Back at the release of the arena system and throughout the duration of season 1 there was one rule of thumb, DoTs were king. Resilience never used to reduce DoT damage and as such warlocks and shadow priests dominated almost every bracket due to overwhelming amounts of shadow damage.

A counter however was found as people began to access The Black Temple. Shadow resist kit began to see widespread use throughout top end arena which caused the end of the domination of shadow caster classes.

As time has gone on though it is no longer possible to swap into resist sets mid arena fight and resilience now affects DoTs. But is the same principle still applicable? Can spell resist be just as effective now or in the future for high end PvP?

While it is no longer possible to equip yourself with pure resist kit specifically tailored to the opponent you are fighting, there are a number of options available to you for increasing your spell resist without significantly reducing your combat capability.

The first consideration before thinking of going for a spell resist build is your basic resist level, paladin auras, shaman totems, certain buffs, racial traits and other class abilities all act to provide a good base level to work off when aiming to resist a single spell school. Should you not have access to these skills, it is very hard to reach significant levels of resistance and as such will probably not be worth your while.

The second consideration is just what spell school you would like to become more resistant to. The most potent options are shadow and nature. The other spell schools, while effective in the right situation, only generally apply to mages who have many spell schools to rely upon for damage in an emergency.

Being able to resist shadow spells will give you a degree of protection from mana burns as well as a chance to resist the application of DoTs to yourself and each individual tick of damage, while becoming nature resistant will enable you to resist a druid crowd control along with poisons and a bulk of the damage from elemental shaman or moonkin.

If you have chosen a spell school to aim your spell resist efforts at, and have access to a decent baseline resist, then it is time to work on your equipment. The main way of increasing your resistances is through the resist all stat. This can be found on numerous enchants along with void spheres created by enchanters.

Each void sphere will provide you with 4 spell resist to every spell school and you are able to enchant your cloak or shoulders with a further 7 each with an additional 5 resist to your shield should you have one available. As a blood elf holy Paladin for example it is currently possible to reach a basic 56 resistance to all spell schools with little trouble.

The next step is spell school specific enchants, a glyph on your helm will add 20 resist to any single spell school of your choice. Armour kits with 8 spell resist to a single school are also available for your chest, legs, hands and feet, though your normal leg and hand enchants are more valuable.

By utilizing these single spell school enchants you can reach around 90 spell resist to a single school without buffs or 160 with an aura effect active. This level of spell resist is enough to resist around half of the incoming damage from that spell school and significantly reduce the chance of non damaging effects landing on you, all without using any pure resist equipment. Add the effect of any spell mitigating abilities such as a higher fear resist chance and you can become a formidable opponent for casters which used to be your nemesis.

Unfortunately, with current arena itemization most casters can pickup 74 spell penetration without any real effort severely compromising this tactic for now. With Wrath of the Lich King however, all spell resist abilities will continue to scale and we may see reduced levels of accessibility to spell penetration, possibly allowing for a return of spell resist to competitive PvP.

For now however, the ease of gaining spell penetration prevents its widespread use outside of PvE content.

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