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Wearing PvP Gear for PvE Content
Published on December 17, 2007 by Phaelia 
Items and Equipment, Obsolete 
23 Comments
This article should be considered obsolete since the changes to mana regeneration in Patch 2.4 that made Spirit a much more desirable stat relative to MP5. As PvP gear favors pure MP5 over Spirit, it will rarely match up to the equivalent Tiered dungeon gear.
This post is written in response to a recent post by Matticus entitled “Why Raiding with PvP Gear is a Bad Idea”. I would like to present a few counterpoints to what he’s written. Here is a small snippet of the original e-mail he received:
Am I wrong to assume that PVP gear (since it’s mostly a solo endeavor aside from arenas), is probably the best route to achieving pre-Kara quality gear? And are there any other resources out there that might be able to lend some guidance to an undecided healer?
Arenas and even Battlegrounds (for those who have the stomach for grinding them out) are great sources for gear. Many of these pieces remain superior even once you’ve been through Karazhan. Let’s look at three pieces as our example: the healing-oriented leather chest piece from Karazhan, the Tier 4 chest piece for Restoration, and the Season 3 chest piece from Arenas:
| [Stonebough Jerkin] | [Chestguard of Malorne] | [Vengeful Gladiator's Kodohide Tunic] |
| 364 Armor | 379 Armor | 501 Armor |
| 34 Stamina | 28 Stamina | 55 Stamina |
| 35 Intellect | 33 Intellect | 39 Intellect |
| 31 Spirit | 25 Spirit | — |
| 77 +Healing | 115 +Healing | 106 +Healing |
| 9 MP5 | 6 MP5 | 15 MP5 |
| — | Y B B | R R Y |
Note: I’m omitting the consideration of Resilience due to its limited value in PvE.
For this example and when applicable, I will be gemming yellow slots with [Dazzling Talasite] and blue and red slots with [Royal Nightseye]. While you might opt to gem for Stamina or Resilience gems if you were serious about PvPing, in this case we’re purely interested in PvPing to acquire gear to use in PvE. Similarly, you’d probably gem a helm with a PvE-oriented meta gem such as the [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond] rather than the PvP meta gem offering 5% stun resistance.
The Season 3 tunic frankly blows the Stonebough Jerkin away. It gives 29 more +Healing, 4 more Intellect, 6 more MP5, and 21 more Stamina, all at the expense of 31 Spirit (which roughly equivocates to 12.4 MP5 when considering Blessing of Kings, Living Spirit, and Innervate). By wearing the Season 3 tunic over Tier 4 (which isn’t available until your guild can defeat Magtheridon), you gain 21 Stamina, 6 Intellect, and 9 MP5 and lose 9 +Healing and 25 Spirit. Obviously, the Season 3 tunic is the best choice if it’s available.
Additional Considerations
There are other reasons you might want to gear up through Arenas and Battlegrounds. First of all, by doing so you are reducing the amount of guild-acquired loot your character will need. You will save DKP on drops while allowing other guildmates with whom you might otherwise be competing to gear themselves up more quickly. Secondly, the survivability stats provided by this gear make it an excellent option when soloing (assuming you solo using Balance spells). Thirdly, it’s a great way to help gear up an alternate or newly-created main character you want to begin taking to raids, reducing the strain on your guild to help gear you up so that you can perform at the same level as your old main. And don’t forget what is perhaps the most compelling reason to use PvP gear over PvE gear.
While the most recent Arena armor will always remain at least half a step behind its tiered counterpart (Season 3 = Tier 6) due to its increased reliance upon survivability stats, it will (hopefully) continue to provide an excellent avenue for gear progression for those guilds who also lag a step or two behind in their raid capabilities.
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All these things can be done in 5 mans though. Riverwishs...
Well shiver me Timbers!! (Literally, I’m a tree) I knew i was on to something with the PVP gear question (spelling?) Thank you Phaelia for the comparisons and i fell honored to have this make it onto your sweet sweet blog.
Thanks for the help Phae. I know you’ve made one druid there happy =).
Glad at least ONE of us knows what we’re talking about.
But what about the primal mooncloth robe?
Actually, I think it’s great to balance out the lack of stamina on the PM set with some of the extra stamina on PvP gear. Well, anyways, it’s a strategy that’s worked out pretty well for me, and I’ve done it both as a tree and as a priest healer. I wear the PMC and Whitemend sets, and then have the Vindicator’s … of Salvation necklace and ring, and the Gladiator’s Salvation as my weapon. I don’t like doing arenas, so I went for the the things I could get with honor. The weapon, even the season 1 one that you purchase with honor is pretty compelling — I think it’s equal or better than pretty much anything you’ll find in Kara. The lack of spirit and mp5 can be a problem, but as long as you aren’t wearing all PvP gear, I don’t think it’s the end of the world.
