[Nyd]

I wanted to take a few minutes to do a write up about pvProt. I've followed it and been pretty intensely focused on it from the moment I had access to beta. I've watched it evolve from "Hey we can do damage now" to "Not only can I do damage but I can really shut someone down, protect my comrades, and generally become an immovable mountain".

I'm going to cover some basics for the aspiring pvProt warrior, gearing choices, specs as well as general strategy and execution. In this first revision I will talk about general Strategy for Battlegrounds and one on one matchups and will expand on it the more I experiment.


Section 1. - Strengths and Weakness

First let's take a look at the basic Strengths and Weakness of prot in pvp. Realize of course that Protection is a control spec in pvp. It is designed to shut down opponents, protect comrades and pack a bit of a punch on the tail end to bring people down.

Protection Strengths:
+Moderate Damage Output
+Excellent Shutdown
+Unmatched Mobility
+Good to Excellent Sticking power
+Friendly Protection (Safeguard, Spell Reflect)

Protection Weakness:
-No healing reduction
-Heavy Diminishing Return centric spec (Stuns)

Section 2. - General Concepts and Strategy

pvProt is very centric around shutting players down via stuns, interupts and silences while having the mobility to enact that shut down and facilitate some sticking power to truly lock a target down. On top of that our ability to reflect critical offensive spells (sheeps and heavy damage) directed not only at ourselves but anyone in our immediate party as well as the protective power of Intervenes paired with Safeguard and even Vigilance's damage reduction create a controlling defensive play style that is unique to the pvProt warrior. Not only are you offensively threatening your presence should cause some real fear towards anyone looking to go after your healers or ranged dps.

pvProt is the tackle of the offensive line. We put the hurt on the opposing team while protecting the quarterback and opening up holes for our running backs to get out there and do their magic.

Strategic use of Stuns followed by Silencing shield bashes with charges, intervenes and intercepts are all skills that will need to be mastered to be an effective pvProt warrior. Diminishing returns will need to be monitored closely (I'm still looking for a solid mod) as you can waste critical locking power to targets still within the DR window.

Section 3. - Talents

Currently on Live we have our 51 point talents and only 61 points to spend on the trees. Protection relies on some Deep Prot talents and especially our 51 point talent so as such what we do with the other 10 points is somewhat limited at 70. As we level in WotLK more talents will open up to us and some serious choices will need to be made (Damage vs Control). At 70 it's less of an issue as we simply don't have enough points to get into T3 talents in arms or fury. Today we'll focus on Live and I will update this as we transition into Wrath.

I've played with a couple of different specs. I will list what I've tested and give an overview of what I prefer and why.

8/0/53 - Stance Mastery

0/8/53 - Crit

In live currently at level 70 I prefer the Stance Mastery build and here is why. Protection, much like pvp Arms before it benefits greatly from Stance Mastery and I challenge any warrior that avoids stance mastery for any pvp spec to examine the reality that one stance does not fit all.

As a pvProt warrior one of your greatest offensive (and defensive) strengths comes from your mobility. However mobility without sticking power is limited in it's effectiveness. As a pvProt warrior especially you will find yourself both in Battle Stance (for Hamstring) on those targets that require you to be as sticky as possible and Defensive stance on those targets that aren't actively trying to get away from you (melee).

Situational awareness is critical, knowing when it's time to be in Battle stance and when it's time to D-stance up and start looking for that intervene target to get outta dodge is pretty critical, especially so in BG's. Taking heavy focus fire, intervening targets under fire, and otherwise needing that extra mitigation will all be situations that call for Defensive. When you are on the move and on the attack on a target attempting to lock down and / or stick to a target Battle stance is the preferred stance.

Of course having access to Intercepts without worrying about rage dumps is also clutch in the pvProt warriors mobility arsenal.

Improved Revenge is a critical PvP talent providing you with a 50% chance to stun your opponent. The Improved Revenge talent also improves damage by 20%. Revenge received a pretty big boost in damage in a recent patch. It's worth the GCD when it's up. It's a free stun separate from your other stuns' DR timers and it heavily penalizes anyone for attacking you. Frankly I was a big proponent of simply leaving more damage on Devastate and relegating Revenge to use in low-rage-tanking situations or as a choose to use RNG stun only. Protection has enough buttons to manage in D-stance as it is in pvp. Of course this is debatable.

