[Yay]

Just a quick question, does imp spell reflect means theres 1 charge for EACH of the party member? Or just one that shares with all? Would be difficult to use if its the latter since it can be eaten up so easily...

I have to say it's an excellent read on the overall gearing for pvprot, I am using a mix of pve/pvp here. Altho I lose a fair bit of avoidance(which rocks agains rogues/huntards/feral) when using strictly pvp gear...

/yay

[Rudolf]

It's one shared by all I'm afraid. A few people go 1/2 in imp spell reflection to gives themselves a bit more control. Otherwise, all you can do is try to time it as best as possible.

[Trogdore]

Thanks for this information. pvpin prot before the patch was pretty much impossible, but now i cant seem to get enough satisfaction driving people nuts by being a literal tank. I guess i never really noticed that imp spell reflect effect people in my party and those around me. Now i can see when an enemy is casting a spell against me is there a mod to see hows casting what when what where?

[Pizzashark]

Source: Trogdore Thanks for this information. pvpin prot before the patch was pretty much impossible, but now i cant seem to get enough satisfaction driving people nuts by being a literal tank. I guess i never really noticed that imp spell reflect effect people in my party and those around me. Now i can see when an enemy is casting a spell against me is there a mod to see hows casting what when what where?

SpellAlerter works alright, but it can be a little spammy. It shows you who is casting what, but not who they're casting it at... you can set it to only show enemy spellcasts, and it's safe to assume that if the Mage is casting Sheep, it's going to be targeted at a party member.

I do have to ask, though... why in the world would you take Improved Spell Reflection if you weren't aware that it affects you entire party? That's the entire reason for taking the talent... the puny 4% spell avoidance is hardly worth it.

As far as I'm aware, you only get the one charge, but with the cheaper Rage cost, it's not a bad thing. Just means you need to be much more aware of your opponents, which is necessary for higher-level arena play, anyway.

Yay: You may be losing avoidance, but you're gaining crit and probably AP, too, which affects all of your opponents, not just stupid melee players The +15% crit from talents doesn't hurt, but considering full Resilience is about 15%-16% reduction... you still need high base crit

[Yay]

Thanks for the advice, tried some pvprot last night with more pvp gear oriented and a slower weapon and I have to say the result is pretty good, now sitting at 20% crit and 1.9k ap while still wearing quite a few tank piece. The mix and match of gear will make the pvprot v interesting :>

Only annoying thing is there's just not enough talent points to spend around on :<

Anyone know how I can make a macro for revenge and heroic strike? and will only use the latter if first is not available? (for the glyph obviously^^)

/yay

[Brokegritz]

New to the board and stumbled upon it trying to find some information about shield slam (calculating the amount, outside influences on damage output, etc.). While I'm on beta, I didn't even touch prot there simply because I was spending all my time on a death knight

Anyway, recently I've been 'hummin and hawin' over to play my warrior or druid first when Wrath hits, but I suppose that's a different subject (and yet not because I tried out prot on warrior and fell in love with the brand new game play).

So with that in mind, here are a few of my thoughts:

As someone mentioned, burst will always be the way to go in PvP. Decapitator imo seems to be the way to go to that end (mentioned as well). Currently I'm using the Headless Horseman's Blade which is useless in Arena, but great in world PvP and BG. Popping it on stealthed enemies is priceless since the pumpkin see through stealth. Do NOT pop where guards will attack though <sigh>. And most certainly don't pop them near guards after you've learned not to do it from the first time you did it <double sigh>.

I'm convinced 0/8/53 is the way to go. What do we need or want to stance dance for? Revenge isn't worth it (non-talented, and with a 1-H). Beserker Rage is usable in defensive stance. Your only real options possibly worth a dance would be Hamstring and Intercept, both of which only need 10 rage. On the other hand, the eight points in Fury can give some great burst. Concussion Blow, Shockwave, Thunderclap are all based on AP, so SoA adds nearly as much damage as Battle Shout (I carry around 17K armor). In fact, the only thing I think that isn't effected by AP is Shield Slam, and while Shield Slam is a huge chunk of your damage, I think if you get too caught up on seeing how big you can get it to hit, you can really hinder yourself from a great burst potential of a ConBlow/SS/Shockwave instant ability chain.

