So I was thinking about this while messing around on WoWdigger making some gear builds etc, and I was wondering what would benefit a warlock (with Demonic Embrace) in arenas, more stamina from gems etc or the Resil Cap. This is interesting to with the upcoming stats on gear that Ignore targets armor, since resil can help on those burst hits. But with the armor reduction, the regular damage you take will be upped.

Though this can apply to anything in general, not just the armor reduction. So Stamina or Resilience cap? Discuss.

A good mix of both.

The thing is the 4 piece is pretty powerful (0.2 off Fear), so you lose 35 resilience, so you want to use stead talasites (or the 8 resil gem) in yellow sockets to make up for lost resilience.

Sounds to me like you want Steady Talasite.

You'll get plenty of Stamina without trying. I'm a fan of resilience over stamina, but I'm married to my Mystical Skyfire Diamond so compromises have to be made. Even next patch with the 45sec hidden cooldown I don't think I could stand to lose this gem.

Resil cap, no questions asked.

I go for the mix of the two sets so that I can get get some PvE gear in as well. The Kara shadow neck and a decent + damage back. Next season with the Heroic Badge Back I may look at getting the 4piece bonus, but I doubt it, i would prefer to replace the bracers with some PvE ones.

Since we got the Steady Talasite I've been using that gem. Since in my opinion we need both really.

Probably a good mix of both would be best. But if I were you I would still go heavier on the resilience and try to reach the cap as best you can. Since DoTs are now affected by resilience too, being close to the cap will really help.

As a note: I have been using pretty much just the Steady Talasites and have been able to get to about 12.5k HP unbuffed and 486 Resilience as a warlock. Also take into account I still don't have a PvP weapon or wand for non-caster teams, this alone would bring me over the cap.

Just my two cents..

I agree with this, especially if you play with one or more healers. Stamina and resilience perform the same role in two very different ways. When playing with a healer I view stamina as a buffer to increase the amount of damage I can take in order for the healer to get me back up. If I have 12k hp and I take 8k damage before the healer can get me back up to full then those last 4000 hp are essentially worthless as they are unused. If I have enough resilience to effectively reduce the amount of damage I take by 10% which leaves me at 10k hp, and I take 7200 burst (8k*.9) before the healer can get me back up then I have accomplished the same thing while saving my healer more mana.

Imo, you only need enough hp to survive the burst damage until you can get healed. After that, stamina's contribution is worthless compared to that of resilience.

Well the tradeoff in many cases is negligible dependent on spec'ing. If you're Sl/Sl as I'm assuming then you are either the 27/34/0 or 23/38/0 cookie cutters. If you're the later, you're likely going to hit demonic resilience, which, to my knowledge, stacks beyond the 492 resil cap (at least thats what i read at mmo champ). However if you opted to spec otherwise, you are losing .2 off your fear, which in essence isn't going to be a 'make or break' very often. Once you have about 11-12k hp unbuffed, focus on resil as your primary concern. With demonic resil (3/3, i spec'd when i had far less resil then i do now, and I'm sticking with it until i hit 400+ unbuffed.) and any other kind of healing class, you SHOULD be able to dominate most of the low-medium end 2v2/3v3 brackets. As we all know... locks suck in 5v5, kkthx.

i wear 495 resil with about 13k hp unbuffed. works good for me

I can definitely see the 4-piece bonus being useful, I get interrupted at the very end of fear all the time. Right now though I'm gonna go for the double 2-piece bonuses to get to the resilience cap.

The extra 0.2 seconds off fear cast time pretty much blow the double 35 resilience bonus out of the water.

There are lots of 1.5 second speed spells, however having a 1.3 second cast time fear means that you'll beat them to the cast and interrupt their spell that much easier.

rather than starting a new post.

does anybody know if in 2.3 the destruction and affliction arena sets will stack in terms of set bonuses like s1/s2/s3 of each individual set will? Or can i safely assume ill be able to get 2 peices of s1 destruction for that extra 35 res

No, the destruction and the affliction sets are still different with respect to the set bonus.