Question on PVP armor choices and stat priority

metikulous

Hi, I will soon have enough glory to buy my first piece of prestige on my rogue and was wondering if some more experienced rogues could chime in. It's my understanding that for pve we value crit > everything but in pvp it's more like power > recovery > everything else so with that in mind here were my choices...

Executioner Mask (power/crit/arp)
Duelist Vest (power/recovery/regen)
Executioner Gloves (power/crit/arp)
Not sure about boots though but probably leaning towards executioner...
Executioner Boots (power/crit/deflection) vs Duelist Boots (recovery/deflection/movement)

Is there a cap I should be trying to attain for recovery? Trying to decide between slotting silvery or radiant gems in my offensive slots.
Last question I promise, currently using ensorcelled weapons, twisted is a no go at the moment, so drowned or burning set? Thanks in advance for any feedback.

rustlord

Forget about arpen, you can't stack enough of it anyway. Go Power for max shocking damage, go as high as you want. If you're using Courage Breaker, go recovery all the way, 10K recovery is pretty easy to stack some go for 20K but that would be difficult for most. Don't try to balance one with the other, just pick one and max it.

trgluestickz

metikulous said:

Hi, I will soon have enough glory to buy my first piece of prestige on my rogue and was wondering if some more experienced rogues could chime in. It's my understanding that for pve we value crit > everything but in pvp it's more like power > recovery > everything else so with that in mind here were my choices...

Executioner Mask (power/crit/arp)
Duelist Vest (power/recovery/regen)
Executioner Gloves (power/crit/arp)
Not sure about boots though but probably leaning towards executioner...
Executioner Boots (power/crit/deflection) vs Duelist Boots (recovery/deflection/movement)

Is there a cap I should be trying to attain for recovery? Trying to decide between slotting silvery or radiant gems in my offensive slots.
Last question I promise, currently using ensorcelled weapons, twisted is a no go at the moment, so drowned or burning set? Thanks in advance for any feedback.

The Sea of Moving Ice update introduced the relic weapons, these new weapons are roughly a 20% through 35% damage increase for TRs altogether and outpreform twisted weapons at blue quality. I do not recommend any other set over these new weapons, the damage they offer is simply too good to pass up. Burning and drowned are really good but if taking the relic weapons is an option for you, go for those.

For gear pieces on a pvp TR, I would do 3 prestige pieces(head, arms, and feet), one rosegold ring, and the dragonflight raid vest. The dragonflight raid vest grants a lot of power and recovery and is worth taking over a PVP torso piece if you can get a ring to replace the lost tenacity. For the prestige pieces, mix and match according to your preference. I personally went with the executioner gloves, the duelist mask, and the duelist boots.

For recovery, the bare minimum you should take is around 4k through 6k. More is always better. Most Experienced BIS TRs I've met go for 16k through 20k recovery. You could also add on a Sigil of the Devoted artifact at mythic for its activation power, the saboteur's 2 cooldown reduction feats, and the tactics passive power as well. I personally don't use tactics but a lot of TRs do and I do use the other stuff I mentioned.

For power, 30k or over is ideal but as long as you have around 20k you should be fine. 25k is a good amount and less difficult to accomplish than 30k.

For HP, I would make sure to get at least 100k, more is better and the ideal amount for a BIS TR is 130k+(this usually requires the HP guild boon).

If you can get it, around 2k through 3k regeneration is nice to have.

Around 1.8k incoming healing is good to have as well but also optional.

For deflect, I recommend 50% minimum. With some skill+dodges and stealth some people can do well with as little as 30% though if you can get more deflect, definitely get more deflect. The ideal number would be 60% deflect or greater because that is when you can survive GF rotations if you are unlucky enough to get caught in one. I personally try to keep mine at 70% or more since the new relic weapons will probably cause the recommended deflect threshold to go up as more people acquire those weapons.

Lifesteal is optional but it is really good. I recommend 20% lifesteal for pvp if you are able. Notably, its very difficult to hold onto that much lifesteal if you are stacking BIS amounts of recovery and deflect. Many TRs because of this, remove their lifesteal and go pure deflect+other non lifesteal related heals. I recently did this myself, the lack of lifesteal is definitely noticeable though the room I got for stacking recovery and still holding onto my high deflect was worth it.

Tenacity: This stat is vital for PVP though its worth mentioning that it has steep diminishing returns after 3k

General Stat Priorities:

For most up to date PVP TR builds, I would prioritize these stats for offense: Recovery/cool down reduction/other sources of AP gain, piercing damage, straight dps increases, power, combat advantage damage, critical severity

Control strength is also worth taking when available especially if you lean towards a single target control build.