Improved Disarm is also extremely important. This is essentially the prot warriors' reverse Mortal Strike. You can disarm anyone, melee, healer, clothie and they are subject to a 10% increase in damage. Stacked with sunders, a healing reduction debuff, and perhaps a DK Death Grip and you can quickly isolate and debuff a target to the point that your DPS can eliminate the opponent very quickly.

Improved Spell Reflect defines the Protection warrior in PvP. Not only can you use this talent to prevent critical pew-pew or CC moments from casters focused at you, you can equally reflect those attacks aimed towards your comrades. Need to stop that critical CC aimed at your healer as the opposing team makes a burst push on a target, reflect saves the day. On top of that it reduces the chance to be hit with spells in the first place by 4%.

Section 4. - Gearing

I was not a huge pvp'er pre 3.0.2. I did my 10 games, sometimes more, I got my points most weeks, some weeks I didn't. I ended up with a mix of gear that consists of Brutal and Vengeful gear with some Guardian and Vindicators. Paired with some T6 level gear I sit somewhere in the neighborhood of 320 resilience 70 hit rating 14k health and roughly 30% crit. I main tanked T6 content through Kalecgos and pvp'd on the weekend as arms. I give you all of this information only to put into perspective gearing strategy for pvProt as it relates to what I had access to.

The reality is that PvP gear is the best for pvProt. Resilience is still king, high AP and Crit still provide the offensive punch and with how Strength converts to AP and Shield Slam damage as well as benefiting from Vitality; Strength is still the best stat to stack. No matter what you have access to from Seasons 2 to Season 4 - from quest blues to Illidan purples you want to base your gearing around Strength and Crit. You also need to consider hit Rating to 5% (~ 79 hit rating).

Mix and match whatever gives you the best results based on the gear available to you. If you are just getting started then I encourage you to buy your PvP blue gear and start the BG honor grind for Season 2. No reason not to also find a partner and at least get a start on Arena points to get what you can before the Wrath reset.

Section 5. - Enchants and Glyphs

Compiling information for this section.

Section 6. - Specific Strategies

I will be working on filling out the details of the below as I have more face time in the specific scenarios.

a. 1 v 1
b. Battleground
c. Arena

Section 6. - Conclusion

One thing is for certain, pvProt is a exciting and fun shift for Protection warriors from the past. The paradigm shift within Blizzard when it comes to class design is a most welcome one. I only hope that as we progress through Wrath and into future expansions that Blizzard looks at the Protection tree as an example of what can be done with a class spec not initially centered around PvP. I hope that they continue to refine not only the tanking aspects of Protection but also continue to explore it's functionality in PvP as well.

Hopefully someone will find this useful as a ground floor "how do I get started on this pvProt thing?" question. My goal is to continue to expand this guide and I will continue to maintain this and welcome any feedback.


*note Thanks to the following for their contributions to this guide:
Jlafleur
Pizzashark

[ryffryda]

I'm getting more and more convinced Prot is the way to go. I'm not a huge fan of bladestorm in arms so far in pvp. I dueled a prot warrior yesterday, his dps sucked but his stuns put me out of battle for seconds at a time that were crucial. Our gear was comparable and I ended up losing pretty badly he had about 50% hp left over. Execute / overpower popping more frequently is nice but warriors with no hp regen is tough.

[Kazeyonoma]

cool guide, I might run some 2v2s in arenas this weekend with my druid and if he decides to go dps i'll go prot and we'll see how it works out with our cc capabilities to effectively lock down a healer till death.

I'll try to contribute what I can.

One thing you might want to mention is that watching DRs cannot be stressed enough, wasting a intercept stun, or worse a shockwave stun is gonna be very detrimental to your lockdown.

and every warrior who wants to run pvProt needs to know how to run AWAY from their opponents to intercept/charge back in to keep locking down the target.

[Truth]

Excellent guide. I have been debating taking my paladin in as prot for pvp, although its going to be a completely different strategy. I don't know if it will be as effective as warrior pvProt, but a pvProtadin (hmm.. there's got to be a better name than that) should at least be a major annoyance.

I'm sure no one will complain about having blessing of sanctuary or imp devo aura.

Most likely I will be trying this tonight and let everyone know how it goes.

