PvP GemmingFollow

Damage, Haste, Stam, Crit. In that order, IMO.

And I wouldn't bother with Haste until you can at least break about 80 or so. But that's personal opinion.

It will be difficult to get past 400 resilience without partially gemming for it. I have no 100% resil gems, but I have a number of res/sta gems. Balance them stats. I don't know if it's just because I don't like making decisions, but I generally prefer the mixed gems. Supposedly they have slightly inferior itemization but I'm not sure. At the very least, using the mixed gems makes meeting the meta requirements that much easier.

Speaking of metas, I just got my MSD and managed to notice it proc...once in about 20 Arena matches. I know it's proc'ing way more, but I never friggin notice. Anyone have a tip on that?

Here's a question for you, OP--did grinding BGs at 69 seem more efficient than waiting until 70? I'm debating doing this myself on my druid.

edit: speeling

Edited, May 29th 2008 9:50am by AynLoD

Wow, this has been quite the plethora of different responses. It makes me glad to see that there really isn't an overall "Do this" consensus, but I think all of this information has been a helpful addition. As for the grinding at 69, I felt like it truly made a big difference in the terms of (winning) the Battlegrounds and gathering the marks for the lesser BGs, i.e. EoTS, AB, and WSG. I say they are lesser BGs because we all know that at 70, the most efficient way to grind honor without a BG group is via AV. But at 69 (at least on Horde side of the Reckoning Battlegroup) I found myself very confident in winning about 60-80% of the ABs we played, about 85% of the WSG's, and about 99% of the EoTS's. (In truth, i've only had one EoTS loss in the 69 bracket where I came into the game at the beginning. Not saying i'm an all powerful ego god, but i don't count BGs where i don't get the full bonus honor for a win)

But yeah, the 69 Bracket is a ton of fun, mainly because at this point, there really are no more twinks in the brackets, and considering how the only benefit you have to twinking the 69 bracket is that you have maybe 200 more spell damage, and maybe 1000-2000 more hp. And that in itself still doesn't really matter. Well, to sum it up, I thought i'd give BGing in the 69s bracket a try, and it definitly felt better. Granted, the honor is a bit slower than 70, as you've got all the green targets to worry about, its still not terrible considering (if on your server) you may be winning more than losing.

But as for Gems, should i go for MSD for my Meta? or is the Haste proc nerf not worth it anymore?

Edit:

P.S. At what point should I stop gemming Spell Damage, or should i try and equally divide damage and life?

Edited, May 29th 2008 1:42pm by DuctTapeSavior

The mage's flexibility comes from it's avoidance abilities such as blink,ice barrier,cone of cold,and frost nova spells.
At the moment I have 445 resilience(yeah yeah,i'm an arena nerd),and I have 0 resilience gained from gems.
What I'd be suggesting you would be getting 5spell dmg+6 stamina,4 spell crit rating+5 spell dmg,and 12 spell dmg via honor pts or MGT quest reward.
After very long time PvP'ing with my mage,I've come to conlusion,that + 20 resilience or 15 more stamina WILL NOT save you while you're getting pounded,you'll still have to use your escape spells.

The resilience you will be getting from arena gear(considering that s2 will be coming up soon) is more than enough for a mage.I'd suggest you train yourself with blinks,counterspells,cone of colds and get heavy spell dmg such as 900+.I have 980 spell damage on my mage with s3 gear,and still can't nuke healers that hard.

Mixed gems--actually, mixed stats, are always better itemization. There is a greater penalty on having lots of the same stat on an item than to have a mix of low amounts of many stats on an item with the same Item Budget.

That's why you'll see random greens that give 66 Strength but 38 Intellect and 38 Spirit (total of 76) when they're the same-named green of the same slot but different suffix.

You can get more stats out of two Potent Noble Topazes than out of one Runed Living Ruby and one Gleaming Dawnstone. Not that the difference is huge with gems, though. :P




Edit: When I say better itemization, I mean of squeezing the most stats out of your gear. People still gear straight Runed Living Rubies because Spell Damage simply helps more than Spell Crit in DPS until a very high level of Spell Damage.

Edited, May 29th 2008 9:21pm by Raglu

Mhog: Yep, I mislinked, the one you said was the one I was thinking. Thank you.

My work laptop hates the eu.wowarmory like my mage hates warlocks, so unfortunately I can't see your toon. But I thought about it and I'm guessing you have the dagger + offhand instead of the staff? If I switched over to that, I could probably regem away from resil and still maitain 425+.

edit: holy typos Batman. Hages = hates and couldn't = could. Anywho.

Edited, Jun 8th 2008 8:57am by AynLoD