A little while ago, Drysc said in a post that "a prot warrior or shadow priest or what have you should though be able to jump into a battleground or arena and be able to do something with some small amount of success." This hasn't gone over well with many shadow priests. Even with Drysc trying to correct himself in multiple threads and insist that he doesn't mean that the class will never get more viable, a lot of shadow priests are up in arms.
It's probably pretty understandable. After all, before Burning Crusade, a Shadow Priest was pretty much universally feared upon the field of battle. They seemed to take almost no damage in Shadowform, and their DoTs tore through you with ease. Even in the early days of the Arenas, you saw quite a few Warlock/Shadow Priest teams tearing up the charts. These days, Shadowform doesn't really absorb damage like it used to, Psychic Scream doesn't really cut it as CC, and resilience makes sure that their DoTs are blunted quite handily. So what DO you do when you chose a class and spec to PvP, only to have that spec suddenly become lackluster in PvP? This isn't like Protection Warriors, who have known from the start they'd be good as tanks, and tanks alone.
We all generally have a good idea these days of what we roll a class and choose a spec to do. A Protection Paladin expects to tank. A Mage expects to DPS. But it's the divide between which specs are good at PvE and which at PvP that seems to be getting a little thorny lately. Should a player be able to count on their spec always being viable at the same aspects of the game? If so, should Shadow Priests expect PvP buffs sooner rather than later? Or should they accept that their age of PvP dominance was in the Battlegrounds and the pre-70 era, and resign themselves to speccing Discipline if they want to succeed in Arenas?
Hi folks, it's me again. Somehow, Liz's computer got unplugged from the Light at the last minute and wiped her draft for this week clean. The task has fallen upon me once to swing the Light and wreak havoc upon these pages with blood and fury. Or something like that. In the wake of the admittedly lackluster (what, no giant GMs or gnome-transfigurations or demons run amuck?) second take on the TTR stress test, I've decided to write up the experience about making your own Paladin on the Tournament Test Realm, aka the TTRadin. If you haven't logged on to the TTR, now's a good time to download the PTR client and get yourself started. Paladin without the pain If you've never played a Paladin before, the TTR is an excellent way to experience some Paladin goodness without having to go through the entire leveling experience -- some parts of which even self-confessed altaholic and column co-writer Chris Jahosky admits to having a dislike for. Of course, leveling is part of the education process, so don't expect to know all the abilities and talents a Paladin -- or any class you make, for that matter -- right off the bat if you don't have a max-level character of that class on the live servers. That said, making a character on the TTR is well worth the effort and is definitely something any player can use to explore their options. Getting a taste of a max-level character, in our case a Paladin (this is a Paladin column, after all), is something players can learn from.
So where do we start? We have the usual racial choices: Human, Dwarf, or Draenei for the Alliance; and Blood Elf for the Horde. Because it isn't a PvP server by definition, you can make an Alliance and a Horde character. The tournament server also isn't like the live realms in that there are no quests or NPCs aside from the trainers, vendors, and arena representatives. I haven't explored the tournament realm completely, but it's safe to assume that it's a barren world. The NPCs are all Goblins, by the way, which is a bit unsettling and bizarre. There are few things stranger than seeing little green men and women in full Tier 2.
Regular Paladin columnist Elizabeth was crit by an insane amount of work at, well, work and her co-columnist Chris is away completing his own epic quest, so like those duplicitous Blood Elves, I'll be stealing the Light for this week and swinging it around. Since most of the stuff I write on the site concern the one thing I really like to do -- PvP -- I think I'll get into character and write about something that some people find taboo... Retribution PvP. After writing about a few rules on healing in PvP, let's indulge ourselves with a little retributive mayhem. Despite being the most ridiculed spec in the entire game, Retribution can be a lot of fun -- and painful for your opponents -- once you get some fundamentals down pat.
Step one: gear up If you are at all interested in PvP as a Retribution Paladin, you must get geared up. There are no two ways about this. Unless you have the proper gear, you will simply not perform as well as similarly-geared classes and your PvP experience will be diminished greatly. Retribution is one of the most equipment-dependent specs in the game, and you will feel it in PvP. Chris has written an excellent starterguide for all aspiring Ret Pallies, which is an excellent read for learning about the perfect Retribution gear. In order to do some PvP, we'll then need to take the next step and go beyond what Chris suggested and aim much higher as far as at least one piece of equipment is concerned -- your weapon.