[Clyde]

Hm. At least prior to v3, Revenge was on a separate diminishing returns timer than charge / intervene / concussion blow... the "proc based" stun timer that shares with Seal of Justice and the old Mace stuns. The other is the "controlled" stun that shares with Hammer of Justice.

Is that different in v3.0.2? If not, you are giving away some lockdown that wouldn't hurt your other stuns.

[Kazeyonoma]

I don't think it changed, proc versus controlled should still be the case, in which case... we should be able to not worry about revenge procs hurting us.

[Nyd]

That is an assumption I made and I will have to test it further. I am still not sold on Revenge as a PvP talent however. I spent my lunch break outside of Ironforge this morning with the dueling crowd trying to get some class vs. class perspectives. Again for the amount of time you spend dancing from Battle to Defensive (depending on the target) and the relatively little time Revenge has proc'd and is availble to use it just doesn't find itself being used (or useful).

I'm also looking for some clarification on DR's on the Silence from Shield Bash if anyone has hard data on that. I've heard there is no DR on it, but I didn't get a chance this afternoon to test it. I will tonight if no one else has an opportunity.

I've got a Naxx run on Beta tonight and a BT tomorrow on Live so it will likely be Saturday before I can get into the Arena and start putting pvProt through its' paces. We'll likely be doing 3's or 5's. Should be fun!

[jlafleur]

I'm not sure how you can pass up shield mastery (+30% block value, 20 sec CD reduction).

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is my build. The first 10 points in the first two tiers are really interchangeable. Puncture seems like a waste of points as I'm not devastating tons. Just when shockwave, disarm, shield slam, revenge and concussion blow are on CD and really only then to proc sword and board.

Its taken me a couple of days to get used to my new prot pvp keybinds. I've pretty much not left defensive stance although I should be intercepting more when I'm fighting mages (get stuck in a nova right after a charge). I'm planning on focusing on intergrating that into my gameplan over the next couple of days. Having said that, I haven't needed to even consider stance dancing much so I'd prot/fury is probably a better choice overall than prot/arms (stance mastery). The other thing I've got to get in my head is to use recklessness/shield wall/retaliation all of the time rather than once every two weeks. No reason to save them but hard to break old habits.

[jlafleur]

Also mowed through heroic magister's terrace in my prot pvp build in 20 minutes - charge, shockwave, tc, spell reflect plus a cleave and devastate or two.

[Nyd]

I definitely agree that I probably overlooked Shield Mastery. Luckily this is a work in progress! I still contend that Stance Mastery is greater than the little bit of crit and AP from the 8 points into fury. That may just all come down to playstyle in the end however, I like having stances open to me and not burning rage when dancing.

The talent section will likely undergo a bit of a revamp. I may list a few specs but I want to focus more on the talents themselves and what makes pvProt what it is (Spell Reflect, Safeguard, etc).

I appreciate the feedback, keep it coming guys!

[Pizzashark]

I've been Prot since early 05 and I've been using it for PvP since Shield Discipline was the 31-point talent. I've never bothered with Arms or Fury.

Stance Mastery is less critical than you think, especially once you learn Rage management and learn to predict your enemies. It's still necessary, and I definitely will have it at 80, but at 70, my build will be:

5/5 Shield Specialization
2/2 Improved Bloodrage
3/3 Improved Thunder Clap
1/1 Last Stand
2/2 Improved Revenge
2/2 Shield Mastery
5/5 Toughness
2/2 Improved Spell Reflection
2/2 Improved Disarm
1/1 Concussion Blow
2/2 Gag Order
5/5 One-Handed Weapon Specialization
2/2 Improved Defensive Stance
3/3 Focused Rage
1/1 Warbringer
1/1 Devastate
2/2 Safeguard
3/3 Sword and Board
2/2 Damage Shield
1/1 Shockwave

3/3 Armored to the Teeth
5/5 Cruelty
2/2 Booming Voice

Sorry that I can't link to a wowhead build - the site's blocked here at work. The build has a single point in Protection left for you to move around as you see fit - I'm currently giving it to Puncture.

Vigilance is a bad talent for PvP - it was better before as 5% dodge, and now it's just worthless as 3% damage reduction. I cannot justify spending the point there instead of much more powerful abilities - even 1/3 Puncture is better.

