Protection Warrior in Arena
 

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.

While a protection warrior may not be the most amazing thing for an arena team, they can definitely annoy the crap out of casters; our MT is PvPing with his prot spec and I think he's been able to force pallies to bubble (to get rid of the spell interruption) on his own multiple times and has even managed to get two pallies, standing literally right next to each other, to bubble at least once without any outside assistance.

Yeah, the group may not be the most serious, hardcore 5-man arena team in the battlegroup by a long shot, but we're doing ~ok~ considering that every person on it is sticking with their PvE spec during our matches.

We're running with the following makeup if it matters much:

Warrior (Prot)
Priest (Holy)
Mage (Fire)
Hunter (Survival)
Druid (Feral)

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.

Since the rogue poison and mortal strike do not stack, would not rogues be able to apply the same debuff then?

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.