Arcane Brilliance: Get your PvP on

Arcane Brilliance is here again, this time looking at mage PvP. When I began playing the game, PvP consisted of standing outside of Goldshire spamming the "duel" request. Sure there was world PvP, but it didn't really take off until the honor point system was in place. A couple months after that, the battlegrounds were born, places specifically designed for factions to duke it out. The next iteration of WoW PvP came in the form of arenas, the caged death match of the game. Dueling was never my style, but I enjoyed the battlegrounds quite a bit (mostly due to the geek-out factor as a result of playing Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.)

I bring this up to make a point. PvP has changed dramatically in two years, and each aspect requires a different set of skills. In the battlegrounds I was a ninja mage who spent so much times camping Iceblood Graveyard my Alterac Valley ram and I could have built a winter cottage there. I stood in the trees or on ledges and nuked anyone who might happen by. I see much that is similar in dueling and arena combat. Lock down your opponents by any means possible, and once you have the adds controlled, nuke 'em into next Tuesday.

The PvP of today is a vast new world that sometimes scares me, and in the words of Illidan much of me is not prepared. But I can save you the trouble by giving you a glimpse into the stats required for mage PvP.

There are three stats in addition to the normal Mage Trinity that PvP mages need to look at. How you combine these into the ultimate formula really is up to you, but each needs to be considered.

Stamina: The stamina attribute is essential for survivability in PvP. Each point of stamina adds ten health points onto your bar, and in an arena fight this can mean the difference between victory and death. Stamina was one of those stats that seemed relegated to the sidelines until TBC, but since the expansion's release Blizzard has been stacking on more and more +stamina attributes to gear in all flavors. Once you get enough stamina gear you may be asked to do some mage tanking in PvE, but when thinking PvP keep this stat in mind as you collect your armor pieces.

Spell Penetration: Like Spell hit rating, penetration first made its debue in WoW with the release of The Burning Crusade. Largely a PvP stat, penetration tears away at an enemies resistances, and only their resistances. If a target has no resistances spell penetration will not affect them. For this reason it is a good idea to blend spell hit rating and spell penetration bonuses on your gear when possible. If you are looking to add spell penetration to your gear, there are items that have such stats already on them, as well as gems. Adding Arcane Subtlety to your spec will also increase this attribute. You want to shoot for around 70 points of spell penetration to really be effective on the PvP battlefield.

Resilience: Often times those that talk about PvP stats will pair penetration and resilience in the same sentence. Resilience is a stat that decreases the amount of damage you take from critical strikes, and also lessens the damage you take from damage-over-time spells. Being a defensive attribute (and I suspect this has a certain amount to do with how the critical strike mechanics function) you will need a large amount of resilience rating in order to see a difference. It's recommended that you build your resilience to around 200 at level 70, which will give you somewhere around 4% resilience. Definitely stock up on Elixir of Ironskinwhen you get the chance, and look into the chest enchant, which will increase your resilience rating by 15.

When you look at the stats you'll see that there is much in the current combat system to add to a mage's survivability, but the strategy in building up your stats is a fine art. You will need to make some decisions, and possibly some sacrifices as you create your pvp armor set, since you will have to decide on survivability or nukage. Once you get the right balance of these three attributes added to your spell hit/spell damage/spell crit stats, you, my young mage, will be godly.