Dollar

I wouldn't risk picking up berserking enchant. For one you can't tell it when and when not to proc and with how bursty arena is right now it doesn't take much for you to die before your healer can react or when your healer is cc'd. Not to mention it isn't difficult to set your combat text to pick up on when berserking procs and do a quick switch.

"Oh he's a sad little man? He's thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?"

 

• Lanky

Not really. The DK goes to frost presence and mitigates over 60% of the warrior's damage without losing much of his own, and as Unholy Scourgestrike ignores armor, and boneshield significantly reduces incoming damage, especially from slow swinging 2hand classes like a warrior. I routinely stand in bladestorms to get a parry, which allows me to runestrike for colossal amounts of damage. Post-patch this gets nerfed, but Warriors have a really rough time with DKs at the moment.

 

yojoe

I don't know about you but all I'm seeing is miss, miss, miss as fury. I think arms has better survivability with talents like Second Wind and, as someone mentioned, Unrelenting Assault with sword and board. What is fury going to do against a rogue with evasion? or a feral druid with insane dodge? Retaliation + 1 secs Imp. Overpower is just nasty against feral druids.

As for Bladestorm, I think people don't understand how to properly use it and time it. It can be used as an anti cc tool but also as a defensive tool for your healer. It makes people scatter, no one in their right mind is standing inside a Bladestorm with Sweeping Strikes up and it will give your healer or clothie some time to recover. It can also be used to force a bubble/bop/iceblock early on in the game especially against a clothie, but then again they die really fast no matter what. Also, I believe the MS glyph will be a nice boost for arms post patch as well.

 

◊ Birdemani

edit: nm

Relwin: Besides, the BB is not some ivory tower of WoW knowledge, it's just less stupid here than elsewhere.
DeeNogger: Not less stupid, better stupid. The BB takes stupid very seriously. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go misspell the word fire.

 

Angeron

All of this 'TG is awesome controlled burst' talk has me confused; is anyone in this thread(or the world?) currently over 1900 rating as TG? Last time I checked TG burst was absolute shit compared to Bladestorm+SD proc, and like yojoe said, bladestorm is a fantastic anti-cc tool. The fact that (almost) any class can kill a warrior within a few cooldowns now affects both specs, but arms gives you more tools for both on-demand (BS,MS) and wildly random (SD SD SD SD) burst without sacrificing mobility or requiring you to stay in zerker for your big numbers.

Warriors are currently bad compared to the other dps options (rogue/dk/mage/hunter/paladin/boomkin), but Sudden death and bladestorm makes them 'less bad'.

PS: Titanium weapon chain until they move disarm reduction to a tier1 talent.

Though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable; I simply am not there.

 

Dollar

We definitely broke 1900 as resto shaman/warrior (then got farmed for a 100 points by counter comps which is incidentally almost everyone). I think that if I was a paladin rather than a shaman we could easily break 2k in our battle group. If you look at the #1 resto shaman/warrior team that is around 2100 their warrior is TG. So yes TG is "viable" compared to Arms. Though right now I would rather have nearly any other class as a partner in 2v2 but that's a different issue.

"Oh he's a sad little man? He's thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?"

 

gia

I won't claim TG is superior to arms but I find them to be comparable. Honestly, the issues warriors are having at the moment are not something we can overcome with talents. There are situations where we are just completely helpless, I feel TG gives me a better fighting chance in the games where I'm not countercomped because I can do a better job putting a healer under pressure.

I feel our biggest problem at the moment is rage, it really needs to be fixed. With the popularity of paladin healers (sacred shield) and with mage and priest shields getting stronger and stronger we are really hurting. There are many games where I can't even pummel a mage or a paladin because I have an incredibly hard time staying over 10 rage.

I think rage should be completely unlinked from actual damage dealt. The mechanic should be changed so that we get a fixed amount of rage every swing depending on our base weapon speed, scaling only with crit/haste/hit.

That's the main reason I'm TG at the moment, so far the times where I actually have the rage to do something and not be completely useless to my team have been slightly more frequent as fury compared to arms.