The new Safeguard is your counter to healing debuff effects and burn protection for your teammates. Improved Spell Reflection is there to prevent shatter combos, cyclones, sheeps, and other directed CC effects - I highly recommend you pick up SpellAlerter (or something like it) for warning you of incoming spells. It sucks for battlegrounds, but I can't envision doing arena without it.

Improved Revenge is a critical PvP talent. It's a free stun, it's separate from your other stun timers, and it heavily penalizes anyone for attacking you, which is actually a positive thing. It's especially valuable against pet classes.

Improved Disarm is also extremely important. The cooldown reduction is handy, but the real reason to get it is the bonus damage effect. You can use this against any class - don't think that Disarm is restricted to the melee classes; you can Disarm priests and mages just as easily as rogues and paladins. A typical situation would be to stack the sunder effect on a priest (mostly negating his already low armor), force him to blow his fear, disarm him, silence him, and then have a DK death grip him behind a pillar. The priest is now in the middle of your team's DPS, with no armor, no ability to cast spells, no fear to peel with, and he's taking an extra 10% on top of everything else. This is almost certainly going to be death, and I think that teams facing teams with a DK and Prot warrior are going to have to learn to be aware of this and learn how to counter it - keeping the DK out of range of DG and/or not allowing him to pillar hump might be possible ways of countering it.

As a Prot warrior, your role is still that of a tank. Be extremely aggressive. Decide what the enemy team's most dangerous spellcaster is, and stay on top of them. Interrupt their spells, dispel their buffs, kill their armor, and in general make life hell for them. Learn to keep the sunder effect up on multiple targets, forcing the enemy team to be aware of two or more people ripe for a burndown. Interrupt heals, reflect CC's, intervene the enemy team's burn target to keep them up. Prot's gotten some amazing abilities in 3.0 that will make them critical to any 5's team.

Gearing is pretty simple now. PvP gear, all the way. Resilience is not a great concern for you, due to your high Armor and base HP, so enchant and socket for DPS. Fill red sockets with Bold (STR) cuts. Fill yellow sockets with Smooth (crit) cuts. Enchant your chest with 6 stats instead of 15 resilience. Enchant your legs with nethercobra, instead of nethercleft. Put 18 block value on your shield. Put an Eternal Earthstorm Diamond (+5% SBV and +12 Def) in your helm and Boar's Speed (9 STA and speed) on your boots. Use the autoblocker or coin for one trinket, and your medallion for the other.

I can't personally speak about 1v1 because I can't play right now, and things have likely changed. But general tips:

If you're fighting a healing Priest, don't interrupt the shadow spells - spell reflect them or LOS them. Save your interrupt for healing spells. Save your Rage so that you always have enough for a Shield Slam to dispel the bubble, to provide you with uninterrupted Rage generation and them with no free casting.

Against Hunters, spell reflect their traps. Disarm them to prevent wing clip and counterattack. If they're BM, try to force them to use Intimidation and The Beast Within at the same time. When they're under the effects of The Beast Within, either LOS them or run away, out of range. Make them chase you. Either get a mod to keep track of the duration or count 18 seconds. At 15 seconds, start closing back in and intercept them as soon as the effect ends. Keep hamstring/piercing howl on them and spam revenge. If they send their pet after you but don't chase (classic example is in WSG flagrooms), kill the pet - hamstring it and spam revenge.

Against Warriors with Second Wind, don't use Revenge. This may have changed now that Revenge does much more damage, but the damage done needs to exceed the 10% HP they'll recover from the stun effect. Warriors without Second Wind are free kills.

Shammies and Pallies only have a single spell school that matters. Don't worry about what kind of spell you interrupt, because it locks out heals and DPS at the same time. Learn to predict when they'll shock, stun, or judge you and get spell reflection up in time to bounce it. Try to catch them stunned after they pop NS, EM, DF, or similar abilities and dispel them with a Shield Slam.

Keep druids sundered at all times. Druids tend to try and tank you in bearform, then perform a bash+cyclone combo to heal. If you are bashed, do not trinket out until they shift out. If you have time, interrupt the cyclone. If you are not certain you will make it (i.e. they've already gotten 1 sec worth of the cyclone cast time in), wait for the cyclone and trinket it instead. Try to interrupt their Regrowth. Stun them while they're in caster form and burst them as hard as possible. Do not immediately break roots against an oomkin - try to bait a starfire combo reflection.