The calls go out through trade chat, "Premade AB, must have 250 resil." "Warlock looking for 5v5, have 400 resil, pst." It takes some doing but with Season 1 (soon to be Season 2) Arena gear available as PvP honor rewards, this is not outrageous.Changes on the public test realm that allow the purchase of Gladiator gear with Badges of Justice would make it still easier to acquire gear that is loaded with resilience.
Resilience was introduced along with the Burning Cruasde, and has had a massive impact on PvP gear.This combat statistic was designed to reduce the chance of being struck with a critical hit. It also reduces the damage caused by a critical strike.This stat was implemented in order to extend PvP combat.The presence of resilience is the main feature of PvP gear that sets it apart from PvE gear.
A while back, I wrote that the single most important change to World of Warcraft PvP was the introduction of Resilience. Many of you had strong feelings for or against the new mechanic, but one thing is clear: PvP has changed in the post-TBC world. Combat has become less a matter of how much hurt you can dish out but how much of it you can take. The result is -- in single combat encounters, at least -- longer battles and more creativity with the use of spells and abilities. High Resilience is a necessity in Arena combat, particularly in the current Season where Resilience gear is abundant and easily attainable with Honor. Resilience will allow combatants to survive just a little longer against focus fire. In matches that sometimes last under a minute, an extra second or two of survival can make a big difference.
It is also interesting to note that Resilience is almost exclusively an endgame item property, clearly designed for Arena combat. There are no items with Resilience usable below level 60 other than Elixir of Ironskin, which is usable at Level 55. Aside from token items from the Reinforced Fel Iron Chest in Hellfire Ramparts and uncommon quest rewards in the Outlands, most items with Resilience are usable only at Level 70 -- the level where competitive Arena play begins. The idea behind PvP in today's environment is all about damage mitigation. Last week, I discussed the key talents and a few abilities that classes have access to prior to obtaining Resilience. In the process of accumulating gear with Resilience, it helps to be familiar with the various forms of damage mitigation.
Today, however, we dive right into the juicy part. Resilience is an item property or statistic that reduces the chance you will get hit by a critical strike or spell critical strike; reduces the damage taken from critical strikes and spell critical strikes; and, as of Patch 2.2, also reduces the damage taken from Damage-over-Time effects (DoTs). Each 1% of Resilience will reduce the chance you will be crit by a spell or attack by 1%, reduce damage from crits by 2%, and reduce damage taken from DoTs by 1% (edit: It was erroneously written as 2%. Thanks to Phlipy for pointing it out!). A Resilience Rating of 39.4 grants 1% Resilience at Level 70 and -- as a bit of useless information -- a Resilience Rating of 25 grants 1% Resilience at Level 60. Because of the clear advantages it provides, any player moderately serious about PvP should accumulate Resilience gear.
If you're interested in PvP in any way whatsoever, you've probably heard of a little statistic called Resilience. Introduced a little beforeThe Burning Crusade was released, Resilience reduces the chance a player will be struck by critical strikes from spells or attacks. It also reduces the damage taken from critical strikes and Damage-over-Time (DoT) spells. It is a landmark change in PvP mechanics, qualifying as the most important improvement to World of Warcraft PvP since the game was launched. With the introduction of this new item property, PvP became less a matter of damage output -- although that's still important -- and more a matter of survivability or, well, resilience.
Battles are now intended to last a little longer, Resilience greatly reducing the chances of frustrating (for the recipient, anyway) instagibs. Prior to Patch 2.0, the premiere PvP stats used to be Stamina and Spell & Attack Critical Strikes, which were abundant in PvP-obtained items. However, both item properties were often also useful in PvE, which made many PvP items desirable even outside of PvP. Conversely, the sheer strength of PvE raid items were dominant on the PvP front, in many cases overpowering Stamina. This changed with the introduction of Resilience, which drew a defining line between PvP and PvE gear. With the new mechanic, in order to PvP more effectively, one had to wade into the thick of battle and earn Honor or Arena points. All players will start off with no Resilience, and it takes a conscious effort to accumulate the gear for it. Before undertaking such an endeavor, let's take a look at other forms of damage mitigation that are more accessible in the beginning stages of acquiring Resilience gear.
