This is what I dont like about PvP Epics...

[Nixphire]

To turn the converstation around. I like PVE players in my BGs with my PVP gear on. I get to crit them for 3200+. I even crit a warrior last night for 3700. I love [spell=2458]Berserker Stance[/spell]. It does amazing things for my crits

[LastDyingBreath]

I love pvp epics because enhancement shammy mail does not exist from raids.

[Soronus]

Your UI is mad skillz Shadow. I want me one of those.

[Belandand]

What I've found from raiding is that many classes can benefit from going full, or at least near full pvp gear. In many cases, such as mages, moonkins, the spell crit offered through pvp gear helps put out dmg ( I know you know what I mean ). Pvp gear can even cut it as starter raid healing gear for healers. Before Vittoria's GM went unstable, his gear comprised of quite a few pvp pieces (except the trinks, shield and neck I believe).

While I do agree that pvp gear can be a good raid gear kick off, it's best used in moderation. For example, if out of necessity a tank is needed by their guild to start kara and the tank mixes some pvp and pve gear, its fine. But when the tank has full pvp gear (AND the ugly shield), it's terrible.

On a separate note, I used to HATE IT when I saw full s1 pvp rogues WITH sub builds running around with the Shard of Contempt. But now, I don't care because my hard work paid off and I gotz one!

Seriously though, there are certain limits to how much pvp gear can be incorporated into a pve set. For rogues at least, I'd say a safe threshold is no more than 2 pieces (ideally the chest and shoulders).

[Shadowwolf]

The issue with a PvP set for raiding is once you hit the higher level 25 content, its not as good as people think. For example, most PvP gear offers up no +hit, spell or otherwise, so because of that, even gemming +hit doesnt come anywhere near where you need to be to be formidable in PvE content of a higher caliber (SSC/TK, etc). While the spell dmg might be there or the atk power, without Hit, on mobs of higher lvl than 70, your miss/resist rate becomes so high that your dps starts to fall. I believe it was Dep who was on a ZA run with some mage in head to toe PvP gear and while the DPS number showed something like 800, the overall dmg done was below the tank because the mob resist rate was something like 24%. So while when a Fireball/Frostbolt/Shadowbolt/Melee Swing hits a mob or boss for a high amount, the amount of times it takes to land that hit is where you're falling short.

The other shortcoming of PvP gear is you are sacrificing a lot of valuable stats in place of +stamina. PvP is all about survival so stamina becomes a mainstay of a good PvP set, because of that, you have items with not so great other stats in terms of damage output. Priest sets in PvP contain really no spirit, which is bad, for a holy spec or any spec really as spirit counts a lot towards mana regen and +healing/dmg. Hunter sets have really no int stats, so due to that, you end up with hunters that have 12k hp unbuffed but less mana than a prot pally and cant last through long duration fights aside from Autoshot.

PvP gear was never designed to replace PvE items, Blizz always wanted and as far as I can tell still wants to keep the 2 separate because if you could PvP your way to Illidan or Kil'jaeden, there wouldnt be much value to the game then. Its good to get you through the likes of Kara, Gruul, Mag, but once you creep beyond that, the value of the items starts to drop rather quickly.

In truth however, there are some PvP items which carry through value well into later portions of raiding, the 1h swords for example are some of the best in the game for rogues till BT drops, but these items are few and only for some classes does it work.

The big issue here is because so many people equate Purple with "leet", they think all they have to do is PvP to gear up and then they are set for high level raid content. It just doesnt work out that way but most of them are not smart enough to see a difference.

[Grendeel]

Agreed with respect to the hit thats lacking on pvp gear.  In my pvp set ( 3/5 brutal  2/5 veng and all guardian), non raid buffed, without saccing a pet, im at over 1300 damage.  Thats very comparable to my pve set...maybe even higher.  However, without any spell hit, my dps is prolly a good  500 pts or more lower  in comparrison.   Its the reason why reaching the spell hit cap is more important than any other stat.  For a lock  202 is a lot, and u really cant afford to use pvp gear.  That said, the necklace and  s2,s3,s4 weapons are very viable in pve raiding.   Weapons come with spell hit and the necklace, u cant find much better til sunwell really.

With BCs introduction blizz specifically made it this way with the spell hit/resilance changes.  Pre bc my full gm gear was on par with tier 2 and some 2.5. It was very viable for pveing.  I didnt replace any of it til around 65 and still had a few pieces at 70.  Onyx, in full pvp gear, had great matches against Myst, in full pve gear, and Myst won many of them.   I do believe this was what blizzard wanted to prevent.