Shaman PvP Gear, Enchants, and gemming

[Altsoba]

I'd like to know how you're dealing with this subject.

Gear:
Personnaly, I aim for sp and crit in terms of gear choice.

Gems:
Metagem - 21 crit rate + 3% increased crit damage
Blue Slots - +12sp +15 Stam
Yellow Slots - +12sp +10 crit rate
Red Slots - +23 sp
Colorless Slots - +23sp

Enchants:
Head - +29sp +20res (not sure the rep one is worth it)
Shoulder - +23sp +20 res (not sure if the 10k honor one worth it)
Back - +35 spell penetration
Chest - +10 all stats
Wrist - +40 stamina
Weapon - +63sp
Shield - +25 Int
Totem - Using Totem of electrifying wind
Hand - +28sp
Belt -
Legs - +50sp +30 Stam
Feet - +15 Stam Minor speed increase
Ring
Ring
Trinket - Titan-Forged Rune of Audacity
Trinket - Platinum Disks of Sorcery

Glyphs:
Lightning Bolt
Lava
Totem of Wrath

With this, in average, since all shaman aren't equally geared I have self buffed:
Spell - 2716
Crit - 23.26%
Haste - 144
Hit - 0
Resilience - 822
HP - 22120
Mana - 16116

I'd love to hear your comments as well as where you differ or agree with my options. As I'm changing gear, I really feel the urge to change from stamina to spell power everywhere I can.

Alea Jacta Est. Thank you for your contribution.

[heyaz]

Assuming this is for pvp:

1. What do you gem all that crit for? Your hardest hitting spell is a guaranteed crit, you have +5% crit from about the moment you hit combat, and elemental mastery gives you what is it now, 20 or 30% extra crit for 15 sec?

2. You need some hit. Aim for 6% with talents, 7% is even better, Too many blood elves and paladins will just barely cheat death because of their resistance,.

3. Haste is pointless in PVP, especially that little of a rating (144)

4. With only +35 spell penetration you are going to get some very weak hits against anyone with resistance at all (just about everyone in pvp). A 9k lava burst could become 4k. You want 95+ spell resistance these days.

All my gemming is going more towards spell power and spell penetration. I'm phasing out the stam gems once I passed 21k hp. With no crt gems at all (except the mta) you easily hit 22-23% once you hve furious and relentless stuff.

Also don't glyph lightning bolt in pvp, lightning bolt is not your kill shot and the 3 (or 4%??) boost isn't going to make any difference.

[Menthu]

Assuming this is for pvp:

1. What do you gem all that crit for? Your hardest hitting spell is a guaranteed crit, you have +5% crit from about the moment you hit combat, and elemental mastery gives you what is it now, 20 or 30% extra crit for 15 sec?

2. You need some hit. Aim for 6% with talents, 7% is even better, Too many blood elves and paladins will just barely cheat death because of their resistance,.

3. Haste is pointless in PVP, especially that little of a rating (144)

4. With only +35 spell penetration you are going to get some very weak hits against anyone with resistance at all (just about everyone in pvp). A 9k lava burst could become 4k. You want 95+ spell resistance these days.

All my gemming is going more towards spell power and spell penetration. I'm phasing out the stam gems once I passed 21k hp. With no crt gems at all (except the mta) you easily hit 22-23% once you hve furious and relentless stuff.

Also don't glyph lightning bolt in pvp, lightning bolt is not your kill shot and the 3 (or 4%??) boost isn't going to make any difference.

Do I need to say more?

Totally agree. Only thing I do different is that I still stack up stam at this moment (21.5k now). Spell penetration is indeed very important. Try to mix your gems with penetration and stamina.

...and replace the lightning bolt glyph with the shocking glyph.

Junglelove,

-Menthu

[heyaz]

Do I need to say more?

Totally agree. Only thing I do different is that I still stack up stam at this moment (21.5k now). Spell penetration is indeed very important. Try to mix your gems with penetration and stamina.

...and replace the lightning bolt glyph with the shocking glyph.

Junglelove,

-Menthu

in furious + relentless off pieces you should hit like 23k with no stam gems.. until then I'd stick around 21-21.5k maximum and the fact is if your gear isn't good enough to get higher HP than that without gemming, then it's also not good enough to kill geared players without those spell power gems.