Get Afflicted or NECB to help you keep track of your stun DR timers, use MSBT to alert you to enemy buffs, and use SpellAlerter and Proximo to monitor enemy spellcasting. Use Pitbull or X-Perl unitframes and set up a focus target and learn to use it.

[Pizzashark]

Forgot about glyphs. Devastate, Last Stand, and Blocking for your majors. Bloodrage, Charge, and Thunder Clap for your minors. Pick up Rapid Charge for your fourth major if you're a scribe.

As far as weapon enchants go, I'll probably use a weapon chain. Dismantle is currently the only way any team could possibly burn a prot warrior, and the less time you spend vulnerable, the better.

[Pherae]

Source: Pizzashark I've been Prot since early 05 and I've been using it for PvP since Shield Discipline was the 31-point talent. I've never bothered with Arms or Fury. Vigilance is a bad talent for PvP - it was better before as 5% dodge, and now it's just worthless as 3% damage reduction. I cannot justify spending the point there instead of much more powerful abilities - even 1/3 Puncture is better.

It might be powerful in arenas to keep pets off of a teammate (the healer for instance) because every time they are hit, your taunt cooldown is refreshed. Moreover, Taunt is no longer a melee skill now (20 yd range).

The damage reduction aspect of the talent would be secondary and the real use of it would be to control pets.

I think it could be powerful with a /focus macro on the pet in this situation.

[Pizzashark]

That's certainly true. I didn't consider that.

I'd still prefer to kill the pet instead of trying to control it via taunting, though.

[jlafleur]

Scribes don't get a 4th gylph. That seems to have been removed from beta.

3% damage reduction is actually better than 5% IMO since it effects all damage not just melee. Extra dodge encourages overpower crit on your healer from an arm warrior. I think its a must-have for 1 point unless all you plan on doing is dueling.

At this point, I'd say Vitality> Booming Voice

0/8/53 or 0/7/54 > 0/10/51

At 71, I plan on respecing 0/11/51 so I can have piercing howl. Not sure where I'll trim the 3 points from prot at this point but I'll figure it out eventually.

[Pizzashark]

Ugh, forgot to mention Vitality. 3/3 is a no-brainer. Wish they didn't block wowhead here.

I'll be running 0/10/51 at 70, picking up PH at 71, and then probably working down to Stance Mastery on my way to 80. I'll still have a point left over, so I'll probably pick up 2/3 Puncture.

Cider did raise a valid point that, at 70, PH may actually be more valuable than SW. If you can't stay on top of your targets, you're not going to be able to do your job. With the wonky charge/intercept pathing AI, landing 10 yards behind your target could lose you games.

As for the 5% dodge, I'd take 5% dodge over 3% DR any day of the week. A dodged MS means that you may have a couple of seconds of full healing. A dodged Shiv may mean that you can clear crippling long enough to get some distance. A dodged wing clip may mean that the hunter won't be able to get away. You get the idea.

And warriors with unrelenting assault and taste for blood are going to be slamming you with overpowers constantly, anyway.

[Nyd]

Again thanks for the insightful feedback. It's good to see that Revenge's stuns are in fact on separate DR's. It will definitely remain in the builds I use.

I think that Vigilance perhaps has it's place in Arena. I think Intervene/Vigilance macro's might perhaps be useful towards keeping your target up. Is it necessary, is it worth the point, will that one point save the day? Probably not but I'll test it out.

I've been playing with the 0/8/53 build for the past couple of days but intend to swap over to the 8/0/53 build this weekend.

I'll be updating the main post with some of the information to this point here this morning.

[jlafleur]

Pizzashark, no critical block? Right now you have 50 prot points if you add in 3/3 vitality. So I'd say 2/3 critical block (filling to 3/3 with your missing point) > booming voice right now.

[Pizzashark]

If I could take those points out of Fury, I would. But you need 10 points to reach PH, and I frankly think that Booming Voice is better than either tier 2 option.

I don't plan on ever taking critical block, because I seriously doubt any melee class is going to be capable of doling out a 2k non-crit attack, and - as far as I'm aware - a blocked attack cannot crit, period.

[Gehn]

Source: Pizzashark Use Pitbull or X-Perl unitframes and set up a focus target and learn to use it.

Might I ask how you use your focus?

It is one thing that I have never really found useful unless I was a caster. I would love to learn more about its uses as a melee.