Today I finally got a group together to make my 5v5 arena team, but I had a problem - I am a full protection warrior (5/14/42), and I can't seem to find my niche within the system.

My first thought is that I would be spell locking casters with imp shield bash and concussive blow and allow my team mates to go and kill another player. That doesn't seem to be working all that well (we haven't played too many games).

I also am also torn on what gear to wear. It seems that the gear that would make the most sense for PvP would be high crit/high shield block power gear for large shield slams. While devastate would proc the TF, it doesn't do enough damage to really be effective.

I also did some 3v3 Arenas today and I noticed that the 3v3 wasn't as bad. I wasn't as useless because there usually was only one healer to take care of and I could single him out, while in 5v5 I'm having a much larger problem doing so.

Has anyone found the protection warrior's place in 5v5 PvP?

If you are able to unlock this mystery, I'm sure thousands of warriors everywhere will be rejoicing.

If you want to be successful and climb the ladder there isn't one. You will only serve to handicap your team. If you're playing for fun, then I suppose it doesn't really matter.

Protection warriors are worse than any number of other classes you could bring for the spot. Rogues/mages/warlocks/hunters are all better at disruption and can actually do meaningful damage as well. Also, nothing outperforms Mortal Strike in the arena - period.

It's better on an RP server, because taunt actually works.

Our top team is kicking in the 100g each weekend for our MT to respec MS for arena. If your team is serious about arena, it's something to seriously consider.

Ya know that really is the most fitting answer to this question.

The problem with Protection warriors is they are quite literally just an annoyance to casters and a non factor versus any other melee. Pretty much any other class/build would easily be better.

Losing one of your team member just for the purpose of beeing "annoyance" dosent cut it.

I am sorry but protection warriors dont belong in the arena. You can probably wear your prot gear with DPS helm / shoulders and a big 2H so you fool the other team into thinking you are a MS warrior so they focus fire you.

That is about everything i can think of for a protection warrior. I dont think i ever saw one in 500 -600 arena games played.( 5 vs 5 / 2 vs 2 )

At least we're gnomes.

From my limited experience in Arenas on my alt, I would say you might still be an asset when fighting really bad teams because they have a tendency to focus fire on the first thing they see, which can be you.

I'd probably go high stamina / shield block instead of crit. Did you go impale / deep wounds in your prot spec?

I am MT for my guild, and did not respec out of prot for my 5v5 arena fights.

We had a holy priest, holy paladin, rogue (unsure of spec), enhancement shaman and myself, 5/11/45.

I expected going in to be little more than an annoyance, one that bad teams (if we were lucky) would focus on and one that good teams would ignore. What I found instead was that between pummel, conc blow, pummel, war stop, pummel, intim shout, pummel, intercept, pummel, I was able to keep a healer locked down for a very long period of time. If a team had two healers, I went for the heavier one (pally or shaman) while the rest of the team focused on the ligher one (priest or druid.) We went 13-5, raising our overall rating for the week to 1590.

Add in Commanding shout, intervene (yes, common abilities, I know) and piercing howl, and I felt like I was contributing a lot, and had reached the realm of "utility," up from "annoyance."

I wore duel wield DPS gear to help with rage gen, ready to swap on a shield if I attracted magical DPS attention.

Would a DPS warrior been better suited to my spot? Perhaps. They don't have as many interrupt options, but have additional damage available. Did any of my team feel like I was a waste of a spot, even though we all half expected/feared just that? Nope.

It's not even the DPS the other warrior puts out that is in question, it's Mortal Strike. I honestly don't think warriors bring anything else of great value to a team that another class can not do better.

... but 90% of teams need Mortal Strike, so atleast be happy thats available to you.

Poisons can be cleansed/dispelled, mortal strike cannot.

I do feel for the protection warriors in arenas though. Some specs are simply superior overall than others for PvP. I wouldn't mind if Blizzard went the route that some other PvP games have done, and gave tanks PvP taunt.

In various battlegrounds, Protection Warriors were viable (and even optimal) for a few niche roles. Flag carrying in WSG, guarding a node in AB, or PvE tanking in AV were some of the things a Protection Warrior was capable of performing well. But in terms of arena combat, I sadly don't see a viable role for Protection Warriors.

As noted above, Arms Warriors are nearly irreplaceable for MS alone. A Rogue is much better suited for locking down spell casters (especially with Cloak of Shadows- one Frost Nova or Freeze Trap means a non-Gnome Protection Warrior is more or less shut down).

The problem is that you can't force actual players to focus fire on you other than by using Intervene. Since that's the role in which Protection Warriors truly shine (especially against other physical damage classes), we don't get to fully utilitize all of our talents, skills, and gear.