Had to break 2400 spell power (at least on the main) before I could kill relaibly, and that was weeks ago. 2000-2100 would leave too many pople at like 5%. I think when people are geared out in relentless you wil need 2500+ sp unbuffed to get those kill shots. Then again chain lightning crits for like 7k so maybe not as much anymore.

Lot of teams will now have a fire reist aura paladin or fire resist totem down, so you need as much spell pen as you can get. If you can't purge druid buff, they could have over 200 fire rest. making it hard to get the kill shot. I see this in 3v3 constantly.

[asonimie]

Important stats to gem/enchant for? Spellpower, Spell Pen. That is all you need to think about.

To give you perspective, I have done mucho research and counseling on stat placement for fellow boxers, and it has worked out pretty well for everyone so far.

Keep in mind my team is full furious w/ relentless accessories, but here are my current stats (with pvp totems down):
Hp: 25.9k
Mana: 16.5k
Spellpower: 3052 (BASE!!)
Spell Pen: 129
Resil: 1050

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=uther&n=taj

I gem for:
129 spellpen (3x stormy dragons eye)
Otherwise pure SpellPower gems, and 2x Spellpower/Resil gems.
There is ZERO stam / crit / haste in my gem choices.

[Altsoba]

Thank you so much everyone. When I did this post it was more to get insights from you rather than making a statement or a guide. I was almost sure that I wasn't going the good way, since I don't get that awesome results.

I'm more than willing to go the way you advice because it's well fundamented and it seems pretty clear and logical to me.

Asonimie, how do you have a +23sp enchant on a ring in a toon Engineer/jewelcrafter? Is it engineer stuff or is there some way around?

Thank you and please lets keep this topic open :)

[Kruschpakx4]

Haste - 144


: /

neck, 1 ring, cape with +hit, other pvp gear with crit (battlemaster with sp)

[asonimie]

Asonimie, how do you have a +23sp enchant on a ring in a toon Engineer/jewelcrafter? Is it engineer stuff or is there some way around?


I was Enchanting/JC til last month. It shows up on armory but its unusable red on my character now that i dropped Ench.

[Altsoba]

So basically my idea is to place +25 Spell Penetration in every blue slot. That'll make along with the cloak enchant 135.

The three relentless items with +hit give a total of 150.
Meanwhile I think I'll gem colorless/yellow slots/useless item socket bonus slots with the +16 Hit. I won't go far I think but I'll get gear hopefully and will climb on there.

Red slots I'll go with +23 spell power.

Also Just equipped all with Thunderfall Totem.

Thank you so much for your great help.

[Altsoba]

So far I was able to:

Spell Penetration - 115
Hit Rating - 86 (3.28% + Talent 3%)
Spell Power Self buffed - 2.7k

I hope to kill better with this ^^. I'll keep you posted.

[asonimie]

One thing, I would recommend NOT going over 130 spell pen. Personal opinion here, but I feel being slightly low with 100-125 pen is better than going over at all (135). A lot of people roll around with 85-100 pen and seem to do fine, only reason I have 129 was because it worked out that way and I'm an extremist with theorycrafting. I just don't want you to feel like you have to be that high. You might want to change one of those gems to pen/stam or maybe just say screw it and go with pure spellpower.

[Altsoba]

One thing, I would recommend NOT going over 130 spell pen. Personal opinion here, but I feel being slightly low with 100-125 pen is better than going over at all (135). A lot of people roll around with 85-100 pen and seem to do fine, only reason I have 129 was because it worked out that way and I'm an extremist with theorycrafting. I just don't want you to feel like you have to be that high. You might want to change one of those gems to pen/stam or maybe just say screw it and go with pure spellpower.

Can't thank you enough for your continuous support and feedback asonimie :).

Yesterday I didn't do a lot of matches but it went pretty well. We're now at 1356 rating and need to farm honor to get relentless boots :p. Going to get Furious shoulders today too.
I think that for the time being I won't (also, I cannot :p) go over 115 pen.
I have a few questions:
Regarding hit, so with talents I'm at 6.28%. Isn't it enough? I'm not doubting you, just want to understand a bit more hit mechanics in pvp.

I'm at 800+ resilience and 21k hp unbuffed (playing with priest healer). With this gemming and keeping 2.7k sp self buffed I have no way of getting higher. But those are two stats that "naturally" grow with the gear. What do you think?

