PvP Jewels : Overlords’ choices

Have you ever wondered what jewels you should be using for PvP? I know I have. Up to now, I haven’t even touched jewels, because I’ve just been confused with all the choices there are. PvP jewels should be chosen with care, because they do make a difference — at least at top level. As such, we’ll take a look at which PvP jewels are popular.

The Overlords

I have been collecting data on overlords in the Arena in the period between the 16th of June and the 10th of July. While collecting data, I haven’t discriminated against certain levels; I just printscreened whoever I ran into.

As you can see in the table, the largest group are the Prodigious overlords (100 wizards). The second largest group are the Grandmasters (88 overlords), closely followed by Legendaries (71 wizards). After that, the numbers start to dwindle.

This time, I will be mostly focusing on Prodigious wizards in this guide, and look at lower level’s PvP jewels in a different guide.

 

Boosters as Overlords

“So what about boosters,” I hear you ask. (For those of you blissfully unaware of boosting: it’s a fairly new occurance where wizards “boost” their rank without doing serious PvP. It’s a new way of cheating the system. We don’t approve of it, but Kingsisle hasn’t dealt with it as of yet).

First of all, yes, boosters are a common occurence these days, that’s for sure. The fact that they’re not “true PvPers” can skew my information. That said, can you always recognize a booster based on their record? I can’t. Of course, I have left out the most obvious boosters. Regardless of that, I can’t guarantee there are no boosters among my overlords. Therefore the information I provide may not be 100% accurate.

However, the PvP jewels used by those who probably boosted (for example level 110s with 2k+ rank) don’t really differ from those who seem to have earned their rank legitimately. Since our focus is on jewels only, I personally don’t think it matters all that much.

Jewels

Gear jewels come in four shapes: square, round, triangle and tear. Star jewels only occur on pets, so they’re of no importance for this article. You can read more about pet jewels in this article.

Some gear items only have one socket (e.g. decks), some have more sockets. For Baba Yaga, for example, the best athames she drops have 4 sockets, while the Tier 2 athames have 3, and the lowest tier only 2 sockets. Currently, you can get a socket on your amulet, athame, deck, ring, pet and on the newest wands. Some items don’t have sockets at all, like your boots and hat.

 

The Values of the Jewels

Jewels also come in different “levels”. These levels are important because they influence the strength of the jewel. Here’s an example of accuracy jewels:

• Cracked Accurate Jewels: +1 % to +2 % accuracy
• Chipped Accurate Jewels: +3 % accuracy
• Flawed Accurate Jewels: +4% accuracy
• Blemished Accurate Jewels: +5 % accuracy
• Dull Accurate Jewels: +6 % accuracy
• Plain Accurate Jewels: +7 % accuracy
• Opaque Accurate Jewels: +8 % accuracy
• Clear Accurate Jewel: +9 % accuracy
• Polished Accurate Jewel: +10 % accuracy
• Lustrous Accurate Jewel: +11 % accuracy

For any jewel available, the jewel marked as “lustrous” will be the best available at this point of time. This will most likely change with future updates. Not all jewels have a Lustrous option: for example stun resist jewels and healing boost jewels only go up the Polished at the moment.

It’s important to realize that for resist, damage, accuracy, crit and block, you can pick between a school specific jewel and a universal one. Because of that, going for the universal one will mean lower values. If you, for example, go for a school specific resist jewel (let’s say the Lustrous Defense Citrine), you will at most get 48 flat resist against Balance attacks. If you decide to choose a universal resist jewel (the Lustrous Defense Opal), your maximum value of resist will be lower: only 24 flat resist. As such, you have to weigh out which is more important to you: the strength of the jewel, or the universality of it.

Tear PvP jewels

Tear-shaped sockets are the most common. They occur on most Amulets, Athames and Rings Prodigious overlords use. The average overlord has 3 tear sockets on his gear.

You can fill these tear sockets with:

• Health Opals,
• Mana Opals,
• Fishing Luck Opals and
• Energy Opals

Of these, the only viable option for PvP is Health. Hence, max level wizards (97 % of them) do fill their tear sockets with Health Opals. The other 3 % of tear sockets were just left open.

Lustrous Health Opals are the most common: the highest value of 105 health appears in 56 % of the tear sockets. You can find this jewel in jewel packs in the Crowns Shop, but you can also buy them from Jordo Mistborn in Unicorn Way for 275 Arena tickets. Some of the overlords (39 %), however, are happy enough with a lower value than 105, with several jewels between +94 and +104 being common.

Of the lower value health jewels, the Polished Health Opal which gives 95 hp is the most common (with 39 % of the sockets filled with one). In addition to jewel packs and from Jordo Mistborn, you can also get this jewel as a drop in Khrysalis. The White Razors in Crescent Beach, Khrysalis drop it. These mobs drop a lot of other good jewels as well, so I suspect people have been farming them.

 

Circle PvP Jewels

Circle-shaped sockets are the second most common. They occur on most Athames and Rings.

You can fill circle sockets with jewels that give:

• Flat damage,
• Critical,
• Pierce or
• A boost for outgoing heals.

