Gearing Up For Arena

With the release of TBC, the arena is no doubt the most successful thing to have been released in a while. It has established WoW as an E-sport, and tournaments are popping up everywhere for the top teams. In order to be successful in the arena, you're going to need some gear. This guide will help you get the best possible non-raiding gear to insure your success in the arena.

First off, stats. Resilience is HUGE in arena, and should be your primary focus going into arena with no gladiator sets. Resilience cuts the damage of crits and reduces the chance you will be crit. 39.4 resilience rating gives you a 1% chance to not becrit, and 2% less damage taken from crits. Fortunately, resilience gear is easy to acquire before your team has the points for gladiator sets.

Stamina is also important in arena, and all of WoW for that matter. What's the use of your great 30% crit rate or 2.5k attack power if you die in seconds? Dead players do no DPS and cast no heals. In my opinion, stamina should be taken over attack power/agi/str. Once you get some gladiator armor pieces, the high DPS will come. The main thing about gladiator sets is that they also have nice stamina/resilience, so you can afford to start focusing on increasing your DPS.

Crit rating should also been taken by DPS classes. Higher crit allows you greater burst damage, which is the best kind of damage for arena. Any good healer can heal their teammate getting a constant source of small number damage, such as warlock dots. But it would be significantly harder to heal that same teammate when he or she is getting hit by 5k+ damage in a matter of seconds. Crit rating, unfortunately, isn't extremely easy to find pre-raid gear, but some pieces are still out there for you to get.

Now onto the gear itself.

Head: You have 3 real solid choices here. You can opt for the Honor PvP Helm, your dungeon set 3 helm, or the helms from the quest-chain in shadowmoon.

PvP helm will cost you 16,065 honor points and 30 AV marks. Note the meta gem socket.
Dungeon set 3 helm also has a meta gem socket, and drop from various instances depending on your class.
The quest chain helms which are the easiest to obtain start with these 2 quests.
Alliance - A Ghost in the Machine
Horde - A Haunted History

Neck - Veteran's Pendant. Cost is 15,300 honor points and 10 EoS marks.

Caster DPS
Healer
Melee DPS


Shoulders: The PvP shoulders are the best to get here, resilience and decent stats.
PvP shoulders will cost you 10,098 honor and 20 AB marks.

Back - Sergeant's Cloak/Cape will cost you 9,435 honor points and 20 AB marks.

Caster
Melee


Chest: PvP Chest will cost you 16,524 honor points and 30 AB marks. Notable enchant here is +15 resilience, solid enchant and not too expensive.

Bracers- Veteran's bracers. They have a version for every class and spec. Cost is 11,794 honor and 20 WSG marks.

Hands - PVP gloves are almost a must for every class. Each gives you a special ability that is unavailable to you without the gloves equipped. Rogues' deadly throw gets a silence affect, simply a must have for any rogue serious about pvp. The cost for these gloves are 10,098 honor points and 20 AV marks.

Waist- Once again, the veteran's belt for your corresponding class and spec. Cost is 17,850 honor points and 40 AB marks.

Legs- PVP pants are 16,065 honor points and 30 WSG marks. There are some quest alternatives that offer higher DPS, but you would lose resilience.

Feet - Veteran's boots for your corresponding class and spec. Cost for the boots is 17,850 honor poitns and 40 EoS marks.

Rings- Get both the season 1 pvp ring and season 2 pvp ring. Season 2 rings cost 15,300 honor and 10 AV marks. Season 1 Rings cost 11,934 honor points and 10 AV marks.

Caster DPS - Season 2 Ring / Season 1 Ring
Melee DPS - Season 2 Ring / Season 1 Ring
Healer - Season 2 Ring / Season 1 Ring


A notable alternative are the rings from collecting 50 spirit shards. These however would take longer to obtain.
Melee
Caster

Trinkets: There are so many possible trinkets that will work well for arena that I couldn't possibly list them all without missing some. A lot comes down to personal preference too. You may like increasing your attack power with trinkets and another player of the same class may want to increase crit raiting. I'd recommend going to wowhead and browsing through the trinkets.

Weapons: Once again, same as trinkets. There are so many possible weapons to get that you may want to browse through them as well and see which are most accessible to you. Some of the best require heroic instance runs, such as the best ranged weapon and 1h mace pre-raid. Warriors however, have access to the best 2h weapons for a while. The weapon smithing exclusive weapons will last you a long time and each have an individual bonus to each of them, such as the sword's resistance to fear effects.

Anyone in a raiding guild will obviously have better gear accessible to them to choose from, so take advantage. Another thing that I would recommend would be to stack stamina gems and enchants, even if that means not getting a socket bonus. If the socket bonus is small like +3 agility, it may be worth it to put a stamina gem in the slot instead of the corresponding color. Also, be sure you at least get 2 pvp pieces for the +35 resilience set bonus. This will provide an easy boost to your resilience.