Lesson 2: Renown Training & Gear

Lesson 2-A RENOWN TRAINING

I've tried many things in the past with my BW's renown training. It's an odd class on its own. Because with all my other toons I usually focus on two stats:

• STR/WpnSkill on my WH/WL, or when my IB and WP goes dps (Might IV, Blade Master IV*), rest in melee crit %.
•    *There's some variation to this, my wife's WL is spec'ed Might III and Blade Master V.
• Will/Init on my WP when he goes survival healing spec (Resolve IV, Fortitude IV), rest in heal crit %.
• WpnSkill/Armor for my IB when tanking (Blade Master IV, Reinforcement II), rest in block %.

Here's where the BW is different. While other classes have two main stats to focus in and then either some kind of crit or block, in that priority, for BWs, our priority goes magic dmg, magic crit %, wounds, in that order. The reason I said magic dmg and not int is because a lot of the times magic power bonus takes priority over the int stat.

I've tried, and discussed with others about a possible 2nd stat for BW other than int to focus in. Tried toughness or initiative. There's a few reasons why focusing on a 2nd stat for BW isn't a great idea.

1. We're glass cannons. When you wrap a piece of leather over a glass cannon it's still gonna break just as easily. Speccing into toughness or init might allow you to take an extra 2-3 hits from a choppa or WE, but since this game really gives no good means for BWs to escape from a melee class other than an odjira proc coupled with snare immunity once they catch up to you, you're dead either way. Killing you in 4 seconds or 6 seconds really isn't much of a difference. The key here is to NOT ever let any melee class touch you. Besides, our toughness or init will never be high enough to make a significant difference.
2. Although wounds are vitally important for a BW, because our own explosion damage always does a flat 750 damage, and a lot of BWs including me run with Funnel Power skill in the incernation tree (helps to proc 5pc Tyrant bonus if nothing else, haha), but training wounds in renown training, as everyone would tell you, is a bad idea. You get way less wounds per renown point than the primary skills in the first tier. The key is to use wounds talismans.
3. Speccing into a 2nd stat lowers our damage. While the majority of other classes can usually pull off a softcap in str or ballistic skill or whatever by using a combination of two armor sets, usually a 3/3 or 3/4 combination, for bright wizards starting with the annihilator set our best armor bonus is actually a 5/1 combination, 5 pieces from 1 set, and 1 from another, for sake of crit % bonuses. This means that we're not getting the 2nd int bonus (More on this information, see the GEAR section below). The vulture lord glyph/cloak set gives awesome bonuses to the BW but not much in intelligence, all this means that our int will not be soft-capped even when we solely focus in int.

Trading off dmg for slightly higher survivability is not a great idea. With the best dps gear available in the game now we can only just barely burst down destro in certain premades. It's a lot easier when you have two BWs both single target spec'ed focus firing on same target at all times *cough*autofocus-addon*cough* (gone by 1.3.6) but when you're by yourself, you'll need to squeeze out every single bit of dps you can to burst through certain healers like Drz.

So, what to train for renown:

• Tier 1 - Acumen V, 5 clicks +102 intelligence, 34 points. Total points spent: 34.
• Tier 2 - Sage II, 2 clicks +9 intelligence/willpower, 6 points. Total points spent: 40.
• Tier 3 - Focused Power III, 3 clicks +12% magical crit chance, 30 points. Total points spent: 70.
• Tier 3 - Resolute Defence, 1 click, 5 points. Total points spent: 75.

What to do with your last 5 points:Before you're rr80, if you want to get renown faster, you'll probably want to put 2 pts in For Glory!, 5% extra renown for fighting players in scenarios, and Town Raider, 5% extra renown for fighting players in cities. If you do more orvr than scenarios, maybe put in the 5% in skirmish or objectives instead of scenarios, up to you really.

At rr80, as a bright wizard, to max your PVP damage, we'll choose two out of three of the 2% extra damage vs [destro race] renown tactics. This is your personal preference again, pick two races your either hate or kill the most. For me, I like killing witchelves, squig herders, choppas, melee doks, etc, so my two choices are 2% dmg vs darkelves and 2% dmg vs greenskins.

On the way to this build, as your renown level grows, while you wait for your renown rank to be high enough for the next click into something, you can temporarily put the pts into wounds, resists, etc, if you like, and just respec when you can continue on. Get the clicks into magic crit % ASAP.

Lesson 2-B GEAR

Before rr40:

Tier 1-3 is pretty straight forward. The pvp sets are your best choice, with the scenario token weapons being the best available.

