by Matt Low

Toravon is the latest boss to appear within the Vault of Archavon, however we’re not quite sure if he is the last of the VoA bosses to be seen in this expansion. The boss is fairly simple conceptually, but don’t take him too lightly. I’ll walk you through what you need to know to get score some sweet tier 10 PvE gear and equivilent PvP gear.

Gear Drops

He drops tier 10 level gloves and legs along with PvP gear (like belt and boots). Unlike his brothers, he drops 3 items on 25 instead of 2. And yes, he does drop Emblems of Frost. Its a fairly simple encounter for an equipped raid group. There aren’t any fires to stay out of or anything. You’ll need 2 tanks and at least 4-5 healers (on 10 man, you can get away with 2).

Tanks

Tanks will need to switch off of each other to shake the Frostbite debuff. It can stack up to 100 times and each application places a DoT which hits for about 1000 every couple of seconds. Your tanks can switch when they feel the debuff is getting high.

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by Xerin @ tentonhammer

When gearing up your Mage in World of Warcraft you’re going to want focus on just one thing, damage. You’re going to want to smoke your enemies with your arcane wrath as fast as you can snap your fingers or do that funny looking casting animation. I seriously would think that it’d be awesome if Mages could cast spells while snapping, but I’m digressing from the topic.

Everything you need to pick up for a Mage should contain Spell Power, Critical Strike Rating, Hit Rating, and to some extent Haste. The most important thing when you’re gearing up for raiding is to focus on your hit rating. Hit rating, until the cap, is the biggest DPS boost you can have because it removes the chance to hit. When you have a lengthy cast time and miss then you lose A TON of DPS.

When you go to pick up gems and enchants be sure to look in your purse. You do not have to use epic quality gems which often sell for 200gold or more on items that aren’t truly epic quality.

Leveling Up

While leveling up you’re going to want to focus on snagging gear with Intellect. Towards TBC when gear starts branching off between healing (spirit and haste) and damage (intellect and hit) you’ll want to go for damage. Both sets have critical strike rating and for the most part neither bit of gear is bad unless you’re running random dungeons and taking the healing specific gear from the healer.

If you get any pieces of gear with gem slots then feel free to add in the superior quality Spell Power gems into them to make them beefier than ever.

The caster heirlooms are by default the best ones. Dreadmist Mantle, Dreadmist Robe, Headmaster’s Charge, and the Discerning Eye of the Beast are the ones you’ll want as a Mage, if you have a level 80 and a lot of time to farm ‘em up.

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for starters, all this information is about level 80 PvP, as a rogue.

Talent Build: Mutilate/Prep 41/5/25

Stats:
AP: This is your highest priority, you want burst.
Crit: This goes along with AP, not as important but take it where you can.
Hit: Try and be close-ish to the PvP hit cap, which is 5%.
Expertise and Haste: Don’t worry about it, doesn’t hurt though.
Armor Penetration: Nicer than Exp/Haste, but still don’t focus on it.
Resil: Resilience is a tricky balance. You want to have enough you won’t be bursted down in a few GCDs, but it shouldn’t be needed to get a lot. Try and be in the range of 400-500. A bit more or less will probably be ok, but if you have less you may have to play more defensively.

Gear:
You want a balance of PvE and PvP gear. Enough PvP to be in the ideal resil area, and enough PvE to be able to burst people down. This really depends on how far progressed you are in both, so just go for as much AP and crit as you can within the resil range.
Always gem offensively:
Red/Prismatic(eternal belt buckle) sockets – +AP
Blue sockets – +Stam/AP
Yellow sockets – +Crit/AP
(AP, attack power, is your friend!)
Misc. Gear:
There’s a few pieces that aren’t too hard to get you should aim for.
Titan-Forged Rune of Determination – Replace your “regular” PvP trinket with this, easy to get.
Darkmoon Card: Death – Your other trinket, can cost a bit (usually 800-1200, depending on your realm) but trust me, it’s worth it. High proc rate, 45s internal cooldown. So it’s pretty much +2k damage to your opener.
Direbrew’s Shanker 2.0 – Not absolutely needed, but since it’s brewfest you shouldn’t have too hard a time getting one. I use this along with Sinister Revenge and it’s 2.0 speed is really outstanding, more damage from your mutilate, even though it’s lower DPS.
Enchants:
If you are an engineer, congratulations! It’s about to pay off. Rocket gloves are amazing, use them for that extra bit of burst. The nitro boots are the best foot enchant as well.
If you aren’t, don’t worry.
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by Zach Yonzon

Patch 3.2 introduced a new 40-man raid Battleground, technically the biggest instance since old world Naxxramas. In Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, raid dungeons were cut down to 25-players and the two Battlegrounds since then, the Eye of the Storm and Strand of the Ancients, were limited to 15 players per side. Isle of Conquest sees the return of epic battles not seen since Alterac Valley. Well, okay, epic battles with less lag not seen since Wintergrasp, anyway. If you’re just hit Level 80 or are curious about the new Battleground, here’s a quick guide to help you out.