I must disagree strongly with your use of sockets in the yellow slots.
If you assume that the gear is socketed for optimal PvE performance (even though gained with PvP), it would be my opinion that the best PvE gem for yellow sockets is 8 spirit. At least my analisys of spirit actually labels it as a stat for more worth it than intellect, so socketing 4 int seems like a waste given the duration of encounters these days.
Also spirit is pretty much match on with MP5 for druids these days. Yes its still worse if you spend alot of time in the 5 sec rule, and with proper lifebloom rotations you should also do that. Having said that, some druids would probably still consider items like Bangle of Endless Blessings for PvE (i wouldn’t, but i also have a gazzilion mana pots and a pet Shadowpriest because im VIP when im resto
), and you might face encounters with phases where you wouldn’t be casting for some time.
Your thoughts? =)
I’ve been under the impression that PvP gear was disastrous for PvE until recently. When talking with my guildmates, I expressed a reluctance to replace my blue shoulders and gloves with the purple season 1 armor I had just acquired. They were confused as to why, since they were both obvious upgrades. I explained that I had been in many groups that had scoffed at PvP gear for PvE play and didn’t want to be making some unknown mistake, though it seemed obvious which ones were better.
I was told blue PvP = crap, while purple = great (as long as it is an upgrade).
@Jordon: So glad I could help! Best of luck to you in the Arenas and on the battlefield.
@Matticus: Oh, whatever. ^_^ I just already had experience with this having equipped Phaelia in a mixture of PMC, Karazhan gear, and Season 2 items. So these are comparisons I’ve had to make before. =) Thanks for asking me to have a look.
@Tabithy: I didn’t include the PMC robe because it requires Tailoring, a tradeskill that isn’t as common among Druids. But I used the PMC set over my Arena Season 2 chestpiece and shoulders because that set bonus was too good to pass up! I haven’t crunched the numbers to compare it to Season 3’s chest piece, though. I also like the idea of mixing and matching different pieces that specialize in different areas. My S2 helm and gloves helped make up for the lack of Stamina on PMC.
@Athinira: I’m afraid I’m not sure what gems you mean. The only 8 Spirit gem I’m are of is the Sparkling Star of Elune, and that’s Blue, not Yellow. Do you mean that I should break the set bonus or is there another gem I am not thinking of? From my calculations and assuming Living Spirit, Innervate, Blessing of Kings, and Intensity (sheesh), I get a value of 2.32 Intellect = 1 Spirit so I can definitely agree that Spirit is worth more than Intellect for me right now. I’m dying to know if I should be replacing those Talasites, so please let me know what I’m missing. =)
@Bellwether: Don’t let the stigma being assigned to “wellfare epics” get you down. Regardless of an item’s source — or it’s atrocious appearance (/cry [target=Zul'Aman]) — an upgrade is an upgrade as long as it’s better than what you’re currently wearing. =)
“Why Raiding with PvP Gear is a Bad Idea”? I can only disagree (at least from my point of view, being resto druid), specially since it specifically refers to people upgrading their gear in order to raid, which is EXACTLY where PvE with PvP gear makes sense.
I got a few nice epics thanks to battlegrounds and arena because of that; back then it was the best way for me to get good gear to raid with. However, I soon declined to roll on many items from Karazhan because they weren’t any real upgrade. I’m glad to see now I wasn’t the only one. Furthermore, if people were raiding Karazhan with full arena 1 gear instead of PvE blues, it should be in farming already.
An important point is “young” raiding casters generally lack stamina because they have to focus in spell damage/healing/crit rating as much as possible, often leading them to items than only buff a few stats at a time.
Also too many PvE-oriented items have “wrong” sockets, which makes you sacrifice socket bonus because the required gems don’t fit your needs. On the other hand, PvP gear with +resilience bonus isn’t too useful either, but red sockets (+18 heal) are very nice for druids struggling for decent healing stats, so you may end up get with that “free” resilience anyway.
Sure, you lack spirit for your ToL aura (and patch 2.3 buffed its mana regen) but, is it really that bad? You get such a huge upgrade from your green/blue items, you should really consider using them. Specially sad is the case of leather chests. I had to wear some blue lvl 63 DPS piece (I don’t remember the name, but it was actually pretty good, got it from UB I think) for a long time at 70 since there was only one level 70 healing chest available pre-Karazhan, it -as far as I know- drops in heroics and I had no luck. Crafting wasn’t an option either (pre-2.3 LW required too much money and high reputation). If given the chance, I would’ve taken arena 1-2 chest without hesitation.
