PVP Weapons To Finally Equal To PVE In Item Level, Litreocola's Bleed/Poison Mutilate Prep Variant

By far the best 3.1 news yet!  During the preview of S6 arena gear, Blizzard announced for the first time ever, PVP weapons will be equal in item level to the very best PVE equivalents.  WOW!  About time!  While I don't associate every loss against double sinister revenge rogues with gear differences, it is still refreshing to be able to finally play on an equal playing field.  15 DPS is already a 210 AP difference, but to make it worse the deadly weapons suffer from the same itemization issues of neck/ring/cape, with only four stats vs sinister revenge's five.  Once you factor in the 13 item level difference and diminishing returns, sinister revenge basically gets the 36 agility for free.  Double sinister vs double deadly basically gives you an advantage of 210 AP and 72 agility, it can certainly make a difference in the right hands.

Personally, as long as the item level and the number of stats categories are equal, I believe PVP gear is already every bit as competitive as PVE for most classes.  One alternative to further boosting resilience, is bringing back the good old weapon ratings!  Back in classic WOW, weapon ratings reduced the effect of glancing blows, and made it the number one stat for physical DPS classes.  The addition of expertise/haste/armor penetration is not terrible, but with Blizzard ready to buff some of those stats in 3.1 for melee, they will have a bigger impact in PVP.  There are so many ways to make stats awesome for PVE / mediocre for PVP and vice versa.  I really believe Blizzard is very close to finally getting this right, just like they did with the arena match making system.

Mutilate/Prep:  Litrecola The Top BG9 Rogue's Bleed/Poison Variant

This past week was brutal for me as I had to stay as late as 11PM in the office on Wednesday.  On Thursday night, with only 4 hours of sleep and another 12 hour day, I had one of my worst nights playing RMP.  I was slow on every play and we really struggled against teams we should have beaten, and I had to take majority of the blame.  Estel forced me to go to sleep at 10PM on Friday instead of logging on, which really recharged my batteries for Saturday night as we finished above 2200.  It is sad, but as I am months away from the big 30, my chakra doesn't regenerate as fast as it used to.

But perhaps more importantly, I also took a few tips from Litreocola, the top BG9 rogue before Saturday's games.  Our conversation had very little to do with actual RMP strategies, but rather how he specs/gears for mutilate/prep.  His rogue/restoration druid 2v2 is almost 2500 and his RMP is over 2300, makes him one of, if not the highest rated rogues in both brackets.

Poison Choices

Since the removal of dispel resistance on all poisons not named deadly, I have tried everything from deadly/wound with vile poison to mind numbing/wound without vile poison.  In the end, Litreocola believes double wound with vile poison is still the best *main* poison choices and I have to agree.  Even against clothes, double wound is easily 15% of your overall damage.  Against DKs it can easily go up to 25%.  Three points of vile poison offers you anywhere between 3% to 5% OVERALL damage increase, if you are using double wound, it is still more significant than ruthless's 60% chance to add a combo point on finishers.

What about mind numbing?  As much as people complain about this poison, while it is still useful off weapon swap shivs/fan of knives, I just can't give up 7%-12% of my OVERALL damage for something that only helps me against a very small list of classes.  In theory, mind numbing offers good protection against things like abolish poison and poison cleansing totems.  In practice, I find double wound's ability to instantly reapply the debuff far superior against those abilities, and offers far better pressure.  You can easily get RNGed and not proccing wound poison for long stretches, especially if you are using 1.8 daggers.  Double wound is just more reliable when it comes to the most important debuff, and the damage it does is deceivingly high.

Rupture Is Very Underrated

One very interesting choice Litreocola made in his spec is 2/2 Blood Splatter and Glyph of Rupture, he only has 1/3 improved eviscerate even with a RMP team where burst is supposed to be king!  After trying it myself, I have to say I am very impressed by the amount of damage rupture does.

Base Damage: 1750
+24% AP Bonus From 3000 AP (+720): 2470
Serrated Blade: 3211
Blood Splatter: 4174
Glyph of Rupture: 5218
Murder:5426
Find Weakness: 5750

That is almost 6000 damage off 25 second energy, goes right through armor.  Eviscerate, as damaging as it can be, does very little against classes that eat us alive in arenas.  Retribution paladins, warriors, death knights, heck even hunters have 38% damage reduction nowadays.  Rupture + double wound with slice and dice is a lot of damage unmitigated by armor.  Vs double plate teams, it really makes a huge difference.  Against everyone else, I still rupture early and build up for a KS or eviscerate later.  A burst window is usually 5 seconds, three ticks of rupture for 1500 damage, four wound procs, that is 3000 damage right through armor.  The longer rupture duration really mess up other rogues too.

Also, if you are into dueling, sap->CS to get combo points, garrote -> 5 point rupture, vanish CS mutilate CB evis is just incredible with Litreocola's set up, my record against rogue killers improved quite a bit with bleed/poison damage talents.

Resilience Or Damage?

There are two different schools of thoughts right now for arena rogues.  Some go all out on resilience, others get very little of it.  In the end, it still depends on what comp you play.  With DK/holy paladin, I got trained 90% of the times, I had 3/3 deadened nerves, battlemaster, anvil of titans, and was very close to re-gem/re-enchant for max resilience. 

With RMP, I struggled with the defensive set and went back to double offensive trinket and full offensive enchants/gems, it really helps as I am only focus fired 40% of the times, and mage/priest can peel for me much better than DK/paladin ever could.  Litreocola has the highest rated RMP in North America, and his gear/filler choices can help a lot of the struggling RMPs out there.  The comp may not be what it used to be (just ask Neilyo-kun, whose fresh new RMP has a record of 14-8 at 1790), but it is still the only comp where I feel I can not be replaced by a superior class.

To Serennia-sama/Jasi-san

Expressing your opinions in public is fine.  The last a couple of days did provide some quality entertainment for everyone, and sometimes you need to let it all out before you can continue. 

In corporate world you have to work with people you hate ALL THE TIMES, sometimes a little hatred can serve as a great motivation.  I expect WOM to resume its normal coverage starting with this article.