Bloodyonoma's 3.0.2 Warrior PvP Guide

[Bloodwraith]

I've moved all of my information to: http://www.tankspot.com/forums/f40/3...pvp-guide.html

[Kazeyonoma]

__________________________________________________ _______________
I'm going to focus on prot since it's the only one I've tried enough to talk about


General Thoughts

Specs

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft- This is what I've opted to try to use (albeit I haven't tested it completely yet but i'm pretty sure this is what I want to have when I'm protPvP'ing, of course having piercing howl or tactical mastery would help, I just don't think they are worth losing points in prot right now.

With this spec I am able to get all of my core protpvp abilities namely warbringer, shockwave, conc blow, toughness, and damage shield. Now you may ask why I only get 1 point in imp shield reflect, well I mostly run 2s and 3s, so I don't think 1 more point to gain 2% miss chance is worth it to me, I mostly use it to protect my teammates, and as far as I know there is no range difference in the arenas so sometimes if someone is being focus fired, firing off a spell reflect can save him and prevent yourself from eating a CC. Very very useful. Warbringer is a no brainer, being able to basically be unkite-able is amazing in pvp, and I'll get into how to win without MS.

Meta Gems

I am continuing to use my pvp gear and not prot gear for prot PvP in arenas and as such still am a fan of the 24 ap/ run speed meta.
Swift Skyfire Diamond - Item - World of Warcraft

Glyphs

Major (Pick 2)

Because we're prot we're gonna be using different ones than other pvp warriors, one that I've been using is Glyph of Revenge - Item - World of Warcraft it works out very nicely because although rage isn't a huge problem as prot I've found, being able to put out a lot of damage without worrying about rage is still a good situation to be in, so macroing revenge to /cast revenge /cast heroic strike with this macro is a great way to just blow away rogues or ret paladins that focus you. (and they will try, believe me)

My other Major glyph is:
Glyph of Hamstring - Item - World of Warcraft having the ability to proc an imp hamstring is awesome but some people might find that sticking to their target isn't that big of a deal and may opt for these two also great alternatives:
Glyph of Execution - Item - World of Warcraft or
Glyph of Rapid Charge - Item - World of Warcraft

All 4 of these are great, the two I selected were just my preferences, but I don't think you can really go wrong with any of the 4 mentioned above.

Minor

Glyph of Charge - Item - World of Warcraft

Glyph of Bloodrage - Item - World of Warcraft

Glyph of Battle - Item - World of Warcraft

I use the same glyphs as BW, namely because there isn't many available at 70, and 2 because these all are pretty good, especially the glyph of charge, I've charged nearly across the entire Nagrand arena to chase down a blinked mage.


Gear
I am composed entirely of Season 4 armor except for my shoulders which are season 3. Any pvp gear will suit you well as the new str -> sbv conversion is good and you don't want to gimp your overall damage either by lowering your AP (white hits, heroic strike, devastate, revenge, shockwave, conc blow, execute). I unfortunately am using Breeching Comet for my gear because well, I don't have anything better as a One hander, and as an orc the extra expertise is beneficial. Enchants should be your basic pvp enchants, namely Executioner for weapon, and Str/Ap/Crit for your legs, hands, helm and shoulders. I'm also using the season 3 shield which is a big boost to my survivability and my damage output (nice Block Value on it). Preferably I'd use a season 3 or better 1handed axe for it's obvious upgrades.

Gemwise I'm just using the old Str in Red, and Str/Crit in yellow slot mentality.

Trinkets I'm using the pvp trinket of course and depending on what I'm running into a lot of during the night I'll switch between the commendation of kael'thas against rogues/ret paladins, or my battlemaster's trinket against all other comps (more damage, and on demand hp).


Overview

So, new to prot pvp are ya? (who isn't!?) There's some very important things that you need to know, and one of them right off the bat is that yes we've been buffed significantly to be more mobile, and do more damage. Shield slam is definitely our bread and butter damage dealer now especially if timed with shield block BUT without Mortal Strike or some other healing debuff, we are not going to be able to burst down dps/healer teams as fast, BUT there's a good thing in that there are two solutions to this. 1) Run with another class who CAN put up the debuff for you (rogue, warrior, hunter) or 2) run with a good healer and basically use the fact that the healer will never peel you off of them and that you'll win the mana battle as long as you put good pressure on the healer and waste his mana.