PS: Please fix Furious Attacks not proccing on absorbed hits I beg you.

 

Angeron

First things first: Thorriorc is arms. All of the top (read front page on real battlegroups) warriors are arms: Rhoz, Tugget, Thorrioric, etc. Props to gia and others for taking prot and tg to high levels but you're sacrificing metagame viability for 2v2 paladin killing power. Let's not forget that there is a 3v3 and 5v5 game here, and while it's nice to be able to actually break through sacred shield before it's reapplied in 2s, being able to put out ~40k+ dmg in the duration of a bladestorm+resulting SD proc(S) in a 5v5 match is as game-changing as standing in LOS of a BWed hunter.

Though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable; I simply am not there.

 

Riot

Actually, Tugget I think has been Fury for awhile now for PvP.. (Speaking from someone who plays on Stormstrike and BG9). He's Arms for PVE.

TG shines for sustained damage and putting pressure on healers and other casters. Arms can do some pretty wild burst damage with SD executes and breaking CC with BS, but TG shines for sustained pressure with more demand burst (Recklessness, DWish etc).

Pressuring healers as Arms is futile at the moment. It's very tough right now to put enough damage into them to force them to blow cooldowns. In 3v3 and in 5v5, I think the usefulness of Fury v. Arms depends on your composition - Fury requires a little less babysitting with Heroic Fury, Arms offers better burst and better damage in certain situations, but SD adds a big random element.

Overslept, / So tired. / If late, / Get fired. / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again. - The Commuter's Lament
Norman B. Colp

 

Dollar

I must have looked at Thurriorc's armory at the wrong time then. And yes I was talking specifically about it's viability in 2's, obviously Arms potential goes way up when there are more targets for bladestorm to hit at the same time. That being said it's still a viable spec, like it or not. There are plenty of TG warriors above 2k rating on a multitude of BG's. And I don't know if your armory is up to date but it's kind of hard to take you seriously when your only on one 2v2 team at 1550 rating.

"Oh he's a sad little man? He's thrown a kettle over a pub, what have you done?"

 

Twid

I have played Arms up to 2030 so far, and have recently swapped to TG to test it out. My initial impressions are that it's much nicer at pushing through absorb effects. This is the biggest bane for warriors as far as my experiences have shown. The coordination between myself and my healer as far as bursts go feels more calm, as I can choose exactly when I want to burst, versus waiting for the Sudden Death proc, and hoping that everyone is in the right position for the kill. We are able to force trinkets with a fear or HoJ, then when it is up again, I Death Wish/Recklessness, HoJ again, and burst about 17k in 3 GCDs. It's not that Sudden Death isn't proc'ing often enough, it's just that the proc can come off something like a heroic throw on a rogue trying to restealth, and I'm nowhere near him with intercept on cooldown.

As for the matches we did fight after respec'ing:

It's all very dependent on who is queuing unfortunately. We essentially faced nothing but plate teams or double dps on our way up, but since respec'ing this afternoon, we saw a mage/priest team, and shaman/rogue team. We stomped on the mage/priest when they were on my paladin for the first match, and lost one game when they burned on me. The third match they focused me, however I was using a 2H/shield until the PoM pyro was on cooldown, then swapped to dual wielding again. The match had almost everyone out of mana, then our server took a major dump. It would have been interesting to see how that played out, as we hadn't fought any M/P teams up until that point.

I wish I had some better data, but we fought less common comps after I respec'd. The Shaman/Rogue team were only 9-11 point games, so I won't really bother going into those. I'll be posting further results from this week as TG.

 

◊ Birdemani

This interested me last night and it prompted me to look up how well prot is doing in Arena. This isn't the most precise tool as many of these warriors seem to do some PvE/Prot tanking that is caught by the armory spiders. According to this:World of Warcraft Arena Ranking | SK Gaming, the #22 Warrior in the game runs as prot and is just about 2000 in 2's and 3's. Looking here shows slightly different results, but it still has a Prot warrior sitting just outside the top 20:Player Rankings - Arena Junkies

All ranked teams with Prot warriors after SK's last armory scan:
World of Warcraft Arena Ranking | SK Gaming

The trend among the higher ranked warriors seems to be gem for crit and use pieces of gear with SBV on them. In fact, a few of them are still wearing TBC pieces including the Maiden tanking gloves. It seems Blizzard may have achieved their goals of making a Warrior Protection spec viable in competitive PvP. It'll be interesting to see how things change with class balancing in 3.08, more resilience and as the Arena season(s) hopefully move away from insta-gib teams.