When you get into tier 4, assuming your renown rank is following your actual level, get into full annihilator pvp set, find and buy a dark promise belt off someone. I wouldn't bother with sentinel set from Sigmar's Crypts and Warpblade Tunnels, not that great for BWs, the only reason to collect this set would be to give yourself greater wards. By the way, we're already starting with the 5/1 configuration.

When you hit level 36, if you're lucky enough to get your hands on a Greatstaff of the Sandstorm, this will be your weapon for the next LOOOONG while till you can get your scenario royal insignia weapon, usable at rr75.

If you can't get a Greatstaff of the Sandstorm, other good choices are:

• Bloodfist Greatstaff, Dwarf tier 4 warcamp influence reward weapon, 5% crit good int, no magic power. Two tally slots, requires lvl 38 and rr38.
• The Greatstaff of the Bloodmoon, farmable from a PQ in Bastion Stairs, usable at lvl 37, it has 7% crit on there. Two tally slots.
• Greatstaff of the Radiant Star, the staff from Stage II City instances, purple bag. Int and toughness, only 3% crit though. Usable at lvl 40, no renown requirement. 

rr40+:

Here's where the fun begins: Your next set is Conqueror, rr40-45, this set gives your greater ward, same as the sentinel set, and opens the door to the two end game instances, Lost Vale and Tomb of the Vulture Lord, therein lies your further armor upgrades.

Conqeror has great set bonuses for the first 5 pieces: int, some armor, wounds, and magic crit, in that order. The 6th piece bonus is crap, really is o_O, so we'll use 5pc conq. But be sure to collect and put on the full conq set or corresponding sentinel pieces for a second, to complete your Greater Wards.

Conq gloves and boots can be easily found in a guild vault or the auction house, and for the rest of the conq pieces, best way is to participate in the PQ to take destro's warcamp in Land of the Dead, each time after the zone flips to Order, and try to win gold bags.

Even if you don't win the gold bag, be sure to keep accepting the two repeatable quests at order's warcamp, Food for the Flies, to kill 20 destro in lotd, and A Blight in the Sky, killing the destro airship at their warcamp. These quests become available some time after hitting lvl 40. You'll still receive a silver ankh for completing these repeatable quests. You'll need 12 silver ankhs to buy a cloak and 2 more to buy a good jewelry piece (see the 2nd paragraph from this sentence).

Anyway, to hit the battlefield, our 5/1 configuration ideally is either:

Option 1 - 5pc Conqueror, +1 pc Illuminations of Ruin
Illuminations of Ruin is the shoulders from the Ruin set, which is the pve set from tier 4 Public Quests, hope for a gold bag, and hope that the gold bag has the Ruin shoulders. Or:

Option 2 - 5pc Conqueror, +1 pc Darkpromise Spatterguards
Darkpromise boots, dropped by the last boss of Lost Vale's left wing, which is the easiest wing, it's a giant spider queen. If you ever do this boss, as a BW your job is to kill all the little spiders before they get to the boss. If you get these boots, rejoice, because these will be your boots until you start wearing sovereign pieces. Actually, if you can, try to get two pairs of these boots. Put Odjira into one pair, for pvp, and put +23 or +24 int into the 2nd pair, for time-sensitive boss fights such as boss 8 of Vulture Lord.

Land of the Dead introduced some awesome jewelry pieces. The 4 glyph and backpiece set from boss kills in Vulture Lord is still the best accessory set in the game for BWs even in 1.3.6, but before getting to vulture lord, there are some sweet ones to buy from the armor vendor in the lotd order warcamp, using golden scarabs and silver ankhs once you turn level 40. Golden scarabs are tradable and farmable off mobs in lotd, and are sold in the AH for about 1g each. In 1.3.6 you can only access lotd after reaching level 32. Once you're lvl 40, and get some silver ankhs, buy:

• Emblem of Nehekharan Ritualists - Cost: 4 Golden Scarabs, jewelry, which pairs with:
• Veil of Nehekharan Ritualists - Cost: 12 Silver Ankhs, 4 Golden Scarabs, cloak, for a bonus of +90 magic power.
• Icon of Nehekharan Ritualists - Cost: 4 Golden Scarabs, jewelry. which pairs with
• Nehekharan Icon of Knowledge - Cost: 2 Silver Ankhs, 5 Golden Scarabs, jewelry

The first pair, the jewel/cloak set, you will use until you can achieve the full 4xglyph/backpiece set from Tomb of the Vulture Lord, which is your end game accessory set.

rr50+:

