ArP in PvP

[omglazor]

I'm contemplating regemming all of my PvP gear for ArP, which should give me ~10% or so total (especially once I get a Furious weapon +2 gems). What is your take on it? It seems that ArP could be more beneficial than Str considering all the omnipresent Paladins and DKs in arenas...

[Battousai]

I have been dueling a few friends in my ArP pve gear, and one of my resto druid buds tried doing the whole TBC tanking me in bear form tactic....I then crit him for a 4k MS, another 4k overpower, and a white hit for 2k...and in about 4 seconds.


He about crapped his pants. End of story.

[omglazor]

Nice to hear that

I guess my main question is then - what's the formula for ArP in PvP (assuming mace spec)? Same as PvE? If so, what's the "cap" for a lvl 80 Paladin player?

[Battousai]

Nice to hear that

I guess my main question is then - what's the formula for ArP in PvP (assuming mace spec)? Same as PvE? If so, what's the "cap" for a lvl 80 Paladin player?

Atm the cap is how much ArP you can put on your pvp gear.

[RPZip]

Mace Spec is just 15% worth of ArP rating from gear, nothing special. Same for Battle Stance.

Armor Penetration is capped against higher-armor targets. Each point of armor past ~7.7k only adds 1/3rd to the amount you can remove; for example, if you have 100% ArP and are attacking a Paladin with 20k armor you'll only remove 11.8k, not the full 20k.

[omglazor]

By cap I meant the value GC stated in his post
( Armor Value + Some magical number ("Cap") ) / 3 = actual armor being reduced

Unless of course the formula is different for players

[Deleted]

Seriously i would not gem ArPen for PvP. You need tons of ArPen till it outdps Str and you wont be able to get that much with PvP gear. I do value Mace Spec very high in PvP. I did 50 games yesterday with Mace Spec/ Battle Stance and gemmed for STR ( few crit to stay at 30% crit ) and DPS was enermous. It's a bit tricky since i even use imp. Slam but i was able to burst Heal Palas within seconds and their DDs could not do anything because as they attacked me they gave me infinite rage and the possibility to Sweeping Strikes BS that just killed anything.

I would like to play with a druid this season but i just dont know any skilled druid that looks for 2n2 :/... So ill stick with my pala and gem Str for SDK. As long as you do not have more than 400~600 ArPen in arena ( and you wont ), you will have hard times with Plates. Str would gave you more rage on plate and especially more dmg with more rage availible.
BUT mace spec / battle stance / GT proc is a nice alternative and you may time MS with an OP while casting with 6 secs BS in one GT proc. That is such a load of DPS you wont even believe and the healer has no chance to counter it.

EDIT:
I just calculated some stuff and realized how strong Axe Spec became because 15% arpen is almost no stat vs 5% crit since you need 225 rating for 5% crit. But wait, for PvP its somehow very complicated to clarify what could be better. 15% armor ignore are not 15% arpen, but for PvE Axe Spec as Arms with mass Arpen is > Mace spec with moderate ArPen. Since im not that into how maths really work i would not judge Mace spec as good for DPS. Armor ignore and ArPen work way different for Enemies with higher and lower Armor. Ill try to get into that later but there is another really important fact. Since enemies in PvP have resilience the crit bonus of axe spec is not that strong with impale and meta gem. And juggernauts / recklessness gives you 100% crits and OP crit should be over 70% id rather choose Mace spec. But wow, that decision is a tough. Okay Bstance and Mace spec are additive with ArPen, so Axe spec is better for PvP.

[omglazor]

Disruptor, what if you add in BStance and Mace Spec (I assume that's in theory 25% more ArP), so the 10% from gear suddenly becomes 35% >_>
The main reason I want to try ArP is to see if it is actually better against the dread DK/Pala teams :

Your rant is not very clear however, what are you getting at?

[coehld]

I will repost my math from another thread since this one is all about pvp...

