvp spec and my raid spec. The crit wouldnt help much in PVP assuming you are facing high resillience opponents, but it would really help in PVE. On the other hand there are robes out there that would be better for pure PVE and maybe I should just bite the bullet and grab these as my PVP set and go dreadweave.

 

◊ Vain

The test done in this thread Question about spell hit talents (search for post by DaveA50) shows evidence that it does.

However, I've seen posts by other people such as Papaschapa claim that it does not, see here: World Of Papa: 17/0/44 vs 0/7/54: The Great Debate

 

s[orc]ery

I'm currently using the latter and has worked pretty well for me, and this one also has the added bonus of attacking your target once totems are dead.

/petattack
/petattack [target=Grounding Totem]
/petattack [target=Tremor Totem]
/petattack [target=Earthbind Totem]
/petattack [target=Windfury Totem]

 

• probiscus

Full disclosure: my test consisted of dueling a shaman/friend, having him throw every totem that was in my macro (which was bumping the character limit) and the pet would only attack the poison cleansing totem, and maybe a grounding on occasion. Never the WF/tremor/mana tide/searing, etc. I just thought it was odd, as it made sense that one would be able to spam said macro and have it work if the totem was up.

 

• frmorrison

I did tests a few months ago that suppression did nothing to unbreakable will, and this DaveA50 showed no screenshots of his test, nor is he on a top 10 Arena team.

However, Papa is on a top 10 Arena team, and is a least a more active poster so I would assume he did some through testing.

It is possible that silence and fear being affected by spell hit from that talent have different mechanics, at least one Warlock Glickz has a few extra points in Suppression.


Regarding totem killing,
/petattack [target=grounding totem] etc in a seperate macro works best for me.

 

◊ Vain

If spell hit rating beyond 3% doesn't help, then the Merciless Gladiator's Spellblade (and its +15 hit rating bonus) really isn't much of an upgrade, as you can hardly avoid having 3% spell hit across the rest of your gear already.

 

s[orc]ery

Strangely enough i tested it against a shaman friend of my own and my felhunter stomped all of them then went to attack him Are you sure your syntax is correct?

Edit: Nevermind. Your problem is probably a result of your enemy shaman's name starting with the same letter as one of the totems in your macro.

 

seeyou

Apologies for the wall of text in advance.

Looking for a bit of advice from the experienced arena locks here. I'm sitting at about 11.5k HP, 230 resilience in my pvp gear. Next week should see me hitting 300 with another piece of Glad gear and the bonus, and a few hundred HP.

We have a 3v3 team consisting of a Holy pally healer (4 piece gladiators), a hemo rogue (glad weapons, 300+ resil) and myself. Last season we seemed to be on our way to doing reasonably well, but this season we seem to have hit a brick wall around the 1700 mark. (awesome, I know)

I've been jumping around between specs a LOT, trying to find the one that works best for our combo, but I can't seem to settle on anything. Sometimes something will work for a bit, and then things will go completely downhill, and we encounter a situation where "that build" would've worked a lot better, etc.

As 23/38, in BG's I tend to win every 1v1 or even 1v2 I find myself in, with a healer as backup it's even better - but when it comes to arena, I'm not quite sure where this spec fits in. If we try to burst someone down when facing a 2dps/1healer team - well, I have no burst, and even if I land a spell lock on the healer we don't seem to be able to finish someone off before one of us gets CC'd or they come out of it. The majority of my DPS is also dispellable. The mana drain tactic doesn't seem to work so hot either - getting enough time to drain off a 9k mana pool with a rogue/warrior/hunter beating on you just doesn't seem to happen. If I switch solely to harassing the healer with CoT / Spell lock, it'll work for a whiel, but our rogue won't be able to finish off a target on his own. Usually our pally will run out of mana here and we'll be picked off.

Afflic works slightly better. I do guaranteed damage with UA, but I'm remarkably squishy and rogues/warriors put huge strain on our healer with wounding/MS if they focus me, which they almost always do. It's also tough to get anything more than the initial UA's up between being beaten on, CS'd, spell locked, etc. After a while I end up kiting a rogue/warrior around and getting off some insta-dots, which are usually dispelled, and harassing the healer a bit. This is my preferred build for arenas, but I just feel remarkably squishy here. Could be my lack of Res.