The next two pvp sets, Invader and Warlord, beyond the 1st set bonus, the rest of the set bonuses are absolute junk for the bright wizard. between conqueror and sovereign pvp sets, your upgrades lie in Lost Vale's Darkpromise set, and Vulture Lord's Tyrant set. If you're lucky, by the time you're in your rr50s you'll have your darkpromise belt (bought), boots, gloves (which is supposed to be the easiest drop but I waited ages for mine), plus something else, as long as you get 4pc darkpromise, 3pc is doable, but the 4pc +72 wounds bonus is NICE. This is when we break the 5/1 gear pattern for a while. Your next progression, after looting / ninjaing enough dark promise pieces is:

4pc darkpromise including boots, and 2pc invader
Keep in mind invader gloves can be traded/bought.

rr60+:

Into your rr60s, find and buy/farm/bump off someone the warlord ring & gloves and one more piece as soon as you can use them, preferrably NOT the warlord boots if you're using Darkpromise boots. Your next progression is:

4pc Darkpromise including boots, and 3pc Warlord (including the ring)
with the Warlord gloves, and Darkpromise boots as required pieces, and together with the lotd jewelry and cloak stuff listed 2 paragraphs ago. The gloves themselves have 3% crit, and the DP boots have 3% crit, the DP 3pc has 5%crit, and together with a good weapon like the ones listed above, your crit % should finally be approaching the wtfpwnage level.

END GAME GEAR

Weapon:

There is no question that the Nihilist's Greatstaff of Reckoning, purchased with 850 Royal Insignias + a ton of officer emblems, although at only 4% crit, but gives great int, magic power, wounds, and AP bonuses, is the best weapon for pvp for the BW. Try to get it ASAP at rr75.

If your AP isn't a problem, The Greatstaff of Sandstorm and the Ur Hondo Asaph, sceptre of Vengeance, purchased with a Torn Page of the Liber Mortis (World Boss PQ gold bag) + 5 Sacred Funeral Masks will still generate higher dps than the Nihilist's Greatstaff of Reckoning for pve fights. As of this moment, no order on the badlands server has ever killed the World Boss, which is a 15min timed fight, it's the statue in front of Vulture Lord instance entrance. He awakens after someone with the curse buff from killing the 8th boss in Vulture Lord walks close enough to him.

Jewelry & Cloak:

Unfortunately, the end game jewelry pieces and cloak for BW pvp is in a pve instance. Tomb of the Vulture Lord instance drops a glyph/cloak set, boss 1-2 drops one glyph, 3-5 drops one glyph, and 6-7 drops one glyph. The 4th and last glyph is bought from the armor vender in the lotd warcamp with 50 golden scarabs, +12 golden cartouches, which are gold bag PQ rewards for killing bosses in Vulture Lord, these can be masterlooted. The final 8th boss drops the backpiece that goes with the glyph set. As glyphs become available, use them to replace your existing jewelry pieces, but do not replace the Emblem/Veil of the Nehekharan Ritualist pair until you get the full set.

Armor set:

Before rr80:

Vulture Lord instance bosses also have small chances to drop the Tyrant set. As a BW, we're concerned with boss 1, 4, 7, and 8. First boss drops boots repairable by all dps classes. Boss 4 drops shoulders repairable by all humans. Boss 7 drops helm repairable by all dps classes, boss 8 drops chest repairable by ALL classes. Killing boss 8 also gives you access to 6x gold bags, each containing a Sacred Funeral Mask, you'll need 3x masks + 200 golden scarabs to buy either the tyrant gloves or the tyrant belt. Advice: buy the tyrant gloves first. It has 3% crit just like the warlord gloves. The 6 gold bags containing the masks can all be master looted. Thus one person can receive 6 masks in one run.

We're back to the 5/1 configuration.

5 pc tyrant + 1pc Darkpromise Spatterguards boots.
If you don't have DP boots at this point, substitute with Conq boots which also have 3% crit.
(info updated for 1.3.6) The tyrant 5pc bonus is a proc on hit to reduce cast times by 25% for 10 seconds. In 1.3.6 reduced cast time stacking no longer works like the last patch. In this patch, if you hit focused mind, or is using close quarters (reduce cast time by 50%), and your 5pc tyrant bonus procs, cast times will be reduced by 62.5%, using either of the two following formulas:

• .50 + .25 * .50 = .625 = 62.5% or
• .25 + .50 * .75 = .625 = 62.5%

If you combine close quarters, hit focused mind, AND get a 5pc tyrant proc, your cast time will be reduced by 81.25% using one of the following formulas:

• (.50 + .50 * .50) + (.25 * .25) =  .8125 = 81.25% or
• (.25 + .50 * .75) + (.375 * .50) = .8125 = 81.25%

