Arena rewards pages

By Eliah Hecht
Interested parties have probably already gone up to Area 52 to check out the arena rewards vendor, but this may be a little more convenient. Blizz have posted pages on the arena weapons and armor available for purchase with arena points, and they look pretty sweet (although not as overwhelmingly awesome as the top-rank PvP stuff was pre-BC). One thing that always surprises me a little bit is how much resilience is scattered all over PvP gear. All the sets have +35 resilience as a 2-piece bonus; according to WoWWiki, 39.4 resilience at level 70 gives -1% to be crit and -2% damage done by crits against you. All in all, the priest sets have 156 resilience (other sets, at a glance, look to have similar values), which is a 3.96% lower chance to be crit (and twice that knocked off crit damage against you). More and more, it seems PvP is about crits, both scoring and avoiding them. I guess crits were pretty important before, but this resilience bonanza makes it more obvious.

By the way, in case any casters are wondering about whether to go for the War Staff or the Spellblade + Endgame, here's a comparison of the stats.

  • Gladiator's War Staff: 48 sta, 32 int, 21 spellhit, 33 spellcrit, 22 resil, 187 dmg/heal
  • Gladiator's Spellblade + Gladiator's Endgame: 45 sta, 29 int, 30 resil, 203 dmg/heal

So if you cancel out everything that occurs with both options, you get:

  • War Staff: 3 sta, 3 int, 21 spellhit, 33 spellcrit
  • Spellblade + Endgame: 8 resil, 16 dmg/heal

The War Staff looks like a significantly better option to me, unless you're playing an affliction Warlock or something and don't really care about spellcrit. Of course, in the event that you have a better one-handed weapon or off-hand, you may be able to pair it with one of these Gladiator rewards to good effect.

As a final point, I would like to commend Blizzard for making multiple sets available for the classes that need them. Druids, Shaman, and Paladins have three sets each (one for each talent tree), and Priests have two (damage or healing). It's just the pure DPS classes, Mage, Rogue, Warrior, Hunter, and Warlock (Warriors are a pure DPS class in PvP, of course), that only have one set. The T4 and T5 gear have similar choices available. Yay for choices!

Has anyone made enough arena points to buy this stuff yet? If so, how's it working out for you?

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