Sooner or later everybody is gonna have their full season 2 sets which will leave a lot of people with unused season 1 gear sitting in the bank (unless you wear 2/5 season 1 and 3/5 season 2) so I was wondering if anybody had some creative ideas of how to make the gear useful again. Maybe it would only be situational but a warlock fighting a pally that had 200+ resistance with shadow aura because he decked his season 1 gear with void spheres and shadow armor kits would certainly be painful.

Of course, a lot of these things would probably only be effective in 2v2 and 3v3 but it would be interesting to try I think.

One could resocket them in a different way from S1 gear depending on whether one wants more +damage gems vs. more +sta gems (for example). This only works for 3 pieces, but I could see some situational benefit from this. Another reason to hang onto some pieces is if one wants 2 2pc set bonuses for a match instead of the 4pc set bonus (varies greatly by class if this is worthwhile).

I'll be doing with the season 1 gear what I did with my Deadmines gear.

I don't think socketing it differently will have a large impact to the point it would ever be worth downgrading out of the season 2 gear if it were available.

The set only has 6 sockets and 1 meta gem socket, so even in full +4 resist gems you would only net yourself 24 extra shadow resist.

+24 from resist gems
+16 from shadow armor kit to gloves/chest.
+15 shadow resist to PvP cloak
+20 from helm enchant
+10 from AD enchant to pants
+7 all to shoulders from Violet eye

total +shadow resistance: 92
total all school resistance: 31

I'm not saying its worth it, but we might as well get our facts straight.

I'd say that it is more likely that certain classes (*cough* warlocks *cough* shadow priests) would socket that set of gear with +10 spell penetration gems, so that they can easily break +100 spell penetration in a PvP set that offers them some decent amount of stamina/resilience as well.

Spell penetration is maybe important for SPriests and Locks, so it is a good idea to keep S1 gear.

You can get 60 spell pen from gems + 20 from cloak + 10 from ring + 88 from Curse of Shadows for removing 178 Shadow Resist.


Edit: Wrong CoS number

Its closer to -88 resist for curse of shadwos. http://www.thottbot.com/s27229

I'm only going 10 ring 20 cloak 4 10 penetration gems for fighting teams with priests.

I'm taking them to the dry cleaners.

Actually, I'll probably be wearing 2 pieces of Season 1 for quite a bit of time, my Arena points don't come in that fast. I was going to resocket them for pure PVE purposes eventually, but I've come across some better stuff as of late (almost full clear of Kara last week).

The Spell Penetration swap is an interesting one, although I don't face many teams who stack against it, I'm assuming only top teams have dedicated SR gear.

I'm *this* close to slapping the 20 SR on the helm because I hate Locks with such a passion I have to wonder though, is that really much help? I am still struggling to figure out if 20 resist is worth it in the long run. Thoughts, please?

Shadow resist is pretty negligible unless you stack it to decent amounts.

With 20 shadow resist you will have a tiny bit higher chance to partially resist shadow damage than if you had no shadow resist.

It's not going to dramatically alter any fights you have against a warlock, however if you were to pick up some Shadow Protection greens from the auction house and get 200+ shadow resist, you will definitely alter the fight drastically.

I can think of one use, viability depending on how many points you generally bank up during a season beyond your current Arena needs.

Pure DPS/"rush team" gems and enchants versus stamina and stat/stamina or res gems and enchants can make a set of otherwise similar gear into entirely different characters. Gear that works great when you are unlikely to be targeted first (ex. warrior on 5v5 arena team) or have a healer behind you and probably won't run into overwhelming mass focus fire (ex. warrior on an org PvP team) doesn't work so well when you want to duel someone or PvP on your own, or solo an instance. And personal juggernaut suits good for that stuff are half-useless when you aren't being beaten on.

People on max-point 5v5 teams were buying entire alternate sets in Season 1 for this sort of changeout, but if you're like the vast majority of the WoW population, you don't have that many spare points, especially if you want a weapon.

Re-gemming and enchanting the Season 1 gear to do something else is a budget alternative, at least from the perspective of Arena points (gold is so easy to get now it's hardly a factor if you're serious about overhauling some gear).

