Season 4 is almost here, while its still unknown exactly when it will start, its no more than couple weeks away. Since today I decided to get my enchant mats for new gear before prices will sky rocket, ill share with you.
Here are exact numbers so you can get ready as well.
First of all head, legs and shoulders. While you can get head enchant any time for 85g and tomes/armaments around 10g on AH, you might want to pick up [Nethercobra Leg Armor]. Right now its around 500g on my server, used to be 300g before Island dailies destroyed economy. It will be much more expensive after s4 comes out. Also make sure to pick up meta gem of your choice. Also seems that surefooted will no longer be needed, with s4 gear you will have 85 hit without any gems/enchants. So i will switch to 12% crit , 5% snare + boar speed. That will trade 24 ap for 12crit , which is fair trade, and adds +9 sta on top of that insdead of +10 hit rating that now its obsolete and unnecessary.

As for other enchants.

Chest:
[Enchant Chest - Exceptional Stats] or [Enchant Chest - Major Resilience] 4x Large Prismatic Shard, 4x Arcane Dust, 4x Greater Planar Essence or 4x Greater Planar Essence and 10 Arcane Dust

Bracers:
[Enchant Bracer - Brawn] 6 xArcane Dust

Gloves:
[Enchant Gloves - Major Strength] 12x Arcane Dust and 1x Greater Planar Essence

Boots:
[Enchant Boots - Boar's Speed] 8x Large Prismatic Shard and 8x Primal Earth

Ring:
1x [Enchant Ring - Stats] 2x Large Prismatic Shard, 2x Void Crystal

Weapon:
[Executioner] 6x Void Crystal, 10x Large Prismatic Shard, 6x Greater Planar Essence, 30x Arcane Dust and 3x Elixir of Major Strength

So for +6 all stats on chest, total is :
6x [Void Crystal]
22x [Large Prismatic Shard]
11x [Greater Planar Essence]
52x [Arcane Dust]
8x [Primal Earth]
3x [Elixir of Major Strength]

While for those who picked resilience on chest:
6x [Void Crystal]
18x [Large Prismatic Shard]
11x [Greater Planar Essence]
58x [Arcane Dust]
8x [Primal Earth]
3x [Elixir of Major Strength]

and on top of that total for enchanters:
2x [Large Prismatic Shard] and 2x [Void Crystal]

UPDATED:
If you have some spare cash, you might want to get more Void Cristals since those will be much more expensive in s4 (shatter Void Cristal cooldown removed) and you can make some cash on that easly.
(thanks for pointing that out Ano)

SandMan

Warning, HUGE blog.

Name: Get a cool and short name, like Leh or Lemo, so people can armory or remember you easier. Thus, getting some attention and maybe a good healer.

Racials: Gnomes, Orc, Tauren, or reroll. Every little advantage helps… like getting out of the frost nova, resisting the intercept stun, or winning a match with 100 hp.

Hotkeys: You need them. Read previous blogs.

Macros: I personally use only 3 macros.
1. /equip “your shield here” /equip “your 1hander here”
2. /target focus /cast intercept(rank5)
3. /cast defensive stance /equip shield /cast spell reflect /equip 1hander

Internet Connection and Computer: Get good ones because graphical or internet lag will cost games.

Addons: NECB, a cool down count (I use OmniCC), a focus frame mod, and Proximo.

Weapon choice: Mace/Swords for 2s, 3s. Most prefer maces. Sword is probably better with a shaman.

Talents: 35/23/3 or 33/28, I’d socket Crit for either of the build because “burst is king.” I went crit and this is my build http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LV0xdGbqMhkbZVVzu0xRZc.

Gear/Enchant: Highest item level value per slot. IE 5 strength + 4 crit rating gem > 8 strength gem or 8 critical gem. 24 ap and minor speed meta gem + Surefooted boots enchant. 15 resilience > 6 stats. Executioner for 2hander and Mongoose for 1hander with 12 resilience to shield. I think I’ve covered the important ones.

Gems: I’d like to go over why Critical Strike Rating gems are better in arena than Attack Power gems. First, most of your burst is from intercepting a target, a white swing, then Mortal Striking and Whirl winding. If you take a look at this scenario, attack power helps white swing the most and is reduced on MS or WW because of AP normalization. However, critical strike rating helps all 3 attacks equally. The key word is “burst.” There’s a higher chance of you and/or your team down a target if you get critical hits (especially 2 or 3 in a row) on your target. If your white swing crits then you’d have blood frenzy or flurry for the next few attacks. Critical strike rating helps with other special attack such as hamstring, pummel, and execute. Maybe you’ll do 20 damage less each swing or 500 less damage after a match is over, but it’s the crit that wins games.

Professions: Jewel crafting and Enchanting for 24 attack power and 12 critical strike rating gems along with +4 all stats to each ring. Every little advantage adds up.

Cup of Shut the Beep Up: In case you lose you won’t be able to make up some excuse why you sucked or blame your team mate. Remember, you can’t arena alone. I prefer water in this case.

Duels: Dueling is not PvP? It helps a ton with reflexes, teaches you how to adapt to certain situation, and how certain classes react to you. If you got some time waiting for those 2on2 queues, try dueling. It gives you a better understanding of the other classes you don’t play.