So my experience so far is that I've done 20 some odd arena matches and countless BGs this past weekend as prot. For one thing, in BGs there's absolutely no reason why a skilled warrior spec'd prot can't top the charts, I know I did in kbs, kbs/death ratio, as well as Damage done. So the days of "LOL look a prot warrior, ignore him" are gone, people will see you, and either die in futility, or run away knowing they can't kill you but you sure as hell can put the hurt on them.

Arena matchups (2v2s)
Double Dps
I ran resto druid/prot warrior and we beat almost all of the double dps teams because of our survivability and namely my ability to put up reflects for my druid and saving his butt a lot, disarming as often as possible also keeps a lot of pressure off of him, and being able to chain stun people really increases my druids mobility all while I am whittling down the opponents health. If they decide to focus fire me, it's almost a no contest, between shield reflect, shield wall, shield block, and last stand, AND trinkets? They'd have to really do some amazing burst to take you out after all that AND leaving your healer free to heal and cc them. It really was just a matter of protecting my druid till their CDs were blown, and just finishing off the double dpsers.

Healer/DPS
The harder makeup that we faced was this. This required a little bit more time, and effort on my druids part. All I did was run and keep pressure on the healer keeping full stack of sunders by devastating, and shield slamming away buffs they have and working them down. Eventually they run oom, and I am able to get them low, interrupt/silence them and finish them off with a shockwave shield slam conc blow execute. The hardest team we ran up against though was a resto shaman/ret paladin. This team is definitely killer, with the shaman's ability to help dps, as well as give the ret paladin bloodlust and windfury, it just over-inflates the already somewhat overpowered retribution traits in arena. Basically if they could get my druid to 70% health and in los of the shaman it was gg, between stuns, ret burst, and shaman shocks/purges, my druid never stood a chance. I came extremely close to being able to take them out by sticking to the paladin but between the two of them being able to heal, AND the paladins bubbles, this team is definitely something I can't figure out how to beat easily. Aside from this though, I was able to wear down shaman, druid, priest, paladin mana by just working em, keeping 5 sunders, and keeping mobile. This coming week I'll respec to the one I linked above (right now i'm 5/5/51 because I was tanking heroics and thought I needed the parry) and tell you guys how much better we do, we went about 50/50 because of said ret/resto sham team beating us like 7 times, but overall I'd say we did really well.

Tips/Tricks
Remember, warbringer allows you to break out of movement impairing effects whenever you charge/intercept/intervene, so if that mage has you frost nova'd, or that druid has you rooted, or a rogue has you crippling poison'd, just charge right out of it, and much to their surprise. I spent most of my time in berserker stance so that I could both charge and intercept, and it made my ability to stay mobile almost not a problem. The problem with it is that you can't spell reflect while in zerker and without tactical mastery, if you need to do a clutch spell reflect you will not be able to. So against teams that will be trying to drop your druid, only go into zerker to intercept, then go back into battle or defensive immediately to be able to best utilize your survival talents with your druid.

My bread and butter destruction combo is probably strangely enough being in defensive stance because it allows you to light up revenge.

You want to revenge/HS macro, after you've devastated to 5 sunders, shield slam them for big damage, shield bash to interrupt the first spell and to daze the target. Devastate to add damage as well as try to proc SnB for shield slam. when the target tries to cast again, shockwave him to interrupt/stun, shield slam again, and HS if you've got the rage. his final cast will be taken out by your conc blow which should by now dropped their health to execute range to which you want to change stance to berserker, pop Recklessness, and execute him. when timed right they'll never get a heal off, and you'll drop the sucker fast. If you know that the target won't be hitting you at all so they'll never proc revenge for you, then you might want to just sit in zerker and rely on pummel instead of shield bash, and weave in hamstrings to keep them in close.

Always intercept first and charge after unless they are out of range, why? because they share DRs and if you're trying to chain stun someone, you want to use your longer stun first, if you charge first, then intercept, the intercept stun will only be 1 second long.

[Bloodwraith]

/Reserved

[Kazeyonoma]

This proves that no one reads stickies BW.

[Gomer]

I enjoyed the reading. Our battle group has been the suck for pvp this week so I've only ran three 2's games.(F'n servers) Both my shammy healer and I see some good things for prot/shammy. Its good times.

