End PVE in Arena

PVE gear has already brought about some current issues due to the power of shadow resist and ability for certain classes to get away with wearing a majority of PVE healing gear relative to certain aspects of arena play. For the most part, there is generally ways one can overcome the situations when a class has advantages due to said gear, but the problem is still threatening-- especially in the lower brackets. When it goes as far as impacting 5v5, something needs to be done to maintain the already fading level of balance we have to work with.

If you have yet to see the loot I'm speaking of, you can find it here

The first issue that jumps to my mind is obviously the 2H sword. With an upgrade of 45 high end damage, more attack power, which in comparison is an extra 34 over s3 2H mace; and 3 slots to gem, there is a considerable jump up from s3 weapons. Depending on how said slots are gemmed, the gap is even further accentuated when you could potentially stack AP, Crit rating, or even resilience to make up for the loss from using a PVE weapon.

The caster side is where the real problems lie. The Grand Magister's Staff of Torrents basically allows you to eliminate any enchanting/gemming for spell hit, freeing up more slots for damage/stam/etc. gems as well as providing an additional 3 slots by itself. All together it could be a significant leap depending on your preference of gemming--much more than can be found between arena seasons.

Sunwell Trinkets bring in yet another outside variable that can heavily influence the outcomes of matches. Vial of the Sunwell in specific, could really be an issue. Imagine a Dwarf or Human Priest using the trinket in combination with Desperate prayer and instantly healing for 5k+ before crits are even taken into consideration. Even without DP, an instant 2k heal on a 1 minute cooldown could be pretty useful. Granted, it could be potentially hard to pull off 20 heals per minute, and it also depends on what generates the holy power. If it isn't limited to Direct Heals, 1 tick of renew could give you a 100 charge; and don't even get me started on Druids, can you say, Swiftmend + Vial? It's even worse when you throw a battlemaster trinket into the mix on whatever target needs heals.

While at first, the above items might come off as relatively non-threatening in terms of upgrades, consideration must be made to other factors to other factors. First, I'm becoming increasingly concerned with the fact that I doubt Blizzard has any concern with the Arena after 2.4 balance changes; At least, not until WoTLK comes out. Considering the fact that Sunwell doesn't include tier 7, the outlook is pretty grim. At the very least, if Blizzard does pass a season 4 before the x-pack there will be at least a month or two gap between it and Sunwell, allowing these and other PVE items to trickle their way into the Arena. The fact that Blizzard will be creating armor sets that are seamless based on armor type, albeit colored differently, increases my doubts of a season 4 existing; that is, unless Blizzard is interested in a new fashion of rainbow tie-dye and gay pride styled matches.

With a potential threat of no season 4 before WoTLK, damage will scale beyond current stamina levels, and resilience will still be capped, except with 2 full seasons of damage upgrades at the same time instead of just one. In my opinion, with the introduction of PI, the damage already hit the cap (arguably broke it) on the current limitations and gearing in terms of survivability (Res/stam). This is why I was supportive of changing PI. Now, instead of where we sit now, PVE gear could potentially break well over this cap and one target switch will be all that is necessary to kill an opponent. This is further reinforced by the ever struggeling Paladins, who would be the largest counter to heavy damage with such strong direct healing. This is also without even considering possible class buffs in 2.4 (although there could be nerfs as well)

Even if Sunwell PVE gear doesn't quite go over the edge in terms of damage, the current cap on resilience and stamina will be a problem at some point in the future. At the same time, if the cap were to be lifted, we could see a reduction to crit rate and crit damage that is overbearing and imbalanced in itself. A complete revamp might be in order for WoTLK.

In the end, there is still no point whatsoever in allowing PVE gear to be used in the Arena. Why even allow there to be a possibility of an advantage on behalf of one team because they have access to PVE gear? The Arena is sadly the current staple of PVP, and almost everything designed for it has been limited in relative to it's current design set. Allowing PVE to have any impact on PVP when such a huge time investment has already been made to isolate the two biggest aspects of the game from each other is completely asinine.