Comments on: Prot Spec 5v5 Arena

By: blackthought

blackthought — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:32:37 +0000

The preface is that i’m only lvl 65 right now with my warrior (blackthough:deathwing) I’ve played hundreds of BG’s and for the most part been on top of them, party because I took the time to get some high warlord gear at 60, party because I know how to play a fury warrior PVP with the best of them.

I recently switched procs after waiting in instance ques with a full group minus a tank for several weeks now. The downside was that I THOUGHT I wasn’t going to be able to pvp anymore, the upside is that I was wrong.

Once I got a general feel for the tank spec I’ve jumped back up to the top of the killing blows and HK list in the 60-69 bracket. Not as frequently, but I’m up there enough to not mind the switch.

There’s an add on called item rack that lets you switch weapons on the fly through keybinding. THIS IS MY KEY.

I start most fights by intercepting, while in fury mode I use item rack to switch to two handed weapons. I have HWL 1 handed axe and a dagger( steals life but can’t remember the name) So the 3 seconds they are stunned because of intercept means 3 seconds of hitting. As soon as they come out of that I hit them with concussion blow (which you can use in fury stance) totaling 9 seconds of unabated cracking down on whomever I fight. As soon as they near coming out of stun I will switch back to defensive stance and swap back to my shield. By this point I’ve done away with a good chunk of life all while not having been scratched. If I’m fighting a pally I will use devastate to get rid of the armour during this stun session.

As soon as I am able to I disarm and pull out the fury stance with the duel wield again, hitting hamstring for classes that like to run, sometimes I don’t even switch and will use revenge and shield bash plus rend and HS to dish out an easy 1-2k of damage. I usually don’t switch for classes that aren’t going to run from me.

So you have 9 seconds of free attacking, plus 10 seconds of attacking while being attacked with an offhand weapon or fist or spells minus a bonus.

For casters I stay with the shield and use spell reflect along with hamstring. Mages work me over just because I can’t get to them, but most others just don’t last.

At this point things are usually not dead yet, but I’m sitting somewhere near 80-90% life while they are trying to figure out what to do next.

I’ve had instances of fighting casters (mainly pally and mages) though where they didn’t come into a fight at 100% mana and blew their load while fighting me, simply because they couldn’t do anything.

I’m still perfecting the technique but so far it’s worked for me:)

By: Bizzam

Bizzam — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:11:36 +0000

The link is working fine for me. Basically it’s just a link to a page with some PVP results while PVPing as prot.
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It really depends on what you want out of your PVPing. In Battlegrounds, you can actually excel as prot, either on offense or defense. In offense, your low rage attacks and high survivability will allow you to constantly be hitting your opponents. As well if you want to go full defensive, you’re great for holding nodes and flags as a defender.
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In arenas however, it is another matter. Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that any equally geared, equally skilled player of any class/spec will bring more to an arena team than you can as Prot spec. Yes, you can win games, but you will be holding your team back. It makes me very sad to say it, but it’s true. We just don’t have enough burst damage or control to make it worthwhile to take a prot Warrior in arenas.
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It wouldn’t take much to change that either. If they gave Prot some additional debuffs, or control, then it could be viable. Even if they changed it so that you could talent Demo shout to debuff not only attack power but spell and healing power, and Thunder Clap could effect spell cast times, then that even might be enough, but as it is, if you go in as a melee debuffer, it is not often you will run up against enough melee opponents to make it worthwhile. The sunders from devastate are nice, but even in todays arenas, people have access to enough gear that their teammates can still heal through a fully sundered, MS’d target when one of your DPS is a no-burst damage prot warrior.
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Maybe I need to try some different comps, but at this time I just have to believe that a prot warr on an arena team is just taking up a slot that any other class/spec could fill better.

By: Panzerwinkle

Panzerwinkle — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:43:15 +0000

I’m particularly interested in Prot Spec PvP, as I’ve just gotten into PvP late in the game and found it much more fun than I’d thought. I’d only tried it once, at around level 30 or so, and as a prot warrior up against twink rogues and warlocks, it was NOT fun. But strangely, having put together some fairly nice soloing gear, I actually can hold my own against quite a few opponents in PvP. But I’d love to hear more. Your “Other Prot Spec PVP Info” link doesn’t seem to work, and I’m horribly curious what’s behind it. Can that be fixed?

Personally, I’ve been PvPing with a sword & board, since the Gladiator’s Shield Wall was the main reason I tried PvP this time in the first place (it’s practically my only source of Resilience at this point). Devistate with a slower weapon seems to hold it’s own in most situations. I’ve found taking down much better geared warriors possible by switching to defensive stance to disarm and take some of the brunt off of their swings useful, though it’s harder against rogues. Shamen seem to be most susceptible to a prot warrior, since the shield bash and cuncussion blow keep most of their spells out of commission and they don’t have emergancy spells like a mage’s blink and a warlocks fear.

Do you have any other tidbits of advice for a prot PvP-er?