Arena Season 4 Check List

Well, with season 3 rapidly approaching it’s end it’s time to start preparing for season 4’s launch on June 24th. From gems to enchants, and honor to arena points, it may take you some time to get everything in order.

Honor / Arena Points
75,000 Honor Points
5,000 Arena Points

Of course, in addition to the points you should already have purchased the new pvp trinket. The extra resilience just makes it that much better, allowing you to get additional offensive stats in other gear slots.

As far as arena gear is concerned, you’ll have to weigh your individual situation. The new rating requirements may make you think twice about what S3 pieces you’d like to purchase prior to S4 starting.

Arena Gems
The gem choices you make are certainly going to depend on your class and spec choices, but generally speaking there are a few definite decisions you can make.

Honor Gems:
Bold Ornate Ruby
Gleaming Ornate Dawnstone
Inscribed Ornate Dawnstone
Potent Ornate Topaz
Runed Ornate Ruby
Smooth Ornate Dawnstone

So if you’re a healer you’re pretty much SOL for these gems, but for everyone else they are a great choice. Don’t forget, they are unique-equip so you can use them in multiple sets of gear instead of having to acquire the gems by other means.

Badge Gems:
Crimson Spinel
Empyrean Sapphire
Lionseye
Pyrestone
Seasrpay Emerald
Shadowsong Amethyst

Well, in case you’ve been living under a rock and didn’t hear…you can now get BT / Hyjal quality gems for just 15 badges per gem. This may seem a bit high, but when you’re trying to build the perfect set of gear I think it’s worth the price.

PvP Enchants
No question, the biggest money sink of any prep work you’ll have to do for season 4. Furthermore, if you know how to play auction house right, you can really make a killing of this increase in demand. When season 3 began I made 4800 gold in 12 hours, if you want to see numbers like this for yourself when S4 begins make sure to check out my next article.

Back to the enchants though…I strongly STRONGLY encourage you to purchase your materials prior to S4 starting. This will save you vast amounts of time and gold.

Arena Gear and Equipment

Hey guys, this is my first addition to Zuggaming and i hope to add more. So lets start with your welfare epics!

Many people may be abused by other apparent “Leet” players about having these welfare epics (gladiators and soon to be Merciless), but i think they are just scared we might beat em!

So with that out of the way i have 5 easy steps to get geared.

1. PvE Gear
When you first hit 70 you should have a few blues and mostly greens, now you may think that this is not the best in the world, but don’t stress. Your current gear should be good enough to enter a few Pug Karazhan raids if your lucky. Many drops in Karazhan can easily upgrade your gear tremendously, even if your gear does not have the “Resilience” or “Stamina” that you may want it doesn’t hurt to have epics to replace your greens and blues. Try to set aside a day each week to pve (such as Karazhan or Daily Heroics).

2. Badge Items and Gear
Don’t waste your badges on nether vortexes or epic gems, even though this can significantly boost your stock of cash it is not worth it. Many trinkets and offhands such as relics,totems and idols cost a few badges and can be a significant upgrade. These trinkets are essential in pve and in many cases pvp. A usual set up of a pvp/arena geared player is that they will carry “Medallion of the Horde” and a Badge Trinket. To achieve these badges you can easily reach around 25 - 30 badges a week just by doing a full karazhan run and the daily heroic.

3. Save, Save, Save!
Since 2.4 hit your pvp marks can now be turned in for honor (1 of each mark = 314 honor). Even though this may sound like a good thing don’t become a slave to the temptation of wasting all your marks, it becomes very frustrating in future knowing you have the honour but you need to grind bg’s all day just to get the marks for that required item. Usually the marks even out anyway, the amount of time needed to grind the marks for your item will usually make up for the honor you need for that item, so unless your mailbox is exploding with 100’s of marks try to resist the temptation of turning in your marks for honor.

4. Arena Points and Gear
Many people in World of Warcraft do not like arena’s, in many cases i can recall myself residing pve and bg’s over constant arena games, but Arena is your friend!! Try to at least get 10 games a week with a friend, even if your team is a 1300 rating 2v2 team it still adds up. If you see that you can nearly afford those S3/soon to be S4 gloves you have always wanted and yet you do not have your Gladiator/soon to be merciless gloves, don’t waste your honor; take time to think and ask yourself is it really worth spending 11250 honor on these gloves when i will soon be replacing them? This allows you to be more efficient with your honor and allows you to gain gear faster!

and finally on to my last point..