Lastly is x/41/x or some derivative there-of. This also seems to work pretty well for us in some matchups, and not at all in others. I'm far less squishy, but besides the FG's DPS I feel all but useless in adding anything meaningful damage-wise. All dps is dispellable and I can't exactly sit there chain-casting SB's. SP doesn't do much damage. My usual tactic is to set the FG on the DPS target and harass the healer - but once again we can't seem to out-damage the other team before our healer OOMs.

Any advice on which spec would benefit my gear level the most? What I should be concentrating on doing in matches with our particular make-up?

 

Quixotic

With your makeup, and lack of gear, 23/38 is the best spec for you. Focus on keeping your dots up on the rogue's target, and CoT on the healer, and rotate fear between the healer and the other dps. You out last the healers mana pool without even having to drain mana, because your rogue is locking down one dps, and you are fearing the other so your paladin should be ahead on the mana war between healers. If you have spare time, by all means get drains off, but your main priority should be fearing and keeping steady pressure up.

If all a priest has to do is renew/pom a target, he won't go oom nearly fast enough. CC him so he is forced to flash heal, then drain his mana while he is casting heals in los.

 

• frmorrison

Right, the S2 isn't much of an upgrade, since spell hit past 3% is not so useful (at least in my testing). However, 26 +damage, a few stamina/int/resilence adds up to be a solid upgrade over the S1 weapon, but not worth the points compared to the upgrade from S1 to S2 armor and the off-hand.

It is the 3rd best PvE caster weapon in the game though.

 

• probiscus

Crap, that's a great point. The name was popinski. I'll have to go back this evening w/ another one of our shaman and try again - I'd pretty much gone back to manually clicking them >_<

Thanks for the feedback - didn't even think to try with another shaman.

 

Asherz

What would you say are the other options? I'm kind of in the same boat as far as this dilemma goes.

I went on a hiatus from WoW and missed S1. Now I'm back and I've become mostly decked out in gear from Tailoring & Kara. 3/3 Shadoweave, T4 Helm/Goves, Spellstrike Leggings. I think my big weakness currently is my weapon, the sword from Shadow Labs. I get about 700 arena points a week and should be able to afford either the S2 Staff or Blade next week. The staff is tempting for the stats but doesn't seem to offer as much versatility. Unfortunately I lost the roll on the prince dagger this week or else I'd be enjoying the best of both worlds. For PVE the Dagger & Offhand is king while PvP the Staff might be the way to optimize stamina.

 

• frmorrison

I would get S2 dagger because it is a huge gain over a blue and then a off-hand from PvE, there are many that will work like 25 badge items and the Mag off-hand, or even the Oga'la exalted one. Next get the S2 Dreadweave set to work towards the soon to be sexy 4/5 bonus on Fear.


For PvP the dagger and offhand is king, at least for Locks/SP. The staff has more stamina and spell crit at the cost of the off-hand's spell damage and resilience, which is the opposite of what you want.

Especially for Locks, you only need around 12,000 health, then you stack up resilience and damage.

 

Zure

If you're using a 5 man weapon, the arena weapons are definitely a solid choice for upgrades.

However, the 4 pc bonus is about to become indispensable though (0.2 seconds off fear), so you might want to go 4 pc arena and then save points for a season 3 weapon if you consistently have access to Kara for potential weapons (the curator staff is nothing to sneeze at, in addition to the Nathrezim Mindblade).

Tailored gear is very much lacking in the stam/resil that are so vital in pvp (especially as a warlock).

You're not alone in having trouble keeping healers from healing, but between spell lock, devour for HoTs, fear, deathcoil, tongues, plus wound poison on the target and blind+HoJ to allow fear DR to reset, you SHOULD be able to get the killing blow. My hunch is that you (and your teammates) might benefit from more planning with regard to your use of CC.

 

Asherz

I do have access to a weekly Kara clear, but that is about it as far as raiding. Unfortunately I'm a benchwarmer in my guild.. I'll have to go Tonya Harding on someone.

There will be one more trip to Kara that happens before I'll get the remaining points I need for a S2 weapon. If I get the Nathrezim Mindblade then I will likely be re-thinking getting the S2 weapon first, and opt for the Robes instead.