"
So i did some quick math and feel free to correct me if i am wrong but here is a short posting of the numbers i got

a lvl 80 target with 24k armor and a character with 30% armor pen.

(24000+15232.5)/3 = 13077.5 so 13077.5 is chosen b/c it is lower
13077.5 x .3 = 3923.25, thus 24000-3923.5 = 20076.5
so to get the actual armor ignored
20076.5/24000 = .83.. thus just under 17%

now lets say its 15000 arm of target

(15000 + 15232.5)/3 = 10077.5 so 10077.5 is chosen
10077.5 x .3 = 3023.25, thus 15000 - 3023.5 = 11976.5
11976.5/15000 = .798 thus just over 20%

so basically from doing some quick math unless is i am mistaken armor pen become weaker as the targets armor goes up, and greater as the armor goes down, but there is probably some point at which it becomes weaker as it goes down as well, and there is an AC at which armor pen is the optimal stat.
"

so basically, Armor Pen gets worse the more armor something has, so for pvp, stick with strength if you find yourself constantly battling the DK/Paly combo.

[omglazor]

So assuming an average paladin has ~23K armor (correct?), ArP only gets 56% effect ! :
(Graph fun: http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/4705/arpo.jpg)

Fail.

What about ArP against clothies?

[Battousai]

Are you not planning on sundering up a paladin or DK? And every pvper atm should have a Grim Toll...its that good.

[omglazor]

The way I understand it, Sunder reduces paladin's armor by 20%, i.e. 19.4K, so ArP is still only 60% efficient. Question is of course, whether getting 60% of ArP effect nets you more damage to the said plate-wearer than Strength... >_>

[Vampyrr]

Point for point until you hit 100% armor ignore ArP gives more dps increase than str.

[omglazor]

Cite your sources please :P

[Vampyrr]

Cite your sources please :P

It is all over ElitistJerks and I trust there math and my own results over other people guessing.

[omglazor]

Well, I know that much for PvE, but would the same hold true for PvP?

[Hyson]

I'm contemplating regemming all of my PvP gear for ArP, which should give me ~10% or so total (especially once I get a Furious weapon +2 gems). What is your take on it? It seems that ArP could be more beneficial than Str considering all the omnipresent Paladins and DKs in arenas...

Since we already hit clothies kind of hard, "ArP not being effective against clothies" means almost nothing to me. Typically, we have a healer near/with us. All clothies cast, yes? No melee clothies. Pummel, UA, Shield Bash, Shield Wall, Recklessness, Hamstring, Intercept, Overpower, Rend, etc. We have enough against clothies. I've been toying with ArP and been doing comparable to how I was doing with Axe. In fact, I like it more since I feel like ArP is more reliablie since it is not countered by resil and not based on chance. I haven't tried sword spec yet, but I still feel as if the internal cooldown on the extra swing might be too much.

TL;DR:
Try it out. Like it? Keep it. I liked it, and I'm keeping it.

[omglazor]

See, I don't understand how ArP against clothies is least effective. Correct me if my logic is flawed:
according to the formula GC posted, if you look at my table you will notice that anything below ~7600 armor will take a full 100% effect of ArP, so with 30% ArP you would ignore 2100 armor on a target with 7000 armor. As armor goes lower, you lose progressively more damage reduction (the difference in damage reduction between 4900 armor and 7000 armor is a lot higher than 23.5K to 25K), which means that ArP is in fact most effective against cloth! >_>

Sword spec is a little off-topic, but I'll agree with you that the 6 CD might prove a little overbearing... (wish we could have the good ol' WF+Sword procs back, hehe)

[Crimsonak]

Point for point until you hit 100% armor ignore ArP gives more dps increase than str.

Until I see a direct link I claim this sentence to be of the asspulled variety.

[Battousai]

Until I see a direct link I claim this sentence to be of the asspulled variety.

You can actually even go above the "cap" of Armor if recent testing is correct...I haven't done a parse myself and analyzed it. But the math from others makes sense in their findings.