Talented correctly in the prot tree along with Cruelty, you end up with 20% crit to many of your abilities just from talents. I run a glyph of Heroic Strike for this mere reason. A 2 rage crit Heroic Strike (with Focused Rage)?? Yes please! Combine with Glyph of Revenge and you end up with 10 rage, for free! Again, burst.

Continuation of what I've said, I don't think Autoblocker/Coin is the right trinket choice. Go with an AP trinket, something that effects more than one skill. Stop limiting yourself. I'd almost go as far as to say that Savagery would be the correct weapon enchant for more consistancy because all of your abilities save one are AP effected/based. That's a point I would have to test out before I'd say without hesitation though.

Thoughts? Issues?

[jlafleur]

Retaliation and Recklessness are two other very good reasons to stance dance. Remember the 30-minute-now-5-minute abilities share a separate CD (other than you can't use two at the same time).

[Brokegritz]

Source: jlafleur Retaliation and Recklessness are two other very good reasons to stance dance. Remember the 30-minute-now-5-minute abilities share a separate CD (other than you can't use two at the same time).

I didn't realize they had removed the shared cool down. Touche!

Retaliation would be situational and sub par (unless you use stancesets to switch to a 2H when you go to battle stance maybe?). Recklessness is the bees knees though. I'd stick with 0/8/53 and just start an arena match in beserker stance. God I love warbringer.

Anyone ever see the 2v2 Shockadins video? Seems like 2 warriors could do something similar to that in 2's. All a matter of timing... haha.

[Kazeyonoma]

I think it should be noted that they removed the shared overall cooldown (5min) there is a sort of "uber skill gcd" that goes into play while you activate them. Meaning you can't pop all 3 at once by hitting one, stance dance, hitting another, stance dance, and hitting another. The first effect must end before the 2nd one can be put up.

No OP Shield Wall/Retaliate macros to pull entire instances =(

[Kathvely]

Source: Brokegritz Currently I'm using the Headless Horseman's Blade which is useless in Arena, but great in world PvP and BG. Popping it on stealthed enemies is priceless since the pumpkin see through stealth.

I havnt been able to confirm this. Anyone? If these guys can see through stealth and last for 30 seconds, that is a decent ability to use at the start of an arena.

Heroic Strike Questions:
I have noticed a lot of people specing into and using Heroic Strike. It was posted that due to the chance savings a HS will only cost 2 rage or 1 rage. Because of the higher chance to crit you will be doing more damage but you are losing the rage gained from white damage. Your actual damage is close to [HS damage – Normal Swing damage]. If you don’t crit you just dumped rage for the sake of dumping rage.

I only use a revenge / heroic strike macro (free HS + 10 rage on chance) I never directly use heroic strike nor do I spec for the extra crit. I find myself with pretty good rage-control but I have not fully tested if my dps suffers. Any thoughts? Do any think HS is just a lackluster rage dump similar to tanking in pve? Do any forgo HS in order to devastate spam and proc free shield slams?

[Brokegritz]

Source: Kathvely I havnt been able to confirm this. Anyone? If these guys can see through stealth and last for 30 seconds, that is a decent ability to use at the start of an arena.

You can't activate the sword in arena sadly. I'm at work, otherwise I'd go find a random duel to confirm it, because the one time I ran into a rogue in world pvp, I could have just been lucky.

[kshar]

I'm a pve specced protwar in BT/MH/Sunwell gear: The World of Warcraft Armory

Since Patch day i have been spending quite sum time making up for 2 years of slow and painfull deaths in pvp situations as a prot, and killing the shit out of horde on isle of quel'danas (excuse me if spelled wrong)

I so far has not had any probs killing any class thats not a healer, ele shammy's and moonkins and in sum cases skilled retridins are a tougher fight but usually won.

