Sunday, December 9, 2007

Arena Weapon Choice

After debating it for a while, staring at the vendor for a while, and having "come to a conclusion" a fuckton of times, I ended up going with the one hander. I'll break down the three options:

  • Battle Staff - Best offensive DPS style option. Particularly flexible if you move to Fire in 2.3.2. Best in PvE.
  • Penetration Staff - Felhunter killing potential?
  • Spell Blade - Overall with new OH, 35 damage, 16 resilience vs 11 hit, 46 crit, 1 stam, 5 int. But, the one hander lets you kill totems, which you really can't do with the staff.
I do think all three options are pretty viable this season, and that eventually I'd like all 3. I'm still undecided on whether 5/5 S3 is preferable to 4/5 S3 with Holo-Gogs. The 25 badges wand is also slightly interesting for those who want to rock CSD. You can blue gem the wand and the goggles, 10 resil your bracers, and 12 damage (or 9) the rest. All of this stuff is debatable/minor but it's definitely frustrating to gem up shit only to realize it isn't set up exactly how you want it.

53 comments:

Bamft said...

Oh, on a sidenote I'd go with Felhunter killer, but I'm weird like that :D

Bamft said...

Oh, and since I seem to be dominating your wall... I miss Dahis :( Can you get him to comeback and make an ACTUAL video rather then the scraps he threw together of him being drunk? :(
I know you have access to him!

Vhairi said...

You forgot... staff looks fugly!

Charade said...

I've always preferred the staff over dagger+OH really. I might get both the spell pene & spell hit staff, swap to kill felpuppy's, hit for anything else.
With full S3, all S3 honor rewards, 1 ring= violet, hex shrunken head, hitstaff my stats would be aprox:
>10023hp
>aprox 9k mana, bit more or less (couldnt be arsed to calculate this)
>380 res
>21% crit
>1005 spell dmg

= me likes.
I could swap the violet ring for S2 wich would put me above 400 res then at the loss of some crit. Probably for 2V2 i'll do that.

Raddy said...

Oh and I dunno where Dahis went. I think he got aids in the butt and died.

Azazael / Bregor said...

I've always gone MH / OH, but I honestly think I'm gonna go w/ the spell pen staff even though I fucking hate using a staff because they blow ass for killing totems because I'm just tired of all the RNG resists, and getting SRed constantly so I really want more Spell Pen.

I really wish I had actually looked at all the gear before 2.3 came out and planned it all out instead of just buying shit randomly from the vendor on patch day =x

Charade said...

The spell penetration staff as main use, will gimp your spell hit to much imo. With the stats I posted, I'm also easily at the spellhit cap.

Anonymous said...

Pen staff + skull of gul'dan imo

Anonymous said...

raddy, sup with your movie?

Raddy said...

Haven't honestly been working on vid. Been messing around on PTR dueling as DB and 21/40. Need a lot more time to play with those specs before I can be good enough to release anything sweet.

Also, people want arena footage but honestly, I haven't really had any WOW I PLAYED SWEET moments all season in arena. It's just execute the plan, win, or fuckup or get gayed by resists, lose. NEED MORE TIME. I also have some stuff I want to put in, but haven't got around to frapsing yet.

Anonymous said...

STOP SITTING AROUND IN IF THEN, WALLHOPPING WON'T GET YOU ANYWHERE IN eLIFE

zarthustra said...

TL;DR at the end~

this decision is too fucking hard, so I'm going to stream of consciousness this shit in honor of pwyff's virginia woolf leg humping (lol furries).

if you're going fire, you're probably going to go 34/27, 37/24 (fucking retard, get blazing speed), 21/40, 3/47/11, or 17/44.

21/40 is negligible compared to 34/27, because the difference is:

7% overall damage
20% more damage against targets < 20%
15% spell damage on fireball (equivalent to approximately 150 per ball)
combustion

vs.

Improved Blink (313 mana = sex machine)
Arcane Potency, which is amazing on clearcasting; brings crit chance to about 60%.
Spell Power, undeniably flavorful to counteract resilience.
Arcane Power, burst sexiness that augments power infusion by doubling the pleasure & fun

I would give the edge to 37/24 because of Spell Power and Improved Blink. 17/44 is just a different playstyle, and will be lumped accordingly.

