PVP Upgrades Planning

With the success of my 3s team, I’m starting to get to a point I never have previously have gotten to before in WoW. I’m actually starting to qualify for PVP rated gear.

I’ve noticed there’s much less information on PVP than PVE. I can go on Maintankadin and find complete gear lists, and strategies on every boss. While I have found some good strategy information on the web, pretty much all of it is comp specific. I guess Ret/Arms/RestoD isn’t a very well known comp because there isn’t a whole lot of advice out there on it. We are kind of just making it up as we go along. I was extremely proud of our little team last night. After getting beat twice by an RMP (Rogue/Mage/Priest), we adjusted our strategy and beat them. It almost felt like Raiding. Two wipes and then we downed them.

I have also struggled to find information on what pieces of PVP gear I should prioritize to get over others. One really nice thing about PVP gear is it’s a guarantee. You get the rating, the Honor and the Arena Points and you get the loot. No RNG (Random Number Generator) involved. In PVE it’s all up to the RNG. We’ve killed Flame Leviathan every week since Ulduar opened, but I’ve never seen the Flamewatch Armguards drop, not one time. (You watch, it will drop tonight since I can’t make it - QQ)

So again I was on my own. Since every person’s situation is going to be different, let me walk you through how I decided to prioritize my gear. The first thing I did was make a list of all my current gear that I use in PVP.

Helm: Titansteel
Neck: Might of Levithan (FL-10)
Back: Deadly
Shoulders: Hateful
Chest: Heroes (Naxx10)
Bracers: Lost Sentiments (Naxx25?)
Hands: Hateful
Belt: Ascended Phantom (Naxx)
Legs: Heroes (Naxx10)
Boots: Titan Forge (WG)
Ring: Deadly
Ring: Hateful
Trinket: Greatness
Trinket: Titan Forged (WG)
Weapon : Stormedge (Hodir-10)
Libram : Venture Company

Then I looked at what I had available to me based on my Team Rating, Personal Rating and current amount of Honor, Arena Points, and Wintergrasp Marks.

Helm: Titansteel --> Deadly (1450)
Neck: Might of Leviathan (FL-10) --> Deadly
Back: Deadly
Shoulders: Hateful
Chest: Heroes (Naxx10) --> Deadly
Bracers: Lost Sentiments (Naxx) --> Furious
Hands: Hateful --> Deadly
Belt: Ascended Phantom (Naxx) --> Furious (1450)
Legs: Heroes (Naxx10) --> Deadly
Boots: Titan Forge (WG) --> Deadly?
Ring: Deadly
Ring: Hateful --> Furious
Trinket: Greatness
Trinket: Titan Forged (WG)
Weapon : Stormedge (Hodir-10) --> Deadly?
Libram : Venture Company --> Deadly

I put the Furious Belt and Deadly Helm in the upgrade because my Personal Rating is 1435 and I’m really close to being able to get them. I certainly won’t buy a lesser upgrade in that spot when I’m so close.

First thing I want to do is replace my lone blue, the Libram. I really need to buy the Badges one that used to drop in Naxx for my PVE suit anyway. Then I want to start attacking the rest of my PVE gear. My neck is a pretty high ilevel piece coming from Ulduar, so it can probably wait a bit.

I have enough points to get the Deadly Helm, Deadly Libram and Furious Bracers. I would have to wait on the Helm until I can get 15 more Personal Rating points, but I’m sure I can do that this week. I could get the Furious Belt, but that would pretty much wipe out my Honor.

Those 3 upgrades will make grinding the Honor that much easier. I’ll kill faster, and I’ll be both tougher to kill. That’s a good combination. My next two targets after I buy those 3 upgrades will be the Deadly Neck and Furious Belt. Those two are a nice round 100,000 Honor Points.

Once I get all my PVE gear replaced, I can start some of the incremental upgrades of Hateful to Deadly to Furious. I’ll start with pieces that have the highest rating. The Furious Helm is 1900 rating, so the Deadly one should last a good long while. Should my personal rating catch-up to my team rating, I’ll want to upgrade my Hateful Shoulders to Deadly. The Furious ones are 2050. So the Deadly should last.

It’s interesting to note that the bottleneck is not Arena points, but Honor. I see many Battlegrounds in Honors future.