Dk Arena PVP in 3.3

[Solore]

So basically, after a longgggg pve break, i decided to start doing arena, this time with my dk. Now i've done a minor search (and plan to search more) in some forum's for decent Arena specs, what gear/gems to use, but havent found much yet... i was wondering if someone could post a couple links or give a couple examples of what they do, how they spec/gear, and why.

Ty for your time

[Deleted]

Something like this is pretty typical:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jZMGx...dgfuz0ufqo:Lb0

You'll want to switch some talents and glyphs around depending on your team set up.

Ghoul and Dark death are both very good, 3rd glyph has a lot of options. AMS is good both defensively and offensively (defensive is obvious enough - offensively you'd typically use AMS when going for the kill to prevent CCs / peels). Other solid choices are CoI, Icy Touch, or Strangulate.

[Solore]

Something like this is pretty typical:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#jZMGx...dgfuz0ufqo:Lb0

You'll want to switch some talents and glyphs around depending on your team set up.

Ghoul and Dark death are both very good, 3rd glyph has a lot of options. AMS is good both defensively and offensively (defensive is obvious enough - offensively you'd typically use AMS when going for the kill to prevent CCs / peels). Other solid choices are CoI, Icy Touch, or Strangulate.

What would be the best Gems to have assuming were hit/expertise capped

i know STR is optimal for PVE

[Nangz]

[quote=Solore ]
What would be the best Gems to have assuming were hit/expertise capped

i know STR is optimal for PVE
[/quote

Well for dk pvp your going to want to be spell penetration capped because there is honestly nothing worse than having your clincher strangulate resisted. Which the spell pen cap if i'm not mistaken is 120 i may be wrong though.

[Exclusive]

What would be the best Gems to have assuming were hit/expertise capped

i know STR is optimal for PVE

Well for dk pvp your going to want to be spell penetration capped because there is honestly nothing worse than having your clincher strangulate resisted. Which the spell pen cap if i'm not mistaken is 120 i may be wrong though.

The spell penetration CAP is not 120. There isn't really a cap, it's more a point where it's not really useful to get more. If people would wear resitance gear for whatever stupid reason, you'll need more spell penetartion to counter it. Therefor there's no real cap.
You mostly want spell penetration for frost mages (see below) and teams with a priest and/or druid, and some teams use the spell resistance stuff from paladins/shamans also.
Look at it like this, if the oponent has let's say 100 resistance to shadow or frost, you "need" the same amount of spell penetration to ignore that resistance. This is mostly important with frost due to icy chains and applying frost fever via icy touch (in case ur not specced into having it applied via chains) Shadow resistance helps them on the disease ticks but NOT on the appliance of blood fever, since it's applied via a physical attack and cannot be resisted. It does help them to resist for example DC's and the shadow part from SS.

Anyway most important is the frost mage. A typical frost mage would be using ice armor, giving them 60 frost resist (talented). They have another talent that many pvp mages use which gives them 80 resistance to all schools (see arcane tree, 2nd tier from the top). Therefor they can get up to 140 resistance to frost. Having that in mind and them having a lot of ways to avoid damage and to kite you around for ages, you really want to do something to keep doing damage to them or you'll never EVER win (and if you do, the mage is just shit ^^ )
A proper frostmage would absorb all damage, slow you with frostbolt, or an instant cast cone of cold. They root you with frost nova and another root when you break their frost barrier. Another root from their pet... if you actually might get to them they would root you again, or you DG them and they blink away. And if things REALLY go bad for them, they iceblock and wait in their block to get another root off cooldown. They can also use cold snap to reset all cooldowns on the abilities above... you get the point ^^

The only way to have a chance to them is to ignore their frost resistance and keep spamming chains of ice so they just cant run all the time when they root you. Frost mages will always be shit, but theyre the most important reason in arena you'd want spell penetration.

So if you want to gem for spell penetration depends.. how serious do you take arena, how often do you get your ass whooped by frost mages (if you're for example in a 3v3 team with another player that can easilly handle a frost mage, it's might become less important to you), or do you only do bg's where it's less important to not die.. etc etc etc... just look at it for your own situation.
For myself I can't be arsed to gem for spell penetration. This because I don't aim for extremely high ratings and I'm playing a lot 3v3 with a warlock who's quite good at taking care of mages.

[Deleted]

What would be the best Gems to have assuming were hit/expertise capped

i know STR is optimal for PVE

Well, I don't know what you mean by expertise cap, because there is no cap in PvP. Expertise is a weak PvP stat anyway and you shouldn't be using gear that has it.

Assuming hit capped, I'd go:

Blue: Stormy - Spell Penetration (full pvp set only has 3 blue gems iirc - belt gloves and pants)
Yellow: Resplendant - Str / Res
Red: Bold - Str
Prismatic: Bold - Str

[Solore]

Well for dk pvp your going to want to be spell penetration capped because there is honestly nothing worse than having your clincher strangulate resisted. Which the spell pen cap if i'm not mistaken is 120 i may be wrong though.


The spell penetration CAP is not 120. There isn't really a cap, it's more a point where it's not really useful to get more. If people would wear resitance gear for whatever stupid reason, you'll need more spell penetartion to counter it. Therefor there's no real cap.
You mostly want spell penetration for frost mages (see below) and teams with a priest and/or druid, and some teams use the spell resistance stuff from paladins/shamans also.
Look at it like this, if the oponent has let's say 100 resistance to shadow or frost, you "need" the same amount of spell penetration to ignore that resistance. This is mostly important with frost due to icy chains and applying frost fever via icy touch (in case ur not specced into having it applied via chains) Shadow resistance helps them on the disease ticks but NOT on the appliance of blood fever, since it's applied via a physical attack and cannot be resisted. It does help them to resist for example DC's and the shadow part from SS.