5. Read Forums (and ZugGaming.com!) and Learn Your Class
Simply flicking through forums can have a major affect on how you play your class, many forums and dedicated world of warcraft sites such as “This site, the best unofficial WoW site ever” can give you many hints and strategies on how to maximize your playing. Many sites can offer you a wide variety of macros/guides/arena strategies and more, Who knows, this information might lead you to having a better arena team, getting into raids easier and having more fun on your behalf. One of the most important things i have seen in world of warcraft is “Don’t be afraid of criticism” even though many of us will often snob criticism off and usually tell that person a few words that are not nice many people can still have good helpful ideas and tips for you, Constructive criticism is your friend… even though you might not like being told how to play your class it does not hurt taking someones advice on different aspects of the game. Not only will criticism help you improve, but you will also earn respect among the people who criticized you, they will learn that your not that “Uber Noob”. Earning respect among people on your server earns you a greater chance of being invited to Arena teams/raids and guilds.

PS 6: Be time efficient
Know what you are going to do and set to achieve a goal, such as i want to earn X amount of honor and X amount of badges tonight. Find out what your server is best at, such as if your server is constantly winning Av’s then constantly do them, AV will always give you the most honor and is the most efficient way to farm honor.

Strategy courtesy of Electrocow

Rogue Arena Gem Guide

Schools of thought for proper gem selection have basically completed a 180 degree turn from arena season one as compared to arena’s today. Previously, players were forced to gem very defensively, stacking stamina and resilience.

However, do to continued stat inflation, defensive stat stacking is no longer required. Without any defensive gems you can still sit comfortably at nearly 11,000 HP and 400 resilience unbuffed. This opened the door for rogues, allowing increased amounts of offensive stats to be gained and exploited, vastly increasing damage output.

Assuming you are using a complete set of PvP gear you’re sockets are going to look like this.

Helm - 2 sockets (1 meta, 1 red)
Necklace - 1 socket (1 yellow)
Shoulders - 2 sockets (1 yellow, 1 red)
Chest - 3 sockets (1 yellow, 2 red)
Bracer - 1 socket (1 yellow)
Total - 1 meta, 4 yellow, 4 red

In choosing your gems you will want to consider a few basic guidelines. First, try to get all of the socket bonuses, especially bonuses which offer additional offense. If you miss out on a resilience or stamina bonus, no big deal, but if you can pick it up without sacrificing your desire gem, go for it.

First and foremost we are going to want to get all 3 of the PvP gems. Beyond the fact that they do not cost you any gold, they are equivalent to Black Temple gems. These are an absolute must for every rogue.

Bold Ornate Ruby - Cost: 6885 Honor Points
Smooth Ornate Dawnstone - Cost: 6885 Honor Points
Insirbed Ornate Topaz - Cost: 8500 Honor Points

Keep in mind, all of these gems are “unique-equip”. Meaning even if you currently are using them in gear, you can have extras sitting in your bank in preparation for the next season.

This immediately takes care of 3 of our 9 total gems we need.

From this point we have a few options, the most ideal and the path I strongly suggest is to purchase epic gems from your badge vendor on Sunwell Island. The gems are sold from Shaani, the jewelcrafting supplies vendor on the island.

While she sells all epic gems found in high end raiding instances, the one we are most concerned with is Crimson Spinel. The cost to acquire this gem is just 15 badges, and we are going to have it cut into a bright crimson spinel.

In reality, you may be done at this point. Get your 3 honor vendor gems, 5 crimson spinels, and your meta.

…Brief Interlude
Socketing Strategy
One socketing strategy I am contemplating is…

1. Helm - 24 AP / Run speed meta + 1 Crimson Spinel
2. Necklace - 1 Crimson Spinel
3. Shoulders - 1 Bold Ornate Ruby + Smooth Ornate Dawnstone
4. Chest - 2 Crimson Spinel + Inscribed Ornate Topaz
5. Bracer - 1 Crimson Spinel

Socketing like this maximizes offensive stats and still picks up all but 2 of the socket bonuses (2 resilience and 3 HP, marginal increases at best).