Is raiding with PvP gear a bad idea? No. But, should you aim at getting PvP gear? Nope, not that either. Just look at your own gear, see what stats you need the most, and what PvE items you’re least likely to get. Then fill in the gaps with PvP gear, and get the most of it.
I use Luminous Noble Topaz for yellow slots. I just allways used nightseye for my mp5 and used luminous for that extra healing. Now that ive reached an “infinite mana” amount i dont need any more regen so im sticking with Luminous and Teardrop living ruby. I am allso currently saving up for the vengful chest piece and will most likley gem it with 3 living rubys. With those 3 rubys its 142 healing for me and still more mp5 over my S2 chest. Stonebough was just horrible for me compared to S2 so i never picked it up.
Season 3 gear is better across the board for all classes than Tier 4. At this point with S3 gear there is no point in running mags and grulls for T4 gear what so ever, except for maybe the tank T4 (i havent looked at the war tank gear, but resil counts as avoidence for them). Druid tanks allso love the T4 4 set bonus as well. Other than the tanks thouge healing and DPS gear T4 is just inferiour.
I allso have no idea what 8 spirit gem you are refuring to Athinira. I would howevor disagree with you on your evaluation of Bangle of Endless Blessings. It is THE best pure mana regen trinket. I used it for a long time until i got more Mp5. I still keep it just in case i ever need it for a really wierd or mana/healing burst fight. I actually allmost used it for Zul’jin last night as a matter of fact before we got healing and cleanses straight. (Just me, the war tank and feral druid up at the end of that fight, druids ftw! ^_^) I would still have to say the nightseye is the best all around gem for blue and red with Luminous in yellow, switching in Living ruby inthe red slots when you get enough mana regen. Just the strat i have used.
A large part of the “PvP for PvP only” stigma is due to different itemization strategies for different for classes. Druids are fortunate enough to have their PvP gear be useful in both settings, but for many classes, they’re slightly inferior or downright awful (for shaman, for example, the S3 armor is *barely* better than Karazhan gear because of how they chose to itemize the set). So it’s largely a case of “well, my PvP armor isn’t that great for PvE, so it must be that way for everyone.”
Although I wouldn’t recommend PvPing for PvE armor if you’re going to completely hate the experience, there’re often a few good pieces here and there that can make up for deficiencies in itemization for your current progression. So if you enjoy it, and it’s an upgrade, take it and ignore the nay-sayers.
I think folks will find that there are quite a few raiders, including the ones working in Hyjal and BT, who regularly substitute PvP for PvE gear–both to accommodate poor itemization and to boost STA.
I generally utilize the Royal Nightseye, Luminous Noble Topaz, and Purified Shadow Pearls (with the exception of an epic 15 SPI gem sitting in my Vengeful Kodohide Chestpiece). I’d probably stack less SPI except that I AM using two pieces of PvP gear and the lack of SPI in tree form is fairly noticeable in comparison to similarly tier 5 or 6 geared druids. If I wasn’t generally rooted in a tank group I might be concerned more with straight mp5 to balance out the lack of SPI on my PvP gear, but last night on Illidan, for example, I noticed that when I had an SPI scroll on me (thanks, priests, for speccing out of Imp SPI) in addition to the mistletoe buff (w00t), my Rejuvenation and Lifebloom spells were both ticking for an extra 200 or so. On many of the longer fights, that extra oomph is huge, especially if it means you can top off a set of casters or melee taking splash damage with a single Lifebloom. Another benefit I’ve found to stacking mp5 with SPI is that mana regen skyrockets the second I’m out of the 5SR. Does this happen often? No, but on some of the longer fights I’ve been in recently, the raid has only been taking periodic damage and the tank gets hammered. Here, while the paladins are spamming Flash Heal, I can usually slow down, make sure I’ve got my rolling Lifeblooms moving, and kick back for a few.
And I agree with Zackoria–macro the Bangle to Innervate. Fabulous.
First off, I know from other guildmates’ experiences that PvP can definitely be as good or better than at least the Kara gear. There’ve been many times when people passed on drops because they prefered their PvP gear. Once you get into the 25-mans with T5 and T6, then it might be a little more of a debate. Not to mention that the extra stamina is nice for pretty much anyone because there are several fights where everyone’s at risk of being hit. (All that being said, I absolutely hate PvP and have never been able to stick with it long enough to get even one piece of gear, so it does nothing for me.)