[Kazeyonoma]

definitely strong in bgs and possibilities in arenas, but keep in mind not only are we buffer now but that we do have weaknesses and our blaring one is no mortal strike, but there are plenty of compositions that survive without it, it just takes some... thinking.

[Nyd]

What exactly is the criteria for getting a sticky anyway?

[Kazeyonoma]

Which reminds me... sticking your thread too.

Just in general something useful and not worth losing to the 2nd page. Guides normally fall under stickies.

[Nyd]

Mayhaps we should look to consolidate things? I have a round of updates I intend to do tonight (really it depends on how busy I stay at work today ) but perhaps maintaining one pvp-centric 3.0+ guide would be smarter than multiple separate guides.

[Kazeyonoma]

sure, if you want, you can let me know what you want to post, and we can either add your stuff before mine (since yours gives a better overview to begin with) and just place it INside my post, or you can have BW post it in the reserved post he made, that way we have 3 posts, 1 for each of us to edit

[Bloodwraith]

Reserved post would probably be best

[Kazeyonoma]

the lack of responses here is disheartening =( I blame Blood's name.

[Bloodwraith]

It's your name

To be honost, the PvP forums aren't exactly TankSpot's most active forums

[Pizzashark]

Well, most people here seem to prefer PvE to PvP...

That, and Nyd's already putting together a Prot-specific PvP guide... maybe you two should collaborate and just make one big one that covers all three specs and general Warrior PvP playstyles?

[Vennersavatar]

Great post, I just found this site looking for pvp macros, kinda new to arms right now, espescially with the new changes, anyways i decided to keep improved rend and improved charge, along with the glyph this should be a nice combo to charge rend, maybe throw a ms in there then switch into berserker, with 3 points in tactical mastery and go nuts. I didnt take armored to the teeth, concentrating on crit i just took 5/5 cruelty from fury. Ive got no time for slam or overpower and im a big fan of hamstring, but after trying 3/3 in improved wasnt impressed and opted for tactical mastery instead. poleaxe specialization of course and all the 35+ talents. just some thoughts, let me know what you think.

[Pizzashark]

Damned IE crashed and ate my post yesterday, so I'm gonna try again today. Hate IE, wish I could install Firefox on the computers here... <_<

This is the build I plan on using if I manage to get back into WoW before WotLK arrives.

Why I choose what I chose, as compared to Kaze's:

I feel Incite is wasted, because I don't use Heroic Strike in PvP outside of very rare circumstances. Thunder Clap is a debuff ability, not really a killing ability... if it crits, great, if not... oh well. And when was the last time you ever used Cleave in PvP?

Improved Bloodrage has always been a great ability. It's now 15 Rage on demand (read: Spell Reflection) and another 15 over time. Absolutely necessary for those times you must get a Spell Reflection up, but don't have the Rage handy.

5/5 Shield Spec over 3/5 Anticipation is just a personal choice. Both are probably equally useful, though a blocked attack doesn't give them any Rage (and, presumably, no Runic Power), while a Dodged attack does. Your shield block rating can also be read as a chance to reduce being crit in melee, assuming the attack is made on your front 180 - a blocked attack cannot crit, unless anyone can offer empirical evidence otherwise.

2/2 Improved Spell Reflection because I plan on spending most of my arena time in 5's, because I find that bracket to be the most fun. If you plan on focusing on 2's or 3's, there really isn't any reason to go farther than 1 point. So, 1/2 for 2's and 3's, 2/2 for 5's.

Improved Disarm is a no-brainer. Allows you to use it more often, and nothing sucks more than to be a clothie that already didn't have any armor (thanks, Devastate!) and now you get to take an additional 10% from all sources. Maybe clothies will just run around unarmed when they see a prot warr on the other team

3/3 Puncture, because I can say from experience that there's a huge difference between 12 Rage Devastates and 9 Rage Devastates. I honestly cannot imagine taking PvP seriously without at least one point into Puncture. Devastate is your bread-and-butter attack, and the more efficient it is, the better off you are. Combined with Sword and Board (lower cost results in more Devastates which in turn result in more SnB procs), I personally think it's much more effective than 3/3 Critical Block.