Critical strike is still useful but should not be taken over the above stats for a PVP build. you'll end up with some crit no matter what you do and most of what you need is coming from stealth.

Armor pen is useless for PVP TRs right now. Don't bother with it at all, it will not increase your damage in any noticeable way unless you are in PVE.

For defensive stats, the useful ones right now are: tenacity, deflect, HP, lifesteal, healing boons, 3 or more mount insignia heals, regeneration, incoming healing

Another useful thing to have if your build allows for it is sources of non defense related damage reduction such as the feytouched enchantment power or/and the master infighter feat from the scoundrel tree.

The actual defense stat is better than nothing but not great and not worth stacking if you have other options.

Lifesteal Severity is less powerful than regeneration and incoming healing since the latter 2 increase your insignia heals and other healing sources as well as affecting life steal. I do not recommend taking lifesteal severity if you have any other option available.

demonmonger

Looks good so far

rustlord

@trgluestickz pointed out something I'd like to expand on, which is Lifesteal. Friend of ours here, Syndul, had a good run with 40% LS if I can remember my numbers straight with the SH boon. I don't have that boon for myself, but I have managed to go as high as 30% LS with only min-maxing stats. The greater trade off in this is that I have to drop deflect to dangerous levels, 30% as was stated.

I feel like it's a bit elitist of me to say it takes skill to survive with such little deflect, I'd rather say it takes more luck than usual. What works, though, is pairing high recovery with lifesteal. I do have rolls, stealth but the main reason I get away with very little deflect is the ability to spam ITC. I'm already using Feytouched for the debuff instead of Vorpal, so you can add Shocking Execution to the cons list. But in overall, if you're not counting SE, the dps difference between Fey and Vorp is around a 3% margin.

Lifesteal is absolutely incredible at BiS levels, and I don't think I'd be going back to any other stat soon. Flipside is it takes some sacrifices new TRs should be aware of. From where I stand, I will suggest Life Steal if you are dealing with a lot of piercing damage from TR/HR and Deflect if you want to be able take burst damage from GF/GWF.

trgluestickz

rustlord said:

@trgluestickz pointed out something I'd like to expand on, which is Lifesteal. Friend of ours here, Syndul, had a good run with 40% LS if I can remember my numbers straight with the SH boon. I don't have that boon for myself, but I have managed to go as high as 30% LS with only min-maxing stats. The greater trade off in this is that I have to drop deflect to dangerous levels, 30% as was stated.

I feel like it's a bit elitist of me to say it takes skill to survive with such little deflect, I'd rather say it takes more luck than usual. What works, though, is pairing high recovery with lifesteal. I do have rolls, stealth but the main reason I get away with very little deflect is the ability to spam ITC. I'm already using Feytouched for the debuff instead of Vorpal, so you can add Shocking Execution to the cons list. But in overall, if you're not counting SE, the dps difference between Fey and Vorp is around a 3% margin.

Lifesteal is absolutely incredible at BiS levels, and I don't think I'd be going back to any other stat soon. Flipside is it takes some sacrifices new TRs should be aware of. From where I stand, I will suggest Life Steal if you are dealing with a lot of piercing damage from TR/HR and Deflect if you want to be able take burst damage from GF/GWF.

Nice to see a fellow feytouched user. I don't see very many TRs in PVP use feytouched anymore, most are on vorpal and a few have started using dread enchantments.

One other thing I'd like to mention for the benifit of @metikulous here is that it is possible to have both 20% lifesteal and 70%+ deflect if he wanted the best of both worlds on defensive stats. That was my previous setup and its easyest to accomplish that with A scoundrel TR. It just means you won't have as much recovery and limited places to pull power from without a near maxed guild boon. On average, It delt a 50k though 94k SE without first strike and had decent overall damage. Duelist's flurry hit hard given I was using scoundrel damage feats + trans feytouched + flashing blades from the sabotuer tree + lots of combat advantage damage + the passives infultraitor's action and invisible infultraitor. I had around 10.5k recov on that build and 22k power counting my guild's 3k boon to power. This build was a jack of all trades master of none setup and was a fairly good build in spite of my dicision to change to a new build. It did however have some rough areas and is less streamlined than a 16k+ recov build is. It was however, more forgiving of mistakes given that build was ungodly tanky without much reliance on stealth and had decent single target control.

rustlord

We're more cut from the same cloth it looks like. I always end up with Executioner but my first instinct when rolling out an experimental build is to go with Scoundrel. It gives just that much margin for error. For one, the stacking lifesteal from savage blows counts for plenty. Also if I am assuming correctly, out of that benchmark 70% deflect, 20% should be coming from conditional feats.