In regards to the gem issue, I know lots of people ignore the socket bonuses unless it’s a stat that they’re particularly looking to buff. A common belief seems to be that you should socket for the stats you want, and view the socket bonus as a little something extra if your preferences happen to line up with the socket colors. I’m not saying it’s a belief I practice, but it’s not unheard of.
Well there seems to be quite a misunderstanding there. And PVE people tend to dogmaticaly reject PVP gear. It’s all a matter of what you are comparing it to, and how much has your guild progressed.
And the more usual example is the chest piece, because of the advanced difficulty of obtaining it in karazhan gear levels(hellooo maggy).
When you first get Kara on farm, the best chest you can have from PVE is the Stonebough Jerkin mentioned above. Of course it is LAME in comparison to S3 for which all you have to do is lose 10 games each week. Your next choice is S2 or the chest piece from Halazzi in ZA but these require you to be well geared in the first place and still are a bit worse than S3.
Now would I wear the t4 chest over the S3 one? The 25spirit = ~8mp5 and some extra +heal on your tree aura while the 1mp5 extra from S3 is rather equal to the extra raw +10healing from T4.
I guess T4 has only marginally better resto stats, while S3 offers much more raw mana and HP, so the selection is rather obvious (for S3), since in most post-kara fights there seems to be much random raid damage.
My point is that PVP gear is nice and rather easy way of preparing yourself to get better gear (PVP or PVE). The stat rules remain the same for both types…
I have recently made a new application to a guild now just starting to get TK and SSC to farm and one of the comments I received is to replace my PVP chest…
Well obviously I would if I had access to something better…
I would like to see everyone a bit less narrow-minded…
I just stared grinding BG’s in the last couple weeks for the sole purpose of getting the S1 helm. Socketed with pure healing this gave me 117 in the head slot which no other pre-T5 item could come close to (ZA Helm is my planned upgrade). I have become a healing junkie and judge every item by that stat. I use trinkets to take care of mana regen needs and it is working well so far. I was top of healing at Gruul’s last night even as a restokin. Point being if PVP has more healing then that is what I will wear.
@Runycat The Bangle’s use-on spirit is also really good when the 15% mana regen passive ability procs if you can keep an eye on your buffs really well. Having the proc and use affect up at the same time makes your Mp5 litterally soar into the sky (and then maybe being able to pass that innervate on to someone else instead. My guild’s priests get alot out of it since both of them have the bangle themselves AND the priest trinket off Lurker, It’s insane how much mana they regen with innervate then! =O)
@Dimitirs Is that for all shammy gear? PvP gear is allways itamized Differently. For druids the arena gear is very Int heavy and that as well as the stam, extra armor and resil cuts into the item budget for the rest of the items. It’s just funny that S3 is still better than (at least all except the feral gear that ive seen) better than T4. You can tell that guild from me that they need to look at PvP gear again and
Revaluate their opinion on it as long as you have it gemed for PvE, you are totally fine.
@Nasirah For the socket bonuses it depends highly on some key factors. First off is, how many gems you are using those don’t correspond with the socket color and what piece of gear it is (These factors aren’t counting in whether or not you really want the socket bonus, example the resil on the S3 chest for PvE). If you only want to gem one slot that doesn’t fit with the socket color out of say 3 slots than it isn’t as desirable if say you wanted to recolor all 3 slots. Depending on what piece of gear slot you are gemming they can have higher socket bonus budgets. Example, the heroic badge bracers I use currently have a 4 healing socket bonus. The Malorne chest piece has 9 healing for its socket bonus (though there are 3 gem slots on that while my bracers have one so these 2 factors can conflict on occasion). Which stat is in the bonus also can play a factor, example, mail healing bracers from Hydross have 1Mp5 as the bonus while mine have 4 healing, since 9 healing is not an even number and they had to splint the bonus from a 9 healing to 4 (you can assume this from the Hydross bracers since it is 2Mp5 instead of 2) you can safely say that that shammy gets slightly more out of 1Mp5 than I do out of 4 healing since to be half of 9 it would be 4.5 healing. This also brings up some questions as to how Blizzard rounds out item budgets because of the bad 3Mp5 gem (when that should be a 4Mp5 gem according to item budgets, I always assumed 9healing=1.5Mp5 or something like that and Blizzard just rounded up on the Nightseye gems because of this but the 4 healing socket bonus would be rounded down not up).
