So you are getting your PvP gear and started to wonder how to gem it and what trinkets should you use. The first thing I’m going to cover is the metagem + feet enchant choice. Why those two? I simply cannot imagine pvping without minor speed effect on my character, so you either get that from enchant or metagem.

FEET ENCHANT AND METAGEM:

1) [Powerful Earthstorm Diamond] + [Boar's Speed]

This configuration will give you a lot of stamina along with 5% stun resistance, which is good since it stack with Iron Will (and Orc Hardiness if you are an orc). Bad side of this is that you will have to change 3 red/yellow gems in your armor for purple/green ones for the meta gem to work (which will give you even more hp).

2) [Swift Skyfire Diamond] + [Surefooted]

This configuration won’t give you any stamina, but is very good for maxing attack power. Even if you don’t put any stamina gem in your gear and won’t have stamina enchant on legs or whatever, you will have over 12k hp in full S3 gear, which is very fine. Surefooted enchant will give you 5% snare resistance, which is nice (not very reliable tho, as we have no snare resistance talents), and 10 hit rating, and while hit rating might not be the sexiest stat ever, this enchant with full S3 gear and S3 weapon will give you pretty much enough hit rating not to worry about missing in arena.

3) [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] + [Boar's Speed]

I’d never use this configuration for my arena gear, but some people do use it, so I feel I must list it :p.

ATTACK POWER VS CRIT:

When wondering if you should gear for attack power or crit as a warrior, there is only one answer: you need both. PvP gear have a lot of it’s item value spent on crit and have 3 red slots and 5 yellow slots, which makes it much easier to max crit rating as a pvp warrior. When maxing crit you can get 40 crit from [Battlemaster's Cruelty], 50 crit from 5 epic yellow gems and 15 crit + 30 attack power from 3 orange meta gems, giving you total 105 crit rating and 30 attack power. When maxing attack power you can get 80 ap from [Battlemaster's Determination], 60 ap from 3 red epic gems and 50 ap + 25 crit from 5 epic orange gems, giving you total 190 attack power and 25 crit rating. So all in all, the difference is that you will have either 160 attack power or 80 crit rating (3.63% crit). Which is better.

Using my axe vs sword calculator as a dps calculator tool for comparing the two, with base data being 1900 attack power, 31% crit, 134.2 dps 3.6 speed weapon hitting 400 resilience target, the results are:

Base damage: 178079 - no spec
Maxed crit: 183076 - no spec (2.8% dps increase)
Maxed attack power: 184853 - no spec (3.8% dps increase)

Maxing attack power will give you more dps over time than maxing crit. There are two reasons for that, one is that resilience cuts a lot of dps from crits, second is that pvp gear have tons of crit on it’s own. The difference is not very big tho and you can easly max out crit for having a bit lower burst damage, but have it more often.

Terhix