First of all, let me introduce you to my current PvP situattion.

I PvP as a Shadow Priest with 20/0/41 Spec, 415 Resilience, 11k HP self-buffed and 839 Spell Damage. My gear is full Merciless, Brutal gloves with all Vindicator except boots. Not all my gear is properly enchanted yet so there still is a lot of rooms for improvement.

I have a Rogue partner in my 2vs2 team. For his stats please visit his Armory link. For the lazy, I’m just gonna tell you he’s better geared than me.

Now, let’s get to the problem. We can’t get past 1500 rating. Yeah, 1500. And I really have no idea why. Well, I could blame it on the lack of skill and I might be right. But we read tactics, make plans and even if we apply them, we still lose. Double melee teams practically 1-shot me. Teams with a Hunter in them are almost a 80% lose (damn those pillars, damn them). And don’t even get me started on Resto Druids. Funny thing is, we win against Mage/Rogue teams, which should supposedly be the hardest team to beat! Guess this only applies higher in the rankings, eh?

Don’t get me wrong, we still win. We had a few good fights which got us over 20 points/win. But at the end of the day, the balance is usually equal between wins and loses.

I’m frustrated. Last season we started the team 2 weeks before it ended, and we got to 1600 with me having 200 Resilience! Is the start of S4 to blame really? Are we meeting way more skilled and geared teams, even at this low braket (1443 at the time I write this)? I have no idea, but it’s really frustrating. Guess what we have to do is keep playing and keep on improving out game style.

Another dilemma I have is that of my head enchant. I’m faced with 2 options:

Glyph of Power

which was, until 2.4 the standard enchant for a Shadow Priest for a head item, or

Glyph of the Gladiator

which is a really interesting choice.

Let’s compare the two for a second, shall we?

Glyph of Power gives 22 Spell damage and 14 Spell hit rating. Now, we all know that the Spell hit rating cap for PvP is 38 (or >3%). Replacing it with Glyph of the Gladiator means the loss of Spell hit, but this can be easily contered by geming Greater Dawnstonex2 and actually gaining 2 Spell hit rating. If we do this, we lose 16 or more Resilience (because yellow slots should be always filled with Mystic Dawnstone or better). But it doens’t make any difference, because we counter this with the 20 Resilience the Gladiator Glyph gives us.

In conclusion, replacing Glyph of Power with Glyph of the Gladiator takes us to:

• losing 22 Spell Damage;
• gaining 2 Spell hit rating;
• gaining 4 Resilience;
• gaining 20 Stamina;

assuming that we replaced Mystic Dawnstonex2 with Greater Dawnstonex2.

Is this a fair trade? For me it is. I’m struggling in lower brakets, where survability is everything. So looking back and making a comparison between the 2, I’ll go for Glyph of the Gladiator no doubt.

Only thing left now is to get Revered!

You might have noticed that for some time now all my post are lacking the most important aspect of this blog: Protection Paladins. Here is why.

I’m tired

I’m tired of running instances. I’m tired of running Heroics. I’m tired of farming for money. I’m tired of farming for consumables. I’m tired of farming for gear. I would be tired of farming for reputation, luckily I’m exalted with everyone.

I’m bored

Normal instances have nothing to offer me. Heroics have nothing to offer me. Karazhan has only 1 thing to offer me: gloves. And each week I’ve been doing it until Curator with no luck. In fact, in all my Karazhan experience, I have yet to see the Maiden gloves drop.

I hate questing

A few days ago I logged in with Tepisor decided to grind myself to exalted for Of the Shattered Sun title. I stopped after 3 quests because I was bored. Did I already say how much I hate questing? I don’t know how you do it, but I just can’t do anymore dailies. I’m tired of it.

What’s left?

25-man content. I love 25-man content. It’s new, refreshing and challenging for me. Unfortunately, Unseen is having low attendances for the last month and raiding is off. I blame summer. And Roskilde.

The solution

My Shadow Priest, which is absolutely amazing. I turned to PvP. I’ve been doing a lot of Battlegrounds, Arenas and World PvP and got some good gear in the process. I’ve even attended a failed 40-man raid on Orgrimmar (which, of course, I forgot to blog about). I see PvP as a new challenge for myself, a challenge I’m determined to carry on for quite some time.

Conclusions

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Tankadin and under no circumstances I would give him up. I love PvE and PvP alike. My friends (most of them) are PvErs and I will continue to PvE on my Paladin. It’s just that for the moment, things are in a bit of a slump in terms of raiding.

As for the blog, lacking raiding lowers the subjects to write about. I’ve got some guides in draft and some interesting BA shared topics in mind. I promise I’ll try to focus more on those.

I has it.

Area 52 arena vendor

Champion’s Hall in Stormwind

Welcome to hell.

I’m really interested in your experience, because I just had my longest WSG last night:

Yeah, 1 hour and 25 minutes!