Meta Gems
For most rogues, the Swift Skyfire Diamond is going to be the best option. Having run speed on your helmet allows you to get surefooted enchant on your boots. Once again, we add offense without sacrificing too much defense.

Mutilate rogues should go with a Enignmaic Skyfire Diamond. This option is available due to the fleet footed talent that you have in the assassination tree. Stacking the talent, surefooted, and the meta allows you to have a 20% resistance to snare effects, which as you may already know is huge!

Poor / Lazy Man’s Version
The above gem selection will take time and a fair bit of gold to complete. So, in the event you do not have the badges or time to farm the honor, I’d suggest just socketing with bright living rubies in place of the crimson spinels.

For your yellow slots you can use wicked noble topaz

Rogue Arena Enchant Guide

Determining the best enchants is no easy task. With so many available options out there it can be difficult to really understand the reasoning behind each choice. Since arena season 1 started enchanting theory has basically shifted from 100% defensive (stam and resilience) to 100% offensive (crit and attack power).

This change is basically due to gear getting better and better, to the point that without any defensive enchants you could still be at nearly 11,000 hp and 400 resilience unbuffed.

We’ll just go slot by slot.

Helmet
Easy decision here, simply because there are really no other options. Glyph of Ferocity. Attainable via revered reputation with Cenarion Expedition.

Shoulders
Another easy choice since it’s the only option. You’ll want to get the shoulder enchant available to you through your primary faction choice (aldor or scryers). Scryers’ get the following enchant at exalted, Greater Inscription of the Blade. Aldor can get this one, Greater Inscription of Vengeance

If you aren’t exalted yet you can just pickup your lesser level enchant, respectively.

Weapons
Without a doubt, Enchant Weapon - mongoose on both your off hand and main hand weapons. Though executioner is a nice option, especially from the PvE perspective, it just isn’t effective enough against enough classes to really make the enchant worth it in PvP.

Basically, any class with mail or plate armor is going to have so much armor anyway it’s not going to matter if you’ve got some extra armor penetration. However, all classes are equally susceptible to the haste, additional attack power, and crit that mongoose procs provide. For this reason, mongoose is the better enchant.

Cloak
Enchant Cloak - Greater Agility (+12 agility), in keeping with our offensive minded stats we definitely want to go with the agility over anything else.

Chest
Enchant Chest - Exceptional Stats aka +6 all stats, once again offense, offense, offense! If you are still trying to gear up your rogue with the optimal arena and honor pieces you may want to use Enchant Chest - Major Resilience instead, but once you’ve got up above 350 resilience I think it’s better to start shooting for the offense.

Bracer
+24 attack power, Enchant Bracer - Assault. Much better than your alternatives in +12 stamina or +4 all stats.

Gloves
You’ve got a couple of options here, and I really think the choice will depend on your spec. For combat and mutilate rogues, I’d suggest going with the +26 attack power Enchant Gloves - Assault.

However, for 41 point shadowstep rogues you’d be better off picking up the +15 agility Enchant Gloves - Superior Agility. Comparing 26 AP to 15 agility I think the AP has it by a hair (just my personal preference for raw AP over random crits). But with +15% agility from sinister calling the +15 agility pulls ahead by a bit.

Legs
If you can afford it, and you should be able to since you’ve read my book Zuggy’s Gold Mastery Guide, you’ll want to pickup Nethercobra Leg Armor (50 AP and 12 critical strike rating).

Granted it’s a bit expensive, but well worth it. Of course, if you can’t afford this one you can always pick the lesser Cobrahide Leg Armor enchant.

Boots
As far as the boot enchant is concerned I think the only real option is Enchant Boots - Surefooted (10 hit rating and 5% snare resist).

Some may argue that the stam and run speed is superior, however I typically go with the run speed meta gem, and if I don’t have that I’ll have the talent in assassination. Either way, I think you’re going to be better off with surefooted over anything else, the hit is nice, but more than that the snare resit is awesome.

Ring Enchants—-enchanters only!
In all honestly, I think both Enchant Ring - Striking (+2 damage) and Enchant Ring - Stats (+4 all stats) are very close.

