Prot Spec 5v5 Arena
Ask anyone if you can join their 5v5 arena team as prot spec and you’ll likely get laughed out of the room. Unfortunately, these people cannot see what a properly geared and played protection spec warrior can bring to the table.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not think a prot warrior will ever make it on a top tier arena team, but if you are happy banging around the 1500 - 1700 bracket for points, with the right group makeup, you’ll do just fine, and surprise your arena partners.
Over the course of the past few days, I finally convinced my non-hardcore 5v5 arena team to let me go protection spec this week. This team is typically in the 1400 - 1500 range. We ran a couple of different group makeups, neither of which anywhere near to a typical optimal setup. And guess what, we did okay!
At one point we ran with myself, 2 MS warrs, elemental shaman and resto druid. We were up 5 - 1 at 1600 at one point. The sunders were huge for the warriors and there was a no keeping up a target once it had 5 sunders as well as Mortal Strike.
My highlight of running arenas this weekend? Going up against a fairly stacked team, and after a massive battle only myself and this MS warrior (Braains from Spinebreaker) were the last 2 standing. I whipped out [item]Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker[/item] and [item]Shield of Impenetrable Darkness[/item] to take him down solo. Poor guy lost to a PVE Prot warrior and a level 60 weapon, oops! Thanks for the 23 points! (I won’t mention that we went up against them right afterwards and they completely wrecked us, but only gained back 9 of those 23)
All in all, it was a lot of fun, and proved to me that a prot warrior can be viable in a non-competitive 5v5 arena team. If you wanted, you could even put together a pvp prot/devastate spec, which would bypass many of the PVE related talents. I’m going to try this in the coming weeks and I will let you know of my results. Of course, that kind of defeats the purpose of not having to respec out of your raid tanking spec, but hey, I like to be difficult, eh?
Posted: January 15th, 2008 under Tanking.
By Bizzam
Comments
Comment from Bizzam
Time February 6, 2008 at 12:11 pm
The link is working fine for me. Basically it’s just a link to a page with some PVP results while PVPing as prot.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Write a comment
You need to login to post comments!
Comment from Panzerwinkle
Time February 6, 2008 at 8:43 am
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?