How to prepare for Arena in 2 weeks

As most of you may know, Season 5 of arena will commence on December 17, just under 2 weeks from now. With virtually all level 70 gear becoming obsolete, arena competitors are basically left with 3 options of what gear to use:

1. Full PvE (Naxxramas) gear
2. Crafted resilience gear
3. Heroic and badge gear

Each option has its own unique benefits and drawbacks and I'll try to help detail them all so that people have an easier time deciding what they think is best.

PvE Raiding Gear
I honestly feel that this is probably the most interesting and advantageous option. With crafted gear falling dramatically behind in terms of raw DPS and healing stats, along with rather unimpressive resilience to begin with, this becomes an attractive option for many DPS-oriented comps, and even durable healer/dps comps. The advantages to using PvE gear, especially 25-man raiding gear, are the fact that you will have virtually outmatched damage/healing potential compared to anything else attainable short of deadly gladiator gear (I hate you for 3 pieces of this being on Archavon, Blizzard).

Some of this gear is absolutely amazing like these legs that I got last night which have downright amazing stats compared to anything else out there right now, even compared to the Deadly Gladiator DK legs. There are plenty other examples of gear like this that is itemized so well, but on the opposite side of the spectrum, you have to be mindful of gear that is less than stellar for arena, despite being a level 80 epic from Naxx. Generally speaking, haste, expertise, and armor penetration (to an extent) are all typically worthless for arena purposes and should not be used over items with more valuable stats such as hit (because the new arena gear has none and you still need to cap it) or crit. One such example would be for you warriors/dk's/ret paladins gearing up in Nax 10. If you had the option of using this cloak or this one, the second cloak would be the right choice due to being far better itemized. Better yet, though, try to get this one from Sapphiron in Nax 10 to cap your hit rating (you need 5% for pvp for general purposes).

The drawback to using this gear obviously is lower survival due to lack of resilience and in some cases, lack of stamina. However, as with the previous expansion, Blizzard has added a tremendous amount of stamina on new raiding gear, equalling deadly gladiator counterparts in some cases even, making the raid gear a very little change in the HP department. It really just comes down to what comp you run and how much survivability you can sacrifice on each player. For example, in 2v2, a mage/rogue team could probably get away with using no more resilience than their PvP trinkets provide, while on the other hand, a priest/warlock could probably not afford to skimp too much on their survivability. My advice is to at least get into Naxxramas 10-mans (it's really easy and honestly puggable), get what gear you can to help you start out at least, and upgrade to honor and arena gear from the slots that you don't get PvE upgrades from first, then cover those slots last.

Crafted Resilience Gear
If you decide to go this route, whether it be because raiding isn't your cup of tea, you don't have time for it, or because you plan to run a comp where you feel that you simply cannot sacrifice survivability, than here's the best options you have. The blue crafted armor is just above Season 4 Brutal gear typically in terms of survivability but also has much higher armor and stamina typically, if not more primary stats, as well.

The following are the things you should search on WoWhead to suit your specific class/spec needs if you're looking to craft:

Cloth casters: Frostsavage armor
Leather rogues/ferals: Eviscerator's armor
Leather resto/balance druids: Overcast armor
Mail hunters/enhance: Swiftarrow armor
Mail resto/elemental shamans: Stormhide armor
Plate dps (dk/ret/warrior): Savage Saronite armor
Plate holy paladins: Ornate Saronite armor

Again, I really only recommend using this type of gear if your comp depends on one or more players taking a beating. Otherwise, you'll most likely be better off at the start using raid or heroic gear and simply reaping the extra stat benefits from those rather than gimping yourselves with low budgetted blue gear.

Heroic and Badge Gear
This is probably the best middle ground if you don't have time/interest to raid but want to have an edge come Season 5. There are vendors in Dalaran that sell pretty high quality (fot the effort required to get them, at least) gear in exchange for heroic badges. You can find the vendors in your main faction's half of Dalaran where the city teleports are. Among the gear available from these vendors are nice necklaces, belts, off-hands, librams/relics/totems/sigils, but best of all, trinkets.

Melee get an amazing trinket that has a 1000ap proc chance on crits, healers get a really nice spell power trinket with a nice haste proc that can be utilized in different ways for arena (read: mana burn), and casters get a solid trinket that can increase their spell power by 590 on spell casts. Also keep in mind for the caster trinket that almost every class, regardless of spec now, can benefit a great deal from crit. Not necessarily so much so where you want to stack it exorbitantly, but having it certainly is beneficial now for almost everyone.

There are certain heroic-dropped items that various classes/specs will also definitely want to pick up if you don't have the option to raid going into Season 5. I've made a short list of all the significant upgrades for various classes.

2-handed melee classes: Colossal Skull-Clad Cleaver from Heroic Halls of Lightning
Hunters:  Drake-Mounted Crossbow from Heroic Utgarde Keep
Mutilate rogues: The Fleshshaper from Heroic Halls of Stone or Titansteel Shanker (crafted)
Combat/Sub rogues: Greed from Heroic CoT Stratholme or Titansteel Bonecrusher (crafted)
Healers and casters: War-mace of Unrequited Love from Heroic Nexus or Staff of Draconic Combat from Heroic Oculus
Feral druids: Staff of Trickery from Heroic Violet Hold
 
Overall, this is probably the best route for players wishing to get an easier start in Season 5 but don't want to devote the time to raiding. Heroics usually take under an hour (under 30 minutes if your group is competant) and can be rewarding with the zone-specific drops as well as badge rewards. Being able to mix and match nice accessories like these along with your upcoming gladiator gear is also a nice advantage to have in terms of not only making the decision of which pieces to get easier (since you just get whatever is the biggest upgrade), but also allowing you to be flexible with gear swapping when you know you will be playing against a certain comp, etc.

Honor capping
Finally, if you didn't honor cap before WotLK started, you definitely didn't miss out (and I actually feel sorry for anyone that did including me on my warrior). To easily (in all seriousness, too) cap your honor, simply check or ask someone to check your faction's Wintergrasp announcer in Dalaran every now and then to know when the next game of Wintergrasp is starting. Not only do the games themselves award a huge amount of honor as long as you participate (500-1k honor for losing, 1-2k for winning), but there are also always at least 4 daily quests you can complete in Wintergrasp with each rewarding an amazing 1200 honor each:

1 quest to kill 20 players of the opposite faction
1 quest to win Wintergrasp
1 quest to destroy 3 siege vehicles of the opposite faction
1 random daily quest in addition to those 3

Let's just say that I usually only do a couple Wintergrasps a day tops (maybe an hour of my time total) and I have 63k honor on my Death Knight already (cap is still 75k right now).




Anyways, I hope this was helpful to at least some people out there. I know I'll be doing a lot of work to prepare for the upcoming arena season. Remember how fun the first season of arena was when everyone was an undergeared glass cannon and clueless about the new PvP mechanics? Well I do and if Season 5 will be deja vu, then I honestly can't wait.