Equipment Choice for 4x Shaman setup in Arenas

[Nixi]

Lightning Etched Specs or the Season 4 Elemental Shaman helm?
I already have the LESpecs for 3/4 shamans. This is actually more of a question of what is the hit rating cap vs. players in arena. And a similar question is is there a spell penetration cap?


Battlemaster's Audacity (spelldmg/hpbuff trinket) or a resilence trinket?


These choices have been keeping me awake at night. ;(
Any help is appreciated.

[Mercurio]

Nixi,

Your 10-manning Kara thread has inspired me (and cost me lots of money), so the least I can do is share some experiences about gearing up my shammies for arena.

First, I'm not sure you'll be able to get the S4 mail helm. The requirement is 1700 arena team and personal rating, something the vast majority of arena goers never see. Personally, I had to pay a duelist to 2v2 with each of my toons to get them up to 1550 for the S4 legs, then 1600 for the S4 chest. Dropped over 1K gold to pay him for the help, but it was well worth it. I'm sitting with S3 helms atm as they have no rating requirements.

As far as hit rating is concerned for arena, Aelli is sitting at a hit rating of 31 and does quite well. My guys are squids, so they have the +1% chance to hit racial. That and my 15 hit rating (from S2 gavels) seem to do fine.

There is no cap on spell penetration, but all the spell penetration in the world does absolutely no good unless your target has resistance to the school of magic you are casting. I haven't worried much about it, but gearing up for PvP normally has given me a spell penetration of 44 (+20 from cloak enchant, +10 from Veteran's Band of Dominance, +14 from Vindicator's Band of Dominance). This is usually sufficient, because most players won't wear resistance gear into the arena. The common resistance buff is MoTW (the druid buff), which gives 33 resistance to all schools of magic. Night elves have a +10 nature resist racial passive as well, but my spell penetration of 44 covers both.

As for trinkets, my guys all have the battlemaster's trinket and my 3 slaves have a +dmg trinket (eye of Quag, might upgrade to Icon of the Silver Cresent). My main has the Medallion of the Alliance so he can trinket out of CCs and for a bit more resilience as he is the usual target.

Hope that helps!

[Nixi]

Thank you so much, that does help! It is always nice to hear that i've inspired someone, but i have to admit, i've been inspired by many people on these forums. *looks at my 4 box shamans and then Ellay :thumbsup: *


Because of the advice I've received today I went out and purchased the Battlemaster's trinket for all my shamans. I guess spell hit isn't worth looking at when comparing the Lightning Etched Specs to the S4 helm. I'll probably get the S4 helm with my lead. I have 2000 arean points with my main plus last week my partner and I pushed to 1705. We've been learning so much over the past few weeks, but one BIG factor I attribute to our run from 1600 to 1700 was the time of day we played. It was after 1am and people just didn't play 15 min waiting games. Almost everyone would come in earlier than if we were playing during the daytime. That night my partner bought S4 gloves, the s4 hands, and the s4 boots. He wasn't using any pvp gear before that. I'm looking at the s4 helm and my LES and it's a straight up survivability trade for dmg. I think the biggest thing I have against ditching the specs is the look.

[puppychow]

I believe in PVP the spell hit cap against level 70 players is 4% for casters. Beyond that it won't help. You still always have a 1% chance to miss, since you can't go beyond 99%.

[merujo]

1 point in Elemental Precision does the trick for PvP. U dont need much hit in PvP.
Get the PvP Epic Trinket on ur main, 45 resi is very nice, as for the others, Audacity and Icon of the Silver Crescent, at least thats what im going for.

[Dave]

Not to beat a dead-horse, but just to clairify for you Nixi.

The spell damage hit cap is 3% in pvp anything over that is a waste. http://www.wowwiki.com/Spell_hit

And as you can see from the "Spell Hit Chance Chart" Ele shamans can achieve 9% spell hit passively via talents. So I would never gem/enchant or select any gear for spell hit if I were running PvP Elem Shamans.

[s]Also I would personally love to see some people trying to stack spell haste with spell damage in this order, (Spell Dmg>Haste). With the addition of Bloodlust and if you were troll (Berserking) you could cast some quite fast Lightining Bolts. I will make a spell haste post that will explain this in further detail. [/s]

EDIT: Per my spell haste post I think it's crap now. =)

[Alemi]

There is no cap on spell penetration, but all the spell penetration in the world does absolutely no good unless your target has resistance to the school of magic you are casting. I haven't worried much about it, but gearing up for PvP normally has given me a spell penetration of 44 (+20 from cloak enchant, +10 from Veteran's Band of Dominance, +14 from Vindicator's Band of Dominance). This is usually sufficient, because most players won't wear resistance gear into the arena. The common resistance buff is MoTW (the druid buff), which gives 33 resistance to all schools of magic. Night elves have a +10 nature resist racial passive as well, but my spell penetration of 44 covers both.

70 would be the "cap" on spell penetration for buffs. Aspect of the Wild or Nature Resistance Totems buff 70. Hardly anyone will gear nature resist gear for arena, but a smart team will switch their buffs when they see 4 elemental shaman.

That's one reason I don't bother with frost resistance or fire resistance totems in arena. Most casters easily get the 44 as listed above. and having 36 resistance seems silly over whatever totem i'll have to give up.

Note: None of the buffs stack, so MoTW doesn't stack with either of the above. However, we do get kinda screwed in that you can't purge off Aspect.

[Nixi]

The spell damage hit cap is 3% in pvp anything over that is a waste. http://www.wowwiki.com/Spell_hit

Unfortunately I can't view that page from China anymore. It's been block for probably more than a year now. :thumbdown:

Thanks so much for the replies guys. I checked my equipment and I have 40 hit rating, which gives more than 3% spell hit. I've retalented due to this information, so I've moved points from Elemental Precision into Unrelenting storm. I actually lost matches before due to running out of mana, so I hope this can help a little bit.

I also have the essential spell penetration enchant and i'm getting the rings. So I don't see any reason to gem for penetration. I didn't realize it was a 1 pen point to overcome 1 point of resist, so I really appreciate the clarification!

Also I would personally love to see some people trying to stack spell haste ...

I've got around 22% crit on all my shamans now, and i'm still having mana issues on DPS heavy fights where the opponents just won't let up. I won't trade crit for haste until I stop losing matches due to mana issues.

Tanked to 1680 from 1731 last night. A few matches we lost from impatience. Ugh, my partner and I LOSE 5v3 because I blow people up in bad places so we're running around like headless chickens trying to stop res's. He'll get caught up by a rogue or some shit and die then it's game over for me. One match where we held our cool and let them res kills that were in bad positions lasted freaking 1 hour and 20 minutes. Argh, res'ing is a nightmare for my partner and me.

edit: in my partner's defense the rogue that killed him had duel warglaives.

[Dave]

Re-read my spell haste section and browse to the TL;DR section of my new post.

Spell haste is trash for ele shamans in pvp =(

Anyways, glad information was helpful =)