The third Arena season is nearly upon us and those of us who enjoy PvP have been eagerly looking forward to all the new gear that will arrive with the start of Season Three. Unlike PvE, the upgrade path is pretty straightforward, but there's always the question of which item to pick up first.
In order to answer that question for myself, I modified my healing calculations to fit the parameters and playstyle of PvP (specifics are at the end of the article). Using the same "Healing Equivalent Points" system as before, I came up with the following values for Restoration shaman healing gear:
DPS gloves included due to so many shaman using them for the +5 yard range to Shock spells. This bonus will be included in the Season 3 healing gloves, fortunately.
Although the raw numbers are interesting, it's more interesting to see how much of an upgrade each piece is over the earlier season's items. Interestingly, going from Season 1 to Season 2 was often a bigger upgrade than going from Season 2 to Season 3 will be.
| Season 1→2 | Season 2→3 | Season 1→3
|
| Armor | +62.5 | +66.7 | +129.3
|
| Gauntlets | +54.0 | +40.9 | +94.9
|
| Helm | +66.5 | +60.2 | +126.7
|
| Leggings | +72.4 | +65.5 | +137.9
|
| Spaulders | +42.5 | +49.8 | +92.3
|
| Shield | N/A | +82.9 | N/A
|
| Weapon | +74.0 | +58.1 | +132.1
|
| DPS Gauntlets* | | +76.3 | +121.9 |
* Upgrading from DPS gloves to healing gloves.
In order to determine which upgrade provides the greatest "bang for the buck," we can then normalize the raw upgrade value by the cost in arena points. The highest values indicate the upgrades you should go for first (I skipped going from Season 1 to Season 2 as it's always better to upgrade straight to Season 3).
Value per 100 arena points
| Season 2→3 | Season 1→3
|
| Armor | 3.56 | 6.92
|
| Gauntlets | 3.64 | 8.43
|
| Helm | 3.55 | 6.76
|
| Leggings | 3.49 | 7.35
|
| Spaulders | 3.32 | 6.15
|
| Shield | 4.42 | N/A
|
| Weapon | 1.84 | 4.19
|
| DPS Gauntlets* | 6.82 | 10.84 |
* Upgrading from DPS gloves to healing gloves.
As you can see, upgrading from DPS gauntlets should usually be your first priority, followed by upgrading any of your Season 1 gear. In each case, upgrading your weapon is actually the worst value for your arena points due to the higher cost.
We can perform a similar analysis of PvP honor gear as well, using honor point cost as a normalizer.
| Veteran's | Vindicator's | Upgrade value
per 1,000 honor
|
| Bracers | 315.7 | 359.5 | 2.45
|
| Girdle | 430.2 | 470.4 | 2.25
|
| Sabatons | 446.9 | 488.2 | 2.31
|
| Pendant | 284.1 | 325.4 | 2.70
|
| Ring | 288.3 | 329.6 | * |
* Both versions can be worn at once.
Unless you're sporting Tier 6-level rings, grabbing [Vindicator's Band of Salvation] is your most effective upgrade. Following that, the [Vindicator's Pendant of Salvation] appears to be your next best choice.
The HEP values used for this analysis were: Healing = 1.00; Intellect = 3.68; Crit = 0.68; Mana/5 = 8.49; Resilience = 1.27; Stamina = 3.71; Armor = 0.08. These numbers were arrived at by assuming a 5 minute fight in full Season 1/PvP gear, no use of Mana Spring/Mana Tide (due to their frequent destruction), and use of Water Shield at all times. Survival stats were weighted 1:1 with healing stats (mana/5 was reduced by 75% due to the reduced dependence on mana regeneration in PvP and to account for the occasional use of Mana Spring/Tide).
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4 comments:
Awesome blog. I'm currently in the process of switching from Ele to Resto, and you're def helping me figure it out. Keep up the good work.
Thanks so much for this -- just discovered it and your blog is awesome. Post more!
Any thought's on good pvp trinkets?
Obviously the PvP trinket is a "must have" (go for the one with the 2 minute cooldown rather than 5, it's worth the extra honor). I've heard a lot of good things about the new Battlemaster trinkets, which you can use while being focus-fired, but you can also use your second trinket slot to bolster any deficiencies - Stamina and +heal being the obvious choices.
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