With as good as 20 k HP i've had scenarios of killing 1 up to sumtimes even 2 hordes when bein attacked by 3 of them. Offc i know that most of ehm farming dailies there dont have the best gear.
Even so u do occasionally find a fellow ganker from the other side in good if not better gear s4. This hasnt happen that much though i won most of the times.

I dont really do arena so i cant say much bout it, alltough i am pretty sure that 20k HP (wich i most likely will have with a kings or fort and CS) 1k AP and 850 SBV (not shown on armory ) making 2,5 - 3k SS crits on armored classes (even with resi - s4 geared it will be just below 2k) Shockwave critting near 2k or above makes up for the mass amount of STR on S4 pvp gear offc u miss out on the crit though.

As for resilience; Defense rating giefs me 6,5 % less chance to be CRIT and HIT (+2 % less change to be hit as nelf :P) yes theres still more chance to crit me as then i'd be in s4 gear but that is bein covered by less chance to be hit. The crit dmg reduction is covered by the much higher HP then on pvp gear. Also on melee classes dont forget to add the mass amount of parry dodge and block (wich wont work when yer stunned)
Only +point of resi is that it reduces mana drains (lol? mana ? :P) and dots. Wich would only really matter on affi locks, wich are so easy to lock down.

Basically i think pve gear equals if not overcomes s4 gear on a melee based encounter. On casters i agree resi and thus pvp gear is still king.

Btw me aint gonna gear pvprot spec untill i'm lvl 80 and dual spec has arrived. Also as solo in world combat i rly dont miss the more pvp talents in prot.

Btw 2 to all those that think stance dance is required to stick on, dont forget that shieldbash dazes the target again as it was pre patch. 6 sec duration vs 12 sec CD but 6 secs should be easily to overcome.

1 question remaining does hamstring shares same CD as shield bash and piercing howl (both faze affect) or are they both on the same diminishing snare DR ?

Soz for the wall of text and prob under average english.

[Pizzashark]

Some things regarding recent posts:

Stancedancing for Revenge is always worth it, if you have it talented. It's a significant amount of damage now, particularly on targets weakened by Sunder, and it's a stun that doesn't share timers with your other stuns. Plus, it's only 2 Rage. It might not be worth dancing for if you don't have the talent, but you literally have no reason not to take it, even if you're focused purely on PvE content. There is no other place in the entire Protection tree that those two points can be better spent, unless you're screwing up your spec somewhere else.

The Big Three do indeed share a duration timer, but the cooldown timers aren't linked. You can't be under the effects of more than one at a time, but you can chain them back-to-back if you're so inclined. The changes are about two years overdue, but better late than never.

I personally almost never use Heroic Strike in PvP. Properly glyphed and specced for it (Incite, Focused Rage, Improved Heroic Strike, glyphs of Heroic Strike and Revenge), it could become a powerful source of damage, but I can't see sacrificing so many talents and glyph choices for such an ultimately lackluster source of damage. I'd rather save my 12 Rage for something else in most cases. Because Heroic Strike eats a weapon swing, denying Rage generation for that swing, it'll never be free... just more and more efficient. You can get it to the point where it'll have a -1 Rage cost (9 Rage cost, +10 Rage on a crit), and could conceivably set up near-infinite "free" Heroic Strike chains (Revenge gives you a free Heroic Strike which crits, granting you 1 Rage, rinse, lather, repeat), but it'll still gut your Rage generation. I personally think that there are better options for both talents (Incite is worthless for PvP if you don't plan on making extensive use of Heroic Strike, but is amazing for PvE) and glyphs (Glyph of Heroic Strike seems more like a DPS glyph and Glyph of Revenge reeks of PvE focus), though I've been told many of the nicer glyphs won't be available till post-70.