Strategy: You need one against different make ups. For each of those make up you’ll need different strategy depending on what target they are on. For example, as a Arms Warrior/ Holy Priest vs Shadow Priest and Shadow step Rogue
If they are on my priest, I would stick on their shadow priest
Call for dispels whenever power word shield is up
I would pummel the mind blast
Intervene into hamstring / disarm rogue
Intercept back on the priest during a cast

If they are on me, I put on a mace and shield and reflect mind blast
Demoralize/Thunderclap/Mortal Strike/Overpower the rogue
Shield block if you have the extra rage
Go to berserker stance then intercept the priest if he mind blasts if you sucked and reflected something useless.
Disarm only if the rogue’s evasion is off.
Use your battle master’s trinket or fear to save yourself.

Winning = arena points/ratings
Losing = develop strategies, stop queuing because they are your counter-comp, or counter-comp back.
Counter-comp is part of the game, learn to adjust to it.

Counter spelling as a warrrior: (mainly for 2s/3s)
Regardless of what others say, you can lock down healers. We have a counter spell, the macro for it is
/target focus
/cast intercept(rank 5)
Always set a focus target during the match.
Work on your communication with your team so you can lock down a target longer.
Example: Warrior Mage Priest
“I’m going to get the first interrupt” your pummel interrupts holy light
“I’m going to counter-spell his next one” Mage counter spells Paladin’s flash of light
“I got the next one” I would use the focus/intercept macro and interrupt the heal
I then stand right next to the healer and wait for the stun to wear off so I can pummel while my teammates are beating down a target.

Here are some useful arena tips:
Say something when you’re going to pummel so your team don’t waste their interrupt
Spam Hamstring (Mace stuns) if your healer needs to peel off something
Shield reflect something useful
Call out “druid’s innervated, dispel or purge”“going to get sheeped, dispel”
Throw at the caster if you know they are going to drink
Be aware of your/healer’s position, put up raid icons so you can see them easier
Don’t disarm when the rogue is evasion’d unless you’re behind them/they’re stunned.
Innervate your team if you need to reposition/save yourself/teammate
Get anger management / imp hamstring/ imp overpower
Taunt pets to buy time for your healer to drink
Arms warrior can tank almost any heroic instances, being a good tank might help you play better when being focus fired (ie spam defensive abilities/trinket/health stones)
LoS sheeps/entangles if you think it’s coming
The shoulders, gloves, and throwing weapon are poor upgrades, get them last
Predict whether the druid is going to cyclone you or if the paladin is going to heal, run to them and get ready to pummel. You’ll need intuition or experience here
Get known by dueling/performing well in arena/or pay to play with top players and hope they notice you then people will want you on their team
If your target runs right next to a caster, be ready to quickly switch target and pummel
Hotkey everything, including your trinkets and macros
Pummel that frost bolt, lighting bolt, or mind blast. Why? you’re also stopping that ice lance, earth shock, or shadow word death.
Piercing Howl when people are bunched up.
Fear when something is about to die, offensively or defensively
Pummel, intercept, and then pummel can lock down casters

Post advice in comments and I’ll be sure to add to this list. Any other comments, suggestions, requests, or corrections are welcomed.

Leh

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

Long version:

Season 3 starts next week, so it’s high time to take a look at weapon enchants to make sure what to pick. Personally, I think I wont have this problem, since I’ll have to stick with weapon chain. For those of you who will have Weapon Mastery tho, a quick analise.

First, let’s compare Executioner to Mongoose. They are both proc enchants, and while I couldn’t find any real PPM for them to estimate their average uptime, I’ll just assume they proc on same rate. Mongoose gives 120 agility and 2% haste to attacks. 120 agility translate into 3.63% crit, 4% dodge and 240 armor. Executioner makes your attacks ignore 840 enemy armor, the trick here is that the exact dps increase form Executioner depends on the armor your enemy has, and as such it’s best when used on low armor targets. I’ve updated my Sunder Armor calculator recently to include Executioner. Without looking at Sunder Armor, Executioner on 5k armor target is 5.71% damage increase, which really increase burst damage, and it really works great with Sunder Armor. Also, S3 armor is full of armor reduction (not as much as some PvE gear tho). When taking on 10k armored target, that number goes down, but is till worth it, with 4.26% damage increase. If you have around 130% crit, 3.63% crit from mongoose is about 2.7% dps increase, when you take resilience into account it goes down to ~2.2 - 2.1 dps increase, there is no competition, Executioner is way better offensive enchant for warriors then Mongoose. My numbers can be not so accurate, I’m not taking deep wounds, flurry or whatever into account, but even if I would, there is no way that 2.2% would raise enough to compete with 5% of Executioner. The good side about mongoose is that it helps with your survivability, but then, dodge and 240 armor is not going to help you when you get nuked on the arena. Let’s just give mongoose to rogues.

Savagery is pretty simple, 70 attack power always. 70 attack power is 5 dps. 5 dps when you already have 250 dps (I guess that number will go much higher in S3, if it’s not already higher for heavily ap geared S2 warriors) is roughly 2% dps increase (again, not counting many factors, but it should be pretty close). As such, it already beat mongoose for offensive power as it’s active all the time. I don’t know how high can the uptime on Executioner be, but assuming 50% uptime, Executioner beats Savagery on average dps over time. Executioner also scales well better with gear, it gets better the more attack power you have and the more armor reduction from other sources you have, it’s a beast right here. The huge advantage of Savagery is it’s price, Executioner is rather expensive stuff, nothing out of reach for any warrior tho. It finally feels like we have an enchant that truly benefits our class.

Short version:

Executioner pwns.

Terhix