S3 is better than T4 but it is defenetly not better than T5 and 6.
@Athinira: I’m afraid I’m not sure what gems you mean. The only 8 Spirit gem I’m are of is the Sparkling Star of Elune, and that’s Blue, not Yellow.
————————————————————————–
Oh my, sorry. I always thought the spirit gems were yellow.
My mistake =)
Full S1 and Veteran is enough for entering SSC, at least i am feeling good on Lurker. We have another PVE geared tree for aura.
I have Beast deck, rarely go out of mana, and when i will get S3 healing mace instead of Lower City one, i will be at 1800 healing. The only PVE gear i was gettin after BC came out is feral one, because i felt feral PVP is broken. I do arenas often and i def. not have place in bags for separate PVE healing set.
I think both you and Matticus are correct. The difference is Item Level. Your comparing two PvE items of 115 and 120 level to a PvP item of 146 level. The same can not be said for Season one gear though which is the most available.
A similar question would be can you use Raid gear in PvP. Sure, but don’t expect to win, even if you are in a T6 guild. Sure your gear will help you significantly but it doesn’t have the stats that are most helpful in PvP like Armor and Resiliance.
Really what it comes down to is to pick the best item available. That may be pvp gear due to its inflated item levels and relatively few barriers to get, but that doesn’t mean it is optimal.
OK guys we really need to forget anything else but stats when comparing items. PVE/PVP does not say anything, as item level does not say anything either. The real question is:
Does the one have more desirable stats and sockets/bonuses than the other?
Everything else is just theories to explain Blizzards intentions.
The fact is that a PVP piece can be optimal choice for a PVE player in certain phases of progress.
And Shava don’t foul yourself. You obviously enjoy PVP over PVE and sooner or later you might be benched by someone else who has spend his /played time in Karazhan/Gruul getting more PVE oriented stats than you. Raw +healing is quite easy to get. The problem is that as fights get more difficult, you need to get other PVE stats as well like spirit and MP5 amd in good quantities.
I will add that the PvP s3 is invaluable for my gearset. As my guild is now knocking down Illidan’s door and kicking Arch in the shins Stam has become quite an issue. Several fights require that all memebers of the raid break 10k hp buffed. I find that the s3 chest I picked up a few weeks ago is great. Yes, it isn’t PvE Itemized but its not like the Shadow Resist craftables I have to toss on to survive certian other fights. Those pieces give me 0 help healing, just keep me alive. I know the % of players at that level is fairly low and its very situational but I’d add a snipit in there for the raids that are pushing through the ranks. Get in arena and get the welfare epics, just a few. They are worth the investment later on. My recommendation : farm the points but dont buy until you are about to pass the point cap ( 5k? if memory serves. ). Then when you get to those fights you can look at what you’ve got, crunch some numbers, and buy effiently to keep your set bonus’ and other goodies the most optimized.
If someone were to walk up fully decking in PvP gear they would do fine in Kara if they have the skill and gem/enchant to PvE. This would also give them a great gear set to rotate pieces in for those fights where lots of spike damage is tossed out and you need to soak.
-sc
Well at least with the S4 gear, Bliz finally got the idea to give a rating torwards nearly everything to more a less prevent this
@Shinsua: Why should they “more-or-less prevent this” (I mean, they already HAD since Spirit is so valuable in PvE now)? I think cross-avenues for gear progression is a good thing, especially if it helps a new main get up to speed without forcing the person’s guild to go back and do old content.
Thank you for making a post about this.
I tried convincing a friend that S4 will be superior to a lot of PvE gear from ssc/tk, especially slots that don’t contribute to a set bonus. He refused to listen to my reason and remained with his ancient philosophy, that “PvP isn’t made for PvE.” Just compare Belt of the Black Eagle to Guardians Chain Girdle.
Frankly, I would appreciate if some raiders slapped a few pieces of PvP gear on. As a healer, it gives more breathing room when you have 13-14k health raid buffed as oppose to 10k. That extra 3k can provide up to 15 seconds of breathing room if someone else needed heals more urgently.
@Blackbow: This article was written prior to the changes to mana regeneration in 2.4 that made Spirit so much of a more desirable stat for Resto Druids. Unfortunately, most PvP gear doesn’t have Spirit on it, instead favoring direct MP5 (from which we derive less benefit). So while Arenas and Battlegrounds remain great resources from which to draw when gearing up a new character, the gear obtained from such will rarely be a match to the equivalent Tiered set. =(
Of course, it’s always a good idea to carry around a few extra pieces for those fights where HP are so helpful!