I've been using my autoblocker forever, but I do have the AP trinket from Direbrew banked, and may give it a shot when I get a chance to play. Another alternative would be a Battlemaster's trinket. The loss of block value will hurt, but the increased damage from other sources may make up for the loss.

With regards to kshar's post:

20k HP is excessive for PvP. I don't think you'll realistically ever find yourself in a situation where you need or want more than about 13.5-15k base, though that number will certainly go up as gear ilvl improves - I'd wager we'll be breaching 22k base HP in season 5 gear.

1k AP is extremely low. Your Armory is showing you in pure PvE gear running a PvE spec, so I'm not gonna use that. I was rocking 1.6k base AP in blues and a couple pieces of S2 in the week leading up to 3.0, and I have no idea where I'm at now, since I can't check for myself, but I'm probably close to 2.2k or 2.4k with AttT... I'll have to have a friend log in and do my talents up so I can armory myself and check. PvE gear does have STR, which makes it suck a lot less, but it doesn't have nearly enough. Less Stamina, more Strength!

20% base crit is also fairly low, though acceptable if you're in terrible gear like I'm in. In full S2, socketed and enchanted properly, you could reasonably expect about 30% crit or so, base. In S4, you might be able to get it to 35% or more. All depends on what level your gear is and how much money you want to spend on enchanting it.

Defense Rating is not a substitute for Resilience in any way, shape, or form. I'm can't say for certain, but I'm fairly certain that PvP combat tables are not like PvE combat tables in regards to Defense... otherwise, wouldn't we basically autocrit on people 10 levels lower, and never crit on players 10 levels higher? Not to mention Armor in regards to level differential.

Beyond that, Resilience also reduces the amount of damage you take from crits, as well as damage taken from dots. That's pretty important... you'll be able to reach somewhere around 31% damage reduction from magic-based dots while in defensive stance if you're at the Resilience cap. Pretty nice, eh? Because we rock plate and a shield, our need for Resilience is far lower than that of, say, a Priest's or Mage's, but we still need to have a decent amount. Holy Pallies get away with low Resilience for similar reasons - high Armor already makes crits hit for fairly low amounts (even in my blues and S2, I think the hardest MS I ever took was something like 1.1k, and that was from a full S4 warrior sporting both shoulders and weapon), so the real reason for Resilience is to reduce the impact from magical damage... and in the case of Holy Pallies, mana drains.

Basically i think pve gear equals if not overcomes s4 gear on a melee based encounter. On casters i agree resi and thus pvp gear is still king.

That's not far from the truth... the huge amount of avoidance (dodge and parry) you'll get from PvE gear will give you a significant advantage in terms of reducing damage taken, but also keep in mind that PvE gear does not have DPS stats on it (the STR there is there purely for threat generation), so your outgoing damage will probably go down just as much as your incoming. PvE gear might be good for duels, but I'd never use it in BGs, arenas, or when I'm running around picking fights somewhere.

Near as I can tell, Hamstring doesn't even have a DR timer. I know I've read it does, but I can spamstring all day and it still lasts the base 10 seconds. Maybe it's referring to the root effect of Improved Hamstring/Glyph of Hamstring? Hamstring is not classified as a daze effect, and so Heroic Strike won't get the damage bonus from Hamstring.

Piercing Howl is a daze effect and will grant the bonus damage. Same with Shield Bash Daze.

[Kazeyonoma]

Just went 8-2 in arenas and the 2 had ret paladins in em =P

spec'd 0/8/53 and it worked wonderfully.

[Yay]

Can you explain a bit more on your encounter?

On another note, I am now quite keen on dropping incite for puncture, since I do miss the 9rage devastate, and rage is still an issue if you arent focus fired :<

/yay

[Voltaik]

My resto druid and ret pally friends and I (prot, 0/8/53) went from 1500 to 1891 this weekend and only stopped because we ran out of time. We went 39-12 with many of the losses actually coming before the druid re-specced resto, as he started by playing around with feral unsuccessfully. We are easily going to get a much higher rating as soon as we can get some more time in the arena.

