I’ve never been really in to PvP before. I played a little Warsong Gulch with my hunter a while back but now that I hit 70 a couple weeks ago with my main, I’ve developed a thing for Arathi Basin.
I’ve really just binged a couple of nights, once on Warsong Gulch and once on Arathi Basin. Once I noticed that some of the gear only costs 20 Marks of Honour from Warsong Gulch I thought maybe that wasn’t a big purchase. I’m a casual player so I don’t follow all the details of this. Still I’d like to get some better gear when it’s within the bits of game that I’m going to play anyway. What I didn’t realize until I went to turn my marks in for loot was that the much higher cost is the required Honour points. I’ve decided that I’ll just PvP when I feel like it and if I get enough honour and marks from the various battlegrounds then I’ll buy the pretty purples when I can. It can’t be as simple as that of course. So I had to sit down and dig through WoWHead today and find what you buy how.
Apparently the PvP gear is updated from time to time but at the time I’m writing, the thing to buy for Mages with Battleground Marks of Honour are the Vindicator Silk bits. That’d be Vindicator’s Silk Cuffs, Vindicator’s Silk Footguards and Vindicator’s Silk Belt. Together they give some nice bonuses:
- 97 Spell Damage (and the cuffs give a little extra because of the yellow socket)
- 77 Spell Critical Strike bonus - that’s probably 2.5% at level 70
- 115 Stamina and 82 Intellect (the intellect bonus should also give a little more spell crit)
Of course that’s not cheap, you need about 48,000 Honour Points and 40 marks of honour from AB, 40 from EotS and 20 from WSG. I’ve only got about 6k honor right now so I doubt I’ll even get this gear before I lose interest in PvP but you never know. I got on a premade group with some guildies the other night and it was pretty great compared to the pick-up groups that I’d played with before.
Battlegrounds only get three pieces of gear for me from what I’ve seen so far. To get the rest it looks like I have to start playing Arena matches. I’ve heard Arena’s the place to go for easy epics but it’s one more thing to learn about and try out when I really don’t put much time in to WoW. The rewards from Arena are pretty nice compared to what my mage is wearing now of course. The silk bits for mages from Arena PvP are the Merciless Gladiator’s Regalia. The totals for stat bonuses are on the link. Not counting the socket bonuses the main perks are:
- +198 Spell Damage
- +112 Spell Crit
- +118 Intellect
- +253 Stamina
As for the cost of it I don’t even know how to figure out Arena points yet. When it’s something I need I’m sure I can figure it out. Just for daydreaming’s sake, here’s the total of the stats that matter to me for a full set with the three pieces from BG and the Arena set:
- +295 Spell Damage
- +189 Spell Crit (8.55% at level 70)
- +200 Intellect
- +368 Stamina
Don’t forget there are a couple other slots to fill: trinkets, neck, weapon … Then go get some gems for those sockets…