A lot of talk has been about the new Season 3 Armor Penetration and damage increase to melee, but what exactly are the changes and how much damage are we talking about? To understand this, we need to first look at what has been added to both Warrior and Rogue Season 3 sets. Ever wonder why your friend’s Warrior always have higher AP and Crit than your Rogue? What about all the speculations on Warriors taking more damage from Rogues that ’stack’ Armor Penetration in Season 3? Let’s take a quick look at what has been increased in the Season 3 PvP gears and everything will be clear as water.

To start things off, let’s take a look at these charts which break down every increment and decrement of every stat for Rogue and Warrior.

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As you can see, after replacing all Season 2 Honor and Arena pieces with Season 3’s, it’s clear that Warriors have a distinct advantage on Rogues.

Both of them are packing 420 Armor Penetration and just 1 extra Resilience from the Cloak, however Warrior had an increase of 732 Armor while Rogues, even having spent item budget on Armor, only got 514. That’s not the end of it, Warriors got a total of 32 Str and 18 AP which = 82 AP while Rogues got 72 AP and lost 4 Agi (result in just 68 AP increment). Furthermore, even Warrior’s Crit is 3 more than Rogue’s, clocking at 39 vs 36 (actually ~34 due to lost of 4 Agi). Rogues did gain a 36 Hit Rating boost while Warriors had theirs reduced slightly (Season 2 Warrior Armor had 14 Hit Rating per big piece).

We sum it up with Rogue’s 56 Stam gain vs. 62 on the Warrior and an interesting fact that they changed Warrior’s socket bonus on Bracers, Helm and Shoulders from 2 Resil to 2 Str, 4 Str to 4 Crit and 3 Str to 3 Crit for Shoulders. Rogue’s socket bonuses all remained the same. So assuming you always match the colors to get the socket bonuses, Warrior will then have a 72 AP increase and 46 more Crit with -1 Resil. So, why do Warriors get get bigger AP, Crit, Stam and Armor upgrades than Rogues? I’m not really sure, but considering how they got 732 more Armor, that’s more than enough to cover the Armor Penetration effect of Season 3. Some might argue that Executioner Enchant is what it’s all about for Rogues but is that really worth giving up Mongoose which yields 120 AP 3% Crit? Possible, but not likely.

At least they were smart enough to put extra armor on Rogues to also cover up Armor Penetration effect but what will happen when Warriors come at you with Executioner (Mongoose being less effective for Warriors and thus easier to give up)…? So all in all both Warrior and Rogue gained more armor and damage, just slightly different amount. More than likely the current state of Warrior vs. Rogue in Arena will remain the same through Season 3, with slight further tip in balance.

On a side note, by looking at the charts, it is clear that some Armor pieces benefits more than others at same or even less cost! The Cloak is on it’s own due to the cost being Heroic Badges and it should be picked up asap for the whooping 112 Armor Penetration. For Honor points, the order of purchase should be: Ring (Armor Penetration), Wrist, Boots, Belt. As for Arena points, order should be: Chest, Legs, Head (Armor Penetration); then Gloves (Cheaper) or Shoulders.

Tags: Warrior · Rogue · Articles

21 Responses to “Season 3 PvP Armor Upgrade Part 1: Rogue vs. Warrior”

1. Ive Says:
   October 18th, 2007 at 4:01 pm

   Hopefully this will fix the prevalant problems with the warrior class, and bring them up to an equal representation with hunters and rogues.

2. Descent Says:
   October 18th, 2007 at 4:31 pm

   Wow, I hope for stupidity’s sake that Ive has his sarcasm meter turned all the way up. Glad these were pointed as it is obvious that Blizz intended the Warrior class to dominate all facets of this game, PVE and PVP. Really sad for the rogue class.

   Great write up.

3. Sjoblom Says:
   October 18th, 2007 at 4:50 pm

   There wouldn’t be a site up somewhere with tables like these for all armorsets? It would be very informative indeed.

   
   Ziss: Not that I know of, took me quite some time to hand made those tables…

4. Kag Says:
   October 18th, 2007 at 6:03 pm

   Just look at the ret set S2–>S3

   We actually LOSE about 50 strength >.>

5. Shijo Says:
   October 19th, 2007 at 5:07 am

   I agree with Ive, we all know the Warrior class has such big problems when facing Rogues.. >.>

6. Mobie Says:
   October 19th, 2007 at 5:35 am

   Well I think it’s normal warrior get more armor increase than rogues, sure the armor penetration kinda messes things up.
   But im sure 514 armor to a rogue amounts to a larger amount of physical dmg being mitigated than a 732 armor to a warrior. Armor mitigation isn’t linear.

7. Zure Says:
   October 19th, 2007 at 6:55 am

   It’s worth noting that in a “sustained dps” environment, one AP is worth much more to a rogue than to a 2H warrior. I would imagine this thought process guided the itemization team.

   One can challenge how true that is in PvP, but it at least gives a glimpse into Blizzard’s logic.

   All that being said, a swing of 42 hit rating is just massive, and more than outweighs everything else. Three reasons:

   1) Non-melee weapon specials: The dominant S2 setup (run speed over surefooted) gave rogues 58 hit rating about a 3.68% bonus chance to hit. That’s a 1.32% chance for blind, CS, garrote, and kick to miss, which was just annoying as hell.

