PvP Gearing - pre-arena

[Nikodemus]

Greets,

I'm our guild MT and as such don't get a lot of time to PvP, but I enjoy it and there is some arena loot I would like to get if nothing than for grinding during my off-time.

So... what is the typical gearing progression? My first thought would be to farm the hell out of weekend PvP bonuses to get full gladiator gear for all that stam. Is this what people are doing these days?

Thanks,

Niko

[Biggo]

Just to note, you won't be able to farm easily on a PvP weekend for Gladiator Gear, what you'll be thinking of is the level 70 superior (blue) High Warlord/Grand Marshal gear. Those you can farm honour for, and are quite good for heading into arena as they have stam, resilience, and some sockets, but they do however lack in damage and aren't the best if you want to hurt.

Mainly, I'd advise getting the new epic Veteran items; consisting of belt, bracers, boots, ring + neck. They're very VERY good imo, and will help loads. As for helm/shoulders/chest/gloves/legs, I'm sure you can collect a few from instances. The helm of second sight from the shadowmoon quest is still very good, the level 70 superior PVP reward shoulders + gloves are a good combo (getting the 2 set bonus for resilience), you can get some very nice legs from Halaa also. As for a chest piece, either the one from Old Hillsbrad off the 2nd boss (forgot the bosses name + the item name sorry), or get the PVP honor reward one.

A bit brief, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head xD If you're a BSer, get yourself a Deep Thunder (easier to farm the primal nethers needed if you're still prot).

Good luck! And have fun in arena!

EDIT: Just to note, I wouldn't step into arena without some of the items mentioned above, unless you wish to drop below 1500 rating

[Rockshaman]

for arenas..

make 3 teams
popluate said teams
lose 10 games
collect points
repeat till you can win games with trickle of gear/points coming in
win 10 games
repeat

[Nikodemus]

Point well taken.

Now - to Biggo's point a bunch of the Veteran gear is pretty solid. To sport all that I need 95077 honor. I'm trying to get my hands around just how much PvP that is, does anyone have a good estimate of average honor per hour for a broad range of cases (dominating the other faction, 50/50, getting dominated) or any remote idea of what's common and maybe a few hints on what BG's to do.

My thinking is that I can get 20-30k on an AV weekend (just missed it) and 5-10k on other weekends while picking up my marks along the way.

Any help is appreciated.

[Donkbet]

Keep in mind, I solo BG for the most part. Most of my guildies are focused on pve.

As a mage I get about 10-12k honor per day on AV weekend, more or less depending on how much I play obviously. I'm guessing that translates to about 2k honor per hour or so. It doesn't really matter what you do in AV, your team is either going to suck or not suck, and the game is going to run its course one way or the other. As long as you win OR lose fast, you'll do ok on honor. As Horde I usually lose fast.

Normal bonus weekends are about 6k - 9k per day for me, I'm guessing about 1.2-1.5k per hour. In order of preference, I like EotS, AB, and WSG. WSG is a bitch because you can get some long games if people are just screwing around and killing the same folks over and over degrades your honor. Some of this has to do with what Horde is best at in my battlegroup - Horde is good at Eye and AB, terrible in WSG.

I don't pvp during non-bonus times that much, somewhat of a waste of time. Game selection can be lacking too during the week. Then again if you are looking to gear up ASAP, maybe you should ignore what I just said.

Another great thing about honor whoring is that you will never ever ever run out of pots for raids.

This is all guesswork to a point, but I think the numbers are about right.

[Juju]

I'd say the pvp blues are crap and u'll be better off getting nice blues from normal instances for dps or tanking. The new epic in pvp are a whole different story and are (to me) the only items worth it with glad gear (gem included)

[Zakenfein]

for arenas, PVP blues are the best. They are just like weaker versions of Arena gear. They have tons of stam and resilience and crit, while they dont have much AP or other stats. It gives players a taste of what their new gear will be like. Switching from DPS to arena/pvp gear is a huge change, your health goes WAY up and your damage output goes down.

[Nikodemus]

Given the relative ease of getting the Epic gear and the fact that I'm in no rush I intend to spring for the epic Veteran's gear (including the amulet and ring) and fill in around it with various instance gear I get. I already have some Ragesteel coming my way for PvE and I figure it will be better than my tanking PvE gear as a start.

This post delivers. I like all the opinions.

[Juju]

Given the relative ease of getting the Epic gear and the fact that I'm in no rush I intend to spring for the epic Veteran's gear (including the amulet and ring) and fill in around it with various instance gear I get. I already have some Ragesteel coming my way for PvE and I figure it will be better than my tanking PvE gear as a start.

That's the spirit mix dmg and epic pvp rawards ;-) FULL blue pvp geared players are a joke to beat, granted it takes 3 blow to bring them down (I have 950dmg +/- with pvp gear on my mage), but they don't do any dmg... I got crit by a rogue for 300 yesterday... I laughed...
Then again, it's really a choice of whether you're going to be focused fire, in which case u need to be able to take blows, then your dmg doesn't matter, all you do is CC (which warrs cant do) so you're better off with dmg, you'll still be able to take a bunch of hits but your goal will be to kill before they can do real dmg to you. That's what i do anyways, and so far it works very well I find (especially in normal BG's with berseker, one shot a guy and watch him avoid you for the rest of the game, it's always a blast)