PvP: Some Basics

Here are some basic ideas for someone who hasn't done alot of PvP yet and wants to. Very simple. Very basic. I am by no means a pro. Just some observations as I've continued my PvP trek.

Maybe a brief foray into stats:

Resilience: This stat essentially reduces the chance that your opponent will hit you critically, reduce the amount of critical damage and reduce the overall damage received. You need a lot of this! As far as I am aware, the latest cap is 1414.5 (.5? Yes, .5) So functionally lets call it 1414 or 1415. I think many still think the cap is 1230 but it was increased since 3.3.3. The difference between PvP gear and PvE gear is resilience. If you have high resilience, things are a lot easier. Get as much as you can.

Stamina: In my opinion, the next most important stat. Why? Longevity. The more you have, the longer you live. That’s why PvP gear has so much more stam than PvE gear. Think about it. In PvE, provided your tank does his job, the monsters never seem to clue in to the fact that the fancypants girl in the back wearing the long flowing robes and waving her arms about as leaves and stars and flashes of holy light go off around the party is keeping everyone alive. Note to monster….KILL THE HEALER! Unfortunately for the healer, PvP is a different situation. You have a bullseye on you from the opening shot. Any player worth his/her salt should know to kill the healer. You see it in BG chat all the time. “Kill the healer you *&%$’n noobs!!” The more stam you have, the longer you stay alive, the longer your teammates stay alive. That being said, I don’t do a lot of additional stam. When I have a blue slot, I put a stam gem. The PvP gear has quite a bit already. Just wanted to point out the difference between gear.

The beauty of PvP gear is that it does this for you already. Not a lot of thinking. Your other stat priorities depend upon your class.

In my case today, I’m talking about my resto-sham. The stats I focus on for her are haste then a tie between crit and MP5 (maybe 60% MP5 and 40% crit…). Spellpower is on the gear already and it’s more than enough to heal what I need to heal. I don’t really go out looking for more than is on the gear. Crit is nice because it gives you those big hits. MP5 is nice because even as a resto-sham, you’re gonna run dry eventually (more on that later). How you decide to balance those is up to you. You’ll find out during some drawn out battle in AB whether your MP5 is sufficient! This is simply my opinion and I’m sure others have varying ideas. I gem and enchant haste wherever I can (much like PvE). The point is that I know with my regular gear and no added SP, that I can provide more than adequate healing power without a problem. The key is do my slow spells hit in time. Nothing is worse than watching the cast bar for your slow-as-hell chain heal hoping it goes off before everyone near you dies. Haste reduces that cast time and allows you to get off a lot more healing.

In summary, when preparing to PvP there are a few things you should do. Get appropriate gear. Resilience and stamina are key differences in gear stats for PvP vs. PvE gear. Get what you can. Accept that you’re gonna get eaten alive until you get some more. In my opinion, how you gem and enchant is up to you. Whatever keeps you alive longer on the battlefield is good (just not hit gems…okay?). I think next I’ll go into a little more detail on techniques that I use as a resto-sham and after that maybe look at how that changes with the specific BG’s. Talk to you later.