Anyway most important is the frost mage. A typical frost mage would be using ice armor, giving them 60 frost resist (talented). They have another talent that many pvp mages use which gives them 80 resistance to all schools (see arcane tree, 2nd tier from the top). Therefor they can get up to 140 resistance to frost. Having that in mind and them having a lot of ways to avoid damage and to kite you around for ages, you really want to do something to keep doing damage to them or you'll never EVER win (and if you do, the mage is just shit ^^ )
A proper frostmage would absorb all damage, slow you with frostbolt, or an instant cast cone of cold. They root you with frost nova and another root when you break their frost barrier. Another root from their pet... if you actually might get to them they would root you again, or you DG them and they blink away. And if things REALLY go bad for them, they iceblock and wait in their block to get another root off cooldown. They can also use cold snap to reset all cooldowns on the abilities above... you get the point ^^

The only way to have a chance to them is to ignore their frost resistance and keep spamming chains of ice so they just cant run all the time when they root you. Frost mages will always be shit, but theyre the most important reason in arena you'd want spell penetration.

So if you want to gem for spell penetration depends.. how serious do you take arena, how often do you get your ass whooped by frost mages (if you're for example in a 3v3 team with another player that can easilly handle a frost mage, it's might become less important to you), or do you only do bg's where it's less important to not die.. etc etc etc... just look at it for your own situation.
For myself I can't be arsed to gem for spell penetration. This because I don't aim for extremely high ratings and I'm playing a lot 3v3 with a warlock who's quite good at taking care of mages.

Right now i'm more focusing on 2's sadly, since me and my 2's partners arena healer got hacked and he /quit WoW due to it...

but id like to get into serious with 3's asap

Well, I don't know what you mean by expertise cap, because there is no cap in PvP. Expertise is a weak PvP stat anyway and you shouldn't be using gear that has it.

Assuming hit capped, I'd go:

Blue: Stormy - Spell Penetration (full pvp set only has 3 blue gems iirc - belt gloves and pants)
Yellow: Resplendant - Str / Res
Red: Bold - Str
Prismatic: Bold - Str

I haven't pvped in ever so (and blizz made it even easiar to get arena gear this season =/ )

what is the pvp hit cap for dk's, or the soft cap for it

[Yandelo]

I haven't pvped in ever so (and blizz made it even easiar to get arena gear this season =/ )

what is the pvp hit cap for dk's, or the soft cap for it

i believe its 5%

[Deleted]

5% hit, 4% with a draenei.

You may still miss as talents and racials your opponents may have give a bonus make them harder to hit, but "overcapping" hit to compensate for this is rarely viable, and really, the spell hit cap is what's important, which you reach in the process of capping your melee. 164 hit rating required for 5% melee hit, which would give you 6.25% spell hit. 3% from virulence on top of this gives 9.25% which means you'll never miss spells against all viable pvp specced opponents.

[Solore]

5% hit, 4% with a draenei.

You may still miss as talents and racials your opponents may have give a bonus make them harder to hit, but "overcapping" hit to compensate for this is rarely viable, and really, the spell hit cap is what's important, which you reach in the process of capping your melee. 164 hit rating required for 5% melee hit, which would give you 6.25% spell hit. 3% from virulence on top of this gives 9.25% which means you'll never miss spells against all viable pvp specced opponents.

sounds good to me

now to go grind some honor out, since blizzard yet again makes the game even easiar

[Lansworthy]

So basically, after a longgggg pve break, i decided to start doing arena, this time with my dk. Now i've done a minor search (and plan to search more) in some forum's for decent Arena specs, what gear/gems to use, but havent found much yet... i was wondering if someone could post a couple links or give a couple examples of what they do, how they spec/gear, and why.

Ty for your time

I don't pvp much on my death knight as i do my hunter but the gemming is pretty similar to pve, some death knights gem spell pen which I still don't understand since we don't use spells(Death Coil does count as a spell) but I dont understand why people gem spell pen

If you don't want to die in the arena gem tank thats what a DK in my guild is doing he's stacking dodge and stam to be a unstoppable meat shield.

[Deleted]

death coil is not a spell ?
ehm ya right

[Mujo]

(Death Coil does count as a spell).

fixed

[Lansworthy]

fixed

Ok so it's a spell but why gem spell penetration.

[Gerian]

If you don't want to die in the arena gem tank thats what a DK in my guild is doing he's stacking dodge and stam to be a meat shield that hits like a wet noodle.

fix'd it for you

Ok so it's a spell but why gem spell penetration.

Spell penetration counteracts buffs like Shadow Protection and Mage Armor that can cause binary spells like Strangulate to be fully resisted and damage spells like Death Coil to be partially resisted. Getting a strangulate resist during a coordinated CC/Silence/Stun train on a healer is pretty much GG.

[Lansworthy]

fix'd it for you
Spell penetration counteracts buffs like Shadow Protection and Mage Armor that can cause binary spells like Strangulate to be fully resisted and damage spells like Death Coil to be partially resisted. Getting a strangulate resist during a coordinated CC/Silence/Stun train on a healer is pretty much GG.

Ok thank you for telling me, no dk would ever tell me why they gem spell pen, I thought they were all dumbasses thinking they were spellcasters.