So it comes down to 17/44 vs. 34/27 vs. 3/47/11. If you're 34/27 and don't get the staff you're obviously retarded and should be shot. Since 1 stam and 5 int is completely worthless, it comes down to 11 hit and 46 crit rating vs. 16 resilience and 35 damage. 3/47/11 has the hit cap covered, and dropping 1 point in emp fireball to pick up precision for 17/44 covers the hit cap as well.

It's down to 35 damage and 16 resilience vs. 2.19% crit. 35 damage is incredibly attractive when opening your spell book, 16 resilience helps somewhat to keep your fragile ass alive. On the other hand, 16 resilience is only .41% less chance to be crit and .82% damage off critical strikes. Enough to save a life? Maybe once or twice. Bank breaker? Hardly. Written off? Faster than a hobo on the street corner next to starbucks begging for a sandwich.

DECISION TIME. It's fucking Obama vs. Clinton up in this piece, 35 damage vs. 2.19% crit. As previously mentioned, 35 damage is fucking s e x x y looking. Au contraire, 2.19% is in a practical sense more burst and more damage. In honor of Virginia Woolf, Pwyff, and the potentiality of a dyke president (her assistant/lover is fly btw), the advantage necessarily goes to 2.19% crit.

WINNER(s): Battle Staff, heterosexual men everywhere, Rosie O'Donnell, that girl from nip/tuck

LOSER(s): Gardening tools, dentists, heterosexual men everywhere (rosie lol), furries

Plus, the staff looks like anal beads, while the dagger looks like you work for minimum wage on a construction site.

Anonymous said...

"the staff looks like anal beads"

ROFL

Artanias said...

Picked the hit staff myself, simply because im tired of 1h/oh and im tired of not getting crits off my shatter combos :P

Raddy said...

so, I'm going with:

gloves (doneski)
spell blade (doneski)
legs
shoulders
chest
battle staff
wand
pen staff
OH
head

that's a lot of points o.O

Anonymous said...

I'd be more inclined to get the spellblade if I ever saw a shaman in 3v3 :>

As is, I'm getting all the armor first for the AC, then the hit staff, then the pen staff for FFing SL locks, then the wand.

Oppo said...

"I'd be more inclined to get the spellblade if I ever saw a shaman in 3v3 :>

As is, I'm getting all the armor first for the AC, then the hit staff, then the pen staff for FFing SL locks, then the wand."




That.

Klaus said...

about the hit thingy. how much hit is really needed?

Dahis said...

"Can you get him to comeback and make an ACTUAL video rather then the scraps he threw together of him being drunk? :("

Hey now, I was only drunk for the Rogue duels and that vid was still ownage.

I'm playing Druid on Tich now for various reasons including the fact that the owner of my BDF Rogue account preferred it (and Minti will kill me if I don't 3s w/him).

If you want to 2s Rad, you must Tich.

bamft said...

Yarr, my friends are looking to reroll, we might come to Tich as well. I already have a level 10 Draeni Warrior there. "WTF NOT GNOME?!" Yeah, Draeni, know why? Cause I want to have #1 2v2 team with 2 warriors, and we need heals.

I think it'll be a fun experience trying to establish myself as a competent player for the 3rd time XD

And, yeah Dahis I feel like you didn't live up to your teaser :( I mean in the teaser you did shit far superior to what was in the video, and I really felt like there was a lot more stuff you could GENIONLY (sp?) pull off, but just never bothered to record.

Finally, I think I figured out a best way to chase a druid, and never get caught by his CC. It's battle stance with 1 hander and a shield (shield bash/spell reflect rotation, piercing howl for forms) till 60 percent, then zerker with 2 Hander till 0. Thoughts? Since you see both sides now hehe =P

Charade said...

raddy, if I may ask, what are your final S3 stats (with goggles/blade+OH+your gem setup etc..)?
Would be nice to compare a bit n perhaps make some adjustments to my own gear :)

Anonymous said...

12 dmg gems are so fucking expensive >.<

Charade said...

orly ~.~ 1000G each on my server
gg, only 1 guild with all of BT cleared -.-, 2 at illidan, 2 more clearing BT :(

Primio said...

why u prefer Holo-Gogs ?

Anonymous said...

how much do u have to pay for your 12 dmg gems?
we have 2 guilds who downed illidan, 1 guild would sell red gems if they had some, but 650g per piece?
4550g for just seven gems...

Charade said...

As I said, I pay 1000G/gem for the red ones ;p 650 for the 1 purple gem I have.

Anonymous said...

Why is crit always favored over dmg by pvp mages? Isn't it a well known fact that spell dmg > spell crit?