But to answer your question, if you're simply playing for fun and maybe a few epics down the line, sure, stick with Protection. I think Protection is a fun spec to play, personally. However, if you want to focus on arena combat, it may be worth it to farm a few gold every week for a respec, especially if your 5 man team doesn't already have an Arms Warrior.

Exactly, the rogue will have more controled stuns more often than a prot warrior and will shine in this roll whereas the prot warrior might do ok. The cooldowns on intervene and spell reflect make them short term solutions. Plus running around in def stance for the overall mitigation and the imp def stance bonus would put you at risk of being feared. You may have survivability with extra mitigation 14k HP, but you will not be that much of a threat to the other team due to the lack of the MS debuff and the lack of any real burst damage unless you get lucky on a Shield Slam crit. Then there is the typical warrior problem of being shut down with CC.

It might be a fun change of pace for a while, but prot in pvp just isn't going to be an option for rated teams. Thou, I would like to see someone prove me wrong and save me money on respecs.

Actually MS can be removed with BoP - it is currently impossible to cleanse poison applied with the main hand.

What you're seeing is that the rogue is re-stacking the poison as fast as you can cleanse it, combined with the fact that Wound Poison stacks five times at -10% healing per stack. There are ways to deal with that, depending on your group, so it's debatable which debuff is "worse." In one case, you need a single class to blow a significant cooldown. In the other, you have to CC the rogue to prevent re-application, then dispell up to five times (or use Abolish Poison or Poison Cleansing Totem if available).

Or divine shield. Removes practically everything but cyclone.

Obviously it's better for the rogue to go for the priest if there is one, but this is a scenario where I think two paladins might shine above a priest and a paladin. The only priest that has a counter to rogue poisons is the dwarf. The rest of us are screwed (as well as on fear ward).

MS is -50% immediately whereas wounding poison needs a few more hits to kick in, which in an assist train / burst it down situation makes the arms warrior more ideal. If the healers / assisted target have time to react then they will. BOP has a significant cooldown as well.

Not to mention the +40% to resist dispel effects from vile poisons, which really helps a lot.

Not to rag on you, but the only difference between you and the arms or fury warrior is neither of them have concussion blow, which still has a 45 second cooldown, otherwise the interrupt options are identical. The former would have Mortal Strike though, the latter would have the option of Improved Intercept which I found to be a really great PVP talent when I did PVP, and Death Wish does have varying utility just from the fear prevention. Both have significantly higher damage output too, and that matters, because it forces their healers to actually have to deal with someones face getting stomped in. Again, the Protection warrior only has 1 additional stun, really poor burst and sustained damage output. Compared to other classes who can heal, stun, or otherwise have more reliable CC options, and significantly higher damage output, the Protection warrior really has no place on a serious arena team. Sure you might be a quick distraction but honestly a good team would recognize that you really aren't a threat pretty quickly, cc you off and focus fire the actual threats on the team.

I guess there is Shield Slam, but I am not convinced its in fact a 50% dispel, more like 10% if that for the times when I've used it and it actually dispelled anything.

I've stayed with Protection so far. I run a casual 2v2 team with a PvE resto-specced druid.

We lose an awful lot. We can hold our own against low-dps teams (i.e. 1 healer/1 DPS, 2 off-specced healers, etc) simply because our survivability is quite high and we can often outlast them, but against high DPS teams (warlocks, mages, etc) I'm not dealing enough damage and it shows -- where an arms warrior might be able to seriously injure or kill a high-DPS clothie in the few seconds between being CC'd, I can't.

I will say that in 2v2 with a druid (who can start stealthed, in catform) I have the advantage of being the only visible target at the start of the match, which at least lets my durability come into play more than it would otherwise. Similarly, with Perception, we're often able to win The Stealth Game (tm), and I can generally unstealth an enemy rogue before he's able to jump my druid teammate and stunlock her to death. Either way, I usually end up as the focus of attention for the enemies for the first few seconds at least, which gives me a bit of rage to work with at the beginning of the fight as well as taking at least some advantage of my mitigation.

It's not the worst thing ever. On the plus side, you can expect to be stuck playing against a lot of people who're also using their PvE specs, or who simply aren't very good, because your rating won't ever get too high. That's how it's been for us in 2v2, anyway.

My combat log says "failed failed failed failed" so no, it is impossible to remove a mainhand poison. Any poison applied through a yellow attack is undispellable currently.

If talented, any poison stack is +40% dispel resist, which could easily account for those results. (Unless you've tested w/ a known-spec rogue and Shiv, which should be easy enough to do.)