5pc pvp or save my 2pc 9.5? Arms Help

[Oden]

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...s&cn=Odensbane

My current armory.

Here's my stats. I have the standard arms warrior setup, all arp gems, 2pc 9.5 chest & shoulders for their additional arp and the 2pc bonus arp. As it sits right now I am at 58.44% arp in battle stance. I also have grim toll.

Here's my dilemma. My druid partner and I just cannot seem to break the infamous 1800 mark. We've seen 1770's, 1780's, 1790's, but then it's followed by a string of 3-4 losses down to low 1700's and we start the fight back up again. We both have researched, asked advice, practiced, everything you can think of to improve our game. To be honest, my probably biased opinion is that we both play quite well. We communicate excellent, play well together, NEVER rage about a loss, etc. Perfect scenario. But we seem to be struggling in ways that I'm starting to think gear is our bottleneck. We tend to have more issues now with double dps teams than any other. Healer/dps is usually a win, even well executed cc teams tend to go down. But double dps(with oddly the exception of rogue/mage) seems to clean house with us. I'm starting to believe that my survivability is our issue, even with my defensive play.

I was saving for wrathful 2h, but it hasn't come yet. So I'm considering using my honor and arena pts to buy relentless chest and shoulders. For the quick math, I'd gain 4pc bonus, 1100hp putting me around 33.5k unbuffed, 167 res topping me out at 1124res, 113ap increase(4pc minus ap loss from gear). My hangup.....I'd lose roughly 16% arp.

So with the entire wall of text, my question. Is gaining 1100hp, 167res, 113ap, and 4pc bonus a valuable trade off to lose 16% arp?

I greatly appreciate any advice.

[omglazor]

Get 4pc + an iLvL 264 or 251 ArP PvE piece like Castle Breaker's.

[Martsus]

Aye, 4 parts PVP + Castebreakers Chest, or perhaps(if you happen to have it and don't really care about the reduced hamstring cost) 4 parts and the frost gloves. Getting 2 x T9 isn't really worth it anymore atm.

By the way, I can assure you, gear should not be the problem looking at the both of you(you almost got 1k resi along with 32k HP). What you could try is perhaps playing around other times, try to dodge the queue. Also are you guys being aggressive enough? To what dual DPS'es are you losing? Those things can be important for us to know in order to give you advise.

[Oden]

Aye, 4 parts PVP + Castebreakers Chest, or perhaps(if you happen to have it and don't really care about the reduced hamstring cost) 4 parts and the frost gloves. Getting 2 x T9 isn't really worth it anymore atm.

By the way, I can assure you, gear should not be the problem looking at the both of you(you almost got 1k resi along with 32k HP). What you could try is perhaps playing around other times, try to dodge the queue. Also are you guys being aggressive enough? To what dual DPS'es are you losing? Those things can be important for us to know in order to give you advise.

I'll probably do the 4pc, plus castle, actually hadn't thought about that. We used to play late at night, but did this knowing a lot of the "better" players also played then. But this past Saturday we played all afternoon with minimal success. We've tried avoiding Tuesday's and going after Monday's, but doesn't seem to work out in our favor. Probably because neither of us really know when the "good" times are. I'm confident we are aggressive enough. My druid recently spec'd into insect swarm and with a few glyph changes it has considerably improved our output damage as a team, and he being the amazing healer he is, it really hasn't put a damper on his healing output or cc's. Unless I'm cc'd I am all over whoever my target is, and we often cyclone/hard switch to keep the pressure on their healer. This has proven a solid tactic for us against other healer/dps teams.

There are a slew of double dps we've lost to consistently, prot pally/rogue is an absolute nightmare, ele shaman/arcane or frost mage, any dps shaman/lock, enh shaman/hunter. Don't get me wrong, we sometimes get our wins, but those are the teams we cringe at when the arena doors open. There is the occasional struggle with rogue/rogue or feral druid, or rogue/mage. But they have to be quite good on their chain cc's to beat us.

*edit* forgot to mention rogue/spriest, they are becoming more frequent and have proven to be quite the pita for us.

Unless caught in an amazing string of cc/silence abilities the drood can usually survive a double dps burst attempt. Also I am an avid user of intervene, for some mobility, but mostly to demo shout, disarm, spell reflect, etc. But....when all is said and done, even if we down 1 dps, that's about the time my healer goes down. We all know how successful warriors are 1v1, so you can guess the outcome.

I have noticed lately we go against a lot of high 1900-2200 matchmaking value teams. Considering we hover around 1800-1900 this is kinda disturbing. We accept that we should lose to those teams, but it'd be nice to not get 5 matches in a row like this. There can't be that few teams qing when we are can there?

Anyway, appreciate the advice guys and apologize for the qq. I just want to overcome this hurdle.

[omglazor]

About that 1900-2200 thing - I noticed the same thing:
1700-1750 I used to (last I did arenas) get teams in the 1700-1900 range, as soon as we'd get over 1750 and closer to 1800 we'd hit a string of 2100 teams. WTF?

[Oden]

As a follow up, I wanted to let you guys know a few things. I purchased relentless shoulders to replace my 9.5. Did this with the intention of getting the frost badge chest next week. I know have INSANE rage issues in comparison to the 9.5. So much to the point I had to switch back temporarily. Don't get me wrong, I love the 1028 res and the 4pc buffs, but I pretty much stay at the bottom of my rage pool in comparison to what i used to. Any ideas you guys have on that one?

Also to touch on the topic I added. We did some arena tonight. Shot from 1729 to 1776 winning 4 games straight. Then of course, went 4 straight(and lost) to 2k+ matchmaking value teams. Doing an armory check, every team was 1950+. So again, I understand that we should theoretically lose, but it dropped us to 1721 now. I'm just at a loss how we are going against teams with such a higher rating then us, but mostly why we lose so many points. Not to mention we are 14-12(been limited on time) for the week and are down 8 points. Sniffle, this is frustrating.

[ohshift]

i dont wanna sound like a jerk, but maybe the problem is that little teamplay.
maybe if you guys try some more, you can break it
good luck

[Dahkeus]

Get at least 4p PvP for sure. The ArP from 2pT9 is great, but the lowered cooldown on intercept wins games.


Go with 4p PvP with the Castle Breaker's chest from frost emblems.

[Chimpzilla]

Gear should probably be fine. I'd say to just keep working at better team play. I've done warrior druid in 2s plenty of times and it can get rather frustrating. I personally hated the 1700 bracket in 2s because it seemed like everyone was stuck there and every team countered us. You'll get through it I'm sure if it keeps putting you against 1800-1900 mmr teams.

Let us know what combos are causing problems or perhaps what you are having trouble with, and we can offer some advice.