With most of us starting to hit 80, our focus is now moving towards getting great pvp gear to be competitive in the arena and have fun in Battlegrounds.
A lot of complaints have been thrown around on the forums regarding damage being too high in WOTLK, you can be bursted down without even having time to react with a trinket and this does not make for a fun pvp experience.
Blizzards answer? get geared up and start stacking that resilience which negates the chance to be critically hit and reduces the amount that crits do to you.
So what is the fastest way to get the best pvp gear? I will detail the best use of your time to have the highest chances at the best gear.
In this article, our focus for getting the best pvp gear will revolve around how good the gear is divided by the amount of effort or time required to get that gear. While Deadly Gladiator gear is the best to get it will take a lot of rating to acquire in the arenas, which you may even need to have better pvp gear to get to the higher rating requirements.
PvP Gear
Here is a list of and requirements for the attainable gear from best to worst at level 80:
Deadly Gladiator Gear
Shoulders – 2,150 Arena Rating + 1,800 Arena Points
Head – 2,090 Arena Rating +2,250 Arena Points
1 Handed Weapon – 2,030 Arena Rating + 1,350 Arena Points
2 Handed Weapon – 2,030 Arena Rating + 4,500 Arena Points
Off-Hand – 2,030 Arena Rating + 1,350 Arena Points
Thrown/Wand/Gun/Crossbow – 2,030 Arena Rating + 1,200 Arena Points
Chest – 1,970 Arena Rating + 2,250 Arena Points
Leggings – 1,910 Arena Rating + 2,250 Arena Points
Hands – 1,850 Arena Rating + 1,350 Arena Points
Rings – 1,690 Arena Rating + 47,400 Honor
Wrist – 1,660 Arena Rating + 39,400 Honor
Waist – 1,630 Arena Rating + 62,000 Honor
Necklace – 1,600 Arena Rating + 47,400 Honor
Hateful Gladiator Gear
Shoulders – 1,775 Arena Rating + 9,600 Honor + 550 Arena Points or 30 Emblems of Valor
Head – 1,735 Arena Rating +12,000 Honor + 700 Arena Points or 45 Emblems of Valor
1 Handed Weapon – None Exist
2 Handed Weapon – None Exist
Off-Hand – None Exist
Thrown/Wand/Gun/Crossbow – None Exist
Chest – 1,675 Arena Rating + 12.000 Honor + Arena Points or 45 Emblems of Valor
Leggings – 1,645 Arena Rating + 12,000 Honor + 700 Arena Points or 45 Emblems of Valor
Hands – 1,615 Arena Rating + 7,500 Honor + 400 Arena Points or 30 Emblems of Valor
Rings (No Arena Rating Requirement) – 38,000 Honor
Wrist (No Arena Rating Requirement) – 31,600 Honor
Waist (No Arena Rating Requirement) – 49,600 Honor
Necklace (No Arena Rating Requirement) – 38,000 Honor
Savage Gear or Crafted Gear
I am not going to list all the requirement for Savage Gear, however I suggest if you have a decent amount of gold, around 500-800g, get your classes crafted PvP gear (ex. Frostsavage Robe for casters) as this is comparable to Savage gear and you can save all your arena points and honor for Hateful and Deadly Gear.
Fastest Way to Get the Best Gear
From the list you can see that Deadly Gear > Hateful Gear > Crafted or Savage Gear. However the requirements for the higher end gear requires Arena rating which may be unattainable until you get more experience or gear to compete.
You should always be trying to reach the highest arena rating you can achieve, but when you reach a plateau and feel like you are limited by gear, this guide will get you the most value for your time:
1. Vault of Archavon (Wintergrasp) 10man/25 man
By far the best use of your time, you can do the 25 man version, which drops 4 of the deadly version chest, hands and legs but they are class specific, the instance also provides 2x Emblem of Valor for everyone to use to buy Hateful gear if you are unlucky with drops. The 10 man version drops 2 of the Hateful pp gear which is class specific, the instance also provides 2x Emblem of Heroism which you can buy Hero’s Gear with.
*Tip – Since you only get one shot at the 25 man and 10 man version a week, try to find a group where you are the only one of your class in 10 man, and only two of your class in the 25 man, it may take you a bit to find a group but it will pay off in the long run.
Grinding Honor
Now that you are getting a shot at getting the Deadly and Hateful Chest/Hands/Legs once a week, your focus should be on filling out your worst gear slots that have the lowest arena requirements and provide the highest upgrade.