If you really want to get picky though I think it really comes down to your spec. If you’re shadowstep go with the stats, since this provides agility you’re getting a bonus from it. For mutilate I’d go with the +2 damage, and combat is purely a toss up (though +4 all stats would be my personal preference).

Druid / Warrior 2v2 Arena Strategy

The Druid/Warrior 2v2 combo is fundamentally strong. You have survivability to outlast most other compositions. Don’t be surprised if you see yourselves fighting long fights. This is easily one of the best compositions in the arena and difficult for most other team setups.

Warrior Arena Talent Builds
Warrior: 33/28/0 or 35/23/3 (Variations)

1. You need 2 or 3 points in improved hamstring
2. Improved Intercept coupled with the 4 piece bonus 15 second CD on Intercept is Money
3. Mortal Strike—A Must
4. Second Wind—Running without this will cause you to lose a lot more HP and rage and you will get stuck in snares more often as well, personal experience
5. Piercing Howl—Good to have, you will be able to stay on classes such as rogues a lot easier
6. Weapon Mastery—Even with the nerf here, I wouldn’t roll without it
7. Spam hamstring against every class to keep them from getting away from you. Staying on your target is very important
8. Choose your spec by your gear. If you have Black Temple/Hyjal off set epics, use them, as a warrior you have a LOT of survivability and you can easily have 300 resilience and survive for a long time

Additional warrior arena talent specs information.

Druid Arena Talent Builds

Druid: 8/11/42 or 13/11/37

1. The 8/11/42 is the cookie-cutter spec for arenas. 13/11/37 is also a popular spec in arenas, for insect swarm and nature’s reach also helps with the cyclone nerf, however, the Druids HoTs will not tick as high. This spec is popular for well geared druids as they already have enough healing
2. For basic druid strategy, healing, drinking, and mana efficiency are of utmost importance. Communicate with the warrior for debuffs, poisons, and crowd control
3. If you can master drinking during fights, then you will win many fights. It takes 6 seconds to get out of combat. Night elves will have an advantage here as they can shadowmeld and drink.
4. Use rank one entangling roots for mana efficiency. Same goes for insect swarm (if you have it).
5. Cover your Innervate with low cost buffs and HoTs. When chased by a Felhunter force the dispel with Lifebloom or Rank 1 Thorns/MoTW. Then innervate and apply as many trashbuffs/HOTs as possible. When you face teams without dispel then use innervate very early. It is also a good idea to have your warrior kill the felhunter as it only takes a a few strikes.
6. Pillar humping, LoSing Mana burns, frostbolts, and even just kiting melee dps is of utmost importance. Try to use names over your targets to avoid losing them.
7. Use Roots or Feral Charge+Bash when Cyclone would have no extra value to save on DR.

Additional druid arena talent specs information.

Arena Gear Guide
Warrior: Arenas have been overtaken by gear, especially if you are a warrior. If you lack the HP, resilience, or AP then you will be facing road blocks sooner or later. For warriors, if you have less than a 30% crit then stack more crit. If you have atleast a 30% crit then stack more AP. Due to resilience, an extremely high chance to crit won’t serve any person, that is why 97% of the warriors in 2000+ rating don’t use axes. You should gem and enchant to best suit your gear. For example, if you have BT/Hyjal gear then use it. I try to keep around 300 resilience while fighting. Only exceptions to gemming/enchanting to your gear are Surefooted and the +24 AP Minor speed increase gem.

Mace spec will be the best spec for the 2v2 and 3v3 bracket. The mace stuns are just superb. Having the power to lock down and interrupt a healer while they are casting or locking down a rogue so that they don’t mitigate as much damage is also very useful and can be optimal in winning matches. The other weapon that is very common in arenas currently is the 2h sword. It is doesn’t have as much utility as the mace spec for 2v2/3v3. Swords are best for the 5v5 bracket.

Druid: Druids are not nearly as gear dependent as warriors. If you are a druid then you are going to want to spec 8/11/42 or 13/11/37. Having insect swarm and increased cyclone and roots range can push the match in your favor. If you have over 1700 healing then I would definitely suggest speccing in this manner. I would also suggest that you gem/enchant for resilience, stamina, healing, and lastly regen. You should gm and enchant in that order.