Firstly, many of our overlords (88 %) fill their circle sockets with a pierce jewel. The rest of the circle sockets are outgoing healing jewels (6 %) and critical jewels (3 %). This makes sense in today’s meta, which is very much focused on pierce. Flat damage doesn’t make an appearance at all at max level, while you do see these flat damage jewels at lower levels.

Of all the pierce jewels, the Polished (6 % pierce) ones for a specific school are by far the most common (e.g. the Polished Piercing Citrine for Balance), since this version is used as 97 % of the pierce jewels. Universal pierce to all schools is not common at all. You can get these Polished Piercing jewels as a drop from the White Razors in Crescent Beach, Khrysalis. There are other drop locations as well of course, but these White Razors drop many useful jewels, so you might want to choose them.

 

Square PvP Jewels

You can fill square sockets with the following kinds of jewels:

• Flat resist (not percent!)
• Critical block
• Stun Resist
• A boost to incoming heals

Square sockets appear on amulets, decks and rings, as well as on the newest wands: the Warrior’s Hoard pack’s skull wands.

Critical Block jewels are the most common, with 68 % being universal block. When you go for universal block, the highest value you can get is 7 block (with a Lustrous Blocking Opal). If you go for critical block for a specific school, you can go up to 14 block (e.g. the Lustrous Blocking Sapphire against Ice attacks). Block against Balance is the most popular: 52 % of school specific block jewels are balance.

Flat resist jewels appear in 14 % of the square sockets. Of these, 18 are universal resist, with a max value of 8 resist. Of the other 11 flat resist jewels, 9 are against balance, with a highest value of 48. As such, both block and resist jewels reveal the tendency of overlords to defend themselves specifically against Balance when they choose to go for a school specific jewel.

Incoming healing boost jewels occur in 12 % of the square sockets. There apparently isn’t a Lustrous Healing Opal available at this time, as 85 % of the overlords go with a Polished Healing Opal instead, with the rest resorting to even lower level Healing Opals.

Stun resist jewels are equally common as healing boost jewels: they, too, occur in 12 % of the square sockets. This is pretty interesting, as I wouldn’t have guessed to see these jewels so much on max level wizards. Just like with the previous jewels, there is currently no Lustrous Resilient Opal available, so people mostly use the next best thing: Polished Resilient Opals.

 

Triangle PvP Jewels

First of all, I personally think triangle PvP jewels are the most interesting of all the jewels, because they solve problems I have had myself at max level. However, not many gear items come with a triangle slot. As a rule, only athames and decks come with a triangle socket at max level.

You can fill triangle sockets with the following kind of jewels:

• Card jewels.
• Accuracy boosting jewels
• Power pip chance boosting jewels

While card jewels are popular at lower levels, at max level there are exactly zero overlords using a card jewel. Of all triangle sockets available, 53 % have a power pip jewel, and the other 47 % with an accuracy jewel.

The Lustrous PIP Opal (+10 % power pip chance) is the most popular, with 88% of PIP jewels being of this variety. You can get this jewel in a variety of ways. First of all, you can buy this jewel from Jordo Mistborn in Unicorn way for 275 Arena tickets. Secondly, several of the jewel packs have it. Lastly, some bosses in Polaris drop them, though fairly rarely: if you want to go farm for them, try Baba Yaga, Ludus the Beastmaster or Mahon Starsearcher. Polished PIP Opals (+9 % power pip chance) form the remaining 12 % of PIP jewels. These are a little easier to get, because they’re dropped by mobs instead of bosses. If you’re interested in getting one of these, it seems the best mob to go farm would be the life school White Razors in Crescent Beach in Khrysalis.

Of the accuracy jewels, the school specific versions are the most popular. The Lustrous Accurate jewels (e.g. the Lustrous Accurate Citrine for Balance) add 11 % accuracy to a specific school. Of all the accurate jewels used, 59 % are Lustrous jewels. While you can farm some bosses for these, the wiki doesn’t have enough information yet about which bosses. As such, they must be very rare. The sure way to get one would be to buy a jewel pack from the Crowns Shop. Another 35 % of the accuracy boosting jewels are Polished Accurate jewels, which add 10 % to your school’s accuracy. The information about where to farm for these is incomplete at the moment, but you’d do well to check the wiki yourself. The places to farm these are diverse: you can get them from both bosses and mobs in Azteca and Khrysalis, depending on the jewel.

 

Conclusion

All in all, jewels don’t seem to be all that complicated at max level as I feared they might be. The majority of these overlords seem to agree on which jewels are the best. They also seem to agree on the importance of using the right jewels: very few sockets were left locked or empty at max level. For me, everything in this article was new information, because I haven’t bothered gearing up my Prodigious wizards — let alone add jewels to their less-than-perfect gear. I feel more confident about choosing the right jewels now, when I think about the possibility of one day (if they ever get decent gear) PvPing with my silly max level wizards. As always, I am the one to learn the most when I make these articles. I do hope you other nooby max levels find some of this information useful.

 

Happy dueling!

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