There are often debates about which trinkets are the best for PVP/Arenas – with more than 50 level80 trinkets available to rogues it may seem like there’s a huge selection, but in reality the list can be shortened quite heavily. With the exception of Dark Matter and Comet’s Trail, the following trinkets are not hard to get and do not need the assistance of a serious raiding guild.
Anti-Crowd Control Trinkets
Unless your rogue is human, you will need one of the following three trinkets.
Titan-Forged Rune of Determination (25 Wintergrasp Marks)
Titan-Forged Rune of Accuracy (25 Wintergrasp Marks)
Medallion of the Horde/Alliance (30,400 Honor).
Which one you should go for ideally boils down to which secondary item stat you need; resilience, hit or attack power. While you may lack resilience to begin with and think that the Medallion is a good choice, it might be worth considering that even though the ‘recommended’* amount of resilience for a rogue is about 700, you will be able to easily hit this once you start gearing up, without needing the stat on a trinket. Hit is a very important stat – in PVP you need 164 (+5% hit) to stop your mutilates/specials from missing and it’s still a useful stat even upto +7% hit (thanks to Night-elf racials and insect swarm). If you’re hit-capped already, the +190AP from Determination is the best CC-breaking trinket you can get.
Burst Damage Trinkets
These trinkets are all about delivering big, unexpected hits that hopefully proc while you’re emptying your energy bar/cooldowns onto someone.
Bandit’s Insignia
Bandit’s Insignia drops from Sapphiron in Naxx25, and gives plenty of Attack Power as well as providing a proc roughly every 45seconds. It is common to see this proc within your opening stunlock.
Darkmoon Card: Death
While the crit this offers isn’t as good as the attack power from Bandit’s Insignia, the advantage of this trinket is its availability. Mine cost me 700g from the Auction House and I’m lead to believe that this price is fairly typical across the severs (let me know if I’m wrong!). This trinket can proc at the same time as Bandit’s Insignia, and will also proc off your Deadly Poison/Garrote/Rupture ticks. While raiders seem to look down on this trinket, it’s still a good buy – this quote from Mohfuu at Wowhead sums it up nicely; “It’s not like you’ll be doing Yogg Saron.. and he blinds you, vanishes, sprints into a corner to get his health back up by eating a roasted chicken.. but oh no! your trinket procs on him off one of your bleed/dots and poor yogg bites the dust.” Exactly! Procs roughly every 45seconds.
Gnomish Lightning Generator
The poor man’s Darkmoon Card: Death – the ‘GLG‘ might not have the kick of its big, epic brother, but it still gives nice damage and has the advantage of being ‘on use’ rather than ‘chance on hit’ (easier to time your burst and use it when your target is really struggling). This does need engineering however, so isn’t available to everyone. Oh and careful of the malfunctions (hitting yourself for 2k is never a good look).
PVE Trinkets
Less burst damage but more sustained – if you are constantly fighting 10minute games these may be worth a look.
Pyrite Infuser
Quite easy to get, even if you’re pugging Ulduar10, as it drops from Flame Leviathan, one of the easiest bosses in WotLK. Equipping this trinket can be a nice way of reaching the hit cap, and the chance-on-hit works nicely with berserker procs.
Grim Toll
I haven’t ever used this trinket (drops from , but it gives almost +40% armor penetration which is pretty crazy. Combine with Expose Armor to really hurt those plate wearers.
Dark Matter and Comet’s Trail
I won’t ever see these trinkets myself (they both drop from Algalon in Ulduar25), but if you can get hold of these, the sustained damage is very nice indeed.
Other Noteworthy Trinkets
Battlemaster’s Conviction
Maybe not the best trinket for every setup, but I find this a total lifesaver when playing HfB with a prot-paladin. If I was playing with a priest/druid I’d probably leave it in the bank, though maybe it would be useful for double-dps teams.
Anvil of Titans
A nice mix of resilience and attack power, ideal for somebody new to PVP as it is very easy to get (only 25 Wintergrasp Marks).
Hello Sir,
great site you have here, keep up the good work!!!
I think it would be really awesome if you could write a quick post on pvp enchants AND gemming (you can find a lot info on PVE gemming but usually nothing for pvp :s)
Thanks again !
Hey, just wanted to let you know that Anvil of the Titans costs 25 WG marks, not 15.
oops ty
I have the latest and greatest medallion of the horde and with it my resilience is 1058. My second trinket is the Chromium Coaster, which procs 1000 AP fairly often. I have gone back and forth between the medallion and the rune of determination. Am I crazy to be running with that much resilience, at the expense of 190 AP ???
I guess it depends on the setup you’re playing and whether or not you’ll be tunneled much. I’m starting a new 3s team this week and I have a strong feeling I’ll only be taking splash/cleave damage – 850resil should be fine for that. But in 2s where 9/10 of the time it’s me being beaten on, yeah 1000+ resilience does not sound like overkill (and I really wish I had the corroded skeleton key
)
Thats a good point. My 2v2 team is double rogue, where my partner is subtlety and I am mut/prep. Our basic approach is to sap/CC one, while I lock down the other with cheapshot/kidney shot. My partner unleashes as much burst damage as he can…. rinse/repeat. given that things hardly ever go as planned, I seem to be the one taking the brunt of the abuse when our CC is broken… or if I get knocked out of stealth before I can get off the sap or cheapshot, from a nicely timed aoe spam on their part. In this case the added resilience could be the difference between a win or loss.
My 3v3 team is mage, priest, rogue. Generally, it is the poor squishy priest that gets targeted. The mage does most of the CC’ing and I am all dps, except for a quick blind after the sheep is broken. I guess the added AP and less res would be better in this case. I will also have to deal with the ribbing of my squishy teammates who go by the mantra of more resilience is never enough.I will also need to edit my macro whenever I swap between 2s and 3s… lol