I'll have to do some homework on the comparisons between the Staff vs Dagger&Offhand for resilience. I'm currently using the Infinite Possibilities offhand and was saving up badges so that I could convert to the 51 dmg / 18 stamina offhand for PvE once I was able to get hitcapped on other gear.

Prior to the responses I was thinking the Staff would be better for PvP due to the stats and resilience... I was not thinking that there would be an offhand / dagger combo that would beat it for PvP.

Thanks for the input guys.

 

• probiscus

Honestly, save the arena points, if you're wearing tailoring gear (?!?!?!) in arena's you should really try and grab the curator staff, unless it's going to cost you DKP.

The problem you're facing is the opportunity cost of picking up *any* arena weapons vs. the arena gear. In my opinion, unless you're already decked out in S1 gear (which you've admitted your not) you're going to be better off picking up whatever mix of S1 / S2 gear you can get - assuming your goal is survivability in arena's.

If you're just trying to get some more PvE gear, then yeah, get either arena weapon ASAP.

Personally, I get jack shit for points / week seeing as how my 5's is a joke and hasn't played anything in like 2 months, so my gear purchases are more strategic. Acknowledging I'm not going to get 4pc S2 *in* S2, I'm sticking w/ 2pc S1 and 2 pc S2 as my first "goal" - at which point I might pick up a weapon, but am more likely to start stockpiling for S3.

 

sithaden

Ok so i have been browsing through this and I thought I would inquire about our arena teams problem. We are using a holy priest and two shadowfury locks. We all have decent pvp gear with around 200ish resilience and I have 11k hp unbuffed. We are experiencing huge issues with melee groups as expected using 3 clothies. My question is: Are we totally screwing ourselves with this group build or is it salvageable? I have considered speccing UA and allowing the other lock to keep shadowfury since our immolates and such keep getting dispelled. Any tips would be much appreciated.

 

• Symbul

Re: Armor vs Weapons first, I'm getting 4pc Dreadweave before I'm saving for Spellblade and Endgame. I started at the very end of Season 1, only getting Gloves when S2 came out. The Armor/Stamina/Resil boost from the armor set is entirely too valuable as a soft target and the upcoming 4pc bonus will be essential. The damage boost from Weapons is great and all, but as a soft, no-escape, target you're forced to take survivability first - unless maybe you're on a 4dps zerg team with Shadow Priests to tank for you.

 

PapaShlapa

My tests weren't exactly 100% conclusive, I'll admit. What I did was this:

-Baulthus(Paladin) using only imp. conc aura with no necklace or arcane resist
-Toss 40 CSes at him while he's healing. The result was 5(I think? maybe 6) resists, and the rest were either half resisted(silence resist, interrupt hit) or full hits.
-Baulthus(Paladin) using imp. conc aura + necklace, no arcane resist
-Toss 40 CSes at him while he's healing. The result was 16(I think?) resists, and the rest were either half resisted(silence resist, interrupt hit) or full hits.

All tests were performed with me wearing +16% arcane hit. The crux of the issue is this:
If +arcane hit affected "Chance to resist silence/interrupt" his 15% resist in the first test from imp. conc aura would have been entirely negated by my spell hit. If that were the case and he had only the 1% base chance to resist, the chances of him resisting 5 or 6 out of 40 are very, very low. Also in the second test, the chances of him resisting that many with only a 14% chance to resist(after spell hit) would be quite low as well.

From this albeit limited testing, I concluded spell hit had no effect on that mechanic. Nowadays the entire point is moot, though.

http://siggen.xembler.org.nyud.net:8...statsO1ukn.jpg

 

Asherz

Re: Season 2 Staff vs Dagger/Offhand:

Staff:
55 Stamina
42 Intellect
24 Hit
42 Crit
29 Resilience
225 +Dmg

Dagger & Endgame Offhand combined total:
54 Stamina
37 Intellect
15 Hit
45 Resilience
260 +Dmg

 

Kcolraw

meh, i'm getting felweave, silk, and staff, because i really don't want to limit myself specwise... i don't mind sacrificing a bit of stam/damage/whatever for crit, so if i ever want to spec destro i'll have the gear

 

Quixotic

Dagger, simply for the fact that you can stab totems that much faster imo.

 

Kcolraw