What’s the deal?

There are essentially two ways to win the Battleground, identical to the new and improved Alterac Valley — kill the enemy General or deplete the opposing team’s Resources. The Horde forces are led by Overlord Agmar, the orc after whom the Horde base in Dragonblight is named, the leader of the Kor’kron Guard who looks like he’s wearing Northrend greens or blues, at best. On the other team is High Commander Halford Wyrmbane, the leader of the 7th Legion and whom Alliance players will typically first encounter giving quests in Wintergarde Keep in Dragonblight. He isn’t any better off than his rival, as he looks like he’s in Sunwell epics. Cool, right? Alright, now let’s figure out how to kill them.

The boss fights

Unfortunately for flavor but wonderfully for game balance, Agmar and Wyrmbane are identical in every way except one is green and grumpy while the other is prim, proper, and probably powders his nose. Both have about 800k health in the Level 80 bracket and have a few notable abilities. One is Dagger Throw, a ranged ability cast at a random raid member and has a DoT component. Another is Mortal Strike, so named as to not confuse anyone — it hurts and creates a healing debuff. The last ability, also the coolest, is called Crushing Leap, where the boss concentrates for about two seconds before jumping into the air and slamming on the ground and knocking everyone back with a little damage.

Unlike the bosses in Alterac Valley, who generally have to be tanked by a proper tank, Agmar and Wyrmbane are designed to be mobbed. The Mortal Strike debuff and leap discourages tanking to begin with, and the boss’ hall design is such that the main difficulty is getting enough raid members on the same floor. The idea is to engage them with enough numbers to minimize the impact of random strikes and just DPS away. This is why it’s also important to break down the walls so that allies can keep going into the keep. In short, mob the boss, DPS and heal, profit. I know, kind of brainless, but it keeps the games short and sweet.

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As every good priest knew in season 6, you could buff Divine Spirit rank 6 and 5, and they would count as 2 buffs, without the spirit itself stacking. That way you would have that bit more dispel/purge protection on your important buffs, which might just be giving you the edge you need to pull off a win.

This was nerfed a while ago, but ive now found a new way!

Buff Prayer of Spirit rank 2! (not max rank), and then Divine Spirit rank 6 (max rank).
Same effect, and not that noticeable by others as its 2 different icons

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by Christian Belt

PvP

I’m going to start by doing something mildly controversial. I’m going to advocate PvP as a way to gear up for raiding. Yes, I know. I’m wrong on so many levels. Only here’s why I’m not:

Titan-Forged Cloth Trousers of Domination

You can get those from a vendor in Wintergrasp when your faction has control of the zone for the price of 40 Wintergrasp Marks of Honor. If you’re a member of the Alliance on my server, where the Alliance simply has to show up and they get a victory, you can get that many marks pretty quickly. If you’re a member of a faction on a server where that faction typically loses Wintergrasp, it may take you a little while. Take a minute and look at those pants right there.

Those are sexy.

Now here’s the knock on PvP gear for raiding: It’s PvP gear. And you’re raiding. The prevailing sentiment is this: Too much of PvP gear’s itemization leans toward survivability. Mage PvP gear is heavy on stamina and resilience, stats a raiding Mage doesn’t really need. The points used on resilience are not just wasted, those are points that should be allocated to hit rating, or haste, or spirit, or (insert viable raiding stat here), essentially making them negative stats. So if you show up to raid and you’re wearing a noticeable majority of PvP gear, be prepared to get made fun of, or kicked from the raid, or blamed for wipes, or (insert something douchebags do here).

Here’s my problem with this:

It’s stupid. Granted, the idea holds up if you’re still raiding in them in Trial of the Grand Crusader or something, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. The concept we’re dealing with in this particular part of this particular column is that of using PvP gear as entry-level raiding gear. Our overlying theme is this: how do I get raid-quality gear without raiding? In that spirit, let’s compare those pants to, say, these…

Leggings of Sapphiron

…which drop in 10-man Naxx. These are perfectly acceptable entry-level raiding leggings, and they drop inside a raid. Switching from the PvP pants above to these PvE pants does the following:

• -80 stamina
• -1 Intellect
• +72 spirit
• -64 crit rating
• -80 resilience
• +41 haste rating
• -34 spellpower

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Wintergrasp is a large zone in Northrend populated by elementals and once every 2 hours or so, players.

The conventional Wintergrasp tactics go like this:

1) Get vehicles
2) Rush the east side
3) Break through the walls
4) Assault the keep
5) Profit

But, these tactics suck. All that will happen is horde will stack at East side and dick all over your tanks. This equals fail.

If you genuinely want to win and get all the goodies that go a long with winning (marks, honor, VoA) I suggest you listen up.

These tactics work exceedingly well providing you can get people to listen. I know, tough one, but I never said this would be easy.

So, without further ado, here’s how to win WG quickly.

