World of Warcraft PvP is like a self-contained game unto itself, completely separate from PvE in both gearing and playstyle. It’s not easy to make the transition from one to another, and there are many mistakes to be made. We’ve compiled a list of the most common among them, and tips on how they can be avoided.

1. Stat Values

The first major mistake many players make is to think that what works in PvE DPS will work in PvP. It’s not the same! The first thing to remember is that the PvP hit cap is 5% for both spells and melee. If you aren’t capping hit you’re doing it wrong.

Spell Penetration is a stat that most PvE oriented players are barely even aware of. This stat reduces the resistances of enemy players so that your spells don’t outright resist on them. This is extremely important to have, and you’ll want to stack up to around 240 of it as any caster or hybrid caster. This includes Death Knights who have many magical attacks.

There are a couple of extremely worthless stats for PvP that are great in PvE. The biggest culprit here is expertise. This stat is to be avoided like the plague as it is utterly insignificant in PvP. Other useless stats include most defensive stats like Parry and Dodge and even Stamina stacking is not a smart idea. Find out what your class’ best stat for PvP is and stack up a ton of it, there’s no need to balance for optimal sustained DPS, you’ll want to focus on burst instead.

2. Gear for Resilience

Resilience is the ultimate PvP stat, it is the only stat in the game that becomes more powerful the more you have of it. For instance, 0-1000 resilience gains you around 10% reduced damage but 3000-4000 resilience is more like 13%. Stack this stat to the moon if you’re a class that’s under a lot of pressure in PvP like a healer.

Resilience is without exception the most powerful and vital PvP stat.

Unlike the Wrath of the Lich King arena seasons where PvE gear was commonly used and players used a minimal amount of resilience; in Cataclysm you’re going to want to use nothing but resilience gear.

The item level 352 Honor gear is preferable to 359 epic PvE gear just as the item level 365 gear purchased with Conquest Points is superior to the gear gained from Heroic PvE instances.

3. Use Crowd Control Properly

The first thing to remember about PvP crowd control is that it has diminishing returns. These are divided into a myriad of categories like disorient (polymorph, sap), fear (fear, psychic scream, blind), controlled stun (kidney shot, hammer of justice, intercept), controlled roots (frost nova, entangling roots) and many others.

You’ll have to learn which abilities your abilities share Diminishing returns with because if you use your CC improperly you’ll halve and then quarter its duration making it ineffective.

In PvP you need to find a middle ground between using your CC wastefully and not using it enough. CC is the most powerful weapon in the PvPer’s arsenal and it’s critical to use it often but use it wisely. This is much easier with the assistance of mods, hence our next point.

4. Mod Up!

There are several UI mods that will make your PvP experience much easier and more pleasant. The first one is Gladius. Gladius creates a ‘frame’ displaying the enemy characters in an Arena and displays the status of their trinkets, their hit points, mana, and which Crowd Control abilities currently have diminished returns on enemy targets. Gladius also allows you to bind certain keys to interact with the frame so you can right click a person’s name on Gladius and polymorph or fear them. This mod is used pretty much universally among non-professional Arena players and you’ll be at a disadvantage if you don’t have it.

Interruptbar is another fabulous PvP mod. It monitors a variety of interrupts and crowd control abilities of enemy players and tells you when they’ve been used and what their cooldown is. If you fake cast someone’s kick then you’ll know exactly how long you can spam abilities to your heart’s content before it’s back up again. This is particularly useful for healers to have because they’re constantly under threat of being interrupted. This mod is useful in BGs as well as Arenas.

Deadly Boss Mods is a PvE mod that has some nice dual uses in BGs and Arenas. It displays the timers on objectives and utilities in both BGs and Arenas. If you want to know when shadow sight is coming up in an Arena or when the gates are about to open it’s got you covered. Likewise if you want to know how long you have in Arathi Basin before a flag captures or which team is going to win if the game continues in its current state of balance it can tell you that too.

5. Use Voice Chat or Die

Voice chat programs like Ventrilo and Skype have become ubiquitous in the World of Warcraft community. The level of communication required in a raid pales in comparison with what is required in organized PvP. If you aren’t communicating via voice in your battleground or Arena then you are probably throwing away any chance you have of beating an equal or better team. In fact, you will almost certainly lose to much worse players who are using voice chat.

Whether or not to use voice chat is not up for debate, it is a must. Skype is a great option for this. Not only is it free, but it has relatively low latency and doesn’t require a push-to-talk key. It can get a bit obnoxious if you’ve got a ton of people on it at the same time, but for Arena play there’s nothing better.

Ventrilo is a good option for players doing Rated BGs where you need 10-15 people in the same chat at once. Ventrilo costs money, but many WoW players already have Vent access through their guilds or have a personal server so this is rarely an issue for organized players.

If you can avoid these five simple mistakes then you’ll have a solid foundation on which to build your PvP game. You’ll also avoid ridicule and attract stronger players to partner with who recognize that you at least have some idea what you’re doing. Good luck!