Prot the new default 2nd tree for PvP arms warriors?

[Fargan]

Since Arms now gets its own Enrage there isn't much for an Arms warrior in the Fury tree for PvP other than Cruelty and Piercing Howl.

From the Prot tree an Arms Warrior gets:

TM: Great for stance dancing, spell reflects, etc..
Last Stand: Extra health on demand.
Imp. Revenge: If your getting focused it should let you stun one of the attackers, thus reducing your incoming damage.
Improved Disarm: This is the main reason for going this deep into prot. 10% extra damage on target on demand, twice every min (assuming Disarm and Shield Break are on different CDs) is great. Sunder up a healing shammy/pally, then Shield Break them and your looking at a very large chunk of extra damage taken.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warr...00000000000000

[Deleted]

Youre leeching 5% crit...
I would NEVER go that spec...

[Fargan]

With 51pts in Arms you can still spec for Imp. Disarm and still get 2% crit from Fury if you really must.

10% extra damage from all sources on the target on demand (esp when combined with the extra damage from Shield Break) > 3% crit for you.

I unfortunately don't have the maths to back it up, but I'd hazard a guess that 10% extra damage for 10 seconds (20sec if SB and Disarm are on different CDs) every min is a larger overall DPS increase than the 3% extra crit.

(this is ignoring the other goodies you get from Prot, though I do admit PH would be missed)

[Samyaaza]

Since Arms now gets its own Enrage there isn't much for an Arms warrior in the Fury tree for PvP other than Cruelty and Piercing Howl.

For PvP arms I am not going any deeper then 1/3 tactical mastery, and if you wanna do some serious arena, there is no way you can do them without Piercing Howl imo and Blood craze is just too good to be passed, not to mention passing cruelty.

[Fargan]

Blood craze takes the load off your healer a little bit over the course of a long fight. It's not going to save you when you get focused, but Last Stand might.

PH would be missed in 2v2, but in 3v3 or 5v5 its likely other members of your team are going to be able to root / snare them.

Now say for example your vs a team with a Pally healer, I'm not sure what AC levels a PvP Pally healer is running around with atm so I'm gonna assume about 16-17k, thats roughly 60% damage mitigation. You Sunder and Shield Break that pally and your dropping his armor by about 9k (6.5k from shield, 2.5 from Sunder). Thats dropping his mitigation to roughly 40%, or 20% extra dmg taken. Add Imp. Shield break on top of that and your looking at 30% extra dmg on demand on a healer. Now tell me thats not going to be amazing in 5v5 and at least useful in the smaller brackets.

[Terror]

Frankly, I view the Prot tree as primarily useful for Arena, which in PvP is it's primary use right now. Last stand, toughness, and tactical mastery scream survivability to me. A serious arena warrior must at least consider speccing into prot to take this and use them to survive a cc chain on his healer.

On the other hand, if you're mostly doing BGs or planning on spending most of the time in Lake Wintergrasp, it might make more sense to lose some survivability for DPS(especially given the cooldown of last stand). Dying and ressing in a BG isn't a real big deal.

I'd keep tactical mastery just because it does make sense to switch to battle stance against rogues/hunters/feral druids when you get up close. Other than that, I'd take some of the arms/fury talents over the survivability of prot for non-arena pvp.