1) Get there before the fight starts
2) Head to the west side and camp out where the cannons spawn
3) As soon as those cannons spawn, start killing them. At the beginning you should have a load of tenacity stacks so they’ll fall fast.
4) Do this for both the outer and inner west walls
5) Stack siege engines at the Western siege workshop and move in on the walls.
6) Once you break through the 2nd wall, go for the door, if you die grab a demo and go back
7) Win

These tactics have won me countless WG games. You’ll find your enemy won’t actually realise whats happening until the 2nd wall falls and by that time its far too late for them.

I hope you try this out and make it work for you.

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Frost mages are a very good class for pvp if you know how to play them. They are pretty easy to play but it does take a lot of practice, knowlege, and some gear to play them well. That being said I’ll get on with the guide.

Specs

Chosing specs are pretty basic for frost mages but there are many variations that you can do depending on your play style.

The spec that I like to use is 20/0/51. This is probably the most used spec for frost mages.

You can switch the talents around from improved CoC into Permafrost or Frost Channeling. Basicly, if you go into perma frost, your going to be better against melee classes. But mages already have enough CC against melee where I don’t really think it’s necessary.. If you go into frost channeling your going to be better against casters in general. Most of mage counters are casters so I would personally chose frost channeling over perma frost. There is also Enduring Winter which can be needed depending on your arena set ups and other things but I personally don’t like it.

In the arcane tree you can also switch around talents, from torment of the week and Arcane Fortitude, and, if you feel you don’t need improved counter spell you can take those points out to.

Gear

Gear for frost mages isn’t that straight forward. It all depends on your play style really. Some mages like to have a lot of haste, some like to have more stam and resilience. I personally think haste is a must for a frost mage, but I know some pretty high rated mages that don’t have that much haste.

I read up on spell haste, and a lot of people say Spell Power is better than haste, but spell haste is better than crit rating.

Mages also really need spell pen against paladins / mages / etc. The spell pen I like to have is 120 so paladins frost resistance aura and mages mage armor is cancelled out.

Most of the best mage gear comes from raids which can be a pain but if you can join a guild that is farming naxx / ulduar I highly recommend doing so. The gear you really need from raids are:
A Main hand weapon – None of the PvP weapons really have decent haste/spell power on them. There are two weapons that I know of which are really nice for mages are Life and Death , and The Turning Tide – Item – World of Warcraft. There are other weapons that have spell haste ( I tried looking for a list of weapons that have spell haste but I didn’t find anything , sorry ).
Two Piece Tier 7 – Having two pieces of tier 7 is a must imo. With the two pieces you get a set bonus which increases the mana you get from mana gem by 40% and gives you around 200 SP which is really nice for outlasting and burst. The two pieces that I recommend getting is the shoulders and the legs because those two peices have haste.
… The list goes on for the PvE items that help you out in PvP.

Other things that you well want gear wise is the Winters Grasp PvP trinket (+111 SP), the other trinket that gives +res and has a use effect, also the wintersgrasp Salvation set (each piece gives decent spell haste a long with a lot of stam and res).

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The basics.

Spec.
At the moment in 3v3 im using a frost 2h spec. you can find it here. Its working quite well but i havnt tested it in 5v5 or 2v2.
the other alternative is the unholy spec found here. this was working VERY well for me in 2v2 with a druid healer.

Partners.
Death knight partners can be almost anything when it comes to PvP.
At the moment im running a Resto shaman/Ass rogue/frost DK. Its going quite well and we currently are at 1256 rating after 3days.
The other setup is unholy DK/Holy pal/Arms warrior. Going for the cleave setup. this retup is pretty good because you ahve two high dps classes.
Or theres the Disc priest/ass or mut rogue/frost DK. I think that disc priests got a buff this patch so they own in any section in PvP.
Having a rogue in your group with a death knight can help you out with burst, interupts and confusion for the other team.

Gear.
NEVER EVER use savage gear. its blue and crappy. Id go for hateful minimum. it should only take a week or two max to farm the honor to get it.
Gem for stats most of the time while adding some resiliance gems in if needed.
Get minimum 75 spell pen(cloack enchant + hands gem + waist or legs Spell pen gem)
Get a 2 piece t8.5/7.5 set bonus (pref legs and hands) for some more DPS and the bonus you get with the two peice.
Save your WG marks for the trinkets and belt if you cant get a better one.

The Priority dps system.
For my death knight i use Plague strike, icy touch, blood strike, obliterate and frost strike for the rune dumps. Make sure to keep refreshing that system to pull out maximum dps.
With my team i start off by letting the rogue going in, sapping their healer then disarming what seems to be their strongest DPS. then we move on to the remaining DPS and when or if the healer gets out of the sap we get our shaman to hex them then we burn down the DPS.
If we ever get into trouble i hungrying cold in the middle of the opposing team to give us time to refresh or heal. Or if we are out of stuns to stop the healer doing what they need to do so we can burn one of thier players.
If our healer dies or we get into even more trouble i use this macro that pops all my ’staying alive’ cooldowns.

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