Druid / Warrior Arena Matchups:
Druid / Hunter
Druid / Warlock
Druid / Warrior
Priest / Hunter
Priest / Rogue
Priest / Warlock
Shadow Priest / Rogue
Mage / Rogue
Mage / Warlock
Paladin / Warlock
Shaman / Warlock

Arena PvP Gear

Arena Gear Guide
The biggest difference between World of Warcraft prior to and after the expansion has to be the survivability factor. In the time it took players to level from 60 to 70 HP levels doubled or tripled for nearly all players, going from 3.5-5.5k to anywhere from 9-13k unbuffed, after all the buffs have gone out your average would probably be somewhere in the 12-15k range.

Though most players didn’t fully understand the changes resilience would bring, they soon would. By the middle of arena season one it was fairly apparent that resilience was changing World of Warcraft PvP as we knew it. No longer could a rogue stunlock an opposing player from 100% to 0% in the span of a cheap shot and kidney shot, no longer could a single PoM pyroblast one shot a player, no longer could a warrior kill you in three global cool downs, oh wait that still happens, but not as often, haha. In any regard, the whole way we PvP has been altered for ever, battles are longer and rely more on endurance and precision of the team as a whole, not one players burst of cool downs to win a match.

New Arena Gear - Gearing To Survive!
If you are new to the arena scene then you might be confused as to what items / enchants / gems you should be acquiring to better level the playing field for you and your teammates. Generally speaking maximizing your stamina and resilience is going to be your best bet. I hate to be so frank, but you simply cannot role into a serious arena match wearing spell strike or other PvE style items, it simply lacks the fundamental attributes needed to make a good piece of PvP gear.

Steps To Gearing Up:
1) Grind out your honor points gear. This is perhaps the easiest, yet most overlooked sector of gearing up. The honor system allows you to easily transform time spent playing in battlegrounds into great upgrades for arena. I recommend just biting the bullet and getting all the most up to date epic pieces (currently Veterans) first, these are all heavy stamina and resilience pieces and will be essential your PvP success. You can fill the following slots of gear from simply grinding honor points:
a. Bracers, back, boots, belt, neck, ring, PvP trinket (get the 2 minute one)
2) If you are a big fan of grinding, and have a ton of time on your hands, you can grind out the blue pieces (or season 1 arena gear which will be offered through honor points at the start of arena season 3) of resilience gear offered through the honor system. These are all good pieces, though gear slots you’ll replace with the arena armor equivalents in time. These pieces include:
a. Helm, chest, gloves, shoulders, legs
3) Enchant your gear with PvP style enchants. In essence, stamina / resilience enchants.
a. Helm – get your revered reputation reward enchant.
i. Healing – Thrallamar
ii. Spell Damage – Sha’Tar
iii. Melee Damage – Cenarion
b. Shoulder – get your enchant from Aldor or Scryer. If you can afford to buy the arcane tomes and fel armaments to level your reputation, do so. Though the difference between the honored and exalted shoulder enchants is small it’s one worth getting.
c. Chest – get +150 hp enchant or +15 resilience, personally I’m a fan of the resilience, and if you resilience is lower than 400, I strongly suggest this one.
d. Bracers – if you don’t have at least 10k unbuffed health I suggest going with +12 stamina enchant, though beyond that point you may find offensive stats are better suited to you (IE, +healing, +damage, +attack power, etc.)
e. Gloves – Though there is a stamina enchant for gloves, I recommend going with an offensive enchant here. Simply because the offensive stats are far superior to the mere 8 stamina increase you get. In essence, +26 attack power, +20 spell damage, +35 healing, etc.
f. Boots – Spend the gold, get +9 stamina / speed increase. It’s expensive, but still the best enchant in the game for your boots, regardless of your class, and certainly worth it if you’ve got the epic honor boots.
g. Rings – if you are an enchanter you should obviously enchant both your rings. Readily available enchants: +2 weapon damage, +12 spell damage, +20 healing.
4) Farm your Halaa resilience pieces. There are two pieces of resilience / stamina gear for every class available through Halaa (Nagrand) rewards. You simply go to Halaa, kill a few people, grind a few mobs, and bam, you’ve got two excellent starter pieces.
a. Resilience / Stamina based leg and belt armor is available through Halaa
5) Quest and / or Purchase your other resilience based pieces. The following link lists resilience-based pieces you may not be aware of. These are great filler pieces until you can get the epic equivalents available through the arena or honor system.
a. http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4&filter=qu=3;cr=79:92;crs=1:2;crv=1:0#0+6+1
6) Your ultimate goal is to have the perfect combination for resilience, stamina, and offensive stats. Personally I’ve set my survivability stats at 400 resilience and 11,000 unbuffed hp. As I’ve already achieved that I am simply itemizing my enchants now to maintain and increase those stats without losing any more offensive ability. The items I’ve listed above are great ways to get started, though you’ll want to get rid of your blue items as quickly as possible and begin picking up the epic arena armor available through the arena vendors and honor point system.

