Prot Warrior in 5.2 - How bad is it gonna get?!

[chrism]

Howdy y'all,

I am currently planning out my guilds setup for the coming raiding tier and my co-leader (also MT) and I have arrived at the point where we're discussing "optimal" tanking classes for 5.2. Since he used to play a prot warrior before MoP (He rerolled MONK of all classes...) and is very much disappointed with the overall variability and survivability of the brewmaster (the healers keep mocking him, too - it's pathetic, really ^^), we are currently thinking about bringing him back as prot.
However we are a little bit concerned with the coming nerf of warriors and the apparent buff of brewmasters.

Now, I was kinda hoping one of you gentlemen would be able to help us make that determination.

Is the Protection Warrior going to be an optimal (or at least viable) choice for maintanking? Is the Brewmaster becoming stronger and more stable?
Are there any better options yet? Our second tank is a Blood DK who will be DPSing in 1-Tank Setup Encounters and we want it to stay that way.

One of the strongest arguments I could come up with, apart from warrior being an optimal choice in respect to our overall setup (token distribution), is that he brings many raid supporting abilities (e.g. Banners) that are somewhat more viable than the ones brought in by a brewmaster.

Now, without any more rambling, what are your thoughts?
How bad is it gonna get (if at all)?

Cheers

[Senen]

What nerf?
All the nerf relative to warriors on PTR are almost exclusively pvp related.
Raiding prot warriors are more buffed than nerfed: base damages of some techniques are increased but their scaling is decreased (it should be a buff, damages while tanking will be the same but we'll deal more damages while offtanking), ER/IV are buffed, DC disappears but it will barely change anything; the only real nerf is the nerf of SBar but it won't destroy prot warriors at all.
Second wind change shouldn't affect pve at all. Shockwave change makes this talent slightly less valuable dps-wise on fights like Empress or Lei Shi, but it won't really matter.

[gruxxar]

not many prot changes ..

afaik:

- Scaling of Shield Barrier with AP decreased with 10%
- cooldown of Shockwave increases to 40 sec if it doesn't 3 or more targets

buffs:
- Victory rush buffed from 10% to 15% (which will play nicely along T15 2set)

[siccora]

I'm playing a monk brewmaster right now, rerolled from druid. we have a deathknight as the second (or sometimes main) tank. and i also thought about rerolling into prot warri or pala. to have 1 avoid and 1 block tank should be the best option. the only problem with this is the loot. but i think that block tanks will be the better choice for some encounters (like windlord).
so my opinion is, if your maintank wants to play that prot, he should. prot are much fun to play i must say. same with brewmasters but the effort you put into that class with the results is not that satisfying. you can play the monk perfectly and still he gets 1 shottet. if you don't have superior healers with you, then the monk is REALLY squishy.

[Deleted]

All that has been said already, I honestly think with monk scaling it will be fine deeper into t15 and monk is genuinely a really fun class to tank on, I however wouldn't advise it for progress on anything other than Normals or fights where you can abuse its 2, 90% reduction mechanics like on something such as lei-shi or the Garalon enrage. You might be able to get away with it on 10HC fights but on 25 you will really start to see its current weakness

With a blood DK as a tank I would honestly either suggest a Prot Paladin or Prot Warrior, I think either are equally viable and both have their nuances and situational benefits over the other, and both have a strong raid CD, Rally or AM... I would personally say rally + Demo Banner, beat AM most of the time though

[chrism]

Thank you guys so much for contributing to this thread, it really helps me(us) out quiet significantly.
I personally was not aware, that the warrior changes were relatively minor in pve (i apologize for not being as prepared as one should be before throwing stuff like this out there).

Like Eddytheone, it was my understanding, that the Prot Warrior would be a "saver" counterpart for the BloodDK in a 10 man raid setting and I can relate to his statement, that when pushing the envelope on HC fights the current brewmaster is a little bit to "spiky" as it were.
I will however not exclude the possibility, that my colleague is beyond error and might be able to step up his play to further increase survivability. Just as much as it is entirely possible that our healers are just not as focused as they should be.

I will discuss all that has been said here with my colleague and might be getting back to some of you!
Thanks for your support so far! Really appreciate it!