Keep in mind, spamming fireballs at 50% reduced cast time or 80% reduced cast time takes the same time overall, due to the 1.5 second global cooldown, this of course does not factor in lag. Difference is, you won't be set back as much by getting hit if your casting is faster. Some notes:

1. The tyrant 5pc proc can refresh itself during a proc, if you're lucky, especially when you're AoEing a lot of things, you can end up with endless tyrant 5pc procs and thus spam faster fiery blasts for a long time. You're limited only by your available action points.
2. If you read my first lesson, you know that my rotation relies heavily on dots, and faster spells actually prevent my damage from hitting together, so the 5pc tyrant proc is a little counter-productive for my rotation. With 1.3.6's close quarter changes, you don't even need it much for pve, thus you might want to replace the tyrant belt with the darkpromise belt, using a 4 pc tyrant, 2pc DP gear configuration with DP belt & boots to get the int bonus, rest all tyrant. This is really up to you.

Since 5pc tyrant bonus has been nerfed to 25% this patch, and a burst rotation doesn't really rely on reduced cast times, it's feasible to replace tyrant belt with darkpromise belt thus losing the 5pc tyrant proc but giving you an extra 72 intelligence.

rr80:

1.3.6 Option 1 - 6pc Sovereign
Sovereign helm, shoulders, gloves, chest, boots, belt. Plus the 4xGlyph & the Keymantle of Ptra backpiece set. This will give you the overall best crit% and dmg% bonus for max dps generation, 1 more tally slot, with much higher armor than the pre-rr80 setup. The missing 5pc tyrant proc is fun but not necessary for my rvr setup.

The 6th piece sovvereign proc, 130 magic power, is a huge boost to dps. And with all the dots we do and Flames of Rhuin and Funnel Power it procs pretty often.

Base stats comparison with 6pc sovereign vs. 4x tyrant 2x darkpromise, using 4x glyph + keymantle of ptra set.
With the talismans listed below, and rr75 royal weapon:

• 6pc sovereign: 258.6 dmg bonus, 33% crit, 7130 hp, 263 tough, 1431 armor, resists 443/405/447
• 4xtyrant/2xdp: 264.4 dmg bonus, 35% crit, 6930 hp, 209 tough, 1264 armor, resists 415/415/419

As you can see the tyrant/dp set still gives better base dmg and crit, at the cost of other stats for survival. A great solo spec'ed kiter might still choose to wear this over sovereign, if you don't want to rely on the 130 magic power proc.

1.3.6 Option 2 - 7pc Sovereign (remove 1 glyph or backpiece)
The BW offensive sovereign set offers pretty cool procs for the 6th and 7th piece soverign. You might feel like sacrificing the 5% overall damage from the glyph/cloak set for the procs from sovereign. The 7th piece sovereign proc is a 10% chance on hit to make target receive 5% dmg from all sources. You need to weigh that with the glyph/cloak bonus which is a constant 5% damage bonus from you alone. Are you a team player? Or would you rather do more damage? >:-D

BTW, if you need to remove one piece of the glyph/backpiece set, I'd replace the backpiece with the sovereign keymantle. Higher resists + 2% more crit is always good.

1.3.6 Option 3 - 8pc Sovereign (remove 2 glyphs or 1 glyph and backpiece)
Is it worth it? To have a granted ability at a 2min cooldown that increases target and surrounding destro's action points cost by 50% for 10 seconds? Lose 5% damage, 2% crit overall, for a 10second proc every 2 minutes? Not for me, but maybe for you. We're all different :)

Talismans:

No matter what gear you use, the ideal talisman config is the same. If you have the gold and want to use good tallies on gear you might be changing out of soon, go ahead. But at end game, this is your tally config for rvr:

Helm: +23/24 wounds
shoulders: +4% magic crit
chest: +23/24 wounds
gloves: +35 magic power
boots: Odjira
Weapon: +23/24 int, +23/24 wounds
(As of 1.3.6 the sovereign belt also has a tally slot, put in +23/24 wounds)

Again, this is for rvr.

OTHER NOTES

I never mentioned the vessal weapon from lotd, won by killing bosses in the tombs in lotd where you can slot in 3x lotd tallismans, because it's a temporary fix, and +magic crit% tallies from lotd are very hard to come by. If you really want to use it, ideally, you'll put in a crit% tally, +magic power tally, and a wounds tally, all from lotd.

Link to lesson 1: Single Target / DoT spec RVR: Tactics, Rotation & Build
Link to lesson 2: Renown Training & Gear
Link to lesson 3: Single Target / DoT spec RVR Advanced: Kiting

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