Tomorrow morning Arena Season 3 is scheduled to start up and, among other things, this will bring a lot of newloot into the game. I'm sure many of you are like myself and have been hoarding up honor and arena points in order to buy the new gear as soon as it appears on the vendors. This season, due largely to the new rating requirements placed on some of the new items, I've decided to actually put forth effort to be competitive in the arena.
With that in mind, picking up the new PvP gear becomes a priority, and I imagine other people are going to be in a similar position. Gone are the days of dying in the arena week after week in order to finally pick up that amazing weapon. Of course, for many players, there's a much more important aspect to preparing for Season 3: making money on the auction house.
Every piece has +Resilience and has set bonuses for the same stat. Sprinkled through the armor (and the weapons/ranged slot items) are small enhancements to existing abilities for each class as well.
Head over to WoR and check it out, then let us know if you think Blizzard has made a class PvP set that works for you or is it totally off base. You can also check out all the latest Arena Season 3 news right here!
Currently, in Arena matches, once in the arena, you can still swap your gear before combat starts. Why would you want to do this? There is an immense amount of difference in what my resto Shaman can do depending on whether he's wearing his healing gear of his damage gear, and being able to choose my set after I've seen the other team can be an advantage.
Too much of an advantage, says Blizzard. Even though they haven't changed things on the PTRs yet, Drysc says that when DoTs are affected by resilience, Arena players will no longer be able to swap their gear once inside. Apparently the reasoning is that when opposing players see a Warlock/Shadow Priest combo, they real quick switch on their shadow resist gear, and so casters are hoping for a nerf to gear swapping to come at the same time the DoT resilience shows up (which is what Drysc promises).
It's an interesting little QQ session, and like all good PvP worries, it means a whole lot to the people who are affected by it, and not much to anyone else. Still, nerfing gear swapping seems like a big change to make just to deal with folks who are trying to duck shadow damage in 2v2 Arenas. But it seems like, as soon as 2.2, Blizzard might be telling arena players to pick a set and stick to it.
Perhaps you've heard about the planned change to modify the resilience stat to effect DoTs? When I first read about it, I can't say I understood it. Resilience is an anti-crit stat, which reduces the chance that you'll take a critical strike and reduces the damage done by a critical strike if you take it. Specifically, each point of resilience (and at level 70, it takes 39.4 resilience rating to equal one point of resilience) reduces your chance to be crit by 1% and reduces crit damage by 2%.
But the main downside to using DoTs as a damage source is that they're incapable of critting. So what in the world do DoTs have to do with resilience? Eyonix explains it for us:
As it currently stands, each new tier of equipment adds to the amount of damage DoT abilities have, yet that damage is not mitigated through combat ratings found on typical equipment. This change will help ensure that DoT effects do not scale too well compared to other damage mechanics. The amount of damage reduced will be equal to the critical chance reduction effect that resilience grants.
If you're as confused as I was about why this was being done, not to mention how it was going to work, read on.
Two resonably major changes have been announced by Tom "Kalgan" Chilton, WoW lead designer in charge of balance, in a forum thread.
First, a change is planned to be implemented to prevent you from changing gear (besides what's normally swappable during combat, i.e. things that occupy the main hand, off hand, and ranged slots) during an Arena battle:
We do plan to disallow gear swapping (other than items you can normally change while in combat) once an arena battle has begun.
Ands secondly, something that has previously been the subject of much debate, with proponents on both sides of the fence. I think it's safe to say that it's the bigger of the two changes: DoTs will be affected by resilience. When asked "How about making DoTs affected by resilience sometime in the near future," Kalgan replied:
In the conclusion to this series of posts, we're going to be discussing the game's defensive stats -- which are probably only of minor importance unless you're interested in tanking. Though if you're one of those people (like me!) who has to know everything about the game, this is interesting information which will explain a lot of things about how damage is handled in World of Warcraft. If you're tuning in to all you needed to know about stats for the first time, it may be worthwhile to go back and read part 1 (covering the five basic attributes), part 2 (covering physical damage stats), and part 3 (covering spell damage stats) first -- but if you can't wait to know all there is to know about defense, resilience, spell resistance, dodge, parry, and block, keep reading!
