Hateful Versus Deadly

Okay, the level of confusion concerning the new honor sets rivals my own sexual confusion in the mornings. Did I really just dream that? But I don't even like honey.

There are two arena sets that you could conceivably care about: Hateful and Deadly. Hateful and Deadly are the only honor sets -- there isn't a blue set for belt, rings, necks, bracers, etc.

Savage is awful anyways and is a total waste of honor points. Even if you're horrible, you're better investing those points in Hateful honor pieces and using heroic drops in your other slots.

However, the only good option in spending honor is to spend exclusively on Deadly gear. Reaching 1800 in the first week isn't exactly a huge stretch. (1800, 1775 if you don't want to use Battlemaster's trinket is an important first week goal and probably where most people will call their first night of playing)

Why do you dream of dicks? I mean, why 1775? Well, you need 1750 for the Deadly Cloak, which is actually very good unless you have the 25man sarth cape which shits all over it. But more importantly, it's the rating requirement for Hateful Shoulders, one of the few pieces worth acquiring for many classes. If you raid and have badges to spend, you should consider the shoulders/gloves as they cost only 30 badges -- the gloves for the bonus obvious and the shoulders because you probably won't upgrade them for a week or two. (Or much later if you save for a weapon)

Why buy Deadly honor gear?

Because the difference in cost is marginal and the rating requirements on the pieces can be all attained within the first night or two of playing.

Yo rddy ur a sik blogr n arenaz gud lik wut do i buyz wit my pointzettaz nag?

Even if you have all 100 BG marks saved up (HUGE NERD - hi2u Narelia <3), style="font-weight: bold;">Boots/Belt/Trinket(BM's) 60.2k
Cloak/Ring/Neck 47.4k
Bracers 39.4k
PvP Trinket 49.6k

That's 351.6k if you don't pick up the Battlemaster's.

First of all, you should not invest in the PvP trinket until last. It is relatively the smallest upgrade unless you have amazing 25man gear.

You should obviously pick gear that fills holes in your heroic gear or that you don't envision you'd have a suitable alternative in that slot in the near future. That being said, it's probably to your advantage to have more pieces of gear than less, so the boots and belt should probably be later upgrades. (Wyrmrest boots and badges belt aren't horrible anyways)

This is mage specific, and I'm going to get some hate on this, but I think Ascendancy is the way to go unless you're sure you're going to play exclusively Frost, if so, go with the Haste gear. (Subjugation)

Why get hit gear bro?

You're going to want 5% hit. None of the other deadly pieces have hit on them or socket bonuses with hit. If you have a piece or two (trinkets come to mind) with a ton of hit, you're obviously free to go with subjugation for 1/3 of the pieces, but 2/3 Ascendancy is almost certainly safe.

While it's true that resilience is currently low, and crit therefore is better now than it will ever be in the future, there is going to be a race to gearing up resilience, and sinking tons of honor into gear that is going to massively deflate in value as your opponents get better and better geared is probably not the wisest idea.

It also frees up your gem slots for resilience gems to facilitate your own resiling up. I'm not yet sold on the 16 resil gems -- I think rocking the green 8x12s is probably a better option until we all hit 20k+ hp.

If you end up playing on a comp where survivability isn't a concern, you can also just socket damage.

Again, going full Ascendancy might be overkill, but two pieces makes at least, some sense.

So..back to what to buy when servers come up.

If your team is on and read to queue, nothing. Buy the bracers when you can. Assuming you have at least a few marks saved up, buy the cloak. Then the ring, then the neck.

If your team won' t be on for a few hours, grab the Hateful bracers and hit WG or Strand. Upgrade the Hateful bracers after everything else later in the season. (Including PvP trinket)

Realistically, you won't need a lot of mats for enchants day one or really any gems unless you've got a ton of the 25man raid tokens. Mats for a bracer and ring enchant at most. No gems.

Realize that while this week marks the beginning of Arena, it is equally the beginning of the real honor grind. There's perhaps no huge rush, but 75k is a tiny drop in the 350k total needed. =p

Flame away nerds.

Thinking of this spec perhaps for 3s/5s: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=obIbfzrcdchuGtxdfcbcZh

(After the patch) If you ever eat a silence, you're potentially free to stack up some ABs. Shrug.