Relwin: Besides, the BB is not some ivory tower of WoW knowledge, it's just less stupid here than elsewhere.
DeeNogger: Not less stupid, better stupid. The BB takes stupid very seriously. Now if you will excuse me, I have to go misspell the word fire.

 

Deci

I've tried out Fury and it seems rather good. I agree with Twid that it's less reliant on RNG.
A different question though, anyone picking up enrage for pvp or those the lack of talent points scare you off like me?

 

Rammie

What meta's are everyone using at the moment? Was using minor run speed before as I was using my pve boots for pvp, however now I have the pvp boots I can enchant speed there and go for something else.

I would have thought the most popular would be

1. 21 crit(or 21 agi) & +3% crit damage (likely you will have more than 2 blue gems in pvp gear so should be no reason to get agi)
2. 42ap (or 32 stamina) & -10% duration on stuns

though there would be other alternatives such as

3. 32 stamina & -2% spell damage taken
4. 21 crit rating & -10% reduction on slowing (this im tempted as a troll, assuming it stacks)

I doubt anyone would bother with

5. 32 stamina & +2% armour
6. 21 crit & -10% duration on fear
7. 25 crit & 1% spell reflect
8. 21 def & 5% block value (though maybe for prot)

 

oldator

Indeed it is very nice at the moment to do arena as protection. However there is no arena gear with blockvalue which is a bit of a concern to me.. I am currently at 1720... nothing shocking, i have only replaced my items with no blockvalue on it, as i need the stat for all my abilities.. pretty much. Would be nice to see a protection arena set, also the 2 set abilities are useless. Less rage on hamstring and shorter cooldown on intercept, i'll be happy if just that is changed to hamstring/shield bash and intercept/intervene, but that would cancel out adding blockvalue. So make 2 sets already.

And replying on a post earlier in this topic, holy paladins are a pain indeed. altho my tactic is mainly chain interupt/stun and have the deathknight nuke it. Does not work a lot. The dispell effect of shieldslam is nice aswell on paladins, all their buffs are magic i think.

 

dysent

I've had similar experiences to many other posters... I went TG after 2 weeks as arms and am never looking back.

I found a really big advantage to TG in 2's was the option to fight with a shield out while still producing moderate pressure when playing against dps-heavy, healing light teams. The extra armor and spell reflect meant the shaman had less concern about me getting killed while they split 1-1 on us.

Eventually they'd try to double down on the shaman or I'd spell reflect something nasty - at which point DW+Reck-> intercept WW+BT+slam for a 2-3GCD kill.

Using 2h/shield sets up spell reflect and shield slam for dispels while still producing more battlestance dps than arms sword+board (BT only loses a couple hundred damage from item stats with a shield, and shield slam is moderate damage itself).

Also, double intercept feels much better for killing a mage or evasion'd rogue than bladestorm+SD. Bladestorm is kiteable and obvious when it goes up but reck -> intercept WW is much more explosive and comes out of nowhere.

I think that post-3.08 with the DK nerfs and the BT & WW changes, TG will be the spec to play. Just be sure you're rolling with enough lvl213 hit gear that you can support the spec if you're trying it out.

 

Plea

How do you switch to dw from 1h-shield? Might have been talked about in the macro thread, but this thread should be appropriate too.

 

gia

This will equip a weapon directly in your offhand.

To put on your shield as TG you simply equip the shield, no macro required. Or simply "/equip Shieldname" if you need it for a spellreflect macro or similar stuff.