Most of this gear requires Honor, and in some cases only honor, so here is the best way to grind honor:
2. Do Wintergrasp Whenever Your Side is Attacking
As it stands right now it is pretty much impossible to win while defending due to the large amounts of lag the servers experience when a lot of people are in this zone, this provides you with a large amount of bonus honor and Wintergrasp Tokens when you are attacking that can be turned in for even more honor once patch 3.0.8 comes around.
Pick up these dailies before attacking Wintergrasp: Slay them all!, Stop the Siege, Fueling the Demolishers, and Victory in Wintergrasp (last one only available if you haven’t completed the daily BG quest)
These daily quests not only provide bonus honor and gold, but also give you Stone Keeper’s Shards which are used to buy some of the BEST shoulder and head pvp enchants, Wintergrasp Commendation, Kharmaa’s Grace, and Bind on Account gear that you can use towards gear to level your alts.
You can pick up these quests in the fortress while you control Wintergrasp, or at your sides flight path in Wintergrasp when you are attacking. Fueling the Demolishers can only be completed when a battle is not occurring and your side owns Wintergrasp.
3. Complete the Daily Battleground
Pretty straight forward, you get +930 bonus honor from this daily and you will also get 1 or 3 tokens from the battleground which can go towards completing For Great Honor.
4. Do The Battlegrounds You Have The Least Tokens Towards For Great Honor
If you have completed all of the above, the best way to grind honor is to keep on completing For Great Honor which can be done unlimited times a day. The only limitation is you need to have a token from each of those 4 Battlegrounds, do the battleground you have the least or no tokens for and keep at it until either your side is attacking wintergrasp or you have to log. They removed Alteric Valley from the requirement list which makes this much easier to complete.
If you follow this guide I am confident that you will be getting geared up for PVP the fastest possible, be sure to be replacing the gear which provides the highest upgrade and seek out gear that has no arena requirements (Such as the Hateful Necklace) as early upgrades for maximum gain.
If you found this article useful, share it with your friends and guildmates, click the Share Button located at the bottom of the page.
Click Here to sign up to the RSS feed to know exactly when a new article is posted.
Popularity: 33% [?]
Nice article, lots of good information and good advice for gearing up for PVP!!
I just wanted to point out that you left out the Hateful and Deadly feet items. (Hateful require no rating, and Deadly only require around 1630ish? I cant remember.)
Thanks, I’ll make the changes to the article. Appreciate the feedback!
you cant turn in “For great honor” at lvl 80, the rest is fine… ^^
Yes you can, I’ve done it multiple times so far at level 80. The requirement is above level 71 , this is taken from wowhead.com:
For Great Honor
Bring 1 Strand of the Ancients Mark of Honor, 1 Arathi Basin Mark of Honor, 1 Warsong Gulch Mark of Honor and 1 Eye of the Storm Mark of Honor to a Horde Warbringer in any Horde capital city or Shattrath.
Just so you know and can update this they added AV and and Isle of Conquest to the unlimited turn in for honor you now need 1 mark from all 6 bg's to complete it
Wow, this will really help me get geared. Thanks!
Well, nice buddy… Someone will love this article if I tell her about this. She’s really interested in this topic. Thanks again…
This is some great information, and very usefull. However, it is a little out dated. If you could. I would love to see an updated list including the new PvP Gear.
Again Great Job.
Lil
Nice article, but I have one question:
When you use the Emblem of Valor to buy your gear, do you also need the arena rating req. as well?
No, when you purchase gear with Emblems of Valor, there is no arena rating requirement.
And just for clarification:
For Great Honor is the Horde quest
For Alliance it’s called Concerted Efforts.
hey i think the hateful set u can buy without arena rat. look here;
http://www.wowhead.com/?search=Hateful+Gladiator#items:100+12+1
Great guide although a couple of problems.
1. Without running a lot of dungeons/heroics or paying a small fortune for crafted gear, no group will take your quest blues/green wearing butt into VoA- unless of course you’re in a guild that’s going to carry you.
2. If you’re alliance be prepared to only win 1/3 to 1/4 of all Wintergrasps/BG’s.
3. “For Great Honor” now requires five tokens, instead of four (since Isle of Conquest was added). Again, if you’re alliance, you’re looking at 20-25 minutes to complete most of these BG’s, collect scrappy honor as the losing team and 1 token).
Definitely do Wintergrasp every time it’s up, but lower your expectations quite a bit if you’re Alliance. The rest of your time should be afking honor in AV like always…
Well it depends, if your on a crappy server/battle broup etc. then yes you lose a bunch. As alliance i win about 75% of bg's and about 60-70% of wg almost always own wg so getting shards is to easy