Arena Gear Update
Since this guide is several months old it’s a bit dated, but you should note that in addition to all of the above avenues to gear up that I have listed, you can now gear blue resilience pieces from various reputation vendors. Most of the main Burning Crusades will sell several pieces, all they require is a bit of gold and honored reputation. This is a great way to start your PvP career off if you’ve just started playing WoW.

Priest Arena Talent Specs

18/0/43 Shadow Spec

Prior to the release of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, shadow priests were seen in both PvP and PvE as being useless. Their damage was lacking, their survivability was limited, and they offered little utility. All this changed with the release of resilience and 41-point talents, and shadow priests are now staples on arena teams of all sizes.

The premise of the spec is fairly obvious, it’s a spec that allows the priest to not only do considerable amounts of burst damage, but also sustain said damage over long fights. In addition, with the proper gear setup and itemization you’ll have the ability to literally tank an entire DPS assist train you. The true utility of the class, and gray area where good shadow priests are separated from the poor ones, comes in the ability to make quick decisions. Very early in the match the shadow priest needs to decide, is this a team I can DoT, throw a couple mindblast + shadow word: death combos, silence the healer, and get the kill? Or is it a team I need to play more defensively, relying more on shielding to survive while mana burning the opposing teams healers to win the mana battle? All of these factors will depend on both your own team’s composition and your opponents setup. However, the spec allows you to take a wide variety of roads to victory, as the shadow priest it’s now your responsibility to make the correct decision for yourself and your team that allows you to take full advantage of the many bonuses the shadow spec offers you.

41/20/0 Discipline Spec
41/20/0 Discipline (offensive disc, ideal for rogue/priest)

Though disc sat in the shadow of holy (no pun intended!) until Burning Crusade it finally made it’s big debut in patch 2.2. The changes and additions of many talents have finally made the spec a big contender for PvP healing, and certainly the dominant spec currently.

Though disc doesn’t have quite the healing power of holy it exceeds holy’s versatility by adding many offensive capabilities. This makes the disc priest ideal in many arena setups.

Depending on how you choose to customize your spec you can have the ability to throw out a lot of extra damage, or have greater defensive capabilities. Talents like searing light, reflective shield and power infusion allow the priest to take on a whole different hybrid role in certain team compositions.

28/33/0 Holy Spec

Though holy is no longer the dominant healing spec for arena it still offers great utility and viability if it fits well with your play style and team’s composition. With improved mana burn you are still able to fill the “tank the enemy and mana burn” role. In addition you have a wide range of insta-cast heals you can throw as you kite the opposing team.

The big talent from holy is without a doubt the blessed resilience talent. The talent is the only saving grace for priests when it comes to fending off warriors and rogues. Blessed resilience combined with a solid set of resilience gear, the correct itemization and gems allows you to quite simply tank the other team. Though the ability to tank the opposition is great, the spec truly shines in the hands of an player who understands the intricacies to the kiting aspect of the game. Just as much as your gear plays into your ability to execute this talent spec, so does understand of kiting. Between prayer of mending, renew, and shield, you can quite simply run the other direction of your enemies (assuming they are attacking you) and continually heal yourself without ever having to stop.

Needless to say, this is certainly going to be mana inefficient, though if it’s the difference between you dying and not dying, or the difference between your teammates being able to kill the enemy in time, well it’s a necessary evil then. 28/33/0 is going to be your bread and butter when it comes to maximum efficient PvP healing, it allows for great survivability, lots of insta-cast healing, the ability to tank many opposing players and offers a great deal of utility if you understand the benefits of the kiting game.