It was only a few days ago that I posted about my PVP nubness. Since that time I've been reading up on all the PVP goodness I can at informative blogs like Out of Mana and Shifttusk does PVP. What I have learnt is great but also has me facing a conundrum.
Unlike my "icky" offsider Emelin I am not wont to change my spec everytime the wind changes direction. I've got my 41/20/0 BM raiding build going on and I likes it. Trouble is, from all I've read, and based on my experience to date (little that there is) this build is not going to serve me all that well in arenas. Mainly due to the lack of burst damage and control. BM as we all know is a great raiding spec with it's MQoSDPS, but in Arena you don't have time to get that sustained thing going on. Instead you want to be controlling the action as much as possible with abilities like scatter shot and silencing shot. The Beast Within is awesome but it can mean that your opportunity to win is based mainly on that one 18 second burst of 'I win Lawl!" rather than an arsenal of abilities.
So the question confronting me is: should I respec? Do I want to have to respec every week so that I can both PVP AND raid effectively. Truth is, not really. Reason: I am still trying to save up the gold for my epic riding skill. I know that I could dedicate myself to farming the gold up but that introduces the whole fun equation I've mentioned previously. farming != fun in my world.
Sounds like it's time for some decision making eh?
Ah but wait. There is also another issue - my resilience is truly pathetic. Like awesomely so. I just purchased my Gladiator's Chain Spaulders last night. I skipped on the Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets because the next thing I will be able to afford with Arena points will be the S3 Vengeful Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets and I'm going to try and balance S1 honour purchased items with the S3 gear as much as I can based on increasing my resilience as much as possible. My health points are also really low for an arena environment too being just under 8k. There's the gem thing too. Although I'm a JC I don't have any resilience recipes. So I will need to buy the gems or farm Halaa tokens for the Sublime Mystic Dawnstone.There's that spending my epic riding skill savings thing again. I also need to investigate enchants and find out what the best faction shoulder enchant is for my new shoulders.
What this is all adding up to is a lot of effort. Did I mention I'm a lazy lazy hunter? I also still need to get the mats for the Nethercleft Leg Armour for my T4 legs.
Methinks I will first work on getting better PvP gear through honour and then look at changing up my spec to allow me to access the S3 arena gear.
I guess the question I ultimately have to answer is: Am I willing to put in the game play time to allow me to do both PVP and raiding successfully or do I decide to do one well and the other not so well.
Time will tell I guess.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
A Conundrum: PVP or PVE
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Depends on a couple of things, miss Jez:
1) Are you planning on dedicating serious time to PvPing over your daily schedule PvE? If you're playing to have fun, it's probably not worth the effort; if you're playing to reach beyond 1750, you'll want to spend the gold to respec.
2) Can you afford respeccing at whim for Arenas? It might work if you plan to do all of your Arena battles on a single day every week so you can minimize the amount of gold you spend weekly, but this might not always be an option.
I've Arena'd on my hunter and you can do pretty decent damage as a Beast Master despite the other limiting factors. I have no interest in competing hardcore on my hunter, so I never respecced her for fights. The important thing, however, is to really start getting that gear and see how you perform. Your survivability in Arenas is probably the biggest concern at the moment; snag the S1 honor-purchased PvP gear, stack stamina and resilience, and get some decent enchants. See how you do then and maybe you'll find that the current spec - while not the best - suffices.
Of course, you could always do what I did and roll a second character of the same class. I've got a Shadow priest, Holy healing priest, and Discipline PvP priest. It's cheaper than respeccing, I got some extra crafting skills, and more characters to do dailies on!
Could you just run the PvP with your current build, with a goal to getting only particular items?
Expect to get killed alot, and also not to be at the top score, and just laugh it off. You get the items you need to continue PvE, and some arrogant Rogue (Rouge) gets to brag about how he dropped a Hunter. Big deal.
And you don't waste gold on re-spec, can still PvE, and can also run the daily quests between PvP sessions.
Also I'd recommend against an alt to farm gold, as it costs a stack to level a character. Remember the 100s of gold in skill purchasing alone? Unless its got a few gathering porfessions I suppose.
@ Estzi
Precisely. I'm not going to level another toon just for PVP though. I intend to PVP on my other toons though and am thinking of getting into the honour accruing game early this time round. On Jez I didn't really do any BGs until 60 and then 70.
@ Andrew
*coughs* I am nearly always at or near the top of damage in a BG thank you :P
Unless of course I'm guarding a node or something and not getting any action.
BM is considered a viable spec for BGs according to what I've read, just not so much for Arena.
I think the question breaks down to what you value more in the game. For me I like to succeed but I'm lazy. I don't mind spending the gold - except I'm too lazy to farm it up + trying to save for the epic flying skill.
So this probably means that I'll need to settle for being 'ok' at Arena and slowly amass better PVP gear through honour points and arena points.
Thanks for the comments guys :)
Hi Jez :)
Have a read of my site if you want a glimpse of respec and PvP angst from a Beast Master's perspepctive. I'm in the dilemma of finally looking at raiding but loving PvP at the same time.
I've road tested several specs, and quite frankly I prefer BM for battlegrounds. BM is OK for 2vs2 Arena where you need to burn someone down fast. I've joined a 3vs3 team, and this adds more horrible conundrums of where to spend money, what gear to get & how to balance between being all things all of the time :)
I really enjoy your site.
Kotaro
@Jezrael - hehe Max-Dps-Hunter is king - hax!
To get way easy cash, keep questing. Those level 70 quests are easy earners.
"what you value more in the game" -the interraction with the folks in the guild is paramount, and getting good instance runs going IMHO.
Post a Comment