Tank Hard!

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 [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker] and [Shield of Impenetrable Darkness] 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?

Other Prot Spec PVP Info

I continue to say that with the right gear, prot spec can be a viable PVP spec.  With Devastate being such a low rage ability, it can be used quite a bit.  Granted you don’t get massive burst damage with this spec (other than execute), but you can still dish out significant damage, and you will really shine if you are coupled with other melee players.

I haven’t had much luck getting arena teams to let me try out this spec in 5v, but I actually feel that in a melee heavy 5v team, that you could do okay.

On a related note, as Horde, queue times for AV have gotten ridiculous.  I was queued for nearly an hour and a half for this particular AV.  Come on Alliance, I know you guys had it EZ Mode for the longest time before the change, but don’t QQ and just refuse to go anymore, learn to win at the new AV!

AV was one of my favorite battlegrounds to play as a protection warrior. It had a lot of PVE focused content which allowed us to shine where we shine best. However, most of that has changed. AV can still be fun, but don’t expect to be leading the charge to your opponents general in the shortest time possible.

WoWInsider has a nice post about the changes to AV in patch 2.3.

After a few runs of the new and improved AV, I think it is very important that the masses become educated on the new AV. In my battlegroup, the Horde were still very firmly of the mindset of the race to Vann at all costs, giving away towers and bunkers freely with little to no defense.

In the new AV, a balanced offense and defense are more important than ever. Keeping your towers and your captains are very important to exiting the battleground with a good amount of honor. The sooner everyone realizes this, the better!

Devastate Spam FTW

On another, somewhat related note, I have a little tip for all you deep prot warriors. In battlegrounds, don’t be afraid to whip out your [The Decapitator] and [Fool's Bane], then go Devastate crazy with all your might. You never know, you might just find out you can be the damage king and really piss off Arms warriors =)

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The season 3 shield wall has been added to PTR.  It’s pretty nice, but will fall into the category of items requiring an 1850 Personal Arena Rating.  Good luck to any Prot warr not willing to respec out to PVP to get a chance to snag this puppy =)