 

dysent

Also, an easy single line macro for swapping, c/o wowwiki:
/equipslot [equipped:Shields] 17 Titansteel Destroyer; 17 Titansteel Shield Wall

This will put on a shield if you don't have one on, or put your weapon in your offhand if you do, without taking 2 actionbar spots.

 

Randor

Haven't had much interest in doing Arena this season (1990 rating is personal best on this toon) and haven't done much PvPing on this toon at 80 either.

But wanted to give it a try this past weekend so I went and got the 5 pieces of Savage Gladiator gear and the 80 PvP trinket. Gemmed and enchanted then filled in with the PvE gear. 232 hit rating, 35% crit self-buffed with Zerker, 3500ish attack power and using BoH/Jawbone combo.


Spec was 18/53

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...h=000000000000

I went into every BG a few times minimum (including Strand and WG).

It may not have been teh lazer pew pew of days gone by but I was pleasantly surprised, especially after reading all the QQ posts.

Warlocks? A joke to kill. Mages? They sheep you, you trinket. They blink, you intercept. They frost trap you. you Heroic Fury and re-intercept them.

Killed not 1, not 2 but 3 hunters with Heroic Throw.

Prot warrior? Shadowmeld, itemrack into Prot gear and go toe to to with them.

Ret pally? Keep them busy till help came to burst their bubble.

And finally: DKs. A few took me down but I managed to kill my share, even going 1 on 1. Go go shield reflect and disarm.

Priests were still the hardest to kill.

Anyway, PvP seems viable. It may not be the bursty killing machines we once were, but we're hardly on the bottom of the food chain. Hoping to try it this weekend in the Arenas.

This is a computer-generated message and needs no signature.

 

tarrek

I'm currently level 77 on my warrior, leveling as prot and aiming to do PvP as prot once I reach 80 as well. I'm not overly concerned about reaching high ratings in arena, as I'm a PvE player by heart who enjoy mostly casual PvP.

Most of my experience with prot PvP so far is from (mostly successfully) defending myself against gankings. Even against level 80 gankers I feel that even though I usually lose eventually against 80s due to level and gear differences I'm not a complete pushover, and there's been a fair amount of close calls.

Anyway.. I'm curious about others' experience with prot pvp. How do you spec and what glyphs are good for PvP use? [Glyph of Rapid Charge] feels pretty obvious along with the minor [Glyph of Charge], but the rest are less obvious to me.

As you say the 4pc bonus of Gladiator's Battlegear is fairly useless when you have in-combat Charge anyway, so I'm thinking if it would be worth it to use 3 pieces Battlegear and 2 pieces of the tanking Tier7 for the 10% extra damage on Shield Slam? You also have a good amount of SBV on the T7 helm. And for the purpose of high SS hits, you can also get the Titanium Plating to add 40 SBV to your shield in 3.0.8.

 

dysent

In my experience from when I was BGing as prot while we were ramping up raiding, the minor charge glyph was just a faster way to make everything you want to attack immune to your good stuns.

It was rare to the extreme that intercept, intervene AND 15sec charge were all down when I wanted to catch someone who wasn't already immune to my stuns. Charge is terrible for catching moving targets anyhow.

I liked glyphing blocking/hamstring/devastate, though I could see block/ham/HS also being good seeing as prot in pvp gear can see HS crit rates at 50-55%.

It's weird to read that people are getting decently far as prot in 2's, but apparently it works. If anyone has a quick link handy to an article or thread about a high rated prot warrior's experiences testing the spec out, it'd be cool to read. I've been looking around unsuccessfully.

 

Disruptor

I cant complain about prot.
Im playing 2s with a heal druid having blue pvp gear and we are doing fine.
Just got almost 1800 in 2s @ 30~40 games.
And we arent even used to that comp and just use teamspeak.
My SBV gear with things like imp. disarm makes my SS crit for 10k-20k, depending on equip ( plate or cloth ) and res.
And wow, we got chess games back. Almost any fight is longer then 3-4 minutes and we just outplay our enemies by using tank support skills and my recklessnes / trinket / shield block crit spike.
I can support my druid in many ways , for example by -30% dmg with intervene or 3 charges that stuns the enemy or spellreflect.
HS glyph gives us another very awesome advantage. By spamming HS my druid is almost untouchable.
And even if my druid dies, of 40 games i won mb 5~10 on my own just 1 vs 2 because enemies were oom or had everything on CD.