Another question is, is there a way to include bloodlust in our kill htem all macro without preventing the rest of the sequence from being casted when it's on cd?


Thank you!

[asonimie]

Can't thank you enough for your continuous support and feedback asonimie :).

Yesterday I didn't do a lot of matches but it went pretty well. We're now at 1356 rating and need to farm honor to get relentless boots :p. Going to get Furious shoulders today too.
I think that for the time being I won't (also, I cannot :p) go over 115 pen.
I have a few questions:
Regarding hit, so with talents I'm at 6.28%. Isn't it enough? I'm not doubting you, just want to understand a bit more hit mechanics in pvp.

I'm at 800+ resilience and 21k hp unbuffed (playing with priest healer). With this gemming and keeping 2.7k sp self buffed I have no way of getting higher. But those are two stats that "naturally" grow with the gear. What do you think?

Another question is, is there a way to include bloodlust in our kill htem all macro without preventing the rest of the sequence from being casted when it's on cd?


Thank you!

No problem, and I'm glad you're seeing some success
I'll work in reverse,

Bloodlust/Heroism: It eats a GCD, so no, there is no way for you to combine it with Elemental mastery. I have it bound to the same keybind on all characters, therefore no matter who is charge stunned, sap'd etc... ONE of the shamans will get it off. A note: As you climb in rating, good teams will attempt to "bait" your heroism, and then LOS you for 45 seconds til it's gone. Against high rated intelligent teams, MAKE SURE they are commited (not just 1 person charging you, but healers stepping out into position etc.)

HP and Resil: Absolutely correct, Stam and Resil just come with gear. No major enchants/Gems to boost them (other than WG helm/shoulder chants of course). For people starting out, you can only really focus on one stat - I still maintain that Spellpower should be the first stat you concentrate on. Your gear may not be awesome starting out, but with boosted Spellpower you can practice being a defensive cannon, instead of a defensive impotent dmg sponge.

Gear comes at a set rate... practice does not. Practice the correct rythmn and you'll be ready once the gear shows up.

Hit% for PVP: Another topic that is debatable as where to draw the line. To achieve basic PVP hitcap for spells you need against most toons is 4% total hit (5% if you are a melee class, which most of us are not). Don't forget to account for Draenei racial here, because it does not show up on your spell stats. However BElves and similar racials/effects increase chance to miss by 2%, so that pushes the "hard cap" for spells to 6% hit. But there's more, there are additional talents/effects that increase chance to miss even further, such as Ret Pally's Divine Purpose etc, which increases spell miss by 4%. So worst case scenario is a BE Ret Pally, who has a 10% chance to be missed by spells.

Obviously 10% Hit is too high to shoot for in pvp, and is usually a waste of stat allocation. For the more casual world PvP/BGs, I would say the 4% is probably fine, for serious arena - 6% is accepted to account for 2% miss racials. I wouldn't advise going any further than 6%. With my new gear upgrades I bumped up to ~6.3%, so I'll be moving gear around to try for flat 6% again.

BTW, the best way to achieve PVP spell hit% is through the gear itself. Use "ascendancy" pieces (neck, cloak, one of the rings always has hit etc). That way you are trading crit for Hit, which is a good stat to lose. Don't gem/enchant for hit%, because then you are sacrificing potential spellpower stats that can be achieved by Runed gems. Losing Crit > Losing SP.

[daviddoran]

So i'm gearing my relatively new 80 shamans at the moment, leveled in AV, and now have 5 of the set pieces, 3 ele 2 resto for the extra resil. I'm still using the BoA staves now, what should I go for for a weapon and shield? Are my only options earned in PvE? I see a lot of shaman with the old badge shield, with the badges now, it seems like a waste to downgrade badges for that shield.

Do I have to pony up 5k gold for 5 BoE caster shields?

[asonimie]

Run some heroics and grab these from the badge vendor.

Protective Barricade of the Light

Great starter shields and should take you all the way to relentless shields at 1800.

[Altsoba]

I'm currently 150 Hit Rating (5.72%) and 115 Spell Penetration.

I attained that hit just with gems (+16 hit), Deadly ring of ascendacy (+38 hit) and the legs from WG (+64 hit).
It makes 8.72% hit with EP (talent).

So, I believe it's better to move to relentless dominance when upgrading (relentless ring to replace deadly included - minus 1.45% hit), or you have another opinion?