PvProt is a ton of fun and a hugely skill-rewarding spec to play.

My advice to others interested in pursuing this spec, is that your job is to ensure survival of the team via crowd control and damage prevention, and open the way for a killing burst of dps also with crowd control and damage amplification.

Having immediate access to shield wall and spell reflect, along with talented last stand, will keep you alive through burst situations. Believe me, many teams will wrongly try to burst you down and these abilities will keep you alive even through today's highly burst-oriented PvP.

Stuns are powerful but especially so when you switch targets to avoid heavy diminishing returns penalties. The silence on Shield Bash and the fear from Intimidating shout and the "crowd control" from disarm are all ways to disable the opposition that DON'T effect or and are not penalized by your stun diminishing returns. Mix them in to great effect.

Sunder Armor + Talented Disarm (+10% damage debuff) is your finishing move. After stacking sunders throw Disarm and other crowd control (like shout or concussion blow), and combine with a call for focused physical dps from teammates and even popping recklessness+shield slam on your part and things will go down.

Things we can look forward to: Heroic Throw as a silence will add ANOTHER great crowd control ability and Glyph of Devastate (along with Puncture) will allow for rapid sunder stacking. The next 10 talent points will enable even more great things, like impale for greater burst while still having AttT.

I'm also planning on playing with a 8/0/53 build or something similar for stance mastery and/or imp charge, I'll post how that goes.

[Bloodwraith]

I think you might want to check your stance mastery spec. It doesn't include Imp revenge, which you state right below is critical to Prot PvP.

[Iazy]

would you recommend a pvp shield or a high end pve shield for pvprot? Also, as a pvprot warrior, would I want to get a pvp one hander, such as the vengeful cleaver for example, or would a decent pve one handed do?
I'm just asking because currently my "pvprot set" for weapons consists of king defender and iron oak shield, and sometimes after I throw up my spell reflect macro, I forget use my zerker/2h macro, and the damage I do (around 1.2k ms) is comparible, but falls short of, the damage I put out with gorehowl. My guess is that you would go for the pvp we for the more ap/crit/resil you get from them over the pve one handers, where all you get is defense rating and stam (mostly), but I just want to make sure as I have nver actually tried pvprot but am considering it with the melée range dificulties I've been experiencing on my nelf as arms

[p3zst]

I rolled a warr, specced arms to lvl and got bored and stopped playin wow up until a few weeks b4 patch as a 48. pvProt is the single greatest spec in wow. i have never had so much fun on any toon. Stunning and silencing and just pure war bringing i feel energized switching targets. as everyone has said. mobility is sweeet.. and with WotLK bringing all the new elements to pvp i dont think i will ever respec unless blizz changes it which i doubt. i dont play alot of wow im not a pro. i think pvp is awesome because i dont have to spend alot of time getting places i am lazy in wow. when i get to 70 and then eventually 80 i will pure PVP. I am grateful to prot changes, as i finally explored the tree and will not be rerolling for the millionth time.

why is tactical mastery so unpopular? is it not useful for popping retaliation, SB, recklessness, cleave/ww, SS, revenge type combos. stances are what make a warrior such a great class to play imo. hooray for dks too they gun be cool.

btw thank you for the guide(s) pizza i like your input i feel my play style resembles yours more..

[jlafleur]

Tactical Mastery isn't unpopular --- it would be nice to have with an unlimited number of talent points --- but it really isn't a necessary talent for prot pvp. Charge is useable in all stances with warbringer mitigating dumping rage the few times you actually need to stance dance (retaliation, recklessness, hamstring and intercept are all I can think of). About the only time I choose to stance dance is for intercept. Not to mention that you only have 10 points to play with at this point in time if you put at least 51 in prot. Those points are probably better spent elsewhere than allocating eight in arms to get 3/3 tactical mastery. If you do choose to activate recklessness, then try to move away from your target, activate it, switch back to defensive stance, charge back in.