3s im sticking with furor and im very excited about the patch.
Berserker as weapon enchant will be very interesting and the 2% hit needed for styles are very easy to get, giving you many ways to define your equipment.
Playing 3s with a ret and the heal dudu and works fine as well.
Many ways to CC and still enough survivabiltity due to BoP etc.
Using DW and Recklessness with a lucky trinket proc makes me sometimes kill well geared priests within few seconds.

Arms nerf will be coming so i rather consider to play as prot / fury, especially with those fury buffs.

 

carrionghoul

Which spec you play in arena really comes down to what team size and what comp you are playing.

Currently in 2vs2 its all about who can burst down who the fastest. 3vs3 is still really bursty but then again I personally haven't run into too many 2 healer/1 dps teams yet. 5vs5 is up in the air depending on gear vs gear/comp vs comp (I am unsure what is dominating in this forum since expansion)

Having played an MS warrior since beta, I am sadly dissapointed in the current state of MS. It is imo completely proc dependant (even more so then it used to be). If you get a TfB or Sudden Death proc or 2 you will wtfpwn someone. One second they are standing there, the next they fall over and take a dirt nap. If you do not get your procs, you will most likely die. Oh, lets not forget, if you can hamstring someone and they don't have a root break AND Bladestorm is up, you will kill them. That being said, this spec is very good in 2vs2 and decent in 3s and 5s. Again, its very good in these situations as long as you are getting your procs. Did I mention procs? oh, ok, good. :P

Having run Fury I like the way it works overall better then MS in general pvp ( BG's and Winters Grasp). It is solid in 2s, and very good in 3s and 5s. Having a snare break every 45 and a refreshed intercept to go with it, makes this very competative. It is also sick dps without having to rely on procs. This is important in the drawn out game. Overall I feel TG is the more stable and less proc reliant spec, that can easily push as much dps then MS, althou MS will have the occasional crazy burst when it get a TfB or Sudden Death proc or 2 in there. TG will be amazing after the patch once the extra miss rate is removed.

I love the new Prot. Charge charge charge+root break all day long. Two different silences with gag order, stuns up the wazoo and group spell reflect. Prot is very good annoyance/CC. It could be viable in 5s as long as your comp can handle a lower dps/high survivability spec. Same with 3's. Sadly untill res and stam gets to where healers can survive long enough against double dps in 2s, Prot will never do amazingly well there (althou it will annoy the bejezus out of any team you come up against and I have yet to get together with a guildie and do the dual prot warrior team ;P )

To recap

MS= great in all arenas if you can stand a very proc reliant spec, Bladestorm is a one trick pony (but sometimes all you need is one good horse)

TG= great in all arenas for a much more stable high dps/rootbreaking spec

Prot= great survivability and CC, better in comps that involve long lasting strategies althou current trend is more dps burst then the drag out knock down survival specs of last season. Once the gear catches up to the dps, prot will become a terror.

 

tarrek

I haven't touched arena previously because I've always played squishy classes/specs that dies too fast in pvp up until now, but the survivability I'm seeing just with my level 78 gear is amazing. I can't imagine what a tough nut a prot warrior with high resilience will be. I'm curious about arena now though, mostly interested in a 3v3 or 5v5 setup.

There are only two issues I've found with pvp as prot, judging from fooling around in Wintergrasp and battlegrounds. The most glaring one is the lack of Hamstring in defensive stance. Shield Bash works as a substitute, but only lasts 6 seconds.

The other is that the 1 second stun on Charge isn't enough to catch someone running away from you because of how buggy Charge/Intercept is and you often stop outside of melee range, and if you've recenty been in the fray with your target chances are they're immune to your stun anyway.

I feel that with how many stuns prot has access to anyway, some way to change that 1s stun into a 2-3s daze would be very welcome.