   2) Rogues can now actually move out of low level combat if they choose due to precision being less vital, since it is now only helpful for white attacks and versus class specs with -hit talents. 1-20 Combat, meanwhile, is far from gutted by the itemization change. So many great talents in there.

   3) White damage still adds up, and +hit is a very efficient way to boost that damage output.

8. bife Says:
   October 19th, 2007 at 3:50 pm

   you seriously expected to have a similar increase in armor comparing a plate wearer with a leather wearer?

   Ziss: No, but I didn’t want to get shafted on offensive stats.

9. Zure Says:
   October 19th, 2007 at 8:55 pm

   Ziss, my post didn’t merit a reply?

   Ziss: That’s cause all your points were valid and I had nothing against them lol

10. Emokk Says:
    October 19th, 2007 at 9:24 pm

    I like your response Zure, but at the same time i see what Ziss is saying, they messed up the mage S2 stats, i wouldn’t mind a second look at our set, as the ret pallies would as well

11. Skel Says:
    October 22nd, 2007 at 4:37 am

    Before you complain about warriors, play one and then decide. Warriors own with a healer backing them up. They get pooped on without one.

12. erendric Says:
    October 22nd, 2007 at 12:38 pm

    skel you make no sense every warrior has a healer therefore you point is mute… warriors are very op and giving them more of a buff in season 3 is not the fix

13. Skel Says:
    October 22nd, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    In arenas every warrior has a healer. Try playing one in battlegrounds. Warriors are not overpowered , just my opinion though.

14. erendric Says:
    October 23rd, 2007 at 1:00 am

    this armor is ment for areana since you get it from areana

15. nevermore Says:
    October 23rd, 2007 at 8:11 am

    The armor is meant for all PvP sitautions, and some PvE. However, any relevant balance discussion will pertain solely to Arena, and mostly 5v5.

16. vio55555 Says:
    October 23rd, 2007 at 5:29 pm

    In terms of total itemization upgrade, it seems like warriors and rogues actually come off roughly equally; however, it plays out like Zure said with warriors getting a bit more of everything else while losing hit rating where rogues got a massive hit rating buff to their set to offset the smaller increase in the other stats.

    Also, I think it needs to be pointed out that as of now Executioner doesn’t stack, so maybe rogues might consider one of each?

    However, I do agree that the Executioner enchant is a far bigger PVP buff for warriors because its the rather obvious choice whereas Mongoose will be difficult for rogues to forgo.

17. vio55555 Says:
    October 23rd, 2007 at 5:34 pm

    I forgot to add one comment that I don’t think has been brought up and its fairly important.

    420 Armor Penetration is not equal for both rogues and warriors in terms of Warrior vs. Rogue situations.

    Warriors get a larger % DPS upgrade from 420 Armor Penetration against rogues due to the huge armor differential. 420 armor penetration on a class with 4k armor (example) is a far larger % DPS upgrade than 420 armor penetration on a warrior with 10k armor.

    Just thought I’d add that to the discussion since it seems to be about warrior vs. rogue mechanics.

18. Ziss Says:
    October 24th, 2007 at 12:00 am

    That was my whole point! Nicely put vio5…555

19. Imprecation Says:
    October 26th, 2007 at 8:15 am

    http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p-p2GoLIggc7xJFZegWVhDA

    sums it up pretty well

20. Darkmantle Says:
    October 29th, 2007 at 5:52 pm

    So, why do Warriors get get bigger AP, Crit, Stam and Armor upgrades than Rogues? I’m not really sure, but considering how they got 732 more Armor, that’s more than enough to cover the Armor Penetration effect of Season 3.

    a) Warriors get more armor because they have plate they get more base armor from an ilvl increase than leather does.
    b) The reason they get bigger ap,crit,stam is because rogues got 36 hit.
    c) Wow items follow a strict formula worked out LONG AGO which is detailed here http://www.wowwiki.com/Level_(Item) claims of underbudget items can only be made after understanding the framework. What actually happened is the item designers decided to give rogues more hit and you got a bit less of other stats in return.

21. Felt Says:
    September 13th, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    I shifted briefly to a private server to test things out (was really hard finding one that had all the above mentioned things working), but anyways, I have to agree with vio55.., the warrior benefits most from the new gear, getting more AP, crit, ArP.

    Whereas the rogue’s hit rate increase is a bit useless seeing as it’s kind of hard to miss against a warrior. The thing that’ll hurt the rogue most is the ArP, as mentioned above, when armor goes up, the benefit of ArP goes down, unless you find a way to stack ArP properly without compromising the rest of your stats.

    Based on an some experiments, my opinion is that the s3 warrior vs an s3 rogue will be won by the warrior in the end. Dual mongoose is just too valuable to give up for exec + goose. And honestly, I thought it was kind of dumb for a rogue to try and ignore armor on a plate wearer, whereas crit might even stand more of a chance, even with resilience factored in, because a rogue doing crit will still do more damage (even if just a little) compared to a rogue with ignore armor written all over his gear. The reason is really the fact that vio55.. pointed out, “the higher the armor, the less help ArP will be.”

    Worst case scenario: ArP rogue meeting a Bear form druid with 30k-ish armor.

    ArP shines against clothies and leather wearers, rogues have better odds going crit than ArP. But as always, it’s up to the player.

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