Gear
Understanding Stats
Setting up the correct stats for your character's gear can drastically increase your damage, survivability, and overall performance in PvP. The stats you choose to prioritize can change depending on the meta and your playstyle.
Primary Stats
Increases your spell power and damage.
Increases your health pool.
Secondary Stats
Increases your casting speed and reduces the global cooldown.
Increases your chance to critically hit with spells.
Increases your damage and healing done and decreases damage taken.
Increases the damage of your spells during eclipse.
Tertiary Stats
These stats only work when they are enchanted or gemmed. Tertiary stats on gear by random do not work in PvP.
Reduces the damage taken from AoE attacks.
Heals for a portion of damage done.
Increases your movement speed.
Stat Priority
Common Builds
You want to build 3 sets of gear for the 3 most common builds. The first two are the most common to be played, while the third is more for fun.
Cycling / Cycloning
Dampening / Counterpressure
Rated Battlegrounds
Understanding Tempo
The tempo of a game is the frequency of game-breaking decisions. On a small map like Dalaran Sewers versus a Devastation + Havoc + Fistweaver, the tempo is high. Kiting is not an option and any Cyclone or mistake can lead to an instant win or loss respectively.
What about fighting Elemental + Demonology + Restoration Druid on a larger map? Playing for Cyclones is not an option, setups are infrequent from both sides, and damage is manageable until a healer goes OOM (out of mana). This is an example of a low tempo game.
What about fighting Havoc + Unholy + Restoration Shaman on a larger map? This is a tough situation to be in, tempo is high, kiting is hard, but Cycloning is not an option. The best option is to take the lesser of two evils and play to kite and maximize damage. I include this matchup here because the best strategy is to kite and maximize damage without Cyclones, but the tempo is high which means the best gear is Haste and Versatility. Tempo decides the best gear, not whether you can Cyclone or not.
Stat Diminishing Returns
Stat DRs are applied to secondary stats when you have too much of one stat. Install the addon True Stat Values to see when you are hitting a DR. When building your low tempo gear set, use gems, enchants, and gear to avoid stat DRs. Trade out versatility for mastery in the 10% versatility stat DR. Haste up to the 30% DR is still beneficial.
In a 4 season expansion, only in season 3 and 4 will you have to worry about stat DRs. Season 1 and 2 you will only need a Haste + Versatility build.
Why is haste so good?
Exponential Baseline
Haste increases the speed at which you can re-apply dots to dispelled targets, the speed you can enter Eclipse, the speed you can use utility spells to kite, and the speed you can cast Cyclones. Without haste, you mastery is less active, your eclipses are harder to enter, and globals are so expensive that you cannot afford to kite. Haste for Balance Druid exponentially increases your ability to win games.
Multiplicative Properties
Let's say you have 30% haste. You cast Incarnation which gives you a 10% haste buff.
Haste = (1 + 0.3) * (1 + 0.1) - 1
Haste = 0.43
Notice how it is not 40%. Haste is not applied as a linear increase. It is applied as a multiplicative increase based off of your baseline haste.
Let's say you have 34% haste in arena. You cast Incarnation (10% haste) and 3 Starsurges (12% haste from Starlord).
Haste = (1 + 0.34) * (1 + 0.22) - 1
Haste = 0.6348
Challenge Time!
- Obtain Cycling / Cycloning:This gear set is best to start off with as it is the most common build to play.
- Obtain Dampening / Counterpressure (Optional):This gear set is less common, however with some experience, you can leverage more wins in this higher damage build.
- Obtain Rated Battlegrounds (Optional):Playing a few RBGs will help you understand the importance of having a high mastery build for maximum damage output.
Note: In later seasons of an expansion, the difference between using the correct gear sets stat wise, can often be the difference between winning and losing a game.