Aside from that, our talent trees are identical. I do plan on dropping all three points out of Puncture (/cry) to pick up Piericng Howl at 71. I'll probably take 2/2 Booming Voice for my trash talents to reach 10 points... less time spent refreshing shouts and I really don't see either of the tier 2 talents as being better.

After that, I think I'll go for Tactical Mastery in Arms and then place my last 2 points into 2/3 Puncture. Another alternative would be 2/5 Commanding Presence in Fury. I'm not sure how Rend will perform with all the changes that it's been receiving - if it turns out to be pretty good, I may go 3/5 Deflection and 2/2 Improved Rend for my first five points into Arms. Otherwise, 5/5 Deflection all the way.

As for glyph selection, I'll be rocking something like this at or around 80:

Glyph of Last Stand - It's yet another "potion" for me. It's on a 2 minute timer, separate from potions and healthstones. Last Stand is usually used to buy you time to wait for that next heal or bandage to come in, and I'd rather have a slightly weaker, much more frequent ability than a slightly stronger, infrequent ability.

Glyph of Blocking - Under normal circumstances, this can basically be read as a permanent +10% SBV as long as you're in combat, because you'll almost certainly be using Shield Slam at least once every ten seconds. It increases outgoing damage and reduces incoming damage from physical sources.

Glyph of Devastate - Lets you get those important Sunder Armor stacks up much more efficiently, and thus makes it easier to keep the stacks up on multiple targets at the same time. Also has the side effect of making your Devastate hit harder, faster (three uses to reach a full stack as compared to five.) If I were to choose a different glyph, it'd probably be Glyph of Hamstring - Improved Hamstring on a sheet of paper.


Our selection of minor glyphs is kinda weak, but:

Glyph of Bloodrage - Already use it a lot, so the saved HP will add up over time. Not a major change, but it's not bad.

Glyph of Charge - Extends Charge's range to 30 yd, same as Intercept and Intervene. I'm honestly surprised this one isn't a major.

Glyph of Thunder Clap - Extends Thunder Clap's range by 2 yards. Makes it a little easier to tag people with the debuff. Glyph of Battle (+60 seconds to Battle Shout duration) is a perfectly acceptable substitute.

As for the meta gem, I'd actually recommend you take an Eternal Earthstorm Diamond (+5% SBV, and +12 DefR) over anything else. It's an easy way to squeeze a little more out of your Shield Slam, and you can easily get the speed boost from Boar's Speed (or Cat's Grace) on your boots. While AP is great to have, I'm pretty sure 5% more SBV will prove to be more DPS than 24 AP.

I personally prefer Smooth (+6/8/10 Crit) gems for my yellow slots, instead of Inscribed (STR/crit) gems to maximize my crit chance, though I'd wager either kind are perfectly fine. YMMV.

Sorry this post has ended up so disorganized and random. I had it all nice and pretty and really easy to read, but then IE crashed and I lost everything. Once again, Firefox > IE.

[Saturday]

I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned but with the new arms and prot pvp specs, you don't have enough points to get weapon mastery. That, in addition to rogue's getting Dismantle, has really caused some problems in fighting them (moreso as prot than as arms).

I tend to save Shockwave or intervene for when I get dismantled and then try to gain some distance but if the rogue blows his pvp trinket or is human (><) they do ridicilous amounts of damage when you're in that position. My question was if anybody had tried using an adamantite weapon chain and if it reduces the time of not only the disarm but the dis-shield (for lack of a better word). They don't appear as separate debuffs but there hasn't been a mob/spell that removes a shield before either (to my knowledge).

If the chain does, isn't it more valuable in filling the quissential anti-melee role due to the general dominance of both rogues and warriors in pvp?

[Kazeyonoma]

that's a good point, and rogues have been putting the hurt on with dismantle, i might try it out with my new shiny weapon and see if i can test it iwth my rogue buddy.

[Bloodwraith]

The noticeable losses from old specs is no piercing howl, death wish, and weapon mastery. Eating 10 second disarms from rogues sucks but going deep arms is still worth it I think.

I did mention it

[Saturday]

I did mention it

Shh, let me contribute! I just wanted to know whether an enchant which would only be justified in dealing with those two classes

The hit rating on it is kind of moot as you're hit capped so long as you're in mostly s2/s3 whereas Armour Ignore or Crit help against everything.