The cloak and glove enchants are pretty boring stuff for spellcasters. I wanted to ask about the viability of some of the new interesting options we have in WoW.

+20 damage or +35 healing enchant: Orthodox recommendation

+15 spell hit: Mostly a PVE stat. Since the 4% hit or whatever it is needed to hit a player is easily attainable I can see why this isn't popular for PVP gear.

+10 Stamina: the dark horse but still with a solid user base. I usually see it with non-shadow priests and people that need survival over additional heal power stacking.

+240 Armor: a recent addition to 2.3, mostly gone unnoticed except by protection warriors and paladins, with whom it has become very popular. No use at all to PVE casters, but offering a significant little boost to clothie casters' armor rating, even at arena levels.

Given the spell penetration enchant is also pretty boring, but the orthodox choice for casters in PVP, I was wondering about the cloak enchant available as well. My question, then, is: Could it be theoretically viable for a caster to trade the traditional +20 spell damage/+20 penetration to gain +360 armor?

Spell hit is extremely important for PVP considering numerous classes have 15% chance to resist Fear effects, stuns, curses, etc. Given the difficulty in keeping the MSD meta gem active, 15 spell hit to gloves is a wise choice due to the non-existence of non-yellow spell hit gems.

Unless something was changed recently, +hit doesn't effect the fear/silence etc resist talents.

When/where was this tested?

It certainly affects Cloak Of Shadows...

Since when?

While it's not viable in arena, when I do BG's in pve gear I often land mind flays through cos intentionally. They cost next to no mana and with enough hit its worth trying if it means a kill/flag cap/flag return. Spamming rank1 SW:P on someone trying to run away from you with cos works fine too and can also stop a cos -> vanish if you get lucky.

Also, if the target is low enough and you have time time/range/extra mana to cast it, and the death of that player means winning the game/flag/whatever, then there is no reason not to shoot for that 10-25% chance.

From a theorycrafting PoV, how exactly does CoS work in this respect? Does it work by effectively decreasing your +spell hit on him? By how much? Does it also increase his magic resistances, such that you'd really need a lot of +hit and +penetration to hit a rogue for full in CoS?

Thottbot World of Warcraft: Cloak of Shadows

It reduces your chance to hit, and so can be countered up with straight-up +spell-hit from gear and talents. Spell penetration has zero effect on it as it does not increase his school resistances. If a warlock took full suppression and wore their PvE boss gear set, they'd have about a 20-25% chance to land a DoT through it. If there's nothing else to do, I usually find it worthwhile to try a CoX or SL.

With regards to stun/fear resistance talents/gems, etc., they use a separate mechanic altogther, f.ex Thottbot World of Warcraft: Cloak of Shadows. I haven't tested whether these are affected by spell-hit or not, but I think it's very unlikely.

More on-topic: I too recently noticed the 240 AC glove enchant, and was contemplating its efficacy for arena on my warlock. CConsidering I only have about 1k AC (although this may go up as I get arena rewards) it might work out as a good chunk of survivability against melee, which is a sticking point otherwise. Not run any numbers on it yet, but just wanted to drag the conversation back to the OP.

You can get ~8k armor(and high resilience) if you absolutely max for it as a clothie. How useful that is to any class or more importantly spec is debatable. The glove and cloak enchant seem very worthwhile if you let those slots be for armor, i.e. S2-3 gloves+enchant(533-543 AC) and Resolute cape+enchant (469 AC+ 21 res+ 30 stam). Those same enhancements make less sense on lower AC items though.

Maybe as a mage or priest with the talents they have, but definitely not as a warlock, even with Demon Armor up :<.

Ok here are better numbers:

Priest: 6747 AC Self buffed
Mage: 5782 AC Self buffed
Warlock: 5551 AC Self buffed


Armor:
Head S3 - 409
Shoulder S2 - 311
Chest S3 - 454
Pants S3 - 424
Gloves S3 - 293

Bracers Vind - 103
Boots Vind - 168
Belt Akama's Sash - 195
Back Resolute Cape - 349

Ring1 Exalted Kara ring - 392
Ring2 Mag head reward - 367
Neck no option for AC - 0

Trinket1 Badge of Tenacity - 308
Trinket2 Mark of Tyranny - 180

Enhancements
150 to head
150 to legs
40 to chest
40 to boots
120 to cloak
240 to gloves

And no one in their right mind would try to hit these marks, but you can get significant AC and high resilience without sacrificing too much. The "is it worthwhile for my spec?" question is big though.

What? Are you just making numbers up? I have around 2500 armor in almost full season 3 with the +armor talent. You may want to do some quick armory scans before making such claims.

Did you even look at those items? And what you're saying is wrong. With full S3/Vindicator-equip, Arcane Fortitude, Frost Warding and Ice Armor you can easily have more than 3,5k Armor as a Mage.

[Nigh Invulnerability Belt] would be an even better option, BTW.

I updated the numbers, and the 5782 is from the gear listed + item enhancements + 1089 Ac from talented mage self buff and ignores the meager ac you get from base stats.

1089= [645 Ac from top rank Ice Armor x 1.3 from talent]+ a conservative +250 ac from Arcane fortitude. My mage isn't 70 yet so sorry if my estimate on that is way off.

chardev.org - A World of Warcraft character planer v.2.beta

A lot of armor-enchants are missing (40 to chest and boots, 240 to gloves). Add the improved Ice Armor on top (+838,5 armor) and there you go. Sure, your spelldamage and your critrate is less than subpar but it's possible.

Regarding the original subject: I doubt that it's really a good idea to stack defensive stats over and over as a Mage. While you will be the focus target quite often Armor will not help you to survive much longer once you are out of Mana. You are still a CCing and damage dealing class and with an all-defensive setup you will simply fail at the latter.

Glove Reinforcements
Glove Reinforcements - Spells - World of Warcraft

They are called [Glove Reinforcements].

Okay so I just checked using a druid with 3/3 in the Fear resist feral talent for 15%

Tests done with 2/5 Suppression to negate 4% natural PVP spell miss

Me naked, 0% hit - 46 resist out of 300, right in line with the talent

Me with max spell hit - 4 resist out of 300, in line with natural unavoidable 1% spell miss

So spell hit does counter fear warding talents.

No, I didn't look at the items because the post said "self-buffed", then went on to list the items as if adding them to the original total. Either way, 5700 is still a far cry from the original 8000 that was thrown out, and honestly the whole discussion is a bit silly.

Considering some of the items listed for this "clothy armour set" are hopelessly woeful for your primary role in PvP, it does seem rather pointless to be "anti physical" at the sacrifice of so many offensive stats. As a healer you take a massive hit in both mp5, +healing and intellect, for example.

Either burning some of the reduced mana pool or simply focusing your teammates in order for you to empty your mana pool with your low-power/high cost heals seems like you're putting a lot of effort into gear to do their job for them.

If anyone insists on making an anti-physical set, some items I found which may be useful (to a point) in addition to the above would be:

[Adamantine Figurine]
[Alembic of Infernal Power]

I realise neither of these have armour, but the figurine can be valuable to try to counter some of an Adrenaline Rush burst in 1v1 - although I'd consider the Alembic to be a better option, especially against teams with pets and fast-hitting opponents (usually physical damage users, hence the inclusion). Imo it's worth it for the resilience alone.

Bear in mind when you throw around all these Armor values, increasing your Armor may have an exponential effect on your damage reduction, but it has a linear effect on your survivability (time to live, basically). It feels like you get a lot of reduction out of very little Armor when you're dealing with such moderate amounts of it, but 200 Armor has the same value in terms of pure time it takes for X DPS to kill you at 0 as it does at 20k.