Assume the so called "game winning crit" chance happens in 10% of your own spell casts (probably much smaller than this but fuck it). Even with the additional 2.08% crit from the battle staff you will only increase your winning percentage by 0.208% (2.08% * 10%) or 1 win in 481 games.

Anonymous said...

it's not only about the game winning crits..every crit puts more pressure on the opposing healers

Raddy said...

Agree with anonymous about pressuring healers. "Game winning" crits need not be killing blows.

Anonymous said...

"it's not only about the game winning crits..every crit puts more pressure on the opposing healers"

A game winning crit is a crit that increased your team's chance of winning the game. For sake of brevity I assumed a net result of 100% chance to win but it could be something like 60% where the effect of 2.08%+ crit is even more diminished.

It should also be noted that 35 dmg will result in more DPS than 46 crit.

Dahis said...

Well I won't pretend it wasn't thrown together or that I wish I had time to actually make a serious (+arena footage) project out of it, but I got more than enough comparisons to Laintime and Vurtne(!) to make me happy with it.

Anonymous said...

"It should also be noted that 35 dmg will result in more DPS than 46 crit."

raw dps-wise, yes.
but in arena raw dps is non-reliable. if you can get a frostbolt off the difference between a 1500 and a 1550 dmg frostbolt is non-existent, the difference between a 1500 dmg hit and a 2250 dmg crit (assuming target is resilience-capped) is.

and now add the fact that it's really rare that you're able to chaincast in high rated arena

Anonymous said...

"but in arena raw dps is non-reliable. "

You can say the same thing about raw crit percentage. Arena matches are sufficiently small in length that your actual crit percentage could be below your gear crit percentage.

However there is nothing preventing you from adding arena matches together and you get an accurate measure of averaged crit percentage which will match your gear crit percentage given enough arena matches. It's no different than dps where over many arena matches your dps will be higher with 35 dmg than 46 crit. Albeit not by that much.

Anonymous said...

Fireblast for example only gets a small % of your +dmg. I think in this case +crit give you more dps.

Maybe +dmg gives more dps to frostbolt, but also to "chaincasting" fireblast?

Or am I wrong here?

Anonymous said...

Also I might add that spread stats are "more" then focussed stats. For example 1 ring with + stam and 1 ring with + int < 2 rings with stam & int.

Romulox said...

"Arena matches are sufficiently small in length that your actual crit percentage could be below your gear crit percentage."

Or it could be higher. This is faulty logic. Your crit chance does not actualy change. If you have 7 non crits in a row, you are not more likely to get a crit on the 8th then you were on the 7th....unless you have combustion. :P I'am sure Raddy the poker wiz can explain it better then me.

Romlulox said...

what i am mainly trying to say is that your "actual" crit percentage IS your gear crit percentage, and no shortness or longness of the fight will change that. You cant plan for the luck of 5 crits in a row, or the bad luck of no crits all match.

You CAN use your experience that you mostly fireblast in an arena, and the fact that fireblast does not recieve much benefit from damage vs. crit and choose crit over dmg. Chose your gear based on actual and past behavior in addition to the statistics, not on luck or lack there of.

steph said...

Thx for playing river's priest the other day. Sick T6 shadowpriest DPS?

Anonymous said...

Raddy raiding with other guilds to get BT gems because his own guild won't give him any?

Anonymous said...

Transfer to tich imo

Raddy said...

OMG THE DRAMA I CAN'T TAKE IT

teki said...

Yeah, transfer to Tich if you like "Position in Queue: 200" every night.

Anonymous said...

Tich rarely has Qs. It's just the past few days.

pontif said...

Love how people start bullshit by hiding behind anonymous. You should really disable anonymous posting here.

Raddy said...

Nah, I <3 the attention

Mayhem said...

Is the 15 to 21 damage you gain by using 12 damage instead of 9 really worth the hassle?

Antoine said...

none of the alliance guilds besides FH are even close to selling spinels at this point

Anonymous said...

Who said anything about alliance

Raddy said...

I'm very confused right now

pwyff said...

GENDER-WISE?

Anonymous said...

to damage fanboi: enjoy your 900 ice lances

Anonymous said...

get the battle staff and use the spell pen wand, jesus loves you.

Zow said...

You are a mage, not a tank, go for the staff! Keep the mage spirit up with no lock stats around, and yes MH + OH season 3 weapons are warlock stuff in my honest opinion.