Originally Posted by
Exclusive
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.