I hadn't mentioned the cape or anything from honor rewards because I assumed we were just discussing arena gear. Anyways, while the items can be enchanted/socketed differently, if your goal was to switch into some shadow resist heavy gear it seems like you would be doing so because you're facing a full shadow damage team. If this is the case, there would be better gear to suit this purpose as you can get gear specifically suited for it, or wear some PvE dps gear with shadow resist gems/enchants, because against that team setup resilience is more or less a waste of the item budget, and your season 1 gear uses a lot of it's budget on it.

Using the warrior's Merciless Gladiator's Battlegear compared to the Gladiator's Battlegear, the total base stat difference is:
+34 strength
+31 stamina
+25 melee critical strike rating
+18 melee hit rating
+6 resilience
+639 armor

That leaves you with enchants and 6 variable slots for other stats. Assuming the warrior had SSoE in all 6 slots, that's +72 stamina. Gearing the season 1 gear alternatively, the warrior could get +4 resist all gems totaling +24 resistance to all magic.

Regarding enchants:
Gloves: Both pairs will likely have +15 strength as there isn't a resistance alternative.
Helm: Glyph of Ferocity (34 attack power, 16 hit rating) can be subbed with +20 shadow resistance.
Shoulders: Greater Inscription of the Blade (15 crit strike rating, 20 AP) can be subbed with +7 to all resists.
Legs: Nethercobra Leg Armor (50 AP, 12 crit strike rating) for +10 shadow resist.
Chest: 15 resilience rating replaced by a shadow armor kit for +8 shadow resistance.

Overall that leaves the warrior with:
-34 strength
-103 stamina
-52 melee critical strike rating
-34 melee hit rating
-21 resilience
-639 armor
-104 attack power
To gain a whopping:
+31 to all magic resistances
+38 shadow resistance for a total of 69 shadow resist.

How would anyone ever think that it was worth that much stat sacrifice for 69 shadow resist when you can pick up one pair of the Shadesteel Greaves (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=32404) which have 54 stamina, 72 shadow resist and will only cause you to lose:
-47 strength
-9 stamina
-14 hit rating
-43 critical strike rating
-22 resilience
To gain:
+72 shadow resist

By having one item that's focused on shadow resist (yet keeping the better leg enchant instead of dropping it in favor of the much weaker leg enchant) you end up with much less stat loss from downgrading, and you also end up with higher shadow resist.

Giving mine away to the homeless and the illiterate.

(druid)

Season 2 gear for tanking, Season 1 gear (started late, only picked up shoulders) for pve DPS.

Replace S2 gear with "for healing" and that's my plan. I don't expect it to be optimal, or even cunning, and perhaps it's entirely a plan that appeals to the avarice of purple over blue regardless of stat evaluation. Who knows!

Personally I keep all of my old gear until I'm sure I won't need it. Why? Because you never know what Blizzard decides to buff, nerf, change or fix and I rather waste a couple of bank slots instead of wasting time farming for it again.

Keep it, season 1 Warrior arena gear is so stylish on me.

Once I get a Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver, I'll replace my S1 weapon's Mongoose enchant with a Weapon Chain.

I'm turning my S1 gear into a Spell Penetration set (2v2s) for teams known to wear heavy SR. We ran into a stupidly geared (bunch of obvious greens) Hunter/Druid team that just slowly ran my Paladin OOM while both of them resisted Fear after Fear.

Shoulders - 20
Robes - 30
Cloak - 20
Ring - 15
Ring - 10

That's -95 off their SR gear, without using Curse of Shadows. If they have no de-curser, the total rises to -183.

A decent option is fill out (or, more likely, leave it filled out) with 12sta gems for BGs and use resilience/etc. gems for your S2. A higher hp pool is more valuable than resilience (or even dmg) for BG fun imho due to the far fewer heals you will recieve.

On my rogue I am slowly converting all my S1 gear into hybrid DPS gear (for arena not PVE) while my S2 will become my max survivability build. Since im either not targeted at all (2v2 with my holy priest) or targeted the whole time (3v3 or 5v5, even though I quit 5v5 on my rogue) I figured it be nice to have 2 sets of gear, one with more dmg output and 30% less res.

As for my warlock, I just got to 70 a month ago, I already have 2 piece S2 and will probably keep 2 piece S1 since double 35+ res bonuses are sexy.

How will this do you any good now that you won't be able to swap gear in arenas?

From the looks of it he intends to wear 1 set for 2v2 and 1 set for the others, not necessarily switch out mid-fight.