I think most of us were led to believe that the weakness of this path is its lack of damage as its very cc-dependent, and most of that have been nerfed so severely. From experience however, I think the edge that Executioner has over it is just being able to go back into stealth so freely. There are limiting factors to that in the scoundrel path, which also in effect makes it harder to trigger Mocking Gesture (T5, 10% Deflect on entering stealth). Similarly, Survivor (T2, 10% Deflect when low health) is even more challenging as I was constantly healing over the HP threshold with Life Steal. I was never quite able to get out of that pickle.

But what's definitely true is that Scoundrel is the best of both worlds. It's as good a place to start as any.

trgluestickz

rustlord said:

We're more cut from the same cloth it looks like. I always end up with Executioner but my first instinct when rolling out an experimental build is to go with Scoundrel. It gives just that much margin for error. For one, the stacking lifesteal from savage blows counts for plenty. Also if I am assuming correctly, out of that benchmark 70% deflect, 20% should be coming from conditional feats.

I think most of us were led to believe that the weakness of this path is its lack of damage as its very cc-dependent, and most of that have been nerfed so severely. From experience however, I think the edge that Executioner has over it is just being able to go back into stealth so freely. There are limiting factors to that in the scoundrel path, which also in effect makes it harder to trigger Mocking Gesture (T5, 10% Deflect on entering stealth). Similarly, Survivor (T2, 10% Deflect when low health) is even more challenging as I was constantly healing over the HP threshold with Life Steal. I was never quite able to get out of that pickle.

But what's definitely true is that Scoundrel is the best of both worlds. It's as good a place to start as any.

In my case, I have a champion's armored bulette mount. I can hold 70% deflect or over without mocking gesture on my old build though without an armored bulette, mocking gesture would be needed. Only 10% is comming from conditional feats without the mount and none of it is with the mount. 11 of my insignias were deflect for 2.2k deflect, I had the roll with the punches feat, a mix of silveries and vicious rank 12's in all my defense slots, lucky skirmesher 3/3, deflect from all boons that offered it, 1 deflect/power rosegold ring, 400 deflect in armor kits(the other 2 were lifesteal), and my race is halfling so 3% more deflect. I could also pot up using ability score increasing elixirs for a little extra. I had no level up points in dexterity at all but I did have charisma and strength maxed so I could optionally have gotten even more deflect by pouring my points from strength into dex.

Also, on my new build its fairly easy with that kind of recov to get a lot of stealth on a scoundrel making mocking gesture easy to keep up. I don't gain more deflect on my new build since I am changing mount powers and a lot of my insignias to recovery but with mocking gesture, I can maintain it. I wasn't considering survivor until the recent itc changes since I have stopped slotting itc and have a lack of better alternatives, I was using press the advantage before. Survivor I found to be way too situational and kinda pointless given the only low health a well built scoundrel usually sees is just called death. This was especially true on my old build which had lifesteal + drowned weapons + many other heals.

rustlord

I see now. Mount powers is where a few of our choices start to head off in slightly different directions. I have the old (non-legacy) version of the epic Flail Snail with 25% AP bonus. After they fiddled with how that bonus worked between purple and legendary mounts, I'm a little more inclined to keep it, unless the choice is a 4K mount power that I don't have.

This reminds me though of an earlier conversation I had with one of the TRs here with regards to deflect. I don't know if I can dig up the thread, but the gist of it is either to max the deflect in the 70-80 range, or drop it down to 30 and not invest in it at all. I think it cropped up with a discussion about how RNG worked, and where randomness is concerned half measures are to be taken with a grain of salt. I think, in most PvE high crit build, they are applying the same concept.

But to contrast, Life Steal seems to defy this rule somehow. LS is harder to stack than any other stat, but it's being hell of a lot effective in the 20-30% range. I thought that was weird, till it occurred to me how lifesteal synergizes with our attack speed, say Bloodbath, Duelist, Courager Breaker. Fast-hitting powers multiple times in succession activates it so reliably that 20% is more than sufficient. It's funny being on the other side of this conversation. A year ago I was pro-deflect and struggling to understand Life Steal.

demonmonger

Order of importance to me
Power 17000
Mobility 14000
Lifesteal 6000
Deflect 4000
Critical 4000
Defense 3000
Regeneration 2000

My play style is more of a get in quick
Cc you and attempt to kill you before cc ends. Then escape and wait for cc again if I fail on first attempt. Thus, mobility is key.

You cannot kill what you cannot catch.