Resilience, a stat introduced in the Burning Crusade, has quickly become very important in the new Arena-centric PvP world. In a nutshell, it reduces your chance to be crit, as well as the damage taken from any crits that do get through. And since PvP is all about burst damage, it makes sense that attacking crits would help. It helps against melee damage, ranged physical damage, magic nukes, anything that can crit. However, one very important class of damage is incapable of critting: DoTs.
A DoT can't crit, and therefore it doesn't care about resilience. So what, you ask? Well, this means that as PvP gear improves, and gains more resilience, it protects more against all kinds of damage except DoTs. Which means that, relative to other types of damage, DoTs get buffed as PvP gear improves. Dahis of Shadow Gaming calls this "classist item scaling," and presents as plausible solutions "Either nerf DoT base damage and allow crits, or rework resilience with some flat damage reduction component, or just add some aspect that pertains directly to DoTs." And it looks like Blizzard is listening to the growing concern; in a discussion on resilience, Drysc said "We're looking into it."
So what do you think? Does the DoTs/resilience situation need to be addressed in some way, or is it good as is? For more in-depth analysis, do read the article over at Shadow Gaming, which has several good points.
Not sure what exactly resilience is? Then I'll start out with an explanation: resilience is a stat which reduces your chance to be crit and reduces the damage done by crits when they do hit you. Of course, you'd think there's something of a downside to reducing your chance to get crit -- cool abilities that are activated by critical strikes won't activate, right?
Actually, as confirmed by Drysc, wrong. Players have been reporting that crit-activated abilities activate inconsistantly when they have high resilience, and Drysc explains that this is by design. High resilience can prevent crits from landing -- but to allow crit-activated abilities to still benefit the player, whenever a hit occurs, the crit-activated abilities have a small chance of being activated. Abilities are checked individually, so it's possible for say, Blood Craze to activate without Enrage activating.
The combat ratings system was implemented when the expansion came around-- it used to be that instead of a "dodge rating" on a piece of armor, you just got a "+2% chance to dodge." But Blizzard noticed that in order to scale that gear up ten levels, they'd have to push up percentages, and eventually everyone would just be walking around with crazy high percentages-- adding enough armor up to a 100% chance to dodge would obviously break the game.
So they developed the rating system, with each armor piece giving a plus to "rating" that then translated into different percentages at different levels-- an item with 18.9 dodge rating on it actually gives +1% dodge at level 70, but more than that at level 60 (about %1.5, actually). That way, Blizzard can scale the rating with level, and gear can get better without breaking the game. Much more on this, I'm sure, when Elizabeth continues her WoW Rookie feature on stats. And don't forget that RatingBuster can give you all this automatically ingame-- from what I understand, it has been updated with these numbers.
But in the meantime, after the jump, I've posted what Drysc says all the ratings will give you at level 70. Feel free to bookmark this post for quick reference when comparing gear.
A little while ago, Drysc said in a post that "a prot warrior or shadow priest or what have you should though be able to jump into a battleground or arena and be able to do something with some small amount of success." This hasn't gone over well with many shadow priests. Even with Drysc trying to correct himself in multiple threads and insist that he doesn't mean that the class will never get more viable, a lot of shadow priests are up in arms. 
The calls go out through trade chat, "Premade AB, must have 250 resil." "Warlock looking for 5v5, have 400 resil, pst." 
World of Raids is at it again. 
Currently, in Arena matches, once in the arena, you can still swap your gear before combat starts. Why would you want to do this? There is an immense amount of difference in what my resto Shaman can do depending on whether he's wearing his healing gear of his damage gear, and being able to choose my set after I've seen the other team can be an advantage.
Two resonably major changes have been announced by Tom "Kalgan" Chilton, WoW lead designer in charge of balance, 
With 
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